Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the Scholar Part 3

LETTER OF THOMAS HARIOT TO MR. SECRETARY

SIR ROBERT CECIL.

_From the original holograph in the Cecil Papers at Hatfield, vol. xliii, At first printed in Edward Edward's Life of Raleigh, vol. ii, page 420._

Right Honourable Sir,

These are to let you understand that whereas, according to your Honor's direction, I have been framing of a Charte out of some such of Sir Walter's notes and writings, which he hath left behind him,-his princ.i.p.al Charte being carried with him, -if it may please you, I do thinke most fit that the discovery of Captain Kemish be added, in his due place, before I finish it. It is of importance, and all Chartes which had that coast before be very imperfecte, as in many thinges elce.

And that of Sir Walter's, although it were better in that parte then any other, yet it was don but by intelligence from the Indians, and this voyadge was specially for the discovery of the same; which is, as I find, well and sufficiently performed. And because the secrecy of these matters doth much importe her Majesty and this State, I pray let me be so bould as to crave that the dispatch of the plotting and describing be don only by me for you, according to the order of trust that Sir Walter left with me, before his departure, in that behalf, and as he hath usually don heretofore. If your Honor have any notes from Sir Thomas Baskerville, if it may please you to make me acquaynted with them, that which they will manifest of other particularytyes then that before Sir Walter hath described shall also be set downe.

Although Captain Kemish be not come home rich, yet he hath don the speciall thing which he was injoined to do, as the discovery of the coast betwixt the river of Amasones and Orinico, where are many goodly harbors for the greatest ships her Majesty hath and any nomber; wher there are great rivers, and more then probability of great good to be don by them for Guiana, as by any other way or to other rich contryes borderinge upon it. As also, the discovery of the mouth of Orinico it self,-a good harbor and free pa.s.sage for ingresse and egresse of most of the ordinary ships of England, above 3 hundred miles into the contry.

Insomuch that Berreo wondred much of our mens comming up so far; so that it seemeth they know not of that pa.s.sage. Nether could they, or can possibly, find it from Trinidado; from whence usually they have made their discoveryes. But if it be don by them the shortest way, it must be done out of Spayne. Now, if it shall please her Majesty to undertake the enterprise, or permitte it in her subjectes, by her order, countenance, and authority, for the supplanting of those that are now gotten thither, I thinke it of great importance to keepe that which is don as secretly as we may, lest the Spaniardes learne to know those harbors and entrances, and worke to prevent us.

And because I understand that the master of the ship with Captain Kemish is somewhat carelesse of this, by geving and selling copyes of his travelles and plottes of discoveryes, I thought it my dutye to remember it unto your wisdome, that some order might be taken for the prevention of such inconveniences as may thereby follow : by geving authority to some Justice, or the Mayor, to call him before them, and to take all his writinges and chartes or papers that concerne this discovery, or any elce, in other mens handes, that he hath sold or conveyed them into ; and to send them sealed to your Honor, as also to take bond for his further secrecy on that behalf. And the like order to be taken by those others, as we shall further informe your Honor of, that have any such plots, which yet, for myne owne parte, I know not of; or any other order, by sending for him up or otherwise, as to your wisdome shall seeme best.

Concerning the Eldorado which hath been shewed your Honor out of the Spanish booke of Acosta, which you had from Wright, and I have scene, when I shall have that favour as but to speake with you I shall shew you that it is not ours-that we meane-there being three. Nether doth he say, or meane, that Amazones river and Orinoco is all one,-as some, I feare, do averre to your Honor ; as by good profe out of that booke alone I can make manifest; and by other meanes besides then this discovery, I can put it out of all dout.

To be breef, I am at your Honor's comandement in love and duty farther than I can sodeynly expresse for haste. I will wayte upon you at Court, or here at London, about any of these matters or any others, at any time, if I might have but that favour as to heare so much. I dare not presume of my selfe, for some former respectes. My fidelity hath never been impeached, and I take that order that it never shall. I make no application. And I beseech your Honor to pardon my boldness, because of haste. My meaning is allwayes good. And so I most humbly take my leave.

This Sunday, 11th of July 1596.

Your Honor's most ready at commandement in all services I may,

THO. HARRIOTE.

addressed:

To the right honorable Sir ROBERT CICILL, Knight Princ.i.p.all Secretary to Her Majesty, these.

Endorsed: 11 July, 1596. Mr Harriott to my Master.

The vigilant Secretary lost no time in acting upon Hariot's suggestions.

