their relation to the Progress of Science. 173
generation. From the spiritual problems with which it had
so long wrestled in vain, England turned at last to the
physical world around it, to the observation of its phenomena,
to the discovery of the laws which govern them. The pur-
suit of Physical Science became a passion ; and its method
of research, by observation, comparison, and experiment,
transformed the older methods of inquiry in matters without
its pale. In religion, in politics, in the study of man and of
nature, not faith but reason, not tradition but inquiry, were
to be the watchwords of the coming time. The dead-weight
of the past was suddenly rolled away, and the new England
heard at last and understood the call of Francis Bacon."
In this seventeenth century renaissance, this rationalistic
illumination, no mean part was to be played by the son of the
blacksmith of Black Notley, John Ray.
Ray was born at Black Notley, near Braintree, probably on
November 29th, 1627, since his baptism is registered on
June 29th, 1628, though his birth is commonly recorded in
November, 1628. His father was Roger and his mother
Elizabeth Ray, but until the year 1670 the naturalist spelled
his name with a W, as he says "antiqua et patria scriptione
immutata." He was educated, until nearly seventeen, at
Braintree Grammar School, when, on June 28th, 1644, he
entered at Catherine Hall, Cambridge, a year before his
future friend, Isaac Barrow, left Felstead for Trinity College.
The year before Abraham Cowley, holding Royalist views,
left Cambridge for Oxford, and in this same year 1644, Robert
Boyle, having returned from Geneva, and, by the advice of
his sister, Lady Ranelagh, turned away from the strife of
parties, made the acquaintance of the enlightened Pole,
Samuel Hartlib, and of his friend John Milton, whose tract
"Of Education" was in this year dedicated to Hartlib. In
the following year, 1645, began those informal meetings in
London of men interested in science, from which sprang the
Royal Society, and in which the leading spirits were John
Wilkins, afterwards Warden of Wadham College, Oxford,
brother-in-law of Cromwell, Master of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, and Bishop of Chester, and John Wallis, then Rector