Mr. <Richard> Towneley, of Towneley, in Lancashire, esq., haz his papers.—From Mr. Edmund Flamsted, who sayes he found out the way of improveing telescopes before Des Cartes.
Mr. Edmund Flamsted tells me, Sept. 1682, that 'twas at Yorke fight he was slaine.
Henry Gellibrand (1597-1637).
[967]Henry Gellibrand was borne in London. He was of Trinity Colledge in Oxon (vide Anthony Wood's Antiq. Oxon.). Dr. Potter and Dr. <William> Hobbes knew him. Dr. Hannibal Potter was his tutor, and preached his funeral sermon in London. They told me that he was good for little a great while, till at last it happened accidentally, that he heard a Geometrie[968] lecture. He was so taken with it, that immediately he fell to studying it, and quickly made great progresse in it. The fine diall over the Colledge Library is of his owne doeing. Construxit Logarithmos Henrici Briggs, jussu Autoris τοῦ μακαρίτου, 1631. He was Astronomy Professor in Collegio Greshamensi, Lond. Scripsit Trigonometriam. He being one time in the country, shewed the tricks of drawing[969] what card you touched, which was by combination with his confederate, who had a string that was tyed to his leg, and the leg of the other, by which his confederate gave him notice by the touch; but by this trick, he was reported to be a conjuror.
Vide Canterbury's Doome[970] about Protestant martyrs, <inserted in> the Almanac; <and> that he kept conventicles in Gresham College.
... Gerard.
[971]One Mr. Gerard, of Castle Carey in Somerset, collected the antiquities of that county, Dorset, and that of Devon: which I cannot for my life retrive. His executor had them, whose estate was seized for debt; and <they> utterly lost.