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Title: Thomas Hariot
Author: Henry Stevens
Release Date: May 28, 2002 [eBook #5171]
[Most recently updated: December 25, 2021]
Language: English
Produced by: Norm Wolcott
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS HARIOT ***
Thomas Hariot
by Henry Stevens
[Redactor’s note: Very little is known of Thomas Hariot; his only
published works are the ‘Briefe and true report’ (PG#4247) and the
posthumous ‘Praxis’, a handbook of algebra. He anticipated the law of
refraction, corresponded with Kepler, observed comets, and may have
been the first to recognize that the straight line paths of comets
might be segments of elongated ellipses. The lost ‘ephemera’ referred
to in the text have since been found (since 1876) and a conference was
held in 1970 at the University of Delaware on the current state of
Hariot research, the proceedings of which have been published by the
Oxford University Press, where one may find a fairly current view of
the historical record. Due to the large number of quotations and early
english typography, the casual reader may find the ‘html’ version
easier to follow than the text version.]
THOMAS HARIOT
THE MATHEMATICIAN
THE PHILOSOPHER AND
THE SCHOLAR
DEVELOPED
CHIEFLY
FROM
DORMANT MATERIALS
WITH NOTICES OF HIS ASSOCIATES
INCLUDING BIOGRAPHICAL AND
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DISQUISITIONS
UPON THE MATERIALS OF THE
HISTORY OF ‘OULD
VIRGINIA’
BY HENRY STEVENS OF VERMONT
PREMONITION
WHEN I YEARS AGO undertook among other enterprises to compile a sketch
of the life of THOMAS HARIOT the first historian of the new found land
of Virginia; and to trace the gradual geographical development of that
country out of the unlimited ‘Terra Florida’ of Juan Ponce de Leon,
through the French planting and the Spanish rooting out of the Huguenot
colony down to the successful foothold of the English in Wingandacoa
under Raleigh’s patent, I little suspected either the extent of the
research I was drifting into, or the success that awaited my
investigations.
The results however are contained in this little volume, which has
expanded day by day from the original limit of fifty to above two
hundred pages. From a concise bibliographical essay the work has grown
into a biography of a philosopher and man of science with extraordinary
surroundings, wherein the patient reader may trace the gradual
development of Virginia from the earliest time to 1585 ; I especially,’
says Strachey, I that which hath bene published by that true lover of
vertue and great learned professor of all arts and knowledges, Mr
Hariots, who lyved there in the tyme of the first colony, spake the
Indian language, searcht the country,’ etc ; Hariot’s nearly forty
years’ intimate connection with Sir Walter Raleigh; his long close
companionship with Henry Percy ; his correspondence with Kepler; his
participation in Raleigh’s `History of the World;’ his invention of the
telescope and his consequent astronomical discoveries ; his scientific
disciples ; his many friendships and no foeships ; his blameless life ;
his beautiful epitaph in St Christopher’s church, and his long slumber
in the ‘garden’ of the Bank of England.
The little book is now submitted with considerable diffidence, for in
endeavouring to extricate Hariot from the confusion of historical
‘facts’ into which he had fallen, and to place him in the position to
which he is entitled by his great merits, it is desirable to be clear,
explicit and logical. A decision of mankind of two centuries’ standing,
as expressed in many dictionaries and encyclopaedias, cannot be easily
reversed without good contemporary evidence. This I have endeavoured to
produce.
Referring to pages 191 and 192 the writer still craves the reader’s
indulgence for the apparently irrelevant matter introduced, as well as
for the inartistic grouping of the many detached materials, for reasons
there given.
It ought perhaps to be stated here that the book necessarily includes
notices, more or less elaborate, of very many of Hariot’s friends,
associates and contemporaries, while others, for want of space, are
mentioned little more than by name.
The lives of Raleigh, and Henry Percy of Northumberland, Prisoners in
the Tower, seem to be inseparable from that of their Fidus Achates, but
I have endeavoured to eliminate that of Hariot as far as possible
without derogation to his patrons. All the new documents mentioned have
their special value, but too much importance cannot be attached to the
recovery of Hariot’s Will, for it at once dispels a great deal of the
inference and conjecture that have so long beclouded his memory. It
throws the bright electric light of to-day over his eminently
scholarly, scientific and philosophical Life. By this and the other
authorities given it is hoped to add a new star to the joint
constellation of the honored Worthies of England and America.
HENRY STEVENS of Vermont
Vermont House, xiii Upper Avenue Road,
London, N.W. April 10 1885
THOMAS HARIOT
AND HIS
ASSOCIATES
‘chusing always rather to doe some thinge worth
nothing than nothing att all.’ _Sir William Lower
to Hariot_ July 19 1611 (see p. 99)
To
FRANCIS PARKMAN
THE
HISTORIAN and TRUSTIE FRIEND
Who Forty Years ago
When we were young Students of History together
Gave me a hand of his over the Sea
NOW
Give I him this right hand of mine
with
Ever grateful Tribute to
our life-long
FRIENDSHIP
MORIN
Custos juris reimprimendi
Caveat homo trium literarum
[The touching Dedication on the opposite page was penned by my father a
few months before his death on February 18, 1886. I have thought it
best to leave it exactly as he had planned it, although now, alas! Mr.
Parkman is no longer with us. Let us hope the old friends may have
again joined hands beyond the unknown sea.-H. N. S.]
EXPLANATORY
IN the year 1877 the late Mr. Henry Stevens of Vermont, under the
pseudonym of ‘Mr. Secretary Outis,’ projected and initiated a literary
Association entitled THE HERCULES CLUB. The following extracts from the
original prospectus of that year explain this platform:
The objects of this Association are literary, social, antiquarian,
festive and historical ; and its aims are thoroughly independent
research into the materials of early Anglo-American history and
literature. The Association is known as THE HERCULES CLUB, whose
Eurystheus is Historic Truth and whose appointed labours are to clear
this field for the historian of the future.
“Sinking the individual in the Association the Hercules Club proposes
to scour the plain and endeavour to rid it of some of the many
literary, historical, chronological, geographical and other monstrous
errors, hydras and public nuisances that infest it . . . . Very many
books, maps, manuscripts and other materials relating alike to England
and to America are well known to exist in various public and private
repositories on both sides of the Atlantic. Some unique are of the
highest rarity, are of great historic value, while others are difficult
of access, if not wholly inaccessible, to the general student. It ís
one of the purposes therefore of the Hercules Club to ferret out these
materials, collate, edit and reproduce them with extreme accuracy, but
not in facsimile. The printing is to be in the best style of the
Chiswick Press. The paper with the Club’s monogram in each leaf is made
expressly for the purpose”.
The following ten works were selected as the first field of the Club’s
investigations, and to form the first series of its publications.
1. Waymouth (Capt. George) Voyage to North Virginia in 1605. By James
Rosier. London, 1605, 4°
2. Sil. Jourdan’s Description of Barmuda. London, 1610, 4°
3. Lochinvar. Encouragements for such as shall have intention to bee
Vndertakers in the new plantation of Cape Breton, now New Galloway.
Edinburgh, 1625, 4°
4. Voyage into New England in 1623-24.. By Christopher Levett. London,
1628, 4°
5. Capt. John Smith’s True Relation of such occurrences of Noate as
hath hapned in Virginia. London, 1608, 4°
6. Gosnold’s Voyage to the North part of Virginia in 1602. By John
Brereton. London, 1602, 4°
7. A Plain Description of the Barmudas, now called Sommer Islands.
London, 1613, 4°
8. For the Colony in Virginia Brittania, Lavves Divine Morall and
Martiall, &c. London, 1612, 4°
9. Capt. John Smith’s Description of NewEngland, 16l4-15, map. London,
1616, 4°
10. Hariot (Thomas) Briefe and true report of the new foundland of
Virginia. London, 1588, 4°
‘Mr. Secretary Outis’ undertook the task of seeing the reprints of the
original texts of these ten volumes through the Press, and almost the
whole of this work he actually accomplished.
The co-operative objects of the Association, however, appear never to
have been fully inaugurated, although a large number of literary men,
collectors, societies and libraries entered their names as Members of
the Club. All were willing to give their pecuniary support as
subscribers to the Club’s publications, but few offered the more
valuable aid of their literary assistance; hence practically the whole
of the editing also devolved upon Mr. Henry Stevens.
He first took up No. 10 on the above list, Hariot’s Virginia. His long
and diligent study for the introduction thereto, resulted in the
discovery of so much new and important matter relative to Hariot and
Raleigh, that it became necessary to embody it in the present separate
volume, as the maximum dimensions contemplated for the introduction to
each work had been exceeded tenfold or more.
Owing to Mr. Stevens’s failing health, the cares of his business, and
the continual discovery of fresh material, it was not till 1885 that
his investigations were completed, although many sheets of the book had
been printed off from time to time as he progressed. The whole of the
text was actually printed off during his lifetime, but unfortunately he
did not live to witness the publication of his work, perhaps the most
historically important of any of his writings. Publication has since
been delayed for reasons explained hereinafter.
On the death of my father, on February 28, 1886, I found myself
appointed his literary executor, and I have since devoted much time to
the arrangement, completion, and publication of his various unfinished
works, seeking the help of competent editors where necessary.
Immediately after his decease I published his
_Recollections of Mr. James Lenox of New York, and the formation of his
Library,_ a little volume which was most favourably received and ran
through several impressions.
In the same year I published _The Dawn of British Trade to the East
Indies as recorded in the Court Minutes of the East India Company._
This volume contained an account of the formation of the Company and of
Captain Waymouth’s voyage to America in search of the North-west
passage to the East Indies. The work was printed for the first time
from the original manuscript preserved in the India Office, and the
introduction was written by Sir George Birdwood.
In 1888 I issued _Johann Schöner, Professor of Mathematics at
Nuremberg. A reproduction of his Globe of 1523 long lost, his
dedicatory letter to Reymer von Streytperck, and the `De Moluccis’ of
Maximilianus Transylvanus, with new translations and notes on the Globe
by Henry Stevens of Vermont, edited, with an introduction and
bibliography, by C. H. Coote, of the British Museum._ This Globe of
1523_,_ now generally known as Schöner’s Third Globe, is marked by a
line representing the route of Magellan’s expedition in the first
circumnavigation of the earth; and the facsimile of Maximilianus’s
interesting account of that voyage, with an English translation, was
consequently added to the volume. Mr. Coote, in his introduction, gives
a graphic account of many other early globes, several of which are also
reproduced in facsimile. The whole volume was most carefully prepared,
and exhibits considerable originality both in the printing and binding,
Mr. Henry Stevens’s own ideas having been faithfully carried out.
In 1893 I issued to the subscribers that elegant folio volume which my
father always considered as his _magnum opus._ It was entitled _The New
Laws of the Indies for the good treatment and preservation of the
Indians, promulgated by the Emperor Charles the Fifth, 1542-1543. A
facsimile reprint of the original Spanish edition, together with a
literal translation into the English language, to which is prefixed an
historical introduction._ Of the long introduction _of_ ninety-four
pages, the first thirty-eight are from the pen of Mr. Henry Stevens,
the remainder from that of Mr. Fred. W. Lucas, whose diligent
researches into American history are amply exemplified in his former
work, _Appendiculae Historicae, or shreds of history hung on a horn,_
and in his recent work, _The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers
Zeno._
Ever since 1886 I have from time to time unsuccessfully endeavoured to
enlist the services of various editors competent to complete the
projected eleven volumes of the Hercules Club publications, but after a
lapse of nearly fourteen years I have awakened to the fact that no
actual progress has been made, and that I have secured nothing beyond
the vague promise of future assistance. The field of editors capable of
this class of work being necessarily very limited, and death having
recently robbed me in the most promising case of even the slender hope
of future help, I determined to ascertain for myself the exact position
of the work already done, with the hope of bringing at least some of
the volumes to a completion separately, instead of waiting longer in
the hope of finishing and issuing them all _en bloc_ as originally
proposed and intended. On collating the printed stock I found that the
two volumes, _Hariot’s Virginia_ and the _Life of Hariot,_ were
practically complete, the text of both all printed off, and the titles
and preliminary leaves and the Index to _Hariot’s Virginia_ actually
standing in type at the Chiswick Press just as my father left them
fourteen years ago! (Many thanks to Messrs Charles Whittingham and Co.
for their patience.) The proofs of these I have corrected and passed
for press, and I have added the Index to the present volume. My great
regret is that I did not sooner discover the practical completeness of
these two volumes, as owing to the nature of the contents of the _Life
of Hariot_ it is not just to Hariot’s memory, or to that of my father,
that such important truths should so long have been withheld from
posterity.
These two volumes being thus completed, ít remained to be decided in
what manner they should be published. I did not feel myself competent
to pick up the fallen reins of the HERCULES CLUB, which, as I have said
before, appears never to have been fully inaugurated on the intended
co-operative basis.
There being now no constituted association (such having entirely lapsed
on the death of Mr. ‘Secretary Outis’), and many of the original
subscribers, who were ipso facto members, being also no longer with us,
it appeared impossible to put forth the volumes as the publications of
the HERCULES CLUB. Consequently I resolved to issue them myself (and
any future volumes I may be able to bring to completion) simply as
privately printed books, and I feel perfectly justified in so doing, as
no one but Mr. Henry Stevens had any hand in their design or production
either editorially or financially. No money whatever was received from
the members, whose subscriptions were only to become payable when the
publications were ready for delivery. The surviving members have been
offered the first chance of subscribing to these two Hariot volumes and
I am grateful for the support received. They and the new subscribers
will also be offered the option of taking any subsequent volumes of the
series which I may be enabled to complete.
HENRY N. STEVENS,
_Literary Executor of the late
Henry Stevens of Vermont.
39, Great Russell Street,
_ London, W.C.
_ 10th February, 1900._
THOMAS HARIOT
AND HIS
ASSOCIATES
COLLECTORS OF RARE English books always speak reverently and even
mysteriously of the ‘quarto Hariot’ as they do of the ‘first folio.’ It
is given to but few of them ever to touch or to see it, for not more
than seven copies are at present known to exist. Even four of these are
locked up in public libraries, whence they are never likely to pass
into private hands.
One copy is in the Grenville Library; another is in the Bodleian; a
third slumbers in the University of Leyden; a fourth is in the Lenox
Library; a fifth in Lord Taunton’s; a sixth in the late Henry Huth’s;
and a seventh produced £300 in 1883 in the Drake sale.
The little quarto volume of Hariot’s Virginia is as important as it is
rare, and as beautiful as it is important. Few English books of its
time, 1588, surpass it either in typographic execution or literary
merit. It was not probably thrown into the usual channels of commerce,
as it bears the imprint of a privately-printed book, without the name
or address of a publisher, and is not found entered in the registers of
Stationers’ Hall. It bears the arms of Sir Walter Raleigh on the
reverse of the title, and is highly commended by Ralfe Lane, the late
Governor of the Colony, who testifies, ‘I dare boldly auouch It may
very well pass with the credit of truth even amongst the most true
relations of this age.’ It was manifestly put forth somewhat hurriedly
to counteract, in influential quarters, certain slanders and aspersions
spread abroad in England by some ignorant persons returned from
Virginia, who ‘woulde seeme to knowe so much as no men more,’ and who
‘had little vnderstanding, lesse discretion, and more tongue then was
needful or requisite.’ Hariot’s book is dated at the end, February
1588, that is 1589 by present reckoning. Raleigh’s assignment is dated
the 7th of March following. It is probable therefore that the
‘influential quarters’ above referred to meant the Assignment of
Raleigh’s Charter which would have expired by the limitation of six
years on the 24th of March, 1590, if no colonists had been shipped or
plantation attempted. It is possible also that Theodore De Bry’s
presence in London, as mentioned below, may have hastened the printing
of the volume.
Indeed, the little book professes to be only an epitome of what might
be expected, for near the end the author says, ‘this is all the fruits
of our labours, that I haue thought necessary to aduertise you of at
present;’ and, further on, ‘I haue ready in a discourse by it self in
maner of a Chronicle according to the course of times, and when time
shall bee thought conuenicnt, shall also be published.’ Hariot’s
‘Chronicle of Virginia’ among things long lost upon earth ! It is to be
hoped that some day the historic trumpet of Fame will sound loud enough
to awaken it, together with Cabot’s lost bundle of maps and journals
deposited with William Worthington ; Ferdinand Columbus’ lost life of
his father in the original Spanish; and Peter Martyr’s book on the
first circumnavigation of the globe by the fleet of Magalhaens, which
he so fussily sent to Pope Adrian to be read and printed, also lost!
Hakluyt, in his volume of 1589, dated in his preface the 19th of
November, gives something of a chronicle of Virginian events,
1584-1589, with a reprint of this book. But there are reasons for
believing that this is not the chronicle which Hariot refers to. As
White’s original drawings have recently turned up after nearly three
centuries, may we not still hope to see also Hariot’s Chronicle?
However, till these lost jewels are found let us appreciate what is
still left to us. Hariot’s ‘True Report’ is usually considered the
first original authority in our language relating to that part of
English North America now called the United States, and is indeed so
full and trustworthy that almost everything of a primeval character
that we know of ‘Ould Virginia’ may be traced back to it as to a first
parent. It is an integral portion of English history, for England
supplied the enterprise and the men. It is equally an integral portion
of American history, for America supplied the scene and the material.
Without any preliminary flourish or subsequent reflections, the learned
author simply and truthfully portrays in 1585-6 the land and the people
of Virginia, the condition and commodities of the one, with the habits
and character of the other, of that narrow strip of coast lying between
Cape Fear and the Chesapeake, chiefly in the present State of North
Carolina. This land, called by the natives Wingandacoa, was named in
England in 1584 Virginia, in compliment to Queen Elizabeth. This name
at first covered only a small district, but afterwards it possessed
varying limits, extending at one time over North Virginia even to 45
degrees north.
Raleigh’s Virginia soon faded, but her portrait to the life is to be
found in Hariot’s book, especially when taken with the pictures by
Captain John White, so often referred to in the text. This precious
little work is perhaps the most truthful, trustworthy, fresh, and
important representation of primitive American human life, animals and
vegetables for food, natural productions and commercial commodities
that has come down to us. Though the ‘first colonie’ of Raleigh, like
all his subsequent efforts in this direction, was a present failure,
Hariot and White have left us some, if not ample, compensation in their
picturesque account of the savage life and lavish nature of
pre-Anglo-Virginia, the like of which we look for in vain elsewhere,
either in Spanish, French, or English colonization.
Indeed, nearly all we know of the uncontaminated American aborigines,
their mode of life and domestic economy, is derived from this book, and
therefore its influence and results as an original authority cannot
well be over-estimated. We have many Spanish and French books of a
kindred character, but none so lively and lifelike as this by Hariot,
especially as afterwards illustrated by De Bry’s engravings from
White’s drawings described below.
The first breath of European enterprise in the New World, combined with
its commercial Christianity, seems in all quarters, particularly the
Spanish and English, to have at once taken off the bloom and freshness
of the Indian. His natural simplicity and grandeur of character
immediately quailed before the dictatorial owner of property and
civilization. The Christian greed for gold and the civilized cruelty
practised without scruple in plundering the unregenerate and unbaptized
of their possessions of all kinds, soon taught the Indian cunning and
the necessity of resorting to all manner of savage and untutored
devices to enable him to cope with his relentless enemies for even
restrained liberty and self-preservation; nay, even for very existence,
and this too on his own soil that generously gave him bread and meat.
All these by a self-asserted authority the coming European civilizer,
with Bible in hand, taxed with tribute of gold, labour, liberty, life.
This has been the common lot of the western races.
It is therefore refreshing to catch this mirrored glimpse of Virginia,
her inhabitants, and her resources of primitive nature, before she was
contaminated by the residence and monopoly of the white man. It may
have been best in the long run that the European races should displace
the aborigines of the New World, but it is a melancholy reflection upon
‘go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature,’
that no tribe of American Indians has yet been absorbed into the body
politic. Many a white man has let himself down into savage life and
habits, but no tribe of aborigines has yet come up to the requirements,
the honours, and the delights of European civilization. Like the tall
wild grass before the prairie-fire, the aboriginal races are gradually
but surely being swept away by the progress of civilization. Now that
they are gone or going the desire to gather real and visible memorials
of them is increasing, but fate seems to have swept these also from the
grasp of the greedy conqueror. Cortes gathered the golden art treasures
of Montezuma and sent them to Charles the Fifth, but the spoiler was
spoiled on the high seas, and not a drinking-cup or ringer-ring of that
western barbaric monarch remains to tell us of his island splendour.
A historical word upon the events that led up to Raleigh’s Virginia
patent may not be out of place in a bibliographical Life of Hariot. The
patent was no sudden freak of fortune but was the natural outgrowth of
stirring events. Had it not been allotted to Raleigh it would doubtless
soon after have fallen to some other promoter. But Raleigh was the
Devonshire war-horse that first snuffed the breeze from afar. He
fathered and took upon himself the burden of this newborn English
enterprise of Western Planting.
Though unsuccessful himself, Raleigh lifted his country into success
more than any other one man of his time. To this day he is honoured
alike in the old country that gave him birth, and in the new country to
which he gave new life. His energy, enterprise, and fame are now a part
of England’s history and pride, while his disgrace and death belong to
his king. Thomas Hariot was for nearly forty years his confidential
lieutenant throughout his varied career.
From his youth Raleigh had sympathized, like many intelligent
Englishmen, with the Huguenot cause in France. As early as 1569, at the
age of seventeen, he had been one of a hundred volunteers whom
Elizabeth sent over to assist and countenance Coligni. He thus probably
became better acquainted with the great but unsuccessful scheme of
colonizing Florida. At all events the history of that disastrous French
Huguenot colonization was first published under his auspices, and a
chief survivor, Jacques Le Moyne, became attached to his service and
interests. The story is in brief as follows.
Gaspar de Coligni, Admiral of France, often in our day called the
French Raleigh, was a Protestant, and firm friend of England. One of
his captains, Jean Ribault, of Dieppe, also a Protestant, had written
an important paper on the policy of preserving peace with Protestant
England. That paper, transmitted by the Admiral to England, is still
preserved in the national archives. Ribault became the leader of
Coligni’s preliminary expedition in 1562 into Florida to seek out a
suitable place, somewhere between 30° north latitude and Cape Breton,
for the discomfited Huguenots to retire to and found a Protestant
colony. The previous Brazilian project had already been abandoned as
impracticable and unsuccessful.
Hitherto the Spanish Roman Catholic maritime doctrine had been that to
see or sail by any undiscovered country gave possession. But the French
Protestants, now firmly rejecting the Pope’s gift, required occupation
in addition to discovery to secure title. Hence Florida at that time,
not being occupied by the Spanish, was considered open to the French.
Ribault sailed from Havre the 18th of February 1562, taking a course
across the Atlantic direct, and, as he thought, new, making his land
fall on the 30th of April at 29½ degrees; but Verrazano had in 1524
sailed also direct for Florida, taking a similar course, with the
difference that he started from Madeira. Thence coasting northward,
seeking for a harbour, touching at the river of May, and proceeding up
the coast to 32½ degrees, Ribault found a good harbour into which he
entered on the 27th of May, and named it Port Royal. He was so well
pleased with the country that, perhaps contrary to instructions, he
left a colony of thirty volunteers, under Capt. Albert de la Pierria,
and returned home with the news, arriving in France, after a quick
voyage, on the 20th of July, 1562.
Ribault, on leaving Port Royal, intended to explore up the coast to
40°, that is, to the present site of New York, but gives various
reasons for not doing so, one of which was ‘the declaration made vnto
vs of our pilots and some others that had before been at some of those
places where we purposed to sayle and have been already found by some
of the king’s subjects.’ This little colony of Port Royal, after nearly
a year of danger and privation, built a ship and put to sea, hoping to
reach France. After incredible sufferings, they were relieved by an
English ship, which, after putting the feeble on shore, carried the
rest to England, having on board a French sailor who had come home the
previous year with Ribault. These surviving colonists were all
presented to Queen Elizabeth, and attracted much attention and great
sympathy in England. Some found their way back to France, while others
entered the English service. Thus England became acquainted with the
aim, object, success, and failure of the first Florida (now South
Carolina) Protestant French colony. Thomas Hacket published in London
the 30th of May 1563, Ribault’s ‘True and last Discouerie of Florida,’
purporting to be a translation from the French; but no printed French
original is now known to exist.
The year of bigotry, 1563, in France having passed, a second expedition
of three vessels under Réné de Laudonnière, who had been an officer
under Ribault in 1562, sailed for Florida from Havre, April 22, 1564,
and arrived at the river of May the 25th of June. There were men of
courage and consequence in this company of adventurers, among whom was
Le Moyne, the painter and mathematician. The story of the sufferings of
this second colony has often been told, and need not be repeated here.
Suffice it to say that it was greatly relieved in July 1565, by Captain
John Hawkins on his return voyage from his second famous slave
expedition to Africa and the West Indies. Hawkins, after generously
relieving the French with food, general supplies, and friendly counsel,
returned to Devonshire, sailing up the coast to Newfoundland, and
thence home, bringing stores of gold, silver, pearls, and the usual
valuable merchandize of the Indies, but the store of information
respecting Florida and our Protestant friends, and especially the
geography of the American coast, was worth more to England than all his
vast store of merchandize.
In 1565 a third French expedition was fitted out, again under Ribault,
to supply, reinforce, and support Laudonnière. After many disappointing
and vexatious delays, Ribault, late in the season, put to sea, but by
stress of weather was forced into Portsmouth, where he remained a
fortnight. This gave England still more information respecting the
French Protestant projects of southern colonization, as well as of
Florida, which at that time extended very far north of its present
limits. At length on the 14th of June Ribault left the hospitable
shores of England with a fair north east wind to waft his seven ships,
freighted with above three hundred colonists including sailors and
soldiers, and taking the new ‘French route’ north of the Azores and
south of Bermuda, entered the river of May on the 27th of August, just
one month after the departure of Hawkins, and just one day before the
arrival of the Spaniards at the river of St John, a few miles south.
We find no hint of any opposition in England to these French colonizing
schemes, but on the contrary they were looked upon as an advantageous
barrier to Spanish greed of territorial extension northward under the
vicegerent’s gift. There are still existing hints of English projects
of western voyages at this time, about the year 1565, to the American
coast. Elizabeth, however, was friendly to the Huguenots, and evinced
great sympathy with their Florida colonial scheme. England’s claim to
Newfoundland and Labrador, through discovery by the Cabots, had been
allowed to lapse chiefly from the Protestant doctrine of
non-occupation. The French occupation of Canada was not disputed. There
was some doubt, however, about the intermediate country between the New
France of Canada and the New France of Florida, and hence we find that
private plans of English occupation were hatching at this early period,
but they were not encouraged. This delicate question between France and
Spain was, however, soon settled by the well known course of events
with which England had nothing to do but to stand aside till the
contest was over, and then in due course of time, like an independent
powerful neutral, step in and reap the rewards.
It is well known that Laudonnière’s followers were not altogether
harmonious. Some restless spirits seceded, and seizing one of the
colony’s ships, entered successfully in the autumn and winter of
1564-65 into piracy on the rich commerce of Spain in the West Indies.
These French spoliations had been a sore point with the owners of West
India commerce since the days of Verrazano, so much so that the Spanish
Government had instituted a fleet of coastguards among the islands to
intercept and destroy the pirates. This fleet for some time had been
under the charge of an experienced, trusted, and efficient officer
named Pedro Menendez de Avilés. No doubt the provocation was great, and
the new piracy was not to be endured. The home government of Spain had
been kept informed of the Huguenot encroachments in Florida, a country
which had long ago been granted to Ponce de Leon, Ayllon and others,
and had been coasted by Estevan Gomez, but these encroachments had
hitherto been so long winked at that the French colonists began to feel
themselves to be in tolerable security.
French piracy and Calvinism, however, coming together were two
provocations too much for the patriotism and piety of the zealous Roman
Catholic Spanish commander in the West Indies. Besides, there was a
sorrow which roused his Spanish bigotry and induced him more than ever
to serve God and his king by exterminating heresy. Don Pedro, with his
new honors and high hopes, had left Cadiz on the 31st of May 1564, as
Captain-General of the West India, the Terra Firma, the Peruvian, and
the New-Spain fleets, his son under him commanding the ships to Vera
Cruz. This son on the homeward voyage in the autumn had been lost on
the rocks of Bermuda. This circumstance, with the Florida pirates, the
heretic French and his Spanish love of barbaric gold, fired his zeal.
The General rushed home to Spain for new powers. Early in 1565 he stood
again before Philip petition in hand. Besides his present dignities he
would be Adelantado of Florida. Florida in Spanish eyes extended not
only to St. Mary’s or the Bay of Chesapeake, but even to Newfoundland,
so as to embrace the whole northern continent west of the line of
demarcation. Philip had heard not only of Laudonnière and the French
Huguenots the last year, but was informed of Ribault’s new reinforcing
expedition from Dieppe. He at once not only granted the General’s
request, but enlarged his powers from time to time as additional news
came in of the French. Don Pedro became indeed a royal favourite. He
was now a veteran of forty-seven, who had done Philip and his father
personal service. He had cruised against blockaders and corsairs in
early youth, had convoyed richly-laden plate fleets from the Indies;
had turned the scale of victory at StQuintin in 1557 by suddenly
throwing Spanish troops into Flanders greatly to the advantage of
Philip; was the commanding general of the armada in which the king
returned in 1559 from Flanders to Spain; had been made in 1560
captain-general of the convoy or protecting fleets between Spain and
the West Indies, in which there was much active business in guarding
Spanish commerce from corsairs. In spoiling these spoilers the general
amassed much wealth, and was acknowledged the protector of the islands
and their commerce. In 1561 he had fallen into some difficulty which
caused his arrest by the Council of the Indies, but the king came to
his rescue, restored his appointments, and promoted him in 1562 and
1563, and still more, as we have seen, in 1564. In 1565 Philip gave him
almost unlimited power over Florida, with directions to conquer,
colonize, Christianize, explore and survey, and all these too at his
own expense. Such is the fascination of royal grants. He was given
three years to perform these wonders, in which so many others had
failed. He was to survey the coasts up to Chesapeake Bay, explore
inlets and find out the hidden straits to Cathay. Thus armed and
instructed this Spanish pioneer of Virginia history and geography
returned to his native Asturias, raised an army, manned and fitted out
a fleet with many soldiers and sailors, and 500 negro slaves. He
embarked at Cadiz with eleven ships on the 29th of June 1565, a
fortnight after Ribault with his seven ships had left Portsmouth. From
Porto Rico the Adelantado, in his hot haste to forestall the French,
took a new route north of StDomingo, through the Lucayan islands and
the Bahamas, to the coast of Florida at the River of StJohn, on the
28th of August, the day after the arrival of the French a few miles
north. Here Menendez entered the inlet, landed his five hundred African
negro slaves, founded a town, the first in what is now the United
States, and named it StAugustine, because he made his land-fall on the
saint’s-day of the great African bishop. Thus StAugustine became the
patron saint of this first town in the United States. Here slavery
struck root, and here the Spanish Papist and the French Huguenot,
brought out of civilized and Christianized Europe were set down
blindfolded on the wild and inhospitable shores of Florida, like two
game-cocks, to fight out their religious and implacable hatred. It was
here that these ‘children of the sun’ showed the red men of the
American forests that they too were human and mortal. Here, a few days
later, the Spaniards began that merciless cut-throat religious butchery
of Huguenots, to the astonishment of the savages of the primeval
forests of America which finds a parallel on the pages of history only
in the lesson which it taught in refined Paris just seven years later
on St Bartholomew’s day.
All the world knows how the swift vengeance of Pedro Menendez de Aviles
descended upon the unfortunate colonists of Laudonnière and Ribault and
destroyed them, with very few exceptions, in September 1565. On the
other hand, every one has heard how the Spaniards, almost all except
the absent leader, expiated their murderous cruelty in April 1568,
under the retributive justice of De Gourgues. The Spanish settlers of
Florida were thus as completely exterminated by the French as the
French three years before had been exterminated by the Spaniards.
After this till 1574, the Spaniards maintained possession of Florida,
as far north as the Chesapeake Bay, under Menendez, who had been
appointed at first Adelantado of Florida, and subsequently also
Governor of Cuba. He caused an elaborate and official survey of the
whole coast to be made and recorded, both in writing and in charts.
Barcia tells the whole interesting story, but the charts seem to have
been lost, though the description, or parts of it, remains. Menendez
returned to Spain and died in 1574, just as he had been invested with
the command of an ‘invincible’ armada of three hundred ships, and
twenty thousand men to act against England and Flanders. All his North
American acquisitions and surveys seem to have at once fallen into
neglect. Not a Spanish town had been founded north of StAugustine. His
Spanish missionaries sent among the Indians had gained no solid foot
hold. Spain however still claimed possession, on paper, of the whole
coast up to Newfoundland, though she could not boast of a single place
of actual occupation.
England at this time began to see the coast clear for the spread of her
protestant principles in America, and for her occupation of some of
those vast countries she now professed to have been the first to
discover by the Cabots. No friendly power any longer stood in her way.
Her relations with Spain had settled into patriotic hatred and open
war. The voyages of Hawkins and Drake into the West Indies had revealed
to Englishmen the enormous wealth of the Spanish trade thither, as well
as the weakness of the Spanish Government in those plundered papal
possessions. Frobisher had matured his plans, secured his grant, and in
1576 made his first voyage to find the north west passage. The same
year the half-brother of Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, published his
‘discourse for a discouerieof a new passage to Catai,’ with a map
showing the coast of North America, and the passage to China. This was
the result of years of study, and though the elaborate work was written
out hastily at last, we know that while others were advocating the
north east passage, Sir Humphrey always persisted in the north western.
Frobisher’s expedition is said to have been an outgrowth of Gilbert’s
efforts and petitions. These projects were long in hand, but Gilbert,
in June 1578, obtained his famous patent from Elizabeth for two hundred
leagues of any American coast not occupied by a Christian prince. This
grant was limited to six years, to expire the eleventh of June 1584 in
case no settlement was made or colony founded. The story of Gilbert’s
efforts, expenditures of himself and friends, his unparalleled
misfortunes and death, need not be retold here. Part of his rights and
privileges fell to his half-brother Walter Raleigh who had participated
somewhat in the enterprise. After Gilbert’s death and before the
expiration of the patent, Raleigh succeeded in obtaining from Elizabeth
another patent, with similar rights, privileges, and limitations, dated
the 25th of March 1584, leaving the whole unoccupied coast open to his
selection. On the 27th of April, only a month later, he despatched two
barks under the command of Captains Amadas and Barlow, to reconnoitre
the coast, as Ribault had done, for a suitable place to plant a colony,
somewhere between Florida and Newfoundland. This patent also, like
Gilbert’s, in case of negligence or non-success, was limited to six
years. But it required the confirmation of Parliament. Though there
were many rival interests, some of which had perhaps to be conciliated,
the patent was confirmed.
It ought perhaps to be mentioned here that five of Gilbert’s six years
having already expired without his obtaining success or possession,
several others, anticipating a forfeiture of the patent, began
agitation for rival patents in 1583. Carleil, Walsingham, Sidney,
Peckham, Raleigh, and perhaps others were eager in the strife. Mostof
the papers are given in Hakluyt’s 1589 edition. The ‘Golden Hinde’
returned in September 1583 with the news of the utter failure of the
expedition and the death of Sir Humphrey. Raleigh succeeded in
obtaining the royal grant, and then all the rest joined him in getting
the patent confirmed by Parliament.
Raleigh was now thirty-three, a man of position, of large heart and
large income, a popular courtier high in royal favor, a man of foreign
travel, great experience and extensive acquirements. He had served
under Coligni with his protestant friends in France; subsequently
served under William of Orange in Flanders; had served his Queen in
Ireland; under Gilbert’s patent, contemplated a voyage to Newfoundland
in 1578; and in 1583 was ready to embark himself again, but by some
happy accident did not go, though he fitted out and sent a large ship
at his own cost bearing his own name, which ship however put back on
account of the outbreak of some contagion. Fully alive to the wants,
plans, and desires of the Huguenots, he had not only informed himself
of their Florida schemes, but had promoted the publication of their
history, and secured the interest and active co-operation of the most
important survivor of them all, Jaques LeMoyne, the painter, who having
escaped landed destitute in Wales, and subsequently entered the service
of Raleigh who had him safely lodged in the Blackfriars. He had also,
how or when precisely is not known, secured the active aid and facile
pen of the geographical Richard Hakluyt, who wrote for him, as no man
else could write, in 1584, a treatise on Western Planting, a work
intended probably to prime the ministry and the Parliament, to enable
Raleigh first to secure the confirmation of his patent, and afterwards
the co-operation and active interest of the nobility and gentry in his
enterprise. This important hitherto unpublished volume of sixty-three
large folio pages in the hand writing of Hakluyt, after having probably
served its purpose and lain dormant for nearly three centuries, was
bought at Earl Mountnorris’s sale at Arley Castle in December 1852, by
Mr Henry Stevens of Vermont, who, as he himself informs us, after
partly copying it, and endeavouring in vain to place it in some public
or private library in England or the United States, threw it into
auction, where it was sold by Messrs Puttick and Simpson in May 1854,
for £44, as lot 474, Sir Thomas Phillipps being the purchaser. The
manuscript still adorns the Phillipps library at Cheltenham. In 1868 a
copy of this most suggestive volume was obtained by the late Dr Leonard
Woods for the Maine Historical Society, and has since been edited with
valuable notes by Mr Charles Deane of Cambridge and with an
Introduction by Dr Woods. It appeared in 1877 as the second volume of
the second series of the Society’s Collections.
This Treatise of Hakluyt under Raleigh’s inspiration may be regarded as
the harbinger of Virginia history. Though intended for a special
purpose, it is of the highest importance in developing the history of
English maritime policy at that time, and defining the growth of the
English arguments, advantages and reasons for western planting. The
book is full of personal hints, and is immensely suggestive, showing us
more than anything else the master hand of Master Hakluyt in moulding
England’s ‘sea policie’ and colonial navigation. No mere geographical
study by Hakluyt could alone have produced this remarkable volume. It
is the combination of many materials, and the result of compromising
divers interests. Hakluyt had already, though still a young man under
thirty, entered deeply into the study of commercial geography, and had
in 1582 published his _Divers Voyages_ dedicated to his friend Sir
Philip Sidney, son-in-law to the chief Secretary Walsingham. In the
Spring of 1583 the Secretary sent Hakluyt down to Bristol with a letter
to the principal merchants there to enlist their co-operation in a
project of discovery and planting in America somewhere between the
possessions of the French in Canada and the Spaniards in Florida, which
his son-in-law Master Christopher Carleil was developing under the
auspices of the Muscovie Company, and for which they were about to ask
the Queen for a patent independent of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s.
In the summer of 1583 Hakluyt thought to go to Newfoundland with
Gilbert’s expedition, according to the letter of Parmenius, but
fortunately did not go. But in the autumn of the same year Walsingham
sent him to Paris nominally as chaplain to the English Ambassador at
the French court, Sir Edward Stafford, but really to pursue his
geographical investigations into the west and learn what the French and
Spanish were doing in these remote regions, and what were their
particular claims, resources and trade.
Before his departure for Paris, the ‘Golden Hinde’ had returned to
Falmouth with the heavy news of the fate of Gilbert and the consequent
certain forfeiture of his patent, notwithstanding it had still some
nine months to run. Though Sir Humphrey had taken formal possession of
Newfoundland, as no colony was left there, his rights and privileges
would lapse as a matter of course.
Western planting now became the talk and fashion. Many projects were
hatching for new patents. Raleigh alone succeeded. Hakluyt’s position
and circumstances in Paris seem made for the occasion, and he soon
found all these western eggs put into his basket. The materials of the
several previous writers and of the rival claimants were all apparently
thrust upon him. He thus became in 1583-4, though perhaps
unconsciously, the mouthpiece of a snug family party all playing into
the hands of Raleigh. There were Walsingham, and Sidney, and Carleil,
and Leicester, all connected with each other and with Raleigh. Then
there were the papers of Sir George Peckham, Edward Hayes, Richard
Clarke master of the Delight, and Steven Par-menius, rich alike in
hints and facts. The interests of these distinguished persons were by
family ties or other influence suddenly merged into a single patent and
that Raleigh’s. The papers mostly passed through Raleigh’s hands into
Hakluyt’s, who acknowledges himself indebted to him for his chiefest
light.
Raleigh, besides being the half-brother and representative of Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, held also a large share in that venture. Gilbert’s
real aim, policy and plan, in this last yearof his patent, to prospect
for a suitable place in which to take possession and found a colony,
was to begin at the south and work northward as the French had done,
but his previous failures since 1578, the inevitable impediments and
delays, the advanced season of this his last year 1583, and the
necessity of making a final strike for success, in behalf of himself
and his assignees, compelled him at the last hour to go direct to
Newfoundland, take possession, and then, if thought best, work
southward. He was however unquestionably influenced or professed to be
by rumours of metals or gold mines in Newfoundland. This northern
passage was his fatal mistake. Had he taken a middle or southern course
say between 37° and 42° he might perhaps have succeeded.
Under these circumstances Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting was
written, and may be considered as a digest of many plans without much
originality and a consolidation of many interests. Hakluyt and Raleigh
were at Oxford together, but we find no particular evidence of their
intimacy before the Spring of 1584, when Hakluyt had returned to London
from Paris with his Discourse, or perhaps it was partly written in
England. It is pretty certain that it was not shown to the Queen before
the date of the Patent, the 25th of March, as Hakluyt speaks of her
seeing it in the summer. It was probably intended principally for the
promotion of the interests of the Patent in Parliament.
At all events with his investigations in France Hakluyt’s Discourse
became thoroughly English in its tone and tenor, and from this time he
labored zealously in the interests of Raleigh. A main point of inquiry
in Paris was to avail himself of the many opportunities at the Spanish
and Portuguese embassies, and with the French merchants and sailors of
Paris, Rouen, Havre and Dieppe, to pick up the particulars of the West
India trade of the Spaniards, and the nature of the French dealings in
Cape Breton and Canada. This led him to set forth the advantages of
direct English western trade independent of France and Spain, and of
French and Spanish routes.
The fisheries of Newfoundland and the Banks were extensive, and by
repeated treaties neutral, but gave no exclusive rights on the
adjoining territory to any one of the fishing nations; though in all
cases the English by common consent exercised leadership in the
Newfoundland harbors among the fishing ships, of which there were now
some six or eight hundred a year, notwithstanding the English still
fished also at Iceland.
It was necessary however in the interests of England for Hakluyt in
this Discourse to revive and substantiate the English rights in America
by putting forward the prior discovery by the Cabots in 1497-1498.
Though he presents this direct claim modestly, yet like Sir Humphrey
Gilbert he founds it upon insufficient evidence. In a loose manner he
speaks of Cabot and not the Cabots, and attributes to Sebastian the son
what properly belongs to John the father. He reposes full confidence in
the loose and gossiping statements of Peter Martyr that Sebastian
Cabot, a quarter of a century after the discovery, told him that at the
time, 1497 or 98,he had explored the coast to the latitude of
Gibraltar, that is to Chesapeake Bay and the longitude of Cuba or the
city of Cincinnati, a thing not probable, in as much as the active old
pilot mayor was never able to declare, down to the time of Gomez, that
he had been on that coast before. It would have been foolish in him to
fit out in 1524 Gomez to ‘discover’ what the pilot mayor had already
explored in 1497.
Hakluyt’s arguments and historical statements in this Discourse of 1584
to the present time have always been presented by English diplomatists
with confidence, especially against the French. Yet the French
continued to maintain their occupation of Cape Breton, the Gulf of St
Lawrence and Canada, which together they called New France. It is now
however made apparent from contemporary historical documents that have
recently been brought to light from the archives of Spain and Venice
that John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, then a youth of some
nineteen or twenty years, in 1497 took possession of Cape Breton in the
names of Venice and England conjointly, and raised the flags of St Mark
and St George. There is not yet any trustworthy evidence that they went
south of Cape Breton either in that or the voyage of 1498.
Hakluyt in his Divers Voyages in 1582 did not venture to make this
Cabot claim so strong as in this Discourse. In his dedication to Sir
Philip Sidney he quaintly says that he ‘put downe the title which we
haue to this part of America which is from Florida to 67 degrees
northwarde by the letters patentes graunted to John Cabote and his
three sonnes,’ simply meaning that he had printed the first patent of
5th May 1496. In his title page he speaks of the Discoverie of
America,’ made first of all by our Englishmen and afterwards by the
Frenchmen and Bretons.’ He does not question the rights and privileges
of Frenchmen to the Gulf of St Lawrence and Canada, because they were
in the occupation of a Christian prince.
This Discourse of Western Planting therefore, and the voyage of Amadas
and Barlow, in 1584, at the instigation and expense of Raleigh, based
on a thorough knowledge of the Huguenot and Spanish expeditions to
Florida in 1562-1568, are all parts of Virginia history, and therefore
are preliminary to Hariot’s Report. It should be borne in mind that
these terms Florida and Virginia as used by the Spaniards, French, and
English, included the whole country from the point of Florida through
the Carolinas and Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay, or perhaps even to
Bacalaos.
Raleigh’s patent, in which all interests were thus consolidated, came
before Parliament in the Autumn of 1584 well fortified in its
historical and geographical bearings by Hakluyt’s learned Discourse. In
the House of Commons the matter was adroitly referred to a Commitee of
which Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir
Francis Drake were members. The bill having passed the House was sent
up to the Lords, and there read the first time on Sunday the 19th of
December 1584, as appears by the following entry in the Lords’ Journal,
volume ii, page 76. ‘Hodie allatae sicut a Dome Communi 4 Billae;
_Prima,_ For the Confirmation of the Queen’s Majesty’s Letters Patents,
granted to Walter Raughlieghe, Esquire, touching the Discovery and
Inhabiting of certain Foreign Lands and Countries, quae ia _vice_ lecta
est.’ It does not appear precisely at what date the Bill received the
Queen’s signature, but probably as early as Christmas or New Year.
Having now early in 1585 secured the Confirmation of this much coveted
patent which liberally permitted him in the name and under the aegis of
England to plant a ‘colonie’ and found an English empire in the New
World at his own expense of money, men, and enterprise; having pocketed
the geographical results and valuable experience of the French in
Florida and Canada; having vainly attempted a visit to Newfoundland in
1578, and having succeeded to the rights and privileges of his noble
half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert; having received by the return in
September of his two reconnoitring barks favorable reports as to the
properest place to begin his Western Planting in Wingandacoa ; and
being thoroughly supported by the good wishes and hearty co-operation
of the Queen and many of her prominent and influential subjects,
Raleigh rose superior to all jealousies and opposition.
This lasted as usual just so long as he was successful and no longer.
But he was blessed in his household, or at his table, or in his
confidence, with four sterling adherents who stuck to him through thick
and thin, through prosperity and adversity. These were Richard Hakluyt,
Jaques Le Moyne, John White and Thomas Hariot. When Wingandacoa makes
up her jewels she will not forget these Four, whom it is just to call
Raleigh’s Magi.
With marvellous energy, enterprise, and skill Raleigh collected and
fitted out in an incredibly short time a fleet of seven ships well
stocked and well manned to transport his ‘first colonie’ into the wilds
of America. It was under the command of his valiant cousin, Admiral Sir
Richard Grenville, and sailed from Plymouth on the 19th of May 1585.
Never before did a finer fleet leave the shores of England, and never
since was one more honestly or hopefully dispatched. There were the
‘Tyger’ and the ‘Roe Buck’ of 140 tons each, the ‘Lyon’ of 100 tons,
the ‘Elizabeth’ of 50 tons, the ‘Dorothea’, a small bark, and two
pinnaces, hardly big enough to bear distinct names, yet small enough to
cross dangerous bars and enter unknown bays and rivers. In this
splendid outfit were nearly two hundred souls, among whom were Master
Ralfe Lane as governor of the colony. Thomas Candish or Cavendish
afterwards the circumnavigator, Captain Philip Amadas of the Council,
John White the painter as delineator and draughtsman, Master Thomas
Hariot the mathematician as historiographer, surveyor and scientific
discoverer or explorer, and many others whose names are preserved in
Hakluyt.
The fleet had a prosperous voyage by the then usual route of the West
Indies and fell in with the main of Florida on the 20th of June, made
and named Cape Fear on the 23d, and a first landing the next day, and
on the 26th came to Wococa where Amadas and Barlow had been the year
before. They disembarked and at first mistook the country for Paradise.
July was spent in surveying and exploring the country, making the
acquaintance of the natives, chiefly by means of two Indians that had
been taken to England and brought back able to speak English. On the
5th of August Master John Arundel, captain of one of the vessels, was
sent back to England, and on the 25th of August Admiral Grenville,
after a sojourn of two months in Virginia, took his leave and returned,
arriving at Plymouth on the 18th of October. There were left in
Virginia as Raleigh’s ‘First Colonie,’ one hundred and nine men. They
remained there one whole year and then, discontented, returned to
England in July 1586 in Sir Francis Drake’s fleet coming home
victorious from the West Indies.
One of these 109 men was Thomas Hariot the Author of the Report of
Virginia. Another was John White the painter. To these two earnest and
true men we owe, as has been said, nearly all we know of ‘Ould
Virginia.’ Their story is briefly told by Hakluyt.
Sir Francis Drake in the true spirit of friendship went out of his way
to make this call on the Colony of his friend Raleigh. He found them
anything but contented and prosperous. They had long been expecting
supplies and reinforcements from home, which not arriving, on the
departure of Drake’s fleet becoming dejected and homesick, they
petitioned the Governor for permission to return. Immediately after
their departure a ship arrived from Raleigh, and fourteen days later
Sir Richard Grenville himself returned with his fleet of three ships,
new planters and stores of supplies, only to find the Colony deserted
and no tidings to be had. Leaving twenty men to hold possession the
Admiral made his way back to England.
It has already been stated how and under what circumstances the epitome
of the labours and surveys of Hariot came to be printed, but it may be
well to show how it came to be united with John White’s drawings and
republished a year or two later as the first part of De Bry’s
celebrated collections of voyages. Hakluyt returned to Paris at the end
of 1584. and remained there, perhaps with an occasional visit to
London, till 1588, always working in the interests of Raleigh. In April
1585, a month before the departure of the Virginia fleet, he wrote to
Walsingham that he ‘was careful to advertise Sir Walter Raleigh from
tyme to tyme and send him discourses both in print and in written hand
concerning his voyage.’ Rene Goulaine de Laudonnière’s Journal had
fallen into Hakluyt’s hand, and he induced his friend Basanier the
mathematician to edit and publish it. This was done and the work was
dedicated to Raleigh and probably paid for by him. Le Moyne the painter
and mathematician who had accompanied the expedition, one of the few
who escaped into the woods and swamps with Laudonnière the dreadful
morning of the massacre, was named by Basanier. He also mentions a lad
named De Bry who was lucky enough to find his way out of the clutches
of the Spanish butchers into the hands of the more merciful American
Savages. This young man was found
by De Gourgues nearly three years later among the Indians that joined
him in his mission of retribution against the Spaniards, and was
restored to his friends well instructed in the ways, manners and
customs of the Florida Aborigines.
This journal of Laudonnière carefully edited by Basanier was completed
in time to be published in Paris in 1586, in French, in octavo. It was
dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. Hakluyt translated it into English,
and printed it in small quarto in London the next year and it
reappeared again in his folio voyages of 1589. The French edition fell
under the eye of Theodore De Bry the afterwards celebrated engraver of
Frankfort, formerly of Liege. Whether or not this engraver was a
relative of young De Bry of Florida is not known, but we are told that
he soon sought out Le Moyne whom he found in Raleigh’s service living
in the Blackfriars in London, acting as painter, engraver on wood, a
teacher and art publisher or bookseller.
De Bry first came to London in 1587 to see Le Moyne and arrange with
him about illustrating Laudonnière’s Journal with the artist’s maps and
paintings, and remained here some time, but did not succeed in
obtaining what he wanted, probably because Le Moyne was meditating a
similar work of his own, and being still attached to the household of
Raleigh was not free to negotiate for that peculiar local and special
information which he had already placed at Raleigh’s disposal for his
colony planted a little north of the French settlement in Florida, then
supposed to be in successful operation, but of which nothing had yet
been published to give either the world at large or the Spaniards in
the peninsula a premature clue to his enterprise.
There is still preserved a good memorial of De Bry’s visit to London in
the celebrated funeral pageant at the obsequies of Sir Philip Sidney in
the month of February 1587, drawn and invented by T. Lant and engraved
on copper by Theodore de Bry in the city of London, 1587. A complete
copy is in the British Museum, and another is said to be at the old
family seat of the Sidneys at Penshurst in Kent, now Lord de L’lsle’s;
while a third copy not quite perfect adorns the famous London
collectionof Mr Gardner of St John’s Wood Park.
