21 Feb. 1662–3, and was buried in the north aisle of the choir of Exeter Cathedral, where a stone marks his resting-place; a mural tablet to his memory was placed on the north side of the entrance to the lady-chapel, but is now in St. James's Chantry. His wife Ellenor, second daughter of Thomas Hinson of Tavistock, who married Anne, daughter of Sir William Spring of Pakenham, Suffolk, was buried at All Hallows, Exeter, on 7 Dec. 1622. Their only child, Thomas, matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, on 8 April 1636, aged 16, graduated B.C.L. on 7 March 1641–2, and died unmarried on 20 May 1651 (Boase, Exeter College Commoners, p. 338). Ten ‘epicedial distichs’ composed on his death are in the father's ‘Enchiridium Epigrammatum,’ leaf 185.
‘In his younger days Vilvain was esteemed a very good poet, orator, and disputant, and, in his elder, as eminent for divinity as his proper faculty,’ but in the prime of his life he neglected to produce anything, and his writings are ‘nothing but scraps, whimseys, and dotages of old age’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, iii. 631–3). These are: 1. ‘A Compend of Chronography,’ 1654. 2. ‘Enchiridium Epigrammatum Latino-Anglicum. An epitome of essais, Englished out of Latin. Six classes or centuries, beside a Fardel of 76 fragments,’ 1654. 3. ‘Theoremata Theologica,’ 1654. All three bear the same imprint and date, but from manuscript notes on the copies at the British Museum it would seem that Nos. 1 and 3 came out on 28 Dec. 1656, and the other on 3 Sept. 1655. The ‘Theoremata’ was reissued with a new title-page in 1663. He also published: 4. ‘A short survey of our Julian English year, with the definition, deviation, dimension, and manner of Reformation,’ in a single undated sheet (Wood, ib.) Fuller, when at Exeter, was much gratified by some ‘uncommon manuscripts in Vilvain's library, with a museum of natural curiosities besides’ (Biogr. Brit. 1750, pp. 2056–7; cf. Fuller, History of Cambridge, p. 28).
Vilvain's benefactions to his native city and his college were numerous and costly. He gave 20l. towards the cost of the new buildings at Exeter College about 1624, and he founded at the college in 1637 four exhibitions of 32l. each per annum, to be paid through the rector and sub-rector. For the free school at St. John's Hospital, Exeter, he gave a tenement in Paris Street without the east-gate of Exeter, and he erected new buildings within the hospital at a cost of about 600l.
On Vilvain's motion the corporation of Exeter in December 1657 allowed the lady-chapel in the cathedral to be fitted up as a library, and the valuable collection of books then at St. John's Hospital, which had previously formed the cathedral library, to be moved thither. Vilvain defrayed the cost of the alterations in the lady-chapel, and the care of the library was entrusted to him. The books remained in this place until 1820.
[Polwhele's Devonshire, ii. 17, 32; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Oliver's Exeter City, pp. 119, 160; Visit. of Gloucester (Harl. Soc. 1885), p. 83; Bailey's Fuller, p. 349; Izacke's Devon Benefactors, 1736, pp. 142–5, 155–9; Izacke's Exeter, pp. 6, 136; Western Antiq. v. 3, viii. 185; Notes and Gleanings, i. 187, ii. 166, iii. 6; Cotton's Exeter Records, pp. 178–9; Worthy's Exeter Suburbs, p. 164; Boase's Exeter College Fellows, edit. 1894, pp. 88–9, 200, 269, 319; information from Mr. Arthur Burch, F.S.A., Diocesan Registry, Exeter.]
VINCE, SAMUEL (1749–1821), mathematician and astronomer, born at Fressingfield in Suffolk on 6 April 1749, was the son of John Vince, a bricklayer. He worked with his father until he was about twelve, when the Rev. Mr. Warnes noticed him sitting reading beside his hod of mortar. He lent him books, and eventually sent him to Mr. Tilney's school at Harleston, Norfolk, where he became usher. In or near 1768 he proposed three questions, and answered one, in the ‘Ladies' Diary;’ and the generosity of the Rev. John Holmes of Gawdy Hall, near Bungay in Suffolk, procured him a university education. He graduated in 1775 as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman from Caius College, Cambridge, and proceeded M.A. from Sidney-Sussex College in 1778. After vacating, probably by marriage, his fellowship of that body, he resided in the town of Cambridge. Having taken orders, he was presented successively to the rectory of Kirby Bedon in 1784 and the vicarage of South Creak in 1786, both in Norfolk; to the prebend of Melton Ross with Scamblesby in Lincolnshire on 10 Jan. 1803, and on 12 Jan. 1809 to the archdeaconry of Bedford.
For an ‘Investigation of the Principles of Progressive and Rotatory Motion’ (Phil. Trans. lxx. 546), read before the Royal Society on 15 June 1780, he received the Copley medal. Communications regarding the summation of infinite series ensued in 1782 and 1784; with an account, in 1785, of an elaborate course of experiments on friction (ib. lxxii. 389, lxxv. 32, 65). Elected a fellow of the society on 22 June 1786, he discoursed, as Bakerian lecturer for 1794, 1797, and 1799, on ‘The Motion and Resistance of
