WORTHIES : JOHN AUBREY, AND OTHER WRITERS. 79 



did grieve me then to see. Afterwards I went to schoole to Mr. Latimer at Leigh-delamer, the 

 next parish, where was the like use of covering of bookes. In my grandfather's dayes the manu- 

 scripts flew about like butterflies. All musick bookes, account bookes, copie bookes," &c. were 

 covered with old manuscripts, as wee cover them now with blew paper or marbled paper ; and the 

 glovers at Malmesbury 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 hereabout ; 

 for within half a dozen miles of this place were the abbey of Malmesbury, where it may be presumed 

 the library was as well furnished with choice copies as most libraries of England ; and perhaps in 

 this library we might have found a correct Pliny's Naturall History, which Canutus, a monk here, 

 did abridge for King Henry the Second. Within the aforesaid compass was Broadstock Priory, 

 Stanleigh Abbey, Farleigh Abbey, Bath Abbey, eight miles, and Cyrencester Abbey, twelve miles. 

 Anno 1638 I was transplanted to Blandford-schoole, in Dorset, to Mr. Win. Sutton. (In Mr. Wm. 

 Gardner's time it was the most eminent schoole for the education of gentlemen in the West of 

 England.) Here also was the use of covering of bookes with old parchments, sc. leases, &c., but I 

 never saw any thing of a manuscript there. Hereabout were no abbeys or convents for men. One 

 may also perceive by the binding of old bookes how the old manuscripts went to wrack in those 

 dayes. Anno 1647 I went to Parson Stump out of curiosity, to see his manuscripts, whereof I had 

 seen some in my childhood ; but by that time they were lost and disperst. His sons were gunners and 

 souldiers, and scoured their gunnes with them ; but he shewed me severall old deedes granted by 

 the Lords Abbotts, with their scales annexed, which I suppose his sonn Capt. Tho. Stump of 

 Malmesbury hath still. [I have quoted part of this curious paragraph in my Memoir of Aubrey, 

 4to. 1845. J. B.] 



WRITERS. William of Malmesbury. He was the next historiographer of this nation to Venerable 

 Bede, as he himself writeth ; and was fain, he sayes, to pick out his history out of ballads and old 



rhythmes hundred yeares after Bede. He dedicates his history to [Robert, Earl of 



Gloucester] filio naturali Henrici primi. He wrote also the history of the abbey of Glastonbury, 

 which is in manuscript in the library of Trinity College in Cambridge, wherein are many good 

 remarques to be found, as Dr. Thomas Gale of Paules schoole enformes me. [This was edited by 

 Gale, and published at Oxford in 1691, 8vo. J. B.] 



Robertas Sarisburiensis wrote a good discourse, De Pisdnis, mentioned and commended by Sir 

 Henry Wotton in his Elements of Architecture. Q. Anth. Wood, de hoc. 



Dr. .... Forman, Mr. Ashmole thinkes his name was John, [Simon. J. B.] physitian and 

 astrologer, was born at Wilton, in Wilts. He was of the University of Oxford, but took his degree 

 of Doctor in Cambridge, practised in Salisbury, where he was persecuted for his astrologie, which 

 in those ignorant times was accounted conjuring. He then came to London, where he had very 

 good practise, and did great cures ; but the college hated him, and at last drove him out of London : 

 so he lived and died at Lambeth, where he lies buried. Elias Ashmole, Esq. has severall bookes of 

 his writing (never printed), as also his own life. There it may be seen whether he was not a 

 favorite of Mary, Countesse of Pembroke. He was a chymist, as far as chymistry went in those 

 dayes, and 'tis very likely he was a favorite of her honour's. Quaere Mr. Deiinet, the Earl of 

 Pembrock's steward, if he had not a pension from the Earl of Pembrock ? Forman is a common 

 name in Calne parish, Wilts, where there are still severall wealthy men, cloathiers, &c. of that 

 name ; but tempore Regince Elizabethce there was a Forman of Calne, Lord Maior of London. My 

 grandfather Lyte told me that at his Lord Maior's shew there was the representation of the creation 



