The Place of Nature and the Nature of Place: The Chorographic Challenge to the History of British Provincial Science

Thoresby Ralph , Ducatus Leodiensis: Or the topography of the ancient and populous town and parish of Leeds, and parts adjacent in the West-Riding of the County of York (London, 1715), preface. On Thoresby's and Nicolson's friendship, see the Rev. Hunter Joseph , The diary of Ralph Thoresby, FRS (London, 1830), 7. A century after Thoresby's pronouncement, another chorographer of Cornwall, C. S. Gilbert, wrote that “local attachment ranks among the best feelings of our nature, and it was an irresistible impulse of this kind, which led to the publication of [this book]”. Gilbert C. S. , An historical survey of the County of Cornwall (London, 1817), 9.

Atkyns Robert , The ancient and present state of Glostershire (London, 1712), preface.

Piggott Stuart , William Stukeley (Oxford, 1950), 137.

Porter Roy , “Science, provincial culture and public opinion in Enlightenment England”, The British journal for eighteenth-century studies, iii (1980), 20–46, p. 27. On the aspects of the influence of London on provincial society, see Borsay Peter , The English urban renaissance: Culture and society in the provincial town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), chap. 5; in European context, the motivation for, and features of, the provincial urge to publish is ably researched by Anne Goldgar in Impolite learning: Conduct and community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1750 (New Haven, 1995). For the ways in which the changes in the countryside affected the practice of natural history, see Allen David E. , “Natural history in Britain in eighteenth century”, Archives of natural history, xx (1993), 333–47.

The concept of emulation explains some aspects of economic development in the countryside and some elements of provincial culture — Those which Michael Reed has called “distractions of the villetes” (provincial newspapers, lectures, debating societies, music, and theatre). Reed Michael , “The cultural role of small towns in England 1600–1800”, in Clark Peter (ed.), Small towns in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995), 121–47. Reed defines villetes as places with under 5000 inhabitants at the time of the 1801 census. For more details on the “distractions” in English provinces in the year 1771, see Wiles R. M. , “Provincial culture in early Georgian England”, in Fritz P. Williams D. (eds), The triumph of culture: 18th century perspectives (Toronto, 1972), 49–68.

Jacob Margaret , Scientific culture and the making of the industrial West (Oxford, 1997), 89. Uses of natural philosophy in Hanoverian Britain are discussed by Stewart Larry , “Public lectures and private patronage in Newtonian England”, Isis, lxxvii (1986), 47–58; idem, The rise of public science (Cambridge, 1992); Golinski Jan , “Utility and audience in eighteenth-century chemistry: Case studies of William Cullen and Joseph Priestley”, The British journal for the history of science, lxviii (1988), 1–32; Jacob Margaret C. , “Scientific culture in the early English Enlightenment: Mechanisms, industry, and gentlemanly facts”, in Kors Alan Charles Korshin Paul J. (eds), Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany (Philadelphia, 1987), 134–65; Schaffer Simon , “The consuming flame: Electrical showmen and Tory mystics in the world of goods”, in Brewer John Porter Roy (eds), Consumption and the world of goods (London, 1996), 489–526; Fara Patricia , Sympathetic attractions (Princeton, 1996). On the commercialization of instruments, see Walters Alice , “Tools of Enlightenment: The material culture of science in eighteenth-century England” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Berkeley, 1992). Recently, Charles Withers has put geography in the commercial context in his “Toward a history of geography in the public sphere”, History of science, xxxvi (1998), 45–78. For an overview of the presuppositions of the theories of “conspicuous consumption” and “emulative behaviour” on which most of the above studies are founded, see Campbell Colin , “Understanding traditional and modern patterns of consumption in eighteenth-century England: A character–action approach”, in Brewer Porter (eds), op. cit. (ref. 6), 40–58.

Porter , op. cit. (ref. 4), 30.

On the history of British chorograhy see Mendyk Stan A. E. , ‘Speculum Britanniae’: Regional study, antiquarianism, and science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto, 1989); McCormack Lesley , ‘“Good fences make good neighbors’: Geography as self-definition in early modern England”, Isis, lxxxii (1991), 639–61; Hoskins W. G. , Local history in England (London, 1959); Tiller Kate , English local history: An introduction (Wolfeboro Falls, NH, 1992); Piggott Stuart , Ancient Britons and the antiquarian imagination (London and New York, 1989); idem, Ruins in a landscape (Edinburgh, 1981); Woolf D. R. , The idea of history in early Stuart England (Toronto, 1990); Ferguson Arthur B. , Clio unbound: Perception of the social and cultural past in Renaissance England (Durham, 1979). Gilbert E. W. , “The idea of the region”, Geography, xlv (1960), 157–75, p. 158, my italics. For Morgan F. W. , the humans and their habitat should be viewed as a “geographic individuality … appearing through the ‘physionomie,’ aspect or landscape”. See his “Three aspects of regional consciousness”, The sociological review, xxxi (1939), 68–88, p. 86. The literature on definition and meaning of landscape is overwhelming. The eighteenth-century aesthetics of landscape are discussed in Barrell John , The idea of landscape and the sense of place 1730–1840 (Cambridge, 1972), 1–64. A study of landscape as a nexus of political ideologies is Everett Nigel , The Tory view of landscape (New Haven and London, 1994). For the ways in which landscape is viewed as constitutive of national identity see Turner James , The politics of landscape: Rural scenery and society in English poetry 1630–1660 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979) and Daniels Stephen , Fields of vision: Landscape imagery and national identity in England and United States (Cambridge, 1993). For a recent view, see Olwig Kenneth Robert , “Sexual cosmology, nation and landscape at the conceptual interstices of nature and culture; or What does landscape really mean?”, in Bender Barbara (ed.), Landscape: Politics and perspectives (Providence and Oxford, 1993). For the eighteenth-century construction of Britishness through literary landscapes, the useful study is Fulford Tim , Landscape, liberty and authority (Cambridge, 1996).

Helgerson Richard , Forms of nationhood: The Elizabethan writing of England (Chicago and London, 1992), 136.

Gilbert E. W. , “The idea of the region”, Geography, xlv (1960), 157–75, p. 158, my italics.