On the 31st of July Sir George Trenchard and Sir Ralph Horsey wrote to Cecil from Dorchester in reply to his instructions, that they had seized the charts and books of the ' India Voyage' [to Guiana] from one Samuel Mace and William Downe, which they would send up to the Secretary if desired. They were desired, and accordingly sent them by post on the 10th of August. A few days later Raleigh returned to Plymouth with the first glorious news of the success of the English fleet at Cadiz ; which news completely turned the heads of the people of England one way, and those of the Queen and the hungry politicians the other. Poor Mace, to whom Raleigh was much attached, was restored to his confidence. To Raleigh more than to any one man this triumph over Spain was justly due, but in the pitiful squabbles that followed in the apportionment of the honors and the spoils Sir Walter used to aver that his sole gain in this great national enterprise from beginning to end was but a lame leg. He might have added that the business had gained for him the envy, malice and all uncharitableness of those in high places. In worldly wealth he was now comparatively poor, and his fortunes were broken, though the Queen at times, only at times, smiled on him.

At what precise time Hariot, who never deserted Raleigh, became acquainted with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with whose honored name, next to that of Sir Walter's, his must ever be a.s.sociated, does not as yet appear. It is known, however, that there was an intimacy between Raleigh and Percy as early as 1586, when Sir Walter presented Percy with a coat of mail on his going over to Flanders, and soon after a bedstead made of cedar from Virginia ; while the Earl about the same time gave to Sir Walter a ' stroe coloured velvet saddle.' From this time to the day of Raleigh's triumph on the scaffold there exists plenty of evidence of their continued intimacy.

When therefore the Earl and Raleigh were finally caged together in the Tower for life in 1606 their friendship was of more than twenty years'

standing. From this we infer that Hariot also knew Percy almost from the time of his joining Raleigh; but the earliest mention of his name in connection with that of the Earl which we have met with is this of 1596, in the Earl's pay-rolls, still preserved at Sion, and described in the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission of Historical Ma.n.u.scripts, page 227, 'To Mr. Herytt for a book of the Turk's pictures, 7s.' It appears from the same rolls that from Michaelmas 1597 to 1610, if not earlier and later, an annual pension of 80 (not 120, or 150, 300, as variously stated) was paid to Hariot by the Earl. This pension was probably continued as long as Hariot lived; and besides there are not wanting many marks of the Earl's liberality, friendship, and love for his companion and pensioner, who was long known as ' Hariot of Sion on Thames,' as expressed on his monument. In the Earl's accounts for 1608 there is this entry, ' Payment for repairing and finishing Mr Heriotts house at Sion.'

At what time exactly Hariot took up his residence at Sion the Earl's new seat (purchased of James in 1604) is not known, but probably soon after the Earl was sent to the Tower in 1606. There is preserved a Letter from Sir William Lower addressed to Hariot at Sion dated the 3Oth of September 1607, and other letters or papers exist showing his continued residence there until near the time of his death in 1621. Wood and many subsequent writers to the present time have confused Sion near Isleworth with Sion College in London. They are totally distinct. Hariot had nothing to do with Sion College, which was not founded until 1630, nine years after his death. The error arose out of the coincidence of Torporley's taking chambers at Sion College on retiring from his clerical profession, and dying there in April 1632, leaving his mathematical books and ma.n.u.scripts to the College Library. He had been appointed by Hariot to look over, arrange, and ' pen out the doctrine '

of his mathematical writings. Torporley's abstracts of Hariot's papers are still preserved in Sion College Library.

What the Earl of Northumberland did for Hariot is, as the world goes, ascribed to patronage ; what Hariot did for the Earl cannot be measured by money or houses, but may be summed up in four words, alike honorable to both, ' they were long friends.' To this day the debt of grat.i.tude from the philosopher to the n.o.bleman is fairly balanced by the similar debt of the n.o.bleman to the philosopher. Hariot's Will, given on pages 193-203, tells the rest of the story of this n.o.ble friendship.

It is manifest, however, from many considerations that the n.o.ble Earl took a lively and almost officious interest in the public honor and character of his friend, for Hariot appears to have been as careless of his own scientific reputation as his contemporary Shakspeare is said to have been of his literary eminence.

