THE STUDY OF THOMAS HARRIOTS MANUSCRIPTS*

I. HARRIOTS WILL

ROSALIND C. H. TANNER~ Imperial College, London

RUMOURS that a major publication of Harriot's manuscripts was imminent

have bedevilled Harriot history from the very beginning.' They still do.
At intervals, these rumours build up to a crisis, and it really seems that
something momentous is about to happen. Each case deserves separate
study, and apart from a general psychic similarity, as far as can be
assessed, the reasons for failure appear to be different in each case. After
the first, one factor was lacking in all succeeding cases: Harriot's Will.
Its existence was at one time not known, and afterwards not properly
assessed in its bearing on the fate of his manuscripts. In this respect the
present situation can be materially improved.
Research on Harriot's manuscripts begins with his Will: in a very real
sense it may be looked upon as the last manuscript he left us. It was
also the last to be discovered. Not in the original, which has never been
found, but in the two legal copies now housed in the Guildhall Library
of the City of London. They ares
(1) the authentic copy for Probate, proved in the Archdeaconry of
London Court on 6 July 1621; and
(2) the Register Copy of the same Court, entered in a large bound
volume.
The Probate Copy is on five leaves threaded through with tape and kept
in a box with other contemporary wills. It is in a perfect state of preser-
vation except for a little fraying of the top leaf.
The contents of Harriot's Will were made public in 1900, transcribed
in appendix to Henry Stevens's account of Thomas Harriet and his asso-
ciates,S a rare book privately printed and often quoted only second-hand.
To this American Henry Stevens belongs the credit of discovering the
Will. Its existence and whereabouts were still unknown when the
noted historian of astronomy Agnes Clerke" composed her article on
Harriot for the Dictionary of national biography. Reprinted unchanged
in the second edition of 1908, her phrase still stands: "Harriet's Will was
not found". It echoes the same statement, three-quarters of a century
earlier, by the Oxford Savilian Professor Stephen Rigaud, who had to do
with another abortive publication project for Harriot. Rigaud's meticu-
lous and untiring character is known from his son's account.s fully borne
out by the mass of autograph material now mainly in the Bodleian
• Papers read at the first Thomas Harriot Seminar, held at All Souls College. Oxford,
on 10 November 1967.
I

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2 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Library. 6 Letters belonging to the Earl of Leconsfield at his House in

Petworth testify further that Rigaud intended to spare no effort in track-
ing down any material that would illuminate Harriot's life and work.?
His failure to find the Will which Stevens, an American and an amateur
in the field, discovered later is entirely attributable to the chaotic state
of the jurisdiction over wills until well after Rigaud's death in 1839.
At that time wills were the concern and private property of Ecclesiasti-
cal Courts, of which there were at least 300 in the whole country, the
Prerogative Court of Canterbury (P.C.C.) having over-ruling powers over
them all. The place of probate of a will depended in the first instance on
the disposition of the lands of the deceased, but could always be trans-
ferred to the P.C.C., which most men of substance often preferred.s
In 1828 Parliament became concerned with these Courts and their
Jurisdiction. It called for a Return from them, to include where and
by whom their records were kept. This was finally completed by the
Command Paper 205 of 1830, detailing the classes of documents held by
each Registry, the extent of clear runs or gaps, and the ease or otherwise
with which they could be consulted, among other things, at the discretion
of the Registrar in each case." This seems to be our only guide to the
state of testamentary records when Rigaud made his search in 1835.
Rigaud applied to the "Bishop of London's Registry in St Paul's",
and recorded "No will of Harriot or of Sir Wm Lower found".lO He
searched the "Prerogative office", equally without success.P There
is no sign of his having tried the Archidiaconal Court of London, and
this is hardly surprising. The position there is somewhat pathetically
described by the new registrar in 1830. The wills, he explains, had last
been sorted in 1803, the original wills tied up in bundles, the recorded
copies, act books and indexes all lately rebound. These records were
deposited in the lord mayor's vestry room in the cathedral church of
St Paul's at the time. But later the lord mayor's officer gave positive
directions for them to be removed "to another and less convenient place
in the church". The return made shows a gap around 1621. But "the
present registrar . . . cannot be positive as to the accuracy of the above
return, in consequence of the very inconvenient place in which the
records are kept".12
When Henry Stevens settled in London in 1845 as "self-appointed
missionary, on an antiquarian and historical book-hunting expedition'l.P
the position was effectually unchanged. But twelve years later, the
private jurisdiction of Ecclesiastical Bodies in testamentary matters was
abolished. By the Act of 20 and 21 Victoria c.77, which came into force
on I I January 1858, all these separate jurisdictions were concentrated
into one, that of the new lay Court of Probate.P This was to have
throughout England the same powers as the P.C.C. had had within its
own Province of Canterbury. The Act is mainly concerned with current

