History of the life and death of John, Earl of Gowrie

116 *HE LIFE AND DEATH OF
in the summer of 1598. This privilege was con-
tinued with them almost an hundred years. Among
them many, both of their clergy and laity, were
eminently learned and good men. By them the
pious Protestant Earl was honoured and kindly en-
tertained. At the same time, the high quality he
possessed in his own country, and his elegant ac-
complishments, rendered him an acceptable visitor
at the Court of Henry IV.
When at Paris, and in his excursions through
the French kingdom, he was necessarily in compa-
nies of various kinds. He particularly attended
concerts of music, a divertisement in which he had
probably learned to take pleasure when he was in
Italy. But in these, and other such companies, he
was accosted, and troubled with astrologers, a dan-
gerous set of men, who were then abounding in all
the countries of Europe. He treated them with
contempt, and sometimes with anger, as he related,
after he came home, to his cousin, James Wemyss
of Bogie, in a jocular conversation which he had
with him, concerning the secrets of nature. Wil-
liam Drummond of Hawthornden, in one of his
familiar epistles, written about the year 1640,
speaking of astrological predictions, says, " I never
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