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Mr. Milburne and the Serpentine Line 48 Journal of the Oughtred Society Mr. Milburne and the Serpentine Line Panagiotis Venetsianos Foreword it in the Parish Register. He may have died and been buried at some other place, while fleeing the sacking of Brancepeth by In Charles Hutton’s Mathematical Tables1 we can read that, the Scots. “about the year 1650”, logarithmic lines were drawn in a “spe- cial form by a Mr. Milburne of Yorkshire”. However, Hutton Milburne’s Family did not describe this special form (though he partially lifted the veil in another book2 by saying that the logarithmic lines Little is known about Milburne’s family. He had an elder were in a spiral form) nor did he give any detail on this Mr. brother, Robert, who became a London stationer and kept Milburne (not even his Christian name). “the Greyhound in Paul’s Churchyard”.6 Robert and William Many later articles on the history of the slide rule seem were the sons of Robert Mylborne (sic) and were baptised in to have simply borrowed the little information provided by 1595 and 1599 respectively. Charles Hutton. Even Florian Cajori stated in his history of the logarithmic slide rule3 that according to Hutton “a Mr. Curate of Brancepeth7 Milburne of Yorkshire designed the spiral form of slide rule about 1650”. Cajori also stated that he had “not been able to The Clergy of the Church of England Database (http://www. secure more detailed information relating to Milburne”. We theclergydatabase.org.uk/index.html) informs us that as from find the same statement in Leon Lalanne’s Instruction sur les July, 1615, Willimus Milborne or Milburne had been sizar at Règles à Calcul.4 “We have not been able to verify Hutton’s Christ’s College of Cambridge University (a sizar is a student informations on Wingate and Milburne. The name of the lat- who receives some form of assistance such as meals, lower ter is not even mentioned in the catalogue of the Bibliothèque fees or lodging during his or her period of study). William Nationale nor in any other bibliography”. was aged 22 when he was awarded the Bachelor of Arts on This article is an attempt to discover who Milburne was the 23rd of December, 1621. No birth place is given but curi- and why, being credited with the invention of the spiral ously, the database says also that, according to the Ordina- scales, so little of his work in this field is known to the 21st tion Register, he “was born both in Chesterford Magna, Essex, century collector. and Meldreth, Kent”. The same source says that Milburne was ordained deacon the day he graduated with a Bachelor Span of Life of Arts, on the 23rd of December, 1621. Five years later, on the 24th of December 1626, he was awarded the Master of The available information is not fully conclusive, but our Arts at the same Cambridge University and was ordained a William Milburne5 was most probably born at Great priest by the bishop of London, George Montaigne. Chesterford in the County of Essex (East of England) in the William Milburne, according to another source6 “gained year 1599. his B.A. degree in 1619-1620, entered holy orders, and pro- He died at an early age, in 1640, in the County of Durham ceeded to M.A. in 1623”. In the early 1630s Milburne was (North of England). His exact date and place of death are not eventually made curate at Brancepeth near Durham “divid- known, nor is the place of his burial. He might have been ing his time between his duties as curate of the parish and buried at Brancepeth where he lived, but there is no record of the prosecution of astronomical observations”.8 Volume 19, Number 2, Fall, 2010 49 FIGURE 1. St. Brandon’s Church in Brancepeth where William Milburne was curate Troubled Times, the Bishops’ Wars9 Apparently, it was during the first Bishops’ War that most of Milburne’s documentation was destroyed. Was his William Milburne was curate at Brancepeth in a time of tur- death connected with the sacking of Brancepeth? Did he die moil and civil war: “...the state of things in England in the while fleeing the Scottish invasion? I have not been able to beginning of the seventeenth century was by no means find anything about this, not even a beginning of an answer. favourable to scientific pursuits; and towards the middle of it, the great commotion, which convulsed the frame of civil Mathematics and Astronomy society, threatened the extinction of science altogether”.8 In the summer of 1639, Charles I, king of England and Milburne was well versed in mathematics and astronomy and Scotland, in his attempts to reform the Scottish Church, was kept up a correspondence with others interested in these led to march toward the border of Scotland. He was con- fields. He is said