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 HARRIOT'S WILL 3

testamentary procedure. But implicit is the termination of the purely

private nature of testamentary records, for "any Paper or Writing being
or purporting to be testamentary" may be required to be produced,
"whether any Suit or other Proceeding shall or shall not be pending in
the court with respect to any Probate or Administration'J.P In other
respects, records remained nevertheless, for the time being, in unchanged
conditions judicially and physically. Wills of the category to which
Harriot's belonged were still housed in the old Will Office of Doctors'
Commons, adjoining St Paul's Churchyard, and part of the London
diocesan registry. Before Stevens embarked on his publication enter-
prise in 1877, however, the Judicature Act of 1873 had ordained the
concentration in one place of all the Probate Copies and Original Wills
proved in London Courts. Somerset House had been transformed into
what its historians in 1905 called 'The National Beehive"." During the
summer of 1874 its vaults became the permanent home of the wills
hitherto housed in Doctors' Commons, which anyone was now entitled
to inspect on payment of one shilling.
Here it fell to Stevens to discover Harriot's Will.l? filed under "the
Archdeaconry Court of London, just the place where one would least
expect to find it" .18 The gap in the 1803 list can only enhance the surprise.
But there in fact was the original Probate copy, which he transcribed, and
carefully collated with the Register copy, finding only unimportant
differences "in spelling, punctuation, etc.". He doubtless had an easier
task than Rigaud in existing conditions; but it was nevertheless quite a
feat, if not sheer luck: for the Probate records of the Archdeaconry of
London Court were not properly arranged, calendared and indexed until
early this century.P
Stevens had done his share long before that. He died in 1886, with
his account of Harriot in process of being printed; and thirteen years
later his son saw to it that the printing was completed and Stevens's
researches made available, not to a very wide public, since only a couple
of hundred copies or so were produced. Its rarity has no doubt contri-
buted to keeping the significance of the Will to the fate of Harriot's
manuscripts out of the limelight, as has also the accident that antedated
Agnes Clerke's authoritative article in the D.N.B. There is the added
fact that Stevens's location of the Will is now obsolete, and anyone seeking
a first-hand view on the strength of it is likely to fail. In 1949, both
copies were found at Somerset House by Dr J. W. Shirley.w The transfer
to Guildhall was made not long afterwards, in the autumn of 1953, by
order of the President of the Probate, Admiralty and Divorce division of
the High Court of Justice; and it comprised the entire extant archives of
the Archdeaconry of London Court, so that any other relevant records
would have been included in the transfer, leaving no trace of previous
tenure.

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4 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

A surprising feature of the story is that whereas we should now take it

for granted that the 1857 Act in effect made all such documents Public
Records and as such available for inspection, once traced, they were not
statutorily so defined for another hundred years: the Public Records
Act of 6 & 7 Eliz. II cap. 51, which received the Royal Assent on 2
December 1958, for the first time clearly defines them as Public Records
and places them under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chancellor as the
statutory head of the Public Record Office.P
Interest in Harriot's testamentary dispositions had always, from the
time of his death, centred on his manuscripts. What Rigaud knew of
these dispositions was little more than the seventeenth-century hearsay
noted by Aubrey,22 and the report in an undated letter from Collins which
Rigaud inserted in his collection of Letters of scientific men.23 Rigaud
did not, or course, rely on these gossip-mongers, but went to Camden's
annals of James I for confirmation, and quotes him in a footnote to the
Collins letter: 24 "Harriot's will is not to be found, but Camden says that
he left his property to Viscount Lisle and sir Thos. Aylesbury. Lord
Lisle's share of the property appears to have been given up to his father-
in-law, Henry, Earl of Northumberland, who had been Harriot's munificent
patron, and they descended with the family property to the E. of Egre-
mont, by whom a large portion has been given to the British museum,
and the remainder are still preserved at Petworth. Sir Thos. Aylesbury's
share became the property of his son-in-law Lord Chancellor Clarendon, to
whom the Royal Society applied, but, as it appears, without obtaining
them". Here the last sentence, though he does not say so, is taken
directly from Aubrey (loc. cit.) on the one hand, and Royal Society
Reports on the other (of which more infra), and derives no authenticity
from Camden. When Rigaud wrote those words, the great mass of
Harriot manuscripts, had only recently been identified" in the Earl of
Egremont's home at Petworth. The conjecture on Lord Lisle's share was
Rigaud's attempt to explain how they came to be there.
The story that Aylesbury had inherited some of Harriot's papers, on
the other hand, had received an air of authenticity in the 1660'S. Ayles-
bury's son-in-law (1634), the Earl of Clarendon, had admitted that he
actually had in his custody "several papers of Mr Harriet" (note he did
not say "in his possession"). This was reported (r662) to the Royal
Society by Clarendon's secretary Matthew Wren. 26 He conveyed the
Earl's readiness to communicate these papers to the Society, and to
"give Mr Wren access to his truncks for them". Nearly a year later
(30 September 1663), it is recorded, Mr Wren was reminded of this
promise.s? But that is the last we hear of it in the Royal Society records.
Clarendon, after fourteen years in exile, had entered London with the
king at the Restoration in 1660, and his daughter had the same year
married the Duke of York. Charles's marriage in 1664 heraldedClarendon's