Helgerson , op. cit. (ref. 9), 137, my italics. See also Stilgoe John R. , in Common landscape of America, 1580–1845 (New Haven, 1982), who suggests that the origin of the comparative evaluation of different topographical districts of the Stuart “perambulations” lay in their “traditional, strongly agricultural bias: Beautiful, useful landscapes are those made and maintained by husbandmen”, p. 25. Stilgoe briefly explains the process by which the economical Landschaft — A discrete collection of dwellings structured within a circle of pasture, meadow, and planting fields — Gradually acquired humanistic identity by the late Middle Ages, representing a spot of land invested with meaning and collective memories: “Each [Landschaft/region] was for its inhabitants a representation of the world, because each was the world. … Each was so uncritically accepted as the emblem of all order that each was thought natural” (p. 19).

Kennet White , Parochial antiquities attempted in the history of Ambrosden and other adjacent parts (1695), quoted in Hoskins, op. cit. (ref. 8), 27.

Mendyk , op. cit. (ref. 8), 19.

Burton William , Description of Leicester Shire (London, 1622); Norden John , Speculum Britanniae, The First part; an Historicall and Chorographicall Description of Middlesex (London, 1593); Camden William , Britain, or Chorographical Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1610).

“The literary and antiquarian societies of the time met the needs of an interested public which read the Gentleman's Magazine, and the investigation of local antiquities was continued in many of the country houses of England. The eighteenth century was to produce its own great contribution to the antiquarian description of the counties of England, and in the sphere of local history the break between the two epochs was less than elsewhere.” Douglas David , English scholars 1660–1730 (London, 1939), 357.

The mid-century physician Thomas Short thought that the savants “deserve[d] to be ridiculed” for setting aside observations of rural countrymen “as not flowing from any natural connection that [the savant] knows of; and because he knows them not, they cannot be”, Short Thomas , New observations, natural, moral, civil, political and medical on city, town, and country bills of mortality (London, 1750), 457. For the Georgic writing and the return to ancients, see Low Anthony , The Georgic Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1993). For other practical manuals see Donaldson John , Agricultural biography (London, 1854). An illuminating discussion of the Georgic tradition is de Bruyn Frans de Bruyn Frans , “From Virgilian Georgic to agricultural science: An instance in the transvaluation of literature in eighteenth-century Britain”, in Rivero Albert J. (ed.), Augustan subjects: Essays in honor of Martin C. Battestim (Delaware, 1997), 47–67.

On popular science, see Thomas Keith , Man and the natural world (London, 1984), 229; Fawcett T. , “Measuring the Provincial Enlightenment: The case of Norwich”, Eighteenth-century life, n.s., xviii/l (1982), 13–27, p. 15; Duthie R. E. , “English florists, societies, and feasts in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries”, Garden history, x (1982), 17–35.

Quoted in the Proceedings of the Surtees Society, iii (1867), 129.

Charles Withers writes that some eighteenth-century public courses in geography reflected local demand and interests; however, his research stresses that the public regard for geography lay in the “discourses of mathematical utility and not alone [in] a matter of local circumstance”, Withers, op. cit. (ref. 6), 59. Emphasizing chorographic practices rather than a diffusion of geographic knowledge, I consider the provincial natural history as as a outstanding example of what Steven Shapin and Adir Ophir call “situated knowledge” in their “The place of knowledge: A methodological survey”, Science in context, iv (1991), 3–21. For the treatment of domicentrism as synonymous to ethnic and psychological rootedness see Sopher David E. , “The landscape of home: Myth, experience, social meaning”, in Meinig D. W. (ed.), The interpretation of ordinary landscapes (Oxford, 1979), 129–49, p. 133. The intensity of human attachment to the native place as anchor of security is comprehensively discussed by Relph E. , Place and placelessness (London, 1976), 31, 37, and passim. More recently, the idea of a “nature of one's own” and its presence in the early modern economic and legal thought is discussed in Jaritz Gerhardt Winiwarter Verena , “On the perception of nature in a Renaissance society”, in Teich Mikuláš Porter Roy Gustafson Bo (eds), Nature and society in historical context (Cambridge, 1997), 91–112. For an anthropological approach to domicentricity see Tuan Yi-Fu , Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1974), 92–129; idem, “Place: An experiential perspective”, Geographical review, lxv (1975), 151–65; Hayward D. Geoffrey , “Home as an environmental and psychological concept”, Landscape, xx (1975), 2–9; Porteous J. Douglas , “Home: The territorial core”, Geographical review, lxvi (1976), 383–90. Porter has seen topophilia as coordinating the scientific interests during Enlightenment years: “Topophilia lay not just in its traditionally agreeable aspects [pastoral, etc.] but in new modes — In the Sublime, the Picturesque and then the Romantic. [The] naturalists unashamedly viewed the environment through esthetic filters, such as order and disorder, regularity, symmetry, organic form. Furthermore, such value-laden perceptions stood as yardsticks of scientific truth”, Porter Roy Porter Roy , “The terraquaeous globe”, in Rousseau G. S. Porter Roy (eds), The ferment of knowledge (Cambridge, 1980), 285–324, p. 300.

Newman Gerald , The rise of English nationalism 1740–1830 (New York, 1987), 111. For various aspects of these tendencies see Williams Raymond , The country and the city (London, 1973); Kramnick Isaac , Bolingbroke and his circle: The politics of nostalgia in the age of Walpole (Ithaca, NY, 1968), 223–30. On negative perceptions of the city see also Rosenheim James M. , The emergence of a ruling order: English landed society, 1650–1750 (London, 1998), 238–44; Clark J. C. D. , Samuel Johnson: Literature, religion and English cultural politics from Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge, 1994), 1–43. On the politicization of Georgics and the significance of countryside and farm as traditional sources of criticism of political life, see Feingold Richard , Nature and society: Later eighteenth-century uses of the pastoral and Georgics (New Brunswick, 1978), 121–155.

Merrett Robert James , “Natural history and the eighteenth-century English novel”, Eighteenth century studies, xxv (1991), 145–70, p. 147. The escapist retreat to an illusion of a stable regional world was underscored in regional fiction which is ably discussed in Keith W. J. , Regions of the imagination: The development of British rural fiction (Toronto, 1988), 9. For Goldsmith Oliver Goldsmith Oliver , for example, the greatest pleasure was “to grow old in the spot in which one was born. Native walks and fields have, by association, beauties beyond the most delightful scenes ‘that ever art improved’ or ‘fancy painted’. To observe familiar objects, and to measure the years by the growth of trees planted by one's own hands, are the basis of personal contentment, of loyalty to individuals and communities, and ultimately of love of country.” Quoted in Everett , op. cit. (ref. 9), 63, my italics.

