The publication of the Methodus marks the close of the first half of Ray's career as a scientist. By it he had fulfilled a threefold obligation laid upon him by the embarrassing request of Bishop Wilkins, by the failure of the Tables, and by the requests of his friends; and so had completed the first phase of his botanical studies. Hitherto his life had been unsettled: he had turned his enforced homelessness to good account, collected a mass of material, discharged his debt to Willughby, and done good service to British botany. But opportunities for large-scale work in his own field had been scanty. He was not master of his time or circumstances, and could not settle down to uninterrupted study or plan a long piece of research. Only when he had finally moved to Dewlands and renounced all prospect of further travel or of promotion could he begin the larger tasks for which his experience fitted him. Lists of synonyms and localities and a scheme of classification were, as he now realised, the proper prelude to a larger undertaking, a History of Plants which should not merely catalogue but describe, which should not be confined to Britain or Western Europe but include all known species, which should not be alphabetical or arbitrary in its arrangement but should illustrate, expand and modify his Method.