The Jew of Crane Court: Emanuel Mendes Da Costa (1717–91),Natural History and Natural Excess

Rousseau G. S. Haycock David , “Voices calling for reform: The Royal Society in the mid-eighteenth century — Martin Folkes, John Hill, and William Stukeley”, History of science, xxxvii (1999), 377–406.

The only substantial previous treatment of da Costa's life is Whitehead P. J. P. , “Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717–91) and the Conchology, or natural history of shells”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), historical series, vi (1977), 1–24. On the Sephardic Jews in England and the da Costa family in general see Endelman Todd M. , Radical assimilation in English Jewish history, 1656–1945 (Bloomington, 1990), 10–21, which we find authoritative; Katz David S. , “The Chinese Jews and the problem of biblical authority in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England”, English historical review, cv (1990), 893–919; and Katz David S. , The Jews in the history of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford, 1994), 223–9. There are also discussions of Emanuel da Costa in Brock C. H. , “Dru Drury's Illustrations of natural history and the type specimen of Goliathus goliatus Drury”, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, viii (1977), 259–65; Porter Roy , The making of geology: Earth science in Britain, 1660–1815 (London, 1977), 114–15. Invaluable for constructing a new, revised context for natural history are the essays in Jardine N. Secord J. A. Spary E. C. (eds), Cultures of natural history (Cambridge, 1996); Findlen's P. Possessing Nature (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), for its astute discussions of the psychology of collecting and trading in natural history specimens; and Rappaport Rhoda , When geologists were historians, 1665–1750 (Ithaca and London, 1997). For cliques and groups within the Royal Society at mid-century, see Miller David Philip , “The ‘Hardwicke circle’: The Whig supremacy and its demise in the eighteenth-century Royal Society”, in Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, lii (1998), 73–91. Even these excellent professional studies grant the value of archival retrieval and biographically driven scholarship. For more general studies of the Jews in eighteenth-century England, see Roth Cecil , A history of the Jews in England (3rd edn, Oxford, 1978), and Israel Jonathan I. , European Jewry in the age of mercantilism, 1550–1750 (rev. edn, Oxford, 1989), who provides a context for da Costa's Sephardic milieu in London in the middle of the eighteenth century. We use psychological resources in this analysis of da Costa as an historical figure, and agree with Michael Hunter when he claims in an essay in a volume psychoanalysing Robert Boyle that for such figures as Boyle and Newton “It could … be argued that what is primarily required is historical sensitivity informed by the basic presuppositions of psychoanalysis, most notably the existence of a subconscious”; see Hunter Michael , “Robert Boyle (1627–91): A suitable case for treatment?”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxii (1999), 261–75. Valuable information about the Enlightenment culture of luxury is found in Sekora John , Luxury: The concept in Western thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore, 1977), which touches on some of the concerns of this study, but not on the psychobiography of greed or the culture of excess which forms the heart of this analysis. Finally, we are indebted to the larger mapping of the Royal Society at mid-century that necessarily figures into any professional revisionist history. There were many groups other than the naturalists within the Society in the eighteenth century, and their activities could be productively compared to those of the naturalists (da Costa, Parsons, Stukeley, Baker, Arderon, Edwards, Borlase, Needham, Alchorne, Pulteney, Collinson, and many others) who constituted something of a critical wing and with whom they were often at war. It would be instructive to ascertain how the naturalists' criticism of the Society compared to the platforms of these other groups, but such work cannot be undertaken within an article that merely aims to establish an individual's biographical circumstances and its contexts. Besides, we adjudge it premature to launch these comparisons before archival retrieval and psychobiographical interpretation have been rigorously undertaken. History that removes real lives and their motives, which overlooks the narrative lines created by individuals in action, which abjures motive and emotion, which suppresses the private sphere in preference for the public, may ultimately be relegated to the neglected annals of professional specialization and find few readers.

