THOMAS MUFFETT. 277 



naturalist of renown. During his undergraduate dayg 

 Muffett nearly succumbed to an attack of ptomaine 

 poisoning caused by eating mussels {Healths Improvement, 

 p. 159). He seems to have been somewhat inconstant 

 in his attachment to his colleges, for deserting Caius and 

 choosing to proceed to his M.A. degree from Trinity, 

 he was promptly expelled from the former college by 

 Thomas Legge, the Master. Muffett has been included 

 by A. Wood in his Atlience Oxonienses, but there seems 

 to be no authority for the statement that he studied at 

 that University. On leaving Cambridge, Muffett went 

 abroad, and studied medicine at Basle, taking the degree 

 of M.D. there in 1578. He also visited Italy and Spain, 

 in which latter country he paid much attention to the 

 cultivation of the silkworm, and afterwards pubHshed 

 an anonymous poem on that subject. In 1582 he returned 

 to Cambridge, and in July of that same year accompanied 

 Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby, to Denmark, on the 

 occasion of the investiture of King Frederick with the 

 Order of the Garter, and he records that the royal banquets 

 in that kingdom lasted seven and eight hours at a stretch. 

 By 1588 Muffett was established in a good practice in 

 London (he appears for a time to have resided at Ipswich), 

 and in February, 1588 he was elected a Fellow of the 

 College of Physicians. In July, 1586, he attended in 

 conjunction with Thomas Penny, his friend and colleague, 

 the death-bed of Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, 

 widow of the Protector, and attested her will, and in 

 1591 he was appointed physician to the forces serving 

 in Normandy under the Earl of Essex. On his return 

 to England, Muffett spent much of his time at Court, 

 where he made the acquaintance of Sir Francis Drake, 

 who first showed him a flying-fish. Muffett at this time 

 came under the notice of Henry Herbert, second Earl 

 of Pembroke, and his Countess, who became his patrons, 

 and at or near whose residence at Wilton he appears to 

 have settled down as a pensioner. By the Earl's influence 

 he was returned as a Member for Wilton in 1597. Aubrey 