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 HARRIOT'S WILL 5
final downfall and renewed exile in 1667. In 1665, Clarendon's third son
died. Scholarly interests inevitably took second place during this later
time. Rigaud, in his footnote, adds that the then representatives of the
family, the Earl of Clarendon and Lord Montagu, had no such papers in
their possession. And today it is clear that they never were in the
possession of that family. Whatever Aylesbury may have had would
have been at most on loan; and the report which even Agnes Clerke
accepted as fact, and which still stands in the D.N.B., represents a
garbled version of the true position as the Will itself reveals it.
The mathematical manuscripts are mentioned in the very first bequest,
deferring details. When they come, they leave all in effect to the Earl,
who was in the Tower at the time when the Will was made. He was to
have ultimate custody of the manuscripts, which were to be kept in a
locked trunk in his library, with the key delivered to him. The Earl
was released sixteen days after Harriot's death, and retired, precisely, to
his country seat at Petworth, there to live for another ten years or SO.28
And there, consequentially, the manuscripts were found to be, more than
a century and a half later. 29
There was to be only one exception to this wholesale bequest to the
Earl: Viscount Lisle was to receive a set of papers, "about five quires",
which was a copy of some mathematical notes of Harriot made by another
noble pupil of Harriot's, Lord Harrington, since deceased. This bequest
to Lord Lisle was clearly inflated by rumour. It was most probably the
basis also for another report noted by Collins in the same letter: "One
Mr Protheroe, in Wales, was executor to Mr Harriot, and from him Lord
Vaughan, the Earl of Carbery's son, received more than a quire of Mr
Harriet's Analytics". Collins reported this same story to the Royal
Society on 2 December 1669. The records'" of that meeting confuse the
issue further by substituting the name Cherbury for Carbury. It is
hardly surprising that Oldenbourg shows no sign of having succeeded "to
procure a sight and transcript of them", as he undertook to do "if they
were in those hands".
Collins is exact in one particular: John Protheroe, a Welsh squire, was
in fact one of the four executors appointed by Harriot in his Will. The
evidence is that he was the one delegated actually to handle the manu-
scripts and act physically on behalf of the others. These others were,
first, Aylesbury and Viscount Lisle, and, last, Thomas Buckner, a London
mercer, the friend at whose house Harriot lay ill when he made his Will,
and died three days later. Aubrey mentions both "Alesbury" and
"Prothero" as executors, and clearly assumes that they had, as such,
had the reversion of Harriot's writings. But Rigaud discounted the
statement: "Aubrey's reports, indeed, cannot be set in opposition to the
authority of Camden't.P
One condition was attached to the bequest of Harriot's manuscripts to

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6 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

the Earl of Northumberland. Harriot had published nothing except the

Brief and true report on Virginia32 which started him on his career. He
now desired his Executors to make his mathematical work available to the
public, as might prove feasible. For this purpose, they were to get
Nathaniel Torporley to sift the whole store of his mathematical papers,
not so much to publish any as they were, as to make use of them to write
up, as he puts it: "such doctrine that belongs unto them for public uses
as it shall be thought convenient by my executors and himself". After-
wards Torporley was to return all the papers to the Earl.
Nathaniel Torporley (1564-1632) was a well-recognised mathematician
in his day,33 whose somewhat unorthodox career at Oxford and after
engendered considerable confusion and inaccuracy in attempted accounts
of his life. The true facts as ascertainable were collected by Rigaud and
accurately noted down,34 as he did for every known associate of Harriot,
although he was far from guessing the real nature and extent of the
association in this case. That Torporley was a very old friend of Harriot
a recent paper by Mr Jon Pepper has substantiated," with a letter written
by Torporley to Harriot on the eve of meeting Vieta in Paris in 1586.
The two had differences of opinion, though these have perhaps been
made too much of.36 But in 1621 Harriot proclaimed the friendship
unbroken by the very act of putting his whole reliance confidently on
Torporley for the posthumous publication of his mathematical works,
with a provision that points to their not having been in close touch
mathematically for some time. The careful wording of Harriot's further
instructions to Torporley makes it appear that Aylesbury and Lisle were
to have potentially over-riding responsibility for the publication en-
visaged; for he was to consult them in final resort if any difficulty he
met in the papers could not be resolved to his satisfaction by the Earl's
two scientific dependents Walter Warners? and Robert Hughes.P who
had long been more intimately associated with Harriot and his work,
and presumably knew well the peculiarities of notation and lay-out that
might be unfamiliar to Torporley.
He at that time was Rector of Salwarpe, a Worcester village near
Droitwich, mentioned in the Will. He was also Prebendary of Liddington
in Wiltshire near Swindon, having held both posts simultaneously since
r608. The Liddington post did not require residence, and he retained
it to the end of his life. But Salwarpe was different: and we find that he
resigned it the very next year, in r622. 39 The presumption is inescapable
that he did so to come to London and take up as a full-time operation the
task allotted to him under the terms of Harriet's Will. This would have
been unthinkable unless he had the prospect of being supported financially
while so engaged. Harriot's Will did not provide for such financial
support. The resignation from Salwarpe cannot there have been en-
visaged. The only direct bequest to Torporley was "one furnace with

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 HARRIOT'S WILL 7
his appurtenances", curiously inappropriate in our view for a major
editing enterprise in mathematics. The inference is that Torporley was
led to expect that the Earl of Northumberland would take him under his
patronage in company with Warner and Hughes. A faint pointer, to
support the idea that he was, is the oft-quoted statement by the surgeon,
Dr Alexander Read,40 which credits the Earl, "the favourer of all good
learning and mecaenas of learned men", with maintaining all three as
well as Harriot, while he was still in the Tower, "for their worth and
various literature".
Dr Read wrote these words in 1635, three years after both Torporley
and the Earl had died. He was referring to his first and only meeting
with Harriot "but a short time before his death", fourteen years earlier.
His notions about the Earl's household were therefore formed after that
encounter. The absence of any reference to Torporley in the Earl's
household papers during Harriot's lifetime, established by Dr Shirley in
1949,41 had made Dr Read's statement appear as a simple piece of mis-
information, and baseless. It had always been taken as suspect, even
before this pioneering work. Only one meeting between Torporley and
the Earl is known of-before 1603.42 But Mr G. R. Batho, who has
continued Dr Shirley's researches into the period relevant to us, found one
payment at least to Torporley; this was for 1626. 43 May not the mistake
have been merely in the anachronism of the words "at that time", that is
at the time of Harriot's death? If Torporley did, most understandably
in the light of the Will, come under the Earl's generous aegis when he
took up work on the manuscripts left to the Earl, then popular report
would not so carefully distinguish his status from that of the Earl's
other proteges.
But, apart from this slender evidence, the bald fact is that we have
for the moment no evidence whatever on Torporley's mode of life or
whereabouts during the eight years between his leaving Salwarpe in
1622 and 1630, when we find him in residence in the newly-founded Sion
College fronting on London Wall." At Sion College Torporley dug him-
self in with all his goods and chattels and a very considerable library.
He was now 66. He had only another two years to live. He died
in 1632 without sufficient warning to make a written will; but a verbal
communication of his wishes, which was recorded and attested, left
nearly all he had to Sion College.v And he had not brought out any
mathematical works of Harriot.
There can be no real doubt that Torporley, together with the Executors,
initially intended to implement Harriot's wishes fully. We know that a
large collection of Harriot's papers was in fact handed over to him. A
list of them was made by Protheroe, Harriot's third Executor, and a copy
of the list is extant in the British Museum.s" It is a truly astonishing
document. To begin with, it shows that the disarray, often commented

