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LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS.

15

howerly, will (by God's grace) appeare unto your lordship more and more abundantly. Returning now, therefore, to the matter wherof I last (by mowth) spake unto your honor, and which, also, was the last principall point of my spedy letter than delivered to your Lordship,—As concerning thresor hid. First, it may pleas your lordship to consider this clause truely by me noted out of Theseus Ambrosius, fol. 206, b. In copiosa illa Antonii de Fantis Tarvisini librorum multitudine, magnum sane volumen repertum fuit, in quo abdita quam plurima, et satis abunde curiosa, tam ad philosophiam, medicinam, et herbarum notionem, quam etiam ad astrologiam, geomantiam, et magiam, pertinentia continebantur. Et in ejus præcipua quadam parte tractabatur de thesauris per totum fere orbem reconditis atque latentibus, quorum admodum clara atque specifica notio haberi poterat, &c. Secondly out of Henricus Leicestrensis (I suppose) it is noted, in the summary of English chronicles, anno 1344, of a Sarazin comming than to Erle Warren, as concerning a great threasor hid in his grownd, in the Marches of Wales, and of the good success therof. Thirdly (for this xx. yeres space) I have had sundry such matters detected unto me, in sundry lands. Fowrthly, of late, I have byn sued unto by diverse sorts of people, of which, some by vehement iterated dreames, some by vision, as they have thowght, other, by speche forced to their imagination by night, have byn informed of certayn places where threasor doth lye hid; which all, for feare of kepars, as the phrase commonly nameth them, or for mistrust of truth in the places assigned, and some for some other causes, have forborn to deale farder, unleast I shold corrage them, or cownsaile them, how to procede. Wherein I have allways byn contented to heare the histories, fantasies, or illusions to me reported, but never entermeddled according to the desire of such. Hereof might grow many articles of question and controversie among the common lerned; and skruple among the theologians: which all I cut of from this place, ready to answer onely your Lordship most largely, in termes of godly philosophic, whan opportunitie shall serve: making small accownt of vulgar opinions in matter of so rare knowledg: but making allways my chief reckening to do nothing but that which may stand with the profession of a true Christian, and of a faithfull subject. But, if, (besides all bokes, dreames, visions, reports and virgula divina) by any other naturall meanes and likely demonstrations of sympathia and antipathia rerum, or by attraction and repulsion, the places may be discryed or discovered, where gold, silver, or better matter, doth lye hid, within a certayne distance: how great a

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