to her daughter Gulielma; being admitted, as such, to ride with her
in her little coach, drawn by her footman about Lincoln's Inn
Fields.

I mention this in this place because the continuation of that
acquaintance and friendship, having been an occasional means of my
being afterwards brought to the knowledge of the blessed TRUTH, I
shall have frequent cause, in the course of the following discourse,
to make honourable mention of that family, to which I am under so
many and great obligations.

Soon after the surrender of Oxford my father returned to his estate
at Crowell, which by that time he might have need enough to look
after, having spent, I suppose, the greatest part of the moneys
which had been left him by his grandfather in maintaining himself
and his family at a high rate in London.

My elder brother (for I had one brother and two sisters, all elder
than myself) was, while we lived in London, boarded at a private
school, in the house of one Francis Atkinson, at a place called
Hadley, near Barnet, in Hertfordshire, where he had made some good
proficiency in the Latin and French tongues. But after we had left
the city, and were re-settled in the country, he was taken from that
private school and sent to the free school at Thame, in Oxfordshire.

Thither also was I sent as soon as my tender age would permit; for I
was indeed but young when I went, and yet seemed younger than I was,
by reason of my low and little stature. For it was held for some
years a doubtful point whether I should not have proved a dwarf.
But after I was arrived at the fifteenth year of my age, or