[Footnote 7:  There is no such place in Suffolk, it being
    mistaken for Framlingham in that county.]

In this year also William Bredon, parson or vicar of Thornton in Buckinghamshire, was living, a profound divine, but absolutely the most polite person for nativities in that age, strictly adhering to Ptolemy, which he well understood; he had a hand in composing Sir Christopher Heydon’s Defence of Judicial Astrology, being that time his chaplain; he was so given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no tobacco, he would cut the bell-ropes and smoke them.

I come now to continue the story of my own life, but thought it not inconvenient to commit unto memory something concerning those persons who practised when first I became a student in astrology; I have wrote nothing concerning any of them, which I myself do not either know, or believe to be true.

In October 1633 my first wife died, and left me whatever was hers:  it was considerable, very near to the value of one thousand pounds.

One whole year and more I continued a widower, and followed my studies very hard; during which time a scholar pawned unto me, for forty shillings, Ars Notoria,[8] a large volume wrote in parchment, with the names of those angels, and their pictures, which are thought and believed by wise men, to teach and instruct in all the several liberal sciences, and is attained by observing elected times, and those prayers appropriated unto the several angels.

    [Footnote 8:  Among Dr. Napier’s MSS.  I had an Ars Notoria,
    written by S. Forman in large vellum.]

I do ingenuously acknowledge, I used those prayers according to the form and direction prescribed for some weeks, using the word astrologia for astronomia; but of this no more:  that Ars Notoria, inserted in the latter end of Cornelius Agrippa signifieth nothing; many of the prayers being not the same, nor is the direction to these prayers any thing considerable.

In the year 1634, I taught Sir George Peckham, Knight, astrology, that part which concerns sickness, wherein he so profited, that in two or three months he would give a very true discovery of any disease, only by his figures.  He practised in Nottingham, but unfortunately died in 1635, at St. Winifred’s Well in Wales; in which well he continued so long mumbling his Pater Nosters and Sancta Winifrida ora pro me, that the cold struck into his body; and, after his coming forth of that well, never spoke more.

In this year 1634, I purchased the moiety of thirteen houses in the Strand for five hundred and thirty pounds.

In November, the 18th day, I was again the second time married, and had five hundred pounds portion with that wife; she was of the nature of Mars.

Two accidents happened to me in that year something memorable.