LEGACY by Jean Gill
Tudor England, 1558
When a man loses everything, what is his legacy?...
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| About Jean's story |
The Tudor
mathematician who cared too much about equality
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Robert Recorde memorial, St Mary’s Church, Tenby Credit Richard Hagen from Brisbane, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0 <>, via Wikimedia Commons |
2 + 2 = 4
Simple, even for those who hate Maths! However, before 1557, English
speakers would not have written a sum this way. Roman numerals were the norm
and Latin was the usual written language of scholars. Even if English were
used, the sum would have been written down as
ii in addition to ii is equal to iv
Clear as mud, isn’t it? Equations looked even more obscure as the
symbols x and y for unknown factors weren’t yet used. And who cared whether
ordinary people understood any of the scholars’ erudite thinking?
In 1557 Dr Robert Recorde cared. This Welshman grew up in Tenby, was
educated in medicine at Oxford, then Cambridge universities, and turned his
passion for teaching Mathematics into a revolutionary mission. In those days,
there were no degree courses in Mathematics.
Through books written in the English language, he combined all the
advanced knowledge that was accepted in mainland Europe with practical examples,
aimed at ordinary people. He invented the = equals sign ‘to avoid tedious
repetition’ and brought many more symbols, such as the plus sign +, into
common use by mathematicians.
This is the equation that changed English mathematics forever, using the
long parallel lines that have become our modern equals sign =.
Recorde’s books became the textbooks used in schools for hundreds of
years after his death and, when my mathematical husband looked at my print-out
of The Whetstone of Witte, he was shocked at how modern it is in
structure and progression. If you’ve ever puzzled over how long it takes ten
men to dig a ditch if one man takes five days, then that’s exactly how Recorde
gave examples to practise calculations. He was the first to relate Mathematics
to daily life in his teaching.
For all that he was a genius in many fields – royal physician, royal mintmaster, navigator and writer – Recorde is little known today, compared with his contemporary Dr John Dee or, later, Sir Isaac Newton.
Why?
My answer is in the short story I wrote for the anthology ‘Courage’ and
I think he should be famous and honoured. You can still tell that he was
a wonderful teacher from his books, as well as in the testimony of students who
attended his lectures.
I usually write 12th century medieval women back into
history, in all the rich variety of their unsung lives, but this time my unsung
hero is a man, trying to survive in dangerous times at court under four
different Tudor rulers in the 16th century.
This was quite a challenge for me, researching a different period as
well as the man himself but the more I found out about him, the more I wanted
others to know about all he achieved. His biography is full of contradictions –
a bachelor or married with twelve children? Even his bas-relief portrait above
the plaque in his Tenby birthplace is disputed and credibly attributed to some
other subject. So we probably have no picture of this amazing man, a merchant’s
son who changed mathematics forever. We do, however, have his words, in four
books you can still read today.
Here if you hope your wits to whet
Much sharpness thereby shall you get,
Dull wits hereby do greatly mend,
Sharp wits are honed to their full extent.
Now to prove and praise as you do find
And to yourself be not unkind.
(from the Preface to The Whetstone of Wittes, with my modern tweaks)
I’m wondering whether this short story might turn into a novel one day –
we shall see! It depends on whether you, my readers, want more of Robert
Recorde’s story… let me know!
Read ‘The Whetstone of Witte’ here
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| read a snippet |
LEGACY by Jean Gill
Tudor England, 1558
When a man loses everything, what is his legacy?
In a world of cheats and
liars, an honest man can easily find himself with debts he cannot pay, though
he has never spent one penny above his income. Especially if he demonstrates
publicly that someone rich and powerful is a crook and swindler. The place
deemed suitable by the courts for such presumption is one of the infamous
prisons situated south of the River Thames in the quarter of London known as
Southwark. Beside the prisons of the Marshalsea and the Queen’s Bench, (its sex
changing with that of the ruling monarch), noble townhouses rub shoulders with
taverns, and a miasma rises from the drained marshland of St George’s Fields.
At night, scratching the red
lumps on his skin left by his bedmates, the man is tormented even more by
questions than by the fleas in his hand-me-down mattress. Previous inmates have
left their imprint on the saggy middle and he has no option but to lie where
they have lain.
When did he run out of options? And why? If he had not sent the letter to the Queen, or if he’d phrased it differently, would he be here? He knew Queen Mary would show the letter to her advisors, who would always favour his enemy, and that whatever words he used would be twisted against him.
Award-winning
Welsh author and photographer Jean Gill lives in Provence with the best
scent-hound in the world, a Nikon D750 and a man. Best known for writing epic
medieval adventures in The Troubadours and The Midwinter Dragon
series, Jean has published twenty-seven multi-genre books since 1988, including
the dog bestseller Someone To Look Up To.
For many
years, she taught English, and was the first woman to be a secondary
headteacher in the Welsh county of Dyfed. She is mother or stepmother to five
children so life is hectic. With Scottish parents, Welsh and French residence
and an English birthplace, she can usually shout for the winning team in
sporting events.
She
loves to hear from readers.
Website: www.jeangill.com
Amazon author pages:
US: https://www.amazon.com/author/jeangill
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