the intellectual origins of the royal society. london and oxford

The Intellectual Origins of the Royal Society. London and OxfordAuthor(s): A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas HallSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Dec., 1968), pp. 157-168Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/530984 .

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157

THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY -LONDON AND OXFORD

By A. RUPERT HALL and MARIE BOAS HALL

Department of the History of Science and Technology, Imperial College, London

ISCUSSION of the origins of the Royal Society, or more accurately of the background to that historic meeting on 28 November i660 at

which 'something was offered about a design of founding a college for the

promotion of physico-mathematical experimental learning' (I), has turned

upon two hypotheses, each associated with a major contemporary narrative and an intellectual thesis (2). The first of these attaches primary importance to Gresham College, London, as providing the site and occasion for the first scientific meetings of which that just mentioned was the lineal successor; the second, discounting the claims of the first, contends that the earliest organized meetings of scientists in England took place somewhat later at Oxford, and that these were virtually removed to Gresham College but little before the Restoration. A third possible hypothesis, a successor to the now dis- credited 'Invisible College' tradition invoked by Birch, which would attach special importance to the circle of Samuel Hartlib, is really not worth

debating, for as G. H. Turnbull, the most thorough ofHartlib's biographers, has written:

[Hartlib] was no scientist or experimenter, and had no hand in the foundation of the Society, and no direct influence on its early history (3). Of these rival hypotheses the second was the first published, being

embraced by Thomas Sprat in his History of the Royal Society (1667): It was therefore, some space after the end of the Civil Wars at Oxford,

in Dr. Wilkins his Lodgings, in Wadham College, which was then the

place of Resort for Vertuous, and Learned Men, that the first meetings were made, which laid the foundation of all this that follow'd (4).

To which the mathematician John Wallis offered a correction eleven years later, asserting that these Oxford meetings (in which he had figured himself) had been preceded by others at Gresham College beginning about I645, the Gresham series continuing independently through the time in which the Oxford 'philosophical club' had been functioning. Wallis remembered Theodore Haak as the first proposer of these regular scientific discussions in London.



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Hence the two hypotheses supplement each other, and indeed can be combined, as by Robert Hooke about 1698/9 when he wrote "tis well known who were the principal Men that began and promoted that Design [the origins of the Royal Society], both in this City, and in Oxford' (5). The

only contradiction is in respect to the crucial role attributed by Sprat to

John Wilkins. Yet in fact the two hypotheses do not even together embrace all the necessary elements of a complete historical account, for neither London nor Oxford could have generated the Royal Society as it actually came into existence without the strong Royalist contingent (especially Brouncker, Moray and Evelyn). Again, though Samuel Hartlib must be dissociated from the Royal Society tradition his influence in intellectual circles before I660 (and on a number of future Fellows) was none the less

strong, and he furnished a most important route by which the Germanic version of magio-utilitarianism reached England and ultimately the Royal Society. Indeed mere abstract grounds of probability must suggest that the

Royal Society (whose founders were by no means drawn from any single group) could not be the creation of a single individual, however scintillating, and that a narrative like Wallis's which allows for a variety of actions in more than one place, is more inherently plausible than one taking a very narrow, simple line.

Now these alternative hypotheses are not simply divided by a decision to ignore or not to ignore certain historical documents. They diverge also because they are linked to distinct views of the development of science in

seventeenth-century England, and of the Royal Society's role within this. For some historians the history of science at this time is a peculiarly insular

story, dominated by the pioneering figure of Francis Bacon, whose precepts to experiment were, apparently, exemplified in practice by Bacon's con-

temporaries Gilbert and Harvey (a fact that Bacon himself failed to perceive). The flourishing of science in England in the first generation of the Royal Society is seen as the fruition of Bacon's philosophy and the emulation of the

Gilbert/Harvey example; Descartes, now long dead, can be conveniently resurrected as a handy speculative foil to the triumph of English empiricism. Other historians, viewing both the European scene and the structure of science more broadly, discern as the chief feature of the mid-seventeenth century (so far as England is concerned) her full participation in the prosecu- tion of science so successful on the Continent since the time of Galileo and Kepler, noting, for example, not only the publication of Harvey's book at Frankfort, or Gilbert's seminal influence upon Kepler, but the thriving of Anglo-French intellectual relations in the I630's and I640's. Hobbes and Digby-the former by any standards the outstanding English philosopher of



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his age, the latter by contemporary applause the outstanding English scientist-were as much at home in Paris as in London. Wallis, though second to none in his jealousy for English priorities, recognized in his account that the 'New Philosophy .. .from the times of Galileo at Florence and Sir Francis Bacon in England hath been much cultivated in Italy, France, Germany & other Parts abroad, as well as with us in England' (6).

