He is now considered, albeit in a very different type of theory, to have provided in 1605 a clear suggestion of an oval orbit in astronomy, anticipating Johannes Kepler, with whom he also had a controversial exchange relating to chronology.
[3] Defective memory and speech led him to give up both the study of divinity and his fellowship in 1603, in order to devote himself to mathematics and chronology.
In 1609 he dedicated his Emendatio Temporum to Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who appointed him his chronographer and cosmographer, and took him into his household as reader, granting him an annual pension and the use of his library.
[3] The death of the Prince of Wales in 1612 cut off his hopes of preferment, and in the same year, after some hesitation, he accepted the family living of Alkerton, which he had refused during his father's lifetime.
At this point he vainly petitioned the king for permission to travel in Turkey, Armenia, and Abyssinia, in order to collect materials for civil and ecclesiastical history.
These then passed, apparently, with the rest of Lamphire's property, into the hands of William Coward M.D., who presented to the Bodleian Library fifteen manuscripts.