Sir, These shall request you to forgive me my absence untill to morrowe; then I shall give you a more particular accounte of my discourse with Mayerne. In the meane time, I shall lett you knowe that he cannot possibly com to London, thoughe he have manny occasions to invite him to it, but he desiers much to see you there; but betweene this and twesday he will send you, under his hand, the methode that he wolde advise you in the cure”. Tomorrowe I shall see you myselfe. In the meane time, I remaine

Your assured frende,
SAM. TURNER.

Good Mr. Lydiat, My desire was to have seen you here this Act, and to have enjoyed your company and conference about our common business, the furthering of such as desire to understand the mathematics, and to have desired you to have holpen me to Origanus, whereof I should have some continual use. I pray you therefore send it me safe, and leave it for me, if I be not in town, with Mr. Crane of New College, my very good friend, or when you think good, that at my coming home I may not fail to have it. I am still at my logarithms, and can neither finish them to my mind nor let them alone. If your calling, being of so high a nature, would give you leave seriously to intend other business, I should intreat you to strive to get out your meditations and great pains, and to demonstrate every thing as you go, without which I think you cannot have that acceptance and applause that your great pains have deserved. But we that have no such eminent business may be busied about these trifles in respect, though in themselves they des, or , to be of good account. Thus wishing you all happiness and success to your liking, I take my leave. Your very assured loving friend, HENRY BRIGGs. From Merton Coll: this 11 July, 1623.

Mr. Briggs, There was delivered to me yesterday, in the afternoon, at Banbury, by one of my neighbour ministers, a letter from you bearing date the 11 of July, i. e. Friday was sennenet, which he said was delivered to him yesterday was sennenet, the morrow after the Act. And touching that you write therein about your Origanus, for which I thank you, and your Kepler: because you signified you were likely to be from home, I have written to Mr. Crane of New College, with whom you wished me to leave them in your absence, and sent money to buy others of the same for me, or rather for yourself, because, as I told you, yours were somewhat bruised and wronged by my carriage, and peradventure might be more in the recarriage.

Now whereas you renew your motion of demonstrating, thereto I answer still, as before, bene mones. And whensoever you or any man else from generality shall proceed to particular specifying of any assertion of mine not sufficiently demonstrated and proved according to the nature thereof, I will, by God’s grace, do my best endeavour to demonstrate and prove it better. But I hold not a diagramme the only way and means of demonstrating, nor so generally necessary as you seem to urge. To give you an instance; I met the other day at London, with Lansbergius his Progymnasmata Astronomiae restitutae, where in the 10 pag. applying the sun's parallaxe to Hipparchus his AEquinoctial observations, to make them serve his turn, he sets down a diagramme to demonstrate that the true vernal aequinox is sooner, and the true autumnal later than the apparent, in regard of the parallaxe, which to me seems superfluous. For having granted that the parallaxe makes the sun seem lower than truth, he that cannot thereupon conceive that, in his ascent, he attains the vernal sooner than he seems to attain it, and contrarywise in his descent he seems to attain the autumnal sooner than he dot-attain it; and consequently the vernal true must needs be sooner, and the autumnal true later than the appearing: say I, he that cannot conceive the necessity hereof without a diagramme, is a verier dunce than myself, and not far from that itching morbo demonstrandi that some have complained of before me. In a word, I hold it as absurd to require diagrammes where they are needless, as not to put them where is need. And if there be any that will not look upon my writings for want of diagrammes, they may look beside them, and they will for me. Further to acquaint you with my studies, I have within this twelvemonth, since my last being at Oxford, scribled out three inchoate and imperfect treatises of astronomy: the first, of the obliquity of the zodiak in our age, which repulsing the insensible inobservable parallaxe, and the imaginary regular refraction obtruded by Tycho, I find with Regiomontanus and the Landgrave, to be 23# degrees at the most: the second, of the sun's apparent anomaly and eccentricity, which I have by many observations confirmed to be according as I before supposed, 184 days, and 333}, whereof the radius is 100,000; with the greatest prosthaphaeresis, igr. 54 str. 42 sec.: the third is of the place of the Sun's Apogaeum; for the reversing whereof to the AEstine Solstice and beginning of Cancir, I have with much labour found out above fifty good observations of Waters, the Landgraves, Byrgius his, and Tycho's own last Bohemicks. But speed these as they may, with diagrammes or without, I am resolved against the bringing in of the Gregorian year and calendar into our country, to oppose my great Period or Annus Magnus; and, with God's help, to maintain against whatsoever Jesuit or Papist; and in regard of the contempt and disgrace that hath been offered my poor self and it, to stand for a reward of my pains in finding or restoring of it. But haste breaks off this idle talk. I was even chiding ripe with my neighbour minister for keeping your letter so long in his hand. I know not whether he doubted me to be the man to whom it was meant, because you endorsed it to Alkerton in Buckinghamshire. Indeed my direct way to Alkerton from London, whence I came upon Friday was sennenet, the 11th of July, which day your letter bears date, is to Ailesbury, and so all along through Buckinghamshire; but Alkerton, my native soil and dwelling-place, is in the utmost skirt of Oxfordshire northward, as I have heretofore, although not demonstrated, yet declared without a diagramme in mine Astronomical Epistle, a copy whereof I remember I gave you. And from thence at this time, I thank God, in health, I take leave of you; the 23 of Julian July, and 4th of ours, on Wednesday Morning, 1623. Yours, Thomas LYDYAT.

