vacation, 1593, sent to Brazen Nose College, in the
condition of a commoner, where he made considerable progress in logic and
philosophy. In 1599 he was elected student of Christ Church, and, for
form's sake, was put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards
Bishop of Oxford. In 1614 he was admitted to the reading of the Sentences,
and on the 29th of November, 1616, had the vicarage of St. Thomas, in the
west suburb of Oxford, conferred on him by the dean and canons of Christ
Church, which, with the rectory of Segrave, in Leicestershire, given to him
in the year 1636, by George, Lord Berkeley, he kept, to use the words of
the Oxford antiquary, with much ado to his dying day. He seems to have been
first beneficed at Walsby, in Lincolnshire, through the munificence of his
noble patroness, Frances, Countess Dowager of Exeter, but resigned the
same, as he tells us, for some special reasons. At his vicarage he is
remarked to have always given the sacrament in wafers. Wood's character of
him is, that "he was an exact mathematician, a curious calculator of
nativities, a general read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one
that understood the surveying of lands well. As he was by many accounted a
severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous person; so
by others, who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing and
charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christ Church often say, that
his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile; and no man in his time
did surpass him for his ready and dexterous interlarding his common
discourses among them with verses from the poets, or sentences from classic
authors; which being then all the fashion in the University, made his
company the more acceptable." He appears to have been a universal reader of
all kinds of books, and availed himself of his multifarious studies in a
very extraordinary manner. From the information of Hearne, we learn that
John Rouse, the Bodleian librarian, furnished him with choice books for the
prosecution of his work. The subject of his labour and amusement, seems to
have been adopted from the infirmities of his own habit and constitution.
Mr. Granger says, "He composed this book with a view of relieving his own
melancholy, but increased it to such a degree, that nothing could make him
laugh, but going to the bridge-foot and hearing the ribaldry of the
bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of