Thomas Browne, best known as Sir Thomas Browne, came of a Cheshire family. He was born in London on 19 October, 1605. Early left fatherless, "he was, according to the common fate of orphans," says Dr. Johnson, "defrauded by one of his guardians," who seems to have lacked opportunity to strip the orphan absolutely bare. Browne was educated at Winchester, went on to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, graduated (1629), travelled in Ireland, took a doctor's degree at Leyden; is said to have practised medicine at Halifax, and about 1637 settled at Norwich for the fifty remaining years of his life. His earliest and probably his most popular book, the "Religio Medici," appears to have been written about 1635-1637. Several transcripts existed; in 1642 one of them, imperfect enough, was printed without Browne's knowledge and consent, and was criticized by Sir Kenelm Digby and others. Browne therefore issued an authorized edition, and the work was extremely successful both in England and on the Continent. Naturally this confessor of his private ideas about religion was attacked on all sides, as an atheist, a papist, a deist, by the scribblers of the hostile sects. Browne, in fact, was a Christian who did not, as at that time was especially common, regard hatred of all who differed with him about a surplice or a sermon as a holier thing than the virtue of charity. In his preface he says that almost every man suffers by the Press, and that he "has lived to behold the highest perversion of that excellent invention," the King defamed, the honour of Parliament impaired, a flood of printed falsehoods submerging everything, and carrying erroneous copies of Browne's private papers into the market. Browne opens his work by declaring that, in spite of his profession (and of the proverb, "one doctor out of three is an atheist"), he is a Christian, and a tolerant Christian. "Holy water and crucifix (dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment, nor abuse my devotion at all. ...I should violate my own arm rather than a church; nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour."