- For one practitioner's response to these charges, see Worsop Edward A Discoverie of sundire errours London 1582
- Much of the material for a larger study can be found in Taylor E.G.R. The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England Cambridge 1954
- For William Bedwell's publications on Thomas' carpenter's rule, see Harris Eileen British Architectural Books and Writers 1556–1785 Cambridge 1990
- Bedwell's Trinity details are: matriculated as a sizar (1562), B.A. (1566–7), fellow (1569), and M. A. (1570). See Venn John Venn J.A. Alumni Cantabrigienses Cambridge 1922–27 I 124 124 Part 1, 4 vols The first recorded payment to him appears in the Bursar's Books for 1570, and he continued to be paid until at least 1574. See H. M. Innes, Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge (Cambridge, 1941), p. 25. Note that there are no surviving records for 1575 (ibid., p.7).
- Cooper Charles Henry Cooper Thompson Athenae Cantabrigienses Cambridge 1858–1913 II 539 539 3 vols (1861) state that Bedwell became a minister in London. The statement was repeated by Venn and Venn (footnote 6) and made its way into the Dictionary of National Biography. However, Bedwell does not appear in G. Hennessy, Novum Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense (London, 1898). While the possibility that Bedwell was briefly a minister cannot be ruled out, it should be discounted until some supporting evidence can be found. The statement may have arisen from a misinterpretation of a passage written by his nephew William Bedwell in A Brief Description of the town of Tottenham High-Cross in Middlesex (London, 1631), chapter 8.
- The best modern account of the Elizabethan harbour works at Dover is by Summerson J. The History of the King's Works Colvin H.M. London 1963–82 IV 755 764 6 vols
- 1927 . Calendar of State Paper, Foreign, June 1586 to March 1587 319 – 319 . London He is presumably the ‘beduwel’ listed in the Dutch records as a follower of Leicester; see R. Strong and J. A. van Dorsten, Leicester's Triumph, Publications of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute, special series, 2 (Leiden, 1964), p.110. For the duties of the pioneers see C. G. Cruickshank, Elizabeth's Army, second edition (Oxford, 1966), p.25.
- PRO SP12/199/22 Earl of Sussex to Lord Burghley, from Portsmouth 1587 March 10
- Colvin , H.M. , ed. 1963–82 . The History of the King's Works Vol. IV , 604 – 604 . London
- Bedwell was buried on 30 April 1595, see M.S.R. Notes and Queries 1860 10 74 75 2nd series
- For the diffuse but recognizable role of the military engineer, see The History of the King's Works Colvin H.M. London 1963–82 IV 409 414
- PRO SP12/153/27
- Water clocks may appear unlikely candidates for the determination of longitude. However Bedwell was not alone in rating their possibilities highly: William Oughtred was another who considered that they offered the likeliest method for establishing longitude differences. See his Circles of Proportion and the Horizontal Instrument A.H. Oxford 1660 140 143 translated by W. F.
- See the dedication to his Nova Scientia Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy Drake Stillman Drabkin I.E. Madison 1969 65 65 in For a more general account of gunnery in this period, see A. R. Hall, Ballistics in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1952).
- Bedwell's patent as storekeeper is dated 15 January 1589, see Hogg O.F.G. The Royal Arsenal London 1963 I 169 169 2 vols n.111
- British Library Sloane MS 871 fol. 150r-v
- Warwick to Burghley January 1588/9 17 BL Lansdowne MS 59/5.
- Robert Norman, the mechanician responsible for discovering the dip of the magnetic needle, certainly felt arguments of this sort to be a disparagement to his status as an expert artisan. He defended himself against the learned, who wished to reduce the mechanician to no more than a drudge incapable of any intellectual contribution. See The Newe Attractiue London 1581 sig. Biv
- 1980 . Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution , corrected edition Oxford chapter 1, ‘London Science and Medicine’.
- Rossi Paolo Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era New York 1970 29 30 translated by S. Attanasio Rossi distinguishes the general process of the revaluation of the mechanical arts from the particular changes in the status of mechanicians. Rossi's stress on upward mobility and harmonious co-operation between artisans and intellectuals should be qualified by a more extensive consideration of strategies such as Bedwell's.
- More identifies himself as a carpenter on his title page. For his membership of the company, see Millard A.M. Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters VII, Wardens' Account Book 1592–1614 London 1968 where he is indexed as Richard Moore.