It is difficult to point to the limitations of Bacon's knowledge of what science and its actual problems were in his day without seeming to deny his real eminence as a philosopher of science; it is difficult to declare that scientific work is done by 'scientists' without seeming to decry philosophers. Bacon's writings were of great intellectual importance to seventeenth-century Englishmen (and of course to Europeans also; the message was not restricted to a chosen people). As is well known, their importance was (crudely speak- ing) of two kinds: because they invited people to think of intellectual effort as useful (in a whole complex of senses), possibly as even related to manual work; and because they proposed to base knowledge upon the extensive, organized compilation of factual information (derived, actually, from observation and books as well as experiments). Roughly, then, Bacon's influence related to motive and to method; those who have seen the Royal Society as essentially a Baconian institution have seen his stamp either in the supposed motives of the Society for its work, or its methods, or both. However, only a foolish Englishman in the I66o's (or at any time) thought he could learn about the state or content of any science-except, perhaps, meteorology-from Bacon's books. To be an anatomist it was necessary to study the writings of anatomists; to be an astronomer one read Clavius, Galileo, Scheiner, Kepler, Longomontanus, Boulliaud and many more; to be a botanist one studied Gerard, Parkinson, Bauhin and De l'Ecluse. And the would-be scientist learned the techniques of his science, dissecting, observing, collecting. So much is obvious. Further, the questions in debate between scientists (and sometimes laymen too) were not, commonly, questions of motive or method in abstract, but questions of fact and inter- pretation. So, in Wallis's recollection of the Gresham College meetings before I650, the assembly discussed the circulation of the blood, the valves in the veins, the lacteal and lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites ofJupiter and the peculiar figure of Saturn, pneumatics, the mechanical philosophy, and so forth. Wallis's list of topics is extremely plausible for the period, as a report of men interested in science talking about science. The best work on most of these topics had, of course, been done on the Continent; that is what the fore- runners of the Royal Society, bringing England into the mainstream, would



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be interested in, the changing subjects: mechanics, astronomy, anatomy, pneumatics.

It is not only the case that Bacon's books could not instruct people in the new sciences, admirable as his broad programme might be: his interests might well direct people into unfruitful paths. It is foolish to insist on Bacon's own feebleness as an investigator, or the often trivial content of his experimental programmes; what is more to the point is the sad truth that such warm exponents of Baconianism in a later age as John Beale or Joseph Glanvill were really not contributing to the scientific revolution at all. To quote from the author of Britannia Baconica (1661), Joshua Childrey, a dull though worthy cleric:

In ye meane time take this briefe account of my study so far as con- cernes Philosophy. Some 2 yeares before ye happy returne of the King, I bought me as many Paperbookes of about I6 sheets a piece, as my L. Verulam hath Histories at ye end of his Novum Organon, into which Bookes (being noted with ye figure & title given them by my Lord) I entred all Philosophicall matters, that I met with observable in my reading; & intend (God willing) to continue it. This I acquaint you with, to let you see how earnest & serious I have been for severall yeares in that that is ye businesse of ye R. Society; though indeed I first fell in love with the L. Bacons Philosophy in the yeare 1646, & tried severall Experiments (though such as I now reckon not to be of any moment) in 1647. 1648. I649. & 50. And besides these I have 2 larger Paperbookes in Folio, one of which I call Chronologia Naturalis, and the other Geographia Naturalis; ye former containing the time of all droughts, Comets, Earthquakes, &c. & the other ye naturall rarities of Countreyes. These Paperbookes cannot be expected to be yet full, & God knowes, whether I shall live to see them filled; But God willing, such & so as they are, I intend to bequeath them to the Society, whensoever I die (7). To whatever worthy pursuits Childrey's interests might lead, they could

lead no one to the experiments of Boyle, the observations of Malpighi and Flamsteed, or the mechanical theorems of Huygens and Newton. If Childrey be dismissed as a blockhead, what is to be said of the great John Wilkins? One may hold that Wilkins was second only to Bacon himself as a bell calling the wits together; nevertheless, on the international scale of science he was a third-rate figure, at best a successful popularizer and interesting exponent of the ars memorativa.

