64
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
built its first Chapel. This was known as the "Braintree
Meeting House" and its Ministers as "the Dissenting Ministers
of Braintree." For years (perhaps until his death), Dale held
the office of Deacon.84
There is evidence, however, that all Ministers of the Church
of England in Braintree did not accord to Dale their friendship
and toleration, as the great Ray had done; for the Rev. Stephen
Newcomen, vicar of Braintree, in his letter to the Rev. Philip
Morant,85 Writes:—"You know enough, I presume, of Mr.
Dale's character, as not to launch out too largely in his praise."
What there was to lead Newcomen to write so contemptuously
of Dale's character, I know not. So far as we know, it was of
the highest. Perhaps, with advancing age, Dale had become
somewhat crabbed. His portrait,86 painted in 1711, when,
he Was 72 years of age, certainly suggests great determination
which perhaps developed later into obstinacy. Probably,
however, the sneering tone of Newcomen's reference to Dale
is due to nothing more than the bias of one Church of England
clergyman writing to another in reference to a prominent local
dissenter.
Dale was never a Fellow of the Royal Society, though he
was described as such in an incomplete and incorrect obituary
notice.87
It has been remarked already that, late in life, Dale took a
physician's degree—that of Licentiate in Medicine ("M.L.")—
in addition to that as an apothecary which he had held for
very many years. It is not known, however, by what medical
authority, or when, this Was granted. Newcomen, in his
letter to Morant, states88 that "He prescribed as a physician
9 or 10 years before his death, which happened the 15th89 March
1738-9." That is to say, he began about 1729.90
84 In 1789, an independent church having been established in Braintree, the older chapel
became known (as it is still) as the Bocking Congregational Church. (See Biographical
Sketchs of Successive Pastors of the Congregational Church at Bocking, Essex (Braintree,
8s., 1829; reprinted from the Congregational Magazine). In the beginning and middle of the
Nineteenth Century, it was attended regularly by many of the leading families of the twin-
towns and neighbourhood.
85 See ante, p. 58.
86 Essex Nat., xvii., p. 132 (1913).
87 Gentl. Mag., ix., p. 327.
88 See ante, p. 58.
89 Should be 18th (see post, p. 65).
90 This accords very well with the fact that, in the will of Dale's second wife, made in March
1726, he is described as "apothecary" only; whilst later he was generally described as "MX.,"
as, for instance, on Plate 96 in Michaelis' Nova Plantarum Genera, published in 1729, and on the
portrait in the 3rd ed. of Dale's Pharmacologia, published in 1737, Further, Thomas Wright
states explicitly (Hist. of Essex, ii., p. 25 : 1832) that, "in 1730, Dale became a Licentiate of the
Royal College of Physicians in London and a practitioner at Bocking, where he died in 1739,
aged eighty." It is difficult to disbelieve so positive a statement by a reputable writer, even
when he omits to cite a definite authority ; but the records of the College (which I have been
kindly allowed to see) contain no record of the fact.