to attribute to the lion.  The famous Linacre, one of the founders of the College of Physicians, sent to Budaeus, a French court official and the first Greek scholar of the age, one gold ring and eighteen silver rings which had been blessed by Henry VIII, and had thus been made preservative against convulsions; and Budaeus presented them to his womenkind.  We need not take this to imply that he thought little of them; more probably he reflected that convulsions are most frequent among the race of babies, and therefore distributed them where they would be most useful.  Anyway, it was Linacre who sent them.  With such notions abroad, quackery must have been rife, and serious medical practitioners had many difficulties to contend with.  Some idea of these may be gained from a letter written by Wolfgang Rychard, a physician of high repute at Ulm, to a friend at Erfurt, whither he was thinking of sending his son to practise.  He asks his friend to inquire of the apothecaries what was the status of doctors, whether they were allowed by the town council to hire houses for themselves and to live freely without exactions, as at Tubingen and universities in the South, or whether they were obliged to pay an annual fee to the town, before they might serve mankind with their healing art.

The feeble-minded and half-witted are nowadays caught up into asylums, for better care, and to ensure that their trouble dies with them.  Of old it was thought that God gave them some recompense for their affliction by putting into their mouths truths and prophecies which were hidden from the wise; and thus the village soothsayer or witch often held a strong position in local politics.  But it is surprising to find the Cardinal of Sion, Schinner, a clever and experienced diplomatist, writing in 1516, with complete seriousness:  ’A Swiss idiot, who prophesies many true things, has foretold that the French will surfer a heavy blow next month’; as though the intelligence would really be of value to his correspondent.

But the prophet’s credit varied with his circumstances.  Early in the sixteenth century a Franciscan friar, naming himself Thomas of Illyria, wandered about through Southern France, calling on men to repent and rebuking the comfortable vices of the clergy.  A wave of serious thought spread with him, and all the accompaniments of a religious revival, such as the twentieth century saw lately in Wales.  As the ‘saintly man’ set foot in villages and towns, games and pleasures were suddenly abandoned, and the churches thronged to overflowing.  His words were gathered up, especially those with which he wept over Guienne, that ’fair and delicious province, the Paradise of the world’, and foretold the coming of foes who should burn the churches round Bordeaux while the townsmen looked on helplessly from their walls.  For a time he retired to a hermitage on a headland by Arcachon, where miracles were quickly ascribed to him.  An image of the Virgin was washed ashore, to be the protectress of