[49]. From the Classical Journal.
[50]. This eminent naturalist and excellent man, was justly admired both at home and abroad for his virtues and knowledge in every branch of human learning, more particularly in natural history. He was the son of Sir Francis Willoughby, Knt. of Wollaton Hall in the county of Nottingham. Observing in the busy and inquisitive age in which he lived, that the history of animated nature had in a great measure been neglected, he made the study and illustration thereof his unceasing object. For the promotion of this branch of science he went abroad with Mr. Ray, for the purpose of searching out and describing the several species and productions of nature. He travelled over most parts of France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, in all which countries he was so diligent and successful, that not many sorts of animals described by others escaped his observation. He drew them with a pencil, and they were afterwards engraven on copper-plates, at the expense of his widow. His labours were printed in latin under the title of “Ornithologiæ libri tres, &c. London, 1676,“ folio. This work was afterwards translated into English by Mr. Ray, with an appendix, and printed at London, in 1678. Mr. Willoughby also wrote the “History of Fishes,” which was published by Mr. Ray, at London, in 1686, in folio. He likewise printed several papers in the Philosophical Transactions. Mr. Willoughby died on the third of July, 1672, leaving issue by his wife, Emma, daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Bernard, Knt. two Sons, Francis and Thomas, and one daughter Cassandra, married to the Duke of Chandos. The second son Thomas was in 1712 created Lord Middleton, from whom is descended the present peer of that title.
[51]. He was an alderman of London, and after the Exchequer was shut retired to Holland, where he died, and was brought over to be interred in the church of Tyringham, in Buckinghamshire, where he lies embalmed. A glass is placed over his face, so that it is likely he may even be seen at this time. There is a small portrait of him at Tyringham House, in which he is represented in long hair and a flowered gown, with a table by him.
[52]. A part of the national debt, amounting to £664,263, is as old as this iniquitous transaction of Charles the second and his ministers. This sum was all that those persons received, who had placed their property and their confidence in that monarch, for the loss of £1,328,526, and 26 years interest thereon at 6 per cent. about £2,100,000 more.
[53]. Tradescant was the first English collector of curiosities in a private rank. Thoresby was the second. Gough’s Topogr.
[54]. The late James West, Esq. told Mr. Bull, that one of the family of Roelans, of which there are four or five prints by Hollar, lived a long while at Lambeth, in the house that afterwards belonged to Tradescant, to whom Roelans sold it. Granger’s B. II. 2. 371.
[55]. In the year 1656 the younger Tradescant, published a small volume, entitled “Museum Tradescantianum, or a Collection of Rarities preserved at South Lambeth. London, 1656, small octavo.” This book is divided into two parts, the first containing a catalogue of the museum, and the second an enumeration of the plants, shrubs, and trees, growing in the garden at South Lambeth. Among the natural curiosities here preserved are “a dragon’s egg—the claw of the bird Rock, which, as authors report, is able to trusse an elephant,” &c. &c.
[56]. These drawings are engraven in the Philosophical Trans. vol. 63, p. 88; and printed from the same plates, in Bibl. Topogr. Brit. vol. 2. in Dr. Ducarel’s Hist. of Lambeth.
[57]. Tradescant’s was the next botanical garden in England after Gerard’s.
Gerard seems to have been the first that cultivated a botanical garden. He had a large one near his house in Holborn, London, where he raised nearly eleven hundred different trees and plants. He published his history of plants in 1597 under the patronage of Lord Burleigh. His herbal was republished in 1636 by Johnson.