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 passion for worldly goods. In a letter (Harl. MS. 6989, ff. 141 et seq.) written to the Duchess of Somerset, who had countenanced charges of rapacity and bribery brought against him, Smith gives an account of his income. From his professorship he derived 40l. a year, from the chancellorship of Ely 50l., and from the rectory of Leverington 36l.; but though he kept three servants, ‘three summer nags, and three winter geldings,’ he spent but 30l. a year, and saved the rest. His fee as secretary of state was 100l. a year, and his income from Eton varied from 80l. in one year to nothing in the next. On his resignation of it and the deanery of Carlisle, which produced 80l. a year, Queen Mary allowed him a pension of 100l. He purchased from the chantry commissioners the ‘college of Derby,’ worth 34l. a year. He built a new mansion at Ankerwick, near Eton, 1551–3, and commenced another, Hill Hall, Theydon Mount, Essex, with which his second wife was jointured.

As a classical scholar Smith was the rival of Cheke, and his friends included the chief scholars of the time both in England and on the continent. He was also an accomplished ‘physician, mathematician, astronomer, architect, historian, and orator.’ Besides his tracts on the reform of the Greek and English languages, and on the marriage of Elizabeth, mentioned above, and his voluminous diplomatic and private correspondence, selections of which were published in Digges's ‘Compleat Ambassador,’ 1655, and in Wright's ‘Queen Elizabeth,’ 1838, Smith translated ‘Certaigne Psalms or Songues of David,’ extant in Brit. Museum Royal MS. 17 A. xvii., and wrote tracts on the wages of a Roman foot-soldier and on the coinage, both of which are printed in Strype's Appendix. But his principal work was his ‘De Republica Anglorum; the Maner of Governement or Policie of the Realm of England,’ which he wrote in English during his first embassy in France. It is the most important description of the constitution and government of England written in the Tudor age. It was first printed at London in 1583, 4to; it passed through eleven editions in English in little more than a century, viz. 1584, 1589, 1594, 1601, 1609, 1621, 1633, 1635, 1640, and 1691. The editions from 1589 onwards have the title ‘The Common Welth of England.’ Latin translations were published in 1610? 1625, 1630, and 1641. A Dutch version of the portions dealing with parliament appeared at Amsterdam in 1673, and a German version at Hamburg in 1688.

[Strype's Life of Sir T. Smith was first published in 1698. The edition quoted above is that published at Oxford in 1820. On this is mainly based the unusually full account in Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 368–73. But neither Strype nor Cooper, though referring to it, made any use of Smith's volume of astrological collections extant in Addit. MS. 325. This contains valuable autobiographical details, which supplement and correct Strype in many essential particulars, e.g. the date of his birth, his ordination, &c. Attention was first directed to it by John Gough Nichols, who in 1859 published in Archæologia, xxxviii. 98–126, the principal additions thus supplied. Some information was added in the Wiltshire Archæol. Mag. xviii. 257 et seq., where Canon Jackson published some letters from Smith extant among the Longleat Papers. See also, besides authorities cited, Gairdner's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Foreign and Venetian Ser.; Cal. Hatfield MSS.; Haynes and Murdin's Burghley Papers; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, 1542–1577; Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, 1880–1895; Lit. Remains of Edward VI (Roxburghe Club); Wriothesley's Chron. (Camden Soc.); Parker Corr. (Parker Soc.); Corr. Polit. de Odet de Selve, 1886; Stow's Annals and Holinshed's Chron.; Camden's Elizabeth, ii. 318–19; Foxe's Actes and Monuments; Fuller's Church Hist. ii. 254; Burnet's Hist. Reformation, ed. Pocock; H. M. Baird's Rise of the Huguenots, 1880, vol. ii. passim; Hume's Courtships of Queen Elizabeth, 1897; Granger's Biogr. Hist.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy; Official Return of Members of Parl; Harwood's Alumni Eton. pp. 4 et seq.; Maxwell-Lyte's Hist. Eton Coll.; Creasy's Eminent Etonians; Lloyd's State Worthies; Morant's Essex; Lipscomb's Bucks; Barrett's Highways, &c. of Essex, i. 158–159, ii. 171, 191; Burke's Peerage, s.v. ‘Smijth;’ Tytler's, Lingard's, and Froude's Histories; R.W. Dixon's Hist. of Church of England.]

 SMITH, THOMAS (1556?–1609), master of requests, born at Abingdon, Berkshire, about 1556, was the son of Thomas Smith, who is probably to be identified with the Thomas Smith who was mayor of Abingdon in 1584 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90, p. 177). He must be distinguished from Sir Thomas Smith or Smythe (1558?–1625) [q. v.], governor of the East India Company, and from the latter's father, Thomas Smythe (d. 1591), ‘customer’ of the port of London (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–91, passim). He was educated at Abingdon grammar school and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was elected student in 1573, graduated B.A. in December 1574, and M.A. in June 1578. He was chosen public orator on 9 April 1582, and proctor on 29 April 1584. Soon afterwards he became secretary to Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex [q. v.], and in 1587 was appointed clerk of the privy council. In December 1591 he wrote