On the other hand, Hariot's interest in the Earl's affairs and family at Sion redound greatly to his credit. He was both an eminent scholar and a remarkable teacher. Earnest students flocked to him for higher education from all parts of the country. Besides the private scientific and professional instruction that from the first he gave to Raleigh, his captains and sea officers, he seems to have had under his scientific tuition and mathematical guidance many young men who afterwards became celebrated; among whom may be mentioned Robert Sidney, the brother of Sir Philip, afterwards Lord Lisle of Penshurst; Thomas Aylesburyof Windsor, afterwards Sir Thomas, the great-grandfather of two queens of England; the late Lord Harrington; Sir William Protheroe and Sir William Lower of South Wales; Nathaniel Torporley of Shropshire; Sir Ferdinando Gorges of Devonshire; Captain Keymis; Captain Whiddon, and many others.

Cordial and affectionate letters of most of these men to their venerated master are still preserved.

At Sion were the groves of Hariot's academy.

Yet he with Warner and Hues was constantly pa.s.sing by the Thames between Sion and the Tower, some three or four hours by oar and tide. They were all three pensioners, or in the pay, of the Earl, though the last two were on a very different footing from that of Hariot as to emoluments and responsible position. They were, however, companions of both the Earl and Sir Walter, and, if tradition is to be believed, they were sometimes joined by Ben Jonson, Dr Burrill, Rev. Gilbert Hawthorne, Hugh Broughton, the poet Hoskins and perhaps others.

The Earl had a large family to be educated, and there is reason to believe that in his absence from Sion Hariot was intrusted for many years with the confidential supervision of some of the Earl's personal affairs at Sion, including the education of his children. How he identified himself with the n.o.ble family of his patron may be inferred from these extracts from a letter to Hariot, dated July 19, 1611, of William Lower, one of his loving disciples. Cecil had been fishing out some new evidence of Percy's treason from a discharged servant, and was pressing cruelly upon the prisoner. Lower writes :

I have here [in South Wales] much otium and therefore I may cast awaye some of it in vaine pursuites, chusing always rather to doe some thinge worth nothing then nothing att all. How farre I had proceeded in this, I ment now to have given you an account, but that the reporte of the unfortunate Erles relapse into calamitie makes me beleeve that you are enough troubled both with his misfortunes and my ladys troubles; and so a discourse of this nature would be unseasonable. [And concludes the letter with] But at this time this much is to much. I am sorrie to heare of the new troubles ther, and pray for a good issue of them especiallie for my ladys sake and her five litle ones. [The Countess of Northumberland here referred to was the mother of Sir William Lower's wife, who was Penelope Perrot, daughter of Sir John Perrot, who married Lady Dorothy Devereux, sister of Ess.e.x, and for her second husband Henry Percy the gth Earl of Northumberland. Lower died in 1615.]

This responsible trust gave Hariot a good house and home of his own at Sion, with independence and an observatory. He had a library in his own house, and seems to have been the Earl's librarian and book selector or purchaser for the library of Sion House, as well as for the use of the Earl in the Tower. The Earl was a great book-collector, as appears by his payrolls. Books were carried from Sion to the Tower and back again, probably not only for the Earl's own use, but for Raleigh's in his History of the World. Many of these books, it is understood, are still preserved at Petworth, then and subsequently one of the Earl's seats, but now occupied by the Earl of Leconsfield.

To look back a little. Before either Raleigh or Henry Percy was shut up in the Tower, we find one of Hariot's earliest and ablest mathematical disciples, Nathaniel Torporley, a learned clergyman, writing in high praise of him in his now rare mathematical book in Latin, ent.i.tled,'

Diclides Coelometricx,' or Universal Gates of Astronomy, containing all the materials for calculation of the whole art in the moderate s.p.a.ce of two tables, on a new general and very easy system. By Nathaniel Torporley, of Shropshire, in his philosophical retreat, printed in 1602.

The exact t.i.tle is as follows:

Diclides Coelometricae / Seu / Valvae Astronomicae / vniversales / Omnia artis totius numera Psephoph.o.r.etica in sat modicis / finibus duarum Tabularum Methodo noua, generali,/ & facilima continentes./ Auth.o.r.e Nathale Torporlaeo Salopiensi / in secessu Philotheoro. / Londini / Excudebat Felix Kingston. 1602. / 4.

