Henry Gellibrand

, received his first breath in the Parish of S. Botolph near to Aldersgate in London, 17. Nov. 1597. became a Commoner of Trin. coll. in 1615. took one degree in Arts about four years after, being then esteemed to have no great matter in him. At length upon the hearing of one of Sir Hen. Savile’s Mathematick Lectures by accident, or rather to save the sconce of a Groat, if he had been absent, he was so extreamly taken with it, that he immediately fell to the study of that noble Science, and conquered it before the time he proceeded in Arts. Soon after, his name being up for his wonderful sufficiencies in Geometry and Astronomy, he was elected Astronomy-Professor of Gresham coll. in the place of Gunter deceased; where, tho he wrote and published many useful things, yet he suffer’d Conventicles (being himself a Puritan) to be kept in his lodgings. His works are,

Trigonometria Britannica. Goudae 1633. fol.

Appendix concerning longitude. Lond. 1633. qu. Which is at the end of Capt. Tho. James his Strange and dangerous Voyage in his intended discovery of his northern-east passage into the South Sea.

A discourse Mathematical of the variation of the Magnetical Needle: Together with its admirable diminution lately discovered. Lond. 1635. qu.

The institution Trigonometrical, explaining the doctrine of dimension, of plain and spherical Triangles, &c, in oct.

Epitome of Navigation, &c. Lond. 1674. &c. oct.

Several necessary Tables pertaining to Navigation.

A triangular Canon Logorithmical; or a table of artificial Sines and Tangents, &c.

Two Chiliads; or the Logorithms of absolute numbers, from an unite to 2000.

Append. containing the use of the Forestaff, Quadrant, and Nocturnal in Navigation.—These last 4 Treatises are printed with the Epitome of Navigation.

Treatise of building of Ships.—MS. Which, after its authors death, came into the hands of Edward Lord Conway.

Almanack for the year 1631.—This was published under the name of his Servant Will. Beale: But the author thrusting into it the Martyrs mentioned by John Fox, and omitting divers Saints, allowed by the Church of England, as the Epiphany, Annunciation of our Lady, &c. he and his man were called into question for it in the High Commission Court, and brought into trouble: The particulars of which you may see in a book intit. Canterbury’s (*)(*) [〈◊〉] at Lond. 1645. p. 184. Doom. But the author of that book (Will. Prynne) endeavouring all the ways imaginable to bring envy on Dr. Laud then B. of London, who did discountenance that Almanack very much, the Reader therefore is not to believe every matter, which that implacable person doth there set down. Our author Gellibrand also wrote a Preface to, and published Sciographia, or the Art of Shadows, &c. Lond. 1635. in a large thick oct. written by John Wells of Hampshire Esq a Rom. Catholick. He also intended other matters, but was untimely snatch’d away to the great loss of the Mathematical Faculty,1637 [•] 8. in the month of Febr. in sixteen hundred thirty and seven. His body was buried in the Church of S. Peter in Broad-street within the City of London; at which time Dr. Hannibal Potter his sometimes Tutor in Trinity college, preached his Funeral Sermon, shewing therein to the auditory the piety and worth that was sometimes in the body that lay dead before them. His memory is preserved in the said coll. by a Dial set up by him when he was there a Student, on the east side of that Quadrangle, which is now called the Old Quadrangle.