The achievements of the scientific circle that still bring distinction to his name were, beyond dispute, considerable; but it must be remembered that (Baconians or not Baconians) the members of this circle were professionals



I6I

and budding professionals, such as that great trilogy Wallis, Ward and Willis; Goddard and Glisson; or the younger set, Petty, Boyle, Wren, Hooke and Lower. They did not acquire their scientific competence or interests from either Wilkins or Bacon. Bacon had never urged the investi- gation of pure mathematics, mathematical astronomy, nervous and muscular physiology, chemistry, mechanics or scientific instruments (whose utility he thought very restricted). The scientific interests of the 'Oxford Club' seem to spring (as one would expect) from the lively scientific move- ments derived from the post-Baconian period. Many of these men indeed paid notable tribute to Bacon (Boyle and Wallis included) but it was rather Bacon's belief in the importance and potentialities of experimental science than to any narrow belief in persistent and undirected experiment.

Attention has been drawn to an apparent dissimilarity between the Gresham College assembly, as described by Wallis, and that at Oxford, in that the former might seem to have been merely discursive, while the latter

practised co-operative Baconian experimental inquiry in the manner (it is

said) of the later Royal Society. Seth Ward certainly described the Oxford

group as experimental: 'the end is that out of a sufficient number of sure

experiments, the way of nature in workeing may be discovered' (8). And Matthew Wren describing conditions in 1659 wrote that 'The employment of this Company is by making Experiments and by communicating their observat ons to carry on a discovery of Nature' (9). Without raising the

question whether attention to experiment (especially chemical experiment) is exclusively Baconian, it must be doubted whether the realities were so antithetic as the words suggest. Wallis's earlier account contains a phrase sometimes omitted by those who argue that the Gresham group was non-

experimental; he there plainly speaks of 'a weekly Contribution for the

Charge of Experiments' (io); and it may well be argued that the ratio of words to deeds in the two groups was very similar. Certainly to class the London group as 'talkers' and the Oxford group as 'doers' is too simple, and too misleading.

For one thing, Oxford was far from given over wholly to experiment, and many of the experimenters-like Goddard and Petty--were active in London before they moved to Oxford. True, Willis and such younger men as Boyle, Hooke and Lower were almost exclusively interested in experiment of one sort or another at this period-anatomy, pneumatics, chemistry, microscopy, horology and forty ways of flying. Christopher Wren turned his hand to microscopic iconography, descriptive anatomy, and the injection of fluids into the veins, but he was already a brilliant and creative mathematician. The two men with European reputations were mathematicians-



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Wallis and Seth Ward; though Ward might glorify experiment, his published works, as befitted the Savilian professor of astronomy, were in the I65o's mainly on mathematical astronomy. (Incidentally, Wilkins was not the only member of the group to live in Wadham, for Ward had rather quaintly entered himself as a Fellow Commoner there, presumably to secure the 'chamber over the gate'). Meanwhile Wilkins himself worked at his Real Character.

On the other hand the Gresham group was at least as experimentally- minded and certainly highly competent. There were two sections: the physicians Goddard, Ent, Glisson, Merret; and the mathematicians Wallis, Foster, Wilkins (and probably Lawrence Rooke, an able astronomical observer). Jonathan Goddard was the foremost English 'chemical physician' practicing in London before 1649; he was restored to Gresham College as professor of physic in I655.* Sir George Ent was well known for his connexions with Harvey and his interest in physiology. Francis Glisson was equally distinguished as a clinician and a physiologist. Christopher Merret was both a talented chemist and an able botanist. Whether Paul de Laune, Gresham Professor of Physic from I642 to 1652 also participated is not known.t If Wallis's account is to be accepted (and if it is rejected then any attempt to distinguish the London from the Oxford group on epistemological grounds is redundant) any such distinction between London and Oxford seems insubstantial in view of the obvious community of interest between the two groups.

