Davenant, once Vicar, is buried. He lent Aubrey £500 for a year and a half and would take no interest. Christopher Wren said of him that he "was the best mathematician in the world about thirty or thirty-five years ago." For a time he was parson also at Poulshot, near Seend. Aubrey's "most familiar learned acquaintance was Lancelot Morehouse, parson of Pertwood," which is eight miles east of Kilmington, high up above the old west road, and near the west end of the Great Ridge Wood. He had been curate at Broad Chalk. He wrote against the Vicar of Kilmington's book on the number 666 and was answered "with some sharpness." Also he wrote on squaring the circle. It was apropos of Pertwood that Aubrey mentioned the mists on the downs. But Morehouse died at Little Langford on the Wylye whither he was preferred. He left "his many excellent mathematical notes to his ingenious friend, John Grant, of Hindon," two miles south of Pertwood. Two miles from Hindon, Christopher Wren was born, in the parsonage at East Knoyle.
These people shared some of Aubrey's tastes, but the greater and better part of his material related to more outstanding men and women, like Philip Sidney and his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, at Wilton. There were the Raleighs at Downton, and a portrait of the great Sir Walter "in a white satin doublet, all embroidered with rich pearls, and a mighty rich chain of pearls about his neck, and the old servants have told me that the pearls were near as big as the painted ones." At Becket Park, Shrivenham, just over the Berkshire border, in the Vale of White Horse, lived Henry Martin, of whom Aubrey says that he was "as
