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Brief Lives, Vol. 2

Chapter 183: <Addenda.>
By John Aubrey
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BiographiesBritish LiteratureHistory - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)

About This Book

A collection of concise biographical sketches of contemporaries and earlier figures recorded by an antiquarian observer, combining factual entries—births, offices, publications, and inscriptions—with personal anecdotes, hearsay, heraldic and parish-register notes, bibliographic references, and occasional critical judgments. Entries range from terse records to extended reminiscences, often citing documentary sources or witness statements, and reflect an informal, detail-driven approach aimed at preserving lives, reputations, and local traditions for reference and remembrance.

[LXXVIII.] I thinke I sent the originall to Anthony Wood.

Mr. Duke,

I wrote to Mr. Prideaux to move you for the purchase of Hayes[LXXIX.], a farme sometime in my father's possession. I will most willingly give whatsoever in your conscience you shall deeme it worth, and if at any time you shall have occasion to use me, you shall find me a thankefull friend to you and yours. I am resolved, if I cannot entreat you, to build at Colliton; but for the naturall disposition I have to that place, being borne in that house, I had rather seate myselfe there then any where els; I take my leave, readie to countervaile all your courtesies to the utter of my power.

Court, the xxvi
of July, 1584.

Your very willing friend,
In all I shall be able,
Walter Ralegh.

[LXXIX.] ☞ Hayes is in the parish of East Budleigh. He was not buryed at Exeter by his father and mother, nor at Shirburne in Dorset; at either of which places he desired his wife (in his letter the night before he dyed) to be interred. His father had 80 yeares in this farme of Hayes, and wrote 'esquier.'

<Addenda.>

<His last lines.>
[847]Even such is tyme, which takes in trust
 Our youth, our joyes, and all we have,
 And payes us but with age and dust.
 Within the darke and silent grave,
 When we have wandered all our wayes,
 Shutts up the story of our dayes.
 But from which grave and earth and dust
 The Lord will rayse me up I trust.

These lines Sir Walter Ralegh wrote in his Bible, the night before he was beheaded, and desir'd his relations with these words, viz. 'Beg my dead body, which living is denyed you; and bury it either in Sherburne or Exeter church.'

<His burial-place.>

[848]The bishop of Sarum <Seth Ward> saieth that Sir Walter Raleigh lyes interred in St. Marie's church at Exon, not the cathedral: but knowes not if any inscription or monument be for him.

[849]<James Harrington> lyes buried in the chancell of St. Margarite's church at Westminster, the next grave to the illustrious Sir Walter Raleigh, under the south side of the altar where the priest stands.

Sir Walter Raleigh hath neither stone nor inscription. Mr. Ashmole was the first told me of Sir Walter Raleigh. His son[850] was buryed since the king's restauration in his father's grave.

<MS. account of his trial.>

[851]I am promised the very originall examination of Sir Walter Ralegh, in the Tower, by Lord Chancellor Bacon, George Abbot (archbishop of Canterbury), and Sir Edward Coke, under their owne hands, to insert in my booke.

<His 'History of the World.'>

[852]An attorney's father (that did my businesse in Herefordshire, before I sold it[853]) maryed Dr. <Robert> Burhill's widdowe. She sayd that he <Burhill> was a great favourite of Sir Walter Ralegh's (and, I thinke, had been his chaplayne): but all or the greatest part of the drudgery of his booke, for criticismes, chronology, and reading of Greeke and Hebrew authors, was performed by him for Sir Walter Ralegh, whose picture my friend haz as part of the Doctor's goods.