Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/345

 appeared (Manchester, 12mo, 1746; York, 12mo, 1749; Bristol, 12mo, 1750; Whitehaven, 8vo, 1754). It is in many ways the best and most trustworthy account extant of the campaign and of the state of feeling in England [cf. art. ].



RAY, JOHN (1627–1705), naturalist, was born at Black Notley, near Braintree, Essex, probably on 29 Nov. 1627. He was baptised on 29 June 1628, and in a letter dated 30 June 1702 (Correspondence, p. 401) he speaks of himself as ‘now almost three-score and fifteen.’ His father, Roger Ray, was a blacksmith. Until 1670 he himself spelt his name Wray; but he then dropped the initial W, on the ground apparently that it was not possible to latinise it (ib. p. 65). An unsubstantiated tradition connects the great naturalist with the family of Reay of Gill House, Bromfield, Cumberland (, History of Cumberland; Gent. Mag. 1794, i. 420; Essex Naturalist, iii. 296, iv. 119). Ray was educated first at Braintree grammar school, whence he entered Catharine Hall, Cambridge (28 June 1644), at the cost of a Squire Wyvill (Cottage Gardener, v. 221); a year later (1630–1677) [q. v.] left the neighbouring grammar school of Felsted for Trinity College. In 1646 Ray migrated from Catharine Hall to Trinity College, coming under the tuition of Dr. Duport, who preceded Barrow as regius professor of Greek. In 1647 he graduated B.A., and in 1649 was elected to a minor fellowship at the same time as Barrow. He proceeded M.A. and was appointed Greek lecturer in 1651, mathematical lecturer in 1653, humanity reader in 1655, prælector in 1657, junior dean in 1658, and college steward in 1659 and 1660.

Derham speaks of him (Select Remains) at this time as a good Hebrew scholar, an eminent tutor, and, according to Archbishop Tenison, celebrated as a preacher of ‘solid and useful divinity.’ But he was not at the time in holy orders. Ray's ‘Wisdom of God in the Creation,’ first published in 1691, and his ‘Discourses concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World’ (1692), were college exercises or ‘commonplaces,’ and his funeral sermons on Dr. Arrowsmith, master of Trinity, who died in 1658, and on John Nid, senior fellow, who collaborated with him in his first work and who died about 1659, were also preached before his ordination.

In August and September 1658 Ray made the first of his botanical tours of which we possess the itineraries, riding through the Midland counties and North Wales. In 1660 he published his first work, the ‘Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium,’ a duodecimo of 285 pages, enumerating 626 species in alphabetical order, with a careful synonymy, notes on uses and structure, and descriptions of new species. It was the first local catalogue of the plants of a district which had been issued in England.

On 23 Dec. 1660 Ray was ordained deacon and priest by [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln, in the Barbican Chapel. In July and August 1661, in company with his pupil, Philip (afterwards Sir Philip) Skippon, Ray made a second botanical journey, going through Northumberland into the south of Scotland, and returning through Cumberland. Between May and July 1662, in company with another pupil, [q. v.], he again traversed the Midlands and North Wales, returning through South Wales, Devon, Cornwall, and the south-western counties. Although his theological views in the main harmonised with those of the church establishment under Charles II, Ray, with thirteen other fellows of colleges, resigned his fellowship (24 Aug. 1662), rather than subscribe in accordance with the ‘Bartholomew Act’ of 1662. Though he considered the covenant an unlawful oath, he declined to declare that it was not binding on those who had taken it. Till his death he remained in lay communion with the established church.

In 1662 Ray and Willughby agreed to attempt a systematic description of the whole organic world, Willughby undertaking the animals and Ray the plants. In fulfilment of this scheme, Ray, Willughby, Skippon, and another pupil, Nathaniel Bacon, left Dover in April 1663, and spent three years abroad, visiting Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sicily, and Malta. Although mainly interested in natural history, Ray, on this as on all his journeys, carefully recorded antiquities, local customs, and institutions. On the return journey Willughby parted from them at Montpellier, and visited Spain. Their joint continental ‘Observations’ were not published until 1673.

The winter of 1666–7 Ray devoted partly to the arrangement of Willughby's collections at Middleton Hall, Warwickshire, and partly to drawing up systematic tables of plants and animals for Dr. John Wilkins's ‘Essay towards a Real Character.’ These tables are interesting as the first sketch of the whole of his systematic work. Shortly afterwards Ray, at the request of Wilkins, translated the latter's ‘Essay’ into Latin, but the translation was never published,