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8 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

on, in Harriot's manuscripts as we have them today, was already a feature

of the original collection. Sixteen bundles of "Analytiques" head the
list, unspecified: thus far a classification had been attempted. But it
goes on with over a hundred individually named "bundles" and half a
dozen lots of loose papers, without attempt at grouping or any kind of
logical order. Genuine pure mathematics is mixed up with optics,
terrestrial magnetism, commentaries, chronologies, genealogies and
observational astronomy.
Among Rigaud's manuscripts at the Bodleian is a careful copy of this
liSt.'17 Elsewhere.s" he comments on the resemblance with the now
known Harriot papers, to which, he concludes, "most, if not all of them,"
clearly belonged. But he merely takes this as corroborating Camden's
report of Aylesbury's role, which he had comfortably accounted for.
He will not accept it as evidence of Protheroe's involvement, claimed by
Aubrey. Still less does he ponder on the significance of Torporley. It
is clear that he shelved this question. The problem of assessing Harriot's
scientific achievements as represented by the surviving store of his
papers had brought Rigaud into the field, and this store he had combed
exhaustively enough within his lights. The Will is practically the only
document added since his time. And what the Will does for us it would
have done for him, in focusing on Torporley, and hence on the more
purely mathematical among Harriot's manuscripts. This was where
Torporley's competence lay. For this Harriot must have chosen him as
his interpreter to posterity.
The list that Rigaud copied would have told him as it does us the nearly
prohibitive nature of the undertaking. But Rigaud had also the evidence
that we have for believing that Torporley did in fact attack the task.
This is the manuscript at Sion College which Stevens," from his knowledge
of the Will, saw as apparently "nothing more nor less than Torporley's
attempt to pen out such doctrine as he found in Harriot's papers".
Translating Torporley's closely written Latin, Stevens quotes this re-
markable preamble: "It is our principal design to explain the improve-
ment in science discovered by our friend Thomas Harriot but he neither
completely reformed it (which indeed was not necessary) nor gave a full
account of it, but only strengthened it where it was defective, and by
treating in his own way the points of the science which were heretofore
more difficult, rendered them clear and easy". This modest appraisal is
in complete contrast to the headlong panegyrics one is wont to see
quoted, either from much earlier writers (even Torporley himself'"), or
from John Wallis, who in his Algebra of 1676 plainly voiced a general and
traditional view of Harriot's mathematical genius.P
A detailed study of this manuscript will, I much hope, be made by
J on Pepper, who has already ascertained its kinship with a number of
Harriot papers at Petworth and the British Museum. It does not carry

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 HARRIOT'S WILL 9
out to any extent the programme set out in the preamble. But the
really exciting thing about this programme is that it appears again.
somewhat inflated. in the one book that Harriot's Executors did get
published. ten years after the inception of the scheme. This book is of
course the Artis analyticae praxis. where the Preface expresses. in a more
high-flown style and with many superlatives. exactly the same point of
view as Torporley. He sets out to present Vieta's work combined with
Harriot's principles; the Praxis purposes to present Harriot as Vieta
new-born.52
The temptation to regard this as a sign that Torporley was involved in
the production of the Praxis runs counter to an almost universal opinion.
of which more hereafter. But there is more positive evidence still.
Rigaud himself found it. but without being able to interpret it. Indeed.
it was almost the last addition to his Harriot dossier: less than a year
later. he was dead. 53 The extract is taken from the Warner collection of
manuscripts in the British Museum. which forms three volumes of the
immense set of Pell papers. The originalM had been folded and endorsed
on the back: PraeJatio ad Opus Harrioti. There is first. in Warner's
handwriting. word for word the notice Ad M athematicos studiosos which
is found. not in the Preface. but as postscript. in the printed Praxis
(p. 180). and has been quoted time out of mind. Underneath Torporley
has scrawled: "This will do well in this form. And I leave it to Mr
Warner's discrecn, whether he thinks it fit to give this monition or no.
because he seemed to doubt of it". The handwriting is unmistakable. as
Rigaud saw. He headed his entries on that page: "N. Torporley from
Birch's M.S.S. Nr 4408 (of Ayscough)". The letter he transcribed first
stands a few folios earlier (ff. 89-<)0) in the same volume. and is part of a
brief mathematical communication (not copied by Rigaud) to Protheroe
from "N.T.", ostensibly from his "homely cell" near Gloucester (i.e.
Salwarpe), and hence of a much earlier date. as the firmer handwriting
suggests. These two documents are buried in entirely different material.
little of which is mathematical (and which alone has been mentioned in
the catalogue description of the volume hitherto). evidence once more of
Rigaud's dedicated industry.
These documents of course antedate the publication and perhaps even
the composition of the Praxis. As to Torporley's reactions to its actual
appearance, we have remarkable evidence. In the few months left to
him to live. Torporley set himself to criticise the book with the utmost
severity. This critique was never completed. It breaks off so suddenly
that it would indeed seem to be the last thing he ever wrote. This
fragmentv is a very precious document to find preserved at Sion College,56
where so much of what Torporley left is known only from the Library
catalogue. A special study of it is being made by Dr J. G. Landels-
necessary for the difficult and recondite Latin style and many punning

