GREW'S PARENTAGE 45 



his living, being unable to comply with the Act of Uniformity. 

 Twenty years later, as a man of seventy-five, he was convicted 

 of a breach of the Five Mile Act, and imprisoned for six months 

 in Coventry Gaol. But though by this time his sight had failed, 

 his spirit was indomitable. Whilst in prison, he dictated a sermon 

 every week to an amanuensis, who read it to several shorthand 

 writers, each of whom undertook a number of copies ; it was 

 then distributed to various secret religious meetings, at which 

 it was read. Nehemiah Grew was Obadiah's only son, and it is 

 a curious fact that the year 1682, which witnessed the father's 

 imprisonment, was the year in which the son published his 

 magnum opus, The Anatomy of Plants, prefaced by an Epistle 

 Dedicatory to "His most sacred Majesty Charles II." So far 

 as one can gather, Nehemiah Grew's career seems to have been 

 singularly unaffected by the political crises that took place 

 around him. The deliberate style of his writing certainly 

 suggests a studious and unruffled life. He was an undergraduate 

 at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and afterwards took his doctor's 

 degree in medicine at Leyden, at the age of thirty. He seems 

 to have been successful in his profession, and we learn from the 

 sermon 1 preached at his funeral that he died suddenly, whilst 

 still actively engaged in his practice. In the words of the 

 sermon, " It was his Honour and Happiness, to be Serviceable 

 to the last Moments of Life." 



Before turning to Grew's botanical work, it may be worth 

 while to refer very briefly to his writings on other subjects, 

 showing as they do the remarkable versatility of his mind. He 

 produced a series of chemical papers, and also pamphlets on the 

 method of making sea-water fresh, and on the nature of the salts 

 present in the Epsom wells. In 1681 appeared his Mttsceum 

 Regalis Societatis, a catalogue raisonne of the objects in the 

 Museum of the Royal Society, with which were bound up some 

 contributions to animal anatomy. The Catalogue is a bulky 

 volume, and it is hard to forbear a smile on reading that Grew 

 dedicated it to one Colwall, the founder of the Museum, in order 



1 Enoch's Translation. A Funeral Sermon Upon the Sudden Death of Dr 

 Nehemiah Grew, Fellow of the College of Physicians. Who died March 25th, 1712. 

 Preach'd at Old-Jewry. By John Shower. London. 1712. 



