[XLIII.] Quaere for what he sayd it was good?
[XLIV.] This line is imperfect. It is blurred in my notes.
The old gentleman was a great lover of heraldry, and was well knowne[481] with the heralds at their office, who approved his descent[XLV.].
[XLV.] Dr. <Richard> Blackburne haz his genealogie, of his owne drawing. He loved heraldry.—MS. Aubr. 8, fol. 8.
Memorandum:—he struck-out above halfe of the accedence, and wrote new instead. He taught a gentleman in halfe a yeare to understand Latin, at Mr. Duncombe's his parishioner. Quaere his daughter Brookes at Oxford for it[482].
[483]His wife was a penurious woman, and would not allow him to burne candle after supper, by which meanes many a good notion is lost, and many a probleme unsolved; so that Mr. <Thomas> Henshawe, when he was there, bought candle, which was a great comfort to the old man.
The right honble Thomas[484] Howard, earle of Arundel and Surrey, Lord High Marshall of England, was his great patron[485], and loved him intirely. One time they were like to have been killed together by the fall at Albury of a grott, which fell downe but just as they were come out. ☞ My lord had many grotts about his house, cutt in the sandy sides of hills, wherin he delighted to sitt and discourse.
In the time of the civill warres the duke of Florence invited him over, and offered him 500 li. per annum; but he would not accept of it, because of his religion.
Notwithstanding all that has been sayd of this excellent man, he was in danger to have been sequestred, and ... Onslowe that was a great stickler against the royalists and a member of the House of Commons and living not far from him—he translated his Clavis into English and dedicated it to him to clawe with him, and it did soe his businesse and saved him from sequestration. Now this Onslowe was no scholar and hated by the country[486] for bringing his countrymen of Surry into the trap of slaughter when so many petitioners were killed at Westminster and on the roads in pursuite, anno Domini 16—.
I have heard his neighbour ministers say that he was a pittiful preacher; the reason was because he never studyed it, but bent all his thoughts on the mathematiques; but when he was in danger of being sequestred for a royalist, he fell to the study of divinity, and preacht (they sayd) admirably well, even in his old age.