No More Learning

263.

Fleay identifies him with Norbret, one of the astrologers in
Beaumont and Fletcher's _Rollo, Duke of Normandy_.

=1. 2. 2 Gresham. = A pretended astrologer, contemporary with Forman,
and said to be one of the associates of the infamous Countess of
Essex and Mrs. Turner in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Arthur
Wilson mentions him in _The Life of James I. _, p. 70:

'Mrs. _Turner_, the Mistris of the _Work_, had lost both her
supporters. _Forman_, her first prop, drop't away suddenly by death;
and _Gresham_ another rotten _Engin_ (that succeded him) did not hold
long: She must now bear up all her self. '

He is mentioned twice in Spark's _Narrative History of King James_,
Somer's _Tracts_ 2. 275: 'Dr. Forman being dead, Mrs.
Turner wanted
one to assist her; whereupon, at the countesses coming to London, one
Gresham was nominated to be entertained in this businesse, and, in
processe of time, was wholly interested in it; this man was had in
suspition to have had a hand in the Gunpowder plot, he wrote so near
it in his almanack; but, without all question, he was a very skilful
man in the mathematicks, and, in his latter time, in witchcraft, as
was suspected, and therefore the fitter to bee imployed in those
practises, which, as they were devilish, so the devil had a hand
in them. '

_Ibid. _ 287: 'Now Gresham growing into years, having spent much time
in many foule practises to accomplish those things at this time,
gathers all his babies together, _viz. _ pictures in lead, in wax, in
plates of gold, of naked men and women with crosses, crucifixes, and
other implements, wrapping them all up together in a scarfe, crossed
every letter in the sacred word Trinity, crossed these things very
holily delivered into the hands of one Weston to bee hid in the earth
that no man might find them, and so in Thames-street having finished
his evill times he died, leaving behind him a man and a maid, one
hanged for a witch, and the other for a thief very shortly after. '

In the 'Heads of Charges against Robert, Earl of Somerset',
drawn up by Lord Bacon, we read: 'That the countess laboured
Forman and Gresham to inforce the Queen by witchcraft to favour
the countess' (Howell's _State Trials_ 2. 966). To this King
James replied in an 'Apostyle,' _Nothing to Somerset_. This
exhausts the references to Gresham that I have been able to
find. See note on Savory, 1. 2. 3.

=1. 2. 2. Fore-man. = Simon Foreman, or Forman (1552-1611)
was the most famous of the group of quacks here mentioned.