If Wallis's narrative be (at least for the moment) accepted, and there were Gresham College meetings attended by Wallis, Wilkins and Goddard before all three moved to Oxford about 1649, while meetings continued in London, then it is only reasonable to divorce these London discussions from the pre-history of the Royal Society if it appears that the Royal Society's pursuit of science had a close community of interest and procedure with the Oxford group that it did not share with the Gresham group. It is clear, as shown above, that no real distinction can be made upon 'Baconian' or experimental grounds; Wallis, though a mathematician, regarded Bacon as much the founder of the New Philosophy in England as Wilkins could do. It is true that in the early months of the Society's existence there was much

* As he was also Warden of Merton College, Oxford, until I66o, Goddard did not come into residence at Gresham College until that date.

t Another celebrated physician (and mathematician, a friend of Seth Ward) practising in London was Charles Scarburgh, a Cambridge man briefly at Oxford before Wilkins's time there. As a Royalist, Scarburgh did not associate with Gresham College; though an Original Fellow he seems to have distrusted the Royal Society.



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talk of fairly random experiment, and that many 'histories of trades' were completed or begun, but very soon the discussion at the meetings turned to subjects much more like those discussed at Gresham in the early days, and the Society's procedure ceased to be 'Baconian'. The Society ceased to demand unrelated experimental information; it gave up trying to impose tasks upon its Fellows-even on its Curator of Experiments. Some experiments were still performed at its meetings but more usually the experiments were performed privately and the Society listened to an account. Debate about work done by the Fellows on their own initiative or that done by colleagues abroad consumed a great deal of time. Mathematical, mechanical and astronomical topics were regularly considered along with problems of physiology, microscopy, pneumatics and anatomy. Mutatis mutandis-for the issues at stake had changed over the years-Wallis's description of the Gresham meetings could be applied to those at the Royal Society, except that the Royal Society was a formal body, so that proper records were kept, specimens were shown, demonstrations were (sometimes) offered, and there was a museum. Considering the difference between what we can know from the records of an organized Society and from a few sentences of biographical recollection any judgement that we have here two fundamentally unlike kinds of scientific undertaking seems forced and artificial.

The real question at issue is not how 'Baconian' either group was, but how far each was concerned for, and capable of coping with, the critical issues of mid-seventeenth-century science. By Wallis's testimony-and by the testimony of their names-the Gresham College debaters were so concerned. They were also competent; and here the professional connexions displayed by Wallis's original group are important, as well as being a link with the later Royal Society. Although the medical sciences and biology were in some aspects studied by 'amateurs' (John Ray, the greatest English naturalist of the age, had no medical training) the great majority of those active in these fields were qualified physicians, and the 'scientific revolution' in its biological aspects from Vesalius to Boerhaave was very much the work of the medical profession. Here Wallis's account seems both plausible and of relevance to the history of the Royal Society, where a very important role was played by professional physicians, including three of those named by Wallis.

There were medical men at Oxford, but Wilkins was not one of them, nor did he show any interest in biological matters. The leader here was Thomas Willis, who practised in Oxford in the I65o's and became Sedleian professor of natural philosophy in I660, together with William Petty who was briefly lecturer in anatomy about I650. Willis was linked with Boyle,



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who had considerable interest in certain aspects of biology; Wren, Hooke and Lower (one of the greatest physiologists of the I660's) all worked for him, and acknowledged his influence. Boyle's experiments on respiration, Wren's on pharmaceutical injection and Lower's on blood transfusion were all discussed at later meetings of the Royal Society, but they were but a few

among many biological topics of discussion; even here Oxford by no means set the tone for the Royal Society.

The Royal Society was very strong in the mathematical sciences as well, and here Gresham College clearly provided a stronger background than did Oxford. Serious English mathematics traced its descent from Thomas Hariot through William Oughtred, who was sought out in his country parsonage by such eager young Cambridge scholars as Seth Ward, Charles Scarburgh and John Wallis. In the I65o's at Oxford, Ward and Wallis (but not Wilkins, whose last 'mathematical' work had been the 'popular' Mathematical Magick of 1648) had European reputations, and notable young disciples, and both had London connexions. Wallis never lost contact with London, and his young disciples, Christopher Wren and William Neile, were made known to the mathematical world through his publication of their works. Seth Ward, the other Savilian professor, was admired at home and abroad for his work on theoretical astronomy and regarded by English- men as the creator of the true theory of the elliptical orbit; his best-known disciple was Lawrence Rooke, a Cambridge man but in Oxford after 1650, Gresham professor of astronomy from 1652 to 1657 when he was succeeded by Wren and became Gresham professor of geometry. (Though, after the Restoration, Ward played no very overt role in the Royal Society, being much occupied in episcopal affairs, he was often appealed to as a kind of elder statesman in a way never achieved by Wilkins.) The astronomical and mathematical chairs at Gresham have close links with the Royal Society from the days of Samuel Foster (d. 1652), the professor of astronomy mentioned in Wallis's account (who succeeded Henry Gellibrand), through his successors Lawrence Rooke (d. 1662) and Wren, in whose rooms the decision was taken to establish the formal Society. There were also numerous mathematicians and mathematical practitioners in London, by no means all university men: Vincent Wing, Thomas Streete, Nicholas Mercator, John Collins, Edmund Wingate, John Twysden, Thomas Branker and his teacher John Pell, whose presence was intermittent, but whose influence was great. Through their connexions with men like William Brereton, Charles Cavendish, Theodore Haak, Pell himself and Samuel Hartlib such men as these were not only brought into touch with the upper levels of English society but with Continental mathematics also. Wallis, Ward, Pell and the



