I sent to A. Wood his brother's letter to me from whence I had most of this, and also his epitaph which my lord Hatton gott Mr. H.[879] rector of Hadham in Essex[880] to make, but it is puerile.
Eleanor Ratcliffe, Countess of Sussex (16—-1666).
[881]Countesse of Sussex[882]: a great and sad example of the power of lust and slavery of it. She was as great a bea<u>tie as any in England and had a good witt. After her lord's death (he was jealous) she sends for ... (formerly) her footman, and makes him groom of the chamber. He had the pox and shee knew it; a damnable sot. He waz not very handsom, but his body of an exquisit shape (hinc sagittae). His nostrills were stufft and borne out with corkes in which were quills to breath through. About 1666 this countess dyed of the pox.
Robert Record (1510?-1558).
[883]Robert Record, M.D.—his life is in lib. 2, p. 174 of[884] Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxon., among the writers of All Soules College[885].
He was the first that wrote a good arithmetical treatise in English, which hath been printed a great many times, viz. his 'Arithmetick, containing the ground of arts in which is taught the general parts rules and operations of the same in whole numbers and fractions after a more easie and exact methode then ever heretofore, first written by Robert Record, Dr. in Phisick,' printed....
It was dedicated 'to the most mighty prince Edward the 6th by the grace of God king of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, etc.' In the end of which epistle:—
'how some of these statutes may be applied to use as well in our time as in any other time I have particularly declared in this book and some other I have omitted for just considerations till I may offer them first unto your majestie to weigh them as to your highness shall seem good. For many things in them are not to be published without your highness knowledge and approbation, namely because in them is declared all the rates of all oyles, for all standards from an ounce upwards, with other mysteries of mint-matters, and also most part of the varieties of coines that have been current in this realme by the space of 600 yeares last past, and many of them were currant in the time that the Romans ruled here. All which with the ancient description of England and Ireland, and my simple censure of the same, I have almost compleated to be exhibited to your highnesse.'—