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| ISBN-13: | 9781783168545 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Wales Press |
| Publication date: | 08/15/2017 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
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Robert Recorde
Tudor Scholar and Mathematician
By Gordon Roberts
University of Wales Press
Copyright © 2016 Gordon RobertsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78316-854-5
CHAPTER 1
CHILD OF TENBY
Whether Roger and Elsbeth Recorde stepped ashore in the small harbour, or entered by road through one of the gatehouses set in the town walls, they would have been reassured by Tenby's strong defences. Although the Norman castle was in disrepair and largely abandoned as a defensive fortification, Jasper Tudor had concluded an agreement with the town's merchants to split the costs for refurbishing Tenby's ramparts. The dry ditch along the outside of the town walls was widened to 30 feet, the walls were heightened and a second tier of arrow slits were pierced above a new parapet walk. Additional turret towers were added to the ends of the walls where they abutted the cliff edges. It must have been clear to Roger that Tenby was a place where a newcomer, a merchant, could safely establish himself in business.
Tenby lies on the west side of Carmarthen Bay, looking out over the estuary towards St George's Channel, the Irish Sea and the distant Atlantic. At the time of Roger and Elsbeth's arrival it was a thriving port with a lucrative sea trade across to Bristol and the south and west coasts of England, as well as further afield to Dublin, France, Spain and Portugal. Originally a fishing port anciently named in Welsh Dynbech-y-pyscoed, which is today spelt Dinbych-y-pysgod, it owed its rise to the settlement of Flemings who established a woollen trade here in the reign of Henry I. Roger Recorde may have sensed mercantile opportunities in the wool markets, and this could have been the attraction which lured him to the town from Kent. Tenby was one of Wales's busiest ports, with a bustling trade on the harbour side and in the nearby streets, which were lined with the houses of merchants. We do not know where Roger and Elsbeth made their home in Tenby, but in due course Thomas and William, brothers to Roger, were born here. Sadly Roger and William were to die young, perhaps in infancy, leaving Thomas as the sole survivor to eventually inherit the family's mercantile business.
Nothing is known of Thomas's early years, but inevitably the day arrived when he sought a bride. He did not look beyond the local gentry, making a good marriage with Joan, the daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Ysteven of Tenby. Ysteven was a man of some importance, a bailiff in 1462 and three times mayor in later years. How long this marriage lasted is not known, but Joan died without issue and Thomas became a widower. He won himself a second bride, Ros, from the town of Machynlleth in Montgomeryshire, probably while travelling far afield from Tenby dealing in wool, skins, hides and cloth, which were the staple produce of the Welsh hinterland beyond Little England.
Ros was the daughter of Thomas ap John ap Sion, the father's patronymic name suggesting a long Welsh ancestry. It was the custom in Wales for a person's baptismal name to be linked by ap (son of) or merch (daughter of) to the father's baptismal name, down sometimes to the seventh generation. It is thought that the patronymic system arose from early Welsh law, which made it essential to know how people were descended from an ancestor. So Ros, after her father's example, would have given her name as Ros merch Thomas ap John. However, around the time that Thomas Recorde met Ros, the Welsh patronymic naming system was slowly yielding to the English system of fixed family names. The most common surnames in modern Wales result from adding an 's' to the end of the name, so that Ros may well have been introduced to Thomas Recorde in the English fashion as Ros Johns. This digression into naming conventions serves to show that Robert Recorde's mother, for so was Ros to become, was not named Jones as is so often erroneously stated. The Welsh spelling of her first name as Ros, also variously spelt as Rhos or Rhosyn, can be translated into English as Rose, a name with which she is often credited by English writers.
It is not known where the marriage of Thomas Recorde and Ros Johns took place, but the couple made their home in Tenby. Ros may not have felt immediately comfortable in Little England, a long way from the Welshry of her family. George Owen said of the English side of the language divide, that they:
keep their language among themselves without receiving the Welsh speech or learning any part thereof, and hold themselves so close to the same that to this day they wonder at a Welshman coming among them, the one neighbour saying to the other 'Look there goeth a Welshman'.
Nevertheless, Ros must have reconciled herself to living in the Englishry with her husband and in due course Richard, the first of their two sons, was born. Robert followed, his birth usually ascribed to the year 1510. However, this is certainly too early and 1512 is a much more likely date, as will be adduced as this history unfolds.
Despite being born in Little England, and although only of the second generation on his father's side, Robert was of course entitled to the appellation 'Welshman', not least because, in the words of Anthony a Wood, he 'received his first breath among the Cambrians'. However, it was on his mother's side that Robert could lay claim to a long Welsh heritage. It is pleasing to think that she may have taught her sons something of the Welsh language, and that the lilt of spoken Welsh was not entirely absent from their home. The concept of childhood as we know it today scarcely existed in Tudor times, and young children were thought of as immature adults without the strength as yet to undertake hard manual work or the mental capacity required for reasoned thinking. Nevertheless, Richard and Robert, dressed in smaller versions of adult clothes and encouraged to help around the house from a very early age, would have gradually became familiar with their father's business.
