Volume 1
Further correspondence of John Ray / edited by Robert W.T. Gunther.
- John Ray
- Date:
- 1928
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Further correspondence of John Ray / edited by Robert W.T. Gunther. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![1627 John [son] of Roger and Elizabeth Ray [was baptised] Decemb[er] 6. 1628 John son of Thomas and Dorothie Wray, bapt. June 29. The earlier entry relates to the man of science: the second to a wholly different person. It is so far satisfac¬ tory in that it shows that the day, Thursday, November 29th, ordinarily given as Ray’s birthday, may be the correct day, but that the year should be 1627, and not 1628. The date of his death, wrongly inscribed on his tomb as 17 January, 1705-6, should be, as Derham has it, 17 January, 1704-5.* A Life of Ray in manuscript came to the Bodleian Library with the great collections of Richard Rawlinson, but seems not to have seriously engaged the attention of Ray’s biographers before Dr. Andrew Clark printed it some ten years ago in the Essex Review, under the title of “ George Dale’s MS. Record of John Ray.” Dr. Clark’s title was singularly unfortunate, because he him¬ self pointed out that the MS. was not of George Dale’s writing, but “ a transcript by a very capable copyist.” As a matter of fact the MS. is probably not a transcript, but the original draft for a Life of Ray by his great friend the botanist, Samuel Dale of Braintree. The MS., shelf-marked as MS. Rawlinson, Essex 21, bears an inscription to the effect that it belonged to William Holman, of Halsted in Essex, on March 28th, 1776. * The confusions of Ray’s dates have again been cleared up by Mr Miller Christy in his Report on “The Ray, Dale and Allen Commemoration Fund, 1912,” printed in the Essex Naturalist, xvii, 1913.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31348361_0001_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
