GELLIBRAND. 
While he continued in the pursuit of these 
studies, the professorship of astronomy in 
Gresham College, London, becoming vacant 
by the death of the ingenious Edmund 
Gunter, Mr. Briggs encouraged Mr. Gelli- 
brand to become a candidate for that chair. 
Accordingly he proceeded to London, with 
strong testimonials in his favour from the 
President, Vice ^President, and Fellows of his 
College, and other active friends, and was 
chosen to fill that post, by the electors, in the 
month of January, 1626. From that time 
he lived, as he had done before, in a close 
intimacy with Mr. Briggs, who took great 
pleasure in communicating to, him his ma- 
thematical opinions and discoveries, and at 
the time of his death confided to him the 
task of completing his “ British Trigonome- 
try,*’ which lie did pot live to finish. While 
Mr. Gellibrand was preparing that work 
for the press, he was cited, together with 
liis servant William Beale, into the High 
Commission Court, by Doctor Laud, then 
Bishop of London, on account of an alma- 
nac for the year 1631, which Beale had 
published with the approbation of his mas- 
ter. In this almanac, the Popish saints 
usually put into the calendar were omitted, 
and the names of other saints and martyrs, 
mentioned in “ Fox’s Acts and Monuments 
of the Church,” were inserted, as they stood 
in Fox’s calendar. This circumstance gave 
great offence to the haughty prelate, and 
determined him to prosecute them for a 
measure which he considered to be an un- 
equivocal evidence of their Puritanism. 
But when their cause came to a hearing, by 
shewing that what they had done was no 
innovation, and pleading that they had no 
ill intention, they were acquitted by Arch- 
bishop Abbot, and the whole court, Laud 
only excepted ; which was made an article 
of accusation against the last-mentioned 
prelate at his own trial. This prosecution 
proved the means of retarding the publica- 
tion of Mr. Briggs’s work ; but when Mr. 
Gellibrand had escaped from the vengeance 
of Laud, he again applied to the completion 
of his friend’s design, and having added to 
it a preface and the application of the 
logarithms to plane and spherical trigono- 
metry, &c. constituting the second book of 
the work ; thejwbole was printed at Gouda 
in Holland, under the care of Adrian Vlacq, 
in 1636. It was entitled, “ Trigonometria 
Britannica, sive de Doctrina Triangulorum, 
Libri duo, &c.” folio. 
Mr. Gellibrand, however, though an in- 
dustrious mathematician, had not sufficient 
comprehension of mind to admit the evi- 
dence, which Galileo had lately produced, 
in support of the Copernican system. This 
appears from the account which he has 
given of a conversation which he had, when 
he went over to Holland on the business of 
printing the Trigonometry, with Lansberg, 
an eminent astronomer in Zealand, who in- 
sisted on the truth of that system. “ This 
which he was pleased to style a truth,” says 
our author, “ I should readily receive as an 
hypothesis, and so be easily led on to the con- 
sideration of the imbecility of man’s appre- 
hension, as not able rightly to conceive of 
this admirable opifice of God, or frame of 
the world, without falling foul of so great 
an absurdity. Yet, sure I am, it is a pro- 
bable inducement to shake a wavering 
understanding.” 
From Mr. Gellibrand’® situation at Gres- 
ham College, and his intercourse with the 
lovers of mathematical studies, he had an 
opportunity of contributing some pieces, 
mentioned below, to the improvement of 
navigation, which science would probably 
have been farther benefited by him had he 
not been immaturely carried off by a fever 
in 1636, when in the fortieth year of his 
age. That his mathematical knowledge 
was considerable, and usefully applied, is 
sufficiently apparent from the treatises 
which he left behind him, and the estima- 
tion in which he w r as held by the most re- 
spectable men of science among his contem- 
poraries, both at Oxford and London. But 
he is entitled more to the praise of close 
and unwearied industry than of invention or 
genius. Besides his part of the “ Trigono- 
metria Britannica,” he was the author of 
“An Appendix concerning Longitude,” sub- 
joined to Captain Thomas James’s Voyage 
for the Discovery of the NorthWest Passage, 
1633, quarto ; “A Discourse, mathematical, 
on the variation of the Magnetic Needle, 
together with the admirable diminution 
lately discovered,” annexed to Wright’s 
“ Errors in Navigation Detected, &c.” 
1635, quarto; “A Preface to the Sciogra- 
phia of John Wells, of Brembridge, Esq.” 
1635, 8vo ; “ An Institution, trigonometri- 
cal, explaining the doctrine of plane and 
spherical Triangles, after the most exact 
and compendious way, by Tables of Sines, 
Tangents, & c. with the application thereof 
to questions of Astronomy and Navigation,’’ 
1634, octavo ; and afterwards republished 
with enlargements by William Leybourn, 
1652, octavo : “ An Epitome of Naviga- 
tion, with the necessary tables, &c. and “A« 