LeMoyne died in 1588, and De Bry soon after came to London a second
time and succeeded in purchasing of the widow of Le Moyne a portion of
the artist’s drawings or paintings together with his version of the
French Florida Expeditions. While here this time De Bry fell in with
Richard Hakluyt, who had returned from Paris in November 1588,
escorting Lady Sheffield.
Hakluyt at the end of this year, or the beginning of 1589, was engaged
in seeing through the press his first folio collection of the voyages
of the English, finished, according to the date in the preface, the
17th of November, though entered at Stationers’ Hall on the strength of
a note from Walsingham the first of September previous. Hakluyt with
his mind full of voyages and travels was abundantly competent to
appreciate De Bry’s project of publishing a luxurious edition of
Laudonnière’s Florida illustrated with the exquisite drawings of Le
Moyne. Ever ready to make a good thing better, Hakluyt suggested the
addition of Le Moyne’s and other Florida papers; and introduced De Bry
to John White, Governor of Virginia, then in London.
White, an English painter of eminence and merit, was as an artist to
Virginia what Le Moyne his master had been to Florida. Le Moyne had
twenty years before mapped and pictured everything in Florida from the
River of May to Cape Fear, and White had done the same for Raleigh’s
Colony in Virginia (now North Carolina) from Cape Fear to the
Chesapeake Bay. Le Moyne had spent a year with Laudonnière at Fort
Caroline in 1564-65, and White had been a whole year in and about
Roanoke and the wilderness of Virginia in 1585-86 as the right hand man
of Hariot.
Together Hariot and White surveyed, mapped, pictured and described the
country, the Indians, men and women; the animals, birds, fishes, trees,
plants, fruits and vegetables. Hariot’s Report or epitome of his
Chronicle, reproduced by the Hercules Club, was privately printed in
February 1589. A volume containing seventy-six of White’s original
drawings in water colours is now preserved in the Grenville library in
the British Museum, purchased by the Trustees in March 1866 of Mr Henry
Stevens at the instigation of Mr Panizzi, and placed there as an
appropriate pendant to the world-renowned Grenville De Bry. This is the
very volume that White painted for Raleigh, and which served De Bry for
his Virginia. Only 23 out of the 76 drawings were engraved, the rest
never yet having been published. Thus Hariot’s text and map with
White’s drawings are necessary complements to each other and should be
mentioned together.
Knowing all these men and taking an active part in all these important
events, Hakluyt acted wisely in inducing De Bry to modify his plan of a
separate publication and make a Collection of illustrated Voyages. He
suggested first that the separate work of Florida should be suspended,
and enlarged with Le Moyne’s papers, outside of Laudonnière. Then
reprint, as a basis of the Collection, Hariot’s privately printed
Report on Virginia just coming out in February 1589, and illustrate it
with the map and White’s drawings. Hakluyt engaged to write
descriptions of the plates, and his geographical touches are easily
recognizable in the maps of both Virginia and Florida.
In this way De Bry was induced to make Hariot’s Virginia the First Part
of his celebrated PEREGRINATIONS, with a dedication to Sir Walter
Raleigh. Florida then became the Second Part. The first was illustrated
from the portfolio of John White, and the second from that of Jaques Le
Moyne. Both parts are therefore perfectly authentic and trustworthy.
Thus the famous Collections of De Bry may be said to be of English
origin, for to Raleigh and his magi De Bry owed everything in the start
of his great work. Being thus supplied and instructed, De Bry returned
to Frankfort, and with incredible energy and enterprise, engraved,
printed, and issued his VIRGINIA in four languages, English, French,
Latin and German, in 1590, and his Florida in Latin and German, in
1591. The bibliographical history of these books, the intimacy and
dependence of the several persons engaged; and the geographical
development of Florida-Virginia are all so intertwined and blended,
that the whole seems to lead up to Thomas Hariot, the clearing up of
whose biography thus becomes an appropriate labor of the Hercules Club.
Little more remains to be said of Raleigh’s Magi who have been thus
shown to be hand and glove in working out these interesting episodes of
French and English colonial history. To Hakluyt, Le Moyne, White, De
Bry and Hariot, Raleigh owes an undivided and indivisible debt of
gratitude for the prominent niche which he achieved in the world’s
history, especially in that of England and America ; while to Raleigh’s
liberal heart and boundless enterprise must be ascribed a generous
share of the reputation achieved by his Magi in both hemispheres.
Of Hakluyt and De Bry little more need be said here. They both hewed
out their own fortunes and recorded them on the pages of history, the
one with his pen, the other with his graver. If at times ill informed
bibliographers who have got beyond their depth fail to discern its
merits, and endeavour to deny or depreciate De Bry’s Collection,
charging it with a want of authenticity and historic truth, it is hoped
that enough has been said here to vindicate at least the first two
parts, Virginia and Florida. The remaining parts, it is believed, can
be shown to be of equal authority.
Whoever compares the original drawings of Le Moyne and White with the
engravings of De Bry, as one may now do in the British Museum, must be
convinced that, beautiful as De Bry’s work is, it seems tame in the
presence of the original water-colour drawings. There is no
exaggeration in the engravings.
Le Moyne’s name has not found its way into modern dictionaries of art
or biography, but he was manifestly an artist of great merit and a man
of good position. In addition to what is given above it may be added
that a considerable number of his works is still in existence, and it
is hoped will hereafter be duly appreciated. In the print-room of the
British Museum are two of his drawings, highly finished in
water-colours, being unquestionably the originals of plates eight and
forty-one of De Bry’s Florida. They are about double the size of the
engravings. They came in with the Sloane Collection. There is also in
the Manuscript Department of the British Museum a volume of original
drawings relating chiefly to Florida and Virginia (Sloane N° 5270)
manifestly a mixture of Le Moyne’s and White’s sketches. They are very
valuable. There is also in the Museum library a printed and manuscript
book by Le Moyne, which speaks for itself and tells its own interesting
story. It is in small oblong quarto and is entitled ‘La/ Clef des
Champs,/ pour trouuer plusieurs Ani-/maux, tant Bestes qu’Oyseaux,
auec/ plusieurs Fleurs & Fruitz. . . / Anno. I586./ ¶ Imprimé aux
Blackfriers, pour Jaques/ le Moyne, dit de Morgues Paintre/’. The book
consists of fifty leaves, of which two are preliminary containing the
title and on the reverse and third page a neat dedication in French ‘A
Ma-dame Madame/ De Sidney.’/ Signed’ Voftre tres-affectionne,/ JAQVES
LE MOINE dit
de/ MORGVES Paintre.’/ This dedication is dated ‘Londres/ ce xxvi. de
Mars.’/ On the reverse of the second leaf, also in French, is ‘¶ A Elle
Mesme,/ Sonet’ with the initials I.L.M.
Then follow forty-eight leaves with two woodcuts coloured by hand on
the recto of each leaf, reverse blank. These ninety-six cuts sum up
twenty-four each of beasts, birds, fruits and flowers, with names
printed under each in English, French, German and Latin. Although the
book is dated the 26th of March 1586, it was not entered at Stationers’
Hall until the 31st of July 1587. It there stands under the name of
James Le Moyne alias Morgan. Madame Sidney is given as Mary Sidney. She
was sister of Sir Philip, countess of Pembroke, ‘Sidney’s sister,
Pembroke’s mother.’ There is no allusion to Sir Philip in the
dedication, and therefore we may infer that it was penned before the
battle of Zut-phen. Both the dedication and the sonnet show the
artist’s intimacy and friendship with that distinguished family.
There are two copies of this exceedingly rare book in the British
Museum, both slightly imperfect, but will together make a complete one,
but the more interesting copy is that in 727 c/2 31, in the Sloane
Collection. It has bound up with it thirty-seven leaves on which are
beautifully drawn and painted flowers, fruits, birds &c. There can be
little doubt that these are Le Moyne’s own paintings. It is curious to
find that all these scattered works in the different departments came
in with the Sloane Collection which formed the nucleus of the British
Museum. It is to be hoped that other samples of Le Moyne’s art may be
found or identified, and that all of them may be brought together or be
described as the ‘Le Moyne Collection.’ How Sir Hans Sloane became
possessed of them does not yet appear.
Capt. John White’s name in the annals of English art is destined to
rank high, though it has hitherto failed to be recorded in the art
histories and dictionaries. Yet his seventy-six original paintings in
water-colours done probably in Virginia in 1585-1586 while he was there
with Hariot as the official draughtsman or painter of Raleigh’s ‘First
Colonie’ entitle him to prominence among English artists in Elizabeth’s
reign. There are some other works of his in the Manuscript department
mingled with those of his friend and master Le Moyne.
As Raleigh’s friend and agent White’s name deserves honorable mention
in the history of ‘Ould Virginia.’ He was an original adventurer in the
‘First Colonie’ and was one of the hundred and nine who spent a whole
year at and about Roanoke and returned with Drake in 1586. He went
again to Virginia in April 1587 as Governor of Raleigh’s’ Second
Colonie,’ consisting of one hundred and fifty persons in three ships,
being the fourth expedition. Raleigh appointed to him twelve assistants
‘to whome he gave a Charter, and incorporated them by the name of
Governour and Assistants of the Citie of Raleigh in Virginia,’ intended
to be founded on the Chesapeake Bay. It never became more than a ‘paper
city.’
This Second Colony landed at Roanoke the 20th of July, but finding
themselves disappointed and defeated in all points, the colonists
joined in urging the Governor to return to England for supplies and
instructions. He reluctantly departed the 27th of August from Roanoke,
leaving there his daughter, who was the mother of the first child of
English parents born in English North America, Virginia Dare. He
intended immediately to return to Virginia with relief, but the
embarrassments of Raleigh, the
stirring times, and the ‘Spanish Armada’ defeated Sir Walter and
frustrated all his plans.
On the 20th of November 1587 Governor White having reached home
apprised Raleigh of the circumstances and requirements of the Colony.
Sir Walter at once ‘appointed a pinnesse to be sent thither with all
such necessaries as he vnderstood they stood in neede of,’ and also
‘wrote his letters vnto them, wherein among other matters he comforted
them with promise, that with all conuenient speede he would prepare a
good supply of shipping and men with sufficience of all thinges
needefull, which he intended, God willing, should be with them the
Sommer following.’ This promised fleet was got ready in the harbor of
Bideford under the personal care and supervision of Sir Richard
Grenville, and waited only for a fair wind to put to sea. Then came
news of the proposed invasion of England by Philip King of Spain with
his ‘invincible armada,’ so wide spread and alarming that it was deemed
prudent by the Government to stay all ships fit for war in any ports of
England to be in readiness for service at home ; and even Sir Richard
Grenville was commanded not to leave Cornwall.
Governor White however having left about one hundred and twenty men,
women and children in Virginia, among whom were his own daughter and
granddaughter, left no stone unturned for their relief. He labored so
earnestly and successfully that he obtained two small ‘pinneses’ named
the ‘Brave’ and the ‘Roe,’ one of thirty and the other of twenty-five
tons, ‘wherein fifteen planters and all their provision, with certain
reliefe for those that wintered in the Countrie was to be transported.’
The’ Brave’ and the ‘Roe’ with this slender equipment passed the bar of
Bideford the 22nd of April, just six months after the return of the
Governor, a small fleet with small hope. Had it been larger its going
forth would not have been permitted. The Governor remained behind,
thinking he could serve the Colony better in England. But the sailors
of the little ‘Brave’ and ‘Roe’ had caught the fighting mania before
they sailed, and instead of going with all speed to the relief of
Virginia, scoured the seas for rich prizes, and like two little
fighting cocks let loose attacked every sail they caught sight of,
friend or foe. The natural consequence was that before they reached
Madeira (they took the southern course for the sake of plunder) they
had been several times thoroughly whipped, and ‘all thinges spilled’ in
their fights. ‘By this occasion, God iustly punishing the theeuerie of
our euil disposed mariners, we were of force constrained to break of
our voyage intended for the reliefe of our Colony left the yere before
in Virginia, and the same night to set our course for England.’ In a
month from their departure they recrossed the bar of Bideford, their
voyage having been a disgraceful failure, yet the doings of these two
miniature corsairs are recorded in Hakluyt manifestly only as specimens
of English pluck, a British quality always admired, however much
misdirected. Meanwhile no tidings of the ‘Second colonie’ and worse
still, no tidings or help had the Second Colony received all this long
time from England. And even to this day the echo is ‘no tidings’ and no
help from home. This then may be called the first and great human
sacrifice that savage America required of civilized England before
yielding to her inevitable destiny.
And so it was that Virginia and the Armada Year shook the fortunes of
Raleigh and compelled him to assign a portion of his Patent and
privileges under it to divers gentlemen and merchants of London. This
document, in which are included and protected the charter rights of
White and others in the ‘City of Raleigh,’ bears date the 7th of March
1589. Matters being thus settled, with more capital and new life a
‘Fifth Expedition’ was fitted out in 1590 in which Governor White went
out to carry aid, and to reinforce his long neglected colony of 1587.
Not one survivor was found, and White returned the same year in every
way unsuccessful. He soon after retired to Raleigh’s estates in
Ireland, and the last heard of him is a long letter to his friend
Hakluyt ‘from my house at Newtowne in Kylmore the 4th of February
1593.’
Raleigh’s Patent, like that of Gilbert, would have expired by the
limitation of six years on the 24th of March 1590 if he had not
succeeded in leading out a colony and taking possession. His first
colony of 1585 was voluntarily abandoned, but not his discoveries. His
second colony of 1587 was surrounded with so much obscurity that though
in fact he maintained no real and permanent settlement, yet it was
never denied that he lawfully took possession and inhabited Virginia
within the six years and also for a time in the seventh year, and
therefore was entitled to privileges extending two hundred leagues from
Roanoke. As long as Elizabeth lived no one disputed Raleigh’s
privileges under his patent, though partly assigned, but none of the
Assignees cared to adventure further. The patent had become practically
a dead letter. As late however as 1603 the compliment was paid Raleigh
of asking his permission to make a voyage to North Virginia. As no
English plantation between the Spanish and the French possessions in
North America at the time of the accession of James was maintained the
patent was allowed nominally to remain in force. But no one claimed any
rights under it. It has been stated by several recent historians that
the attainder of Raleigh took away his patent privileges, but evidence
of this is not forthcoming. It is manifest that James the First, who
had little regard for his own or others’ royal grants or chartered
rights in America, considered the coast clear and as open to his own
royal bounty as it had been long before to Pope Alexander the Sixth. It
was easier and safer to obtain new charters than to revive any
questionable old ones.
But to all intents and purposes the interesting history of Virginia
begins with Raleigh. Whence he drew his inspiration, how he profited by
the experience of others, how he patronized his Magi and bound them to
himself with cords of friendship and liberality; how by his very
blunders and misfortunes he transmitted to posterity some of the most
precious historical memorials found on the pages of English or American
history, we have, perhaps at unnecessary length, endeavoured to show in
this long essay on the brief and true Report of Thomas Hariot, his
surveyor and topographer in Virginia, which must ever serve as the
corner-stone of English American History, by a man who, though long
neglected and half forgotten, must eventually shine as the morning star
of the mathematical sciences in England, as well as that of the history
of her Empire in the West.
It remains now to give some personal account of Thomas Hariot, whose
first book as the first of the labors of the hercules club has been
reproduced. Every incident in the life of a man of eminent genius and
originality in any country is a lesson to the world’s posterity
deserving careful record. Hitherto dear quaint old positive
antiquarianly slippery Anthony à Wood in his _Athenes Oxoniensis_
embodies nearly all of our accepted notions of this great English
mathematician and philosopher. Anthony was indefatigable in his
researches into the biography of Hariot who was both an Oxford man and
an Oxford scholar. He happily succeeded in mousing out a goodly number
of recondite and particular occurrences of Hariot’s life. He managed,
however, to state very many of them erroneously ; and he drew hence
some important inferences, the reverse, as it now appears, of
historical truth. This naturally leads one to inquire into his
authorities. Wood’s account of Hariot appeared in his first edition of
1691, and has not been improved in the two subsequent editions. For
most of his facts he appears to have been indebted to Dr John Wallis’s
Algebra, first published in 1685, though ready for the printer in 1676
; and for his fictions to poor old gossiping Aubrey; while his
inferences, in respect to Hariot’s deism and disbelief in the
Scriptures, are probably his own, as we find no sufficient trace of
them prior to the appearance of his Athenæ, unless it be in Chief
Justice Popham’s unjust charge at Winchester in 1603, when he is said
to have twitted Raleigh from the bench with having been ‘bedeviled’ by
Hariot. Dr Wallis appears to have obtained part of his facts from John
Collins, who had been in his usual indefatigable manner looking up
Hariot and his papers as early as 1649, and wrote to the doctor of his
success several letters between 1667 and 1673, which maybe seen in
Professor Rigaud’s Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth
Century, 2 vols, Oxford, 1841, 8°.
Since 1784, from time to time, several other writers have partly
repeated Wood’s estimate and added several new facts, as will be shown
further on. But it has been reserved for the Hercules Club, now just
three hundred years after Hariot left the University, to bring to light
new and important contemporary evidence, sufficient, it is believed, to
considerably modify our general estimate of Hariot’s life and
character, and to raise him from the second rank of mathematicians to
which Montucla coolly relegated him nearly a century ago to the
pre-eminence of being one of the foremost scholars of his age, not
alone of England but of the world. Had he been walled around by church
bigotry like his friend and contemporary Galileo he would
unquestionably by the originality and brilliancy of his observations
and discoveries have rivalled, or perhaps have shared that
philosopher’s victories in science. At all events it is believed that
the new matter is sufficient to reopen the courts of criticism and
revision in which some of the decisions respecting the use of
perspective glasses, the invention of the telescope, the discoveries of
the spots on the sun, the satellites of Jupiter and the horns of Venus
may be reconsidered and perhaps reversed. It is believed that in
logical analysis, in philosophy, and in many other departments of
science few in his day were his equals, while in pure mathematics none
was his superior.
Thomas Hariot was born at Oxford, or as Anthony à Wood with more than
his usual quaint-ness expresses it, ‘tumbled out of his mother’s womb
into the lap of the Oxonian muses in 1560.’ He was a ‘bateler or
commoner of St Mary’s hall.’ He ‘took the degree of bachelor of arts in
1579, and in the latter end of that year did compleat it by
determination in Schoolstreet.’ Nothing of his boyhood, or of his
family, except a few hints in his will, has come to light.
It is not known precisely at what time Hariot joined Walter Raleigh,
who was only eight years his senior. From what their friend Hakluyt
says of them both, their intimate friendship and mutually serviceable
connection were already an old story as early as 1587. On the eighth
calends of March 1587, that is on the 22d of February 1588, present
reckoning, Hakluyt wrote from Paris to Raleigh in London,
‘To you therefore I have freely desired to give and dedicate these my
labors. For to whom could I present these Decades of the New World [of
Peter Martyr] more appropriately than to yourself, who, at the expense
of nearly one hundred thousand ducats, with new fleets, are showing to
us of modern times new regions, leading forth a third colony [to
Virginia], giving us news of the unknown, and opening up for us
pathways through the inaccessible ; and whose every care, and thought,
and effort tend towards this end, hinge upon and adhere to it ? To whom
have been present and still are present the same ideas, desires, &
incentives as with that most illustrious Charles Howard, the Second
Neptune of the Ocean, and Edward Stafford our most prudent Ambassador
at the Court of France, in order to accomplish great deeds by sea and
land. But since by your skill in the art of navigation you clearly saw
that the chief glory of an insular kingdom would obtain its greatest
splendor among us by the firm support of the mathematical sciences, you
have trained up and supported now a long time, with a most liberal
salary, Thomas Hariot, a young man well versed in those studies, in
order that you might acquire in your spare hours by his instruction a
knowledge of these noble sciences ; and your own numerous Sea Captains
might unite profitably theory with practice. What is to be the result
shortly of this your wise and learned school, they who possess even
moderate judgment can have no difficulty in guessing. This one thing I
know, the one and only consideration to place before you, that first
the Portuguese and afterwards the Spaniards formerly made great
endeavours with no small loss, but at length succeeded through
determination of mind. Hasten on then to adorn the Sparta[Vir-ginia]
you have discovered; hasten on that ship more than Argonautic, of
nearly a thousand tons burthen which you have at last built and
finished with truly regal expenditure, to join with the rest of the
fleet you have fitted out.’
From this extract one might perhaps reasonably infer that Hariot went
directly from the University in 1580 at the age of twenty into
Raleigh’s service, or at latest in 1582 when Raleigh returned from
Flanders. As our translation of this important passage is rather a free
one the old geographer’s words are here added, in his own peculiar
Latin. Hakluyt in his edition of Peter Martyr’s Eight Decades, printed
at Paris in 1587, 8°, writes of his young friend Hariot in his
dedication to his older friend Sir Walter Raleigh, as follows :—
Tibi igitur has meas vigilias condonatas & confecratas efle volui. Cui
enim potius, quàm tibi has noui Orbis Decades offerem, qui centum ferè
millium ducatoru impenfa, nouis tuis clafsibus regiones nouas, nouam
iam tertiò ducendo coloniam, notas ex ignotis, ex inaccefsis peruias,
nouifsimis hifce teporibus nobis exhibes ? Cuius omnes curse,
cogitationes, conatus, hue fpeflant, haec verfant, in his inhaerent.
Cui cum Illuftrifsimo illo herôe, Carolo Hovvardo, altcro Oceani maris
Neptuno, Edoardi Staffbrdij, noftri apud regem Chriftianifsimum
oratoris prudentifsimi fororio, eadem ftudia, eaedem voluntates, iidem
ad res magnas terra maríque aggrediendas funt & fuerunt ani-morum
ftimuli. Cùm vero artis nauigatoriæ peritia, præcipuum regni infularis
ornamentum, Mathematicarii fcientiaru adminiculis adhibitis, fuu apud
nos fplendore poffe cofequi facile per-fpiceres, Thomas Hariotum,
iuuenem in illis difciplinis excellente, honeftifsimo falario iamdiu
donatum apud te aluifti, cuius fubndio horis fuccefsiuis nobililsimas
fcientias illas addifcercs, tuique familiarcs duces maritimi, quos
habes non paucos, cum praii theoria non fine fructu incredibili
coiungeret. Ex quo pulcherrimo & fapientifsimo inftitutotuo, quid breui
euentutum fit, qui vel mediocri iudicio volent, facilè proculdubio
diuinare poterunt. Vnum hoc fcio, vnam & vnicam rationem te inire, quaæ
primò Lufitani, deinde Caftellani, quod antea toties cum no exigua
iactura funt conati, tandem ex animoru votis perficerut. Perge ergo
Spartam quam nactus es ornare, perge nauem illam plufquam Argonauticam,
mille cuparum fere capace, quam fumptibus plane regiis fabricatam iam
tadem foelicitcr abfoluifti, reliquae tuae clafsi, quam babes egregiè
inftructam, adiungere.
From this early time for nearly forty years, till the morning of the
29th of October 1618, when Raleigh was beheaded, these two friends are
found inseparable. Whether in prosperity or in adversity, in the Tower
or on the scaffold, Sir Walter always had his Fidus Achates to look
after him and watch his interests. With a sharp wit, close mouth, and
ready pen Hariot was of inestimable service to his liberal patron. With
rare attainments in the Greek and Latin Classics, and all branches of
the abstract sciences, he combined that perfect fidelity and honesty of
character which placed him always above suspicion even of the enemies
of Sir Walter. He was neither a politician nor statesman, and therefore
could be even in those times a faithful guide, philosopher, and friend
to Raleigh.
In the year 1585, as has already been stated above, Hariot, at the age
of twenty-five, went out to Virginia in Raleigh’s « first Colonie’ as
surveyor and historiographer with Sir Richard Grenville, and remained
there one year under Governor Ralph Lane, returning in July 1586, in
Sir Francis Drake’s home-bound fleet from the West Indies. During the
absence of this expedition Raleigh had received triple favors from
Fortune. He had entered Parliament, been knighted, and had been
presented by the Queen with twelve thousand broad acres in Ireland.
These Irish acres were partly the Queen’s perquisite from the Babington
‘conspiracy.’ Other royal windfalls had considerably increased Sir
Walter’s expectations, and aroused his ambition. Hariot is known to
have spent some time in Ireland on Raleigh’s estates there during the
reign of Elizabeth, but it is uncertain when. It may have been between
the autumn of 1586 and the autumn of 1588. He was in London in the
winter of 1588-89 in time to get out hurriedly his report in February
1589. It is possible, however, that he went to Ireland after his book
was out. He was probably the manager of one of the estates there as
Governor John White was of another in 1591-93.
The next early author whom we find speaking of Hariot is his lifelong
friend and companion Robert Hues or Hughes in his ‘Tractatus de /
Globis et eo-
/ rvm vsv, / Accommo-datus iis qui Lon-/dini editi funt Anno I593,/
/ fumptibus
Gulielmi Sanderfoni / Ciuis Londinienfis/Confcriptus a Ro-/bertoHues./
Londini/ In ardibus Thomae Dawfon. / 1594.’ / 8°
In his dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh the author says :
Borealiora Europae noftrates diligentimme luftrarunt. Primo Hugo
Willoughby eques Anglus & Richardus Chanceler has oras apperuerunt.
Succedit eis Stephanus Borough, vlterius pro-grefsi funt Artunis Pet &
Carol. Iackman. Sufceptæ funt hae nauigationes, inftigante Sebaftiano
Caboto, vt, fiquâ pofset fieri traiectum in regiones Synanum & Cathayac
breuimmum confequeremur, at irreto haec omnia conatu, nifi quod his
medijs firmatum eft commercium cum Mofchouitis. Hâc cum non fuccederet,
inftitutx funt nauigationes ad Borealiora Americæ;, quas primo fuscepit
Martinus Frobifher, fecutus eft poftca Ioannes Dauis. Ex his omnibus
nauigationibus multi antiquiorum errores,magna eorum ignorantia
detectacft. Atque his conatibus minus fuccedentibus, gens noftra
nauibus abundans otij impatiens, in alias paries fuas nauigationes
inftituerunt. Humphredus Gilbert Eques, Americæ oras Hifpanis
incognitas, magno animo & viribus, fucceffu non aequali noftris aperire
conatus eft. Id quod tuis poftea aufpicijs (vir honoratifsime) felicius
fufceptum eft quibus Virginia nobis patefacta eft, præefecto clafsis
Richardo Grinuil nobili equite, quam diligentifsime luftrauit &
defcripfit Thomæ Hariotus.
