Anthony a'Wood, in his 'Athenæ Oxoniensis,' tells how Braithwaite--or, as he spells the name, Brathwayte--was sent to the University at sixteen years of age in 1604. He remained there three years, 'avoiding as much as he could the rough pathes of Logic and Philosophy, and tracing those smooth ones of Poetry and Roman History, in which at length he did excell.' Thence he went to Cambridge, studying literature 'in dead and living authors.' From Cambridge he proceeded to London to read law in the Inns of Court. In his father's will there are indications, and in his own later writings there are sorrowful confessions, that, for a while, at all events, he lived a wild, roystering life in the Metropolis. 'The day seemed long wherein I did not enjoy these pleasures; the night long wherein I thought not of them. I knew what sinne it was to sollicit a maid into lightnesse; or to be drunken with wine, wherein was excesse; or to suffer mine heart to be oppressed with surfetting and drunkennesse; yet for all this, run I on still in mine evil wayes.' His father's death-bed doubts of him, and the tying up of the estate bequeathed to him, till he had amended, seem to have brought him to himself. While living at Burneside Hall, during the early days of the Civil Wars he was made a Captain of the local Royalist trained bands, a Deputy-Lieutenant, and J.P. for the county, and spent his leisure in composing and publishing the more serious of his books. Seven years after entering on his possessions, he married Miss Frances Lawson, of Darlington, but surreptitiously, probably because of objections raised by the young lady's parents. It seems to have been more than a love-match--a happy union of sixteen years' duration--producing a family of nine--six sons and three daughters. Six years of widowhood, and then he married a Yorkshire lady, who brought him another manor, Catterick, where for the future he resided till his death. The sole issue of this second marriage was a son--Strafford--who was knighted, and was killed in an engagement with an Algerian man-of-war--in the ship _Mary_, of which Sir Roger Strickland was commander. In 1673 Richard Braithwaite died, and was buried in Catterick Parish Church, a mural monument duly setting forth the fact in customary Latin. Anthony a'Wood says he bore during his steady years 'the character of a well-bread (_sic_) gentleman and a good neighbour.' Mr. Haslewood, his most competent editor, has collected, I know not from whence, some oral traditions of his personal appearance, interesting as a picture of the seventeenth-century northern gentry, as well as of the individual. He was, although below the common stature, one of the handsomest men of the time, and well proportioned, remarkable for ready wit and humour, and of polished manners and deportment. He usually wore a light gray coat, a red waistcoat, leather breeches, and a high-crowned hat. From a full-length portrait in the