Sir Thomas Browne as "Orphan," with Some Account of his Stepfather, Sir Thomas Dutton

Abstract

The Reverend John Whitefoot, who probably provided most of the material for the first Life of Sir Thomas Browne in Posthumous Works (1712), stated in the Minutes appended to that life that Browne "spent the greatest Part of his Patrimony in his Travels," but to this statement added a note: "He was likewise very much defrauded by one of his guardians.'" Both Browne's daughter, Elizabeth Lyttleton (as reported by White Kennet), and the author of the Life gave specific figures about the patrimony, as having been £9,000, of which Mrs. Browne took her "thirds," Apparently forgetting that Browne had sisters, Dr. Johnson (in Christian Morals, 1756) allotted him £6,000, and characteristically improved the reference to the dishonest guardian—a reference already strengthened in a short life prefixed to the 1736 Religio—by the words "But it happened to him as to many others, to be made poorer by opulence; for his mother soon married Sir Thomas Dutton, probably by the inducement of her fortune; and he was left to the rapacity of his guardian, deprived now of both his parents, and therefore helpless and unprotected."