CHAPTER VII 
NICHOLAS OF LYNN. ZENO. MEDIEVAL 
NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS 
There was dwelling in Oxford, when Chaucer was 
young, a scholar known as courteous Nicholas. He 
lodged with an old carpenter who had married a very 
young wife. He had a room to himself, and was devoted 
to the study of astrology and mathematics. On shelves 
at his bed head he had several books, including the 
Almagest of Ptolemy, as well as an astrolabe, and angrim 
stones used in numeration. 
The poet Chaucer and the scholar Nicholas had tastes 
in common. Both loved music and both studied what 
was then known of the sphere and the means of fixing 
positions. Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe 
addressed to his little son Lowys in 1391 and called it 
"brede and milke for children." In this treatise Chaucer 
mentions Nicholas with great respect. We shall not be 
far wrong either in assuming Nicholas the scholar to 
have been a friend of Chaucer, or in identifying him with 
the Carmelite monk Nicholas of Lynn, who would take 
his place as England's first Arctic explorer if his work 
had not been lost — a loss which is almost a national 
calamity. 
In 1360 Nicholas of Lynn undertook an expedition 
to Norway and the isles beyond towards the pole, be- 
ginning from 54 0 N. and fixing the latitudes with an 
astrolabe. Hakluyt quotes Gerard Mercator as writing that 
an English monk and mathematician of Oxford had been 
in Norway and the islands in the north, describing all those 
places and determining their latitudes by an astrolabe. 
He is said to have written a work on his expedition 
entitled Inventio Fortunata, which is lost ; and another 
work is attributed to him, De Mundi Revolutions Dr Dee 
wrote that Nicholas made five voyages into the northern 
parts, and left an account of his discoveries. 
