Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/120

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100 Additions to the Biographies of employment, which is the most remarkable of the whole, because it supplies information that has not hitherto been obtained from any other source. It states plainly a circumstance in Cheke's career of which our other intima- tions are obscure, and which has escaped your notice in the Atheme Cantabri- gienses, that Cheke suffered a temporary eclipse of court favour. In the ordinary biographies of Cheke, derived from Strype's Life of him, for instance in that given in the General Biographical Dictionary by Alexander Chalmers, it has been stated that " in May 1549 he retired to Cambridge, upon some disgust he had taken at the court ;" and that " he returned to court in the winter of 1549, but met there with great uneasiness on account of some offence given by his wife to Anne duchess of Somerset." These two items of informa- tion, I am now enabled to say, are reversed from their proper order. It is clear that the latter incident belongs to the January of the historical year 1549, at which time Cheke's disgrace at court occurred, and the former to the following May, when Cheke was again settled at Cambridge, and refurnishing his library there. Both circumstances were derived by Strype from letters of Cheke's own writing, which are still extant. Among the dates preserved by Cardano we have a distinct day named for the event of Cheke's disgrace. "Anno 1519 die umlecima January a pristino honore fermfc decidit." And again Cardano repeats, " Dixi, quod anno 1519 die undecima Januarij fernib excidit ab omcio." So that we find that on the llth Jan. 1548-9 Cheke nearly lost his office of schoolmaster to the King, or rather entirely lost it for a time a fact which has hitherto escaped the notice of his biographers. Whether Cheke's dismissal had any connection with the prosecution of the lord admiral Seymour, which occurred at nearly the same time, I find no precise information 11 ; but in his letter written at the end of the same month of January, which was quoted by Strype, there is evident, though obscure, allusion to the lord admiral's danger. It is a letter addressed by Cheke to the duchess of Somerset, chiefly to solicit pardon for some offence which his wife had given to her grace ; but it begins with a reference to his own position. Although evi- dently in no great personal alarm, Cheke remarks that " in this desert of other 1 Cheke was examined respecting the lord Admiral's conduct, and his " confession," dated on the 20th Feb. 1548-9, is printed by Mr. Tytler in his " England under Edward VI. and Mary," vol. i. p. 154. Cheke had on several occasions received money from the lord Admiral, as was admitted by the latter and by the King.