ROBERT, a physician and eminent mathematician, was descended of a respectable family at Tenby in Wales, and lived in the time of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary of England. The time of his birth is not exactly known, but it must have been about the beginning of the sixteenth century; for he was entered of the university of Oxford about 1525, and was elected fellow of All-Souls College in 1531. As he made physic his profession, he went to Cambridge, where he was honoured with the degree of doctor in that faculty in 1545, and was very much esteemed for his extensive knowledge of many of the arts and sciences. He afterwards returned to Oxford, where he publicly taught arithmetic and mathematics, as he had done prior to his going to Cambridge. It appears that he afterwards went to London, and acted as physician to Edward VI. and to Queen Mary, to whom some of his books are dedicated. He wrote, the year he went to the capital, the Urinal of Physic, which passed through several editions. He died in the King's Bench prison, Southwark, where he was confined for debt in the year 1558.

He published several works upon mathematical subjects, chiefly in the form of dialogue between master and scholar. Of these the following is a list, viz.:—The Pathway to Knowledge, containing the first principles of geometry, as they may most aptly be applied unto practice, both for the use of Instrumenters Geometrical and Astronomical, and also for projection of Planes, much necessary for all sorts of men, London, 1551, 4to.; The Ground of Arts, teaching the perfect use and practice of Arithmeticke, both in whole numbers and fractions, after a new and easy manner, never seen in former time hath been set forth, 1552, 8vo.; The Castle of Knowledge, containing the Explication of the Sphere both Celestiall and Materiall, and other things incident thereto, with sundry pleasant proofs and certaine new demonstrations not written before in any vulgar worke, London, 1555, folio.; The Whetstone of Witte, which is the second part of Arithmeticke, containing the extraction of roots, the Cosinike practice, with the rules of equation, and the worke of surde numbers, London, 1557, 4to. Wood says that he was the author of several pieces on physic, anatomy, politics, and divinity; but they do not seem ever to have been published. Sherburne states that he also published a work called The Key of Knowledge; that he wrote a book, De Arte faciendi Horologium, and another De usu Globorum, et de statu Temporum. Professor de Morgan speaks of him, in The Correspondence to the British Almanac for 1837, in his "Notices of English Mathematical and Astronomical Writers between the Norman Conquest and the year 1600," that he is a "man whose memory deserves a much larger portion of fame than it has met with, on several accounts."