- See his citation of authors in The Carpenters Rule London 1602 56 56
- 1602 . The Carpenters Rule 56 – 56 . London sig. A4v
- 1602 . The Carpenters Rule 56 – 56 . London Bedwell's ruler continued to be used, even before it was advertised and described in print by his nephew William Bedwell. It was probably part of the instrumental repertoire of contemporary mathematicians. Certainly, Henry Briggs was offering instruction on its use in 1607: Briggs to Ralph Clarke in Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century, edited by Stephen Jordan Rigaud, 2 vols (Oxford, 1841), i, 1–3
- Tanner is evidently the work of a copyist: it ends ‘Finis 1596’, the year after Bedwell's death. Laud is a neat copy, presumably prepared by a scrivener and possibly corrected by Bedwell himself. It does not have a dedication, but may have been intended for presentation. There are two manuscripts in the collection of the Earl of Macclesfield ‘for the delineation of Bedwell's ruler’. These treat the carpenter's rule, but may be adaptations of Bedwell's tract or, more probably, independent compositions dealing only with the construction of the instrument. See Rigaud The Carpenters Rule London 1602 1 3 3
- Operations of the Geometric and Military Compass, 1606 Washington, D.C. 1978 41 41 translated by Stillman Drake and Drake's introduction pp. 24–5.
- More . 1602 . The Carpenters Rule 2 – 2 . London ‘As those strikes and divisions agree not with the truth, so upon diverse rules you shall find them to disagree one from another: yea, hardly shall you see two rules that do everywhere agree. Neither is this error insensible, and so not to be respected; but apparently gross, and therefore not to be tolerated …. Neither is this error rare and in some alone, but so general as that if a man would examine them he should be forced to say that true rules are very scant.’ (Ibid.)
- Note that Thomas Digges also decided to restrict his future writings on artillery to the vernacular: Pantometria , second edition London 1591 176 176
- Bedwell's secrecy and reluctance to publish indicate that it was not only craftsmen who were unwilling to divulge the secrets of their trade. This aspect of Bedwell's work requires more sustained attention and a larger comparative context than is possible here. For general comments, see Eisenstein Elizabeth The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Cambridge 1980 2 vols in 1 chapter 6, ‘Technical literature goes to press’.
- Petrus Ramus, for example, repeated Galen's definition: ‘Ars est systema praeceptorum universalium’ (cited by Tatarkiewicz W. Classification of the Arts Dictionary of the History of Ideas Wiener Philip P. New York 1973–4 1 456 462 in 5 vols (pp. 456, 459). Note that Edward Worsop has one of the participants in his dialogue realize that ‘Euclid's Elements is a book of mathematical rules, and that by the knowledge of those rules mathematical operations are performed’ (footnote 1, sig. G2v).
- Taylor . 1954 . The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England 40 – 41 . Cambridge 179; Francis R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A Study of the English Scientific Writings from 1500 to 1645 (Baltimore, 1937), pp. 198–205; D. W. Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, second edition (Greenwich, 1978), pp. 185–201; Hill (footnote 27), pp. 33–4. Even Mordechai Feingold, whose interpretations often sharply differ from those of Taylor, Johnson, Waters, and Hill, agrees that Hood ‘embarked upon a successful career as a mathematical practitioner in London’, see The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities, and Society in England, 1560–1640 (Cambridge, 1984), p. 50.
- Hood's formal education actually began under Richard Mulcaster at Merchant Taylors' School on 7 November 1567 Robinson C.J. Register of the Scholars admitted into Merchant Taylors' School 1562–1874 1882 I 10 10 2 vols Hood's father, also called Thomas Hood, died before his son reached school age. His will is dated 24 June 1563, and it was proved 3 July 1563 (PRO PCC 27 Chayre). Hood's early Cambridge details are: matriculated pensioner 1573, scholar 1575, B.A. 1578, fellow 1579, and M.A. 1581, see Venn and Venn (footnote 6), II (1922), 402. Hood's tenure of the mathematical lectureship is recorded in Grace Book Delta, edited by J. Venn (Cambridge, 1910), p. 356 and in Cambridge University Archives, University Accounts, 2 (1), p. 279. For the lectureship from the 1560s to the 1640s, see Feingold (footnote 44), pp. 50–3; on its earlier history, see Paul Lawrence Rose, ‘Erasmians and Mathematicians at Cambridge in the Early Sixteenth Century’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 8 (Supplement) (1977), 47–59.
