[409]Mr. Richard Norwood:—where he was born I cannot yet learn.
Norwood is an ancient family: about 300 yeares since St. Low maried with a daughter and heire of them and quarters the coate in the margent[410]. They flourish still in Gloucestershire, the mannour of Lakhampton belonging to them.—'Tis probable that this learned Norwood was that countreyman.
In his Epistle to the Reader before his Trigonometrie:—
'but I am already sensible of the unfriendly dealings of some, even of our own countreymen, who, when these tables were printing and almost finished, came to the printing house and not onely tooke a sufficient view of them there, but carried away a president without the printer's leave, and have caused them to be printed beyond sea, the impression or a great part of it being already come over.
Tower-hill, anno 1631, November 1.'
My edition is the third, 1656; and there hath been one since.
The Seaman's practice, containing a fundamental probleme in navigation experimentally verified, namely, touching the compasse of the earth and sea, and the quantity of a degree, in our English measure; also an exact method or form of keeping a reckoning at sea in any kind or manner of sayling, with certain tables and other rules usefull in navigation; as also the plotting and surveying of places, the latitude of the principal places in England, the finding of the currents at sea and what allowance is to be given in respect of them, by Richard Norwood, reader of the Mathematicks, London, 1655, 4to—dedicated to Robert, earle of Warwick.
He, at his owne chardge, measured with a chaine from Barwick to Christ Church (he sayes he came up in ten or eleven dayes) in order to the finding the quantitie of a degree, and so the circumference of the earth and sea, in our known measures—July 1, 1636.
He also published a treatise of the modern way of fortification, 163-, in 4to.
By a letter from Nicholas, earle of Thanet, to me, concerning his purchase in the Bermudas, not dated, but writ about 1674 or 5—thus:—'as to old Mr. Norwood, to whom the Royal Society would send some quaeres, is lately dead, as his sonne informes me, who lately went captaine in that ship wherein I sent my gardiner and vines to the Bermudas. He was aged above 90.'