By this lady he had our author, who received the rudiments of his education from his mother, who was it seems a woman of taste, and capable of inspiring him with a love of polite accomplishments.  When he became fit for an academical education, he was placed in New College in Oxford, in the beginning of the year 1584, where living in the condition of a Gentleman Commoner, he contracted an intimacy with Sir Richard Baker, afterwards an eminent historian.  Sir Henry did not long continue there, but removed to Queen’s College, where, says Walton, he made a great progress in logic and philosophy, and wrote a Tragedy for the use of that college, called Tarroredo.  Walton tells us, ’that this tragedy was so interwoven with sentences, and for the exact personating those passions and humours he proposed to represent, he so performed, that the gravest of the society declared, that he had in a flight employment, given an early and solid testimony of his future abilities.’

On the 8th of June, says Wood, 1588, he as a member of Queen’s College, supplicated the venerable congregation of regents, that he might be admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, which desire was granted conditionally, that he should determine the Lent following, but whether he was admitted, or did determine, or took any degree, does not appear in any of the university registers; though Mr. Walton says, that about the twentieth year of his age, he proceeded Master of Arts, and at that time read in Latin three lectures de Ocello.  During the time he was at the university, and gaining much upon mankind by the reputation of his abilities, his father, for whom he had the highest veneration, died, and left him a hundred marks a year, to be paid out of one of his manors of great value.  Walton proceeds to relate a very astonishing circumstance concerning the father of our author, which as it is of the visionary sort, the reader may credit, or not, as he pleases; it is however too curious to be here omitted, especially as the learned prelate Walton already mentioned has told it with great earnestness, as if he was persuaded of its reality.

In the year 1553, Nicholas Wotton, dean of Canterbury, uncle to our author’s father, being ambassador in France in the reign of queen Mary, dreamed, that his nephew Thomas Wotton, was disposed to be a party in a very hazardous project, which if not suddenly prevented, would issue in the loss of his life, and the ruin of his family; the dean, who was persuaded of the importance of his own dream, was very uneasy; but lest he should be thought superstitious, he resolved to conceal the circumstance, and not to acquaint his nephew, or any body else with it; but dreaming the same a second time, he determined to put something in execution in consequence of it; he accordingly wrote to the Queen to send for his nephew Thomas Wotton out of Kent, and that the Lords of the Council might examine him about some imaginary conspiracy, so as to give