TRANSACTIONS. THOMAS MOFFET IN SUFFOLK, 1585. BY THE EDITOR.
THE MAN.—Biology and archaeology, though often exclaimed upon with equally inane joy at meetings of Field Clubs, are not compatible studies, excepting solely in the case of Early Man : they run parallelly and never elsewhere associate. Hence, and from the time that has since elapsed, it is that Moffet's residence in our County has been hitherto ignored. His father Thomas was a Scot haberdasher of famous London town, who married the Kentish Alice Ashley, so their second son, our Thomas born 1553, was both canny and sober. He had his own way to make in the World, for which purpöse, after matriculating as a pensioner at Trinity in Cambridge 1569, he took his B.A. at Caius in 1572 ; next he attended medical lectures at Basle, where he gained his M.D. in 1578, and the following year began the usual Continental tour, being much Struck by Italian Silkworm culture. Then began the serious doctor's practice that lasted nine years from 1582, ending in detailment to the forces under Lord Essex in Normandy. That his medical knowledge, for that period, was adequate is shown by his selection for attendance upon the Duchess Ann Seymour of Somerset, widow of the Protector, in her last malady ; and his later frequent sojourns at Queen Elizabeth's court, where Drake once showed him a Flying Fish, " Milvus marinus." The very recognition of his ability seems to have marred his later years, which were spent, in attendance upon patrons, at Bulbridge which was a house given him by the Earl of Pembroke, under whose countenance he became M.P. for Wilton in 1597 ; there on 5 June 1604 he died and was buried (DNB. 1894, kindly copied by Mr. H. R. Lingwood). THE BOOK.—Thomas Moffet is to this day celebrated among scientists as the first British author to write a book upon Insects or, indeed, Natural History in general: with his numerous medical treatises we are not concerned. A very remarkable book it Was ! And still is, for the original MS. with sumptuous figures remains to-day in the British museum, showing much matter never published. It was begun by the Swiss Konrad Gesner, who based it upon Edward Wotton of Oxford's De Differentis Animalium, published in Paris 1552. Gesner died at Zürich in 1565, when the MS. came to his executor the Lancashire Thomas Penny, M.D., who sported his plate in London's then fashionable Leadenhall-street near the eider
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THOMAS MOFFET IN SUFFOLK
Moffet's shop. Upon Penny's 1588 decease, the now torn MS. was rescued from his vandal niece by young Moffet; and he it was who completed its 1200 small folio Latin sheets two years later and had leave to dedicate them to the Queen, just when working his hardest as a G.P. But that work and social patronage distracted our Subject's mind, though later royal permission came to transfer the dedication to King James I. After Thomas' death, the MS. was acquired from his apothecary by the Queen's physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, and he at long last in London did publish the work as a small folio volume in 1634, called Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum, which in 1658 was included in an English edition of Topsell's " History of Four Footed Beasts and Serpents " (Dr. Willoughby Gardner, Lancs. & Chesh. Ent. Soc., Dec. 1928 ; quoted in Burr's Insect Legion 1939, 280). The original very ornate and peculiarly Stuart title-page shows busts of Wotton, Gesner, Penny and " Thomas Moffetvs," the last handsome and about forty, with narrow head, tall forehead, moustache, short beard, high ruff and multipleated doublet; lateral pillars bearing floral design are capped by Honey-bee skeps, surrounded by their Aying occupants ; a Silkworm-moth emerging on right from its, on left unopened, cocoon; surmounted by a newly-emerged Deathshead-hawk and its larva; two different Macro larvae are scaling lateral posts, and the Gresham Grasshopper ends Moffet's original füll but unpublished title : " Insectorum Theatrum olim ab Edoardo Wottono, Conrado Gesnero, Thomaque Pennio positum: nunc Tho. Moffeti Londinatis opera sumptibusque aedificatum et egregijs iconibus illustratum" (excellent photograph in The Field, 27 August 1938). IN SUFFOLK.—" By 1588 Moffet had secured a good practice, at first apparently at Ipswich, and afterwards in London " (D.N.B., supra), which uncertainty is altered to : " He returned to England in l580 and set up a practice in Ipswich, but quickly moved to London " (Burr, 277). That is all we know of him in our Countya, excepting the single definite letter, which clinches the matter, detected by the astute Copinger (County 1904, i, 140 and iii, 351), ' on Mr. Nicholas Beaumont's death ß and the discoveries made on dissecting his body, with answer to interrogatories respecting his last will' : A Letter from Thomas Moffet, a Physician of Ipswich, to Mr. Michael Hicks y, written 1585 (now in Brit. Mus., Lansdown MSS. 107, 13). Of what brought Moffet to a I can find n o t h i n g in Ipswich L i b r a r y . — H . R . LINGWOOD, 23 April. ß N o Nicholas in Metcalfe's 1561 Visitation, or M u s k e t t ' s Manorial Families, i i . — H . R . LINGWOOD. y Sir Michael (1543-1612) ; knighted 1604 ; his position, as one of L o r d Burghley's secretaries, gave h i m m u c h influence at Elizabeth's c o u r t ; " very witty and jocose " ( D N B . ) .
DR. HOCKEN, 1939; Dipterist 1887-1949.
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Ipswich we have no inkling, and can but guess an uncle to have been Henry Ashley who served the town as coroner in 1588 et seqq. (Bacon's Annalls, 1884) ; the Suffolk Ashleys were of Bildeston, in which church remain monuments to the Beaumonts. Moffet's activities here seem to have begun, sec. D.N.B., when he was seven-and-twenty during 1580, in which case they last fully five years ; and one would like to find his part of the great " Theatrum " written at Ipswich. However, it did not come into his hands tili 1588, three years after the letter was inscribed, by which time he had probably moved to London where he completed the book in the course of the following two. Many of Moffet's insects have been recognised, though his names are all expunged by ' priority.' " The earliest record of the Bed Bug Cimex lectularius, in Britain is in ' Insects or Minute Animals ' by Thomas Mouffet, who says that in 1503 two ladies of noble family at Mortlake became alarmed at being b u g - b i t t e n " (Butler's Household Insects, 273), but he knew enough to oust the culprits by fumigation of the wooden bed. His Musca bipilis secunda from Oxford is the Ichneumon-fly now called Pimpla instigator, Fab. And, although Kirby of Barham's Melitta Mouffetella must sink as the male of Andrena atriceps, ourSubject's name will live to all time inSchiffermiller's little Moth, Epithectis Mouffetella.
BRYOZOA AND PISCES OF THE CRAG.—While I was at Felixstow in August 1942, I was able to collect some Fossils from the Newbournian Red Crag there which seem worthy of record. Bryozoa are far rarer than in Coralline Crag, but three species turned up that I have named Eschara monilifera, MEdw., Celepora coronopus, Wood and Heteroporella radiata, Busk, from the last author's " Fossil Polyzoa of the Crag," published by the Palaeontological Society in 1857. There were many common Bivalve and Gastropod Mollusca ; and three Sharks' teeth, which our Hon. Secretary names Odontaspis macrota and O. cuspidata, Agaz. Also an interesting Cherry Stone of Prunus cerasus, L . ; but this Dr. R. Melville of Kew, who named it, will not allow to be fossilized. T h e Snails included Neptunea despecta, L., var. subantiquata, Matin and Rackett, and the usual N. contraria, Linn.—JOHN L. GILBERT ; 10 Sept., 1949.