Andrew Ducarel to da Costa, 24 August 1752, in Nichols John , Illustrations of the literary history of the eighteenth century. Consisting of authentic memoirs and original letters of eminent persons (8 vols, London, 1822–28), ii, 608. It is not known what these complimentary “handsome things” were, yet da Costa certainly had his detractors inside the Royal Society soon after his election, although by 1752 he was clearly at the centre of a critical wing of naturalists within the Society. Early that year (1752) James Parsons intended to contend the Secretaryship and wrote to da Costa requesting him to solicit support among “our forces”; see BL Add MS 28540 f. 183. The general charge against da Costa was that he was greedy, untrustworthy, importunate, and interfered in areas (especially elections) where he had no concern; specifically, that he was mean with his money and time and routinely sent correspondents inferior specimens: Itself a type of swindle more difficult to prove and punish than the crime for which he eventually was imprisoned. To what degree all this early criticism was fair versus prejudiced, and how an image of da Costa developed and was sustained from the 1750s forward, forms part of the purpose of this study.

Peter Ascanius to Linnaeus, 7 April 1755, quoted in Smith James Edward , A selection of the correspondence of Linnaeus, and other naturalists, from the original manuscripts (London, 1821), 482–3, translation from Latin original. The friend was probably John Fothergill; see below.

Linnaeus to da Costa, 9 November 1757, quoted in Smith Smith Smith , op. cit. (ref. 4), 488–9, English translation of Latin original.

Linnaeus to da Costa, 27 February 1759, quoted in Smith , op. cit. (ref. 4), 491–2, English translation of Latin original.

Da Costa to Schomberg Ralph , 18 May 1761, in Nichols Nichols , op. cit. (ref 3), iv, 766. Schomberg replied that he was “no stranger to the distinguished character you bear among the naturalists …”. Schomberg to da Costa, 21 May 1761, in Nichols Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 766. See da Costa's letter to Linnaeus, 5 October 1759: “I cannot but own, that the high honour of becoming a member of such a Society is the object of my most earnest wishes, as I have mentioned in a former letter. But as you pass over this subject in absolute silence in your last letter, I cannot but conjecture that I have been judged unworthy of the honour in question …”, Smith , op. cit. (ref. 4), 492–3. The da Costa–Schomberg connection unlocks the key to many of the Jewish connections discussed below.

The gentleman's magazine, lxxxi/2 (1811), 407. He did not apparently receive a response to the identity of “J. E. Raspe”; this was the Hanover-born naturalist and writer Rudolph Eric Raspe (1737–94), elected as an honorary Fellow following a Latin paper published in Philosophical transactions, lix (1770), 126–37 on fossil bones discovered in North America. The work generally attributed to him and for which he is now most famous is Baron Munchausen's narrative of his marvellous travels and campaigns in Russia, first published in London in 1785. Like da Costa, he came to a bad end. Passing himself off as a mining expert, he defrauded a Scottish knight out of large sums of speculative investment by claiming to have discovered signs of immense mineral deposits in the far north of the country in 1791. He escaped to Ireland where he died of scarlet fever.

The gentleman's magazine, lxxxii/1 (1812), 21–24. Whitehead attributes this letter to John Nichols. This branch of the family continued to produce distinguished professional men down through the nineteenth century: Jacob Mendes da Costa, in Emanuel's direct family line, became the President of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century, and the first President of the Jefferson Medical School there.

Endelman , op. cit. (ref. 2), 10.

Endelman , op. cit. (ref. 2), 11.

Copy by da Costa of a letter from Thomas Knowlton to George Edwards, 28 July 1754, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 58/26. For Edwards see ref. 167. The da Costa correspondence in the British Library consists of eleven volumes of received letters and drafts of his replies. The order of letters has been numbered at least twice with no system appearing to be dominant. We have therefore quoted both numbers as they appear on the first facing page of the relevant letter. We have followed da Costa's orthography, but not his capitalization, which is often unclear or inconsistent. If a sentence ended at the edge of the page, or at the end of a paragraph, da Costa generally did not use a full stop. Complete sentences which end thus have been marked with a [.]. Sentences which have been cut by us are marked with ellipsis. On Jacob [Philip] Mendes da Costa's unsuccessful bid for his cousin's hand, see his Proceedings at large in the Arches Court of Canterbury, between Mr. Jacob Mendes da Costa and Mrs. Catherine da Costa Villa Real, both of the Jewish religion, and cousin germans [sic]. Relating to a marriage contract (London, 1734).

Endelman , op. cit. (ref. 2), 16.

Endelman , op. cit. (ref. 2), 16.

Costa Da to Borlase , “Bois le duc or Hertogenbosch”, 16 June 1748, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 249/11.

Will of John Mendes da Costa, Lucien Wolf papers in the Mocatta Library, University College, London, quoted in Whitehead, op. cit. (ref. 2), 8.

