There was a large number of distinguished men who, in their youth, either visited Oughtred’s home and studied under his roof or else read his Clavis and sought his assistance by correspondence. We permit Aubrey to enumerate some of these pupils in his own gossipy style:
Seth Ward, M.A., a fellow of Sydney Colledge in Cambridge (now bishop of Sarum), came to him, and lived with him halfe a yeare (and he would not take a farthing for his diet), and learned all his mathematiques of him. Sir Jonas More was with him a good while, and learn’t; he was but an ordinary logist before. Sir Charles Scarborough was his scholar; so Dr. John Wallis was his scholar; so was Christopher Wren his scholar, so was Mr. . . . . Smethwyck, Regiae Societatis Socius. One Mr. Austin (a most ingeniose man) was his scholar, and studyed so much that he became mad, fell a laughing, and so dyed, to the great griefe of the old gentleman. Mr. . . . . Stokes, another scholar, fell mad, and dream’t that the good old gentleman came to him, and gave him good advice, and so he recovered, and is still well. Mr. Thomas Henshawe, Regiae Societatis Socius, was his scholar (then a young gentleman). But he did not so much like any as those that tugged and tooke paines to worke out questions. He taught all free.
He could not endure to see a scholar write an ill hand; he taught them all presently to mend their hands.[56]
Had Oughtred been the means of guiding the mathematical studies of only John Wallis and Christopher Wren—one the greatest English mathematician between Napier and Newton, the other one of the greatest architects of England—he would have earned profound gratitude. But the foregoing list embraces nine men, most of them distinguished in their day. And yet Aubrey’s list is very incomplete. It is easy to more than double it by adding the names of William Forster, who translated from Latin into English Oughtred’s Circles of Proportion; Arthur Haughton, who brought out the 1660 Oxford edition of the Circles of Proportion; Robert Wood, an educator and politician, who assisted Oughtred in the translation of the Clavis from Latin into English for the edition of 1647; W. Gascoigne, a man of promise, who fell in 1644 at Marston Moor; John Twysden, who was active as a publisher; William Sudell, N. Ewart, Richard Shuttleworth, William Robinson, and William Howard, the son of the Earl of Arundel, for whose instruction Oughtred originally prepared the manuscript treatise that was published in 1631 as the Clavis mathematicae.
Nor must we overlook the names of Lawrence Rooke (who “did admirably well read in Gresham Coll. on the sixth chapt. of the said book,” the Clavis); Christopher Brookes (a maker of mathematical instruments who married a daughter of the famous mathematician); William Leech and William Brearly (who with Robert Wood “have been ready and helpfull incouragers of me [Oughtred] in this labour” of preparing the English Clavis of 1647), and Thomas Wharton, who studied the Clavis and assisted in the editing of the edition of 1647.
The devotion of these pupils offers eloquent testimony, not only of Oughtred’s ability as a mathematician, but also of his power of drawing young men to him—of his personal magnetism. Nor should we omit from the list Richard Delamain, a teacher of mathematics in London, who unfortunately had a bitter controversy with Oughtred on the priority and independence of the invention of the circular slide rule and a form of sun-dial. Delamain became later a tutor in mathematics to King Charles I, and perished in the civil war, before 1645.
OUGHTRED, THE “TODHUNTER OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY”
To afford a clearer view of Oughtred as a teacher and mathematical expositor we quote some passages from various writers and from his correspondence. Anthony Wood[57] gives an interesting account of how Seth Ward and Charles Scarborough went from Cambridge University to the obscure home of the country mathematician to be initiated into the mysteries of algebra:
Mr. Cha. Scarborough, then an ingenious young student and fellow of Caius Coll. in the same university, was his [Seth Ward’s] great acquaintance, and both being equally students in that faculty and desirous to perfect themselves, they took a journey to Mr. Will. Oughtred living then at Albury in Surrey, to be informed in many things in his Clavis mathematica which seemed at that time very obscure to them. Mr. Oughtred treated them with great humanity, being very much pleased to see such ingenious young men apply themselves to these studies, and in short time he sent them away well satisfied in their desires. When they returned to Cambridge, they afterwards read the Clav. Math. to their pupils, which was the first time that book was read in the said university. Mr. Laur. Rook, a disciple of Oughtred, I think, and Mr. Ward’s friend, did admirably well read in Gresham Coll. on the sixth chap. of the said book, which obtained him great repute from some and greater from Mr. Ward, who ever after had an especial favour for him.
Anthony Wood makes a similar statement about Thomas Henshaw:
While he remained in that coll. [University College, Oxford] which was five years . . . . he made an excursion for about 9 months to the famous mathematician Will. Oughtred parson of Aldbury in Surrey, by whom he was initiated in the study of mathematics, and afterwards retiring to his coll. for a time, he at length went to London, was entered a student in the Middle Temple.[58]