Speck William , “Whigs and Tories dim their glories: English political parties under the first two Georges”, in Cannon John (ed.), The Whig ascendancy: Colloquies on Hanoverian England (New York, 1981), 51–71, p. 64. The Court/Country polarization has been the subject of much discussion. The main lines of thought are summarized in Holmes Geoffrey Szechi Daniel , The Age of Oligarchy (London, 1993), 39–40).

Simmons Jack (ed.), English county historians (East Ardsley, 1978). I am grateful to Newton Key for pointing out a similarity between my country/chorography pairing and his connection country/county feast sermons. These sermons, preached in London in celebration of counties, were inventories of “local topography, buildings and institutions, and worthies. In the eighteenth century, one feast sermon even celebrated Oxfordshire's natural history, reminding natives of ‘the rareness of its Minerals; the richness of its Soil,’ and mentioning Robert Plot's geological work, The Natural History of Oxfordshire.” Key Newton , “The localism of the county feast in late Stuart political culture”, Huntington Library quarterly, lviii (1996), 211–37, p. 227.

Beginning with the middle decades of the century, the impulse for the study of provinces sometimes blended with the various forms of the English cultural nationalism. The consolidation of English nationalistic sentiments at this time owed some of its academic content to jealousy of the intellectual achievement of the neighbouring French. On the popular side, anti-French feelings served as a pretext for condemnation of the metropolis and the Court, both accused of being conduits for alien influences. On this see Black Jeremy , Natural and necessary enemies: Anglo-French relations in the eighteenth century (Athens, 1986), 178 and passim. The early romantic effort to validate national virtues in terms of its intellectual heritage resulted in “the proliferation of historical, philological, ethnological, socio-demographic, art-historical, musicological, and other forms of historicist enquiries”. Newman , op. cit. (ref. 20), 111. As Newman observes, production of this kind was essentially ethnic in its concerns, antiquarian in content, educational in its impact, and ideological in its overall significance. The chartering of the Society of Antiquaries (1751), the opening of the British Museum (1759), the preparation of Biographia Britannica (1747–66) are all taken as symptoms of a budding national self-study and self-promotion (ibid., 111).

Oliver J. , “William Borlase's contribution to eighteenth-century meteorology and climatology”, Annals of science, xxv (1969), 275–317.

Plot Robert , The natural history of Oxfordshire, being essay toward the natural history of England (Oxford, 1677); idem, Natural history of Staffordshire (Oxford, 1686); Thoresby , op. cit. (ref. 1); Morton John , Natural history of Northamptonshire with some account of the antiquities, to which is annexed a transcript of Doomsday-Book so far as it relates to that county (London, 1712); Leigh Charles , The natural history of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak in Derbyshire, with an account of the British, Phoenician, Armenian, Greek and Roman antiquities in those parts (Oxford, 1700).

Borlase to John Andrew, 12 September 1737, quoted in Pool P. A. S. , William Borlase (Truro, 1986), 54. On Borlase's connections with the fashionable society of Strawberry Hill, see Brownell Morris R. , Alexander Pope and the arts of Georgian England (Oxford, 1978), 259–64; see also Nicolson Marjorie Rousseau G. S. , ‘This long disease, my life’: Alexander Pope and the sciences (Princeton, 1968).

Mendyk documented the separation of antiquarian and natural study during the first decades of the eighteenth century; he sees Borlase as “the odd regional writer”, but this interpretation overlooks the size and profile of the enterprise Borlase shared with his correspondents and with the larger community of provincial clergymen-naturalists. Mendyk , op. cit. (ref. 8), 242.

For example, Laurence John , Gardening improved: The clergyman's recreation shewing the pleasure and profit of the art of gardening (London, 1718) and Mortimer John , The whole art of husbandry: The way of managing and improving the land (London, 1721).

Borlases of Pendeen belonged to the second rank of Cornish landed gentry. The wealth of William's father, John Borlase, an influential Whig squire, at one time Member of Parliament for St Ives borough, was based on ownership of land and of mineral rights, Cornwall being an important tin-mining region. Pool , op. cit. (ref. 21), 28.

Pool , op. cit. (ref. 21), 26. Andrew to Borlase, 5 March 1736, quoted in ibid. , 80. Richard Carew's study on Cornwall was the only chorographic study of prominence. Other writers on natural history and antiquities were Thomas Tonkin (1678–1742), Jago George (died 1726), and Walter Moyle (1672–1721). John Ray and Edward Lhuyd visited the county in 1667 and 1700.

Woodward John , Brief instructions for making observations in all parts of the world (London, 1696).

Borlase to William Oliver, 1 November 1737. Cornwall he thought to be “a place of an healthy air and of plenty of things which a gentleman would desire to see at his table. I have had [the] pleasure of seeing some of the most considerable places in England, and I think there is hardly any place where I could so willingly wish that my lot has fallen, as where it has.” Letter to George Borlase, 18 December 1727. To Andrew he wrote on 12 September 1737: “The climate [is] so temperate, the soil so plentiful, the plants so many, the natural advantages of havens for trades so commodious, that no one country of equal extent in the world will probably afford so great a variety. … And let me add, that 'tis a county whose Natural History, well executed, will be superior to any thing of that kind which has yet come to my notice.” Pool , op. cit. (ref. 27), 88, 29, 84.

Pennant Thomas , The literary life of the late Thomas Pennant, Esq, by himself (London, 1793), 2.

The journal exists in manuscript form, titled Barometrical and thermometrical and ombrometrical observations with an account of winds and weather at Ludgvan, quoted in Oliver Oliver , op. cit. (ref. 25), 276. Oliver gives a detailed analysis of the record which he describes as evolving in both precision and extent as Borlase started using information published in the newspapers.

Charles Lyttelton had considerable stature as a local historian and archaeologist; he was FRS from 1742 and in 1765 was elected president of the Society of Antiquaries. He was cousin of the “patriot Whig” and minister, George Grenville. Jeremiah Milles, FRS and FSA, succeeded Lyttelton in the presidency of the Society of Antiquaries; his research includes, among articles for the Society, “Topographical notes on Bath, Wells”. He published “Meteorological observations for 1768, made at Bridgewater, Somerset, and Ludgvan, Cornwall”, Philosophical transactions, lix (1769), 234. John Hutchins undertook a series of inquiries in the history of Dorset during the 1730s; in 1739 he circulated a single-sheet folio of six queries about the county. The information was eventually collated in his The history and antiquities of the County of Dorset with some remarkable particulars of natural history (2 vols, London, 1774).