- Grace Book Delta 1882 I 388 389 2 vols Hood continued to receive his fellowship money from Trinity at least until 1583 and probably during 1584, though the Bursar's Books are missing for the latter year, see Innes (footnote 6), p. 7.
- Hood's will was made on 14 March 1620 and proved 23 April 1620 (Worcester Record Office, Probate vol. 7, fols 296v–297v). Hood describes himself as ‘doctor in Physic dwelling within the city of Worcester’ (though he also had a house in the village of Shrawley, 8 miles distant). John Aubrey states more positively that Hood practised physic at Worcester ‘Brief Lives’, chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 and 1696 Clark Andrew Oxford 1898 I 409 409 2 vols It does seem likely that Hood acted as a physician in and around Worcester, but we have no idea when and why he left London.
- On the general European pattern of connection between the roles of mathematicus and medicus, see Westman R.S. The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study History of Science 1980 18 105 147
- By the 1580s, Cambridge was established as a small but effective centre of medical training, and the medical faculty students could look forward to a secure career as either a country or London physician. See Pelling Margaret Webster Charles Medical practitioners Health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth century Webster Charles Cambridge 1979 165 235 in (p. 200). One of Hood's older Cambridge contemporaries, Lancelot Browne, provides an example of the more standard career that Hood could have chosen to follow. Browne was university mathematical lecturer from 1568 to 1570, before medicine fully occupied his studies. His licence to practise came in 1570 and his M.D. in 1576. Thereafter he moved to London where he was elected a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1584. However, Browne's successful pursuit of a London medical career did not rule out the amateur cultivation of his earlier mathematical interests: as late as 1602 he assisted Thomas Blundeville in his Theorics of the Seven Planets and he received the dedication of Thomas Oliver's De rectarum linearum parallelismo et concursu doctrina geometrica (1603). The mathematical arts thus remained worthy of the occasional attention of the learned physician, but they did not provide a career. For Browne, medicine offered the best route for the ambitious graduate and he recommended its study to Gabriel Harvey, even giving him a reading list. See Dictionary of National Biography, Athenae Cantabrigienses (footnote 7), Feingold (footnote 44), p. 50, and Pelling and Webster (above), pp. 193, 204–5.
- Hood to Burghley, BL Lansdowne Ms 101/12, printed in A Collection of Letters Illustrative of the Progress of Science in England Halliwell James Orchard London 1841 31 31
- By contrast with his earlier publications, Hood's title is conspicuously absent in his 1592 Regiment for the Sea Bourne's William 1592 December which was entered in the Stationers' Register on 20
- Barlow , William . 1597 . The Navigators Supply London sig. K2v
- Stow John The Survey of London A.M. London 1618 122 122 first published 1598 Stow's brief notice of the mathematical lecture has come to be regarded as unreliable because he garbled the chronology of its foundation. He was, however, well informed on the end of the lectureship. The carrack was actually the Portuguese Madre de Dios, captured by Walter Ralegh's privateering fleet and brought back to Dartmouth on 7 September. Various contemporary accounts of the action leading to the capture of the ship and its immensely valuable cargo survive: see Kenneth R. Andrews, English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies 1588–1595, Hakluyt Society (Cambridge, 1959), p. 188, n. 1. Hakluyt gives an inventory of merchandise stored at the Leadenhall, dated 15 September 1592 (R. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 12 vols (Glasgow, 1903–4), VII, 116). This is a misdating and should be corrected against BL Lansdowne 70/89, dated 15 December 1592.
- Clark George A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London Oxford 1964–72 I 165 165 3 vols Hood is referred to as ‘Dr Thomas Hudd of Cambridge’, though he is later termed Dr Hood. This is the only definite evidence that he received his M.D. from Cambridge, where almost no official records of the university survive for the period 1589 to 1601 (J. Venn and J. A. Venn, The Book of Matriculations and Degrees … in the University of Cambridge from 1544 to 1659 (Cambridge, 1913)).
- Odyssey Harmondsworth 1946 155 157 translated by E. V. Rieu Book 10
- Dedication to Hood's translation of Christian Urstitius The Elements of Arithmeticke London 1596 Hood is described on the title page as ‘Doctor in Physic, and well-willer of them which delight in the Mathematical Sciences’.
