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Rh chapters were not abolished at the Reformation (1536), but that their incomes for more than a century were spent to support men of merit (or who were supposed to be such), and especially men of learning. The members were still called canons, and if they lived about the cathedral, they formed a corporate body and managed the temporalities of the cathedral and its associated foundations. Gradually the canonries became perfect sinecures, and the kings assumed the right to fill them, until their property, in the course of the second half of the seventeenth century, was taken possession of by the Crown. One of these sinecures was thus by royal letter promised to Tycho Brahe, who now might feel certain that means of following his favourite pursuit would not be wanting. He was possibly still at Rostock when this letter was issued, and it is not known when he left this town (his last recorded observation there is of the 9th February), but it must have been early in the year, as he was at Wittenberg some time in 1568, and went to Basle in the course of the same year, where he was matriculated at the University. He must have stayed at Basle till the beginning of the following year, when we find him at Augsburg, where he began to observe on the 14th April. On the way he had paid a visit to Cyprianus Leovitius (Livowski), a well-known astronomer, who lived at Lauingen, in Suabia, who had published an edition of the trigonometrical tables of Regiomontanus (Tabulæ Directionum, 1552), various Ephemerides, and an astrological book on the signification of conjunctions of planets, eclipses, &c. Leovitius thought the world was likely to