Education
Willis graduated from Christ"s College, Cambridge, in 1592.
Willis graduated from Christ"s College, Cambridge, in 1592.
He developed a simple style of shorthand based on the work by Timothy Bright. On 12 June 1601 he was admitted to the rectory of Saint Mary Bothaw, Dowgate Hill, London. He resigned in 1606 on being appointed rector of Bentley Parva, Essex.
In 1602 he published The Art of Stenographie, which was a new and more practicable system to capture speech in short writing.
His shorthand was based on a system of arbitrary equivalent symbols, one for each single letter of the alphabet.