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royalist Scarburgh were in the I650's the most promising of the new English mathematicians. To such names may be added those of mathematical teachers and instrument makers, all settled in London, who were again to be associated with the later flowering of the Royal Society-men like Henry Bond, Ralph Greatorex, Richard Reeve, and Anthony Thompson.

Just as it is an easy but fallacious solution for the historian to make all threads lead to one pair of hands, so it would be to conjure up the Royal Society out of the petty activities of a crowd of teachers and shopkeepers. Though some of these latter became F.R.S. and more had papers published in Phil. Trans. they had little or nothing to do with either Gresham College or the founding of the Royal Society. But one of them has left evidence for the existence of a 'mathematical club' which cannot be totally unconnected with either the original Gresham group or the later Royal Society; though Anthony Thompson's letter to Pell has been printed more than once it remains unfamiliar and perhaps needs printing again (I ):

November 22nd, I658 Mr. Pell-There is this day a meeting to bee in the Moore Feilds of some mathematicall friends (as you know the custome hath beene) there will bee Mr. Rook and Mr. Wrenn, my Lord Brunkerd, Sir Paul Neale, Dr. Goddard, Dr Scarburow, &c. I had notice the last night of your being in towne from some of the gentellmen now named, and of there desire to injoy your company; there will bee no such number as you usually have seene at such meetinges; 12 is the number invited. Sir, I hope you will excuse the short warning, for it was shorte to mee.

Yours to serve you, Anthony Thompson

Unless one chooses to cavil because the meeting-place is not in the Gresham College rooms of Rooke or Wren, this seems very like the meetings which Wallis described as taking place in London in the I650's; clearly this was a usual event, and is unlikely, to say the least, to have been initiated by the only men to be present with Oxford connexions, namely Rooke and Wren, unless in their capacity as Gresham professors; but Goddard, as Gresham professor of physics, has a stronger claim and longer connexion. Though it was named as mathematical, both Sir Paul Neile and Goddard were mathematicians only in the sense of having an interest in telescopic astronomy, so the presumption must be that the writer (presumably the instrument-maker whose death in the Plague was warmly lamented by Sir Robert Moray) said 'mathematical' where Wallis would have said 'philosophical'. There is no



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inherent plausibility in imagining that this club was founded after I650 in imitation of the Oxford club; yet all those named (except Thompson himself) were to become F.R.S., and Brouncker was the Society's President in the crucial years 1662 to I677.

To trace the growth of mathematical interests in the Royal Society to the point where Newton's Principia came to be regarded as the master scientific production of the age is subject for a paper in itself. Suffice it to say here that Barrow in Cambridge, Gregory in Scotland, Mercator, Pell and Wallis were carefully fostering the development of pure and applied mathematics long before Newton's great voice was heard. As early as I669 the English contributions to the problem of motion were considered as of the highest importance by the Royal Society (and the learned world), and Barrow's two series of lectures (optical and geometrical) rightly won acclaim in the next year. While no historian should (obviously) under- estimate the Society's empirical achievements, direct and indirect, in experimental physics, experimental physiology, chemistry, observational astronomy, microscopy, natural history, comparative anatomy, one may yet hold, as we do, that history has rightly judged that the strongest, most deeply creative activity of the earlier years was that leading to the Principia. Some historians, like Alexandre Koyre, have held that the evolution of mathematical physics, with the Principia as its climax, formed the essential core of the scientific revolution, the fundamental substructure of modern science. On this view, however strong the Royal Society's commitment to empirical Baconianism, the real key to its eminence is not in this-or certainly not in this alone-but in its connexion with Newton and his predecessors such as Huygens, Wren, Ward and Wallis. And if this is so, then the injection of mathematics into the Royal Society by, especially, the 'mathematicall friends' of Wallis becomes of supreme importance, and the London mathematical circle of whose existence we can be certain appears as one of the most important precursors of the Royal Society. Equally, Ward and Wallis, rather than Wilkins, appear to have influenced the rising generation who eagerly migrated to London when they could.

