DIGBY, SIR KENELM (1603-1665)

—Miscellaneous writer, b. near Newport Pagnell, s. of Sir Everard D., one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, was ed. at Oxf., travelled much, and was engaged in sea-fighting. Brought up first as a Romanist, then as a Protestant, he in 1636 joined the Church of Rome. During the Civil War he was active on the side of the King, and on the fall of his cause was for a time banished. He was the author of several books on religious and quasi-scientific subjects, including one on the Choice of a Religion , on the Immortality of the Soul , Observations on Spenser's Faery Queen , and a criticism on Sir T. Browne's Religio Medici . He also wrote a Discourse on Vegetation , and one On the Cure of Wounds by means of a sympathetic powder which he imagined he had discovered.