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parish during the Revolution and Protectorate, and he and his family suffered many hardships. After the Restoration, Henry Collier returned to Langford Magna, and remained there until his death in 1672. His youngest son, Arthur, succeeded him; and to him and his wife Anne, daughter of Thomas and Joan Currey, of Misterton in Somersetshire, was born Arthur Collier. Of his early youth and education we know little. He probably attended the grammar-school of Salisbury, after early studies at home. He entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in July, 1697, but, upon the entrance of his younger brother, William, to the University, left Pembroke to be entered at Baliol with his brother on the twenty-second of October, 1698.^[1]

Of his studies and of his interests during his college course, there is little indication. In his manuscripts "there is no trace of his having made any proficiency in mathematical studies, nor even that the mathematics formed a part of his education. [A] . . . letter . . . in answer to a scriptural objection then often urged against the Copernican and Newtonian systems of the world, shews that he was not indifferent to the progress of natural philosophy."^[2] There are few indications of an interest in literature; but as he says in the opening page of the "Clavis" that he adopted his theory of the universe in 1703, a year before he took