More about Dr. Benjamin Allen (1666-1738), of Braintree, naturalist / by Miller Christy.

  • Christy, Miller.
Date:
1912
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: More about Dr. Benjamin Allen (1666-1738), of Braintree, naturalist / by Miller Christy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Coll., in Cambridge.-21 Bp. Wilkin,94 with whom Mr. Ray lived 7 year*-, together with Dr. Tillotson88 examined it and found them to be his Sunday readings to his pupils exactly, by notes which he saw in some special pupil’s hand. Mr. Ray told me [also] that the other works, sayd to be by the same hand, were wrote by the Bishop of York (Sterry)24 who sent the ' Whole Duty of Man ’ to the press, and were known by his servant and his hand, but this was done by him to make the first seem his own— Here the statement breaks off abruptly, owing to a leaf having been torn from the book—perhaps by some person who disapproved of some religious view which Ray had gone on to express. The closing paragraph is of interest in connection with the much-debated question as to the authorship of The Whole Duty of Man, which was first published in 1658 and ran through innumerable editions. In Evelyn’s Diary, there is a passage so closely similar that one cannot doubt that one was derived from the other or both from some common original. Under date 16 July 1692, Evelyn says*8:— I went to visit the Bishop of Lincoln [Thomas Tenison (1636-1715), afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury], when, amongst other things, he told me that one Dr. Chaplin, of University College, in Oxford, was the person who wrote the ‘ Whole Duty of Man ’ ; that he used to read it to his pupils and communicated it to Dr. Stern, afterwards Archbishop of York, but would never suffer any of his pupils to have a copy of it.” Nevertheless, the general opinion now is that the work was written by Richard Allestree (1619-1681), a Royalist divine, though edited by Dr. John Fell (1625-1686), Bishop of Oxford. Elsewhere (p. 47), Allen returns to the discussion as to the identity of the plant, called “ Star of the Earth,” which was supposed to cure rabies in dogs*6:— “ Mr. Ray told me [he says, that] King James the 2nd sent a plant to the Royal Socyety with which his dogs had been cured. It was sent [by the Society] to Mr. Ray [for him to identify the species], who found it to be the Otis or Sesamoides salamanticum magnum. It came by [i.e under] the name of the “ Starr of the Barth,” and (as he heard) the receipt 21 Possibly the Rev. William Chappel (1582-1649). a scholar and long a Fellow of Christ's College, in Cambridge, also for a time (1638-1641) Bishop of Cork, may have been the man Ray referred to. At all events, others have ascribed to him the authorship of the book. 22 John Wilkins (16141672), Bishop of Chester (1668-1672) and one of the Founders of the Royal Society, was a friend of Evelyn, Boyle, and Ray, but it is difficult to see in what period of seven years the latter can have “ lived with ” him. 23 John Tillotson (1630-1694). a great preacher and theological writer. Dean of St. Paul s (1689-1691) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1691-1694), was a friend and disciple of Wilkins. 24 Without doubt, Allen caught the name wrongly and Ray really spoke of Richard .Sterne (1596—1683), who was successively Bishop of Carlisle and Archbishop (1664-1683) of York. He has been regarded by some as the author of the book. 25 Diary, Bray’s ed., ii., p. 321 (1850). 26 8ee ante, xvi., p. 152.