"Beside the domestique cares pertaining to a wife, the former part of those yeeres were imployed by her in the studies of morality and history, the better by the helpe of forreigne languages, not without a taste and facultie in Poetrie: Wherein some essay shee hath left, ingenious, but chaste and modest like the Authour. Of all which knowledge shee was very sparing in her discourses, as possessing it rather to hide, than to boast of. "Among those her eminencies deseruing our memory, was her owne most ready memory, enabling her vpon the first rehersall to repeat aboue forty lines in English or Latine: a gift the more happy by her imployment of it in carrying away an entire Sermon, so that she could (almost following the steps of the words, or phrase) write it downe in her Chamber. "The latter yeeres of her life shee addicted to no other studies than Diuinity, whereof some imperfect notes remaine, but principally this small Treatise found in her Deske vnfinished, by reason either of some troubles befalling her about a moneth before her end, or of preuention by mis-reckoning the time of her going with this her first (now also last) Childe: which Treatise, intended for her childe, shee so leauing, recommended the same to her husband by her letter to him, written and subscribed by her owne hand, as hereafter followeth. "The many blessings, shee enioyed, were not without some seasoning of afflictions, which by the good vse shee made of them, bred in her a constant temper of patience and more than womanly fortitude: especially in her latter time, when as the course of her life was a perpetuall meditation of death, amounting almost to a propheticall sense of her dissolution, euen then when she had not finished the 27. yeere of her age, nor was oppressed by any disease, or danger, other than the common lot of child-birth, within some moneths approaching. Accordingly when she first felt herselfe quicke with childe (as then trauelling with death itselfe) shee secretly tooke order for the buying a new winding sheet: thus preparing and consecrating herselfe to him, who rested in a _new Sepulcher wherein was neuer man yet layd_. And about that time vndauntedly looking death in the face, priuatly in her Closet betweene God and her, she wrote these pious Meditations; whereof her selfe strangely speaketh to her owne bowels in this manner, _It may seeme strange to thee to receive these lines from a mother, that died when thou wert borne_. "_October 12. 1622._ In Cambridgeshire shee was made a mother of a daughter, whom shortly after, being baptized and brought vnto her, shee blessed, and gaue God thankes that her selfe had liued to see it a Christian: and then instantly called for her winding sheet to bee brought forth and laied vpon her.