in his fifty-ninth year, should have been by rumor attributed to
"poyson"; but "being dead, and his body opened, there was no sign at all
of poyson, his inward parts being all sound, but that his Spleen was a
little faulty, which might be cause enough to cast him into an Ague: the
ordinary high-way, especially in old bo'dies, to a natural death."

The chronicler records among the men of note of James's time Sir Francis
Vere, "who as another Hannibal, with his one eye, could see more in the
Martial Discipline than common men can do with two"; Sir Edward Coke; Sir
Francis Bacon, "who besides his profounder book, of Novum Organum, hath
written the reign of King Henry the Seventh, in so sweet a style, that
like Manna, it pleaseth the tast of all palats"; William Camden, whose
Description of Britain "seems to keep Queen Elizabeth alive after death";
"and to speak it in a word, the Trojan Horse was not fuller of Heroick
Grecians, than King James his Reign was full of men excellent in all
kindes of Learning." Among these was an old university acquaintance of
Baker's, "Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, lived at the Innes of
Court, not dissolute, but very neat; a great Visitor of Ladies, a great
frequenter of Playes, a great writer of conceited Verses; until such
times as King James taking notice of the pregnancy of his Wit, was a
means that he betook him to the study of Divinity, and thereupon
proceeding Doctor, was made Dean of Pauls; and became so rare a Preacher,
that he was not only commended, but even admired by all who heard him."

The times of Elizabeth and James were visited by some awful casualties
and portents. From December, 1602, to the December following, the plague
destroyed 30,518 persons in London; the same disease that in the sixth
year of Elizabeth killed 20,500, and in the thirty-sixth year 17,890,
besides the lord mayor and three aldermen. In January, 1606, a mighty
whale came up the Thames within eight miles of London, whose body, seen