Thus Wallis's account of the Society's formation makes sense and deserves its place as the standard account. Wallis explains a great deal that would otherwise be obscure. Though his memory might have been fallible in detail, there is no obvious reason for his falsifying his recollections, especially in 1678 when many of his contemporaries were still alive, and he had himself figured in both London and Oxford. Moreover, to judge from other matters, Wallis possessed a retentive memory; and there is slight, but strongly positive, independent evidence in support of his recollection.



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Further, Wallis's 1678 account had some precedents. In a letter to the

Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, of 4 October I673, written in Latin because it was intended for an international audience

through publication in the Philosophical Transactions, Wallis mentioned the London group incidentally to his claim for William Neile's priority in the rectification of a curve (the semicubic parabola), a claim universally accepted today. It was, he said, shown to Wren and Brouncker

circiter menses Junii, Juliique, Anno I657. atque rem jam tum apud nostros notissimam fuisse: utpote inter eos (Geometras aliosque,) qui (Societatis Regiae appellationem nondum adepti) tum solebant in Greshamensi Collegio (post habitas ibidem praelectiones Mathematicas) statis diebus convenire, publicatam et cum plausu acceptam (I2).

Wallis had plenty of other good evidence for the date of Neile's feat and his

object was not furthered by this incidental mention of the Gresham College assembly, save as it recalled a word-of-mouth 'publication' of Neile's work to those active sixteen years before.

Far from being suspect, it seems to us that the whole London end of the

story is essential to an understanding of the pre-history of the Royal Society, a Society in which Wilkins (after the first months) played, in fact, a very small part. Above all Wallis's account helps one to understand not only the mathematical current, but also the connexion between the Society and the active professional body of London physicians (already organized in their own College). The currents of intellectual life in Protectorate England were

complex and many-stranded. London was their main, though certainly not their sole centre; one cannot at any point reasonably divorce the history of the Royal Society from that of the capital.

NOTES

(I) Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society, I, p. 3. London (I756-I757). (2) For an account of the various theses and their sources, see Marie Boas Hall, 'Sources for

the history of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century', History of Science, 5, 62-76 (1966). To the works discussed there may be added Margery Purver, The

Royal Society: concept and creation. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1967). (3) G. H. Turnbull, 'Samuel Hartlib's influence on the early history of the Royal Society',

Notes and Records, Roy. Soc. Lond. IO, 130 (I953).

(4) p. 53. (5) Philosophical Experiments and Observations, ed. W. Derham, pp. 388-389. London (1726)

and facsimile reprint. London: Frank Cass (1967). (6) Thomas Heme, Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, I, clxii. Oxford (1725); the original is in the

Bodleian Library. 4



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(7) A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, 6, Letter I240. Madison, Milwaukee and London: University of Wisconsin Press (in the

press). (8) Quoted by H. W. Robinson, 'An unpublished letter of Dr Seth Ward relating to the

early meetings of the Oxford Philosophical Society', Notes and Records, Roy. Soc. Lond. 7, 69 (I949), and Turbull, op. cit. p. II3.

(9) Matthew Wren, Monarchy asserted. Preface. Oxford (1659) quoted in Purver, op. cit. p. II5.

(Io) A defence of the Royal Society, and the Philosophical Transactions, p. 8. London (1678). (iI) J. O. Halliwell, A Collection of letters illustrative of the progress of science in England,

pp. 95-96. London (1841). (I2) Royal Society MS. W 2, no. I4. 'About the months ofJune andJuly I657. And at that

time the business was perfectly well known among our countrymen, especially among those (geometers as well as others) who were accustomed to meet at Gresham

College (after the delivery of the mathematical lectures there) upon certain fixed

days, before they had adopted the title of Royal Society; it was spread abroad among these and received with acclamation.'



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