In the long preface Torporley, who had entered St Mary's Hall the year Hariot graduated, and who during his travels abroad had served two years as private secretary or amanuensis to Francis Vieta, the great French Mathematician, but who had since become a disciple of the greater English Mathematician, thus admiringly speaks of his new master, Thomas Hariot:

Neque enim, per Authorum cunctationem & affectatam ob-scuritatem, fieri potuit, vt in prima huius Artis promulgatione, eidem alicui & inventionis laudem, te erudiendi mercedem deferremus; sed dimicamibus illis, neque de minoribus praemijs quam de imperio Mathematico certantibus; mussantibus vero alijs, & arrectis animis expectantibus, Quis pecori imperitet, quern tot armenta sequantur; non defuit Anglae & suus Agonista (ornatifimum dico, et in omni eruditionis varietate principemvirum Thomam Hariotum, homine natu ad Artes ill.u.s.trandas, &, quod illi palmariu erit praestantissimu, ad nubes philofophicas, in quibus multa iam secula caligauit mundus, indubitata; veritatis splendore difcutiendas) qui vetaret, tarn folidz laudis spolia ad exteros Integra deuolui. Ille enim (etiamdum in pharetra conclufa, quae pupilla viuacis auicular terebraret, sagitta) ipsam totius Artiseius metam egregia methodo collimauit; expedita vero facilitate patefactam, inter alios amicorum, & mihi quoque tradidit; multisq vitro citroq, iaftatis Quaestionibus, ingenia nostra in abysso huius Artis exercendi causam praebuit.

Of Mr Torporley we shall have more to say further on, as he is particularly mentioned in Hariot's will. Meanwhile here is an attempt at a translation of his peculiar Latin in the above extract:

For indeed by the delays and affected obscurity of authors, it was impossible, that in the first promulgation of the art, we should give the praise of invention and the credit of teaching, to the same individual ; but while they were quarrelling & contending for no less a prize than the empire of Mathematics, whilst others were muttering, and waiting with excited minds to see Who should rule the flock, whom so many herds should follow, our own champion has not been wanting to England. I mean Thomas Hariot, a most distinguished man, and one excelling in all branches of learning : a man born to ill.u.s.trate Science, and, what was his princ.i.p.al distinction, to clear away by the splendour of undoubted truth those philosophical clouds in which the world had been involved for so many centuries : who did not allow the trophies of substantial praise to be wholly carried abroad toother nations. For he (while the arrow, which was to hit the bull's-eye, was yet in the quiver) defined by an admirable method the limits of all that science ; and showed it to me, amongst others of his friends, explained in an expeditious and simple manner ; and by proposing various problems to us, enabled us to exercise our ingenuity in the profundities of this science.

But time and s.p.a.ce beckon. On the 24th of March 1603, set 'that bright occidental Star,' and ' that mock Sun' frae the north took by succession its place. To Raleigh the change was the setting of a great hope, for to Queen Elizabeth he owed his fortunes, and was proud of the debt. To Raleigh more than to any other one man, notwithstanding his many faults, the Queen owed the brilliancy of her Court, the efficacy and terror of her navy, the enterprise and intelligent energy of her people, to say nothing of the adventurous spirit of colonization which he awoke in his efforts in Western Planting. The glory of his achievements today is the glory alike of England and English America. King James let no man down so far as he did Raleigh. Perhaps it was because there was no one left of Elizabeth's Court who could fall so far.

On three trumped up charges which never were, and never could be sustained with due form of law, Raleigh was with small delay thrown into the Tower. Several other n.o.blemen and less eminent persons were sent there also. The Asiatic plague was raging in the City. A moral pestilence of equal virulence at the same time infested the Court. The State prisoners must be tried openly, though already secretly condemned.

The Judges of his ' dread Majesty' dared not venture to the Tower as usual for the trials, forgetting apparently that its precincts were just as unhealthy for the great prisoners of State as for them, who were liable any day on the miffs of majesty to change places.

So it was determined that the' traitors' should be carted down to Winchester for trial. A cold wet November seven-days' journey through mud and slush was the miserable dodge to carry out this scheme of darkness which neither c.o.ke nor Popham would have dared to perpetrate in the broad light of London. It was, as all the world knows, a mock trial.

The prisoners Raleigh, Cobham, Gray, and Markham were condemned and sentenced to death as traitors, and Raleigh, for the grim sport of the royal Nimrod, was made to witness a mock execution of his fellow-convicts, but being in due course all respited by a warrant which the Governorof Winchester Castle had carried three days in his pocket, were carted back to the Tower, where, not pardoned, their sentences not commuted, but simply deferred, they were tortured with a living death hanging over them, like the sword of Damocles depending on royal caprice.