There were fourteen “Parochial queries” from 1752; eight asked about the antiquities, seats of nobility, buildings and customs. Nine were devoted to natural history but in characteristically chorographic ordering and with a Hippocratic twist: “Is your Parish reckoned healthy as to air, or otherwise? Any men or women now living of a great age, what their diet? Have any monstrous births human or brutal happened in your Parish, and when? Have any remarkable, non-descript land or water insects been observed by you, or any one you know, lately? Have you, or any neighbouring Gentleman you know, made any observations towards forming a Register of the Weather? Do you know any uncommon plants near you, and where to be found?”, quoted in Pool Pool , op. cit. (ref. 27), 300. A similar questionnaire was distributed in 1754 titled Queries proposed to gentlemen in several parts of Great Britain. Lhwyd's undated folio sheet bore the title: “Parochial queries [for] a natural history of Wales. By the Undertaker E. L.”, Bibliotheca topographica Britannica (London, 1780–90), iv, 156.

It is likely that such a method of collecting information was used by Silas Taylor for his History and antiquities of Harwich and Dovercourt published in 1730 and by Dr Treadway Nash for his Collections for a history of Worcestershire, published in 1781–82. See Reed , op. cit. (ref. 5), 127, 140. The method, however, was not new. The principles of the study of natural history and antiquarian chorography had already found their institutional expression in the thirty-two member “Georgical Committee”, appointed by the Royal Society in 1664. The committee voted to draw up the “Heads of enquiries” in the format of a questionnaire to be dispatched to experienced husbandmen in all the shires of Britain and Ireland for the purpose of improvement of agriculture. Even before the “Georgical Committee”, the physician Arnold Boate had used this method with his Interrogatory or the “Alphabet” of queries in natural history of Ireland, that was appended to the second edition of William Hartlib's Legacy (1652). William Petty in Ireland and John Aubrey in Wiltshire were made responsible for digesting the reports, but the response was meagre. On these developments see Webster Charles , The Great Instauration: Science, medicine, and reform 1626–1660 (New York, 1975), 431. For the activities of the “Georgical Committee”, see Stubbs Mayling , “John Beale, philosophical gardener of Herefordshire. Part Two: The improvement of agriculture and trade in the Royal Society”, Annals of science, xlvi (1989), 323–63, p. 328. See also Perry Graham , “John Evelyn as hortulan saint” in Leslie Michael Raylor Timothy (eds), Culture and cultivation in early modern England: Writing and the land (Leicester, 1992), 130–50. An outstanding study on Aubrey is Hunter Michael , John Aubrey and the realm of learning (London, 1975).

Borlase William , Observations on the antiquities, historical and monumental, of the County of Cornwall (Oxford, 1754), and The natural history of Cornwall, the air, climate, waters, rivers, lakes, sea, and tides etc. (Oxford, 1758).

Borlase , op. cit. (ref. 39, 1758), pp. v, xi.

Leigh Charles , op. cit. (ref. 26). One hundred and twelve coats of arms are engraved in the opening pages. The list of subscribers is alphabetical only to a first approximation as within the list under the same letter, subscribers of the higher rank are put first; knights, higher clergy, landed gentry, MAs. Mendyk quotes the charges of vagueness from Richard Rawlinson's letter to Edward Lhwyd, in 1701. Mendyk , op. cit. (ref. 8), 322.

Quoted in Mendyk Mendyk , op. cit. (ref. 8), 225. Morton thanked the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, and the Lord Bishop of Ely, the last permitting him use of his library. Morton Morton , op. cit. (ref. 26), p. iii.

Cited in Dough Robert , “John Hutchins”, in Simmons Jack (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 23), 17, 125. Simmons writes that in Herefordshire, the eleventh Duke of Norfolk paid to a John Duncumb two guineas a week for twenty years to collect materials for a history of the county. Everitt writes that when during the 1770s, Edward Hasted, the topographer of Kent, approached the Morrice family of Betteshanger for information on their family history, a certain Mary Morrice wrote to her son, the Rev. James Morrice, that “his writings by many are well approved and if I'm not misinformed he has got money by it, and those families who present him highest are the most favourably inserted; but whether it is by liberal subscription for his book about to be published, or by way of present in hand, or how, I can't tell that his favour is really gained; but I know Lady D[aeth] let fall that it cost her son M. 30 Pounds to have the affairs of Knowlton, etc., inserted in Hasted's History.” Quoted in Everitt , “Edward Hasted (1732–1812)”, in Simmons (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 23), 189–221, p. 199.

Borlase , op. cit. (ref. 39, 1758), p. iii. Borlase associated the sense of natural grandeur with spontaneous religiosity: “Look where you will, Admiration seizes us”, or “if moved by the most astonishing scenes of grandeur, we need but look upon the Cliffs or Mountains, upon the Ocean or the Air” (p. iv). The instances of extreme weather were, in the words of one of Borlase's contemporaries, “astonishing phenomena of nature [which] may perhaps terrify us into an apprehension of a superior power; but this is a proof which works upon us in the most sweet and agreeable, though at the same time, forcible and convincing manner”. Theophilus Botanista, M.D., Rural beauties, or the natural history of the four following counties: Cornwall, Dorsetshire, Devonshire and Somersetshire (London, 1757), p. ii. Botanista's work was for children; it is no wonder that a generation of girls, like Elizabeth Carter, tutored on texts like these, found ambivalent excitement in the “gothic” storms described by Samuel Halt Monk in his The sublime: A study of critical theories in XVIII century England (New York, 1935). Tim Fulford suggests that on the basis of the association between emotive enthusiasm and epiphany, Thomson and other descriptive “patriotic” poets were able to claim moral and semi-religious purpose for their sublime landscapes. Fulford, op. cit. (ref. 8), 21. The imaginative connotation of natural history had been acknowledged for some time in literary periodicals: “There is something engaging to the Fancy, as well as to the Reason, in the treatises of Metals, Minerals, Plants and Meteors”, Spectator, 2 July 1712. The author explained that the greatness of objects “produced the idea of an Almighty Being”, Spectator, 19 September 1712.

Borlase to Da Costa Da Costa , 21 May 1749, quoted in Pool , op. cit. (ref. 27), 123. Oliver, op. cit. (ref. 25), 276ff.