BL Add. MS 28537 f. 157/143.

Da Costa to Knowlton , 10 July 1756, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 72/46. Knowlton apologized that he did not have funds enough himself to support his friend: Knowlton to da Costa, 23 October 1756, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 73/48.

Da Costa to Fothergill , 12 August 1761, 14 June 1762, 12 June 1762, BL Add MS 28537 f. 154/139, f. 156/141, f. 158/144. Fothergill (1712–80) made a collection of rare plants at his estate at Upton, near Stratford.

Da Costa to Tissington Anthony , 31 March 1747, BL Add. MS 28543 f. 392/239.

Da Costa , to Pennant , 4 April 1752, Pennant Papers, Warwickshire County RO, TP408, letter 2.

Da Costa to Thomas Elizabeth Mrs , 16 September 1760, BL Add. MS 28543 f. 216. He advised her to keep an account of her expenses so he could repay her. For a long letter illustrating the sort of requests he made to his correspondents, see da Costa's letter to Dr Charles Morton, 1 July 1751, in Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 757–9.

Da Costa to Pennant , 21 May 1752, Pennant Papers, Warwickshire County RO, TP408, letter 6.

Da Costa to Borlase , 9 July 1763, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 345/152.

Borlase wrote that “every one gives a most hopefull acct. of that adventure …”, Borlase to da Costa , 15 July 1763, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 346/153. Da Costa does not refer to this “adventure” again throughout his correspondence.

Buckley J. A. , The Cornish mining industry: A brief history (Penryn, 1992), 14–18.

Dictionary of national biography; Lettsom John Coakley , Some account of the late John Fothergill, M.D. (London, 1783), pp. ciii–civ:.

Da Costa to Knowlton Thomas , 10 March 1764, BL Add. MS 28538 f. 99/79.

The monthly review, lvi (1777), 92.

Walpole Horace , Memoires of the last ten years of the reign of George the Second (London, 1822), i, 310–11, quoted in Katz , op. cit. (ref. 2), 6.

Endelman , op. cit. (ref. 2), 21.

Endelman , op. cit. (ref. 2), 21.

Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 636, Folkes to da Costa, 9 August 1747.

Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 637, Folkes to da Costa, 28 August 1747.

Stukeley's diary, 11 April 1759, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. misc. e. 138.

Da Costa to Knowlton , 10 July 1756, BL Add. MS 28539, f. 72/46.

Birch Thomas to da Costa , 18 January 1763, Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 540.

Da Costa to Pennant , 9 February 1763, Pennant Papers, Warwickshire County RO, TP408, letter 175.

Da Costa to Ducarel James , 10 March 1752, Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 605–6. See Katz , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Da Costa to Pegge Samuel , 28 July 1757, Bod. MS Eng. lett. d. 45 f. 315.

Quoted in Hunter Michael , Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), 37.

Ibid.

See Hunter Michael , “The cabinet institutionalized: The Royal Society's ‘repository’ and its background”, in Impey Oliver MacGregor Arthur (eds), The origins of museums: The cabinet of curiosities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe (Oxford, 1985), 159–68.

See his Lectures and discourses of earthquakes and subterraneous eruptions , in Waller Richard (ed.), The posthumous works of Robert Hooke (London, 1705), 210–450.

Stukeley William , Library of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons, London, MS 1130 Stu (1) f. 125.

Da Costa to Hale J. , 30 April 1784, BL Add. MS 28,538 f. 366/3.

Clarke Samuel , A discourse concerning the unchangeable obligations of natural religion, and the truth and certainty of the Christian revelation, 4th edn (London, 1716), 254.

Woodward John , An attempt towards a natural history of fossils in England, in a catalogue of the English fossils of J. W. (London, 1728–29), i, pp. xiii–xiv.

Quoted in Levine Joseph , Dr. Woodward's shield: History, science and satire in Augustan England (London, 1977), 95.

See Dictionary of national biography.

From The spectator , quoted in Rousseau G. S. , “Science books and their readers in the eighteenth century”, in Rivers Isabel (ed.), Books and their readers in eighteenth-century England (Leicester, 1982), 197–255, p. 202.

Da Costa E. M. , Historia naturalis testaceorum Britannia (London, 1778), Preface, p. vi.

