HIS DEATH. CCCCxlvii 



desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conser 

 vation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment 

 itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey 

 between London and Highgate I was taken with such a 

 fit of casting, as I knew not whether it were the stone, or 

 some surfeit, or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. 

 But when I came to your lordship s house, I was not able 

 to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging 

 here, where your housekeeper is very careful and diligent 

 about me, which I assure myself your lordship will not 

 only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for 

 it. For indeed your lordship s house was happy to me; 

 and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am 

 sure you give me to it. 



&quot; I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship 

 with any other hand than my own ; but by my troth, my 

 fingers are so disjointed with this fit of sickness, that I 

 cannot steadily hold a pen.&quot; 



This was his last letter. He died in the arms of Sir 

 Julius Caesar, early on the morning of Easter Sunday, the 

 9th of April, 1626, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. (a) 



On opening his will, his wish to be buried at St. Albans Opening 

 thus appears: &quot; For my burial, I desire it may be in 

 St. Michael s church, near St. Albans: there was my 

 mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion- 

 house of Gorhambury, and it is the only Christian church 

 \vithin the walls of Old Verulam.&quot; 



() He died on the ninth day of April, in the year 1626, in the early 

 morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour s resurrection, in the 

 sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel s house in Highgate, near 

 London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before, God so 

 ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accom 

 panied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully 

 upon his breast, that he died of suffocation. Rawley. 