In the English edition of Robert Hues’ work, London, 1638, this very
interesting but somewhat irrelevant passage appears as follows:
Among whom, the first that adventured on the discovery of these parts,
were, Sir Hugh Willoughby, and Richard Chanceler: after them, Stephen
Borough. And farther yet then either of these, did Arthur Pet, and
Charles Lackman discover these parts. And these voyages were all
undertaken by the instigation of Sebastian Cabot: that so, if it were
possible, there might bee found out a nearer pafsage to Cathay and
China : yet all in vane ; fave only that by this meanes a course of
trafficke was confirmed betwixt us and the Mofcovite.
When their attempts fucceeded not this way ; their next designe was
then to try, what might bee done in the Northern Coasts of America :
and the first undertaker of these voyages was Mr. Martin Frobisher: who
was afterward feconded by Mr. Iohn Davis. By meanes of all which
Navigations, many errours of the Ancients, and their great ignorance
was discovered.
But now that all these their endeavours fucceeded not, our Kingdome at
that time being well furnished in fhips, and impatient of idlenefse :
they resolved at length to adventure upon other parts. And first Sir
Humphrey Gilbert with great courage and Forces attempted to make a
discovery of those parts of America, which were yet unknowne to the
Spaniard : but the successe was not answerable. Which attempt of his,
was afterward more prosperously prosecuted by that honourable Gentleman
Sir Walter Rawleigh: to whose meanes Virginia was first discovered unto
us, the Generall of his Forces being Sir Richard Greenville : which
Countrey was afterwards very exactly furveighed and described by Mr.
Thomas Harriot.
This William Sanderson, the patron of Mollineux, Hood, and Hues, was a
rich and liberal London merchant, who had married a niece of Raleigh.
He contributed largely to Sir Walter’s first reconnoitring expedition
in 1584 under Amidas and Barlow, and was afterwards a liberal
adventurer and supporter of Raleigh in all his colonial schemes. He was
fond of the science of geography, and contributed largely to the
preparation and publication of the globes of Mollineux, and the
Descriptions of them by Hood and Hues in 1592 and 1594. He was also a
good friend of all Raleigh’s friends, and acted as Sir Walter’s fiscal
agent in regard to the Wine monopoly. On being called upon for a
settlement of the large amount due, as Raleigh supposed, after his
imprisonment in the Tower, Sanderson denied his indebtedness, was sued,
cast into the debtors’ jail, and died in poverty. His son published
severe comments against Raleigh.
Robert Hues, who was an intimate friend and associate of Hariot, was
born at Hertford in 1554. He became a poor scholar at Brazen nose, and
was afterwards at St Mary’s Hall with Hariot. He took his degree of
A.B.in 1579. He is said to have been a good Greek scholar, and after
leaving the University travelled and became an eminent geographer and
mathematician. He attracted the attention, probably through Raleigh, of
that noble patron of learning Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland,
who took him into his service, made him one of his scientific
companions while in the Tower, supported him partly at Sion, intrusted
him to instruct his children, and finally sent him to Oxford as tutor
at Christ Church of his eldest surviving son, Algernon Percy, who on
the death of his father on gunpowder treason day 1632, became the 10th
Earl of Northumberland. Hues died at Oxford the 24th of May, 1632, and
was buried in the cathedral of Christ Church, according to the
inscription on his monument. He is mentioned by Chapman in his
translation of Homer’s Works [ 1616 ] as ‘another right learned,
honest, and entirely loved friend of mine.’ See infra, p. 183.
In 1595 Hariot was mentioned as a distinguished man of science in his
Seaman’s Secrets by Captain John Davis the navigator, a friend and
partner of Raleigh.
On the eleventh of July 1596 Hariot under peculiar circumstances wrote
a long and confidential letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Chief Secretary of
State, in the interests of Raleigh’s Guiana projects. The letter is
here given in full, as it shows better than anything else the close and
confidential relations existing between Sir Walter and Hariot at that
time. Raleigh had returned from Guiana, his first El Dorado expedition,
in August 1595, and had in the mean time employed such energy and
enterprise that within about five months he had fitted out and
dispatched his second El Dorado fleet under his friend Captain Keymis.
This second expedition returned to Plymouth in June 1596, a few days
after Raleigh had gone with Essex and Howard of Effingham on that
world-renowned expedition against Cadiz. Sir Walter appears to have
left his affairs in the hands of his ever faithful Hariot, and hence
this sensible and timely letter in the absence of his patron. There
appears to have been no complaint against Keymis; but the master of his
ship, Samuel Mace, seems to have been less discreet. The letter tells
its own story, and gives a vivid picture of the intelligent earnestness
of Sir Walter respecting Guiana, and at the same time the earnest
intelligence of Hariot during Raleigh’s absence in Spain.
It has been denied that Raleigh really expected to find the El Dorado
in either his first expedition of 1595 or last in 1617, but this letter
goes to show that both he and Hariot had firm faith in the scheme.
Indeed in a German book of travels just published, entitled ‘Aus den
Llanos. Schildenung einer naturwisscn-schaftlichen Reise nach
Venezuela, Von Carl Sachs, Leipzig, 1879,’ the writer states that the
export of gold from Spanish Guiana in 1875 was 79,496 ounces. He says
that the richest mine, that of Callao, has of late years returned as
much as 500 per centum. After briefly narrating the expeditions of
Raleigh, which had been preceded by various Spanish expeditions, he
adds: ‘Now at this day, after nearly three centuries, the riches sought
for have been actually found In the very country where these
unfortunate efforts were made.’ Hariot’s letter is as follows:
LETTER OF THOMAS HARIOT TO MR. SECRETARY
SIR ROBERT CECIL.
_From the original holograph in the Cecil Papers at Hatfield, vol.
xliii,
At first printed in Edward Edward’s Life of
Raleigh, vol. ii, page 420._
Right Honourable Sir,
These are to let you understand that whereas, according to your Honor’s
direction, I have been framing of a Charte out of some such of Sir
Walter’s notes and writings, which he hath left behind him,—his
principal Charte being carried with him, —if it may please you, I do
thinke most fit that the discovery of Captain Kemish be added, in his
due place, before I finish it. It is of importance, and all Chartes
which had that coast before be very imperfecte, as in many thinges
elce. And that of Sir Walter’s, although it were better in that parte
then any other, yet it was don but by intelligence from the Indians,
and this voyadge was specially for the discovery of the same; which is,
as I find, well and sufficiently performed. And because the secrecy of
these matters doth much importe her Majesty and this State, I pray let
me be so bould as to crave that the dispatch of the plotting and
describing be don only by me for you, according to the order of trust
that Sir Walter left with me, before his departure, in that behalf, and
as he hath usually don heretofore. If your Honor have any notes from
Sir Thomas Baskerville, if it may please you to make me acquaynted with
them, that which they will manifest of other particularytyes then that
before Sir Walter hath described shall also be set downe.
Although Captain Kemish be not come home rich, yet he hath don the
speciall thing which he was injoined to do, as the discovery of the
coast betwixt the river of Amasones and Orinico, where are many goodly
harbors for the greatest ships her Majesty hath and any nomber; wher
there are great rivers, and more then probability of great good to be
don by them for Guiana, as by any other way or to other rich contryes
borderinge upon it. As also, the discovery of the mouth of Orinico it
self,—a good harbor and free passage for ingresse and egresse of most
of the ordinary ships of England, above 3 hundred miles into the
contry. Insomuch that Berreo wondred much of our mens comming up so
far; so that it seemeth they know not of that passage. Nether could
they, or can possibly, find it from Trinidado; from whence usually they
have made their discoveryes. But if it be don by them the shortest way,
it must be done out of Spayne. Now, if it shall please her Majesty to
undertake the enterprise, or permitte it in her subjectes, by her
order, countenance, and authority, for the supplanting of those that
are now gotten thither, I thinke it of great importance to keepe that
which is don as secretly as we may, lest the Spaniardes learne to know
those harbors and entrances, and worke to prevent us.
And because I understand that the master of the ship with Captain
Kemish is somewhat carelesse of this, by geving and selling copyes of
his travelles and plottes of discoveryes, I thought it my dutye to
remember it unto your wisdome, that some order might be taken for the
prevention of such inconveniences as may thereby follow : by geving
authority to some Justice, or the Mayor, to call him before them, and
to take all his writinges and chartes or papers that concerne this
discovery, or any elce, in other mens handes, that he hath sold or
conveyed them into ; and to send them sealed to your Honor, as also to
take bond for his further secrecy on that behalf. And the like order to
be taken by those others, as we shall further informe your Honor of,
that have any such plots, which yet, for myne owne parte, I know not
of; or any other order, by sending for him up or otherwise, as to your
wisdome shall seeme best.
Concerning the Eldorado which hath been shewed your Honor out of the
Spanish booke of Acosta, which you had from Wright, and I have scene,
when I shall have that favour as but to speake with you I shall shew
you that it is not ours—that we meane—there being three. Nether doth he
say, or meane, that Amazones river and Orinoco is all one,—as some, I
feare, do averre to your Honor ; as by good profe out of that booke
alone I can make manifest; and by other meanes besides then this
discovery, I can put it out of all dout.
To be breef, I am at your Honor’s comandement in love and duty farther
than I can sodeynly expresse for haste. I will wayte upon you at Court,
or here at London, about any of these matters or any others, at any
time, if I might have but that favour as to heare so much. I dare not
presume of my selfe, for some former respectes. My fidelity hath never
been impeached, and I take that order that it never shall. I make no
application. And I beseech your Honor to pardon my boldness, because of
haste. My meaning is allwayes good. And so I most humbly take my leave.
This Sunday, 11th of July 1596.
Your Honor’s most ready at commandement in all services I may,
THO. HARRIOTE.
addressed:
To the right honorable Sir ROBERT CICILL, Knight
Principall Secretary to Her Majesty, these.
Endorsed: 11 July, 1596. Mr Harriott to my Master.
The vigilant Secretary lost no time in acting upon Hariot’s
suggestions. On the 31st of July Sir George Trenchard and Sir Ralph
Horsey wrote to Cecil from Dorchester in reply to his instructions,
that they had seized the charts and books of the ‘India Voyage’ [to
Guiana] from one Samuel Mace and William Downe, which they would send
up to the Secretary if desired. They were desired, and accordingly sent
them by post on the 10th of August. A few days later Raleigh returned
to Plymouth with the first glorious news of the success of the English
fleet at Cadiz ; which news completely turned the heads of the people
of England one way, and those of the Queen and the hungry politicians
the other. Poor Mace, to whom Raleigh was much attached, was restored
to his confidence. To Raleigh more than to any one man this triumph
over Spain was justly due, but in the pitiful squabbles that followed
in the apportionment of the honors and the spoils Sir Walter used to
aver that his sole gain in this great national enterprise from
beginning to end was but a lame leg. He might have added that the
business had gained for him the envy, malice and all uncharitableness
of those in high places. In worldly wealth he was now comparatively
poor, and his fortunes were broken, though the Queen at times, only at
times, smiled on him.
At what precise time Hariot, who never deserted Raleigh, became
acquainted with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with whose honored
name, next to that of Sir Walter’s, his must ever be associated, does
not as yet appear. It is known, however, that there was an intimacy
between Raleigh and Percy as early as 1586, when Sir Walter presented
Percy with a coat of mail on his going over to Flanders, and soon after
a bedstead made of cedar from Virginia ; while the Earl about the same
time gave to Sir Walter a ‘stroe coloured velvet saddle.’ From this
time to the day of Raleigh’s triumph on the scaffold there exists
plenty of evidence of their continued intimacy.
When therefore the Earl and Raleigh were finally caged together in the
Tower for life in 1606 their friendship was of more than twenty years’
standing. From this we infer that Hariot also knew Percy almost from
the time of his joining Raleigh; but the earliest mention of his name
in connection with that of the Earl which we have met with is this of
1596, in the Earl’s pay-rolls, still preserved at Sion, and described
in the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission of Historical Manuscripts,
page 227, ‘To Mr. Herytt for a book of the Turk’s pictures, 7s.’ It
appears from the same rolls that from Michaelmas 1597 to 1610, if not
earlier and later, an annual pension of £80 (not £ 120, or £ 150, £300,
as variously stated) was paid to Hariot by the Earl. This pension was
probably continued as long as Hariot lived; and besides there are not
wanting many marks of the Earl’s liberality, friendship, and love for
his companion and pensioner, who was long known as ‘Hariot of Sion on
Thames,’ as expressed on his monument. In the Earl’s accounts for 1608
there is this entry, ‘Payment for repairing and finishing Mr Heriotts
house at Sion.’
At what time exactly Hariot took up his residence at Sion the Earl’s
new seat (purchased of James in 1604) is not known, but probably soon
after the Earl was sent to the Tower in 1606. There is preserved a
Letter from Sir William Lower addressed to Hariot at Sion dated the
3Oth of September 1607, and other letters or papers exist showing his
continued residence there until near the time of his death in 1621.
Wood and many subsequent writers to the present time have confused Sion
near Isleworth with Sion College in London. They are totally distinct.
Hariot had nothing to do with Sion College, which was not founded until
1630, nine years after his death. The error arose out of the
coincidence of Torporley’s taking chambers at Sion College on retiring
from his clerical profession, and dying there in April 1632, leaving
his mathematical books and manuscripts to the College Library. He had
been appointed by Hariot to look over, arrange, and ‘pen out the
doctrine’ of his mathematical writings. Torporley’s abstracts of
Hariot’s papers are still preserved in Sion College Library.
What the Earl of Northumberland did for Hariot is, as the world goes,
ascribed to patronage ; what Hariot did for the Earl cannot be measured
by money or houses, but may be summed up in four words, alike honorable
to both, ‘they were long friends.’ To this day the debt of gratitude
from the philosopher to the nobleman is fairly balanced by the similar
debt of the nobleman to the philosopher. Hariot’s Will, given on pages
193-203, tells the rest of the story of this noble friendship.
It is manifest, however, from many considerations that the noble Earl
took a lively and almost officious interest in the public honor and
character of his friend, for Hariot appears to have been as careless of
his own scientific reputation as his contemporary Shakspeare is said to
have been of his literary eminence.
On the other hand, Hariot’s interest in the Earl’s affairs and family
at Sion redound greatly to his credit. He was both an eminent scholar
and a remarkable teacher. Earnest students flocked to him for higher
education from all parts of the country. Besides the private scientific
and professional instruction that from the first he gave to Raleigh,
his captains and sea officers, he seems to have had under his
scientific tuition and mathematical guidance many young men who
afterwards became celebrated; among whom may be mentioned Robert
Sidney, the brother of Sir Philip, afterwards Lord Lisle of Penshurst;
Thomas Aylesburyof Windsor, afterwards Sir Thomas, the
great-grandfather of two queens of England; the late Lord Harrington;
Sir William Protheroe and Sir William Lower of South Wales; Nathaniel
Torporley of Shropshire; Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Devonshire; Captain
Keymis; Captain Whiddon, and many others. Cordial and affectionate
letters of most of these men to their venerated master are still
preserved.
At Sion were the groves of Hariot’s academy.
Yet he with Warner and Hues was constantly passing by the Thames
between Sion and the Tower, some three or four hours by oar and tide.
They were all three pensioners, or in the pay, of the Earl, though the
last two were on a very different footing from that of Hariot as to
emoluments and responsible position. They were, however, companions of
both the Earl and Sir Walter, and, if tradition is to be believed, they
were sometimes joined by Ben Jonson, Dr Burrill, Rev. Gilbert
Hawthorne, Hugh Broughton, the poet Hoskins and perhaps others.
The Earl had a large family to be educated, and there is reason to
believe that in his absence from Sion Hariot was intrusted for many
years with the confidential supervision of some of the Earl’s personal
affairs at Sion, including the education of his children. How he
identified himself with the noble family of his patron may be inferred
from these extracts from a letter to Hariot, dated July 19, 1611, of
William Lower, one of his loving disciples. Cecil had been fishing out
some new evidence of Percy’s treason from a discharged servant, and was
pressing cruelly upon the prisoner. Lower writes :
I have here [in South Wales] much otium and therefore I may cast awaye
some of it in vaine pursuites, chusing always rather to doe some thinge
worth nothing then nothing att all. How farre I had proceeded in this,
I ment now to have given you an account, but that the reporte of the
unfortunate Erles relapse into calamitie makes me beleeve that you are
enough troubled both with his misfortunes and my ladys troubles; and so
a discourse of this nature would be unseasonable. [And concludes the
letter with] But at this time this much is to much. I am sorrie to
heare of the new troubles ther, and pray for a good issue of them
especiallie for my ladys sake and her five litle ones. [The Countess of
Northumberland here referred to was the mother of Sir William Lower’s
wife, who was Penelope Perrot, daughter of Sir John Perrot, who married
Lady Dorothy Devereux, sister of Essex, and for her second husband
Henry Percy the gth Earl of Northumberland. Lower died in 1615.]
This responsible trust gave Hariot a good house and home of his own at
Sion, with independence and an observatory. He had a library in his own
house, and seems to have been the Earl’s librarian and book selector or
purchaser for the library of Sion House, as well as for the use of the
Earl in the Tower. The Earl was a great book-collector, as appears by
his payrolls. Books were carried from Sion to the Tower and back again,
probably not only for the Earl’s own use, but for Raleigh’s in his
History of the World. Many of these books, it is understood, are still
preserved at Petworth, then and subsequently one of the Earl’s seats,
but now occupied by the Earl of Leconsfield.
To look back a little. Before either Raleigh or Henry Percy was shut up
in the Tower, we find one of Hariot’s earliest and ablest mathematical
disciples, Nathaniel Torporley, a learned clergyman, writing in high
praise of him in his now rare mathematical book in Latin, entitled,’
Diclides Coelometricx,’ or Universal Gates of Astronomy, containing all
the materials for calculation of the whole art in the moderate space of
two tables, on a new general and very easy system. By Nathaniel
Torporley, of Shropshire, in his philosophical retreat, printed in
1602. The exact title is as follows:
Diclides Coelometricæ / Seu / Valvæ Astronomicæ / vniversales / Omnia
artis totius numera Psephophoretica in sat modicis / finibus duarum
Tabularum Methodo noua, generali,/ & facilima continentes./ Authore
Nathale Torporlaeo Salopiensi / in secessu Philotheoro. / Londini /
Excudebat Felix Kingston. 1602. / 4°.
In the long preface Torporley, who had entered St Mary’s Hall the year
Hariot graduated, and who during his travels abroad had served two
years as private secretary or amanuensis to Francis Vieta, the great
French Mathematician, but who had since become a disciple of the
greater English Mathematician, thus admiringly speaks of his new
master, Thomas Hariot:
Neque enim, per Authorum cunctationem & affectatam ob-scuritatem, fieri
potuit, vt in prima huius Artis promulgatione, eidem alicui &
inventionis laudem, te erudiendi mercedem deferremus; sed dimicamibus
illis, neque de minoribus præmijs quam de imperio Mathematico
certantibus; mussantibus vero alijs, & arrectis animis expectantibus,
Quis pecori imperitet, quern tot armenta sequantur; non defuit Anglæ &
suus Agonista (ornatifimum dico, et in omni eruditionis varietate
principemvirum Thomam Hariotum, homine natu ad Artes illustrandas, &,
quod illi palmariu erit præstantissimu, ad nubes philofophicas, in
quibus multa iam secula caligauit mundus, indubitata; veritatis
splendore difcutiendas) qui vetaret, tarn folidz laudis spolia ad
exteros Integra deuolui. Ille enim (etiamdum in pharetra conclufa, quæ
pupilla viuacis auicular terebraret, sagitta) ipsam totius Artiseius
metam egregia methodo collimauit; expedita vero facilitate patefactam,
inter alios amicorum, & mihi quoque tradidit; multisq vitro citroq,
iaftatis Quæstionibus, ingenia nostra in abysso huius Artis exercendi
causam præbuit.
Of Mr Torporley we shall have more to say further on, as he is
particularly mentioned in Hariot’s will. Meanwhile here is an attempt
at a translation of his peculiar Latin in the above extract:
For indeed by the delays and affected obscurity of authors, it was
impossible, that in the first promulgation of the art, we should give
the praise of invention and the credit of teaching, to the same
individual ; but while they were quarrelling & contending for no less a
prize than the empire of Mathematics, whilst others were muttering, and
waiting with excited minds to see
Who should rule the flock, whom so many herds should follow,
our own champion has not been wanting to England. I mean Thomas Hariot,
a most distinguished man, and one excelling in all branches of learning
: a man born to illustrate Science, and, what was his principal
distinction, to clear away by the splendour of undoubted truth those
philosophical clouds in which the world had been involved for so many
centuries : who did not allow the trophies of substantial praise to be
wholly carried abroad toother nations. For he (while the arrow, which
was to hit the bull’s-eye, was yet in the quiver) defined by an
admirable method the limits of all that science ; and showed it to me,
amongst others of his friends, explained in an expeditious and simple
manner ; and by proposing various problems to us, enabled us to
exercise our ingenuity in the profundities of this science.
But time and space beckon. On the 24th of March 1603, set ‘that bright
occidental Star,’ and ‘that mock Sun’ fræ the north took by succession
its place. To Raleigh the change was the setting of a great hope, for
to Queen Elizabeth he owed his fortunes, and was proud of the debt. To
Raleigh more than to any other one man, notwithstanding his many
faults, the Queen owed the brilliancy of her Court, the efficacy and
terror of her navy, the enterprise and intelligent energy of her
people, to say nothing of the adventurous spirit of colonization which
he awoke in his efforts in Western Planting. The glory of his
achievements today is the glory alike of England and English America.
King James let no man down so far as he did Raleigh. Perhaps it was
because there was no one left of Elizabeth’s Court who could fall so
far.
On three trumped up charges which never were, and never could be
sustained with due form of law, Raleigh was with small delay thrown
into the Tower. Several other noblemen and less eminent persons were
sent there also. The Asiatic plague was raging in the City. A moral
pestilence of equal virulence at the same time infested the Court. The
State prisoners must be tried openly, though already secretly
condemned. The Judges of his ‘dread Majesty’ dared not venture to the
Tower as usual for the trials, forgetting apparently that its precincts
were just as unhealthy for the great prisoners of State as for them,
who were liable any day on the miffs of majesty to change places.
So it was determined that the’ traitors’ should be carted down to
Winchester for trial. A cold wet November seven-days’ journey through
mud and slush was the miserable dodge to carry out this scheme of
darkness which neither Coke nor Popham would have dared to perpetrate
in the broad light of London. It was, as all the world knows, a mock
trial. The prisoners Raleigh, Cobham, Gray, and Markham were condemned
and sentenced to death as traitors, and Raleigh, for the grim sport of
the royal Nimrod, was made to witness a mock execution of his
fellow-convicts, but being in due course all respited by a warrant
which the Governorof Winchester Castle had carried three days in his
pocket, were carted back to the Tower, where, not pardoned, their
sentences not commuted, but simply deferred, they were tortured with a
living death hanging over them, like the sword of Damocles depending on
royal caprice.
Here Raleigh dragged out his long imprisonment, and (as tersely & truly
expressed by his son) was, after thirteen years, beheaded for opposing
the very thing he was condemned and sentenced for favouring. The whole
story is a bundle of inconsistencies, like that of Henry Percy, the 9th
Earl of Northumberland, committed to the Tower in 1606, and his fifteen
years’ imprisonment. The stories of these two celebrated men are
inseparably connected with that of Hariot. But it is not our purpose to
trace either Raleigh’s or Percy’s progress through these long and
dreary years any further than is necessary to illustrate the life of
Hariot, who was the light of the outer world to them both. Incarcerated
and watched as they were, Hariot was the ears, the eyes, and the hands
of these two noble captives.
The depth and variety of Hariot’s intellectual and scientific
resources, his honesty of purpose, his fidelity of character, his
eminent scholarship, his unswerving integrity, and his command of
tongue, rendered him alike invulnerable to politicians and to royal
minions. He was with Raleigh at Winchester and in the Tower, off and
on, as required, from 1604 to 1618, except during the last voyage to
Guiana. He was at the same time a pensioner, a companion, and
confidential factotum of his old friend the Earl of Northumberland both
in the Tower and at Sion for fifteen years. Watched as these two
prisoners were, ensnared, entrapped, and entangled for new evidence
against them, it was necessary for Hariot to pursue a delicate and
cautious course, to eschew politics, statecraft and treason, and to
devote himself to pure science (almost the only pure commodity that was
then a safeguard) metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics,
history, and literature. He was their jackal, their book of reference,
their guide, their teacher, and their friend.
Raleigh found himself in December 1603, lodged in the Tower, innocent,
as is now generally admitted, of the charges against him, but legally
attainted of high treason. All his worldly effects therefore escheated
to the Crown. The King out of pure cowardice (for he dared not carry
out the sentence of the Court) waived the horrid parts of the
sentence—too horrid even to be quoted here—and commuted it to execution
by the block. He also waived the immediate forfeitureof property
acquired under Elizabeth’s reign, and even allowed Raleigh to complete
the entail of certain estates to his wife and son.
The Governor of the Tower and his Lieutenant were at first officially
kind and friendly, extending many privileges to win his confidence. If
there had been any treason in Sir Walter they would most certainly have
wormed it out of him, for his eyes at first were not fully open. He
still believed in the honour and fidelity of his mock friends at Court.
When no more satisfactory evidence of his guilt could be smuggled out
of him, or his companions, in support of the unjust verdict, they
began, in 1605, to abridge his privileges and darken his lights. At
first his friends and visitors were cut down to a fixed number. There
is a list among the Burleigh papers in the British Museum by which it
appears that Lady Raleigh, her maid, and her son might visit Sir
Walter. For this they took a house on Tower Hill near the old
fortress, where they lived six years, or as long as this privilege
lasted.
Then Sir Walter was to be allowed two men servants and a boy, who were
to remain within the Tower. Besides these he was permitted to see on
occasion, Mr Hawthorne, a clergyman ; Dr Turner, his physician } Mr
Johns, his surgeon ; Mr Sherbery, his solicitor ; his bailiff at
Sherburne ; and his old friend, Thomas Hariot, with no official
designation.
