He had grammer learning from the information of Mr. <Gerard> Dobson[CI], minister of Market Wickham, who taught a private schoole there, and was (he told me) a good schoolmaster, and had been bred at Eaton College schoole. I have heard Mr. Thomas Bigge, of Wickham, say (who was his schoole-fellow, and of the same forme), that he little thought then he would have been so rare a poet; he was wont to make his exercise for him.
His paternall estate, and by his first wife, was 3000 li. per annum. His first wife was ... (vide Heralds' Office) of Worcestershire, by whom he had ... per annum, and issue by her, son. His second wife (maried to her A.D. ...) was ... Brace; a woman beautifull and very prudent, by whom he has severall children (I thinke 10 or 12).
About[1147] 23, or between that and thirty, he grew (upon I know not what occasion) mad; but 'twas (I thinke) not long ere[1148] he was cured:—this from Mr. Thomas Bigg.
Non tulit aethereos pectus mortale tumultus.
Ovid.
Memorandum:—he was proud: to such, a check often gives that distemper.
He was passionately in love with Dorothea, the eldest daughter of the earle of Leicester[CJ], whom he haz eternized in his poems: and the earle loved him, and would have been contented that he should have had one of the youngest daughters; perhaps this might be the check[XCII.].
[XCII.] Mr. Thomas Big of Wickham haz been dead these 20 yeares, who could have told me the cause. I beleeve that I am right. You see how things become antiquated.
... Waller (I thinke, Walter) was his tutor at King's College, Cambridge, who was a very learned man, and was afterwards vicar of Broad Chalke, Wilts.
A burghesse in Parliament, for Beconsfield, in king James's[1149] time, and has been of all the Parliaments since the restauration of king Charles II (1680, aetat. 74 +).