Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/121

Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith. 101 men's trouble, and mishap of mine own, I precisely know not of your grace's favourable goodness towards me." I shall append an accurate copy of this letter from the original now in the Harleian collection. Its very dating is remarkable, for it shows that Cheke, whose celebrity rests principally on his having reformed the pronunciation of Greek, and who was the author of a less successful attempt to remodel the orthography of his native language, was also in advance of his con- temporaries in adopting the New Style in chronology. To make his intention clear he adds the year of the King's reign, " the xxvij. of January 1549, 2 Edw. 6." that is, the year which other people in this country then called 1548. It was probably upon this retirement of Cheke that Sir Anthony Cooke was summoned to superintend the education of Edward the Sixth. Cheke withdrew to Cambridge ; from whence, at the end of the following May, he wrote the short but remafkable letter which was seen by Strype, and quoted by him as showing Cheke's disgust with the court. It is now in the second volume of the Lansdowne Manuscripts," and is directed " To his loving frende M p Peter Osbornc. b "I fele the caulme of quiet nes, being tost afore with storms, and have felt ambition's bitter gal, poisoned with hope of hap. And therefore I can be meri on the bankes side without dangring miself on the sea. Yo r sight is ful of gai thinges abrode, which I desire not, as thinges sufficient li known and valewd. O what pleasure is it to lacke pleasures, and how honorable is it to fli from honor's throws. Among other lacks I lack bucram to lai betwene y bokes and hordes in mi studi, which I now have trimd. I have nede of xxx yardcs. Chuse vow the color. I prai yow hi me a reme of paper at London. Tare yc wel. With coniendacons to yo r mother, M r Lane and his wife, M r and M res Saxee, with other. From Cambridge the xxx. of Mai 1549, 3 Ed. G. Yo rs known, Joan Cheke." It does not appear how long Cheke was absent from his place as the King's schoolmaster : it is after the lapse of more than a year that the following passage occurs in a letter written by John Rodolph Stumphius to Henry Bullinger, dated the 28th Feb. 1549-50 : " Master Cheke and Master Traheron have entered upon the duties committed to them by the council : the one, that of tutor to the King : the other, that of tutor to the duke of Suffolk, who is of the same age as the King." See a portion of this engraved in fac-simile in Nichols's Autographs, 1829, Plate 20. <> It was at the house of his friend Peter Osborne, (sometime a scholar of Cambridge, and afterwards remembrancer of the exchequer,) that Cheke breathed his last on the 13th Sept. 1557. Osborne resided in Wood-street, Cheapside, and Cheke was buried in his parish church of St. Alban, Wood-street. c Zurich Letters, second series, p. 465.