[238] Franciscus Maurolycus (1494-1575) was really the best mathematician produced by Sicily for a long period. He made Latin translations of Theodosius, Menelaus, Euclid, Apollonius, and Archimedes, and wrote on cosmography and other mathematical subjects.
[239] "Nicolaus Copernicus is also tolerated who asserted that the sun is fixed and that the earth whirls about it; and he rather deserves a whip or a lash than a reproof."
[240] "Algebra is the curious science of scholars, and particularly for a general of an army, or a captain, in order quickly to draw up an army in battle array and to number the musketeers and pikemen who compose it, without the figures of arithmetic. This science has five special figures of this kind: P means plus in commerce and pikemen in the army; M means minus, and musketeer in the art of war;... R signifies root in the measurement of a cube, and rank in the army; Q means square (French quarè, as then spelled) in both cases; C means cube in mensuration, and cavalry in arranging batallions and squadrons. As for the operations of this science, they are as follows: to add a plus and a plus, the sum will be plus; to add minus with plus, take the less from the greater and the remainder will be the sum required or the number to be found. I say this only in passing, for the benefit of those who are wholly ignorant of it."
[241] He refers to the Joannis de Beaugrand ... Geostatice, seu de vario pondere gravium secundum varia a terrae (centro) intervalla dissertatio mathematica, Paris, 1636. Pascal relates that de Beaugrand sent all of Roberval's theorems on the cycloid and Fermat's on maxima and minima to Galileo in 1638, pretending that they were his own.
[242] More (1614-1687) was a theologian, a fellow of Christ College, Cambridge, and a Christian Platonist.
[243] Matthew Hale (1609-1676) the famous jurist, wrote a number of tracts on scientific, moral, and religious subjects. These were collected and published in 1805.
[244] They might have been attributed to many a worse man than Dr. Hales (1677-1761), who was a member of the Royal Society and of the Paris Academy, and whose scheme for the ventilation of prisons reduced the mortality at the Savoy prison from one hundred to only four a year. The book to which reference is made is Vegetable Staticks or an Account of some statical experiments on the sap in Vegetables, 1727.
[245] Pleas of the Crown; or a Methodical Summary of the Principal Matters relating to the subject, 1678.
[246] Thomae Streete Astronomia Carolina, a new theory of the celestial motions, 1661. It also appeared at Nuremberg in 1705, and at London in 1710 and 1716 (Halley's editions). He wrote other works on astronomy.
[247] This was the Sir Thomas Street (1626-1696) who passed sentence of death on a Roman Catholic priest for saying mass. The priest was reprieved by the king, but in the light of the present day one would think the justice more in need of pardon. He took part in the trial of the Rye House Conspirators in 1683.