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Sir Henry Billingsley | |
|---|---|
| Lord Mayor of London | |
| In office 1596–1597 | |
| Preceded by | Thomas Skinner |
| Succeeded by | Richard Saltonstall |
| Personal details | |
| Died | 22 November 1606 |
| Occupation | Merchant, translator |
Sir Henry Billingsley (c.1538 - 22 November 1606) was an English scholar and translator, merchant, chief Customs officer for the Port of London in the high age of late Elizabethan piracy, and moneylender, several times Master of the Haberdashers' Company, an alderman, Sheriff and Lord Mayor of London, and twice Member of Parliament for the City.[1][2] His 1570 translation (with exemplifications) of Euclid's Geometry, the first from Greek into English, with a lengthy opening essay by Dr John Dee, was a classic of its time and a landmark in mathematical publishing.[3] It appeared only two years after his translation, from the Latin, of the compendious and seminal Commentary, by the leading Reformation theologian Pietro Martire Vermigli, on the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans, which had been dedicated by its author to the Reformation scholar Sir Anthony Cooke. Both of these important publications were printed by John Daye. Billingsley was for long associated with St Thomas's Hospital in London and was a prominent, worthy and wealthy London citizen, reflecting the examples of his stepfathers Sir Martin Bowes and Thomas Seckford. He was listed in 1617 as a deceased member of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries.[4]
- ^ A. Thrush, 'Billingsley, Sir Henry (c.1538-1606), of Fenchurch Street, London', in A. Thrush and J.P. Ferris (eds), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, (from Cambridge University Press 2010), History of Parliament Online. Thrush confuses the sequence of his mother's first two marriages.
- ^ McConnell, Anita. "Billingsley, Sir Henry (d. 1606)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2392. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ D.M. Simpkins, 'Early editions of Euclid in England', Annals of Science, Vol. 22, No. 4 (December 1966), pp. 225-49.
- ^ 'Introduction: An Historical Account of the Origin and Establishment of the Society of Antiquaries', Archaeologia. Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Antiquity, I (1770), pp. i-xxxix, at p. xx (Internet Archive).
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