We do not know where the family home in Tenby was situated, but as the house of a middle-class merchant, it would have had a large ground floor room opening out on to the street. This was where Thomas did his trading, the room serving as shop, office and warehouse, the goods for sale spilling out into the street, the purchased stock safely stored at the back. Near the door would have been the counting table, its surface inscribed with parallel lines on which were placed small, round counters. The lines represented units, tens, hundreds, thousands and so on, and a skilled merchant could, by rapidly moving the counters to the different lines, quickly calculate a bill or payment. Once an account was finalised it was recorded in ledgers using Roman numerals. Weights, measures and coinage were all extremely complicated at this time and required a good head for arithmetic.
Methods of calculating using newly introduced Arabic numerals, written with a pen on paper, were hardly known to anyone during Robert's childhood. Nor did most people have any idea of how to calculate using the much older method of moving counters on a board. It was regarded as a black art, its merchant practitioners looked upon with suspicion as magicians, so that magic became synonymous with mathematics in the minds of many of the more credulous. After all, the methods used to cast an account seemed little different from those used to cast a spell. Robert could hardly have known that a major part of his life's work would consist of dispelling these superstitious fears, and teaching people the simple means by which they could carry out calculations for themselves in an increasingly mercantile world.
Tenby's market was the oldest in Pembrokeshire, its initial charter being granted in 1290, and no doubt Robert would have become well acquainted with the busy stalls situated in the town centre. Fascinated by the variety of goods for sale, we might suppose that he began to develop his lively and enquiring mind as he explored the market and its environs in the company of his elder brother. Watching the business of buying, selling and bartering merchandise, all of which had its own peculiar system of weights and measures, would soon have made him realise that a sound knowledge of calculation was an essential element of daily life, at least for the mercantile classes. In a future time he would write a book containing an explanation in simple terms of the relationships between the different weights and measures, and the many different coins of the realm that were then used in exchange.
Probably the most exciting place for the brothers to explore, without going outside the town walls, was the harbour. Inside the curving quay on the north side, near a narrow entrance made narrower by a breakwater of stones stretching out from under the cliff face, they would have seen a forest of masts and rigging. Prominent among small coastal vessels and trows from the higher reaches of the Severn, they would have watched caravels from Portugal and carracks from Spain discharging and loading their cargoes. These were ocean-going ships, large enough to be stable in heavy seas, and roomy enough to carry provisions for long voyages. We can imagine Robert's excitement when he learnt that these ships were of the very type in which daring Portuguese and Spanish sea-men were even then probing the Atlantic coasts of Africa and crossing the seemingly limitless ocean to the Americas, exploring and mapping the known limits of the world.
On the harbour side, awaiting shipment to England upstream on the Severn or via the south coast ports, or export to Ireland, Brittany or the Iberian Peninsula, would have been barrels of grain, wooden tubs of butter and cheese, bales of raw wool and woven woollen stuffs, cured skins and hides and even small amounts of coal and lead. Robert would no doubt have been intrigued by negotiations carried out on the harbour wall between ship's captains and town merchants who did not speak each other's language. Buying and selling prices for inward and outward bound cargoes were agreed by age-old hand signs, rapidly passed back and forth by men long accustomed to understand them. Robert would later explain and illustrate this method of signing in one of his books, calling it 'the art of numbering by the hand'. He must have watched laden ships leave the harbour and, as he grew older, observed that hulls on the distant horizon disappeared from his sight long before the top masts. Here, before his eyes, was proof that the world really was a globe, for only curvature of the earth's surface could account for this phenomenon. He would write about this too, in due course.
Robert would also have been familiar with the sight of seamen slipping in and out of the small stone chapel at the end of the quay, to offer thanks for a voyage just completed or to pray for a safe passage about to begin. The entire western world at this time was under the religious domination of the Roman Catholic Church, so mariners of all nationalities would have felt at home in this tiny building dedicated to St Julian. Robert's enquiring mind might have prompted him to peep in at the doorway, but he would have attended services with the other members of his family at the church of St Mary the Virgin, high on the cliff top in the centre of the town. Every Sunday the parishioners of Tenby, almost without exception, the Recorde family among them, would have made their way to church as people had done for generations past. The central nave would have been overcrowded, the crush tolerable because pews were not yet in fashion and the custom was for people to stand or kneel in the empty space.
