Edward Brerewood, the son of a Chester tradesman, born in 1565, was a celebrated mathematician and antiquary. From the Free School at Chester he went to Oxford, and became the first professor of astronomy in Gresham College. Several of his works were published after his death by his nephew, Robert Brerewood, of Chester.
Cheshire can boast of an early botanist and herbalist, John Gerarde, who was born at Nantwich in 1545. He was head gardener to Lord Burghley from 1577. He took his early lessons in the book of nature when wandering on the banks of the Weaver in his native shire. He wrote, in 1596, his work, entitled Catalogus arborum, fruticum ac plantarum, and he was the author of The Herball or General Historie of Plantes, “gathered by John Gerarde, of London, Master in Chirurgerie.”
A more eminent scientist was Samuel Molyneux, son of a learned father, and was born at Chester in 1689. He was a wonderful, precocious genius, and could do marvellous things when he was only five years old. His biographer tells us that “when he advanced to manhood he was acknowledged to be one of the most polite and accomplished gentlemen in England or Ireland, and was appointed secretary to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., and had a house in Kew, near Richmond, where he improved himself in his favourite study astronomy.” He greatly improved the making of telescopes. He married Elizabeth, sister to the Earl of Essex.
The third Lord Brereton, unlike his father, who loved warlike pursuits and fought for the King in the Civil War, was a lover of science and peaceful pursuits. He was educated at Breda in Holland, under the care of Dr. John Pell, and became a good mathematician and algebraist. He was one of the founders of the Royal Society, associated with all the learned men of his time, and always endeavoured to advance the cause of science. He was somewhat of a poet, musician, and composer. The proceedings of the Royal Society often record his name, which learned Society in its infant days seems to have concerned itself with somewhat childish questions, and exercised the minds of its members on the divining-rod and the superstition with regard to the portents presaging the death of any member of the Brereton family.
Lawrence Earnshaw was a wonderful mechanical genius, a native of Mottram-in-Longdendale in the first half of the eighteenth century. Nothing came amiss to his skilful fingers. He could shear sheep and make the wool into cloth entirely with implements of his own making. Engraver, painter, gilder, glass-stainer, blacksmith, gunsmith, bell-founder; maker of sundials, harpsichords, violins, organs—he could do everything. But his great achievement was in the art of clockmaking, producing a curious astronomical and geographical machine which represented the motions of the earth, moon, stars, &c. He anticipated the invention of the spinning-jenny, but destroyed his machine lest it should decrease labour and take bread from the mouths of the poor. Another noted clockmaker was John Whitehurst, Fellow of the Royal Society, born at Congleton in 1713. He was author of some philosophical papers, amongst others of an Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth.
Another learned Cestrian was Dr. William Falconer, born at Chester in 1741. He was learned in science and horticulture, and published several works, including An Historical View of the taste for Gardening and Laying-out Grounds among the Nations of Antiquity; An Essay on the Means of Preserving the Health of those employed in Agricultural Labours; and A Sketch of the History of Sugar in Early Times.
Historians
Many are the writers on Cheshire history whose names should be recorded—men who have loved their county and desired to tell of its beauties and historical associations. We can only mention a tithe of those worthy sons who have done honour to their shire, and accomplished work which has been often little understood or appreciated by their fellows.
The first of these is a name honoured by all historians, Henry Bradshaw, a native of Chester and a monk of St. Werburgh’s Abbey, who lived in the latter part of the fourteenth century. He was one of the earliest chroniclers of Cheshire, and wrote his works in the cloistered shade of his monastic house. His works consist of a treatise, De Antiquitate et Magnificentiâ Urbis Cestriæ, and a translation of “The Holy Lyfe and History of Saint Werburge, very frutefull for all Christen people to rede.” The first work is believed to have been lost, unless it is incorporated in the latter treatise, as Dr. Gower suggested. Perhaps we should have included Henry Bradshaw amongst our poets, in whose company he well deserves a high and important niche. His body lies near the shrine of the saint of whose virtues he loved to sing.
John Booth of Twamlowe, a contemporary of Sir William Brereton, was a distinguished Cheshire genealogist who occupies a foremost place amongst the antiquaries of the county. His works have been most useful to subsequent writers.