SOME ESSEX NATURALISTS 311
The year of his death, 1627, was that which saw the birth
at Black Notley of John Bay.
Some 30 years after the death of William Coys, a certain
North Dale, a silk thrower, was presented with a son who
was called Samuel. Exactly when the event took place is
not known, nor is it known where. It was probably in
1659, because a portrait of him engraved by George Vertue
in 1737 describes him as aged 78. The choice as to where
rests between two places. It was either at Braintree, as is
stated in a manuscript note by Dawson Turner in a copy of
Pulteney in the British Museum, or at or near Whitechapel,
London. In view of his father's occupation, either place
is a possibility.
Of his father's origins, where and when he was born,
whom he married and when he died, we know nothing. We
do know, however, that he had two sons. The elder,
Francis, was born in 1652, and be may be that Francis Dale
who was baptized at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, on 13th
October, 1652. This brother Francis was trained as an
apothecary. It is therefore quite likely that the second son,
Samuel, was born in the same district of London or nearby.
On 5th May, 1674, Samuel was apprenticed, also to an
apothecary, for eight years, being described on the indenture
as :—
" Son of North Dale of the parish of St Mary White-
chappell in the County of Middlesex, silk thrower."
Although Samuel was apprenticed through the Society of
Apothecaries, he does not appear to have taken out his Free-
dom of the City of London.
His apprenticeship would have been completed in 1682,
but by that date he had settled in Braintree, having moved
there in 1680, and his first child was born at Braintree in
1681. Here he practised as an apothecary and also as a physi-
cian. The biographical dictionaries describe him as an
apothecary only, but John Ray described him in the preface
to the first volume of the "Historia Plantarum", 1686, as
"D. Samuel Dale, Medicus et Pharmacopaeus ..." and
again in a supplement to the "Catalogus", where he is
described as physician and apothecary.