- Clark . 1964–72 . A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London Vol. 3 , 165 – 166 . Oxford
- 1598 . Short Title Catalogue , second edition London The title was The Making and Use of the Geometricall Instrument, called a Sector
- Bourne , William . 1601 . A Regiment for the Sea Edited by: Hood , Thomas . London fol. 19
- Hood undertook at various times to publish a full text (with demonstrations) of Ramus' geometry, a treatise on dialling, a manuscript on Mercator's projection of the sea chart, and a completed translation of Simon Stevin's Geometrical Problems
- 1588 . A Copie of the Speache: Made by the Mathematicall Lecturer London
- 1590 . The use of the two Mathematicall instruments, the cross staffe … and the Jacob's staffe London entered in the Stationers' Register 27 January 1590 (STC, second edition).
- 1590 . The Use of the Celestial Globe in Plano, set forth in two hemispheres London entered in the Stationers' Register on 4 September 1590 (STC, second edition).
- 1592 . The Use of both the Globes, Celestiall, and Terrestriall London
- 1590 . The Elementes of Geometrie London Hood also wrote a now lost tract in 1591 in response to a pamphlet by the astrologer Simon Forman, The groundes of the longitude (London, 1591). Forman claimed to have a method of finding the longitude, but he did not reveal his secret; Hood's reply was presumably dismissive. The existence of this pamphlet is known from two sources: Forman's diary records that on ‘the 6 of July [1591] I put my book of the longitude to press …. The 22 of November Mr Hoods book came out Against me’; and Thomas Harriot refers to ‘Forman's book of the longitudes..[and].. Hood's Answer to the same’. See David B. Quinn and John W. Shirley, ‘A Contemporary List of Hariot References’, Renaissance Quarterly, 22 (1969), 9–26 (p. 22). Hood's work was evidently polemical rather than didactic, and thus would not give direct evidence for the content of the mathematical lecture. Note that he also refers slightingly to Forman in the preface to The Use of Both the Globes (1592).
- Hood lectured on at least two other texts, both of which confirm the teaching emphasis of his own books. Before the appearance of his own work on the globes he used Charles Turnbull's A perfect and easie Treatise of the Use of the coelestiall Globe London 1585 (see Globe in Plano (footnote 63), pp. 1v–2r, 13v, 42r). Hood also used Francis Cooke's The Principles of Geometrie, Astronomie, and Geographie (London, 1591), a translation from Georg Henisch whose title page advertised that the text was ‘appointed publicly to be read in the Stapler's Chapel at Leadenhall by the Wor[shipful] Tho. Hood, Mathematical Lecturer of the City of London’.
- For general comments on the didactic importance of instruments in the mathematical arts, with a particular study of John Aubrey's educational scheme of 1683/4, see Turner A.J. Mathematical Instruments and the Education of Gentlemen Annals of Science 1973 30 51 88
- 1590 . Globe in Plano London fol. 23v
- On the Molyneux globes, see Crin`o Anna Maria Wallis Helen New researches on the Molyneux Globes Der Globusfreund 1987 35–37 11 18 with references to earlier literature.
- 1592 . The Use of both the Globes London sig. B1r.
- 1592 . The Use of both the Globes London sig. M[8]r
- 1590 . Elementes of Geometrie London dedication to Sir John Hart, Lord Mayor, and the Aldermen of the City of London.
- Hood himself appears to have been a backer of a proposed voyage by Ralegh, see The Roanoke Voyages, 1584–1590 Quinn David Beers Hakluyt Society London 1955 II 570 570 2 vols
- 1590 . Globe in Plano London fol. 43v, Use of both the Globes (footnote 64), sig. A4v, M[8]r.
- 1592 . The Mariner's Guide London sig. Aiiir. Hood republicized his private availability as a teacher in this work.
- Rowse , A.L. 1962 . Ralegh and the Throckmortons 197 – 197 . London Shortly afterwards Throckmorton put down a deposit of 5 shillings on a ‘sphere’ worth £10 (ibid.).
- For the arithmetic and accounts teachers, see Shirley John W. Thomas Harriot: A Biography Oxford 1983 73 74 As colleagues and competitors, Hood also established relations with other mathematical practitioners. Thomas Harriot was an associate (Quinn and Shirley (footnote 65), p. 13) and Hood became involved in a dispute with Simon Forman (see above, footnote 65). In The Use of Both the Globes, Hood also defended himself against the alleged slanders of Abraham Kendall.
