Brewer's: Read

or Read (Simon), alluded to by Ben Jonson in the Alchemist, i. 2, was Simon Read, of St. George's, Southwark, professor of physic. Rymer, in his Foedera, vol. xvi., says, “he was indicted for invoking evil spirits in order to find out the name of a person who, in 1608, stole 37 10s. from Tobias Mathews, of St. Mary Steynings, London.”

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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