This sounds absurd
only to those who have not perused the _Receipts in Physick and
Chirurgery_. Little brain or not, her husband praised her wits. Ben Jonson
wrote with devotion of her "who was my muse, and life of all I did."
Digby imitated his father-in-law who, in similar circumstances, gave
himself up to solitude and recollection. His place of retirement was
Gresham College. Do its present students remember it once housed a hermit
who "wore a long mourning cloake, a high crowned hat, his beard unshorne
... as signes of sorrowe for his beloved wife"? There "he diverted himself
with chymistry and the professor's good conversation." He had "a fair and
large laboratory ... erected under the lodgings of the Divinity Reader."
Hans Hunneades the Hungarian was his operator.
But another influence was at work. For the first time his mind turned
seriously to religion. Romanist friends were persuading him to his father's
faith. His old tutor Laud and other Protestants were doing their best to
settle him on their side. Out of the struggle of choice he came, in 1636, a
fervent and convinced Catholic.
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