He was a good Latinist and Graecian, as appears in a little treatise of his against one Delamaine, a joyner, who was so sawcy to write against him (I thinke about his circles of proportion): upon which occasion I remember I have seen, many yeares since, twenty or more good verses made[487], which begin to this purpose:—
Thus may some mason or rude carpenter[488]
Putt into the ballance his rule and compasses
'Gainst learned Euclid's pen, etc.
Enquire for them and insert them.
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. His son Ben was confident he understood magique. Mr. Oughtred, at the Custom House, (his grandson) has some of his papers; 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.
He dyed the 13th day of June, 1660, in the yeare of his age eighty-eight + odde dayes. 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[489]drinke his sacred majestie's health.' His spirits were then quite upon the wing to fly away. The 15th of June he was buried in the chancell at Albury, on the north side neer the cancelli. I had much adoe to find the very place where the bones of this learned and good man lay (and 'twas but 16 yeares after his death). When I first ask't his son Ben, he told me that truly the griefe for his father's death was so great, that he did not remember the place—now I should have thought it would have made him remember it the better—but when he had putt on his considering cap (which was never like his father's), he told as aforesaid, with which others did agree. There is not to this day any manner of memorial for him there, which is a great pitty. I have desired Mr. John Evelyn, etc., to speake to our patrone, the duke of Norfolk, to bestowe a decent inscription of marble on him, which will also perpetuate his grace's fame. I asked Ben concerning the report[490] of his father's dyeing a Roman Catholique: he told me that 'twas indeed true that when he was sick some priests came from my lord duke's (then Mr. Henry Howard, of Norfolk) to him to have discoursed with him, in order to his conversion to their church, but his father was then past understanding. Ben was then by, he told me.
His Clavis Mathematica was first dedicated to the lord <Thomas[491]> Howard, earle of Arundel and Surrey, and Lord Marshall of England, anno Domini MDCXXXI, London, apud Thomam Harperum.
His Clavis Mathematica, denuo limata sive potius fabricata was printed by the said Thomas Harper, 1648.
Editio tertia auctior et emendatior was at Oxford, 1652; where Dr. John Wallis, the Savillian professor, corrected the presse. The old gentleman in his Preface to the Reader mentioned with much respect Seth Ward (Savillian professor of Astronomy), Dr. Charles Scarborough, John Wallis, Mr. Christopher Wren, and Mr. Robert Wood.
He writt a stitch't pamphlet about 163(?4) against ... Delamaine.