nues. The date of his death I cannot with any certainty affix. MEMORABLE PERSONS. MACHELL VIVAN is a Scottish-man by his birth; but, because beneficed in this county so many years, shall (by the reader's leave) pass for an Englishman, so far as to be here inserted; the rather, because he will minister to the present and future ages just matter of admiration, as, by the perusing of the ensuing letter from my credible friend, well known in London (where his surviving father was not long since the prime magistrate thereof) will appear: وو "There is an acquaintance of mine, and a friend of yours, who certified me of your desire of being satisfied of the truth of that relation I made, concerning the old minister in the north. It fortuned, in my journey to Scotland, I lay at Alnwick in Northumberland one Sunday by the way; and understanding from the host of the house where I lodged, that this minister lived within three miles of that place, I took my horse after dinner, and rid thither, to hear him preach, for my own satisfaction. I found him in the desk, where he read unto us some part of the common prayer, some of holy David's Psalms, and two chapters, one out of the Old the other out of the New Testament, without the use of spectacles. The Bible, out of which he read the chapters, was a very small printed Bible. He went afterwards into his pulpit, where he prayed and preached to us about an hour and a half. His text was, "Seek you the kingdom of God, and all things shall be added unto you.' In my poor judgment, he made an excellent good sermon, and went cleverly through, without the help of any notes. After sermon, I went with him to his house, where I proposed these several following questions to him. Whether it was true, the book reported of him concerning his hair? whether or no he had a new set of teeth come? whether or no his eye-sight ever failed him? and whether in any measure he found his strength renewed unto him? He answered me distinctly to all these; and told me, he understood the news-book reported his hair to become a dark brown again; but that is false: he took his cap off, and shewed me it. It is come again like a child's, but rather flaxen than either brown or gray. For his teeth, he hath three come within these two years, not yet to their perfection; while he bred them he was very ill. Forty years since he could not read the biggest print without spectacles, and now (he blesseth God) there is no print so small, no written hand so small, but he can read it without them. For his strength, he thinks himself as strong now as he hath been these twenty years. Not long since he walked to Alnwick to dinner and back again, six north-country miles. He is now an hundred and ten years of age, and, ever since last May, a hearty body, very cheerful, but stoops very much. He had five chil dren after he was eighty years of age, four of them lusty lasses now living with him, the other died lately; his wife yet hardly fifty years of age. He writes himself Machell Vivan. He is a Scottish-man, born near Aberdeen. I forget the town's name where he is now pastor; he hath been there fifty years. "Your assured loving friend, THOMAS ATKIN." "Windsor, 28 September, 1657." A most strange accident! for waiving the poetical fiction of Æson's Re-juvenescency in Medea's bath, it will hardly be paired. To begin with Scripture, Caleb (or all-heart) his professing himself as able for any action at eighty, as forty years before,* speaketh no renovation, but continuation of his strength. Andwhereas David saith, that "his youth was renewed as an Eagle's,"+ he is to be understood in a metaphorical, yea spiritual sense, of the vigorousness and sprightliness of grace in his heart, seeing otherwise his great debilitation doth appear at seventy years,‡ scarce a moiety of this man's age. As for the many miracles, wrought by our Saviour, though extending to the cleansing of lepers, curing diseases, casting out devils, yea reviving the dead, yet they never countermanded nature in this kind, by recruiting the strength of an aged person. As for human history, I meet not with any to mate him in all particulars. The nearest that treadeth on his heels, is the countess of Desmond, married in the reign of king Edward the Fourth, and yet alive anno 1589, and many years since, when she was well known to Sir Walter Raleigh, and to all the nobles and gentlemen in Munster; but chiefly to the earls (for there was a succession of them worn out by her vivacity) of Desmond, from whose expectation she detained her jointure. The lord Bacon casteth up her age to be a hundred and forty at least, adding withal, "Ter per vices dentisse," (that she recovered her teeth, after her casting them three several times.) All I will add, is this, had this happened in foreign parts, addicted to Popery, near the shrine of some Saint, superstition, with her sickle, might have reaped a great harvest thereby. ANDERSON, a townsman and merchant of Newcastle, talking with a friend on Newcastle bridge, and fingering his ring, before he was aware let it fall into the river, and was much troubled with the loss thereof, until the same was found in a fish caught in the river, and restored unto him.§ The same is reported by Herodotus, in his third book, of Polycrates, a petty king, and the minion of fortune, and may be an instance of the recurrency of remarkable accidents, according to Solomon's observation, "There is no new thing under the sun."|| * Joshua xiv. 11. + Psalm ciii. 5. §"Vox Piscis," printed anno 1626, p. 13. 1 Kings i. 1. Eccles. i. 9. NAMES OF THE GENTRY OF THIS COUNTY, RETURNED BY THE COMMISSIONERS IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH, 1433. Thomas bishop of Durham, and Ralph earl of Westmoreland;Thomas Lilborn, and John Carington, (knights for the shire); -Commissioners to take the oaths. Rob. Umfravile, mil. Rad. Gray, mil. Rob. Ogle, senior, mil. Rob. Raymes. Laur. Acton. Tho. Gray de Norton. Row. Thirwall. Ric. Fetherstanhalgh. Gilb. Rotherford. Will. Muschaunce. Gilb. Eryngton. Johan. Heron de Netherton. Joh. Eryngton. Nic. Heron de Meldon. Joh. Chestre. Lion. Chestre. Joh. Horsley de Horsley. OBSERVATIONS. The fable is sufficiently known of the contest betwixt the wind and the sun, which first should force the traveller to put off his clothes. The wind made him wrap them the closer about him; whilst the heat of the sun soon made him to part with them. This is moralized in our English gentry. Such who live southward near London (which, for the lustre thereof, I may fitly call the sun of our nation), in the warmth of wealth, and plenty of pleasures, quickly strip and disrobe themselves of their estates and inheritance; whilst the gentry living in this county, in the confines of Scotland, in the wind of war (daily alarmed with their blustering enemies), buckle their estates (as their armour) the closer unto them; and since have no less thriftily defended their patrimony in peace, than formerly they valiantly maintained it in war. The commissioners of this county did not over-weary themselves in working, when they returned these persons; presenting no under-wood, yea, no standels, but only timber oaks, men of great wealth and worship in this shire, as appears by the thinness of their number, but one and twenty. |