page_title: John Greaves
section_title: Ejection from Oxford
hierarchical_section_title: John Greaves / Biography / Ejection from Oxford
caption_attribution_description: Merton college, front quadrangle
context_page_description: John Greaves was an English mathematician, astronomer and antiquarian.
  Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he was elected a Fellow of Merton College in 1624. He studied Persian and Arabic, acquired a number of old books & manuscripts for archbishop William Laud, and wrote a treatise on the Persian language. He travelled in Italy and the Levant from 1636 to 1640 and made a survey of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
  He was Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London, and Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford University, and collected astrolabes and astronomical measuring devices. He was particularly interested in the study of weights and measures, and wrote a treatise on the Roman foot and denarius, and was a keen numismatist. In 1645 he attempted a reform of the Julian calendar in 1645 which was not adopted.
  During the English Civil War he supported Charles I, who stayed at Merton College while in Oxford, but lost his academic positions at Oxford in 1647 through the animosity of Nathaniel Brent, Warden of Merton College and a Parliamentarian.
context_section_description: In 1642 Greaves had been elected subwarden of Merton College. Merton was the only Oxford college to side with the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War, through an earlier dispute in 1638 between Nathaniel Brent, the Warden of Merton, and Greaves' patron William Laud. Brent had been a witness for the prosecution at Laud's 1644 trial. After Laud was executed on 10 January 1645, Greaves drew up a petition for Brent's removal from office; Brent was deposed by Charles I on 27 January.
  However, in 1647 a Parliamentary commission (or visitation) was set up "for the correction of offences, abuses, and disorders" in the University of Oxford. Nathaniel Brent was the president of the visitors. After Thomas Fairfax had captured Oxford for the Parliamentarians in 1648 and Brent had returned from London, Greaves was accused of sequestrating the college's plate and funds for king Charles. Despite a deposition from his brother Thomas, Greaves had lost both his Merton fellowship and his Savilian chair by 9 November 1648. Many of his books and MSS disappeared after his rooms were rifled by soldiers, although his friend John Selden managed to recover some of them.  However, Greaves was not actually deprived of the professorship until August 1649.
  He was succeeded as Savilian Professor of Astronomy in that year by Seth Ward, who ensured that Greaves was paid the arrears (£500) of his salary; Greaves was unlikely to have got his money, since the Savilian professors were paid from the income of lands held in Kent and Essex, which were under control of Parliament (rather than the king). Ward also gave over a considerable amount of his own salary to Greaves.
caption: The front quadrangle of Merton College
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