Rossi Paolo , The dark abyss of time: The history of the Earth and the history of nations from Hooke to Vico (Chicago, 1984), Introduction.

See da Costa's correspondence with Revd William Huddesford of Trinity College, Oxford, in Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 456–76, and da Costa to Tissington Anthony , 27 January 1747, BL Add. MS 28543 f. 232. Tissington had written of Woodward's book “it really has so little in it, either of Truth, or pleasing Romances, that tis quite Drudgery to read it”. Tissington to da Costa , 7 January 1747, BL Add. MS 28543 f. 228.

Da Costa to Clarke Revd John , rector of Padworth, Berkshire, 14 November 1747, BL Add. MS 28536 f. 32/43.

Da Costa to Borlase , 26 March 1751, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 279/60.

Da Costa to Waring , 4 November 1780, BL Add. MS 28544 f. 537/72. Da Costa also noted that he kept his letters in a “very careful manner … in bound folio books of blue paper & only pin the letter each in chronological order”. He did not paste them in “for that hurts loose papers”.

Pallas to da Costa , 10 November 1764, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 279/173. Pallas (1741–1811) had visited England and met da Costa at the Royal Society, to which he was elected a Fellow in 1763. Anne Goldgar in Impolite learning: Conduct and community in the republic of letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven and London, 1995) has isolated the complex role of correspondence among scientists in the republic of letters as proof that a particular scholar or individual enjoyed status within the scientific community, and even occupied a particular position within that community; see Goldgar , op. cit., 29. It certainly seems applicable to da Costa.

Da Costa to Pallas , 18 January 1765, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 280/175.

For the awful episode with Platt see Platt Joseph to Collinson Peter , BL Add. MS 28727 f. 98/99, which incorporates da Costa's verbatim replies; for the Pennant affair see Pennant to da Costa , Pennant Papers, Warwickshire County RO, TP408 letter 100, verso.

There is no biography or DNB life. The late Elizabeth and Joseph Hall embarked on a biography but did not publish it. Constable's correspondence with da Costa is in the Hull City Library and Humberside Archives (ERAS). Much information is also found in the Burton Constable Muniments, Yorkshire. We are grateful to Jasmine Myers who permitted the use of Constable's herbarium at Burton Constable and entry to the Humberside Archives before it was moved to ERAS. Constable's brother Marmaduke inherited some of the collections of Joseph Banks, FRS, which were dispersed in the early nineteenth century.

Rousseau's almost daily correspondence with Constable in May 1770, when Constable was twenty-nine, documents the near-visit; see Leigh R. A. (ed.), Correspondance complète de Jean Jacques Rousseau (51 vols, The Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1981), xxxviii, 12 May – 12 October 1770, pp. 9–123 passim, suggesting that the purpose of Rousseau's visit would be botanical. The portrait of Constable dressed as Rousseau is in the Leeds City Art Gallery and was reproduced in Country life.

See Rousseau G. S. , The letters and papers of Sir John Hill (New York, 1982), 203, for the references to Lord Petre.

See Royal Society Minutes, 4 May 1775.

See da Costa to Constable , 4 July 1764, ERAS, Estate Archive, DDCC/145/1.

Hill published The vegetable system (1759–75) in 26 vols under the patronage of the Earl of Bute and with the aid of pre-paid subscribers.

Nowhere in the Constable archives have we found any mention of the amounts involved.

Da Costa to Green , 5 May 1747, BL Add. MS 28537 f 284/304.

Da Costa , A natural history of fossils, i/1 (London, 1757), Preface, p. iii.

Ibid., p. iv.

Ibid., pp. iv–v.

Ibid., pp. v–vi.

Lyon John Sloan Philip R. (eds), From natural history to the history of nature: Readings from Buffon and his critics (Notre Dame, 1981), 107.

Lyon Sloan , op. cit. (ref. 73), 115.

Da Costa to Borlase , 3 January 1760, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 315/108.

Da Costa to Ascanius Pierre , 26 September 1760, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 96/131.

The monthly review, xix (1758), 444–54.

Da Costa to Knowlton Thomas , 20 July 1758, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 82/58.

Porter , op. cit. (ref. 2), 115.

“An Account of the Impressions of Plants on the Slates of Coals: In a Letter to the Right Honourable George Earl of Macclesfield, President of the R.S. from Mr. Emanuel Mendes da Costa, F.R.S.”, Philosophical transactions, 1 (1757–58), 228–35, p. 232.

