150 A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN.
declare—as the Act required him as a college officer to declare—
that the covenant was not binding on those who had taken it.
Accordingly, he threw in his lot with the Presbyterians, resigning
his fellowship—as did 13 other fellows of colleges in Cambridge—
and retired (as he expressly explained, both then and on his
death bed) into lay communion with the re-established church,
in which he could never bring himself to seek for preferment.
From his conversations on religious matters with Allen,
badly reported as they are, we gather that he was inclined to
criticise his church in such matters as the disuse of immersion in
baptism and the use of the so-called Apocryphal books of the
Old Testament ; but we have also abundant evidence of the
deep-seated reverence and piety of the man. It is, however,
obviously inaccurate to speak of Ray as having been expelled
from his college or university.
From this time, with apparently brief visits to his native
village, Ray was largely with Willughby. They agreed to
divide the description of the organic world between them,
Willughby undertaking the animals, Ray the plants ; and it
was partly to collect material for this scheme that, in April
1663, they started, with Skippon and another pupil, Nathaniel
Bacon, on their only continental journey, which occupied three
years. They visited Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy,
Sicily, and Malta ; and, on the return, Willughby, leaving them
at Montpellier, went on into Spain. The journal of these
travels was published in 1673, the year following Willughby's
too-early death.
The winter after their return (1666-7) was spent by Ray at
Willughby's palatial home, Middleton Hall, in Warwickshire,
which was to be practically the great naturalist's home for the
next ten years. Here he was at first occupied in classifying
Willughby's numerous collections, from which task naturally
grew that of the joint compilation by the two fellow-students
of synoptical tables of plants and animals. These tables were
more particularly required by Dr. John Wilkins, the son-in-law
of Cromwell, and afterwards Bishop of Chester, and one of
the founders of the Royal Society, who was preparing an inter-
national scientific nomenclature or Real Character and Philo-
sophical Language (published in 1668). They are of great impor-
tance in the evolution of Ray's life-work, since they are the