John Felde has been styled "the proto-Copernican" of England, inasmuch as he was the first to make known in that country by his writings the discoveries of this remarkable man, who delayed for a long time the publication of his famous work, "De Orium Coelestium Revolutionibus," on account of the opposition and persecution to be feared from the persons who considered its teaching opposed to those of the Bible. Although completed in 1530, it was not printed until 1543, when Copernicus, the author, was on his death-bed. Works based upon the new system (which revolutionized the science of astronomy) by Rheticus and Reinhold had appeared in Germany a few years earlier, but the "Ephemeris" of John Field for 1557 which was published in that year, was the first opportunity afforded the people of England of becoming acquainted with a similar work, calculated for 1558, 1559, 1560. Probably these were not his only publications, but no others have come down to us, and only two copies of these are known to exist, the British Museum and Bodleian Library, at Oxford, each possessing both works.
------FIELD GENEALOGY by Frederick C. Pierce copyright 1901-------