[1] In 1572 he was at Paris, probably pursuing his medical studies, when he narrowly escaped the St Bartholomew's Day massacre by taking refuge in the house of Francis Walsingham.
[2] The dedication to Peter Osborne (Keeper of the Privy Purse) of his Treatise on Melancholy is dated from 'litle S. Bartlemewes by Smithfield,' 23 May 1586.
[3] In the dedication[4] he wrote: This my slender endeuour I dedicate to your name right worshipfull M. Osbourne, to whom besides I am particularly beholdinge, your good fauouringe of vertue and learning in certaine of my acquaintance of the best marke hath moued me to geue this signification howe readie learning is to honor her fauorers: she hath many daughters, and they be all knit in loue.
He held these livings till his death; the latter seems to have been his usual place of abode; there, at least, he made his will, on 9 August 1615, in which he leaves his body to be buried where God pleases.
In the dedication of this book to Queen Elizabeth, the author describes his invention: Cicero did account it worthie his labour, and no less profitable to the Roman common weale (Most gratious Soueraigne) to inuent a speedie kinde of wryting by Character, as Plutarch reporteth in the life of Cato the younger.
Whether through iniurie of time, or that men gaue it over for tediousness of learning, nothing remaineth extant of Ciceros invention at this day.
And herein (besides other properties) excelling the wryting by letters and Alphabet, in that, Nations of strange languages, may hereby communicate their meaning together in writing, though of sundrie tongues.Queen Elizabeth, by letters patent dated 26 July 1588, granted to Bright for a period of fifteen years the exclusive privilege of teaching and of printing books, 'in or by Character not before this tyme commonlye knowne and vsed by anye other oure subiects'.
The alphabet was too clumsy to be regularly applied to the whole of a word, as was done fourteen years later by John Willis, whose scheme, explained in the 'Art of Stenographie' (1602), is the foundation of later systems of shorthand.
A Treatise upon Shorthand, by Timothye Bright, Doctor of Physicke, together with a table of the characters, was sold at the sale of Dawson Turner's manuscripts in 1859.
There is a chapter in which he discusses the question 'how the soule by one simple faculty performeth so many and diverse actions,' and illustrates his argument by a description of the way in which the complicated movements of a watch proceed from 'one right and straight motion'.