56 
MEMOIR OF 
intimately acquainted with Mr Ray, and wrote 
his life, and edited his epistolary correspondence, 
amongst which are many, of Mr Willughby’s 
letters, never mentions or alludes even in the 
most distant manner to the circumstance. * •• 
He frequently speaks of Mr Skippon, Mr Peter 
Courthope, Mr Bacon, and others, and often dis- 
tinguishes them as Mr Ray’s pupils, but although 
he much more frequently mentions Mr Willughby 
than any of these gentlemen, he never takes 
notice of him in that capacity. 
It is stated in Dr Derham’s Life of Ray, that 
he went to Cambridge, to Catherine Hall, at the 
early age of sixteen, distinguished among his 
* The following sentence in Dr Derham’s Life of Ray, 
seems studiously constructed with the view to avoid giving 
occasion to such an inference. 
•• Mr Ray having spent the hitter end of this year, 
1668, with his friends, Mr Barrel and Mr Courthope, at 
Danny, in Sussex, and Sir Robert Barnham, at Bocton, 
in Kent, (all three his pupils at Trinity,) and Mr Wil- 
lughby in Warwickshire, he then, in July following, 
began another journey alone by himself,” &c. 
This passage refers to a period when the connection of 
all the parties with Cambridge had totally ceased for some 
years. 
It should seem that, upon the supposition that Mr 
Willughby had been a pupil of Mr Ray while at the 
University, it would have been both the most natural, 
and the easiest procedure, for Dr Derham to have classed 
him along with the other gentlemen whom he mentions 
as “Mr Ray’s pupils at Trinity.” The distinction has 
all the appearance of having been made, for the sake of 
accuracy. 
