This loving father, of whom one would fain know more, died in the early childhood of his son Thomas.  He left a handsome estate of L9,000, and a widow not wholly inconsolable with her third portion and a not unduly deferred second marriage to a titled gentleman, Sir Thomas Button,—­a knight so scantily and at the same time so variously described, as “a worthy person who had great places,” and “a bad member” of “mutinous and unworthy carriage,” that one is content to leave him as a problematical character.

The boy Thomas Browne being left to the care of guardians, his estate was despoiled, though to what extent does not appear; nor can it be considered greatly deplorable, since it did not prevent his early schooling at that ancient and noble foundation of Winchester, nor in 1623 his entrance into Pembroke College, Oxford, and in due course his graduation in 1626 as bachelor of arts.  With what special assistance or direction he began his studies in medical science, cannot now be ascertained; but after taking his degree of master of arts in 1629, he practiced physic for about two years in some uncertain place in Oxfordshire.  He then began a course of travel, unusually extensive for that day.  His stepfather upon occasion of his official duties under the government “shewed him all Ireland in some visitation of the forts and castles.”  It is improbable that Ireland at that time long detained a traveler essentially literary in his tastes.  Browne betook himself to France and Italy, where he appears to have spent about two years, residing at Montpellier and Padua, then great centres of medical learning, with students drawn from most parts of Christendom.  Returning homeward through Holland, he received the degree of doctor of medicine from the University of Leyden in 1633, and settled in practice at Halifax, England.

At this time—­favored probably by the leisure which largely attends the beginning of a medical career, but which is rarely so laudably or productively employed,—­he wrote the treatise ‘Religio Medici,’ which more than any other of his works has established his fame and won the affectionate admiration of thoughtful readers.  This production was not printed until seven years later, although some unauthorized manuscript copies, more or less faulty, were in circulation.  When in 1642 “it arrived in a most depraved copy at the press,” Browne felt it necessary to vindicate himself by publishing a correct edition, although, he protests, its original “intention was not publick:  and being a private exercise directed to myself, what is delivered therein was rather a memorial unto me than an example or rule unto any other.”