A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN. l6l 
friend Buddie, as one of the first critical students of our British 
flora. Confining his attention to a far more limited field than 
did his master Ray, he was able to reach a higher degree of 
accuracy in detail. 
Few further details of his private life are known to us. He 
was twice married, his first wife’s name being Judah, and his 
second Sarah Finch. Mr. Christy has found the births of several 
children by the former in the Parish Registers here. He was a 
prominent member of “ The Company of Twenty-four,” the 
ancient urban council of this town, and he was one of the founders 
and first deacons of the Booking Independent Chapel from 1707. 
He died between three and four of the clock on Sunday morning, 
18th March 1739, in his 81st year, and was probably buried in 
the chapel burial-ground at Booking. His will was proved on 
6th April of the same year. 
I have left myself but little time to speak of Benjamin Allen, 
the youngest and least eminent of the three friends, united by a 
common love of Nature as well as by their residence in this 
neighbourhood, whom we honour to-day. This, however, is 
excusable, since the papers in which Mr. Christy has, in a masterly 
manner, collected all that is known of Allen, are so recent as to 
be fresh in the memory of many of us. 
Allen was born in Somersetshire in 1663, being the son of 
another Benjamin Allen, a physician, apparently of London 
but he was probably related to the Alleyns, of Little Leighs 
Black Notley, Thaxted, and other places in this county. He 
was sent to St. Paul’s School and in 1681 to Queen’s College, 
Cambridge, and it was, perhaps, to Dr. Thomas Gale, High 
Master of St. Paul’s, that he was indebted for his interest in 
Natural Science. 
While still an undergraduate he wrote much of his treatise 
on The Chalybeat and Purging Waters of England, which was not, 
however, published till 1699. He began to practise in 1686, 
probably as assistant to Dr. Joshua Draper, of this town, who 
died in that year, and whose daughter, Katherine, Allen married, 
about 1695. In 1688 he graduated as Bachelor of Medicine : 
in 1692 Ray writes of him as “ our principal physician at Brain¬ 
tree, my acquaintace and friend,” and in 1697 Mrs. Ray stood 
as godmother to his eldest son. 