THOMAS MAN TO THOMAS LYDYAT.

[MS. Bodl. 313, Orig.]
April 19th, 1625.

Sir, In your letter, written to Mr. Crane, and dated the 23rd of July, 1623, you made mention of a manuscript, which was a paraphrase of Ptolomie's Almagest, and extant in our Library”; out of which you desired to have copied out the beginning of the third book so far as to those words answering the Greek Tovtov 8 ovros exovrov, &c., together with the marginal notes, and if there were ought else to be found either in the beginning, or end thereof, or any where else concerning the antiquity and author of it. To give you satisfaction herein, Mr. Warden hath taken great care and pains; for he hath employed one of our fellows in copying it out, and hath transcribed it himself. You shall receive both the copies by the bearer hereof, Mr. William Griffith; but I fear neither of them will answer your expectation. For first, whereas you suppose this manuscript to be a paraphrase of Ptolomy, it appears plainly by the same book being extant in the library of All Souls’ College, that it is only a mere translation. In the preface of which book, after a strong commendation of this Ptolomy and his work, there is some mention made of this translation. The words, because they are a sufficient proof hereof, and will satisfy your demand concerning the author and antiquity of it, I have sent you as I find them at the end of the preface; and they are these: Liber hic praecepto Maimonis regis Arabum, qui regnavit in Baldath, a Alahazer filio Josephi filii Matte Arismetici, et Sergio filii Elbe Yplano, in anno 12 et 2000 Sectae Sarracenorum translatus est; qui quidem liber est Magnus dictus Almagesti, quem Bartholomaeus Bheleudensis de scientia stellarum, et motuum, qui sunt in calo, conscripsit. The same translation, but without this preface, is extant in the same Library, excus. ā Petro Liechtenstein, Colon. Venetiis, 1515. Again, that clause which you aim at especially, as I understood by Mr. Doctor Bainbridge,

and which in our manuscript is thus in the text, si in considerationibus decepti fuerimus in quarta diei, ut sit inter ipsam et suam differentiam quarta diei; this clause, I say, is not found in the manuscript or printed book of All Souls; in the printed book not at all; and in the MS. 'tis only in the margin thus: ut sit inter ipsam et suam differentiam quarta diei. Other diversities of reading in All Souls’ MS. you shall find noted in the margin of one of these copies. As for the marginal notes in our MS., Mr. Warden hath with great labour transcribed them; they being written in a very small character, and full of abbreviations. This is all I thought good to acquaint you with concerning this matter. If you shall desire to be farther certified in any special point out of this M.S., you shall find me (besides others) as willing to perform at any time, as now to promise my best furtherance therein; and so I leaving you to God’s protection, rest Your friend, THoMAs MAN.

THOMAS LYDYAT TO THOMAS MAN.

[MS. Bodl. 313.]
Alkerton, May 12th, 1625.

Sir, Touching the letter I received from you, dated April the 19th, almost three weeks since, together with the transcript out of the Latin paraphrase of Ptolemy, as I termed it in my letter, wherein I desired it to be sent me almost two years agone, then deeming it a matter of no greater moment or difficulty, but that I might easily have obtained it within two or three days; whereas you write, you fear neither of the copies will answer mine expectation : truly mine expectation thereof was no greater than I signified in my letter, and had before set forth in print, and given copies thereof into your library, that you needed not to be ignorant of the matter. But I must confess it fell out very greatly contrary to mine expectation, that it was so long differred, which I imagined might have been so soon obtained; and that made me at length the more earnestly to urge not only to others of your fellows, my kind friends, according as I met with them, but in the end also to your worthy, and by me accordingly respected, Mr. Warden himself; I say the more earnestly and almost obstinately to urge that which in the beginning I did not so much respect: because I began to suspect, that not the difficulty of the matter, but some sinister surmise arising upon