It remains that I should adde something touching the beginning, and use of these Sciences. . . . . I shall only, to their honours, name some of our own Nation yet living, who have happily laboured upon both stages. That succeeding ages may understand that in this of ours, there yet remained some who were neither ignorant of these Arts, as if they had held them vain, nor condemn them as superfluous. Amongst them all let Mr. William Oughtred, of Aeton, be named in the first place, a Person of venerable grey haires, and exemplary piety, who indeed exceeds all praise we can bestow upon him. Who by an easie method, and admirable Key, hath unlocked the hidden things of geometry. Who by an accurate Trigonometry and furniture of Instruments, hath inriched, as well geometry, as Astronomy. Let D. John Wallis, and D. Seth Ward, succeed in the next place, both famous Persons, and Doctors in Divinity, the one of geometry, the other of astronomy, Savilian Professors in the University of Oxford.[71] The astronomer Edmund Halley, in his preface to the 1694 English edition of the Clavis, speaks of this book as one of “so established a reputation, that it were needless to say anything thereof,” though “the concise Brevity of the author is such, as in many places to need Explication, to render it Intelligible to the less knowing Mathematical matters.” In closing this part of our monograph, we quote the testimony of Robert Boyle, the experimental physicist, as given May 8, 1647, in a letter to Mr. Hartlib: The Englishing of, and additions to Oughtred’s Clavis mathematica does much content me, I having formerly spent much study on the original of that algebra, which I have long since esteemed a much more instructive way of logic, than that of Aristotle.[72] WAS DESCARTES INDEBTED TO OUGHTRED? This question first arose in the seventeenth century, when John Wallis, of Oxford, in his Algebra (the English edition of 1685, and more particularly the Latin edition of 1693), raised the issue of Descartes’ indebtedness to the English scientists, Thomas Harriot and William Oughtred. In discussing matters of priority between Harriot and Descartes, relating to the theory of equations, Wallis is generally held to have shown marked partiality to Harriot. Less attention has been given by historians of mathematics to Descartes’ indebtedness to Oughtred. Yet this question is of importance in tracing Oughtred’s influence upon his time. On January 8, 1688-89, Samuel Morland addressed a letter of inquiry to John Wallis, containing a passage which we translate from the Latin: