Editing Kenelm Digby (section)

==Career==
Around 1625, he married [[Venetia Stanley]], whose wooing he cryptically described in his memoirs. He had also become a member of the [[Privy Council of the United Kingdom|Privy Council]] of [[Charles I of England]]. As his Roman Catholicism hindered appointment to government office, he converted to [[Anglicanism]].
[[File:Van Dyck, Sir Anthony - Venetia, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|left|''Venetia Stanley on her Death Bed'' by van Dyck, 1633, Dulwich Picture Gallery]]

Digby became a [[privateer]] in 1627.<ref name=EB/> Sailing his flagship, the ''Eagle'' (later renamed ''[[Arbella|Arabella]]''),<ref>Davida Rubin, Kenneth Garth Huston. ''Sir Kenelm Digby, F.R.S., 1603–1665: a bibliography ...'' (1969), p. 2.</ref> he arrived off [[Gibraltar]] on 18 January and captured several Spanish and Flemish vessels.<ref name=EB/> From 15 February to 27 March he remained at anchor off [[Algiers]] due to illness of his men, and extracted a promise from authorities of better treatment of the English ships:<ref name=EB/> he persuaded the city governors to free 50 English slaves.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite book|last1= Moshenska|first1= Joe|title= A Stain in the Blood: The Remarkable Voyage of Sir Kenelm Digby|date= 2016| location= London| publisher= Heinemann |isbn= 9780434022892}}</ref> He seized a Dutch vessel near [[Majorca]], and after other adventures gained a victory over the French and Venetian ships in the harbour of [[Iskanderun]] on 11 June.<ref name=EB/> His successes, however, brought upon the English merchants the risk of reprisals, and he was urged to depart. He returned to become a naval administrator<ref name=EB/> and later Governor of [[Trinity House]].

His wife Venetia, a noted beauty, died suddenly in 1633, prompting a famous deathbed portrait by [[Van Dyck]] and a eulogy by [[Ben Jonson]]. (Digby was later Jonson's [[literary executor]]. Jonson's poem about Venetia is now partially lost, because of the loss of the centre sheet of a leaf of papers which held the only copy.) Digby, stricken with grief and the object of enough suspicion for the Crown to order an [[autopsy]] (rare at the time) on Venetia's body, secluded himself in [[Gresham College]] and attempted to forget his personal woes through scientific experimentation and a return to Catholicism. At Gresham College he held an unofficial post, receiving no payment from the college. Digby, alongside Hungarian chemist [[Johannes Banfi Hunyades]], constructed a laboratory under the lodgings of [[Gresham Professor of Divinity]] where the two conducted [[Botany|botanical]] experiments.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Adamson |first=I. R. |date=1980 |title=The Administration of Gresham College and its Fluctuating Fortunes as a Scientific Institution in the Seventeenth Century |journal=History of Education |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=20 |doi=10.1080/0046760800090102 }}</ref>

At that period, public servants were often rewarded with patents of monopoly; Digby received the regional monopoly of [[sealing wax]] in Wales and the [[Welsh Borders]]. This was a guaranteed income; more speculative were the monopolies of trade with the [[Gulf of Guinea]] and with [[Canada]]. These were doubtless more difficult to police.
[[File:Anthony van Dyck - Family portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby and Lady Venetia Anastasia Stanley with their sons Kenelm and John.jpg|thumb|280px|''Family portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby and Lady Venetia Anastasia Stanley with their sons Kenelm and John'' by van Dyck]]