Borlase William , “An account of a storm of thunder and lightning, near Ludgvan in Cornwall”, Philosophical transactions, xlviii (1753–54), 86–98; “Of the earthquake in the west parts of Cornwall, July 1757”, ibid. , 1 (1757), 499–503; “On the late mild weather in Cornwall”, ibid., liii (1763), 27–29; “Of the quantity of rain fallen at Mount Bay in Cornwall and of the weather in that place”, ibid., liv (1764), 59–60; “Meteorological observations at Ludgvan in Mount's Bay, Cornwall”, ibid., lviii (1768), 89; “Meteorological observations for 1769, made at Bridgewater, Somersetshire; and at Mount's Bay, Cornwall”, ibid., lx (1770), 228; “Meteorological observations for 1770 at Ludgvan in Mount's Bay, Cornwall”, ibid., lxi (1771), 195; “Meteorological observations for 1771, at Ludgvan in Mount's Bay”, ibid., lxii (1772), 365.

Borlase , op. cit. (ref. 46, 1753), 93.

The director of a local tin mine informed Borlase that no sound coming from the surface could be heard at 60 fathoms depth (at which level several miners heard the rumbling sound during the earthquake) and Borlase concluded that the sound was caused by “a real tremor of the earth, attended with a noise, owing to a current of air and vapour proceeding upwards from the earth”. Borlase , op. cit. (ref. 46, 1757), 505. This claim and the concern about state of the weather at the time of the earthquake were typical Aristotelian gestures.

The informants might have been coordinated through personal connections; such was the case with “An account of the effects of a storm of thunder and lightning, in the parishes of Looe and Lanreath, in the County of Cornwall, on the 27th day of June, 1756”, sent to Jeremiah Milles by the Rev. James Dyer, minister of Looe and the Rev. Milles (Jeremiah's brother?), vicar of Duloe, Cornwall. Philosophical transactions, 1 (1757), 104–7.

Sources are Borlase, op. cit. (ref. 46, 1757); Borlase , op. cit. (ref. 46, 1753), 86; Pool, op. cit. (ref. 27), 167.

In the eighteenth century, the most notable example was Jurin's James “Invitatio ad observationes meteorologicas communi consilio instituendas”, Philosophical transactions, xxxii (1723), 422–7. During the 1720s Jurin — Whose agenda was medical — Corresponded with several observers, including John Horsley, a schoolmaster in Northumberland, John Huxham, a physician in Plymouth, and Thomas Nettleton in Halifax. See Rusnock Andrea (ed.), The corespondence of James Jurin (1684–1750) (Amsterdam, 1996); also Golinski Jan , “Barometers of change: Meteorological instruments as machines of enlightenment”, in Clark William Golinski Jan Schaffer Simon (eds), The sciences in enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999).

Pool , op. cit. (ref. 27), 253.

Borlase to Baker Henry , 18 July 1763, quoted in Pool Pool , op. cit. (ref. 27), 252–3. A decade earlier, Baker was interested in weather himself: “Abstract of several observations of aurorae boreales”, Philosophical transactions, xlv (1748), 499–502; “An account of the [meteor of 22 July 1750]”, Philosophical transactions, xlvi (1749–50), 3. As no evidence exists to suggest Borlase's commitment to astrometeorology, the reference to heavenly bodies might have been either an allusion to the contemporary theories of the Moon's influence on the weather, or a colloquialism without literal meaning.

Horsley S. , “An abridged state of the weather at London in the year 1774”, Philosophical transactions, lxv (1775), 167–8. An interesting comparison can be make with the suspicion voiced several years later by the officials of the Cercle des Philadelphes, the “tropical equivalent of a French provincial academy”: “Very precise meteorological observations have been made with very exact instruments, but the utility of these observations has not yet been sufficiently demonstrated. [One never sees causes], one only sees outcomes. No power to control, no ability to prevent or to remedy anything results. The Cercle asks what can be the utility of meteorological observations.” Quoted in McClellan James E. III , Colonialism and science: Saint Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore and London, 1992), 167.

Boyle Robert , “Memoirs for a general history of the air” (1695), in Shaw Peter (ed.), The philosophical works of Robert Boyle (London, 1725), iii, 15–76, p. 36. Boyle referred to the chorographically based natural histories of which one of the most successful instances was an Irish cartographic project undertaken during the 1680s. William Molyneux began collecting information for an English atlas envisioned by Moses Pitt and coordinated by Hooke. Molyneux mobilized a number of Protestant and Catholic Irish to collaborate, the most enthusiastic of whom was Roderick O'Flaherty, writer of A chorographical description of West or h-Iar Connaught, written A.D. 1684. See Simms J. G. , William Molyneux of Dublin, 1656–1695 (Blackrock, Ireland, 1982), 34–46.

For this information, I am grateful to Mick Wood, Archivist to the Meteorological Archive and Library at Bracknell.

The barometer was “hailed as a triumph of contemporary science and as an object of superstitious faith”. Golinski , op. cit. (ref. 51), 5. This was a result of the wide popularity of astrometeorological prediction. For an interpretation which postpones the demise of astrology (proposed by Bernard Capp, Patrick Curry and Keith Thomas), see Perkins's Maureen Visions of the future: Almanacs, time, and cultural change, 1775–1870 (Oxford, 1996).

For a different angle in looking at the rise and fall of meteorological networking see Rusnock Andrea , “Correspondence networks and the Royal Society, 1700–1750”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxii (1999), 155–69.

Borlase to Oliver , 1 November 1737, quoted in Pool , op. cit. (ref. 21), 86.

Golinski , op. cit. (ref. 51), 36. At approximately the same time, Samuel Johnson, who otherwise deplored the so-called weather-talk, came to regard the keeping of a journal as a valuable practice, primarily for its contribution to spiritual life: “My general resolution to which I humbly implore the help of god is to methodise my life, to resist sloth and combat scruples. I hope from this time to keep a Journal.” The quote and other important information on the social relevance of diarizing among the Augustan élites is in Fothergill John , Private chronicles: A study of the English diaries (London, 1974), 25.

Smellie William , The philosophy of natural history (Edinburgh, 1790–99), p. viii. Henry Ellis, governor of Georgia and the correspondent of Borlase's correspondent John Ellis, illustrates this opinion in his description of the heats of the American South: “I have frequently walked a hundred yards under an umbrella, with a thermometer suspended from it by a thread, to the height of my nostrils, when the mercury rose to 105; which is prodigious.” His letter shows extreme weather to be a topic of personal and scientific correspondence as well as a subject of diary writing; the sense of the moment is conveyed when he writes: “It's now 3 o'clock; the sun bears nearly S.W. and I am writing in piazza, open at each end, on the N.E. side of my house, perfectly in the shade; a small breeze at S.W. blows freely through it; Bird's thermometer stands at 102.” The annual register (London, 1767), 24.

