112 Additions to the Biographies of Toulouse and at Blois, with loss of appetite. On the 23rd I began to get better. On the 3rd of January I returned to court." This is the last entry. Sir Thomas Smith lived more than four years longer, hut did not again open his manuscript book. Its subsequent pages are for the most part occupied with those astrological calculations which were generally termed nativities, but which were made upon any accident or other remarkable event of a man's life, as well as upon his birth ; and the only rational information to be cleaned from them consists in the dates of the births of various members of his family, and of a few of his friends.* There is, however, also in the British Museum another autobiographical paper of Sir Thomas Smith to which it will not be superfluous for me to draw attention upon the present occasion ; for, although it was employed by Strype, and is in fact the authority for some of his most important statements upon the life and character of Sir Thomas Smith, yet his allusions to it are obscure, whilst the materials derived from it are scattered in various parts of his book, b often without citing its authority. This document is now preserved in the Harleian MS. 6989. It is a paper of sen oral sheets, addressed by Smith to the duchess of Somerset; and consists of an elaborate defence against various aspersions with which his character bad been assailed. No date is affixed, but internal evidence shows that it was written in the autumn of 1519, not long before his dismissal from the ofliee of Secretary of State. In this paper Sir Thomas Smith defends himself, first from the charge of haugh- tiness, next from that of being a sore and extreme man, and thirdly from covetous- ness. It had been said that he was a great purchaser. So far, he declares, was this from the truth, that all the land he possessed in the world, besides one little house in Canon-row and another in 1'liilpot-lane, consisted of the manor of Yarlington, in Somersetshire, worth oO/. a year, and the college of Derby, worth 33/. The former, he says, was purchased entirely with money he possessed before he entered into the duke of Somerset's service, and which he had saved from his income at Cambridge. The details of this are remarkable : " for (he says) I thank God I was well contented with niy living there, and had enough yearly and to spare: for These are given in the Appendix to this paper. b In his chapters i , iii., iv., xvii. and xviii., at pp 5, 26, 28, 81, 32, 170, and 176 of the Oxford edition of 1820. " This is ascertained from his statements respecting the revenue of Eton College. He was made Provost at Christmas 1547, and two Midsummers had sine* occurred. In October 1549 he ceased to be Secretary of State.
