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 130 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES The king's kindness did not stop here. In September, 1628, on the death of Middleton, the office of City's Chronologer had been conferred on Jonson, with a salary of one hundred nobles per annum. In November, 1631, this salary was sus- pended until he should have " presented some fruits of his labours in that his place." But in September, 1634, there is an entry in the City Records : "This day Mr. Recorder and Sir James Hamersley Knight and Alderman declared unto this Court His Majesty's pleasure signified unto them by the right honble. the Earle of Dorsett for and in the behalfe of Benjamine Johnson the Cittyes Chronologer, Wherupon it is ordered by this Court that his yearely pencion of one hundred nobles out of the Chamber of London shall be continued and that Mr. Chamberlen shall satisfie and pay unto him his arrerages thereof." He, no doubt, as is remarked by Mr. Dyce, to whom we owe the extracts from the Records, continued to hold the office till his death, when he was succeeded in it by Francis Quarles, of the " Emblems." This, with any other succours, must have been most welcome. Already, in 1631, he had addressed to the Lord High Treasurer an "Epistle Mendicant" ("Underwoods/' xc), wherein he says : — " Disease the enemy, and his ingineers, Want, with the rest of his concealed compeers, Have cast a trench about me now five years. The Muse not peeps out, one of hundred days :