Da Costa to Hale J. , 30 April 1784, BL Add. MS 28538 f. 366/3.

Ibid.

Baker Henry , “A letter … concerning an extraordinary large fossil Tooth of an elephant”, Philosophical transactions, xliii (1745), 331–5. As Rappaport notes, “not a single element in [Baker's] tissue of suppositions was new. Among British writers alone, Hooke and Edmond Halley, Thomas Burnet and Abraham de la Pryme had discussed all these conjectures”. Rappaport , op. cit. (ref. 2), 118.

Da Costa to Hale J. , 30 April 1784, BL Add. MS 28538 f. 366/3.

Stukeley's diary, 23 January 1752, Bod. MS Eng. misc. e.132 ff. 18–19.

Da Costa , “Minutes of the Royal Society”, 22 March 1759, BL Add. MS Eg. 2381 f. 87.

Borlase to da Costa , 21 July 1759, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 308/100.

Da Costa to Borlase , 23 August 1759, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 311/103.

Needham to da Costa , 22 October 1749, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 207/73. Needham (1713–81) was an English Catholic. He became a priest in France in 1738, and was elected FRS in 1747; he worked with Buffon in Paris, retiring to the English seminary there in 1767, and was chosen a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1768.

Da Costa to Needham , 18 October 1749, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 209/75.

Da Costa to Watkins , 9 November 1749, Bod. MS Eng. Lett. c.368 f. 74.

Watkins to da Costa , 14 November 1749, Bod. MS Eng. Lett. c.368 ff. 72–73.

Watkins to da Costa , 29 April 1752, Bod. MS Eng. Lett. c.368 f. 76.

In a letter to Watkins of 16 January 1750, da Costa explained that though he had selected over a hundred “curious & rare fossils he had heard the Museum had no cases for them, and had for this reason not sent them”. Da Costa to Watkins , 16 January 1750, BL Add. MS 28544 f. 614/181.

Borlase to da Costa , 25 March 1752, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 288/75.

Da Costa to Borlase , 15 February 1759, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 306/97.

Borlase to da Costa , 19 March 1759, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 307/98.

Da Costa to Borlase , 14 July 1759, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 308/99.

Da Costa to Borlase , 3 January 1760, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 315/107.

BL Add MS 29867 f. 43; Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 8.

Da Costa to Chandler Revd Samuel , 19 January 1763, BL Add. MS 28536 f. 36/40.

Da Costa to Bolton Thomas Mr , florist at Worraly Clough near Halifax, 10 March 1764, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 239/345.

Da Costa to Borlase , 19 March 1765, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 351/160.

Da Costa to Needham , 9 December 1766, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 226/96.

Needham to da Costa , 12 February 1767, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 229/101.

Royal Society, Council Minutes, v, ff. 220–2; these were items da Costa claimed as his own on his expulsion from the Society.

Da Costa to Borlase , 12 October 1765, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 356/165.

Da Costa to Borlase , 19 March 1765, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 351/160.

Da Costa to Borlase , 25 February 1766, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 613/171.

Ibid. Such an MS is not recorded in the Royal Society's archives.

Da Costa to Borlase , 14 October 1766, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 364/174.

Da Costa to Hunter William , 10 January 1771, Spencer-Perceval Papers, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; quoted in Brock, op. cit. (ref. 2), 260.

Dru Drury to Pallas, 12 November 1767, quoted in Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 19. Da Costa told Hunter “my intended book was to consist of four plates to each number …”, da Costa to William Hunter, 10 January 1771, Spencer-Perceval Papers, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; quoted in Brock, op. cit. (ref. 2), 260. The completed plates were among da Costa's possessions auctioned after his fall from grace.

On this episode, and an account of Hill's life and correspondence, see Rousseau , op. cit. (ref. 63); the second volume of this biography is in progress.

Da Costa to Needham , 7 July 1747, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 200/64.

Da Costa to Ascanius Pierre , 26 September 1760, BL Add. MS 28535 f. 96/132.

Da Costa to Reinhart John Andrea Gerard , a German apothecary whom da Costa had met in England, 2 March 1762, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 70/98.

From two different sources: da Costa to Knowlton Thomas , 8 February 1757, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 74/49; da Costa to Waring Richard Hill , 28 September 1780, BL Add. MS 28544 f. 540/77.