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10 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

allusions, and the more imperative because the published transcription

by the Shakespearean scholar Halliwells?is extremely faulty, as Dr D. T.
Whiteside discovered on a preliminary attempt at translation.
There are several features and implications in the document of con-
siderable interest for Harriot research; and, taken in conjunction with
Harriot's Will, it brings an invaluable, if shadowy, glimmer of light to the
problem of the initial fate of Harriot's manuscripts. Those now extant
give no immediate evidence of anything coherent enough to have been the
original of the Praxis. The Preface to that work indeed seems to imply
that there never was one from Harriet's own hand. It claims for the
work only what Harriot himself directed: to be taken out of his writings,
without reproducing them exactly. It is therefore of the greatest sig-
nificance that Torporley, for the purpose of his critique, armed himself
with the actual manuscript of Harriot on which he knew the text was
based.
By the terms of the Will, he was entitled to get back on loan any
papers he had returned to the Earl after use. He must have availed
himself of this right-another proof that he had not relinquished his
position under the Will, voluntarily or no. He describes how, in these
papers, the work is laid out in a manner peculiar and customary to
Harriot; and he enumerates the sections, by their identifying letter and
numeral, and title. Folios similarly lettered and numbered are found
in the British Museum collection, and a close examination may yet serve
to piece together something like a preliminary draft for the work under-
lying the published treatise. Between the manuscripts and the printed
work there are, however, material differences. Both the algorithm used
and the mode of presentation are different. And this, precisely, is what
Torporley blames the Praxis for in the first instance. He does not
specify. But the discrepancies in symbolism are evident on the most
cursory inspectic ..
Rigaud noted'" that our equality sign, which is used throughout the
Praxis, was not the one Harriot used. Recorde69 had adopted the two
parallel lines ("because no two things can be more equal") a century
before. But Harriot joined the two lines by two short cross-strokes, as
clearly shown in the facsimile printed by Rigaud. And he drew them
not always horizontal, nor even straight. More unexpected still, our
inequality signs, which occur in the Praxis and have always been taken
to be Harriot's invention, are also, in the manuscripts, drawn with two
short cross-strokes. Dr J. Lohne has made two attempts to reproduce
them in print;60 the first went completely astray, and the second, in
minute print in a footnote, does not show what Harriot normally drew,
namely a half-crescent moon, closed at the broad end by two short cross-
strokes. Half-made signs are found,61 with only one side of the half-
crescent set down, obviously pending certainty as to which way the

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 HARRIOT'S WILL II

inequality should go, but never completed, thus showing his habitual
method of drawing them. Undoubtedly Harriot was the first to think
of an inequality as a formula; those reproduced in the Praxis are basic 62
and are also found in the manuscripts. To the history of mathematical
notation, a publication of Harriot's algebraic manuscripts would add
quite a chapter. The idea of simplifying Harriot's inequality signs in
line with the adoption of the equality sign of Recorde would have been a
happy one for the sake of the printer. Who first proposed it we cannot
know, but circumstantial evidence would at least implicate John Pell. 63
Torporley was not pre-eminently interested in symbols. He took
these particular discrepancies as merely typical of a general unfaithfulness
to the very core and spirit of Harriot's work on the part of the anonymous
editors of the Praxis. At the same time, he added, they had made such
a poor showing on Harriot's behalf that they entirely belied the fulsome
praise they gave him in the Preface. This too is justified: although there
is more in the Praxis than he or anyone else has hitherto properly ex-
hibited.P only further publication, as actually intended at the time, could
have gone far to remove the reproach. Torporley was plainly writing of
Harriet's mathematics as of something with which he was then, in 1632,
fully familiar. The original provision in the Will certainly no longer had
any force: "And if it happen that some manner of Notations or writings
in the said papers shall not be understood by him then my desire is that it
will please him to conferre with Mr Warner or Mr Hughes . . .". In
the intervening ten years, Torporley had become an expert on Harriot.
So why had he not brought out the book himself and done it properly?
The simplest conjecture that fits all the facts so far presented here is that
he did make a start, perhaps several, that he sent unfinished drafts to
the Executors, till either he or they got tired of it, and Aylesbury per-
suaded Walter Warner to take over at least provisionally.P There are
many possible reasons why Torporley could have ~ven up, if only
temporarily; and if the consequence did not please him, it would only
annoy him all the more that it was partly his own fault.
In his critique Torporley described himself as an old man issuing a last
warning to posterity, and at the same time removing some blemish.
His meaning is wrapped up in a profusion of allegories and metaphors that
will take some unravelling. There are undoubted allusions both in the
text and in the ornate frontispiece (in two versions, not reproduced by
Halliwell, but transcribed, and one translated, by Stevensw) to the
notorious difference between Torporley and Harriot on the subject of
atomism." But they are fleeting and humorous; and Torporley pulls
himself up short after playing with Harriot's celebrated device of setting
all the terms of an equation on one side and setting 'nothing' on the other68
-an invitation to the punster to maintain that he thus refutes his own
position. But this won't do, he says in effect. He must get down to the
B

