Brief Lives, Vol. 1 - John Aubrey

1. It was suggested by Richard Blackburne.

MS. Aubr. 7, fol. 8^v:—'Dr. <Richard> Blackbourn would have me putt out in print the lives of our English mathematicians together.'

2. It had been partly anticipated by Selden and Sherburne.

MS. Aubr. 8, fol. 70:—'My purpose is, if God give me life, to make an apparatus, for [34] the lives of our English Mathematicians; which when I have ended, I would then desire Mr. Anthony Wood to find out one that is master of a good Latin stile, and to adde what is [35] already in his printed booke [36] to these following [37] minutes.

'I will not meddle with our own writers [38] in the mathematicks before the reigne of king Henry VIII, but prefix those excellent verses of Mr. John Selden (with a learned commentary to them) which are printed before a booke intituled <Arthur> Hopton's Concordance of yeares[39] scilicet:—'

MS. Aubr. 8, fol. 69:—'Sir Edward Shirbourn, somewhere in his translation and notes upon Manilius, has enumerated our English mathematicians, and hath given short touches of their lives—which see.'

3. The first step towards it would be to pick out the mathematicians from the lives already written by Aubrey.

MS. Aubr. 6, fol. 51^v:—'I would have the lives of John Dee, Sir Henry Billingsley, the two Digges (father and sonne), Mr. Thomas Hariot, Mr. <Walter> Warner, Mr. <Henry> Brigges, and Dr. <John> Pell's, to be putt together.—As to the account of Mr. Hariot, Mr. Warner, and Mr. Brigges, I recieved it from Dr. Pell.'

MS. Aubr. 9: a folio, containing fifty-five leaves, and in addition several printed papers.