128 = Nevt/ Maskelyne, D.D., F.RS., Astronomer Royal. 
> writes, in 1765, their cousin the 
“T am impatient to hear,’ 
Honble. Mrs. Hervey, to Captain Edmund Maskelyne, the second 
son (then in India with his life-long friend and brother-in-law, 
Lord Clive), “how poor Nevil does. It’s pity great abilities has 
not larger purses.” And yet the slender purse, perhaps, counted 
for something in the different issue of the brothers’ lives. 
Elizabeth Maskelyne, his mother, died in the winter of 1743. 
“Poor Neice Maskelyne died of a Palsey,” is the note in the diary 
of her aunt, Mrs. Katherine Howard. Thus, when he was just 
15, Nevil became an orphan in respect to both his parents. 
The nature and extent of his life’s work will best appear-from a 
chronological statement of what he did. 
As before stated Nevil Maskelyne was educated at Westminster ; 
and afterwards successively at Catherine Hall, Pembroke Hall, and 
Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1754; M.A., 
in 1757; Trinity fellowship, in 1757; B.D. degree, in 1768; and 
DD. jin: lieity. 
He says of himself that :— 
“it was from occasional discourses in the family that he became eager to see the 
effect of telescopes and to know more of the system of the universe. The 
observing of the great eclipse of the sun in 1748 with Mr. Ayscough in an 
unusual manner by means of the sun’s image projected through a telescope on a 
white screen in camera obscura added fresh spur to his astronomical desires. . . .” 
It is a singular coincidence that to this same eclipse the French 
astronomer Lalande owed also his introduction to astronomy. He 
was only three months older than Nevil Maskelyne, and was his 
correspondent and friend to the end of his life. 
In 1755 Maskelyne accepted a curacy at Barnet, and about this 
time became acquainted with the then Astronomer Royal, Dr. 
Bradley, whom he assisted in his astronomical calculations. 
In 1758 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and became 
an important contributor to the Philosophical Transactions. 
In 1761 he was chosen by the Royal Society to go to the Island 
of St. Helena to observe the transit of Venus. The cloudy state of 
the weather prevented this observation, and the imperfections of 
his instruments frustrated other intentions connected with the 