Borlase wrote about his will to continue the rain record despite the improbability of discovering weather laws: “[Keeping a weather register] has been a constant amusement to me ever since my correspondence on the subject increased.” Letter to William Huddesford (Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum), 13 February 1767. Oliver Oliver , op. cit. (ref. 25), 292.

Cited in Withers Charles , “Geography, natural history and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: Putting the world in place”, History workshop journal, xxxix (1995), 137–164, p. 154. William Addison observes that whereas the seventeenth century had been the century of the Church's poets, “the eighteenth was the century of her diarists and also of her scientists”. Addison William , The English country parson (London, 1947), 83.

Stokes Francis Griffin (ed.), The Blecheley diary of the Rev. William Cole, 1765–67 (London, 1931), quoted in Sunday Times, 24 January 1932.

Paul James B. (ed.), The diary of George Ridpath 1755–1761 (London, 1922).

Dawson Warren R. (ed.), The Banks letters (London, 1958), 438. Hutchinson Benjamin [Vicar of Kimbolton, Linconlshire], A calendar of the weather for the year 1781, with an introductory discourse on the Moon's influence at common lunations in general, and on the winds at the eclipses in particular, founded at observations at Kimbolton (London, 1782).

Henry William , “An account of an extraordinary stream of wind, which shot thro' part of the Parishes of Termonomungan and Urney, in the County of Tyrone, on Wednesday October 11, 1752”, Philosophical transactions, xlviii (1753–54), 1–4.

Oliver , op. cit. (ref. 25), 291.

Arderon William , “Concerning an improvement of the weather cord”, Philosophical transactions, xliv (1746–47), 169–73; “A letter from Mr. Henry Baker to the President, containing an extract of a letter from Mr. William Arderon, FRS to Mr. Baker giving … a representation of an halo or mock-sun observed by the same gentleman July 11, 1749”, ibid., xlvi (1749–50), 196; “On the hot weather in July 1750”, ibid., xlvi (1749–50), 573–5; “Observations on the late severe cold weather”, ibid., xlviii (1753–54), 507–8; “Of the rain fallen in a foot-square at Norwich, 1749–1762”, ibid., liv (1763–64), 9.

Miles was editor and transcriber (assisted by Thomas Birch) of Robert Boyle's manuscripts. See Hall Marie Boas , “Henry Miles F.R.S. (1698–1763) and Thomas Birch (1705–1766)”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xviii (1963), 39–44. Boas suggests that his fellowship was largely due to his work on an edition of Boyle's works, despite a good previous publishing record. Miles's meteorological papers are “A representation of the parhelia seen in Kent, December 19, 1741”, Philosophical transactions, xlii (1742–43), 16–17; “Of the storm of thunder which happened June 12, 1748”, ibid., xlv (1748), 383–5; “On thermometers and the weather”, ibid., xlvi (1749–50), 1–6; “Concerning aurora borealis, seen February 16, 1749”, ibid., xlvi (1749–50), 319; “On the heat of the weather at Tooting in July and September last”, ibid., xlvi (1749–50), 571–3.

Pringle John , “Several accounts of the fiery meteor”, Philosophical transactions, li (1759–60), 218; idem, “Of an unusual agitation of the sea”, ibid., xlix (1755–56), 642–4; Rev. Costard George , “Concerning a fiery meteor seen in the air on July 14, 1745”, ibid., xliii (1744–45), 522–4; Rev. Williams Anthony , “Of a remarkable thunder-storm”, ibid., lxi (1771), 71–72.

Regarded as the “birth of empirical meteorology”, these schemes are the most investigated aspect of early modern meteorology. See Gunther R. T. , Early science in Oxford (London, 1925), iv, 34, 170; Symons G. J. , “The history of English meteorological societies, 1823 to 1880”, Quarterly journal of the Meteorological Society, vii (1881), 65–68; Manley Gordon , “The weather and diseases: Some eighteenth century contributions to observational meteorology”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, ix (1952), 300–7; Landsberg H. E. , “Roots of modern climatology”, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, liv (1964), 130–41; Khrgian A. K. , Meteorology: A historical survey (Washington, D.C., 1970); Schove D. J. Reynolds David , “Weather in Scotland, 1659–1660: The diary of Andre Hay”, Annals of science, xxx (1973), 165–77; Schneider-Carius Karl , Weather science, weather research (New Delhi, 1975); Frisinger Howard , The history of meteorology: To 1800 (New York, 1977); Kington J. , The weather of the 1780s over Europe (Cambridge, 1978); Shields Lisa , “The beginnings of scientific weather observation in Ireland (1684–1708)”, Weather, xl (1984), 304–11. On medical and astro-meteorological diaries see Beier Lucinda McCray , “Experience and experiment: Robert Hooke, illness and medicine”, in Hunter Michael Schaffer Simon (eds), Robert Hooke: New studies (London, 1989), 235–51. See also Dewhurst Kenneth , Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) (Berkeley, 1966), 60–67; Hunter M. Gregory A. (eds), An astrological diary of the seventeenth century: Samuel Jeake of Rye (1652–1699) (Oxford, 1988).

[ Greenwood Isaac ], “A new method for composing a natural history of meteors communicated in a letter to Dr. Jurin”, Philosophical transactions, xxxv (1727–28), 390–402.

Feldman Theodore , “The history of meteorology, 1750–1800: A study in the quantification of experimental physics”, Dissertation abstracts international , 1984, 922-A, 205–5. In this work, Feldman has documented the history of the failure to establish a lasting network of weather observers. See also in this respect a somewhat optimistic analysis by McClellan, op. cit (ref. 54), 163–80; for the French undertaking see Desaive J. P. , Médecins, climat and épidémies à la fin du XVIII^e siècle (Paris, 1972). Later, the European governments were more efficient in collecting meteorological information through the channels of the Société Royale de Médecine (1778) in France and Societas Meteorologica Palatina (1780) in Germany. See Kington J. A. , “The Societas Meteorologica Palatina: An eighteenth-century meteorological society”, Weather , 1974, 416–26. Of special interest is this respect is the recent study of Lowood Henry E. , Patriotism, profit, and the promotion of science in the German Enlightenment: The economic and scientific societies, 1760–1815 (New York, 1991), 205–79. Lowood points out that weather became in this period an ideal subject for the “regional science”, Landskunde: “The accumulation of data on temperature, sky conditions, the influence of weather on crops, and distinctive meteorological events had an obvious place alongside the facts and figures of topography, economy, geology, botany and zoology pertaining to a particular region” (p. 247).