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12 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

true business of his critique and his real subject, which was mathematical.
So it would seem to be in the mathematical context that he wished to
dissociate himself from the Praxis and remove some stigma. The latest
suggestion.w the most plausible yet in the light of fresh evidence, is that
Torporley intended to rehabilitate Harriot from the blame which he rightly
foresaw would redound on his reputation if this treatise were taken as
representative of his mathematical achievements. Such an attempt
would be consistent with a realisation on Torporley's part that he was now
unlikely to be able himself to implement the promise that Warner had
(significantly, perhaps pointedly) hesitated to append to the Praxis-the
only positive way to show indisputably Harriot's true greatness as a
mathematician. It would also speak for Torporley's mathematical
acumen, and put it above that of Wallis, if we restrict Wallis's comments
in his Algebra to an evaluation of the Praxis itself and discount his
explicit declaration that he will report what he finds implicit in his authors
and not just their literal content.70 Such considerations would do much
to vindicate the wisdom of Harriot's choice of Torporley as his literary
executor in his Will. But for a full evaluation more research is needed
on Torporley as mathematician, and the material is there both published
and unpublished.
Although the bearing of Harriot's Will on the problem of his manu-
scripts is its primary title of interest to us here, the document offers in
almost every line a pointer or clue, such as Rigaud would have delighted
to take Up,71 concerning Harriot, his family and affiliations, his character
and his mode of life. But above all it is to be prized as the one document
in which Harriot speaks directly to us. In his Virginia report he was
addressing contemporaries-"adventurers and well-wishers"-who might
help to man another colonising expedition. But here he said "My desire
is". And his 'desires' were so courteous and modest, so minutely and
selflessly specified, exact descriptions and locations brightening up the
stiff legal phraseology: old and obsolete papers he had charge of, his many
valuable scientific instruments, accurately identified people, even past as
well as present servants, that one by one aspects of Harriot's past seem to
be brought to life and to be gathered round him as he lay there on the
verge of death, in the house he mentioned, thereby bringing the whole up
to the minute in time. The five folio pages that represent the lost original
are truly a surprising testimony to the humanity of a man who must have
been too severely disfigured facially at the time to speak all this with any
comfort.72
REFERENCES
I. Expectations were raised notably, and in succession, by Artis analyticae Praxis . . .
Tractates e posthumis Thomae Harrioti . . . schediatismi . . . descriptu« (London,
1631) 180; Th, Birch, The history of the Royal Society (London, 1756) 120; X. von
Zach, "Anzeige von den in England aufgefundenen Harriotschen Manuscripten"
. . . London 26 Nov. 1784 in J. E. Bode's Berliner astronomisches Jahrbuch .••

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 HARRIOT'S WILL 13
(Berlin, 1785) 153; Ch. Hutton, A mathematical and philosophical dictionary, i
(London, 1795) 584; H. Stevens (posth.), Thomas Harriot, the mathematician, the
philosopher, the scholar developed chiefly from dormant materials . . . (London,
privately printed, 1900) 187; D. B. Quinn, The Roanoke voyages I (London, Hakluyt
Soc., 195 2) 3.
2. Guildhall Library, London, MS 9052, box V (1618-1623), and MS 9051, vol. vi, resp.
(Archdeaconry of London Court Records). The Will is reproduced in the appendix
to R. H. C. Tanner, "Thomas Harriot as mathematician-a legacy of hearsay;
part i", Physis, ix (1967), 235-247.
3. Stevens, op. cit., n. 1. For biographical details on Stevens, see the Preface by his
son, and F. Boase (ed.), Modern English biography iii (1965) 739.
4. A. M. Clerke (1842-1907). author of the popular History of astronomy during the I9th
century (London, 1885), contributed a number of excellent articles to the Dictionary
of National Biography (London, 1885-1900) and is herself the subject of one in the
new edition (1908).
5. S. J. Rigaud, Stephen Peter Rigaud, a memoir (Oxford, privately printed, 1883) 39.
6. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MSS Rigaud 1-62, esp. MS 35. (Nos 26203-26261 in
Summary catalogue of western manuscripts.) Presented in 1874 to the Savile
Library, Oxford, by two sons, John and Gibbes Rigaud, and passed to the Bodleian
in 1884.
7. Historical MSS Commission Leconfield 241, Petworth bundle vii, Letters from S. P.
Rigaud to Rev. T. Sockett, 23 July 1831; 25 July and 25 Aug. 1932.
8. Information on wills has been taken principally from B. G. Bouwen, revised by A. G.
Camp, Wills and their whereabouts (1963) iii, ix; and F. C. Montague, Law reform
I80o-I88S, 543 in H. D. Trail and J. S. Mann (ed.), Social England, vi (London,
1904). Also relevant is R. Burn, Ecclesiastical law, 4th ed., iv (London, 1731),
art. "Wills", esp. 179, 180, 206, 208.
9. Parliamentary papers, vol. xix, Session 5 Febr.-23 July 1830, pp. 47 sqq.
10. Bodleian Library MS Rigaud 35, f. 179 (f. 68 in Rigaud's numbering of a batch on
"Thomas Harriot and Sir William Lower"), Oct. 1835.
II. Ibid. f. 220 in "Particulars respecting Harriot in addition to the Accounts which
have been published of him" (fl. 214-235, undated).
12. P. C. Moore, Registrar, Doctor's Commons 29 Jan. 1830 in op. cit. n. 9, 88, 89.
13. Recollections of M« James Lenox of New York and the formation of his library (1886),
quoted in Dictionary of American Biography, xvii (1935), art. "Henry Stevens",
6II-612.
14. Public &- General Acts 20 &- 2I Viet. c. 77, 710, III, IV.
15. Ibid. 716, xxvi.
16. R. Needham and A. Webster, Somerset House, past and present (London, 1905) 245,
259. Public &- General Acts 36 &- 37 Viet. c. 66, esp. 45, 92, "Transfer of books and
papers to supreme court".
17. Stevens, op. cit. n. I, 166 and 203.
18. Ibid. 166--167.
19. Information kindly communicated by the Librarian, The Guildhall, London, by
letter 20 October 1967, and quoted with permission.
20. J. W. Shirley, "The scientific experiments of Sir Walter Ralegh, the Wizard Earl
and the three Magi in the Tower 1603-1617", Ambi«, iv (1949-51) 59, n. 34.
21. Information kindly communicated by the Librarian, The Guildhall, London, by letter
23 November 1967. The Public &- General Acts I9S8 (HMSO, 1959) 486--502, esp.
298 (n),
22. Rigaud's source was Aubrey's Letters and lives of eminent men, ii (1813) 578 (Bodleian
Library MS Rigaud 35, f. 218). The later selection by A. Clark (Brief lives, 1898)
gives the passage in the article "Walter Warner" (ii, 291).
23. S. P. Rigaud, The correspondence of scientific men in the seventeenth century, i (Oxford,
1841) 153 (posthumous, but already in print in Rigaud's lifetime; see op. cit. n. 5,
II).
24. Bodleian Library, Rigaud MS 35, f. 218. William Camden (1551-1623) made notes
for the reign of James I, as a continuation of his Annales of the reign of Elizabeth
(1615 sqq.), which Thomas Smith appended to his edition of Camden's Epistolae
(1691). They run chronologically from 1603 to 1623, and Anno I6.u starts at p. 65.
On P- 72 the entry for June 16, between items on peers of the realm, reads: Th,

