who long afterwards referred to this connection (Brewer, Letters and Papers relating to Henry VIII, vol. iv. pt. iii. p. 2874). His return to England through Geneva, Paris, and Calais is hinted at in two Latin poems by Janus Vitalis and Joannes Latomus (printed in Johnson's Life of Linacre, p. 147). According to these poems, Linacre on leaving the southern side of the Alps (probably by the Great St. Bernard), and bidding farewell to Italy, indulged his fancy in building a rough altar of stones, which he dedicated to the land of his studies as ‘sancta mater studiorum.’
It is not clear how long Linacre remained in Italy, but Erasmus speaks of several years; and he certainly returned home after Grocyn, who is believed to have come back to England in 1491. His stay might therefore have extended over six years. There is little ground for the suggestion that he paid a second visit to Venice in 1499, when his first work was published there.
After Linacre's return to Oxford he was incorporated M.D. on his Padua degree, and read some public lectures, probably on medical subjects. A more definite statement is made by Wood that he gave lectures at a later period, apparently about 1510. Doubtless his refined Latin scholarship and profound knowledge of Greek gave him, along with his friends Grocyn and Latimer, a position of great distinction, and he was as fortunate in his pupils as he had been in his preceptors. Thomas More acquired from him a knowledge of Greek, and Erasmus, who came to Oxford in 1497, partly to learn that language, owed Linacre a debt, which he generously acknowledged; though it is not clear whether Linacre or Grocyn was more specially his instructor. Colet, another member of the brilliant band of Oxford scholars often spoken of by Erasmus, was also Linacre's intimate friend till an unfortunate quarrel about the Latin grammar which the latter wrote for St. Paul's School broke off their intimacy.
It is stated by Caius that Linacre, on some occasion after his return to Oxford, migrated to Cambridge, but whether this was merely a temporary visit due to an outbreak of plague which occurred in his own university, or for the purpose of study, is uncertain. However, his foundation of a lectureship at Cambridge in after times seems to show some grateful recollection of the sister university.
About 1500 or 1501 Linacre was called to court as tutor to the young Prince Arthur. This appointment seems to be foreshadowed in his dedication to the prince of a translation from the Greek into Latin of ‘Proclus on the Sphere’ (1499), evidently before he had received any such nomination. The office came to an end with the death of the prince in April 1502, if not earlier, and was probably little more than nominal. It does not appear to have involved any medical duties, but soon after the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 Linacre was made one of the king's physicians, with a salary of 50l. a year. This office was then marked by an external state and dignity, curiously described by George Lily [q. v.], a junior contemporary, in his ‘Elogia.’ From this time, if not before, Linacre lived chiefly in London, and was actively employed as a physician, having among his patients great statesmen, such as Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop Warham, and Bishop Fox, besides his own intimate friends, Colet, More, Erasmus, Lily, and other scholars.
It is curious that about this time begins the long list of Linacre's ecclesiastical preferments. In 1509 he received the rectory of Mersham in Kent; in the same year the prebend of Easton-in-Gordano at Wells; in March 1510–11 the living of Hawkhurst; in 1517 a canonry and prebend of St. Stephen's, Westminster; in 1518 the prebend of South Newbald, York, and the rectory of Holsworthy, Devonshire. In 1519 he was made precentor of York Cathedral, and finally in 1520 rector of Wigan, Lancashire. He was admitted to priest's orders on the title of the last-mentioned preferment, 22 Dec. 1520 (Tanner). Tanner improbably dates his admission to deacon's orders in 1509. It was concerning Linacre's preferment to Hawkhurst that Ammonius wrote to Erasmus in 1511 that Linacre ‘sacerdotio auctus est’ (Erasmi Epistolæ, ed. 1521, p. 358; Brewer, Letters, etc., of Henry VIII, ii. 136). Linacre doubtless received his earlier preferments while still a layman. There is no evidence that he ever resided at any of the places mentioned, and he resigned several benefices within a few months of their bestowal, probably in favour of an aspirant who had received the promise of the next presentation, and was willing to pay the holder to vacate. Such arrangements for rewarding the favourites of the court or the prelacy without expense to the patron were not uncommon then and not unknown since. From these endowments Linacre derived a great portion of the wealth which he afterwards employed for public purposes.
After receiving priest's orders there is no doubt that Linacre gave up practice and devoted himself to clerical life, his object being, as he states in the dedication of one of his books to Archbishop Warham, to obtain more leisure for literary work. Sir John Cheke
