John Pell - After The Restoration

After The Restoration

After his return to England he took orders, in 1661, when he became rector of Fobbing in Essex. In 1663 he was given an honorary D.D. (Lambeth degree), and was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. At the same time he was presented by Bishop Gilbert Sheldon to the rectory of Laindon, Essex; Sheldon expected him to treat the positions as sinecures. He spent time as mathematics teacher to William Brereton, 3rd Baron Brereton, at Brereton Hall.

In 1673 he met Leibniz in London, and was able to inform him that some of his mathematical work had been anticipated by François Regnaud and Gabriel Mouton. His devotion to mathematics seems to have interfered with his advancement in the Church and with his private life. For a time he was confined as a debtor in the King's Bench Prison. He lived, on the invitation of Dr Daniel Whistler, for a short time in 1682 at the College of Physicians, but died at the house of Mr Cothorne, reader of the church of St Giles-in-the Fields.