It needs no ears under the walls of the Tower to tell us what were the
duties of this learned and trusted friend, who had been Sir Walter’s
confidential factor for a quarter of a century in all his most
important enterprises. Hariot, it will be perceived, was the only one
named, in this house-list, without an assigned profession. Fortunately
there is still preserved a ‘hoggeshead of papers’ in Hariot’s
handwriting, ill-assorted and hitherto unsifted, which partially reveal
the secrets of this prison-house, and show Hariot here, there, and
everywhere, mixed up with all the studies, toils, experiments, books,
and literary ventures of our honored traitor.
So passed, with tantalizing uncertainty, the year 1605, with many fears
for the future and some hopes; but 1606 brought into the Tower Sir
Walter’s old friend Henry Percy, another ‘traitor.’ With him, at first,
there was considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all
paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate
and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and
perform their ‘magic.’ Hariot was the master of both in these occult
sciences. The ‘furnace’ and the ‘still’ were at first Raleigh’s chief
amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling
simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes,
with exercises in chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of both
Raleigh and the Earl. But soon the policy of the Court changed. The
prisoners had less liberty and saw less of each other, and so the
stills were pulled down, and the gardens given up. Raleigh was more
closely watched, and entrapped. Then there was fencing and defencing,
for nothing could stand against the King’s persistent rancor, and
Cecil’s dissimulation. From time to time Sir Walter’s titles, his
offices, his Elizabethan monopolies and his appointments were all taken
from him. All his emoluments were wanted for hungry favourites ; and
finally the Sherburne estate which he had been permitted to entail on
his son went by no higher law than the king’s, ‘I mon hae it for Carr.’
During all these anxious months Hariot was Sir Walter’s close-mouthed
and trusted Mercury, a silent messenger who floated frequently by the
tide on the Thames between the Tower and his residence at Sion, a
pensioner of, and one of Percy’s staff of wise men, but really
Raleigh’s strong right hand. He adroitly and faithfully served two
masters, preserving his own independence and self reliance, and not
losing the confidence of either.
From the trial at Winchester to the final transfer of Sherburne, a
period of some five years, every step against Raleigh was taken through
the high Courts of Justice. That the cannie monarch was capable of all
this moral wrong and legal crookedness need not surprise any one who
has investigated his antecedents and proclivities, but that he on
coming to England should have developed that masterly power of warping
great minds and bending the English Courts of Justice to his purposes,
and even crunching its strong old oaken Bench and Bar into his own
royal privy pocket, does surprise one. The secret of this unenglish
strength, however, has been attributed partly to his Bur-leigh help.
When Raleigh found the cords thus tightening round him, he offered
sundry concessions and services for life and liberty. He would carry
out his schemes for enriching the king and the kingdom by conquering
and exploring Guiana; he would accept exile in Holland; or emigrate to
Virginia, and help to build up a new English empire in the West; but
all in vain. It was feared that his unexpired and dormant patent might
interfere with the King’s own Virginia charter. So Raleigh and Hariot
worked on, but relieved the tedium by ever changing study. Every year
or two, as long as he could command through himself or friends the
resources, Raleigh sent privately a reconnoitring and intelligence ship
to Guiana, to keep that pet enterprise alive. In this delicate matter
Hariot was Sir Walter’s geographer and assayer, while Hariot’s old
college friend, Keymis, was his factor or shipping agent.
Then come Raleigh’s Essays and smaller writing with his hopeful
correspondence with the Queen and Prince Henry. Lady Raleigh’s
privileges, after six years, ceased in 1611; probably about the time
that Cecil was for some unaccountable reason prospecting actively for
new evidence against both Sir Walter and Percy. The years 1610 and 1611
were anxious times for them both; but they were bright days for Hariot,
with his invention of the telescope and his discoveries. Whether in the
Tower, administering new scientific delicacies and delights to the
prisoners; or at Sion, unlocking the secrets of the starry firmament by
night, in his observatory; or floating between Sion and the Tower by
day on the broad bosom of the Thames, prying into the optical secrets
of lenses, and inventing his perspective trunks by which he could bring
distant objects near, Hariot in foggy England of the north was working
out almost the same brilliant series of discoveries that Galileo was
making in Italy. To this day, with our undated and indefinite material,
even with the new and much more precise evidence now for the first time
herewith produced, it is difficult to decide which of them first
invented the telescope, or first by actual observation with that
marvellous instrument confirmed the truth of the Copernican System by
revealing the spots on the Sun, the orbit of Mars, the horns of Venus,
the satellites of Jupiter, the mountains in the Moon, the elliptical
orbits of comets, _etc._ It is manifest, however, that they were both
working in the same groove and at the same time.
Hariot was undoubtedly as great a mathematician and astronomer as
Galileo. In 1607 at Ilfracombe and in South Wales, he had taken by hand
and Jacob’s staff, the old patriarchal method, valuable observations of
the comet of that year, and compared notes with his astronomical pupil
William Lower, and afterwards with Kepler. This comet, now known as
Halley’s, ought perhaps to have been named Hariot’s, for it confirmed
his notions that the motions of the planets were not perfect circles
and afforded probably the germ of his reasoning out the elliptical
orbits of comets, especially afterhis friend and correspondent [see
infra, pages 178-180] Kepler’s book _de Motibus Stella Atartis_ came
out in 1609, and he had invented and improved his telescope or
perspective ‘truncke’ or cylinder in 1609-10.
It is not positively stated that Hariot held direct correspondence with
Galileo in 1609 and 1610 or even later, but the evidence is strong that
he was promptly kept informedof what was going on in Italy in
astronomical and mathematical discovery, as well as in Germany and
elsewhere. That he was using a ‘perspective truncke’ or telescope as
early as the winter of 1609-10, and that his ‘servaunte’ Christopher
Tooke (or as Lower in 1611 familiarly called him’ Kitt’) made lenses
for him and fitted them into his ‘trunckcs’ for sale by himself, is
known. From this circumstance,and from the fact that he disposed of
many ‘trunckes’ by his will, and left a considerable stock of them to
Tooke, it is manifest that he manufactured and traded in telescopes
from 1609 to 1621. With his invention of the telescope then it required
no correspondence with Galileo to induce him to rake the heavens and
sweep our planetary system for new astronomical discoveries. To an
astronomer of his activity and mathematical acumen these discoveries
followed as a matter of course. Like Galileo he may have borrowed from
the Dutch (or quite as likely they of him) the idea that by a
combination of lenses it was possible to bring distant objects near,
but that he worked out the idea independently of Galileo admits hardly
of a doubt. But he seems to have been less ambitious than Galileo to
claim priority in either the invention or the discoveries that
immediately followed. In this connection the following hitherto
unpublished letter will be read with interest:
LETTER OF SIR WILLIAM LOWER _in South Wales to_
THOMAS HARIOT _at Sion_ 21 _June_ 1610.
_Printed from the holograph original in the British Museum_
I gaue your letter a double welcome, both because it came from you and
contained newes of that strange nature ; although that wch I craued,
you haue deserved till another time. Me thinkes my diligent Galileus
hath done more in his three fold discouerie then Magellane in openinge
the streightes to the South sea or the dutch men that weare eaten by
beares in Noua Zembla. I am sure with more ease and saftie to him selfe
and more pleasure to mee. I am so affected with this newes as I wish
sommer were past that I mighte obserue these phenomenes also, in the
moone I had formerlie observed a strange spotted-nesse al ouer, but had
no conceite that anie parte therof mighte be shadowes; since I haue
obserued three degrees in the darke partes, of wch the lighter sorte
hath some resemblance of shadinesse but that they grow shorter or
longer I cannot yet pceaue. ther are three starres in Orion below the
three in his girdle so neere togeather as they appeared vnto me alwayes
like a longe starre, insomuch as aboute 4 yeares since I was a writing
you newes out of Cornwall of a view a strange phenomenon but asking
some that had better eyes then my selfe they told me, they were three
starres lying close togeather in a right line, thes starres with my
cylinder this last winter I often observed, and it was longe er I
beleued that I saw them, they appearinge through the Cylinder so farre
and distinctlie asunder that without I can not yet disseuer. the
discouerie of thes made me then obserue the 7 starres also in, ###
[Taurus], wch before I alwayes rather beleued to be, 7. then euer could
nomber them, through my Cylinder I saw thes also plainelie and far
asunder, and more then, 7. to, but because I was prejugd with that
number, I beleved not myne eyes nor was carefull to obserue how manie;
the next winter now that you have opened mine eyes you shall heare much
frö me of this argument, of the third and greatest (that I confesse
pleased me most) I have least to say, sauing that just at the instance
that I receaved your letters wee Traventane Philosophers were a
consideringe of Kepler’s* reasons [*pag. 106. Noua Stella Serpentarii]
by wch he indeauors to ouerthrow Nolanus and Gilberts opinions
concerninge the immensitie of the Spheare of the starres and. that
opinion particularlie of Nolanus by wch he affirmed that the eye beinge
placed in anie parte of the Univers the apparence would be still all
one as vnto us here. When I was a sayinge that although Kepler had sayd
somethinge to moste that mighte be vrged for that opinion of Nolanus,
yet of one principall thinge hee had not thought; for although it may
be true that to the ey placed in anie starre of, ### [Cancer], the
starres in Capricorne will vanish, yet he hath not therfore so soundlie
concluded (as he thinkes) that therfore towards that parte of the world
ther wilbe a voidnesse or thin scattering of little starres wheras els
round about ther will appeare huge starres close thruste togeather: for
sayd I (hauinge heard you say often as much) what is in that huge space
betweene the starres and Saturne, ther remaine euer fixed infinite
nombers wch may supplie the apparence to the eye that shalbe placed in
### [Cancer], wch by reason of ther lesser magnitudes doe flie our
sighte what is aboute ### [Saturn], ### [Jupiter], ### [Mars], etc.
ther moue other planets also wch appeare not. just as I was a saying
this comes your letter, wch when I had redd, loe, qd I, what I spoke
probablie experience hath made good ; so that we both with wonder and
delighte fell a consideringe your letter, we are here so on fire with
thes thinges that I must renew my request and your promise to send mee
of all sortes of thes Cylinders. my man shal deliuer you monie for anie
charge requisite, and contente your man for his paines and skill. Send
me so manie as you thinke needfull vnto thes obseruations, and in
requitall, I will send you store of observations. Send me also one of
Galileus bookes if anie yet be come ouer and you can get them.
Concerning my doubte in Kepler, you see what it is to bee so far fro
you. What troubled me a month you satisfyed in a minute. I have
supplied verie fitlie my wante of a spheare, in the desolution of a
hogshead, for the hopes therof haue framed me a verie fine one. I pray
also at your leasure answere the other pointes of my last letter
concerning Vieta, Kepler and your selfe. I have nothinge to presence
you in counter, but gratitude with a will in act to be vsefull vnto you
and a power in proxima potentia ; wch I will not leaue also till I haue
broughte ad actum. If you in the meane time can further it, tell wher
in I may doe you seruice, and see how wholie you shall dispose of me.
Your most assured and louing friend
Tra’uenti the longest day of, 1610. Willm Lower.
~ _Addressed:_ To his espesial good frind
Mr. Thomas Hariot
Seal of Arms, _(B. M. Add._ 6789.) at Sion neere London.
[Tra’venti or Trafenty, near Lower Court, is eight or nine miles
south-west of Caermarthen, near the confluence of the rivers Taf and
Cywyn.]
The writer is fortunately able to throw some light upon these letters
of Lower to Hariot. In _the Monatlicbe Correspondenz Vol._ 8, 1803,
published by F. X. von Zach at Gotha, pages 47-56, is a most
interesting fragment of an original letter inEnglish toHariot. Dr Zach
says that he found this letter at Petworth in 1784, and it being
without date or signature he confidently assigned its authorship to the
Earl of Northumberland, and guessed the date to have been prior to
1619. In his many notes he is in raptures over his discovery, and
deplores the misfortune of its breaking off in the most interesting
place just as the Earl was about to announce the discovery of the
elliptical orbit of the comet of 1607, as reasoned out of Hariot’s
observations and the writings of Kepler. This famous letter has been
used or copied in many places, particularly in Ersch and Gru-ber’s
Algemeine Encyklopadie under Hariot.
The mystery is now solved by giving here the letter in full. It is even
more important than Dr Zach with all his enthusiasm supposed. It is
not, however, from the pen of Northumberland, though none the less
interesting on that account. The letter is in the well-known
handwriting of Lower, of Tra’venti, on Mount Martin, near Llanfihangel,
in South Wales, to his dearly loved friend and master Hariot at Sion,
and is dated the 6th of February, 1610. The letter fills two sheets of
foolscap paper. The first sheet of four pages Dr Zach found at
Petworth, and it is to be hoped that it still exists there. The other
sheet of four pages is preserved in the British Museum (Add. 6789). How
long these two sheets have been separated it is difficult to tell, but
probably from Hariot’s day, that is, for more than two centuries and a
half. The two fragments are now brought together and printed for the
first time complete, the first half from Dr Zach’s text, and the latter
half copied verbatim direct from the original autograph manuscript,
Brit. Mus. Add. 6789.
LETTER FROM SIR WILLIAM LOWER MATHEMATICIAN
AND ASTRONOMER TO THOMAS HARIOT AT SION
FEBRUARY 6, 1610.
I have receeved the perspective Cylinder that you promised me and am
sorrie that my man gave you not more warning, that I might have had
also the 2 or 3 more that you mentioned to chuse for me. Hence forward
he shall have order to attend you better and to defray the charge of
this and others, that he forgot to pay the worke man. According as you
wished I have observed the Mone in all his changes. In the new I
discover manifestlie the earthshine, a little before the Dichotomic,
that spot which reprefents unto me the Man in the Moone (but without a
head) is first to be feene. a little after neare the brimme of the
gibbous parts towards the upper corner appeare luminous parts like
starres much brighter then the rest and the whole brimme along, lookes
like unto the Description of Coasts in the dutch bookes of voyages, in
the full she appeares like a tarte that my Cooke made me the last
Weeke. here a vaine of bright stuffe, and there of darke, and so
consufedlie al over. I muft confesse I can see none of this without my
cylinder. Yet an ingenious younge man that accompanies me here often,
and loves you, and these studies much, sees manie of these things even
without the helpe of the instrument, but with it sees them most
plainielie. I meane the younge Mr. Protherbe.
Kepler I read diligentlie. but therein I find what it is to be so far
from you. For as himfelf, he hath almoft put me out of my wits, his
Aequanes, his sections of excentricities, librations in the diameters
of Epicycles, revolutions in ellipses, have fo thoroughlie seased upon
my imagination as I do not onlie ever dreame of them, but oftentimes
awake lose my selfe, and power of thinkinge with to much wantinge to
it. not of his caufes for I cannot phansie those magnetical natures,
but aboute his theorie which me thinks (although I cannot yet
overmafter manie of his particulars) he eftablifheth soundlie and as
you say overthrowes the circular Aftronomie.
Do you not here startle, to see every day some of your inventions taken
from you ; for I remember long since you told me as much, that the
motions of the planets were not perfect circles. So you taught me the
curious way to observe weight in Water, and within a while after
Ghetaldi comes out with it in print, a little before Vieta prevented
[anticipated] you of the gharland of the greate Invention of Algebra,
al these were your deues and manie others that I could mention ; and
yet to great reservednesse had robd you of these glories, but although
the inventions be greate, the first and last I meane, yet when I survei
your storehouse, I see they are the smallest things and such as in
comparison of manie others are of smal or no value. Onlie let this
remember you, that it is possible by to much procrastination to be
prevented in the honor of some of your rarest inventions and
speculations. Let your Countrie and frinds injoye the comforts they
would have in the true and greate honor you would purchase your selfe
by publishing some of your choise workes, but you know best what you
have to doe. Onlie I, because I wish you all good, with this, and
sometimes the more longinglie, because in one of your letters you gave
me some kind of hope therof.
But againe to Kepler I have read him twice over cursoridlie. I read him
now with Calculation. Some times I find a difference of minutes,
sometimes false prints, and sometimes an utter confufion in his
accounts, these difficulties are so manie, and often as here againe I
want your conference, for I know an hower with you, would advance my
studies more than a yeare heare, to give you a taft of some of thes
difficulties that you may judge of my capacitie, I will send you onlie
this one [upon the _Locum Martis_ out of Kepler’s Astronomy, de motibus
Stella: Martis, etc. Pragæ, 1609, folio Ch. xxvi, page 137.] For this
theorie I am much in love with these particulars;
1° his permutation of the medial to the apparent motions, for it is
more rational that all dimensions as of Eccentricities, apogacies,
etc.. . . should depend rather of the habitude to the sun, then to the
imaginarie circle of orbis annuus.
2° His elliptical iter planetarum. for me thinks it shiews a Way to the
folving of the unknown walks of comets. For ai his Ellipfis in the
Earths motion is more a circle _[here endeth Dr Zacb’s fragment, and
here beginneth the continuation from tie original in the Britith
Museum]_ and in Mars is more longe and in some of the other planets may
be longer againe so in thos commets that are appeard fixed the ellipsis
may be neere a right line.
3. His phansie of ecliptica media or his via regia of the sun, vnto wch
the walke of al the other planets is obliqj more or lesse; even the
ecliptica uera under wch the earth walkes his yeares journie; by wch he
solues handsomelie the mutation of the starres latitudes. Indeed I am
much delighted with his booke, but he is so tough in rnanie places as I
cannot bite him. I pray write me some instructions in your next, how I
may deale with him to ouermaster him for I am readie to take paines, te
modo jura dantem indigeo, dictatorem exposco. But in his booke I am
much out of loue with thes particulars. I. First his manie and
intolerable atechnies, whence deriue thos manie and vncertaine assayes
of calculation. 2. His finding fault with Vieta for mending the like
things in Ptol: Cop..... but se the justice Vieta speakes sleightlie of
Copernicus a greater then Atlas. Kepler speakes as slightlie of Vieta,
a greater then Appollonius whom Kepler everie wher admires. For
whosoever can doe the things that Kepler cannot doe, shalbe to him
great Appollonius. But enough of Kepler let me once againe intreate
your counsel how to read him with best profit, for I am wholie
possessed with Astronomical speculations and desires. For your
declaration of Vieta’s appendicle it is so full and plaine, as you haue
aboundantlie satisfyed my desire, for wch I yield you the thankes I
ought, onlie in a word tell me whether by it he can solue Copernicus, 5
cap: of his 5. booke. The last of Vieta’s probleames you leaue to
speake of because (you say) I had a better of you, wch was more
vniuersal and more easilie demonstrated, and findeth the point, E. as
wel out of the plaine of the triangle giuen, as in the plaine. I pray
here helpe my memorie or vnderstand-inge, for although I haue bethought
my selfe vsq ad insaniam, I cannot remember or conceaue what
proposition you meane. If I haue had such a one of you, tel me what one
it is and by what tokens I may know it ; If I haue not had, then let me
now haue it, for you know how much I loue your things and of all wayes
of teaching for richnesse and fullnesse for stuffe and forme, yours
vnto me are incomparablie most satisfactorie. If your leasure giue you
leaue imparte also unto me somewhat els of your riches in this
argument.
Let me intreate you to advise and direct this bearer Mr. Vaughan wher
and how to prouide himselfe of a fit sphere ; that by the contemplation
of that our imaginations here may be releued in manie speculations that
perplexe our vnderstandings with diagrammed in plano. He hath monie to
prouide doe you but tell him wher the are to be had and what manner of
sphere (I meant with what and how manie circles) wilbe most vsefull for
vs to thes studies. After all this I must needs tell you my sorrowes.
God that gaue him, hath taken from me my onlie sun, by continual and
strange fits of Epelepsie or Apoloxie, when in apparence, as he was
most pleasant and goodlie, he was most healthie, but amongst other
things, I haue learnt of you to setle and submit my desires to the will
of god ; onlie my wife with more greife beares this affliction, yet now
againe she begins to be comforted. Let me heare fro you and according
to your leasure and frindshippe haue directions in the course of studie
I am in. Aboue al things take care of your health, keepe correspondence
with Kepler and wherinsoeuer you can haue vse of me, require it with
all libertie. Soe I rest ever,
Your assured and true friend to be vsed in
all things that you please.
Willm Lowër.
Tra’vent on Mount Martin [in South Wales.] 6 February, 1610.
Let me not make my selfe more able then ther is cause. I can not order
the calculation by the construction you sent me of Vieta’s 3. probleme,
to find the distances of C. & D. & B. from the Apegen or the proportion
of ia. to ac. the eccentricitie. I tooke Copernicus, 3. observations in
the, 6. chap, of his, 5. booke, therfore helpe here once againe.
_Addressed:_ To his especiall good friend
Mr. THO : HARRYOT at Sion neere London.
About this time, it is understood, Raleigh took up seriously and
earnestly the great literary work of his life, _The History of the
World._ It must have been brewing in his mind for years, for in his
preface he expressed the fears he had entertained ‘that the darkness of
age and death would have overtaken him long before the performance.’
The work, according to Camden, was published in April 1614, just before
the meeting of Parliament. It appeared anonymously, and for obvious
reasons was not entered at Stationers’ Hall. James is said to have had
his conscience so pricked by certain passages which everywhere pervade
the work on the power, conduct and responsibility of princes, that
strenuous efforts were made in January 1615 to call in and suppress it,
but the king might as well have attempted to call back a departed
spirit by Act of Parliament as to call in that ‘History of the World’
by royal proclamation. The Book was in type and in the hands of the
people of England. It could therefore no more be suppressed at that day
by princely power than could manifest destiny itself. The second
edition of 1621 was the first with Raleigh’s name.
This grand work, which in almost everychapter shows the masterly hand
of Raleigh himself, needs no comment here. It is however no
disparagement of the book (but the contrary) to say that in the
collection, arrangement and condensation of its materials; that in
unlocking the muniment room of antiquity and perusing the chief authors
of the Greek and Latin classics from Heroditus to Livy and Eusebius,
covering a period of near four thousand years, he must have had at
cheerful beck powerful and competent aid. To collect, read, collate,
note down, and digest these vast and scattered treasures into
reasonable and presentable shape for the master mind, required not a
bevy of poets and parsons, but one masterly scholar of scientific,
analytic, mathematical, philosophical and religious training. Such a
man was Hariot.
We read of Gibbon’s twenty years’ fag and toil on the materials of the
History of the Roman Empire alone, and at a time when there were many
aids not existing in Raleigh’s day. Gibbon personally ransacked the
libraries of Europe. Raleigh had scarcely four years to cover the four
most ancient empires and a much longer period, and was himself confined
to Tower Hill. But he had at command a Hariot, a sort of winged
Mercury, who was neither entowered nor hide-bound with conceit or
ignorance. He was a marvellously good Greek and Latin scholar, who
wrote Latin with almost as much ease as English. One has but to read
the vast number of notes, citations and particular references in the
History of the World to see the height, depth, and perfect modelling of
the structure.
Raleigh was unquestionably the designer, the architect and the finisher
of his History of the World. To him is due the honor and credit of the
work. But who was the builder ? The answer manifestly is Thomas Hariot
of Sion on Thames, learned, patient, self-forgetting, painstaking,
long-waiting, devoted Hariot. Many writers have claimed to be, or have
been named as, Sir Walter’s assistants and polishers. Ben Jonson, Rev.
Dr Burhill, John Hoskins the poet, and others have each had their
advocates,but without sufficient evidence. It may well be questioned if
any one of them possessed either the ability, the time, the access to
the Tower, or the opportunity to perform such herculean labors of love.
These claims are apparently all based on pure conjecture, or
unrectified gossip, as shown by Mr Bolton Corney in his razorly reply
to Mr Isaac D’israeli. But Thomas Hariot, on the contrary, possessed
abundantly what they all lacked, the necessary credentials. For proof
of this assertion the doubter, as well as the lover of confirmed
historical accuracy, is referred to the Hariot papers still preserved
partly at Petworth and partly in the British Museum.
The Hariot manuscripts, of which there are thousands of folio pages all
in his own handwriting, seem to be still in the same confused state in
which he left them. He directed that the ‘waste’ should be weeded out
of his mathematical papers and destroyed. But this duty seems,
fortunately for us, to have been neglected by his executors, and hence
among this ‘waste’ one has even now no great difficulty in recognizing
in the well-known Latin handwriting of the’ magician,’ many jottings in
chronology, geography and science, and many abstracts and citations of
the classics, that in their time must have played parts in the _History
of the World._ The Will now first produced lets in a flood of light on
the history of these valued papers, and dispels a great deal of the
heaps of foreign pretension, domestic assertion, and mixed charlatanism
that have since 1784 beclouded the memories of both Raleigh and Hariot.
It is true that on a hint in the previous century from Camden of a will
by the great mathematician, many conjectures were afloat from the days
of Pell, Collins, Wallis and Wood, but it has not been possible until
now for one, with due knowledge of the main events in the lives of
these two men, each equally great in his own sphere, to satisfactorily
clear away any considerable portion of the misconception and
misstatements of biographers and historians concerning them and their
achievements. The dawn however is coming, when these new materials now
first printed by the Hercules Club, but not worked up, may attract the
attention of some historian competent to give them a thorough
scientific scrutiny and ‘pen their doctrine.’
It is not our purpose here to dwell upon Raleigh’s masterpiece. From
the preface of the _History of the World,_ which opens with ‘the
boundless ambition of mortal man,’ to the epilogue which closes up the
work with the glorious triumph of Death, the whole book is replete with
lessons of wisdom and warning. No one can rise from its perusal without
perceiving that the modern author has made himself by apt illustration
an accomplished actor in ancient history, while the ancient characters
are made in their vera effigies to strut on modern stages. His pictures
of great actions and great men, noble deeds and nobler princes, are
drawn with such masterly perspective of truth, that they serve for all
time ; while his portraiture of tyrants, villains, and dishonorable
characters are no less lifelike and human. One marvels not therefore
that King James, whose political creed was that the people are bound to
princes by iron, and princes to the people by cobwebs, should see in
Raleigh’s portraiture of the upright kings no likeness to himself, but
had no difficulty in recognizing in the deformed greatness and selfish
virtues of the old monarchs qualities suggestive of himself and his
favorites. This grand history, extending from the creation over the
four great monarchies of the world, near four thousand years, closes
with the final triumph of Emilius Paullus in these memorable and
oft-repeated words from the first edition of 1614.
