ks, and dear-bought experience: he out of all employment
that might yield a support for himself and wife, who had been curiously
and plentifully educated; both their natures generous, and accustomed to
confer, and not to receive, courtesies, these and other considerations,
but chiefly that his wife was to bear a part in his sufferings,
surrounded him with many sad thoughts, and some apparent apprehensions
of want.

But his sorrows were lessened and his wants prevented by the seasonable
courtesy of their noble kinsman, Sir Francis Wolly, of Pirford in
Surrey, who intreated them to a cohabitation with him; where they
remained with much freedom to themselves, and equal content to Him, for
some years; and as their charge increased--she had yearly a child--so
did his love and bounty.

Mr. Donne and his wife continued with Sir Francis Wolly till his death:
a little before which time Sir Francis was so happy as to make a perfect
reconciliation between Sir George and his forsaken son and daughter; Sir
George conditioning, by bond, to pay to Mr. Donne 800_l._ at a certain
day, as a portion with his wife, or 20_l._ quarterly for their
maintenance, as the interest for it, till the said portion was paid.

Most of those years that he lived with Sir Francis he studied the Civil
and Canon Laws; in which he acquired such a perfection, as was judged to
hold proportion with many, who had made that study the employment of
their whole life.

Sir Francis being dead, and that happy family dissolved, Mr. Donne took
for himself a house in Mitcham--near to Croydon in Surrey--a place noted
for good air and choice company: there his wife and children remained;
and for himself he took lodgings in London, near to Whitehall, whither
his friends and occasions drew him very often, and where he was as often
visited by many of the nobility and others of this nation, who used him
in their counsels of greatest consideration, and with some rewards for
his better subsistence.

Nor did our own nobility only value and favour him, but his acquaintance
and friendship was sought for by most Ambassadors of foreign nations,
and by many other strangers whose learning or business occasioned their
stay in this nation.

Thus it continued with him for about two years, all which time his
family remained constantly at Mitcham; and to which place he often
retired himself, and destined some days to a constant study of some
points of controversy betwixt the English a