See Rousseau Haycock , “Voices” (ref. 1). In both our studies we have been aiming to document the existence of a wing of naturalists within the Royal Society at mid-century, but we do not claim that excess was its common, even communal, hallmark more so than excess would have been found in other circles of the Society. A comparative study of various circles at mid-century could well reveal and document that excess was rampant but we do not have the evidence to show it. What we do claim is that English life at large was then permeated with excess and that it spilled over to its professional foundations, and even ruined the lives of some of the naturalist groups and of its luminaries, such as da Costa.

David Allen makes the point in The naturalist in Britain: A social history (London, 1976), 29.

See Rousseau , op. cit. (ref. 63).

Rousseau , op. cit. (ref. 63), letters 127–8.

Da Costa , op. cit. (ref. 116).

Rousseau , op. cit. (ref. 63), letters 180, 183.

Rousseau , op. cit. (ref. 63), letter 183.

Da Costa to Witchell George , Mathematical Master of the Royal Academy at Portsmouth, 11 July 1767, BL Add. MS 28544 f. 646/223; da Costa to Priestley Joseph , 14 June 1766, in Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 541. According to da Costa's letter to Priestley the lump sum in 1766 was 25 guineas, by 1767 and the letter to Witchell it was 31 guineas.

Pennant to da Costa , 2 July 1762. Pennant Papers, Warwickshire County RO, TP408, letter 165.

Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 8.

See Katz , op. cit. (ref. 2), 243–4, 270–3. Imprudent financial speulations led to Salvador's own ruin, and in 1784 he emigrated to extensive estates he had previously purchased in South Carolina, where he died. Salvador clearly forgave his cousin his indiscretions, as there exist friendly letters between the two men, including some interesting remarks on America, in BL Add. MS 28542 ff. 176/90 and 177/93.

Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 9.

Royal Society, Minutes of Council, v (1763–68), ff. 211–13. This meeting is incorrectly cited as having taken place on 3 June 1767 in Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 9.

Penneck to Borlase , 19 December 1767, quoted in Pool P. A. S. , William Borlase (Truro, 1986), 238–9.

Borlase to Lyttelton , 28 December 1767, quoted in Pool , op. cit. (ref. 132), 239.

Lyttelton to Borlase , no details given, quoted in Pool , op. cit. (ref. 132), 239; Pennant Thomas to Banks Joseph , 25 December 1767, quoted in Whitehead, op. cit. (ref. 2), 9. Stukeley William , from whom we would also have expected comment on his friend's disgrace, had died in 1765.

Needham to da Costa , 15 February 1768, BL Add. MS 28540 f. 236/113.

Da Costa to Anderson John , 14 July 1768, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 21/27.

The gentleman's magazine, lxxxii/1 (1812), 24.

Details of da Costa's case are in the Public Record Office, PRIS. 4, 4: 203. See Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 10.

Da Costa to Alchorne Stanesby , 21 February 1769, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 5/6.

See Byrne Richard , Prisons and punishments of London (London, 1989), 61, 107–9, and Cockburn J. S. (ed.), Crime in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1977). A more famous inmate during da Costa's stay was John Wilkes, who was briefly imprisoned at the King's Bench in 1770. The prison was destroyed during the Gordon Riots in 1780 but rebuilt shortly after.

Da Costa to Alchorne Stanesby , 21 February 1769, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 5/6.

Da Costa to Hawkeens John , 20 March 1770, BL Add. MS 28538 f. 459/119. Da Costa's interior dialogue with himself about “the Almighty” occurred a few weeks earlier, in January, and was recounted in a letter dated 3 January 1770 to Frank Nicholls; see Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 760.

Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 760, da Costa to Nicholls Frank , 3 January 1770.

Da Costa to Hawkeens John , 20 March 1770, BL Add. MS 28538 f. 459/119.

Cronstedt A. , An essay towards a system of mineralogy … translated from the original Swedish, with notes by Gustav von Engestrom. To which is added, a treatise on the pocket-laboratory…. The whole revised and corrected, with some additional notes, by Emanuel Mendes da Costa (London, 1770); Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 12.

Drury Dru to Pallas , 14 January 1770, letter-book of Dru Drury, British Museum (Natural History), quoted in Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 13.

Da Costa to Hawkeens John , 7 March 1771, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 460/121.

Hawkeens to da Costa , 2 April 1771, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 461/122.

