Physick Garden run by Bobart. Sharrock's interests extended to Equisetum, disregarded in his time. He also supplied prefaces to three of the physical treatises of Robert Boyle: Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy (1663); New Experiments Physico-Mechanical (1665); and A Defence of the Doctrine touching the Spring and Weight of the Air (1669). Sharrock edited New Experiments and translated it into Latin. Sharrock's work on political philosophy, Ὑπόθεσις ἠθική, De Officiis secundum Naturae Jus, was directed against Hobbes's views of ethics and politics (Oxford, 1660; Gotha, 1667; Oxford, 1682). It was quoted as of authority by Richard Cumberland in his De Legibus Naturae, and by other philosophical writers. According to Jon Parkin, "The aim of De officiis was to prove against Hobbes a number of hypotheses on the existence of a hierarchy of duties annexed to natural law"; and the method was to "transpose" Hobbes into an Epicurean so as to use against him old arguments of Cicero. Sharrock in doing this was accepting of some of Hobbes's criticism of scholasticism, but also had to distinguish himself from the unacceptable Hobbes. These manoeuvres were a partial prototype for Cumberland's more famous work in the same direction. Hobbes also came in for attack in Sharrock's Judicia and De finibus virtutis, the latter quoting research of Thomas Willis on neurology. Sharrock also published: Judicia (seu Legum Censurae) de variis Incontinentiae speciebus, Oxford, 1662; Tübingen, 1668. Provinciale vetus Provinciae Cantuariensis, Oxford, 1663, 1664, a collection of constitutions and statutes of the archbishops of Canterbury from 1222 to 1415, and of the cardinal legates Otho and Othobonus. De Finibus Virtutis Christianae, Oxford, 1673. Royal Table of the Laws of Humane Nature, London, 1682, a skeleton plan of his Ὑπόθεσις ἠθική). References Agnes Arber, Robert Sharrock (1630–1684), a Predecessor of Nehemiah Grew, Isis (1969), Notes References External links Galileo Project page 1630 births 1684 deaths Archdeacons of Winchester (ancient) 17th-century English botanists Fellows of New College, Oxford 17th-century English male writers English philosophers People from Aylesbury Vale Burials in Hampshire People from Buckinghamshire