“Haec est Oughtredi senio labantis imago
Itala quam cupiit, Terra Britanna tulit.”
In the sketch of Oughtred by Owen Manning it is confessed that “it is not known to what this alludes; but possibly he might have been in Italy with his patron, the Earl of Arundel.”[19] It would seem quite certain either that Oughtred traveled in Europe or that he received some sort of an offer to settle in Italy. In view of Aubrey’s explicit statement and of Oughtred’s well-known habit of confining himself to his duties and studies in his own parish, seldom going even as far as London, we strongly incline to the opinion that he did not travel on the Continent, but that he received an offer from some patron of the sciences—possibly some distinguished visitor—to settle in Italy.
HIS DEATH
He died at Albury, June 30, 1660, aged about eighty-six years. Of his last days and death, Aubrey speaks as follows:
Before he dyed he burned a world of papers, and sayd that the world was not worthy of them; he was so superb. He burned also severall printed bookes, and would not stirre, till they were consumed. . . . . I myselfe have his Pitiscus, imbelished with his excellent marginall notes, which I esteeme as a great rarity. I wish I could also have got his Bilingsley’s Euclid, which John Collins sayes was full of his annotations. . . . .
Ralph Greatrex, his great friend, the mathematicall instrument-maker, sayed he conceived he dyed with joy for the comeing-in of the king, which was the 29th of May before. “And are yee sure he is restored?”—“Then give me a glasse of sack to drinke his sacred majestie’s health.” His spirits were then quite upon the wing to fly away. . . . .[20]
In this passage, as in others, due allowance must be made for Aubrey’s lack of discrimination. He was not in the habit of sifting facts from mere gossip. That Oughtred should have declared that the world was not worthy of his papers or manuscripts is not in consonance with the sweetness of disposition ordinarily attributed to him. More probable was the feeling that the papers he burned—possibly old sermons—were of no particular value to the world. That he did not destroy a large mass of mathematical manuscripts is evident from the fact that a considerable number of them came after his death into the hands of Sir Charles Scarborough, M.D., under whose supervision some of them were carefully revised and published at Oxford in 1677 under the title of Opuscula mathematica hactenus inedita.
Aubrey’s story of Oughtred’s mode of death has been as widely circulated in every modern biographical sketch as has his slander of Mrs. Oughtred by claiming that she was so penurious that she would deny him the use of candles to read by. Oughtred died on June 30; the Restoration occurred on May 29. No doubt Oughtred rejoiced over the Restoration, but the story of his drinking “a glass of sack” to his Majesty’s health, and then dying of joy is surely apocryphal. De Morgan humorously remarks, “It should be added, by way of excuse, that he was eighty-six years old.”[21]