It is not positively stated that Hariot held direct correspondence with Galileo in 1609 and 1610 or even later, but the evidence is strong that he was promptly kept informedof what was going on in Italy in astronomical and mathematical discovery, as well as in Germany and elsewhere.  That he was using a ’ perspective truncke ’ or telescope as early as the winter of 1609-10, and that his ’ servaunte ’ Christopher Tooke (or as Lower in 1611 familiarly called him’ Kitt’) made lenses for him and fitted them into his ‘trunckcs’ for sale by himself, is known.  From this circumstance,and from the fact that he disposed of many ’ trunckes ’ by his will, and left a considerable stock of them to Tooke, it is manifest that he manufactured and traded in telescopes from 1609 to 1621.  With his invention of the telescope then it required no correspondence with Galileo to induce him to rake the heavens and sweep our planetary system for new astronomical discoveries.  To an astronomer of his activity and mathematical acumen these discoveries followed as a matter of course.  Like Galileo he may have borrowed from the Dutch (or quite as likely they of him) the idea that by a combination of lenses it was possible to bring distant objects near, but that he worked out the idea independently of Galileo admits hardly of a doubt.  But he seems to have been less ambitious than Galileo to claim priority in either the invention or the discoveries that immediately followed.  In this connection the following hitherto unpublished letter will be read with interest: 

LETTER OF SIR WILLIAM LOWER in South Wales to

THOMAS HARIOT at Sion 21 June 1610.

Printed from the holograph original in the British Museum

I gaue your letter a double welcome, both because it came from you and contained newes of that strange nature ; although that wch I craued, you haue deserved till another time.  Me thinkes my diligent Galileus hath done more in his three fold discouerie then Magellane in openinge the streightes to the South sea or the dutch men that weare eaten by beares in Noua Zembla.  I am sure with more ease and saftie to him selfe and more pleasure to mee.  I am so affected with this newes as I wish sommer were past that I mighte obserue these phenomenes also, in the moone I had formerlie observed a strange spotted-nesse al ouer, but had no conceite that anie parte therof mighte be shadowes; since I haue obserued three degrees in the darke partes, of wch the lighter sorte hath some resemblance of shadinesse but that they grow shorter or longer I cannot yet pceaue. ther are three starres in Orion below the three in his girdle so neere togeather as they appeared vnto me alwayes like a longe starre, insomuch as aboute 4 yeares since I was a writing you newes out of Cornwall of a view a strange phenomenon but asking some that had better eyes then my selfe they told me, they were three starres lying close togeather in a right line, thes starres with my cylinder