Kings and Princes have alwayes laid before them, the actions, but not
the ends, of those great Ones which precededthem. They are alwayes
transported with the glorie of the one, but they never minde the
miserie of the other, till they finde the experience themselves. They
neglect the advice of God, while they enioy life, or hope it; but they
follow the counsell of Death, upon his first approach. It is he that
puts into man all the wisdome of the world, without speaking a word ;
which God with all the words of His Law, promises, or threats, doth not
infuse. Death which hateth and destroyeth man, is beleeved ; God, which
hath made him and loves him, is alwayes deferred. I have considered,
saith Solomon, all the workes that are under the Sunne, and behold, all
is vanitie and vexation of spirit: but who beleeves it, till Death
tells it us. It was Death, which opening the conscience of Charles the
fift, made him enjoyne his sonne Philip to restore Navarre ; and King
Francis the First of France, to command that justice should be done
upon the murderers of the Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which
till then he neglected. It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly
make man know himselfe. He tells the proud and insolent, that they are
but Abjects, and humbles them at the instant ; makes them crie,
complaine, and repent; yea, even to hate their forepassed happinesse.
He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked
begger, which hath interest in nothing, but in the grauell that filles
his mouth. He holds a glasse before the eyes of the most beautifull,
and makes them see therein their deformitie and rottennesse; and they
acknowledge it.
O eloquent, just and mightie Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast
perswaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the
world hath flattered, thou onely hast cast out of the world and
despised : thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched
greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition, of man, and covered
it all over with those two narrow words : _Hic jacet._
With this outburst of true eloquence the historian of the world laid
down his pen in 1614. Four short years later the same historian
himself, wickedly sacrificed by his hispaniolized monarch, laid down
his life on the scaffold, with an apotheosis scarcely less eloquent. No
death recorded in ancient or modern history is more grand or
instructive than that of Sir Walter Raleigh, in many respects the
greatest man of his age.
On the execution being granted in the King’s Bench Court, on the
afternoon of the 28th of October 1618, he asked for a little time for
pre- paration, but his request was refused, Bacon having already in his
pocket the death warrant duly signed by the King before the meeting of
the Court! Sir Walter then asked for paper, pen and ink; and when he
came to die that he might be permitted to speak at his farewell. To
these last requests he appears to have received no reply, but was with
indecent haste hustled off to the Gate House for execution early the
next morning, the 29th of October, Lord Mayor’s day, when it was
expected that the crowd would go cityward. However, there was a crowd,
and probably in consequence he was not prohibited from speaking. He had
prepared himself, and is said to have consulted a _‘Note of
Remembrance’_ which he held in his hand while speaking. It is possible,
nay, probable that this very same _Note_ still survives in
‘paper-saving’ Hariot’s ‘waste,’ for a precious little waif, all
crumpled and soiled, just such a ‘Note of Remembrance,’ it is believed,
as Raleigh held in his hand and consulted during that ever memorable
speech, has comedown to us, and is now preserved among the Hariot
papers in the British Museum. It has been recently recognized and
identified by Mr Stevens, who has placed it, with other newly
discovered documents respecting our philosopher, at the disposition of
the Hercules Club. It is thought to possess internal evidence of having
been drawn out _before_ the speech, and is not therefore Hariot’s
jottings of remembrance _after_ it. But positive proof is wanting.
It is beyond all doubt, however, in the well-known handwriting of
Hariot, and is presumed to be the ‘note of remembrance’ _for_ the
speech, made in the Gate House, probably from dictation, during the
night before the execution. It appears as if hurriedly penned with a
blunt quill, and is on a narrow strip of thin foolscap paper such as
Hariot used. It is about twelve inches long and nearly four inches
wide, about one-third of the lower part of the paper being blank. There
is no heading, date, or anything else on the paper. It is rather
difficult to read, but every word, letter and point have been made out,
and the whole _Note_ is here given, line for line, and verbatim, the
heading and press-mark only being added :
[SIR WALTER RALEIGH’S ‘NOTE OR REMEMBRANCE’
_for his speech on the Scaffold_ Oct. 29 1618.]
Two fits of an agew.
Thankes to god.
of calling god to witness.
note
That He Speake iustly & truely.
I.) Concerning his loyalty to _ye_
King. French Agent,
& Comission fro ye french King.
2.) of Slanderous fpeeches touching
his majty. a french man.
Sr L. Stukely.
3.) Sr L. Stukely. My lo: Carewe.
4.) SrL. Stukely. My lo: of Danchaster.
5.) Sr L. St: S’ Edward Perham.
6.) Sr L. St. A letter on london hyway l0000li.
7.) Mine of Guiana.
8.) Came back by constreynt.
9.) My L. of Arundell.
10.) Company ufed ill in ye Voyadge.
11. Spotting of his face & counterfeiting sicknes.
12 The _E. of_ Eflex.
Lastly, he deiired ye company to ioyne with him in prayer. &c.
_[Brit. MM. Add._ MSS. 6789.]
Every paragraph of the speech is noted, but not quite in the order of
the speech as variously reported by those who witnessed the execution
and heard it. Circumstances occurred after Sir Walter began to speak,
which may have caused the slight change in the order as here set down.
This argues in favor of its being a note prepared beforehand. If so It
must have been written shortly before the speech, because the order for
the execution was not given in the King’s Bench Court till the
afternoon of the 28th, and the execution was fixed for early the next
morning.
There is a little confusion of the tenses, but this is not strange
considering that the note was penned by a third person. The last two
lines, below the number 12, may have been added by Hariot afterwards,
as they are in the past tense and third person, and are separated from
the rest of the note by a dash. This point is not numbered. It is
possible that thefirst five lines were also added subsequently, as they
are not numbered, and are placed near the top of the paper, as if
interpolated, but they are in the same handwriting, and apparently were
written with the same pen and ink.
At all events, whether written by Hariot before or after the deed, it
is a precious contemporary document, and is another proof, if any more
be needed, of the genuineness of the reported dying speech, and,
consequently, that the famous ‘Spanish papers’ recently reproduced are
forgeries and false. It requires no great stretch of the imagination
with this little messenger in hand to believe that the ingenious
teacher and friend of his youth, and for nearly two score years the
constant companion of his manhood, passed that dreadful night with Sir
Walter in the Gate House at Westminster, and after ‘dear Bess’ had
taken her leave at midnight, penned out this note of remembrance for
his friend’s morning guidance, that nothing should be forgotten in case
the ague returned, which he feared even more than death.
A little more than a month after the execution of his friend, Hariot is
found in his observatory at Sion taking observations of the comet of
December 1618. His valuable observations are preserved among his
mathematical papers. During the eleven years following his primitive
observations of the ‘Hariot’ comet of 1607, first at Ilfracombeand
later at Kidwely, great advances had been made in the science of
astronomy, chiefly in consequence of the invention of the telescope,
and the discoveries by means of it. No mathematician in Europe was
probably further advanced in this science than Hariot.
What particular discoveries belonged to him and what to Galileo, Kepler
and other contemporaries, it is very difficult to determine, since it
is now positively known that from 1609 or 1610 Hariot was a
manufacturer and dealer in lenses, or perspective glasses, as well as
in perspective trunks or telescopes; and that he was in correspondence
with Kepler, and probably with Galileo. He was easily the chief of
astronomers in England, and is known to have possessed the earliest
books of Galileo and to have sent them to his disciples, Lower and
Protheroe, in Wales. Respecting this comet of 1618, he was in
correspondence with Alien and Standish of Oxford and other scholars at
home and abroad.
In ‘Certain Elegant Poems, Written By Dr. [Richard] Corbel, Bishop of
Norwich. R. Cotes for Andrew Crooke, 1647, 16°- The mirth-loving
Bishop, in ‘A Letter sent from Doclor Corbetto MaJler [Sir Thomas]
Ailebury, Decem. 9. 1618’ [on the Comet of that year] is the following
allusion to Hariot:
_Burton_ to _Gunter_ Cants, and _Burton_ heares
From _Gunter,_ and th’ Exchange both tongue & eares
By carriage : thus doth mired _Guy_ complaine,
His Waggon on their letters beares _Charles_ Waine,
_Charles_ Waine, to which they fay the tayle will reach
And at this diftance they both heare, and teach.
Now for the peace of God and men, advise
(Thou that haft wherewithall to make us wise)
Thine owne rich ftudies, and deepe Harriots mine,
In which there is no drosse, but all refine,
O tell us what to trust to, lest we wax
All stiffe and tupid with his paralex ;
Say, shall the old Philofophy be true ?
Or doth he ride above the Moone think you ? _etc._
After the departure of the ‘Blazing Starr’ of December 1618, very
little is known of Hariot, except that he lived at Sion while his
patron the Earl was still in the Tower, where he was probably
frequently visited by his man of science. The following letter, dated
the 19th of January 1619, to him at Sion from Sir Thomas Aylesbury is
interesting as showing the great interest taken in his old master by
his ‘loytering scholar.’ Many other letters of this stamp, breathing
love and ardent friendship, are found among the Hariot papers, from Sir
William Lower, Sir John Protheroe, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Dr Turner,
and Sir Thomas Aylesbury. Here is a sample:
Sr, Though I have bene yet soe little a while att New Mar-kett, that I
have not any thing of moment to ympart; yet I thinke it not amisse to
write a bare salutacons, and let yo know, that in theise wearie
journeys I am often times comforted wth the remembraunce of yor kind
love and paynes bestowed on yor loytering scholar, whose little credit
in the way of learning is all-waits underpropped wt the name of soe
worthie a Maister.
The Comet being spent, the talke of it still runnes current here; The
Kings ma before mycumming spake w’ one of Cambridge called Olarentia,
(a name able to beget beleefe of some extraordinarie qualities) but
what satisfaction he gave, I cannot yet learne; here are papers out of
Spayne about it, yea and fro Roome, wc I will endevor to gett, and
meane yt yo shall partake of the newes as tyme serves.
Cura ut valeas et me ames, who am ever trulie and unfaynedlyr
yors att Commaund. THO: AYLESBURIE.
Newmarkett. 19, Jan. 1618/1619
_Addressed:_ To my right woorthie frend Mr. THOMAS HARRIOT
att Syon, theise, fro Newmarkett.
Between 1615 and 1620 there are evidences of Hariot’s failing health.
He was greatly troubled with a cancerous ulcer on the lip. How early
this began is not apparent. In 1610 his friend Lower cautions him to be
careful of his health. There is in the British Museum among the Hariot
papers the drafts of three beautiful letters in Latin written from Sion
in 1615 and 1616 to a friend of distinction, name not mentioned, who
had been recently appointed to some medical office at court, in which
he describes himself and his disease.
These letters show great resignation and Christian fortitude. He seemed
to be getting better in 1616, and expressed himself as somewhat
hopeful. The progress of the cancer and other troubles cannot now
probably be traced, but he is found in the summer of 1621 lodging with
his old friend Thomas Buckner, in Threadneedle Street, near the Royal
Exchange, in the parish of St Christopher. Buckner had been one of
Raleigh’s ‘First Colonie’ to Virginia in 1585 with Hariot, and Hariot,
now in 1621, had come up from Sion probably for medical advice near the
hospital. On the 2gth of June he made or executed his Will, and died
three days after at Buckner’s, on the and of July 1621. He was buried
the next day, according to the wish expressed in his will, in the old
parish church of St Christopher in Threadneedle Street.
Sifte viator, leviter preme,
Iacet hic juxta, Quod mortale fuit,
C. V.
THOMÆ HARRIOTT.
Hic fuit Doftiffimus ille Harriotus
de Syon ad Flumen Thamefin,
Patria & educatione
Oxonienfis,
QVM omnes fcientias Caluit,
Qui in omnibus excelluit,
Mathematicis, Philofophicis, Theologicis.
Veritatis indagator ftudiofiffimus,
Dei Trini-uniui cultor piiffimus,
Sexagenarius, aut eo circiter,
Mortalitati valedixit, Non vitæ,
Anno Christi M.DC.XXI. Iulii 2.
Shortly after there was erected to his memory in the chancel, at the
expense, it is understood, of his noble friend the Earl of
Northumberland, a fine marble monument, bearing the above neat and
appropriate inscription.
St Christopher’s, a very old church, with its records (still preserved)
extending back in an almost unbroken series to 1488, passed through
many vicissitudes before itwas finally swallowed up by the leviathan of
the world’s commerce. The site of it is now occupied by the south-west
cornerof the Bank of England on Princes Street, to the left of the
entrance, nearly opposite the Mansion House. The church was restored
and redecorated the year of Hariot’s death, and again twelve years
later, but was burnt in the great fire of 1666. Hariot’s monument
perished with it, but the inscription had been preserved by Stow. The
church was rebuilt on the same foundation by Sir Christopher Wren in
1680.
About a century ago the church, with the whole parish of St Christopher
(called then St Christopher-le-stocks because near the stocks standing
at the east end of Cheapside), together with a large portion of two
other parishes, St Margaret’s and St Bartholomew’s, was purchased by
the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street for the site of the new Bank of
England. Thus one great bank of this modern metropolis covers a large
part of three parishes of old London.
The whole area of the Bank, however, was not given up to mammon, though
still here men most do congregate, and worshippers most do worship. One
small consecrated spot, enough perhaps to leaven and memorize the whole
site, was respected, and not built over. It was the churchyard of St
Christopher. This ‘God’s acre’ the architect and the governors have
dedicated to Beauty, Art, and Nature. The little ‘Garden of the Bank of
England,’ the loveliest spot in all London at this day, measuring about
twenty-four by thirty-two yards, was just a hundred years ago the
little churchyard of St Christopher, where still repose the bones of
THOMAS HARIOT.
Virginia, which once comprehended the present United States from South
to North, has been called the monument to Sir Walter Raleigh. So the
Bank of England, built round the churchyard of St Christopher, may be
called the monument to Thomas Hariot.
The present year, 1879, is just three centuries since Hariot went
forth, a youth of twenty, from the University of Oxford. We have
briefly told his story. England is all the richer for his life, and the
world itself acknowledges the wealth of his science and the worth of
his philosophy. The Bank of England is built round his bones, but it
cannot cover his memory.
Stay, traveller, tread lightly ;
Near this spot lies what was mortal
of that most celebrated man
THOMAS HARRIOT.
He was the very learned Harriot
of Sion on Thames ;
by birth and education
an Oxonian, Who cultivated all the sciences,
and excelled in all,
In Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Theology.
A most studious investigator of truth, A most pious
worshipper of the Triune God,
At the age of sixty, or thereabouts,
He bade farewell to mortality, not to life,
July 2d A.D. 1621.
He lived, died, and was forgotten in the parish of St Christopher.
Henceforward, whenever Englishmen and Americans, merchants and
scholars, rich and poor, men of genius and men of money, enter this
little’ Garden,’ let them read there in English what Henry Percy
originally set up in Latin, the above inscription.
An impression has gone abroad, traceable chiefly to Aubrey and to
Anthony à Wood, that Hariot was unsound in religious principles and
matters of belief; that he was, in fact, not only a Deist himself, but
that he exerted a baleful influence over Raleigh and his History as
well as over the Earl of Northumberland. Not to misstate this utterly
unfounded imputation, the very words of Wood, as first printed in his
Athenæ in 1691, and never since modified, are here given in full: ‘But
notwithstanding his great skill in mathematics, he had strange thoughts
of the scripture, and always undervalued the old story of the creation
of the world, and could never believe that trite position, _Ex nihilo
nihil fit._ He made a _Philosophical Theology,_ wherein he cast off the
OLD TESTAMENT, so that consequently the New would have no foundation.
He wasaDeist, and his doctrine he did impart to the said Count [the
Earl] and to Sir Walt. Raleigh when he was compiling the _History of
the World,_ and would controvert the matter with eminent divines of
those times; who therefore having no good opinion of him, did look on
the manner of his death as a judgment upon him for those matters, and
for nullifying the scripture.’
It is needless to say that in all our investigations into the life,
actions, and character of this eminent philosopher and Christian, from
the time when, as a young man in 1585, he took delight in reading the
Bible to the Indians of Virginia, down to the time that he made his
remarkable will in 1621, not one word has been found in cor-roboration
of these statements; but, on the contrary, many passages have appeared
to contradict and disprove them. Let any one notice the numerous
citations of the various books of the Bible in Raleigh’s History, and
he will surely fail to discover any evidence of Raleigh’s being a
Deist, or that Hariot had taught him to undervalue the scripture.
It is not necessary here to say more in this connection than to quote
the following passage from one of the Latin letters in 1616 referred to
above by Hariot to the eminent physician who had just received a high
medical appointment at Court, describing himself and his terrible
affliction [a cancer on the lip]. The passage is given in English, but
the original Latin may be seen in the British Museum (Add. 6789). It
seems to have been written on purpose to refute such slanders. He
writes :
Think of me as your sincere friend. Your interests are involved as well
as mine. My recovery will be your triumph, but through the Almighty who
is the Author of all good things. As I have now and then said, I
believe these three points. I believe in God Almighty; I believe that
Medicine was ordained by him ; I trust the Physician as his minister.
My faith is sure, my hope firm. I wait however with patience for
everything in its own time according to His Providence. We must act
earnestly, fight boldly, but in His name, and we shall conquer. Sic
transit gloria mundi, omnia transibunt, nos ibimus, ibitis, ibunt. So
passes away the glory of this world, all things shall pass away, we
shall pass away, you will pass away, they will pass away.
There is unfortunately no portrait known of Hariot, and we can form no
idea of his personal appearance; but, fortunately, the drafts of the
three Latin letters to his eminent friend at Court, alluded to above,
fully describe his terrible disease and other bodily infirmities in
1615 and 1616, and give us some notion of himself and his personal
habits. His regular physician was Dr Turner, and his apothecary Mr
May-orne, both employed also by Sir Walter.
Dr Alexander Read, in his ‘Chirurgicall Lectures of Tumors and Vlcers
Delivered in the Chirurgeans Hall, 1632-34. London. 1638,’ 4°, says in
Treatise 2, Lecture 26, page 307:
Cancerous ulcers also feize upon this part [lips]. This grief haftened
the end of that famous Mathematician, Mr. Hariot, with whom I was
acquainted but a fhorttime before his death : whom at one time,
together with Mr. Hughes, who wrote of the Globes, Mr. Warner, and Mr.
Torperley, the Noble Earl of Northumberland, the favourer of all good
learning, and Mecænas of learned men, maintained while he was in the
Tower for their worth and various literature
A great deal of misconception has hitherto prevailed respecting
Hariot’s great printed work on Algebra. His reputation as a
mathematician has been permitted to hinge chiefly upon it, very much to
his disadvantage. A brief bibliographical statement of facts will
probably present the matter in a new light. But first let the book be
described as it lies before us and has been described by many others
since the days of Professor Wallis, nearly two hundred years ago. The
Title is as follows : ‘Artis Analyticæ / Praxis / Ad æquationes
Algebraicas nouæ, expeditæ, & generali / methodo, resoluendas :
/ Tractatus/ E posthumis THOMÆ HARRIOTI Philosophi ac Mathematici ce- /
leberrimi sche-diasmatis summæ fide & diligentia / descriptus:/
Et/Illvstrissimo Domino/Dom. HenricoPercio,/ Northvmbriæ Comiti,/Qui
hæc primò, sub Patronatus & Munificentiæ suæ auspicjss / ad proprios
vsus elucubrata, in communem Mathematicorum / vtilitatem, denuò
reuisenda, describenda, & publicanda / mandauit, meritissimi Honoris
ergò / Nuncupatus. / Londini / Apud Robertvm Barker, Typographum /
Regium : Et Hæred. Io. Billii. /Anno 1631. / _Title, reverse blank;_
Prefatio 4 pages; Text 180 pages, and Errata 1 page (Bbb) followed by a
blank page, folio. A very handsomely printed book. In the British
Museum, 529 m 8, is Charles the First’s copy in old calf, gilt edges,
with the royal arms on the sides. In the Preface the editors (Aylesbury
and Prothero aided by Warner)say:
Artis Analyticæ, cuius caufa hîc agitur, port eruditum illud Græcorum
fæculum antiquitatæ iamdiù & incultæ iacentis, rcftitutionem
_Francifcus Viete,_ Gallus, vir clariflimus, & ob infignem in fcientijs
Mathematicis peritiam, Gallicæ gentis decus, primus fingulari confilio
& intentato ante hâc conamine aggreffus eft; atque ingenuam hanc animi
fui intentionem per varios tractatus, quos in argumenti huius
elaboratione eleganter & acutè confcripfit, pofteris teftatem rcliquit.
Dùm verò ille veteris Analytices reftitutionem, quam fibi propofuit,
feriò molitus eft, non tàm eam reftitutam, quàm proprijs inuentionibus
actam & exornatam, tanquam nouam & fuam, nobis tradidifle videtur. Quod
generali conceptu enuntiatum paulo fufius explicandum eft; vt, oftenfo
eo quod primùm à _Vieta_ in inftituto fuo promouendo actum eft, quid
pofteà ab authore noftro doctifiimo _Thomâ Harrioto,_ qui ilium
certamine ifto Analytico fequntus eft, praeftitum fit, meliùs
innotefcere possit. [Which done into English is substantially as
follows]
Francis Vieta, a Frenchman, a most distinguished man, and on account of
his remarkable skill in Mathematical Science the honour of the French
nation, first of all with singular genius and with industry hitherto
unattempted undertook the restoration of the analytic art, of which
subject we are here treating, which after the learned age of the Greeks
for a long time had become antiquated and remained uncultivated : and
by various treatises which he eloquently and ingeniously wrote in the
working out of this line of argument, left a record to posterity of
this noble design of his mind. But while he seriously laboured at the
restoration of the old Analysis, which he had proposed to himself, he
seems not so much to have transmitted to us a restoration of that
science, as a new and original method, worked out and illustrated by
his own discoveries. This, having been enunciated in general terms,
must be explained a little more at length ; so that having shown what
was first effected by Vieta in promoting his design, it may be more
clear, what was afterwards performed by our very learned author Thomas
Harriot, who followed him in these analytical investigations.
And at the end of the volume, on page 180, is the following explanatory
note :
AD MATHIMATICIS STUDIOSOS.
‘Ex omnibus _Thoma Harrioti_ fcriptis Mathematicis,quòd opus hoc
Analyticum primum in publicum emiflum fit, haud inconfulto factum
eft. Nam, quùm reliqua eius opera, multiplici inuentorum nouitate
excellentia, eodem omnino quo tractatus ifte (Logiftices fpeciofsæ
exemplis omnimodis totus compofitus) ftilo Logiftico, hactenùs
inufitato, confcripta fint, eâ certè ratione fit, vt prodromus hic
tractatus, vltra proprium ipfius inæftimabilem vfum, reliquis
_Harrioti_ fcriptis, de quorum editione iam ferio cogitatur, pro
neceffario preparamento fiue introductorio opportunè inferuire
poffit. De quâ quidem accefforiâ operis huius vtilitate rerum
Mathematicarum ftudiofos paucis his præmonuiffe operæprecium efle
duximus.’ [Which being interpreted reads as follows in English]
TO STUDENTS OF MATHEMATICS.
It is not without good reason that, of all Thomas Harriot’s
Mathematical writings, this on Analysis has been published first. For
whereas all his remaining works, remarkable for their manifold
novelties of discovery, are written precisely in the same, hitherto
unusual, logical style as this treatise (which consists entirely of
varied specimens of beautiful reasoning); this was certainly done that
this preliminary treatise, besides its own inestimable utility, might
suitably serve as a necessary preparation or introduction to the study
of Harriot’s remaining works, the publication of which is now under
serious consideration. Of this accessory use of this treatise we have
thought it worth while to remind mathematical students in these brief
remarks.
From this it appears that Hariot’s system of Analytics or Algebra was
based on that of his friend and correspondent Francois Vieta, as
Vieta’s was avowedly based on that of the ancients. There appears to
have been no attempt whatever on the part of the Englishman to
appropriate the honors of the Frenchman, as many foreign writers have
charged. Full credit was given by Hariot and his friends to the
distinguished French mathematician.
But Hariot’s modifications, improvements, and simplifications were so
distinct and marked that from the first, and long before publication,
they were called among his students and correspondents ‘Hariot’s
Method,’ meaning thereby only Hariot’s peculiarities, without reference
to the great merits of Vieta’s restoration, modification, adaptation,
and improvement of the old analyses from the times of the Greeks.
Vieta’s’ Canon Mathematicus’ was published at Paris in 1579, and was
reissued in London with a new title in 1589 as his ‘Opera Mathematica.’
But this work does not contain the Algebra. That was first published in
1591 under the following title :
‘Francisci Vietæ/InArtem Analyticam/Isagoge/Seorfim excuffa ab Opere
reftitutæ Mathematicæ/Analyfeos, seu, Algebraicâ nouâ. / Tvronis,/ Apud
Iametivm Mettayer Typographium Regium. / Anno 1591.’ / folio. A
Supplement appeared in 1593. Seven years later there came out under the
auspices of Ghetaldi, a young Italian nobleman of mathematical tastes,
who had been studying in Paris, the following:—‘De Nvmerosa Potestatvm
/ Ad Exegefum / Resolvtione. / Ex Opere reftitutæ Mathematicæ
Analyfeos, / feu, Algebrà nouà / Francisci Vietæ. / Parisiis, /
Excudebat David le Clerc. / 1600.’ / folio. On the last page of this
book is an interesting letter from Marino Ghetaldi to his preceptor
Michele Coignetto, dated at Paris the I5th of February 1600.
These three thin folio volumes of great rarity are models of
typographic beauty. They manifestly served as the model for printing
Hariot’s Algebra in 1631. The set here described (the three bound in
one volume), Prince Henry’s own copies, bearing his arms and the Prince
of Wales’ feathers, is preserved in the British Museum, press-marked
530, m. 10.
Thus Vieta’s method appears to have been given to the world in three
instalments between 1591 and 1600, while the author himself died in
1603. It was probably in reference to one or both of these works that
Lower gently reproached Hariot for having allowed himself to be
anticipated in the public announcement of his discoveries in Algebra by
Vieta. It has already been seen, on page 101 above, what Torperley, the
friend of Vieta, wrote of his two masters in 1602, and also, on page
121, what Lower wrote to Hariot in 1610.
