: SIR THOMAS SMITH'S BOOK-STAMP.]

Sir Thomas Smith, who was Secretary of State to King Edward VI., and
afterwards to Queen Elizabeth, was born at Saffron Walden, Essex, on the
23rd of December 1513. He was the son of John Smith of Saffron Walden
and Agnes Charnock, a member of an old Lancashire family. When eleven
years old he was sent to Queens' College, Cambridge, as he himself
informs us in his _Autobiographical Notes_, now preserved in the British
Museum,[14] which he wrote for the purpose of having his nativity cast:
'1525. Sub fine II [=a]ni circa fest[=u] Mic[=h]is Cantabrigiam s[=u]
missus ad bonas I[=r]as.' Here he so greatly distinguished himself that
King Henry VIII. chose him and John Cheke, afterwards tutor to Prince
Edward, to be his scholars, and allotted them salaries for the
encouragement of their studies. Cheke makes mention of this honour in an
epistle to the King prefixed to his edition of Two Homilies of St. John
Chrysostom, published at London in 1543: 'Cooptasti me et Thomam Smithum
socium atque aequalem meum, in scholasticos tuos.' Smith specially
applied himself to the study of the Greek classics, and also to the
reformation of the faulty pronunciation of the Greek language which then
prevailed; and in a short time, so Strype, in his _Life of Sir T.
Smith_, tells us, his more correct way 'prevailed all the University
over.' He also endeavoured to introduce a new English alphabet of
twenty-nine letters, and to amend the spelling of the time, 'some of the
syllables,' he considered, 'being stuffed with needless letters.' As
early as 1531 he had become a Fellow of his college, and in 1534 he was
chosen University Orator. In 1540 Smith paid a visit to the Continent,
and proceeded to Padua, where he took the degree of D.C.L. On his return
to England in 1542 he was made LL.D. at Cambridge, and at the beginning
of 1544 was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University.
In the succeeding year he served as Vice-Chancellor, and also became
Chancellor to Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, by whom in 1546 he was collated
to the rectory of Leverington, Cambridgeshire, and also ordained priest,
a fact unknown to Strype. About the same time he received a prebend from
the Dean of Lincoln, and soon after he became Provost of Eton and Dean
of Carlisle. Towards the end of February 1547, Smith was summoned to
court, and 'mutata clericali veste, modoque, ac vivendi forma,'[15] he
was made Clerk of the Privy Counc