on condition of his remaining in the kingdom; and he contrived to
pass away those days of horror in an unmolested obscurity.

He was among the first whom Mary's illustrious successor recalled to
public usefulness; being summoned to take his place at her earliest
privy-council. In the important measures of the beginning of the reign
for the settlement of religion, he took a distinguished part: afterwards
he was employed with advantage to his country in several difficult
embassies; he was then appointed assistant and finally successor to
Burleigh in the same high post which they had occupied together so many
years before under the reign of Edward, and in this station he died at
the age of sixty-three.

No statesman of the age bore a higher character than sir Thomas Smith
for rectitude and benevolence, and nothing of the wiliness and craft
conspicuous in most of his coadjutors is discernible in him. There was
one foible of his day, however, from which he was by no means exempt: on
certain points he was superstitious beyond the ordinary measure of
learned credulity in the sixteenth century. Of his faith in alchemical
experiments a striking instance has already occurred; he was likewise a
great astrologer, and gave himself much concern in conjecturing what
direful events might be portended by the appearance of a comet which
became visible in the last year of his life. During a temporary
retirement from court, he had also distinguished himself as a magistrate
by his extraordinary diligence in the prosecution of suspected witches.
But the date of these and similar delusions had not yet expired. Great
alarms were excited in the country during the year 1577 by the
prevalence of certain magical practices, which were supposed to strike
at the life of her majesty. There were found at Islington, concealed in
the house of a catholic priest who was a reputed sorcerer, three waxen
images, formed to represent the queen and two of her chief counsellors;
other dealings also of professors of the occult sciences were from time
to time discovered. "Whether it were the effect of this magic," says
Strype, who wrote in the beginning of the eighteenth century, "or
proceeded from some natural cause, but the queen was in some part of
this year under excessive anguish by pains of her teeth: Insomuch that
she took no rest for divers nights, and endured very great torment night
and day." In this extremity, a certain "outlandish" physician was
consu