Neufshatel Francois , “Recherches historiques sur les années froides et humides” (1816), quoted in Feldman , op. cit. (ref. 74), 273.

Kington John , The weather journals of a Rutland squire: Thomas Barker of Lyndon Hall (Oakham, Rutland, 1988). Journals similar to Barker's were kept by others. Robert Marsham from Straton in Norfolk sent a summary of his naturalist's journal (1736–88) to the Royal Society. See Marsham Robert , “Naturalist journal, 1736–1788”, Philosophical transactions, lxxix (1789), 154. Journals were also kept by Gilbert White's brothers Henry White of Fyfield Rectory and John White, vicar of Blackburn in Lancashire. John corresponded with Linnaeus and compiled Fauna Calpensis, the natural history of Gibraltar. See the Rev. Clutterbuck Robert , Notes on the Parishes of Fyfield, Kimpton, Penton Mewsey, Weyhill and Wherwell in the County of Hampshire (Salisbury, 1898), 5ff. In fact, Gilbert's other brother Thomas as well as his two nephews, Charles Henry and Sampson Henry also kept naturalistic journals. Here is a typical entry from Henry White's journal: “1784, may 17th. Perfect settled dry weather continues, with summer warmth beyond ye season; thin light gray clouds with hot sun between. Went to serve Kimpton before 10 a.m. etc.” Clutterbuck, Notes, 10. Some of these records were published: The Rev. B. Hutchinson [Vicar of Kimbolton, Lincolnshire], A kalendar of the weather for the year 1781, with an introductory discours on the Moon's influence on the weather … founded on observations at Kimbolton (London, 1782).

Barker Thomas , “An account of an extraordinary meteor seen in the County of Rutland, which resembled a water-spout”, Philosophical transactions, xlvi (1749–50), 248–50; “An account of a remarkable halo”, ibid., lii (1760–61), 3; “[C]oncerning observations of the quantities of rain at [Lyndon] for several years”, ibid., lix (1769), 221; “Extract of Mr. Barker's meteorological register at Lyndon in Rutland [1771]”, ibid., lxii (1772), 42; “Extract of a register of the barometer, thermometer, and rain, at Lyndon in Rutland, 1772”, ibid., lxiii (1772–73), 221; “Extract … for 1773”, ibid., lxiv (1774), 202. The Transactions annually published Barker's meteorological extracts and abstracts until 1800.

Fothergill , op. cit. (ref. 60), 29. The farming and weather journals were not new. During Elizabeth's reign, Thomas Hill's The profitable arte of gardening (1568) linked the weather with the Virgilian husbandry. Richard Meager in 1697 wrote The mystery of husbandry comprising sixty-one rules for good husbandry and “The country almanack” of weather signs. In 1707, John Mortimer, FRS, published The whole art of husbandry with the “the countryman's calendar, or what is to do every month of the year”. Stephen Switzer wrote the influential Ichnographia rustica (1718). Giles Jacob appended a pastoral eulogy of countryside innocence to his practical The country gentleman's Vade Mecum (1717), and John Lawrence, rector of Bishops Wearmouth in Durham, wrote gardening manuals for Hanoverian clergy and gentry. Some of these works included “The clergyman's recreations”, “The gentleman's recreation”, “The fruit-gardener's calendar”. For other similar works, see Donaldson John , Agricultural biography (London, 1854). On the natural history done by country parsons, see Hart Arthur Tindal , The eighteenth century country parson (Shrewsbury, 1955), 46–66.

“The calendar of flora. 1. Swedish and 2. English; made in 1755. 3. Greek; selected from Theophrastus”, in Stillingfleet Benjamin , Miscellaneous tracts relating to natural history, husbandry, and physick (London, 1762), 402.

In 1754 Stillingfleet personally adjusted the thermometer of the poet Thomas Gray, and the next year, by coincidence, both Gray and Stillingfleet independently drew up their calendar schemes. Gray kept up the observations of Cambridge plants, insects, and weather for the rest of his life, from 1767 in the printed form as the “Naturalist's journal”, issued by Benjamin White, Gilbert's brother and an eminent publisher in London. Jones William Powell , Thomas Gray, scholar (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), 125–42. Also see Norton C. E. , Thomas Gray as a naturalist (Boston, 1903), and Ketton-Cremer R. W. , Thomas Gray: A biography (Cambridge, 1955), 182. The popularity of naturalistic diaries reached its climax during these decades when, for instance, one Josiah Ringsted published A diary for gentlemen, sportsmen, gardeners, grasiers, game-keepers, cow-keepers, horse dealers, carriers, etc., etc. with a Coloumn [sic] for observations on the weather (London, c. 1780); see also Burrow Reuben , The lady's and gentleman's diary (London, 1755–58). Another example of the Linnean/Georgic climatology is T[imothy] Sheldrake, The cause of heat and cold in the several climates and situations of this globe (London, 1756). Sheldrake's interest in climate began with his attempt to grow exotic plants in England. The work was mainly based on Hales's chemistry of plants, Boyle's and Ray's study of cold, and Boerhaave's iatrochemistry. The same year he published The gardener's best companion in the greenhouse, or tables showing the greatest heat and cold of all countries. A more popular scheme was The Scots gardiner [sic] for the climate of Scotland, together with the gardiner's kalendar, and observations on the weather (Edinburgh, 1755). The compiler inserted The Shepherd of Banbury's rules to judge the changes of weather. Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster informs us in 1827 that his father, the naturalist Thomas Forster, kept a season-calendar and diary of the weather on a daily basis from 1780 to his death in 1825. Forster T. , Pocket encyclopedia (London, 1827), p. x.

White switched to the “Naturalist's journal” in 1768. On the first page he wrote: “The Gift of the Honourable Mr. Barrington, the Inventer”. Rashleigh Holt-White, Life and letters of Gilbert White of Selbourne (London, 1969), i, 156.

Introduction to Natural history of Selborne , p. v, and “Letter IX” to Barrington, quoted in Keith W. J. , Rural tradition: A study of the non-fiction prose writers of the English countryside (Toronto and Buffalo, 1974), 48–49. On the epistemological and literary evolution of the parish record see Mabey Richard , Gilbert White (London, 1986); Hammond Lansing V. , “Gilbert White, poetizer of the commonplace”, in The Age of Johnson: Essays presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker (New Haven, 1949), 377–83. On White's political conservatism see Merrett , op. cit. (ref. 21), 148, and Maddox Lucy B. , “Gilbert White and the politics of natural history”, Eighteenth century life, x (1986), 45–57.