Here Raleigh dragged out his long imprisonment, and (as tersely & truly expressed by his son) was, after thirteen years, beheaded for opposing the very thing he was condemned and sentenced for favouring. The whole story is a bundle of inconsistencies, like that of Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, committed to the Tower in 1606, and his fifteen years' imprisonment. The stories of these two celebrated men are inseparably connected with that of Hariot. But it is not our purpose to trace either Raleigh's or Percy's progress through these long and dreary years any further than is necessary to ill.u.s.trate the life of Hariot, who was the light of the outer world to them both. Incarcerated and watched as they were, Hariot was the ears, the eyes, and the hands of these two n.o.ble captives.

The depth and variety of Hariot's intellectual and scientific resources, his honesty of purpose, his fidelity of character, his eminent scholarship, his unswerving integrity, and his command of tongue, rendered him alike invulnerable to politicians and to royal minions. He was with Raleigh at Winchester and in the Tower, off and on, as required, from 1604 to 1618, except during the last voyage to Guiana. He was at the same time a pensioner, a companion, and confidential factotum of his old friend the Earl of Northumberland both in the Tower and at Sion for fifteen years. Watched as these two prisoners were, ensnared, entrapped, and entangled for new evidence against them, it was necessary for Hariot to pursue a delicate and cautious course, to eschew politics, statecraft and treason, and to devote himself to pure science (almost the only pure commodity that was then a safeguard) metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics, history, and literature. He was their jackal, their book of reference, their guide, their teacher, and their friend.

Raleigh found himself in December 1603, lodged in the Tower, innocent, as is now generally admitted, of the charges against him, but legally attainted of high treason. All his worldly effects therefore escheated to the Crown. The King out of pure cowardice (for he dared not carry out the sentence of the Court) waived the horrid parts of the sentence-too horrid even to be quoted here-and commuted it to execution by the block.

He also waived the immediate forfeitureof property acquired under Elizabeth's reign, and even allowed Raleigh to complete the entail of certain estates to his wife and son.

The Governor of the Tower and his Lieutenant were at first officially kind and friendly, extending many privileges to win his confidence. If there had been any treason in Sir Walter they would most certainly have wormed it out of him, for his eyes at first were not fully open. He still believed in the honour and fidelity of his mock friends at Court.

When no more satisfactory evidence of his guilt could be smuggled out of him, or his companions, in support of the unjust verdict, they began, in 1605, to abridge his privileges and darken his lights. At first his friends and visitors were cut down to a fixed number. There is a list among the Burleigh papers in the British Museum by which it appears that Lady Raleigh, her maid, and her son might visit Sir Walter. For this they took a house on Tower Hill near the old fortress, where they lived six years, or as long as this privilege lasted.

Then Sir Walter was to be allowed two men servants and a boy, who were to remain within the Tower. Besides these he was permitted to see on occasion, Mr Hawthorne, a clergyman ; Dr Turner, his physician } Mr Johns, his surgeon ; Mr Sherbery, his solicitor ; his bailiff at Sherburne ; and his old friend, Thomas Hariot, with no official designation.

It needs no ears under the walls of the Tower to tell us what were the duties of this learned and trusted friend, who had been Sir Walter's confidential factor for a quarter of a century in all his most important enterprises. Hariot, it will be perceived, was the only one named, in this house-list, without an a.s.signed profession. Fortunately there is still preserved a ' hoggeshead of papers' in Hariot's handwriting, ill-a.s.sorted and hitherto unsifted, which partially reveal the secrets of this prison-house, and show Hariot here, there, and everywhere, mixed up with all the studies, toils, experiments, books, and literary ventures of our honored traitor.

So pa.s.sed, with tantalizing uncertainty, the year 1605, with many fears for the future and some hopes; but 1606 brought into the Tower Sir Walter's old friend Henry Percy, another 'traitor.' With him, at first, there was considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their '

magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The '

furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amus.e.m.e.nt and study. a.s.saying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of both Raleigh and the Earl.

But soon the policy of the Court changed. The prisoners had less liberty and saw less of each other, and so the stills were pulled down, and the gardens given up. Raleigh was more closely watched, and entrapped. Then there was fencing and defencing, for nothing could stand against the King's persistent rancor, and Cecil's dissimulation. From time to time Sir Walter's t.i.tles, his offices, his Elizabethan monopolies and his appointments were all taken from him. All his emoluments were wanted for hungry favourites ; and finally the Sherburne estate which he had been permitted to entail on his son went by no higher law than the king's, '