One is forced, therefore, to the conclusion that by 1600, if not some
time before, Hariot had completed his method in Algebra, and
distributed his well known problems to his admiring scholars. It has
also been seen how, from 1603 to the day of his death, he was occupied
in many other absorbing matters connected with Raleigh and Percy. Yet
he may have felt, as Lower expressed it, that when he surveyed his
storehouse of inventions this one of Algebra might seem in ‘comparison
of manie others smal or of no value.’ The matter is introduced here
mainly because certain foreign writers,rebutting Wallis’s patriotic
claims in behalf of Hariot, have not only accused Hariot of
appropriating Vieta’s rights, but they even describe the distinguished
English mathematician as working on the ‘Cartesian Method.’ While the
truth appears to be that Hariot’s method in Algebra, though not
published for more than thirty years after its invention, must date
from a time when Descartes was scarcely four years old.
On the other hand, on looking into Descartes’ great and original work
on geometry, first published in 1637, six years after Hariot’s Algebra
first saw the light in print, one is not disposed to accuse the great
philosopher of plagiarism because in working out his problems of great
novelty in reference to geometrical curves he employed any systems of
notation and calculation in algebra (Hariot’s among the others) that
happened to be before the world. The point or essence of Descartes’
work was geometry and not algebra. Therefore, in climbing to his loft,
he was perfectly justified in using the ladder which Hariot had left,
as it was then in general use, and was only an incidental aid in his
independent calculations, especially as the fame of his great
mathematical brother was well established, and he had been already
sixteen years in St Christopher’s. Vieta therefore had manifestly no
just reason to complain, and Descartes stands acquitted.
The history of Hariot’s _Praxis_ has attracted a great deal of
attention for more than two centuries and has long been obscured by
many misconceptions and erroneous statements. In the first place it has
been always said from the days of Collins that it was edited by Walter
Warner, and Wood adds that Warner was to have his pension continued by
Algernon Percy, for that scientific labor. There is evidence that
Warner, though employed on the work by Sir Thomas Aylesbury, was not
the sole editor. See Aylesbury’s Letter to the Earl on page 189.
The book led to a great deal of international or patriotic controversy,
and with great injustice to Hariot was treated by the English advocates
as his masterpiece in science. Wallis in 1685 in his History of
Algebra, after much correspondence with Collins and others on the
subject between 1667 and 1676, became Hariot’s English champion. The
controversy respecting the Methods of Hariot and of Descartes became as
warm as that respecting the discoveries of Leibnitz and of Newton.
Wallis ranked Oughtred’s _Clavis_ and Hariot’s _Praxis_ very high, and
because both were first printed in 1631, treated them as productions or
inventions of that year, whereas Hariot’s method, as we have seen, had
been long practically before his disciples; and was, ten years after
the author’s death, given to the world avowedly as an’ accessory’ only,
or preliminary treatise, that it ‘might suitably serve as a necessary
preparation or introduction to the study of Hariot’s remaining works,
the publication of which is now under serious consideration.’
Unfortunately this excellent scheme fell through, probably in
consequence of the death of the Earl of Northumberland, and perhaps
partly because of the death of Nathaniel Torporley who had long been
engaged in ‘penning the doctrine’ of Hariot’s mathematical papers. They
both died in 1632, shortly after the publication of the Praxis.
Wallis’s charge had a basis of truth, but it was narrow and petty. As
an Algebraist he seems to have lost sight of the main point, that
Descartes’ great work was on Geometry and not on Algebra, and that
Hariot’s method, though first printed in 1631, was almost as old as
Descartes himself. Montucla the French mathematician, near the close of
the last century, in his History of Mathematics, summed up the
controversy raised by Wallis including the minor one raised by Dr Zach
in 1785, clearing Descartes of Wallis’s charges and relegating Hariot
to the respectability of a second-rate mathematician. If Montucla’s
verdict be based on mathematical reasoning as loose and slipshod as is
his statement of the historical points of the case, to say nothing of
his utter ignorance of Hariot’s biography and true position as an
English man of science, one feels justified in rejecting it as
worthless : as one also is compelled to do the vapid conclusions drawn
from Montucla which have since found their way into many recent
biographical dictionaries and into many pretentious articles in learned
encyclopædias respecting Hariot and his works. The truth seems to be
that Hariot was unlucky and fell into oblivion accidentally. He was a
man of immense industry and great mental power, but perhaps careless of
his scientific and literary reputation. As has been seen, he always had
many irons in the fire, and was overtaken by death in the prime of
life, leaving, as his will shows, many things unfinished, and none of
his papers in a state ready for publication. He was surrounded by the
best of friends, but time and opportunity, as so often happens in the
affairs of busy men, worked against him, and he was well nigh consigned
to forgetfulness.
However, after a half century’s slumber, when the great fire of London
had destroyed his monument, and too late many scholars were minded to
attempt the recovery and preservation of memorials of the past, John
Collins the mathematician began soundings in the pool of oblivion for
Hariot and his papers. He and his correspondents fished up a great deal
of truth and history, but so mixed with error and conjecture that the
results, though interesting, are misleading.
In the ‘Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century,
Edited by Professor S.J. Rigaud, 2 volumes, Oxford 1841,’ 8°, are found
the following instructive and amusing passages :
As for Geysius, he published an Algebra and Stereometria divers years
before the first edition of the Clavis [of Oughtred, 1631] was extant
in Mr. Harriot’s method, out of which Alsted took what he published of
algebra in his Encylopasdia printed in 1630, the year before the Clavis
was first extant (see Christmannus and Raymarus). Mr. Harriot’s method
is now more used than Oughtred’s, and himself in the esteem of Dr.
Wallis not beneath Des Cartes. Dr. Hakewill, in his Apology, tells you
Harriot was the first that squared the area of a spherical triangle;
and I can tell you, by the perusal of some papers of Torporley’s it
appears that Harriot could make the sign of any arch at demand, and the
converse, and apply a table of sines to solve all equations, and
treated largely of figurate arithmetic. His papers fell into the hands
of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, father to the Lord Chancellor’s lady, where I
hope they still are, unless they had the hard fate to be lent out,
before the fire, and be burned, as some have said.
_Collins to Wallis, no date, circa_ 1670, _vol. ii, page_ 478.
As to Harriot, he was so learned, saith Dr. Pell, that had he published
all he knew in algebra, he would have left little of the chief
mysteries of that art unhandled. His papers fell into the hands of Sir
Thomas Aylesbury, who was father to the late Lord Chancellor’s
[Clarendon] Lady,by which means they fell into the Lord Chancellor’s
hands, to whom application was made by the members of the Royal Society
to obtain them: his lordship (then in the height of his dignity and
employments) gave order for a search to be made, and in result the
answer was, they could not be found. I am afraid the search was but
perfunctory, and that, if his lordship (now at leisure) were solicited
for them, he might write to his son the Lord Cornbury to make a
diligent search for them. One Mr. Protheroe, in Wales, was executor to
Mr. Harriot, and from him the Lord Vaughan, the Earl of Carbery’s son,
received more than a quire of Mr. Harriot’s Analytics. The Lord
Brounker has about two sheets of Harriot de Motu et Collisione
Corporum, and more of his I know not of: there is nothing of Harriot’s
extant but that piece which Mons. Garibal hath.
_Collint to Vernon, not dated but circa_ 1671, _vol. i, page_ 153.
Upon this passage Professor Rigaud makes the following note, written at
Oxford in 1841:
Harriot’s will is not to be found, but Camden says that he left his
property to Viscount Lisle and Sir Thomas Aylesbury. Lord Lisle’s share
of the papers appear to have been given up to his father-in-law, Henry
earl of Northumberland, who had been Harriot’s munificent patron, and
they descended with the family property to the E. of Egremont, by whom
a large portion has been given to the British Museum, and the remainder
are still preserved at Petworth. Sir Thomas Aylesbury’s share became
the property of his son-in-law Lord Chancellor Clarendon, to whom the
Royal Society applied, but, as it appears, without obtaining them. (See
Birch, Hist. Royal Society, vol. ii, pp. 120, 116, 309.)—_Vol. i, page_
153.
Here seems to be the germ of Professor Wallis’s charge of plagiarism
against Descartes, written to Collins twelve years before it appeared
in thefirst editionof his History of Algebra in English in 1685. It
subsequently took a wider range, and was strenuously defended by Wallis
when opposed:
That which I most valued in his [Des Cartes] method, and which pleased
me best, was the way of bringing over the whole equations to one side,
making it equal to nothing, and thereby forming his compound equations
by the multiplication of simples, from thence also determining the
number of roots, real or imaginary, in each. This artifice, on which
all the rest of his doctrine is grounded, was that which most made me
to set a value on him, presuming it had been properly his own; but
afterwards I perceived that he had it from Hariot, whose Algebra was
published after his death in the year 1631, six years before Des
Cartes’ Geometry in French in the year 1637 : and yet Des Cartes makes
no mention at all of Harriot, whom he follows in designing his species
by small letters, and the power: of them by the number of dimensions,
without the characters of _j, c, qq, &c._
_Walla to Collins, Oxford,_ 12 _April_ 1673, _vol, ii, page_ 573.
And had I but known of any precedent, (as since in Harriot I find one,
and I think but one √_—dddddd,)_ I should not have scrupled to follow
it; but I was then too young an algebraist to innovate without example.
Since that time I have been more venturous, and I find now that others
do not scruple to use it as well as I. [Just what Descartes did. He
‘innovated’ prior to 1637, when he took Hariot’s well recognized
notation in algebra to work out his problems in geometry for which
Hariot himself would have thanked him.]
_Wallis to Collins, May 6,_ 1673, _vol. ii, page_ 578.
One Torporley, long since, left a manuscript treatise in Latin in Sion
College, wherein is a much more copious table of figurate numbers,
which I have caused to be transcribed, with what he says de
combinationibus, to send to Mr. Strode.
On this passage, extracted from a letter from Collins to Baker, dated
the 19th of August, 1676, Professor Rigaud has the following note,
written in 1841, vol. ii, page 5 :
Nath. Torporley left his manuscripts to Sion College, where he spent
the latter years of his life ; but the greater part of them was
destroyed by the fire of London. Reading, in his catalogue of the
library, mentions only one, “Corrector Analyticus,” which is an attack
on Warner for the manner in which he had edited Harriot’s “Artis
Analyticæ Praxis.” This is a short tract, and incomplete. There is,
however, another volume, A. 37-39, entitled, “Algebraica, Tabulæ
Sinuum,&c.” in which Torporley’s hand may be certainly recognized.
Wood, in the list of his works, speaks of "Congestor opus
Mathematicam,— imperfect." A perfect copy of this treatise is in Lord
Maccles-field’s possession, and probably once belonged to Collins.
Perhaps the best comment that one can make on the wild and
extraordinary statements contained in the above extracts is to ask the
reader to read over Hariot’s Will,given entire on pages 193-203, and
especially this _Item_ respecting his Mathematical and other Writings,
and the Rev. Nathaniel Torporley, from which it will appear that all
his valued papers were bequeathed with great care to the Earl of
Northumberland, to be deposited in his library in a trunk with lock and
key, after they had been looked over and perused, by Mr Torporley, and
(the waste papers having been weeded out) the whole arranged by him ‘to
the end that _after hee doth vnderstand them_ he may make use in
penning such doctrine that belongs unto them for publique use.’ This,
of course, was to be done under the supervision of the four Executors,
who were persons of no less distinction than Sir Robert Sidney Knight
Viscount Lisle, John Protheroe Esquire, Thomas Aylesbury Esquire, and
Thomas Buckner Mercer.
ITEM I ordayne and Constitute the aforesaid Nathaniel Thorperley first
to be Overseer of my Mathematical Writings to be received of my
Executors to peruse and order and to separate the Chiefe of them from
my waste papers, to the end that after hee doth vnderstand them hee may
make use in penninge such doctrine that belongs vnto them for publique
vses as it shall be thought Convenient by my Executors and him selfe.
And if it happen that some manner of Notacions or writings of the said
papers shall not be understood by him then my desire is that it will
please him to confer with Mr Warner or Mr Hughes Attendants on the
afore said Earle Concerning the aforesaid double. And if hee be not
resolued by either of them That then hee Conferre with ihe aforesaid
John Protheroe Esquier or the aforesaid Thomas Alesbury Esquior. (I
hopeing that some or other of the aforesaid fower last nominated can
resolve him). And when hee hath had the use of the said papers soe
longe as my Executors and hee have agreed for the use afore said That
then he deliver them againe unto my Executors to be putt into a
Convenient Truncke with a locke and key and to be placed in my Lord of
Northumberlandes Library and the key thereof to be delivered into his
Lordshipps hands. And if at anie tyme after my Executors or the afore
said Nathaniell Thorperley shall agayne desire the use of some or all
of the said Mathematicall papers That then it will please the said
Earle to lett anie of the aforesaid to have them for theire use soe
long as shall be thought Convenient, and afterwards to be restored
agayne unto the Truncke in the afore said Earles Library. Secondly my
will and desire is that the said Nathaniell Thorperley be alsoe
Overseere of other written bookes and papers as my Executors and hee
shall thincke Convenient.
This will, of extraordinary interest, has fallen to our lot to exhume,
after many antiquaries and scholars had long sought it in vain. It was
recently discovered in the Archdeaconry Court of London, just the place
where one would least expect to find it. One has only to read the
document to read the character of the man—good, learned,affectionate,
charitable and just. He was carried off by a terrible disease, away
from home, but among friends. He left his affairs and fame in loving
hands. His will was proved on the 4th day after his death by two of the
Executors, Sir Thomas Aylesbury and Mr Buckner, with the right reserved
to the other two to act subsequently. It is found by papers in the
British Museum that Sir John Protheroe did act, for there is a very
long list of manuscripts, copied from Protheroe’s list of papers
delivered to Mr Torporley, which served as a receipt for them, and
which was returned with the papers.
Mr Torporley then, it is manifest, had in hand the papers and returned
them, but it is not apparent what amount of labor he bestowed upon
them. They do not appear to be properly arranged, nor have the waste
papers been weeded out. From Protheroe’s list and other circumstances
it is likely that nothing has been destroyed, except perhaps the
Raleigh accounts and the Irish papers in the ‘canvas baggs.’ The papers
were at Sion, and were placed in a trunk and delivered to the Earl, who
left the Tower only sixteen days after Hariot’s death. They
subsequently found their way to Petworth, another seat of the Earl,
where the trunk and half of the papers still remain, in the possession
of the Earl of Leconsfield, a branch of the Northumberland family. They
are briefly described in this manner by Mr Alfred J. Horwood in the
Sixth Report of the Historical Manuscript Commission for 1877, page
319, folio.
A black leather box containing several hundred leaves of figures and
calculations by Hariot.
A large bundle of Hariot’s papers. They are arranged in packets by
Professor Rigaud. Spots on the Sun. Comets of 1607 and 1618. The Moon.
Jupiter’s Satellites. Projectiles, Centre of Gravity, Reflection of
bodies. Triangles. Snell’s Eratosthenes Batavus. Geometry. Calendar.
Conic Sections. De Stella Martis. Drawings of Constellations, papers on
Chemistry and Miscellaneous Calculations. Collections from Observations
of Hannelius, Warner, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe. On the vernal and
autumnal equinoxes, the solstices, orbit of the Earth, length of the
year, &c. Algebra.
A similar collection, but not yet arranged, catalogued, numbered or
bound, is carefully preserved in the Manuscript Department of the
British Museum (Additional, 6782-6789), in eight thick Solander cases,
probably as much in bulk as the Petworth papers. They were presented to
the Museum by the Earl of Egremont in 1810. Why the two collections
were separated does not appear. The Museum papers contain much that is
waste, but much also that is of importance equal probably to those at
Petworth. Mr Torporley was in effect appointed by Hariot his literary
and scientific editor under the direction of the Executors. No papers
were left ready for publication. It must have required great study and
labor to master them sufficiently to pen for public use such doctrine
or science as belonged to them. Torporley lived in Shropshire, but a
few years after Hariot’s death he retired from his rectorship and
removed to London,taking rooms in 1630 at Sion College in London Wall,
when that institution was first founded. It contained then as now a
library for the use of the Clergy, and a few suites of apartments for
those who desired to reside on the premises. It never was a College or
place of instruction, but a sort of guild or Clergyman’s Club. At this
time Mr Torporley was about seventy years old. He died in his chambers
at Sion College in April 1632, and was buried on the 17th of that month
in the Church of St Alphage, close by. In a nuncupative will spoken the
14th ofApril, a copy of which is before the writer, he left his books
and manuscripts to the Sion Col ege Library. A complete list of about
170 books and several manuscripts is preserved in the ‘Donors’ Book.’ A
few of the books are said to have been destroyed by the fire of London,
but probably none of the manuscripts were lost.
Torporley’s manuscripts, as has been stated, have often been referred
to, and sometimes copied, but their true history and character is
explained by Hariot’sWill. There are really but two manuscripts
relating to Hariot. The more important one comprises 116
closely-written folio leaves, or 232 pages, all in Torporley’s
handwriting. It bears no title or designation. Hence various writers
who have seen it, from Collins, Wood, and Dr Zach, have given it
different names, such as, _‘Ephemeris Chysometria,’ ‘Congestor opus
Matbematicum,’_ etc. but it appears to be nothing more nor less than
Torporley’s attempt to pen out such doctrine as he found in Hariot’s
papers. The leaves are numbered, 1 to 16 containing a Treatise on
Hariot’s Theory of Numbers. Leaves 17 to 25 are tables of the divisors
of odd numbers up to 20,300. On the verso of leaf 25 the Theory of
Numbers is resumed, extending to the recto of 27. On the verso of leaf
27 begins the treatise on the properties of Triangles and ends on leaf
34. Leaves 35 to 55 comprise examples of Algebraical processes, and
leaves 56 to 116 contain Tables (probably tabulæ sinuum ?) up to 180°.
On the second leaf the Author speaks of himself as working out, or
working on Hariot’s principles, and also as making use of the writings
of Vieta. He adds:
‘And since it is our principal design to explain the improvement in
this science[the Properties of Numbers and Triangles] discovered by our
friend Thomas Hariot; but he neither completely reformed it (which
indeed was not necessary) nor gave a full account of it, but only
strengthened it where it was defective, and by treating in his own way
the points of the science which were heretofore more difficult,
rendered them clear and easy.’
This manuscript was probably intended for another printed volume of
Hariot’s mathematical works, but owing to the deaths about the same
time, 1632, of the venerable editor and the noble patron this work
never bore a definite name and never saw the light of the press.
CORRECTOR ANALYTICUS
Artis pofthumx THOMÆ HARIOTI
Vt Mathematici eximij, perraro
Vt Philofophi Audentes, frequentius errantis
Vt Hominis evanidi, infigniter
Ad
Fidedigniorem refutationem Philopfeudofophiæ
Atomifticæ;, per cum Reducis, et præ
cæteris eius Portentis
feriò
corripiendæ, anathematyzandæq
Compendiu Antimonitorfi, et Speciminale
exanthorati ia Senioris
Na: Torporley.
Vt
Noverit Arbiter Caveat Emptor.
non bene Ripæ
Creditur, ipfe Aries etiam nunc Vellera ficcat.
_Virgil, Ecl._ iii. 94,95,]
This Second Manuscript is a pretentious but small affair. It was
manifestly written at Sion College after the _Praxis_ appeared in 1631.
It is only the preface or the opening of a growl of envy or
disappointment. It shows clearly that Torporley himself was not the
editor of the Algebra or Praxis. The above is the pedantic title-page,
given line for line and verbatim.
The manuscript is in small quarto, and exclusive of the title (which,
indeed, is the nub of the achievement) contains only nine pages,
breaking off abruptly in the middle of a sentence. He criticises the
editors of Hariot’s Algebra, the executors Aylesbury and Protheroe,
aided by Warner, who were all eminent mathematicians. He speaks of the
administrators or editors as if more than one, and does not mention
Warner, or lead us to believe that he was sole editor. Only a small
portion of this projected criticism seems ever to have been written. It
appears to have been begun in senile peevishness, containing only a few
prefatory remarks and discussing some algebraical questions with the
fancied errors of the editors. No mention is made of the’Atomic
Theory,’as promised on the title-page, which is here done into English,
and is as follows:—
THE ANALYTICAL CORRECTOR
of the posthumous scientific writings
of THOMAS HARRIOT.
As an excellent Mathematician one who very seldom
erred
As a bold Philosopher one who occasionally erred,
As a frail Man one who notably erred
For
the more trustworthy refutation of the pseudo-philosophic
atomic theory, revived by him and, outside his
other strange notions, deserving of
reprehension and anathema.
A Compendious Warning with specimens by the aged
and retired-from-active-life
Na: Torporley.
So that
The critic may know
The buyer may beware.
It is not safe to trust to the bank,
The bell-wether himself is drying his fleece.
The ‘Corrector Analyticus’ may be found printed in full (but without
the quaint titles) in ‘The Historical Society of Science. A Collection
of Letters illustrative of Science, edited by J. O. Halliwell,’ London,
1841, 8°, Appendix, pages 109-116. ForTorporley’s curious paper
entitled ‘A Synopsis of the Controversie of Atoms,’ see Brit. Mus. Mss,
Birch 4458, 2.
Mr Torporley informs us, and the papers appear to bear him out in the
statement, that Hariot wrote memoranda, problems, etc. on loose pieces
of paper, and then arranged them in sets fastened together according to
the subjects treated of. He adds, ‘First then let me speak of Hariot’s
method, of which frequent mention will have to be made in the following
pages; so that the reader may understand why some things are stated and
some passed over: here I cannot but complain, that I find it a serious
defect that his Commentators have so completely transformed it [the
Praxis] that they not only do not retain his orderbut not evenhis
language.’ Again he writes, ‘But not even those well-thought-out and
necessary to be known matters, which have been delivered to us, have
been handed down to posterity by his administrators with the fidelity
and accuracy promised.’ The suspicion is raised that Torporley’s age
and dilatoriness compelled the accomplished executors to take the
editorial matter in hand themselves and hinc iliae lacrymæ.
On the back of the above title-page is another attempt of the same sort
as follows, showing that this deed of pedantry was committed at Sion
College:
CORRECTOR
sive
Notæ in Analyticam
Novam, Novatam, Posthuma
quatenus
Fallacem, Defectivam, Extrariam
cum
Apodictica refutatione Atomorum
Somnij, præ cæteris Novatorum
portentis corripiendi Ana-
thematizandiq
Ex Collegio Sion Londinenfi
perfuncti Senis Artemq reponentis
NT
Extremu hoc munus morientis
habetor :
Σĸηρον προς κέντρονλ α κτρον λακτίζειν
[Greek Text]
nee bene Ripæ
Creditur ipse Aries etia nunc Vellera ficcat.
There are one or two unimportant papers among the Torperley manuscripts
that bear marks of having belonged to the Hariot papers, and there is a
manuscript by Warner, entitled, ‘Certayne Definitions of the
Planisphere.’ Any one curious in the history of Torperley may find in
the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1636, page 364, how his
property was purloined by Mr Spencer, the first Librarian of Sion
College. He was sued by Mistress Payne the administratrix and was
compelled to disgorge _£4.0_ in money, eleven diamond rings, eight gold
rings, two bracelets, etc. Then Archbishop Laud took away Spencer’s
librarianship, and let him drop.
Mr William Spence of Greenock published in Nov. 1814, a work entitled,
‘Outlines of a Theory of Algebraical Equations deduced from the
Principles of Harriott, and extended to the Fluxional or differential
Calculus. By William Spence. London, for the Author, by Davis and
Dickson, 1814, 8°, _iv and 80 pages._ Privately printed, intended
‘exclusively for the perusal of those gentlemen to whom it is
addressed.’ He says in his prefatory note that—
‘As the principles are drawn from that theory of equations, by which
Harriott has so far advanced the science of algebra.’ The author says,
page I,’ Until the publication of Harriot’s _Artis Analytica Praxis,_
no extended theory of equations was given. Harriot considered
algebraical equations merely as analytical expressions, detached wholly
from the operations by which they might be individually produced ; and,
carrying all the terms over to one side, he assumed the hypothesis,
that, as in that state the equation was equal to nothing, it could
always be reduced to as many simple factors as there were units in the
index of its highest power.’
Between 1606 and 1609 a very interesting and historically instructive
correspondence took place between Kepler and Hariot upon several
important scientific subjects. Five of the letters are given in full in
‘Joannis Keppleri Alio-rumque Epistolæ Mutuæ. [Frankfort] 1718,’ folio,
to which the reader is referred, but a brief abstract of them may not
be out of place here. The letters are numbered from 222 to 226 and fill
pages 373 to 382. The correspondence was begun by Kepler:
_Letter_ 122, _dated Prague,_ 11 _October,_ 1606, _from John Kepler_
_to Thomas Hariot,_
Kepler had heard of Hariot’s acquirements in Natural Philosophy from
his friend John Eriksen. Would be glad to know Hariot’s views as to the
origin and essential differences of colours; also on the question of
refraction of rays of light; and the causes of the Rainbow; and of
haloes round the sun.
_Letter_ 223, _dated London,_ 11 _December, 1606,from_
_Thomas Hariot to John Kepler,_
Had received with pleasure Kepler’s letter; but should not be able to
answer it at length, being in indifferent health, so that it was not
easy to write or even carefully to reflect. Sends a table of the
results of experiments on equal bulks of various liquids and
transparent solids (thirteen in number, including spring, rain, and
salt water; Spanish and Rhenish wine; vinegar; spirits of wine; oils
and glass). The angle of incidence is 30° in each case; also the
specific gravity of each substance is given. Then he discusses the
reason why refraction takes place. Promises to write on the Rainbow;
but will merely say at present that it is to be explained by the
reflection on the concave superficies and the refraction at the convex
superficies of each separate drop.
_Letter_ 224 _is from John Kepler to Thomas Hariot, dated at Prague,_
11 _August,_ 1607.
Thanks Hariot for his table, which supplies matter for serious
consideration. Asks questions as to how he defines the angles of
incidence and refraction; and goes on to discuss the reasons of
refraction. Agrees with Hariot as to his views about the Rainbow; but
will be very glad to receive his treatises on Colours and the Rainbow.
_Letter_ 225 _is from Thomas Hariot to John Kepler, dated at Syon,_
_near London,_ 13 _July_ (o.s.), 1608.
