[LXXIII.] Quaere Sir R. Henley, if not colonel.
As for his noble design in Guiana, vide the printed bookes. Vide a Latin voyage which John, lord Vaughan, showed me, where is mention of captaine North (brother to the lord North) who went with Sir Walter, where is a large account of these matters. Mr. Edmund Wyld knew him[821] and sayes he was a learned and sober gentleman and good mathematician, but if you happened to speake of Guiana he would be strangely passionate and say 'twas 'the blessedst countrey under the sun,' etc., reflecting on the spoyling that brave designe.
[822]Vide de illo in Capt. North, pag.[823] 18 b.
[824]When he was attached by the officer about the businesse which cost him his head, he was carryed in a whery[825], I thinke only with two men. King James was wont to say that he was a coward to be so taken and conveyed, for els he might easily have made his escape from so slight a guard.
<His imprisonment, death, and burial.>
He was prisoner in the Tower ... (quaere) yeares; quaere where his lodgeings were?
He there (besides his compiling his History of the World) studyed chymistry. The earle of Northumberland was prisoner at the same time, who was the patrone to Mr. ... Harriot and Mr. Warner, two of the best mathematicians then in the world, as also Mr. Hues (<who wrote> de Globis). Serjeant Hoskins (the poet) was a prisoner there too.
I heard my cosen Whitney say that he saw him in the Tower. He had a velvet cap laced, and a rich gowne, and trunke hose.
[826]He was scandalizd with atheisme; but he was a bold man, and would venture at discourse which was unpleasant to the church-men. I remember <the> first lord[827] Scudamour sayd ''twas basely sayd of Sir W. R., to talke of the anagramme of Dog.' In his speech on the scaffold, I heard my cosen Whitney say (and I thinke 'tis printed) that he spake not one word of Christ, but of the great and incomprehensible God, with much zeale and adoration, so that he concluded he was an a-christ, not an atheist.
He tooke[LXXIV.] a pipe of tobacco a little before he went to the scaffold, which some formall persons were scandalized at, but I thinke 'twas well and properly donne, to settle his spirits.