A rood screen, probably solid at the bottom but with narrow arches above, would have separated the nave from the chancel, making it difficult for the parishioners to see the high altar raised against the east wall. The main service of the day was the high mass, for which the clergy donned elaborate vestments. Once robed, they consecrated holy water and processed around the church, accompanied by assistants carrying the processional cross, an incense burner and the sacring bell, sprinkling the holy water on the congregation and the altars in the side chapels as they went. Passing through the rood screen into the chancel, the service proper would begin at the altar steps. The priest would place a wheaten wafer on the communion plate and pour wine into a communion chalice, all the while reciting elaborate texts and following rubrics that specified every movement and gesture. The laity, Robert among them and all squashed together in the nave, could undoubtedly smell the incense, but the intervening screen meant they could see very little of the opening rituals. Few of the congregation would have understood the priest's oratory as he deliberately kept his voice low and, in any case, everything was recited in Latin. While the clergy participated in the liturgy, the parishioners were expected to engage in private devotions.
Up until this point the parish mass was a ceremony that the laity observed as best they could, rather than participated in. However, the priest, speaking in English, would then call on the people to pray for the pope and the clergy, for the king, and for those in special need, such as pregnant women and the sick, and finally for the dead, especially recently deceased parishioners. The priest would then return to the chancel and the ringing of the sacring bell announced the climax of the mass, when he would repeat the words of Christ at the Last Supper – 'hoc est enim corpus meum – 'for this is my body' – as he elevated the newly consecrated wafer, the host, high above his head. The chalice too was raised on high with the words 'hoc est enim calyx sanguinis mei' – 'for this is the cup of my blood'. Only the priests afterwards consumed both wafer and wine in what was called 'communion in both kinds'. For the laity communion took the form of kissing the paxbred, a plate adorned with a sacred picture, which the priest had kissed immediately after kissing the lip of the chalice and the cloth on which the host rested.
We can guess from Robert's lifelong and pious devotion to the church that he must have found these wondrous and magical happenings in his early life both inspiring and indeed spiritually essential. He could not have had any idea that within his lifetime the Roman Catholic Church, with all its centuries-old ritual and splendid ceremonies, would collapse like a house of straw under the ferocious onslaught of a competing doctrine. Nor could he have foreseen that during this process his life would be irrevocably changed, and sometimes even placed in jeopardy.
As they grew older Robert and his brother would have been expected to learn the Catholic creed and catechism and to repeat them in Latin, if only in parrot fashion. This would be Robert's first exposure to the language of scholarship, the lingua franca of educated people throughout Europe, the tongue in which he would later become dazzlingly adept.
In 1519, when Robert was about seven years old, his father was elected Mayor of Tenby, which undoubtedly led to an increase in the family's status within the town. Thomas shared the mayoralty for part of the year with a William Thomas, but the reason for this is not known. As the sons of such a prominent and well-to-do citizen, the two boys, perhaps having learnt to read and write at their mother's knee, may have been educated by a paid schoolmaster or mistress, although it is equally feasible that they were educated by the clergy.
St Mary's Church was extensively rebuilt during the fifteenth century and a new door with a large cruciform porch was inserted in the west wall. Also erected nearby was a so-called college, possibly for the use of the chantry priests serving the three chantry chapels within the church. Both college and west porch are now demolished, but there is evidence that the porch was used as a schoolroom. In 1657-8, payments were recorded for the repair of the church windows and those of the 'schole-house', and it is entirely possible that Robert received his early education in one or other, or both, of these buildings. The provision of teaching was one of the many duties assumed by the church, and the education of the young – at any rate the boys – was an important part of the Christian ideal. The chantry priests were not only enjoined to sing mass for the souls of the chapel founders, but also, in their considerable spare time, to instruct the young. In addition to developing the vernacular reading and writing skills of their pupils, the priests would teach them the elements of chanting in Latin so that they could assist in the celebration of church services. Robert would have been taught no mathematics here though, as even the simplest forms of arithmetic were beyond the abilities of most of the clergy who were otherwise able and willing to teach.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Robert Recorde by Gordon Roberts. Copyright © 2016 Gordon Roberts. Excerpted by permission of University of Wales Press.
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Table of Contents
Series Editor's ForewordList of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Genealogy of Robert Recorde Physician
Prologue
1 Child of Tenby
2 Oxford Scholar
3 Cambridge Savant
4 Such is Your Authority
5 St Paul's Churchyard
6 Doctor Recorde
7 Antiquarian and Mathematician
8 No Mean Divine
9 Comptroller of the King's Mints
10 The Muscovy Company
11 This Talk Delights Me Marvelously
12 Pedagogue and Poet
13 Surveyor of the Mines .md Monies
14 Nemesis
15 A Heart So Oppressed
16 An Unquiet Mind
17 One of His Elect in Glory
Epilogue
Notes and References
Select Bibliography
Index