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 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Hariotus, Mathematicus insignis, moritur: bona legavit Vicecomiti Insulae et Thomae

Ailsburio,
25· von Zach, op, cit. i, 153; S. P. Rigaud, "On Harriot's papers", Journal of the Royal
Institution, ii (1831) 268.
26. Birch, op. cit. n, I, 126.
27· Ibid. 309.
28. Sidney Lee, "Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632)", D.N.B.,
xliv (1895) 413.
29· Confused accounts of the circumstances are current. The search was instigated by
the Earl of Egremont's stepfather, Count von Bruhl, amateur astronomer and
envoy of Saxony in London, and achieved by his protege, Xaver von Zach (1754-
1832), who was, however, side-tracked by the commission to build and supervise
the Observatory at Seeberg near Gotha (now in East Germany). For fuller details,
see Allgememeine deutsche Biograpbie, xliv (Leipzig, 1898) 613; A. Armitage,
"Baron von Zach and his astronomical correspondence", Popular astronomy, lvii
(1949) 326-333; and von Zach's own report, op. cit. n. I, 145-147 and 152-153.
30 • Birch, op. cit. I. 410.
31. Bodleian Library MS Rigaud 35, f. 219.
32. Th. Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia . . ., Im-
printed in London 1588, 4°.
33· Torporley's main work, Diclides caelometricae (London, 1602) is a didactic treatise on
spherical trigonometry (prefaced by an astrological disquisition of no interest to
us), which Cantor briefly analyses in Vorlesungen uber Geschicbte der Mathematik,
ii [znd ed., Leipzig, 1913) 701, following the detailed account by A. G. Kastner
(1719-1800), Geschichte der Mathematik, iii (GOttingen, 1796-1800) 101-107, which
treats as rather a joke Torporley's verbal and pictorial inventions.
34· Bodleian Library MS Rigaud 9, fl. 18, 21, 22.
35· Jon V. Pepper, "A letter from Nathaniel Torporley to Thomas Harriot", British
journal for the history of science, iii (1967) 285-290.
Cf. Jean Jacquot, "Thomas Harriot's reputation for impiety", Notes and records of the
Royal Society of London,ix (1952) 168, 180.
37· Walter Warner (?I560-1643)-the year of death being certified by the burial entry
for 28 March 1643 in the Memorials of St Margaret's Church, Westminster in the
Guildhall Library (and tallying with mentions of him in letters of Pell and Mersenne
in 1642)-was already in the Earl's service in 1591: Shirley, Ambix, iv (1949-51)
56-57·
Robert Hughes or Hues (1553-1632)-these years being certified by the memorial to
him in the Cathedral of Christ Church, Oxford-entered the Earl's household only
in 1615: ibid. 59, 60.
39. The dates of Torporley's ecclesiastical appointments have been confirmed from the
church records at Lyddington and Salwarpe, which provide no further information
on him, as their Rectors have very kindly informed me by letters on 3 and 6 June
1967 from Lyddington Rectory, and 21 October 1967 from Salwarpe.
Alexander Read (Rhead, Reid; 1586-1641), The chirurgicall lectures of tumors and
ulcers (London, 1635) 307. See R. C. H. Tanner-Young, "La place de Thomas
Harriot dans l'histoire de la medecine et de l'astronomie", Gesnerus, xxiv (1967)
75-77 and (shortened version) Actes de la Societe helvetique des sciences naturelles
(1966) 172-173.
4 1 • Shirley, op. cit. n. 20, 59.
42 . Examination of Nathaniel Topherley, 27 Nov. 1605, Heading G: Cal. SP Dom, James I
1603-16II, 14/216 [Gunpowder plot book No 122J: reference from autograph notes
kindly supplied by Dr Shirley.
43· G. R. Batho, Household papers of Henry Percy (London, 1962) 163.
44· E. H. Pearce, Sion College and library (Cambridge, 1913) 234.
45· Somerset House, Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Original Wills Box 506, N. Tor-
perley, I June 1632; Register Copy, Audley 65, f. 8 v. (5th from end of volume):
listed in PCC Probates 1630-1634; Probate Record, P.A. 1632 (mid-volume).
Brit. Mus. MS Add. 6789, fl. 448-450. The endorsement on the back with the names
of Torporley and Protheroe was so deep in the binding at the spine that a microfilm,
taken before the rebinding effected in 1967, does not show it.