to have extracted the approximate root of an fronted with a well-prepared Scottish army. None of the equation of the fifth degree before he had seen Harriot’s belligerents were very keen to fight; they concluded an agree- Praxis, the reference work on the subject at that time. ment known as the Pacification of Berwick. Sherburne10 states though that “...his greatest Labours King Charles had not abandoned yet his plans to sub- were in Astronomy, and his Observation of the Stars, he due Scotland. Being short of money, he was obliged, after used a good Cross Staff, and a Sextans of five foot Radius, more than ten years of absolute power, to call a Parliament in he discovered the weakness of Langsbergius his Astronomy, order to raise funds. He finally didn’t agree with the terms of and verified Kepler’s Tables, which he turned into Decimals”. the Parliament and dissolved it. This led to the second Bish- Milburne’s knowledge of astronomy must have been ops’ War: the Scots invaded England, without notable oppo- quite impressive as he was regarded by Sherburne as one of sition of the English army and, among other parts of En- the “four Lights of the northern hemisphere”, the three other gland, the County of Durham was overrun. Newcastle, which Lights being: William Gascoyne, William Crabtree, and controlled London’s fuel supply, was occupied by the Scots Jeremiah Horrocks. His observations were unfortunately in August, 1640. destroyed by the Scots in 1639 but some records were, in 1675, in the hands of Sir Jonas Moore. 50 Journal of the Oughtred Society Teacher of Mathematics and Astronomy III. Of mans timely remembring of his Creator. Heretofore communicated to some friends in written copies; William Milburne, who had been a pupil of Joseph Mede at but now published for the generall good.” Christ’s College, was apparently a good teacher and dis- This small octavo, containing two tracts by Thomas Jack- seminated mathematics and astronomy among the young men son and one sermon by John Donne, was unfortunately falsely of his parish. Jonas Moore, for instance, the famous English attributed to William Milburne by his brother Robert. This mathematician, identified Milburne as being his first teacher: case of almost plagiarism was much deplored by William in a “Upon the first comming in of the Scots 1640. in a solitary letter dated 20 April 1638 to his rector John Cosin: “I hope my retyrednesse, with a settled resolution, I fell upon the studyes brother of London hath bene mindfull to send you some of Mathematicall, animated thereunto by the promised helpe of the bookes of that copie which I made bold with your wor- Mr William Millburne, Minister of Brauncepeth, in the County ship to read before it went to presse, intitled be mee Sapientia of Durham, my most worthy friend, and a great Master in all Clamitans. The two first treatises in it (as I heare) are Dr. parts of Learning, who not many weekes after departed this Jackson’s which I alwayes suspected by the stile; as you life; leaving me either in choise to give over my journey or may remember I sayd unto your worship. And the other (some travel without Guide or Company.”6 say) is a sermon of Dr. Donne’s. I am mightilie vexed at my In a somewhat contradictory statement though, Moore brother, because it is so printed upon the title page as that also said that he owed all his knowledge to William Oughtred men being unacquainted with the matter take mee as the au- and his Clavis Mathematicae. As remarked by Frances thor, and not as the publisher onelie.”12 Willmoth, author of a book about Jonas Moore6, “this need not to be taken so literally as to devaluate the prior Milburne’s Serpentine Line acknowledgement. Oughtred, after all, was then alive, highly influential, and worth flattering; nevertheless, it was According to Frances Willmoth6, Milburne’s serpentine line Milburne, less well known and long since dead, whom Moore was advertised in The many uses of the spirall or serpentine chose to identify as his first teacher.” line &c, usefull for all mathematicians in generall and for ingenious architects, measurers of land, carpenters and Milburne’s Scientific Works other mechanics in particular. First applied to these sev- eral practices by William Milburne M.A. and reduced into Apparently, not many of Milburne’s scientific works were this form with many additions by Jonas Moore, Professor of preserved after his death: “... his Observations and other the Mathematicks. This title, now lost, was entered in the Papers, &c. were unhappily lost, by the coming in of the Stationer’s Register in 1658; it is not known if it ever ap- Scots, in the year 1639”.10 but, thanks to his correspondence peared in print.
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