Peruse the prefaces.--'The description of the sphaere' hath no preface,
and I believe they were his notes for Prince Henry.
[1292]Mr. Edmund[1293] Wright was of Caius Colledge, in Cambridge. He
was one of the best mathematicians of his time; and the _then_ new way
of sayling, which yet goes by the name of 'sayling by Mr. Mercator's
chart,' was purely his invention, as plainely doeth and may appeare
in his learned booke called 'Wright's Errors in Navigation,' in 4to.
printed A.D.... Mr. Mercator brought this invention in fashion beyond
seas.
He did read mathematiques to Prince Henry, and caused to be made, for
his Highnesse more easie understanding of astronomie, a sphaere of
wood, about three quarters of a yard diameter, which lay neglected and
out of order in the Tower, at London, and Sir Jonas Moor begd it of his
present majestie, who showed it to me.
He wrote 'Hypothesis Stellarum Fixarum et Planetarum,' a MS. of three
sheetes of paper, which I found among bishop Ward's papers, which I
gave to the Museum[1294] at Oxford.
He made a table of Logarithmes (scil. in his Tangents) before
Logarithmes were invented and printed, but did not know he had donne
it.--from John Collins.
=Edmund Wyld= (1616-16--).
[1295]Edmund Wyld[1296], esq., born at Houghton-Conquest in
Bedfordshire, 3ʰ P.M. on a Saterday, Oct. 10th, 1616.
He had the misfortune to kill a man in London, upon a great
provocation, about A.D. 1644. He had the plague in the Inner Temple,
1647, and had a grevous quartan ague in Sept. 1656.
Memorandum, Mr. Wyld sayes that the doctors told him that in 1656 there
dyed in London of the quartan ague fifteen hundred; N.B. In 1657[1297]
Oliver Cromwell, Protector, dyed of a quartan ague.
At Christmas, 1661, Mr. E. W. had a dangerous fever.
=... Yarrington.=
[1298]Capt. Yarrington dyed at London about March last[1299]. The cause
of his death was a beating and throwne into a tub of water.
=Anne, duchess of York= (16--- 1671).
[1300]Colonel Popham's great tankard, the dutches Y: dranke it (almost)
off at a draught.