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 HARRIOT'S WILL IS
47· Bodleian Library MS Rigaud 35, f. 123. See also S. P. Rigaud, Miscellaneous works
of James Bradley (Oxford, 1832-1833), Supplement: An account of Harriet's astro-
nomical papers, 42, note y.
48. Bodleian Library MS Rigaud 35, f. 219.
49· Stevens, op. cit., n. I, 17l.
50. Torporley, op. cit., n, 33, preface (unpaginated) sig. A,v; quoted by Stevens, op. cit.,
n. I, 101, with translation 102. The document is reproduced and discussed in
R. H. C. Tanner, "Nathaniel Torporley and the Harriot manuscripts", Annals of
science (in press).
John Wallis (1616-1703), A treatise on algebra (1876, printed 1885) 125-208, was
interpreting, in the light of this reputation, the attempt made at publication on
Harriot's behalf; by bringing in the name of Descartes, he introduced a polemical
element on which quotations tend to fasten.
52. Praxis (op. cit., n. I), preface, third p., line 7 ab infr.
53· Bodleian Library MS Rigaud 35, fl. 183, 184, extract dated 27/4 38. It is followed by
one more dated II/I2 39, a slip of pen for 38. Rigaud died on 16 March 1839.
54· Brit. Mus. MS Add.4395 (formerly 4408), Warner's Mathematical collection, vol. ii,
t. 92.
55· Torporley, Corrector analyticus, Sion College MS L 4o.2/E 10.
56. Sion College now stands on Victoria Embankment near Blackfriars, beside the City of
London School. The combined frontage was originally allocated to the School.
The land had been reclaimed from the River by the Thames Act of 1862. See
A. E. Douglas-Smith, The City of London School, znd ed. (Oxford, 1965) 217, 244.
Both buildings date from the early 1880'S.
57· J. O. Halliwell (1820-1889), A Collection of letters illustrative of the progress of science in
England from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to that of Charles the Second (1841), usually
quoted as Letters on scientific subjects, Appendix, IOg-II6.
58. Rigaud, op. cit., n. 47, 520 and plate 5.
59· Robert Recorde (1510-1558), The whetstone of witte (London, 1557) leaf Ff lv.,
unpaginated.
60. J. Lohne, "Thomas Harriot als Mathematiker", Centaurus xi (1965) 42, where they
have been printed as modern cancelled inequality signs, and "Dokumente zur
Revalidierung von Thomas Harriot als Algebraiker", A rchioe for the history of the
exact sciences, iii (1966) 204, footnote, which reproduces the stylised form of
Harriet's inequality sign found, e.g., in his pupil William Lower's letter to him on
3 April I6II (Brit. Mus. MS Add.6789, f. 431), reprinted with modernised symbols
by Halliwell, op. cit. n. 57, 41, where < appears both for 'angle' and for 'less than'.
A facsimile reproduction of Harriet's sign is given in R. H. C. Tanner, op, cit., n. 2.
6l. E.g., Brit. Mus. MS Add.6782, f. 232.
62. They are the classical inequalities between geometric and arithmetic means and their
analogues between geometrico-arithmetic means of successive degrees: Praxis
(op. cit. n. 1) 78 (misprinted 72)-86, lemmata 1-6.
Brit. Mus. MS Harl, 6083, f. 147. It seems significant that John Pell (16II-1685)
invented a series of very pertinent mathematical symbols, exhibited in the tran-
scription of his algebraic instruction to J. R. Rahn (Rhonius, 1622-1676), Teutsche
algebra (Zurich, 1659), almost the only writer to adopt the inequality signs of the
Praxis (though without naming it) in print until relatively recent times. A pre-
cocious and lifelong friend of Warner, neglectful of his own interests, Pell was taking
his B.A. at Cambridge and corresponding with Briggs in 1628, and in 1631 he was
incorporated at Oxford.
Mrs Muriel Seltman has undertaken a study of the Praxis for the M.Sc. at University
College, London.
That Walter Warner brought out the Praxis seems to have been common knowledge:
Wallis, op, cit. n. 51, Preface, 4th page; Halliwell, op, cit. n. 57, 71, corrected in
Stevens, op. cit. n. I, 189 (Aylesbury, 5 July 1632, Brit. Mus. MS Add.4396, f. 90).
66. Stevens, op. cit. n. I, 172, 174, 176.
67· Jacquot, op. cit. n. 36. The later account by R. H. Kargon, Atomism in England from
Harriot to Newton (Oxford, 1966), as regards Harriet and Torporley, adds nothing
but errors.

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16 HISTORY OF SCIENCE

68. Cf. Wallis to Collins, Oxford, 12 April 1673, in Rigaud, op. cit. n. 23, ii, 573.
69. Verbally, by T. I. M. Beardsworth, 10 Nov. 1967.
70 • Wallis, op. cit. n. 51, "To the Reader", 20 Nov. 1684, long passage winding up with
"For it many times happens, that a man lights on a good notion; which he hath
not the happiness to express so intelligibly, as perhaps another may do for him. . . ."
71 • As witness, e.g., Rigaud's detailed investigations on Harriot's associates in Bodleian
Library MS Rigaud 35, ft. 106 seq. and 314 seq.
72 • On Harriet's last illness, further research is needed. Contradictions in the reports
were noted already by Rigaud, Bodleian Library MS Rigaud 9. f. 1; ct. also op. cit.
n·4°.

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