By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 



267 



other diet is most fit for his bodie'must confesse hym self a negligent & careless 

 foole & to have lived to long. As I must confes my self a very foole that I 

 yelded so miche to the pliisicious, who in a short space whiles I'yelded my self to 

 them and their diet brought me in that case that neither I had flesh or strength nor 

 could eate or drynk to get it me agayne. The same Nature and tyme that make 

 us old doth teche us also for the tyme by our owne experience, what meate drynck 

 or exercise is most fit for us and doth best agrea with our bodie more playnly & 

 truly then eny phisicion can, who doth not feale nor se what is within us but by 

 blind gesses. Fare you most hai-tely well with comendacions to my good Ladie. 



" From Monthaule the last of Mail. 1576. 



" Yo". assured old freind 

 " Your son my godson I thank hym " T. Smith. 



cam to se me & brought me your 



letre by whom I writ this." 



" To the right worshipf ull 

 my loving freend S' 

 John Thynne Knight " 



Seal : as before. 



Docketed, in the handwriting of the first Lord Weymouth : " S'. Thos. 

 Smith, ultimo Mali 1576. about his owne health " 



11. 18th September, 1576, Bath. The Same to the Same. 



Appears to be an apology for not being able to visit Longleat. 



[According to Strype (p. 150, note) "Sir Thomas, in July, 1576, 

 intended to go to The Baths in Somersetshire ; but instead of 

 there, he went to Buxton's Well which was more in vogue in those 

 times.'' From this letter, however, it is clear that he did try the 

 Bath waters.] 



" Sir I most hartely thank you for your so good remembrances of wield f owle 

 & partriches which you sent now by your servaunt to heape up still your other 

 frendly kyendnes upon me but this I must entreate you, to be content that at 

 this tyme I mak as mich hast to go streight home as I can, as my wief did. I 

 fyend no manner of ease here by eny of the bathes. For now I am removed & 

 at M'. Mayor's to trie his & the hoter bath, but I se they be aU alike to me / 

 they bryng greate weakeness, want of sleape, & no ease at all to eny part of my 

 grief And so is also now D. Turner's * opinion, that I should go home & recover 



• Dr. William Turner : a compound of Physio and Divinity : being M.D., Physician to the Duke 

 of Somerset, Prebendary of York, Canon of Windsor, and Dean of Wells, an enthusiastic Church 

 reformer and parent of many aontroversial treatises. He was also author of " The Herbal," and 

 the first who printed any account of the Bath waters. " Materia medica " seems to hare been not 

 very well understood in those days : for Turner says that when he was a student of plants at 

 Cambridge, '• he could learn never one Greek neither Latin nor English name, even among the 

 physicians, of any herb or tree; such was the ignorance of those times." 



