[4] In the will of Thomas Meade of Berden, 1595[5] there is a bequest "Item I give and bequeath to Joseph my son sixty pounds of good and lawful money to be paid to him at his full age of one and twenty years."
According to Jeffrey K. Jue, in Heaven Upon Earth,[6] “Little is known of Mede’s childhood, other than the fact that at ten years of age both he and his father fell ill from smallpox.
[19] Those following Mede in part as a chronologist and interpreter included Thomas Goodwin, Pierre Jurieu, Isaac Newton,[20][21] and Aaron Kinne (1745–1824).
[22] Richard Popkin[23] attributes Mede's interpretation to countering scepticism, which gave it power to convince others, including the Hartlib circle.
John Coffey[24] writes: The ecumenist Scotsman John Dury, the German scientist Samuel Hartlib, and the Czech educationalist Comenius had each been profoundly influenced by the millenarianism of Alsted and Mede, and seem to have seriously entertained the idea that London was the centre from which human knowledge and divine rule would spread.Coffey also says, however, that millenarianism was rare in the 1630s, coming in only later as an important force.