Public Record Office, PRIS. 4, 4: 203, marginal note; Whitehead , op. cit. (ref. 2), 13.

See Nichols , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 516–19 for the reasons and analysis; Da Costa's own explanation is found in a letter to Professor Thomas Hornsby, 5 May 1774, in Nichols, iv, 518.

Borlase to da Costa , 13 July 1772, quoted in Pool , op. cit. (ref. 132), 269–70.

Da Costa to Pennant Thomas , 16 January 1773, Pennant Papers, Warwickshire County RO, TP408, letter 178.

Da Costa to Lever Ashton , 20 August 1774, BL Add. MS 28539 f. 48/161.

Da Costa to Waring Richard Hill , 29 January 1778, BL Add. MS 28544 f. 499/18.

The monthly review, lvi (1777), 96.

Da Costa , Elements of conchology (London, 1776), 2.

Ibid., 10, 19.

Ibid., pp. iv–v.

Ibid., 97–99.

Ibid., 132–3.

Ibid., 181.

Da Costa , Historia naturalis (ref. 52), Preface, p. v.

Ibid., Preface, p. vi.

Ibid., Preface, p. viii.

Da Costa to Pennant , 9 February 1763, Pennant Papers, Warwickshire County RO, TP408, letter 175.

Da Costa to Waring , 23 October 1779, BL Add. MS 28544 f. 517/44. He noted ruefully the following year that he printed “too many of his last book, viz 750 copies”. Da Costa to Waring , 23 March 1780, BL Add. MS 28544, f. 527/58. Da Costa's thousands of letters contain many such persecutory revelations to his correspondents, for which reason we think an approach such as Michael Hunter's for Boyle possible; see Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Da Costa to Waring , 23 March 1780, BL Add. MS 28544 f. 527/58. Waring — Who lived in Flintshire — Mentioned that he had heard that Hill's widow was considering publishing a new edition of this work. Hill himself had been dead for five years.

Da Costa to Edwards George , 14 and 26 August 1783, BL Add. MS 28536 f. 8/255; this was not the naturalist (see ref. 12) but George Edwards, M.D. (1752–1823), a prolific writer on “human economy”, a physician in London and then at Barnard Castle in Yorkshire where one of da Costa's letters to him is addressed. This Edwards, unrelated to the naturalist of the previous generation, was an ardent Gallican supporter and persuaded of his political mission to proselytize among the English, yet medically an obscure figure. His interest in the French Revolution gave rise to notions doubting his sanity; he published several addresses in French on France's “Nouvelle Constitution”. The other Edwards (1694–1773) was an altogether different character towards whom da Costa had been less inimical than the now dead Hill had been in the 1750s, and with whom he openly discussed scientific subjects. Hill, on the other hand, had been ravished by jealousy of Edwards's productivity at the time Hill was canvassing for support of the Royal Society. When Edwards published his third volume of natural history in 1750, The history of birds, Hill satirized him as a foreigner from the Americas and lampooned his flawed theories in a full-length novel, The adventures of Mr George Edwards, a creole (London, 1751); see especially the scenes about robin red-breasts and other birds in Chapter 2, “An Ichthyological Dissertation upon a dry'd Whiting”. It is crucial to keep the two Edwards distinct.

Da Costa to Edwards George , 7 February 1785, BL Add. MS 28536 f. 11/259.

For the significance of publication in da Costa's milieu see Rousseau G. S. , “‘Stung into action …’: Medicine, professionalism, and the news”, in Raymond J. (ed.), News, newspapers and society in early modern Britain (London, 1999), 177–81, 202–3, and Porter , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Da Costa to Reinhart John Andrea Gerard , 2 March 1762, BL Add. MS 28534 f. 70/98.

See Rousseau , op. cit. (ref. 51), 76–94, for discussion of Linnaeus's bisexual system by naturalists Pulteney Hill Richard There is no evidence whatever that the ageing da Costa read any of Erasmus Darwin's “sexual obscenities” in his (da Costa's) last few years of life, 1786–91, not even the Loves of the plants (1789).

An exception is Anne Goldgar's instructive Impolite learning (New Haven, 1995) dealing with the animosity of different scientific groups viewed from a Continental perspective.

As found, for example, in the broad discussion of the cultures of natural history in Jardine (eds), op. cit. (ref. 2).