A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN. 161
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 Bocking 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 Bocking. 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 Wafers 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 acquaintance and friend," and in 1697 Mrs. Ray stood
as godmother to his eldest son.