Timothy Bright

Timothie Bright, M.D. (1551?-1615) was an Early Modern British physician and clergyman, the inventor of modern shorthand.

Bright was born in or about 1551, probably in the neighbourhood of Sheffield. He matriculated as a sizar at Trinity College, Cambridge, 'impubes, æt. 11,' on 21 May 1561, and graduated B.A. in 1567-8. In 1572 he was at Paris, probably pursuing his medical studies, when he narrowly escaped the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre by taking refuge in the house of Francis Walsingham. In his dedication of Animadversions on Scribonius (1584) to Sir Philip Sidney (1584), Bright remarks that he had only seen him once, on that occasion.

Bright graduated M.B. at Cambridge in 1574, received a license to practise medicine in the following year, and was created M.D. in 1579. For some years after this he appears to have lived at Cambridge, but was living at Ipswich in 1584. He was one of those who were present on 1 October 1585 when the statutes of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, were confirmed and signed by Sir Walter Mildmay, and delivered to Laurence Chaderton, the first master of the college. The dedication to Peter Osborne of his Treatise on Melancholy is dated from 'litle S. Bartlemewes by Smithfield,' 23 May 1586. He occupied the house then appropriated to the physician to the hospital. He succeeded Dr. Turner in that office about 1586, and must have resigned in 1590, as his successor was elected on 19 September in that year.

Bright afterwards abandoned the medical profession and took holy orders. In 1588 he dedicated his treatise Characterie to Queen Elizabeth, who on 5 July 1591 presented him to the rectory of Methley in Yorkshire, then void by the death of Otho Hunt, and on 30 December 1594 to the rectory of Barwick-in-Elmet, in the same county. He held both these livings till his death; the latter seems to have been his usual place of abode; there, at least, he made his will, on 9 August 1615, in which he leaves his body to be buried where God pleases. It was proved at York on 13 November 1615.

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