Abstract
Son of a respected merchant, Robert Recorde was born in the small port of Tenby, Pembrokeshire, circa 1510. Following graduation at Oxford, he obtained a license to practise medicine. This he did for 12 years and was made a Doctor of Physicke by Cambridge University in 1545. By this time he had begun to move in circles close to the Crown and in 1549 received the first of a number of Crown appointments involving him successively as iron-founder, comptroller of three Royal Mints and extraction metallurgist. Starting in 1543, over a period of some 15 years he produced a succession of books written in English, one on Urology and four on mathematical topics. These latter formed the foundation of the English school of practical mathematics whose influence extended well into the next century. His interests as an antiquary made him one of a select band of intellectuals who saved collections of manuscripts by English authors from potential destruction during the Reformation. Fluent in Greek and Latin he was also an Anglo-Saxon scholar. His introduction of the mathematical sign for equality is well recognised: he also introduced a sizeable mathematical vocabulary still in current use. His theological texts have not survived. He died in a debtor’s prison in 1558 following imposition of a massive fine for libelling William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.
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Notes
- 1.
Dwnn L (1846) In: Sir Meyrick SR (ed) Heraldic visitations of wales and part of the Marches, 2 vols. William Rees, Llandovery, I, 68
- 2.
Hore HF (1853) Mayors and Bailiffs of Tenby. In: Archaelogia cambrensis, Second series, pp 114–126, 117–119
- 3.
Ibid., pp 19–32
- 4.
Gwyn Thomas W, The architectural history of St. Mary’s Church, Tenby, Archaeologia cambrensis, vol CXV,134–165,161–2,165;
Laws E, Edwards EH (1807) Church book of St. Mary the Virgin, Tenby. J Leach. Tenby 1807, 16
- 5.
It is unusual in more than one way. The Fig. 4 is given in its modern form. This form had become increasingly common in lay circles in Western Europe since its introduction in Northern Italy in the early fourteenth-century and had become the dominant form there by the end of the fifteenth-century. This was not the case in England where, when Hindu-Arabic numbers were used by astronomers, astrologers etc., the form that the figure ‘four’ took approximated to that of a vertically truncated eight or loop, as found in the early thirteenth-century manuscript, Sacrobosco’s Algorismus. This form is still found in the astronomical manuscripts that Lewis of Caerleon wrote at the beginning of the Tudor era. The mason who prepared the inscription must either have been trained on the Continent or been instructed to follow their practice.
- 6.
Wood AA (1820) Fasti oxoniensis, London, I, p 84
Foster J (1891) Alumni oxoniensis: the members of the University of Oxford 1500–1714, Parker and co., London, III, p 1242
- 7.
Griffith WP (1996) Learning, law and religion. Higher education and Welsh Society c. 1540–1640. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, p 42
- 8.
Ibid., pp 64–65
- 9.
Ibid., pp 203
- 10.
Ibid., p 202
- 11.
McConica J (ed) (1986) The history of the University of Oxford: the collegiate university. Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp 165, 217
- 12.
Lewis G, ibid., ‘4.2 The Faculty of Medicine’, 213–256, 238
- 13.
Venn J (ed) (1910) Grace book. Containing the records of the University of Cambridge 1542–1589. Cambridge, p 27
- 14.
Professor M. McKisack, in her book Medieval History in the Tudor Age, Clarendon (Oxford 1971), 25., gives an overview of the development of antiquarian interests in England during this period. Mathew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his secretary John Jocelyn, during the reign of Elizabeth were the prime movers in the recovery of many of the historical documents dispersed during the dissolution of the monasteries. John Leland and Bishop Bale’s activities in cataloguing such holdings are well documented. Recorde’s activities in these areas will be dealt with at greater length in Chap. 12.
- 15.
Ibid., 6. Sir John Cheke, as he was to become had a distinguished career at Cambridge before becoming tutor to Edward VI. He presented a copy of Recorde’s ‘The Pathway to Knowledg’ to the king. He was also given charge of Leland’s books and papers after the latter’s death in 1552.
- 16.
Sir Thomas Smith became Principal Secretary to Edward VI following a brilliant academic career at Cambridge University, of which he was Vice-Chancellor. The evidence for his numeracy is to be found in several of his publications as summarised by Williams in ‘Mathematics and the Alloying of Coinage 1202–1700: Part II’, Annals of Science, 52 (1995), 235–263,249–250. Smith was also the author of A Discourse on the Commonweal of England which will be referred to in Chap. 5.
- 17.
Underhill E (1854) Autobiographical Anecdotes of Edward Underhill esq., one of the Band of Gentleman Pensioners. In: Gough J (ed) Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, chiefly from the manuscripts of John Foxe the Martyrologist, Old Series 77. Camden Society, London, 132–177, 173
- 18.
Calendar of Patent Rolls [CPR.], 1548–1549, 303–304
- 19.
Ibid., 304
- 20.
Calendar of Patent Rolls Ireland [CPRI.], 1503–1578, 275–276
- 21.
Acts of the Privy Council (APC.), 1552–1554, 225
- 22.
British Library. Harleian MS no. 167, fos. 106–108
Andrew KR (1984) Trade, plunder and settlement. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p 167 n. 2
Nichols G, loc. cit., 150–151
- 23.
Andrew KR, loc. cit. p 167 n. 2
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Williams, J. (2011). A Chronology. In: Robert Recorde. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-862-1_1
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