belief in Christianity. The
following Sunday he wrote a "Meditation concerning the mercy of God in
preserving us from the malice and power of Evil Angels," in which he
refers, with extreme complacency, to the trial over which he had
presided at Bury St. Edmunds.'

[51] See _ante_, p. 127.

[52] Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was the well-known author of _Religio
Medici_, published in 1642; _Vulgar Errors_, published in 1646; and
numerous other mystic, pseudo-scientific and philosophical works. Mr.
Leslie Stephen (_Hours in a Library_, vol. ii. p. 11) writes of him:
'Obviously we shall find in Sir Thomas Browne no inexorably severe guide
to truth; he will not too sternly reject the amusing because it happens
to be slightly improbable, or doubt an authority because he sometimes
sanctions a mass of absurd fables.' So he more or less believed in the
griffin, the phoenix, and the dragon: he knew that the elephant had no
joints, and was caught by cutting down the tree against which he leant
in sleep; that the pelican pierced its breast for the good of its young;
that storks refused to live except in republics or free states; and that
men were struck dumb, literally dumb, by the sight of a wolf: he
discusses what would have happened had Adam eaten the apple of the Tree
of Life before that of the Tree of Knowledge; he discovers error in
every recorded speech but one delivered before the Flood; he admits that
the phoenix is mentioned in holy writers, and alluded to in Job and
the Psalms, but nevertheless adduces eight reasons for not believing in
his existence, of which one is that no one has seen one, another that in
the Scriptures the word translated phoenix also means a palm-tree,
another that he could neither enter the ark in a pair, nor increase and
multiply. At the same time, he probably possessed a considerable
knowledge of physical science, and holds a high, though peculiar,
position in English literature. Evidently he was not a suitable witness
in the present case, and his appearance as recorded above is far the
most unamiable thing known of him; but it is possible that his
neighbours did not take him more seriously as a trustworthy authority
than do his modern critics.

ALICE LISLE

Alice Lisle was the daughter and heiress of Sir White Bechenshaw of
Moyles Court, Ellingham, Hants, the scene of the principal facts
referred to in this trial. The house is still standing. In 1630 she
became the second wife of J