- Turner , G.L'E. 1983 . “ Mathematical instrument-making in London in the sixteenth century ” . In English Map-Making 1500–1650 Edited by: Tyacke , Sarah . 93 – 106 . London in
- There are three known charts signed by Hood: a 1592 chart of the West Indies (reproduced in Kunstmann F. von Spruner K. Thomas Georg M. Atlas zur Entdeckungsgeschichte Amerikas Munich 1859 13 13 a 1592 chart of the North Atlantic (engraved by Augustine Ryther for Hood's The Mariner's Guide; reproduced in A Regiment for the Sea and other writings on navigation by William Bourne, edited by E. G. R. Taylor, Hakluty Society (Cambridge, 1963), facing p. 130); and a 1596 chart of the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel (reproduced in D. Howse and M. Sanderson, The Sea Chart (Newton Abbott, 1973), pp. 46–7). There are also two doubtful attributions: an English chart of the North Atlantic (BL Add. Ms 17938B), unsigned and undated (attributed by Henry Harisse, Découverte et Evolution Cartographique de Terre-Neuve (London and Paris, 1900), p. 303n.); and a chart signed ‘TH’ (reproduced in R. A. Skelton and John Summerson, A Description of Maps and Architectural Drawings in the Collection made by William Cecil First Baron Burghley now at Hatfield House (Oxford, 1971), p. 39 and pl. 15). The last chart, which differs in a number of respects from Hood's standard practice and was made for Trinity House (‘TH’?), was afterwards engraved and appeared with a royal proclamation of 1605 (STC, second edition, 10019). On charts or sea plats as instruments, see Robert Norman's dedication to his translation of The Safegarde of Saylers, or great Rutter (London, 1590): navigation or hydrography use ‘many notable instruments, as Compass, Astrolabes, Plats, Quadrants …’ (sig. A2r).
- 1592 . A Regiment for the Sea London fol. 71v
- The sector has often been credited as Hood's invention, independent of (and possibly earlier than) Galileo's similar device. But Hood made no claim to have devised the instrument and instead referred to it as an already familiar device: he described the instrument as it was ‘commonly’ made The Making and Use of the Geometrical Instrument called a Sector London 1598 ff.5v ff.5v 28v). There is a sector of this type by Robert Beckit, dated 1597, in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford (illustrated in Turner, footnote 78). On Whitwell, see Joyce Brown, Mathematical Instrument-Makers in the Grocers' Company 1688–1800, with notes on some earlier makers (London, 1979), pp. 24, 60–1. Note that an additional engraving by Lenaert Terwoort of a cylindrical dial (dated 1591) was also used in Hood's book on the sector.
- On Ryther, see Brown Mathematical Instrument-Makers in the Grocers' Company 1688–1800, with notes on some earlier makers London 1979 58 60 and Arthur M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1952–64), i, 138–49. Note that in 1590, when Hood was lecturing at the Stapler's Chapel in the Leadenhall, Ryther's shop was ‘a little from Leadenhall next to the Signe of the Tower’.
- 1590 . Celestial Globe in Plano London sig. A4r
- On Savile, see Feingold The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities, and Society in England, 1560–1640 Cambridge 1984 124 130
- See Rose P.L. The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics Geneva 1975
- On Praetorius, see Westman Robert S. Three Responses to the Copernican Theory: Johannes Praetorius, Tycho Brahe, and Michael Maestlin The Copernican Achievement Westman Berkeley 1975 285 345
- Aubrey . 1898 . ‘Brief Lives’, chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 and 1696 Edited by: Clark , Andrew . Vol. II , 215 – 215 . Oxford 2 vols
- Aubrey's anecdote may be exaggerated or apocryphal; Savile did in fact reference to practical geometry in his statutes, see Feingold Mordechai The Universities and the Scientific Revolution: the Case of England New Trends in the History of Science et al. Amsterdam 1989 29 48 (p. 41). However, instruments were at the heart of other disputes on the character and teaching of mathematics. For the controversy between William Oughtred and Richard Delamain, see Turner (footnote 67).
- Feingold . 1984 . The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities, and Society in England, 1560–1640 168 – 170 . Cambridge
- Bruce T. Moran has published a number of articles on German princely courts, see for example German Prince-Practitioners: Aspects in the Development of Courtly Science, Technology, and Procedures in the Renaissance Technology and Culture 1981 22 253 274
- Clulee , Nicholas H. 1988 . John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion 189 – 199 . London
- See Willmoth Frances Annals of Science paper in this issue of
Annals of Science
Volume 48, 1991 - Issue 4