100 Kington St. Michael. [^John Aubrey. 



the manuscripts flew about like butterflies. All musick books, 

 account books, copy books, &c., were covered witb old manuscripts, 

 as wee cover them now with blew or marble paper ; and the glovers 

 at Malmsbury made great havock of them : and gloves were wrapt 

 up no doubt in many good pieces of antiquity. Before the late 

 warres a world of rare manuscripts perished hereabouts : for within 

 half a dozen miles of this place were the Abbics of Malmsbury, 

 Bradenstoke, Stanleigh, Farleigh, Bath, and Cirencester. 



" This summer 1634, (I remember it was venison season, July or 

 Aug.) Mr. Thos. Hobbes^ came into his native country to visit his 

 friends, and amongst others he came to see his old Schoolmaster, 

 Mr. Latimer at Leigh Delamere, when I was then a little youth at 

 schopl in the church, newly entered into my grammar by him. 

 Here was the first place and time that I ever had the honour to 

 see this worthy learned man, who was then pleased to take notice 

 of me, and the next day came and visited my relations. He was 

 a proper man, briske, and in very good equipage : his hairc was 

 then quite black. He stayed at Malmsbury and in the neighbour- 

 hood a weeke or better ; twas the last time that ever he was in 

 Wiltshire.2 



" When a boy, never riotous or prodigal : — of inventive and 

 philosophical head : my witt was always working, but not to verse. 

 — Exceeding mild of sj)irit, mighty susceptible of fascination. 



1 The " Philosopher ; " a native of Malmsbury, author of Leviathan, &c. 

 2 Some biographers have said that Hobbes and Aubrey were school-/e//oM-s. 

 This is clearly wTong, as Hobbes -was born in 1588, 37 years before Aubrey: 

 but they had the same Master, though at different times and places. Mr. Lati- 

 mer in early life kept a private school in "Westport, Malmsbury, when Hobbes 

 was his pupil. In 1609 he became Eector of Leigh Delamere. Against the base 

 of the East Wall of the Church outside, on a stone (removed from the inside 

 when it was rebuilt in 1846) is the following inscri]>tion. "nere lyeth Robert 

 Latymcr, sometime Hector and Pastor of this Church : who deceased this life the 

 2'1 day of November A. D. 1634." The Eectory house was taken down and re- 

 built on the same site in 1639 : and underwent the same process again in 1846: 

 but under the floor of the study in which this memoir of Kington St. Michael's 

 and Aubrey is now wi-itten by one of Mr. Latimer's successors, are buried the 

 two floors of the former houses ; the lowest (of plaster) would probably be that 

 on which Aubrey as a boy repeated his Latin words, or got his slice of the veni- 

 son with which the Philosopher's visit to Leigh Delamere appears to have 

 been celebrated. 



J 



