1842; 11th thousand, with portrait, 8vo, London, 1846. 6. 'Mr. Moffat and the Bechwanas,' 32mo, 1842. 7. 'Visit to the Children of Manchester,' 32mo, 1842. 8. 'Hymns in the Sechwana Language,' Religious Tract Society, 12mo, London, 1843. 9. 'Rivers of Waters in Dry Places; an Account of the Introduction of Christianity into South Africa, and of Mr. Moffat's Missionary Labours,' 8vo, 1863; new edition, 1867; Philadelphia, 1869. 10. 'New Testament translated into Sechwana,' 8vo, 1872. 11. 'The Bible translated into Sechwana,' 8vo, 1872.
[The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat, by their son, John Smith Moffat, with Portraits, Maps, and Illustrations, 8vo, London, 1885; new edition, 1886; popular edition, 1889; Heroes of the Desert; The Story of the Lives and Labours of Moffat and Livingstone, by Miss A. Manning, 8vo,, 1875; new and enlarged edition, 1885; The Farewell Services of Robert Moffat, &c., by Dr. John Campbell, 12mo, London, 1843; Life of Robert Moffat, by J. Marrat; Life by D. J. Deane; Life by E. F. Cherry; A Life's Labour in South Africa, the Story of the Life Work of Robert Moffat, with Portrait, London, Aylesbury, 8vo, printed 1871; Moffat the Missionary, &c., 8vo, London, 1846; Robert Moffat, an Example of Missionary Heroism, 8vo,London, 1878.]
MOFFETT, MOUFET, or MUFFET, THOMAS (1553–1604), physician and author, born in 1553, probably in the parish of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, was of Scottish descent, and the second son of Thomas Moffett, citizen and haberdasher of London, who was also free of the Girdlers' Company. His mother was Alice Ashley of Kent (Ashmole MS. 799, f. 130). Both the physician and his father should, it seems, be distinguished from a third Thomas Moffett, who in January 1575 was employed at Antwerp on political business, and endeavoured under the directions of Burghley and Leicester to win the confidence of the Earl of Westmorland and other English rebels in exile, in order to induce them to quit the Low Countries (Cal. Hatfield MSS. ii. 86–93). This man was reported to be too reckless a dice-player to satisfy his employers (ib.), and he is doubtless the ‘Captain Thomas Moffett’ who petitioned Elizabeth in March 1589 for a license to export four hundred tuns of beer, on the ground that he had served Edward VI and Queen Mary in many countries (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90, p. 586).
An elder brother of the physician resided at Aldham Hall, Essex. Peter Moffett (d. 1617), apparently a younger brother, was rector of Fobbing, Essex, from 1592 till his death in the autumn of 1617 (Newcourt, Repertorium, ii. 268), and seems to have been author of ‘The Excellencie of the Mysterie of Christ Jesus,’ London, 1590, 8vo (dedicated to Margaret, countess of Cumberland, and Anne, countess of Warwick), and of ‘A Commentarie upon the whole Booke of the Proverbs of Solomon,’ London, 1596, 12mo (dedicated to Edward Russell, earl of Bedford).
After spending, it is said, five years at Merchant Taylors' School (Foster, Alumni Oxon.), Thomas matriculated as a pensioner of Trinity College, Cambridge, in May 1569, but migrated, 6 Oct. 1572, to Caius College, where he graduated B.A. While becoming an efficient classic, he studied medicine under Thomas Lorkin [q. v.] and John Caius (1510–1573) [q. v.] His fellow-students and friends included Peter Turner [q. v.], Timothy Bright [q. v.], and Thomas Penny [q. v.], who all distinguished themselves in medical science. During his undergraduate days he was nearly poisoned by eating mussels (Health's Improvement, p. 250; Theatrum Insectorum, p. 283, in English, p. 1107). Choosing to proceed M.A. from Trinity in 1576, he was expelled from Caius by Thomas Legge, the master [q. v.] In 1581 the latter was charged, among other offences, with having expelled Moffett without the fellows' consent. Wood's suggestion that Moffett was educated at Oxford appears to be erroneous (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 574–5).
On leaving Cambridge Moffett went abroad. At Basle he attended the medical lectures of Felix Plater and Zwinger, and after defending publicly many medical theses there in 1578, he received the degree of M.D. In the same year he published at Basle (1578, 4to) two collections of his theses: one entitled ‘De Anodinis Medicamentis,’ the other ‘De Venis Mesaraicis Obstrvctis ipsarvmqve ita affectarum Curatione,’ with a dedication to Penny. A copy of the latter in the Cambridge University Library has an affectionate inscription in Moffett's autograph addressed to his old tutor Lorkin. In 1579 Moffett visited Italy and Spain; there he studied the culture of the silkworm, which he made the subject of a poem, and became an acute observer of all forms of insect life. He was at Nuremberg in July 1580, and frequently at Frankfort between the following October and the spring of 1582. Four letters which he addressed between 1580 and 1582 to Petrus Monavius are printed in Laurentius Scholz's ‘Epistolarum Philosophicarum Volumen,’ Frankfort, 1598.
Moffett, while on the continent, adopted with enthusiasm the Paracelsian system of
