Lord Macclesfield, the eminent mathematician, who was twelve years
President of the Royal Society, built at his seat, Shirburn Castle
in Oxfordshire, an Observatory, about 1739. It stood 100 yards south
from the castle-gate, and consisted of a bed-chamber, a room for the
transit, and the third for a mural quadrant. In the possession of
the Royal Astronomical Society is a curious print representing two
of Lord Macclesfield’s servants taking observations in the Shirburn
observatory; they are Thomas Phelps, aged 82, who, from being a
stable-boy to Lord-Chancellor Macclesfield, rose by his merit and
genius to be appointed observer. His companion is John Bartlett,
originally a shepherd, in which station he, by books and observation,
acquired such a knowledge in computation, and of the heavenly bodies,
as to induce Lord Macclesfield to appoint him assistant-observer in
his observatory. Phelps was the person who, on December 23d, 1743,
discovered the great comet, and made the first observation of it; an
account of which is entered in the _Philosophical Transactions_, but
not the name of the observer.