The departure of Eriksen and other matters do not allow leisure to
write at length. The turpentine (oleum terebinth inum) was not the same
as that experimented on by Kepler but a purer and lighter article (Sp.
grav. ’87). The angle of incidence is understood as defined by Alhazen
and Vitellio [first published 1572]. Points out some errors in
Vitellio’s second table of refractions. As to the causes of refraction,
Hariot believes in the theory of the vacuum; ‘where we still stick in
the mud’. Hopes God (Deum optimum maximum) will soon put an end to
this. Wishes for Kepler’s meteorological records for the last two
years, and will send his own notes in return. Gilbert, author of a work
on the magnet, had recently died, leaving in his brother’s hands a book
entitled ‘De Globo et Mundo nostro sub lunari Philosophia nova contra
Peripateticos, lib. 5." [A treatise, in five books, on Natural
Philosophy, in answer to the Peripatetics.] The book is likely to be
published before the end of the year. Hariot had read some chapters;
and saw that Gilbert defends the doctrine of a vacuum. Not to leave a
vacuum on this page (says Hariot), it is remarkable that though gold is
both heavy and opaque, when beaten out into gold-leaf the light of a
candle can be seen through it, though it appears of a green colour.
_Letter 226, from John Kepler to Thomas Hariot, it dated from_
_Prague, September,_ 1609.
Excuses himself for not having replied sooner; having been very busy;
but would not lose the present opportunity of writing. Discusses the
questions of refraction and the vacuum. Commentaries on Mars entitled
‘Astronomia Nova [Greek Text] or Physica Cælestis,’ have been published
at Frankfort; has not a copy by him. Regrets to hear of the death of
Gilbert. Hopes his work on Magnetism will also be published; and that
Erikson will bring a copy with him. Promises to send a copy of his own
meteorological observations; and hopes to receive Hariot’s.
These studies in optics and this correspondence with the learned Kepler
indicate Hariot’s great advancement in natural philosophy as early as
1606 to 1609 and give an earnest of his inventive genius and scientific
enterprise with his telescope in the astronomical discoveries which
immediately followed in 1609 to 1613. Before awarding all the prizes
for discoveries and inventions in mathematics, philosophy and natural
science to claimants throughout the wide Republic of Letters, let
modest Hariot be heard and examined. Let his papers and all his
credentials be laid out before the high court of science, not in the
light of today, but contemporaneously with those of Tycho, Kepler,
Galileo, Snell, Vieta and Descartes. Hariot himself has claimed
nothing, but Justice and Historical Truth are bound to assign him a
niche appropriate to his merits.
To show that Hariot, like his friends Hakluyt and Purchas, was alive to
everything geographical as well as mathematical going on, the following
is given from the original manuscript among the Hariot papers in the
British Museum (Add. 6789):
Three reasons to prove that there is a passage from the North’ west
into the South-sea.
1. The tydes in Port Nelson (where Sr. Tho : Button did winter, were
constantly, 15, or, 18, foote ; wc is not found in any Bay Throughout
the world but in such seas as lie open att both ends to the mayne
Ocean.
2. Every strong Westerne winde did bring into the Harbor where he
wintered, soe much water, that the Neap-tydes were equall to the
Spring-tydes, notwtstanding yt the harbor was open only to ye E.N.E.
3. In comming out of the harbor, shaping his course directly North,
about, 60, degrees, he found a stronge race of a tyde, set-ting dueEast
and West, wc in probabilitie could be noe other thing, than the tyde
comming from the West, and retourning from the East,
Among the manuscripts in the handwriting of Hariot in the British
Museum (Add. 6789) are these samples of ingenious trifling. No evidence
is forthcoming that he was ever a married man, but that he occasionally
let himself down from pure mathematics and high philosophy and amused
himself with anagrams is plain enough. Here are a few specimens on his
own name.
ANAGRAMS ON THOMAS HARIOTUS
Tu homo artis has traho hosti mufa
Homo has vt artis O trahit hos mufa
Homo hasta vtris oh, os trahit mufa
vitus oho trahit mifas
rutis oho, trahis mutis
Humo astra hosti oho, fum Charitas.
If the pertingent Reader still craves more evidence of the extent of
Hariot’s friendships, and the universality of his acquirements, let him
read the following pithy, quaint, and beautiful tribute paid to him by
blind Old Homer’s Chapman in 1616. It is found in the Preface to the
Reader in the first complete edition of Homer’sworks translated by
George Chapman, London [1616], fo.
No coference had with any one liuing in al the noueltiet I prefume I
haue found. Only fome one or two places I haue fhewed to my worthy and
moft learned friend, M. Harriots, for his cenfure how much mine owne
weighed: whofe iudgement and knowledge in all kinds, I know to be
incomparable, and bottomlefle ; yea, to be admired as much, as his moft
blameles life, and the right facred expence of his time, is to be
honoured and reuerenced. Which affirmation of his cleare vnmatchednefle
in all manner of learning; I make in contempt of that naftie objection
often thruft vpon me ; that he that will iudge, muft know more then he
of whom he iudgeth ; for fo a man fhould know neither God nor himfelf.
Another right learned, honeft, and entirely loued friend of mine, M.
Robert Hews, I muft needs put into my confest conference touching
Homer, though very little more than that I had with M. Harriots. Which
two, I proteft, are all, and preferred to all.
It remains to say two words more about Baron Zach’s’ discovery’ of the
Hariot papers at Petworth in 1784. This remarkable story has been told
many times, in many books, and in many languages. It has found its way
into many modern dictionaries and grave encyclopædias, but it always
appears with an unsatisfactory and suspicious flavor. Dr Zach’s
‘discovery’ is found cropping up all over the continent, and everywhere
is made paramount to Hariot’s papers, while Oxford is blamed for not
giving the young German his dues!
It seems that Dr Zach, a young man, was in England with Count Bruhl,
who had married the dowager Lady Egremont. He thus had easy access to
the old Percy Library at Petworth, in Sussex, where was stored, as we
have seen by Hariot’s will, the black trunk containing his mathematical
writings as bequeathed to the 9th Earl of Northumberland. In 1785 Dr
Zach announced with a truly scholastic flourish in Bode’s Berlin
Ephemeris for 1788 his remarkable ‘discovery’ of the papers of Thomas
Hariot previously known as an eminent Algebraist or Mathematician, but
now elevated to the rank also of a first-class English Astronomer. The
next year, 1786, is celebrated in the annals of English science from
the circumstance of Oxford’s having accepted a proposition from Dr Zach
to publish his account of Hariot and his writings. The Royal Academy of
Brussels in 1788 printed in its Memoirs Dr Zach’s paper on the planet
Uranus, with a long note relative to the discovery at Petworth.
The Berlin paper immediately upon publication was translated into
English and extensively circulated in this country, conducing, it is
suspected, more to the renown of Dr Zach than to that of Hariot. In
1793 Bode’s Jahrbuch gave from the pen of Dr Zach an account of the
Comets of 1607 and 1618, with Hariot’s Observations thereon. But these
observations were given with so many errors and misreadings, as shown
by Professor Rigaud, that they were soon pronounced worthless, to the
discredit of Hariot rather than of his eminent editor. But matters came
to a crisis in 1794, nine years after the grand flourish of the first
announcement at Berlin. Dr Zach sent to Oxford for publication his
abstract of certain of the scientific papers, and the Earl of Egremont
intrusted to the University Dr Zach’s selection of the original papers.
Zach’s abstracts were merely sufficient to identify himself with the
works of Hariot, but he had performed no real editorial labours, and
had not ‘pen’d the doctrine’ contained in them. Here were years of
useful work to be done which the University dreamed not of, so the
whole matter was referred to Professors Robertson and Powell, who both
reported adversely in 1798, or before. In 1799 all the Hariot papers
were returned to Petworth.
In the mean time the full translation of Dr Zach’s account of his
‘discovery,’ with some curious additions, found its way into Dr
Hutton’s Dictionary of Mathematics, under Hariot, 1796, 2 volumes in
quarto. This publication gave an air of solemn record and history to
the transactions, insomuch that Oxford began to be blamed for
withholding from the press Dr Zach’s great work. Oxford preserved a
becoming silence. In 1803 Dr Zach published at Gotha in his Monatliche
Correspondenz a fragment of that remarkable letter from the Earl of
Northumberland to Hariot (which letter we have shown to be Lower’s, see
p. 120). This publication, together with the reprint of the original
Berlin paper by Zach in the second edition of Hutton’s Dictionary in
1815 without alteration, seemed to bring the matter to a point. Oxford
was obliged to rise and explain.
The whole question was inquired into. Professor Robertson’s original
report was brought out and sent to Dr David Brewster, who printed it in
his Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for 1822, volume vi, page 314, in
an article on the Hariot papers. In the meanwhile, in 1810, that
portion of the Hariot papers that did not go to Oxford was presented to
the British Museum by the Earl of Egremont. The division of the papers
(on what principle it is difficult to guess) was unquestionably Dr
Zach’s. The value is no doubt much depreciated by the separation. Under
all these circumstances no one can wonder at the Oxford decision, or
that the papers were deemed not worthy of publication. Yet under other
circumstances it is almost certain that the two collections when worked
together will yield valuable materials for the life of Hariot and the
history and progress of English science, discovery, and invention. To
Professor S. F. Rigaud is due the credit for the most part of working
out the crooked and entangled history of the Zachean fiasco, which has
apparently depreciated the real value of these papers. Professor
Rigaud’s papers may be seen in the Royal Institution Journal, 1831,
volume ii, pages 267-271, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, iii,
125, and in the Appx to Bradley’s Works. Now to pick up a few dropped
stitches. Notices of Hariot by Camden, Aubrey, Hakewill, and others are
omitted from press of matter. Gabriel Harvey in 1593, in his’ Pierces
Supererogation,’ page 190, exclaims ‘and what profounde Mathematician
like Digges, Hariot, or Dee esteemeth not the pregnant Mechanician?’
MrJ.O.Halliwell’s Collection of Letters referred to on page 174, though
falling late under our eye, is most acceptable and thankfully used.
Several letters of Sir William Lower are printed from the originals in
the British Museum. And so is John Bulkley’s dedication to Hariot of
his work on the Quadrature of the Circle, dated Kal. Martii, 1591, the
original manuscript of which is in Sion College. There is also an
interesting letter from Hariot to the Earl dated Sion June 13, 1619,
respecting the doctrine of reflections as communicated to Warner and
Hues for the use of the Earl. But the most important letter is the
following on page 71 from Sir Thomas Aylesbury, one of Hariot’s
executors, to the Earl of Northumberland, respecting some remuneration
for the extra services of Warner in assisting him in passing Hariot’s
‘Artis Analyticæ Praxis’ through the press :
Rt. Ho. May it plese your löp. July 5, 1631.
I presumed heretofore to moue your löp on the behalf of Mr. W. for some
consideration to be had of his extraordinary expense in attending the
publication of Mr. H. book after the copy was finished. The same humble
request I am induced to renew by reson of his present wants occasioned
by that attendance.
For his literary labour and paines taken in forming the work and
fitting it for the publik view, he looks for no other reward then your
löps acceptance therof as an honest discharge of his duty. But his long
attendance through vnexpected difficulties in seeking to get the book
freely printed, and after that was vndertaken the friuolous delaies of
the printers and slow preceding of the presse, wch no intreties of his
or myne could remedy, drew him to a gretter expence then his meanes
would here, including both your löps pencion and the arbitrary help of
his frends. It is this extraordinary expense, wch he cannot recouer wch
makes both him and me for him appele to your Löps goodnei and bounty
for some tollerable mitigation thereof.
I purpose God willing to set forth other peeces of Mr. H. wherein by
reson of my owne incombrances I must of necessitie desire the help of
Mr. W. rather then of any other, whereto I find him redy enough because
it tends to your löps service, and may the more freely trouble him, yf
he receive some little encouragement from your löp towards the
repairing of the detrement that lies still vpon him by his last
imploiment. But for the future my intention it to haue the impression
at my owne charge, and not depend on the curtesy of those
mechaniks,making account that wch may seeme to be saued by the other
way will not countervaile the trouble and tedious prolongation of the
busines. But the copies being made perfect and faire written for the
presse they shall be sufficiently bound to deliuer the books perfectly
clen out of theire hands, and by this meanes the trouble and charge of
attending the presse will be saued. Therfore my Lo. what you do now
will be but for this once, and in such proportion as shall best like
you to favour the humble motion of him who is
Allway most redy at your Löps commaund _ .
_Endorsed in the handwriting of Warner,_
Sr Th. A. letters about my busines.
[B. M. Birch, 4396, 87.]
Notwithstanding the plain initials T. A. Mr Halliwell erroneously
attributes this letter to Torporley, who had been in his grave three
months. The handwriting is not Torporley’s but Warner’s. The Earl died
on the 5th of November following. T. A. unquestionably stands for Sir
Thomas Aylesbury, who, as executor and good friend, had the matter in
hand. Indeed Warner’s endorsement settles the question of authorship.
Six shillings and eight pence were paid for Hariot’s knell, and £4 were
paid as his legacy to the parish for the poor, according to memoranda
supplied by Mr Edwin Freshfleld from the Records of St Christopher’s.
See Will, page 200.
Hariot had a lease from Raleigh of ‘Pinford grounds,’ at Sherburne, for
fifty-eight years, but the King wanted it for Carr, so of course the
title was found defective.
In conclusion, before laying down the pen with which has been exhumed
and set up on a new pedestal one of England’s worthiest of her many
forgotten Worthies, let the holder crave the indulgence of the reader
for the illogical, wordy and mixed style of this essay. He is perfectly
aware of these shortcomings, but puts in the plea that while groping in
the past as if blindfolded he has been decoyed on step by step by the
unexpected recovery of new materials after the others were in type, so
that as often as he had finished his labor of love new facts have
turned up which he had not the heart to reject. So he has incorporated
them one after another as best he could. The results are more
inartistic and crude than he could have wished, but he hesitates not on
that account to invite lovers of and believers in the Truth of History
to the banquet he has prepared.
A well-dined Reader is not likely, the writer thinks, to quarrel with
his dessert because he has to pick out, with some little patience, the
dainty meats of the nuts he has to arrange and crack for himself.
Repetition, and perhaps some contradiction, are acknowledged. But
meandering thoughts and ill-digested narratives, though tedious, are
not criminal. When these new materials have dried in the noon-day sun
for a year and a day, the writer then, or at the expiration of the
Horatian period, may bring them back to his anvil to be re-hammered.
May they then prove as true as they now seem new, is the wish of the
admirer of Thomas Hariot, the first historian of Virginia, the friend
of Sir Walter Raleigh, the companion of Henry Percy, and the Benefactor
of Mankind.
THE WILL of THOMAS HARIOT
Recorded in the Archdeaconry Court of London
IN THE NAME OF
GOD Amen ye nine and twentieth daie of june, in the yeare of or Lord
God 1621 And in ye yeares of the reigne of or Soueraigne Lord James by
the Grace of God of England Scotland Fraunce & Ireland Kinge Defender
of the Faythe & (that is to saie) of England Fraunce & Ireland the
nineteenth And of Scotland the fower & fiftieth I THOMAS HARRIOT of
Syon in the County of Midd Gentleman being troubled in my bodie wth
infirmities. But of pfecte minde & memorie Laude & prayse be giuen to
Almightie God for the same doe make & ordayne this my last will and
testamt. In manner and forme following (viz) First & principally I
Comitte my Soule in to the hands of Almighty God my maker and of his
sonne Jesus Christe my Redeemer of whose merritts by his grace wrought
in mee by the holy Ghoste I doubte not but that I am made ptaker, to
thend that I may enioye the Kingdome of heaven ppared for the electe.
Item my will is that if I die in Londn that my bodie bee interred in
the same pishe Churche of the house where I lye the we" I comitte to
the discrecon of my Executors hereafter named, Excepte taking the
advise and direccon of the right honorable my very good Lord the EARLE
OF NORTHUMBERLAND if it bee his pleasure to haue me buryed at Ilseworth
in ye County of Midd And if it be the pleasure of God that I die at
Syon I doe ordayne that my buriall bee at ye said Churche of Ilseworth
w’out question Item I will & bequeath vnto the aforesaid Earle One
wooden Boxe full or neere full of drawne Mappes standing nowe at the
Northeast windowe of that Roome wch is Called the plor at my house in
Syon, And if it pleaseth his Lorpp to haue anie other Mappes or Chartes
drawne by hand or printed Or anie Bookes or other thinges that I haue I
desire my Extors that hee may haue them according to his pleasure at
reasonable rates excepte my Mathematicall papers in anie other sorte
then is here after menconed Excepting alsoe some other thinges giuen
away in Legacies hereafter alsoe specified Item I bequeath vnto the
right honorable Sr ROBERT SYDNEY KNIGHT VICOUNT LISLE, One Boxe of
papers being nowe vppon the table in my Library at Syon, conteyning
fiue quires of paper, more or lesse wch were written by the last Lord
Harrington, and Coppyed out of some of my Mathematicall papers for his
instrucon Alsoe I doe acknowledge that I haue two newe greate globes
wch haue Cous of Leather the wch I borrowed of the said LORD LISLE And
my will is that they bee restored vnto him againe Item I giue vnto JOHN
PROTHEROE of Hawkesbrooke in the Countie of Carmarthen Esquier One
furnace wth his apputnnce out of the North Clossett of my Library at
Syon. Item I giue vnto NATHANIELL THORPERLEYof Salwarpe in the Countie
of Worcester Clarke One other furnace wth his apputnnce out of the same
Clossett. Item I glue vnto my servaunte CHRISTOPHER TOOKE one other
furnace wth his apputennce out of the same Clossett Alsoe I glue to him
an other furnace out of the South Clossett of my said Lybrarie Item I
give and bequeath vnto Mris BUCKNER wife vnto THOMAS BUCKNER Mercer at
whose house being in St Christophers pishe I nowe lye, and hereafter
nominated one of my Executors the some of fiffteene poundes towards the
repacons of some damages that I haue made, or for other vses as shee
shall thincke Convenient’ Item I giue vnto Mr JOHN BUCKNER theire
eldest sonne the some of fiue poundes Item I giue & bequeath vnto my
Cozen THOMAS YATES my sisters sonne fifty poundes towardes the paiemt.
of his debte and not otherwise, But if his debt doe fall out to be
lesse then fifty poundes then the residue to remayne to himselfe Item
to JOHN HARRIOTT Late servaunte to Mr Doleman of Shawe neere Newbury ín
Barkeshire and being the sonne of my vnckle John Harriotte but nowe
married and dwelling in Churche peene about a Myle westward from the
said Shawe, I doe giue and bequeath fifty poundes Item I giue and
bequeath vnto CHRISTOPHER TOOKE my foresaid servaunte one hundred
poundes. Item I giue & bequeath vnto myservaunte JOHN SHELLER fiue
poundes more then the forty shillinges wch I haue of his in
Custodie,being money given vnto him at sevall tymes by my frends wch in
all is seauen poundes to bee imployed for his vse according to the
discrecon of my Executors for ye placing of him wth an other Master
Item I giue and bequeath to JOANE my servaunte fiue poundes more then
her wages. Item I giue and bequeath vnto my svaunte JANE wch serveth
vnder the said JONE fortie shillinges more then her wages wch wages is
twenty shillinges by yeare Item I giue and bequeath to my auncient
svaunte CHRISTOPHER KELLETT a Lymning paynter dwelling neare
PettyFraunce in Westminster fiue poundes Item to my aincient servaunte
JOANE wife to Paule Chapman dwelling in Brayneford end I bequeath
fortie shillinges. Item I giue vnto the aforesaid EARLE OF
NORTHUMBERLAND my two pspectiue trunckes wherewth I vse espetially to
see Venus horned like the Moone and the Spout in the Sonne The glasses
of wch trunckes I desire to haue remooved into two other of the fayrest
trunckes by my said servaunte CHRISTOPHER TOOKE Item I bequeath vnto
euyone of my Executors hereafterwards to be named, One pspectiue
truncke a peece of the best glasses, and ye fayrest trunckes, as my
said servaunte Can best fitt to theire liking Item I giue vnto my said
servaunte CHRISTOPHER TOOKE the residue of my Cases of pspectiue
trunckes wth the other glasses of his owne making fitted for pspectiue
trunckes (excepting two great longe trunckes Consisting of many ptes
wch I giue vnto the said EARLE OF NORTHUMBERLAND to remayne in his
Library for such vses as they may be put vnto, Alsoe I bequeath the
dishes of iron Called by the spectacle makers tooles to grinde
spectacles, and other pspectiue glasses for trunckes vnto my foresaid
servaunte CHRISTOPHER TOOKE, Item Concerninge my debts, I doe
acknowledg that at this psente I doe owe moneyes to Monseir Mayornes a
Potycarie More to Mr Wheately a Potticary dwelling neare the Stockes at
the East end of Cheapeside Item to my Brewer dwelling at Braynford end
Item to Mr John Bill Staconer for Bookes The some of the debte to all
fower before meneoned I thincke and Judge not to bee much more or lesse
then forty poundes. Item I doe acknowledge to owe vnto Mr Christopher
Ingram keeper of the house of Syon for the aforesaid EARLE OF
NORTHUMBERLAND Three thousand sixe hundred of Billett wch I desire to
be repayed vnto him Item I doe acknowledge that I haue some written
Coppies to the number of twelue or fowerteene (more or lesse) lent vnto
me by Thomas Allen of Gloster Hall in Oxford M` of Artes vnto whome I
desire my Executors hereafter named to restore them safely according to
the noate that hee shall deliu of them (I doubting whether I haue anie
true noate of them my selfe) Item I make Constitute and ordayne theise
fowre following my Executors Namely the aforesaid Sr ROBERT SIDNEY
KNIGHT VISCOUNT LYSLE (if his Lopp may take soe many paynes in my
behalfe) Also JOHN PROTHEROE of Hawkesbrooke in the County of
Carmarthen Esquio` Alsoe THOMAS ALESBURY of Westminster Esquior Lastly
THOMAS BUCKNER Mercer dwelling in St Xpofers pishe in Lond not farre
from ye Royall Exchainge vnto wch Executors I giue full power & aucty
to vse theire owne discrecons in paying theire Charges in my behalfe
out of the rest of my good And if my Bookes wth other goods doe in
value Come to more then I haue afore supposed First I desire them to
bestowe soe much vppon ye poore not exceeding twenty poundes as they
shall thincke Convenient somee pte whereof I giue vnto the poore of the
hospitall in Christes Churche in Lond, Some pte vnto the said pishe of
St Xpofors where I nowe lye, and some pte wch I would haue the greater)
vnto the poore of the píshe of Isleworth neere Syon in the Countie of
Midd Secondly out of the said residue of my good, my will is, That the
said Executors take some pte thereof for theire owne vses according to
theire discretions Lastly my will and desire is that they bestowe the
value of the rest vppon Sr Thomas Bodleyes Library in Oxford, or imploy
it to such Charitable & pious vses as they shall thincke best Item my
will and desire is that Robert Hughes gentleman and nowe attendant
vppon th’afore said EARLE OF NORTHUMBERLAND for matters of Learning bee
an ouseer at the prizing of my Bookes, and some other thinges as my
Executors and hee shall agree vnto Item I ordayne and Constitute the
aforesaid NATHANIELL THORPERLEY first to be Ouseer of my Mathematicall
Writinges to be receiued of my Executors to pvse and order and to
sepate the Cheife of them from my waste papers, to the end that after
hee doth vnderstand them hee may make vse in penninge such doctrine
that belonges vnto them for publique vses as it shall be thought
Convenient by my Executors and him selfe And if it happen that some
manner of Notacons or writinges of the said papers shall not be
vnderstood by him then my desire is that it will please him to Conferre
wth Mr Warner or Mr Hughes Attendants on the aforesaid Earle Concerning
the aforesaid doubte. And if hee be not resolued by either of them That
then hee Conferre wth the aforesaid JOHN PROTHEROE Esquior or the
aforesaid THOMAS ALESBURY Esquior. (I hoping that some or other of the
aforesaid fower last nominated can resolue him) And when hee hath had
the vse of the said papers see longe as my Executors and hee have
agreed for the vse afore said That then he deliu them againe vnto my
Executors to be putt into a Convenient Truncke with a locke & key and
to be placed in my Lord of Northumberlandes Library and the key thereof
to be delifted into his Lordpps hands And if at anie tyme after my
Executors or the afore said NATHANIELL THORPERLEY shall agayne desire
the vse of some or all of the said Mathematicall paps That then it will
please the said Earle to lett anie of the aforesaid to haue them for
theire vse soe long as shall be thought Convenient, and afterwards to
be restored agayne vnto the Truncke in the afore said Earle’s Library
Secondly my will & desire is that the said NATHANIELL THORPERLEY be
alsoe Ouseere of other written bookes & papers as my Executors and hee
shall thincke Convenient. Item Whereas I haue diuers waste papers (of
wch some are in a Canvas bagge) of my Accompte to Sr Walter Rawley for
all wch I haue discharges or acquitances lying in some boxes or other
my desire is that they may bee all burnte. Alsoe there is an other
Canvas bagge of papers concerning Irishe Accompt (the psons whome they
Concerne are dead many yeares since in the raigne of queene Elizabeth
wch I desire alsoe may be burnte as likewise many Idle paps and
Cancelled Deedes wch are good for noe vse Item I revoake all former
wills by mee heretofore made saue onely this my pnte last will and
Testament wch I will shalbe in all thinges effectually and truely
pformed according to the tenor and true meaning of the same In witnes
whereof I the afore said THOMAS HARRIOTT haue to this my psent last
will & Testament put my hand & scale yeouen the daie and yeare first
aboue written THO : HARRIOTTS.
Sealed a published and deliued by ye wthin named THOMAS HARRIOTT for
and as his last will & Testamt the daie & yeares wthin written in the
pfice of vs IMMANUELL BOWRNE WILL: FUTTER, Scr: & THO : ALFORD Svte to
the said scr
Probatum fuit hfnoi Testum sexto die mensis Julij Anno Dni 1621. Coram
venli viro RICHARDO CLARKE legum Dcore Surto Dni Offitis &c . jurio
THOME AILESBURIE et THOME BUCKNER duorum Extorum &c quibus &c de bene
&c saluo jure &c Resrvata tamen ptate similem Comissionem faciendi Dno
ROBERTO SIDNEY militi et JOHANNI PROTHERO armigero alteris Extoribus &c
Cum venerint eandem in debita Juris forma petituri. Pro Inveno ANDREE
prox &c. Concordat cum Originali fca exaicoe pnos HEN: DURHAM Norium
Pubcm RA: BYRDE
[From the certified copy filed in the Probate Registry in Somerset
House, which has been collated with the copy registered, Arch. Lond.
1618-1626/7, Folio 71. The differences in spelling, punctuation etc.
are numerous but unimportant.]
END
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