SIR JOHN CHEKE. 133 



ceeding year that he "was knighted. He assisted after- 

 wards at two solemn theological disputations, and took 

 part in political affairs. In May, 1552, when Cardan was 

 on his way from Paris, Sir John Cheke was ill of a com- 

 plaint which Jerome pronounced to have been peripneu- 

 monia. On the 25th of August of the same year, while 

 Cardan was in Edinburgh, Sir John was made chamber- 

 lain of the Exchequer for life. He was holding that new 

 dignity when, in October, Cardan tarried for some days 

 in London, and had for his principal friends John Cheke 

 (with whom he lodged) and Claude Laval, the French 

 ambassador 1 . In Edinburgh, too, it should have been 

 said, that the representative of France, the Ducdu Cell 2 , 

 had been his friend. 



Cheke, who was thirteen years younger than Cardan, 

 was then aged thirty-eight, and already in high repute as 

 one of the most learned men in England. Jerome de- 

 duced from the stars the fact that if he could avoid public 

 calamities he would live to the age of sixty-one. He did 

 not avoid public calamities, but escaped, as we know, 

 the Tower and the scaffold by abjuring his religion, to 

 die vexed and remorseful at the age of forty-three. His 

 body, says Cardan, was graceful, with a yellow freckled 

 and thin skin, hair moderately long, and decent eyes of a 



1 De Vita Propria, cap. xv. 



* Whom he calls Usellze Princeps. De V. P. cap. iv. 



