Page:The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms.djvu/18

xiv INTRODUCTION. of the system was granted under the privy seal on 22d June 1598. As Archibald Napier was quite a young man at the time, it is most probable the system was the result of experiments made by his father and grandfather.

About 1603, the Lennox, where Napier held large possessions, was devastated in the conflict between the chief of Macgregor and Colquhoun of Luss, known as the raid of Glenfruin. The chief was entrapped by Argyll, tried, and condemned to death. On the jury which condemned him sat John Napier. The Macgregors, driven to desperation, became broken men, and Napier’s lands no doubt suffered from their inroads, as we find him on 24th December 1611 entering into a contract for mutual protection with James Campbell of Lawers, Colin Campbell of Aberuchill, and John Campbell, their brother-german.

To the critical events of 1588 which, as we have already seen, drew Napier into public life, is due the appearance in English of ‘A plaine discovery,’ already mentioned. The treatise was intended to have been written in Latin, but, owing to the events above referred to, he was, as he says, ‘constrained of compassion, leaving the Latin to haste out in English the present work almost unripe.’ It was published in 15934. A revised edition appeared in 1611, wherein he still expressed his intention of rewriting it in Latin, but this was never accomplished.

Mathematics, as well as theology, must have occupied Napier’s attention from an early age. What he had done