178 The Life and Work of John Ray, and
" Who best your wise Creator's praise declare,
Since best to praise his works is best to know.
O, truly Royal! who behold the law
And rule of beings in your Maker's mind,"
in his 'Annus Mirabilis,' 1666.
But one month, however, after the incorporation of the
Royal Society, Charles signed the "Act of Uniformity," by
which two thousand conscientious clergy were deprived of
their livings. It was not that Ray, or many others among
them, were either Presbyterians or had taken the Covenant,
for Ray frequently expressed his disapproval of that oath and
of separatists, and declared on his death-bed that he died, as
he had lived, a priest of the Church of England;—a fact
alluded to in his epitaph,—but he declined to swear, as
required, that the oath of the Covenant was not binding on
those who had taken it. Ray accordingly, with twelve others,
resigned their fellowships, and abandoned all hope of clerical
preferment.
In 1663 Ray issued a small appendix to his Catalogue of
Cambridge plants, and in the spring set out with Francis
Willughby, Philip Skippon, and Nathaniel Bacon, three of
his pupils, for a tour on the Continent, where he remained
for three years, visiting France, Holland, Germany, Switzer-
land, Italy, Sicily, and Malta, a journey of which he afterwards
rendered an ample account.
We fortunately possess a large series of Ray's letters, some
of which have been printed in an incomplete form by Dr.
Derham and Dr. Lankester; but the manuscripts of most of
which are in the British Museum; and from them we can
gather many details as to Ray's life after leaving Cambridge.
In 1666 he seems to have visited his friend, Dr. Martin
Lister, the well-known zoologist, at St. John's College, Cam-
bridge, of which he (Lister) was a fellow, and then to have
been at his native place and with friends in Sussex, and to
have read Hooke's 'Micrographia,' Sydenham on Fevers, and
various works by Boyle and others that had appeared during
his absence abroad. In the winter of the same year he
seems to have been with Willughby at Middleton, in Warwick-
shire, arranging his collections, and, with his assistance,