'If the haesitation in your speech doth hinder, gett a parsonage of 4 or 500 li. per annum, and give a curat 100 li. per annum to officiate for you.'
The letter is dated from 'Fordingbridge; 12 August, 1676.'
Aubrey, in his letters to Anthony Wood, several times touches on the idea of his taking Orders. MS. Ballard 14, fol. 98:—'I am like to be spirited away to Jamaica by my lord <John> Vaughan, who is newly made governor there, and mighty earnest to have me goe with him and will looke out some employment worthy a gentleman for me. Fough! the cassock stinkes: it would be ridiculous.'—April 9, 1674. MS. Ballard 14, fol. 119:—'I am stormed by my chiefest friends afresh, viz. Baron Bertie[230], Sir William Petty, Sir John Hoskyns, bishop of Sarum[231], etc., to turne ecclesiastique; "but the king of France growes stronger and stronger, and what if the Roman religion should come-in againe?" "Why then!" say they, "cannot you turne too?" You, I say, know well that I am no puritan, nor an enimy to the old gentleman on the other side of the Alpes. Truly, if I had a good parsonage of 2 or 300 li. per annum, (as you told me) it would be a shrewd temptation.'—Aug. 29, 1676.
[R] Aubrey notes in the margin, (1) 'T. H.' (in a monogram), i.e. that this Latimer had been schoolmaster to Thomas Hobbes, and (2), 'delicate little horse,' to indicate that he did not walk the mile to Leigh-de-la-mere like a poor boy, but rode his pony there like a fine gentleman. John Britton has mis-read the note, and made it a description of Mr. Latimer's appearance, 'delicate little person.'
In MS. Aubr. 3, fol. 109, Aubrey gives this inscription as on a stone 'under the communion-table' in the church of Leigh-de-la-mere:—
'Here lieth Mr. Robert Latymer, sometime rector and pastor of this church, who deceased this life the second day of November, anno domini 1634.'
And then Aubrey notes:—
'This Mr. Latimer was schoolmaster at Malmsbury[232] to Mr. Thomas Hobbes. He afterwards taught children here[233]. He entred me into my accedence. Before Mr. Latimer, one Mr. Taverner was rector here, who was the parson that maried my grand-father and grandmother Lyte.'
[S] In a marginal note (MS. Aubr. 7, fol. 3), Aubrey excuses his father's neglect of his education on the plea that he himself grew up illiterate. The note is:—
'My grandfather A<ubrey> dyed, leaving my father, who was not educated to learning, but to hawking.' See in the life of Alderman John Whitson.