It is difficult not to see natural history as a phenomenon of interpenetration, in Allen's formulation, of the “hard and rational on the one hand, the soft and sentimental on the other”. Allen , op. cit. (ref. 4), 342. Thomson's heritage was vital throughout the century: The seasons: Autumn and winter. A poem containing, a short review of each season; but more particularly winter, and its severity, etc (London, 1778). On the other hand, the specialness of place owed significantly to providential considerations, as suggested by Christopher Hamlin in his “Chemistry, medicine, and the legitimization of English spas, 1740–1840”, Medical history, Supplement 10 (1990), 67–81, p. 68.

Both quotes are from the advertisement to the first edition of Natural history of Selborne, quoted in Keith , op. cit. (ref. 82), 42.

Holt-White , op. cit. (ref. 81), i, 202.

“Queries, addressed to the Gentlemen and Clergy of North-Britain, respecting the Antiquities and Natural History of their respective Parishes, with a view exciting than to favour the World with a fuller and more satisfactory Account of their Country, then it is a Power of a Stranger and transient Visitant to give.” Quoted in Withers , op. cit. (ref. 63), 152.

White Gilbert , The natural history of Selborne (Harmondsworth, 1977), 253, my italics.

Ibid. , 261. Needless to say, White continued to arrange for observing “this strange severity of the weather”, by placing an Adam's thermometer at a more elevated location in Newton, Hampshire and “expecting wonderful phenomena”. He was “disturbed” to find that Newton's weather proved warmer. The subspecies of the meteoric genre focusing on unusual spells of heat and cold was introduced to the pages of the Philosophical transactions by Henry Miles in 1750. James Six was by 1784 performing a number of thermometrical measurements on Canterbury cathedral and John Cullum wrote for the journal an “Account of extraordinary Frost, 23 June 1783”, Philosophical transactions, lxxiv (1784), 416. Cullum was a divine pursuing the study of antiquities and botany through a wide correspondence network, including Pennant, William Cole, and possibly Thomas Gray. He kept a naturalist's diary and worked on “The history and antiquities of Hawsteed and Hardwick in the County of Suffolk”, published in the Bibliotheca topographica Britannica in 1784. “John Cullum”, Dictionary of national biography.

White , op. cit. (ref. 87), 265. Gilbert's brother Henry recorded in his Fyfield diary, “ye superstitious in town and country have abounded with ye most direful presages and prognostication”, quoted in Mabey Richard , Gilbert White: A biography of the author of The Natural History of Selborne (Century, 1986), 190.

Nicholson Mr. , “An account of a storm of lightning observed March 1, 1776”, Philosophical transactions, lxvii (1777), 350–1. This genre of reportage was popular in periodicals also, as Don Raymond Baesel suggests in his “Natural history and the British periodicals in the eighteenth century” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1974), 393–415.

Short Thomas , “An account of several meteors, communicated in a letter from Thomas Short”, Philosophical transactions, xli (1739–41), 625–30.

Swinton John , “An account of a remarkable meteor seen at Oxford”, Philosophical transactions, lii (1760–61), 99; Swinton's other arresting descriptions are “An account of an anthelion observed near Oxford”, ibid., lii (1760–61), 94; “Of a remarkable meteor [“a resplendant whiteness of the heaven”] seen at Oxford, March 5, 1764”, ibid., liv (1763–64), 326–9; “Of a remarkable meteor seen at Oxford, March 5, 1764”, ibid., liv (1763–64), 332–4. Swinton was rector in St Peter-le-Bailey, in Oxford and FRS from 1728. Between 1739 and 1750, he published six book-length studies on etymology, numismatics and inscription and numerous articles in the Philosophical transactions.

[ Rooke Hayman ], A continuation of the register of weather, 1801–2 (Nottingham, 1802).

[ Rooke Hayman ], Register kept at Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire, 1785–1794 (Nottingham, 1795). Another example of a “non-stationary” diary was Townley Richard , A journal kept in the Isle of Man (Whitehaven, 1791). Alain Corbin discusses Townley in The lure of the sea: The discovery of the seaside in the Western World 1750–1840 (London, 1994), 90. In 1736 Henry Forth wrote to William Derham: “I have for some time pursued [observations of the weather], for my own private satisfaction, upon your ingenious Model”, in Forth Henry , “An account of the storm, Jan. 8, 1734–5”, Philosophical transactions, xxxix (1735–36), 285–7.

New York Times, 3 November 1994, section B, 24.

“In Country writings, philosophy and history were blended into an ideology which has been described as the ‘politics of nostalgia’ [Isaac Kramnick's term]”, in Speck , op. cit. (ref. 22), 64.

Everitt Alan , Landscape and community in England (London and Ronceverte, 1985), 8. Everitt locates the source of provincial integration in the role that the English counties assumed during the seventeenth century, in which period they “ceased to be simply administrative units and in many cases became genuine self-conscious regions” (p. 21). It would be interesting to pursue this conclusion by asking about the place of topography and surveying in this development. A step in this direction is Helgerson, op. cit. (ref. 9).

Clark J. C. D. , Revolution and rebellion: State and society in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Cambridge, 1986), chap. 4. See also his English society 1688–1832: Ideology, social structure and political practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1985), chap. 2. For a most recent revaluation of the role of the Established Church, see Jacob W. M. , Lay people and religion in the early eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1996), 20–56. Like Clark, Jacob rejects the thesis that the “old world” of the popular religiosity ended during the reign of Queen Anne: “[t]he evidence suggests that this ‘old world’ continued for much of the eighteenth century” (p. 4).

Langford Paul , Public life and the propertied Englishman 1689–1789 (Oxford, 1991), 367.

Wahrman Dror , “National society, communal culture: An argument about the recent historiography of eighteenth-century Britain”, Social history, xvii (1992), 43–72, p. 45.

Landau Norma , The Justices of Peace, 1679–1760 (Berkeley, 1984), 3–4, 360. See also Rollinson D. , “Property, ideology and popular culture in a Gloucestershire village 1660–1740”, Past and present, no. 93 (1981), 70–97.

Hoskins , op. cit. (ref. 8), 18.

Goldgar , Impolite learning: Conduct and community in the republic of letters 1680–1750 (New Haven, 1995), 15.