Restoration Ideologies and the Royal Society

Jacob J. R. , “Restoration, reformation and the origins of the Royal Society”, History of science, xiii (1975), 155–76 (hereafter Jacob, “Restoration and the Royal Society”).

Ibid.

Sprat Thomas , A history of the Royal Society (London, 1667), 94 (hereafter Sprat, History); and Shapiro Barbara , John Wilkins, 1614–1672 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), 203–4.

Hall A. Rupert , and Marie Boas Hall (eds), The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (Madison, Wisconsin, and London, 1965–; hereafter CHO), ii, 320–1; Oldenburg to Boyle , London, 24 November 1664.

The others might have included Sir William Petty and John Wallis. For Petty see Birch Thomas , The history of the Royal Society (4 vols, London, 1756–7; hereafter Birch, History), ii, 47; for Wallis, The Royal Society of London, Letter-Book W.1.12, Wallis to Moray.

Evelyn , Apologie for the Royal Party (London, 1659); and Davies Godfrey , The restoration of Charles II, 1658–1660 (Oxford, 1969), 316.

See ref. 14 below.

Jacob , “Restoration and the Royal Society”, 169–70.

Ibid., 158–63.

Matthew Wren dedicated his attack on Harrington, Monarchy asserted (Oxford, 1659), to his Oxford associate John Wilkins, one of the principal founders of the Royal Society. For Sprat's strictures against the republicans see Sprat , History, 429–30; for Boyle's, Jacob J. R. , “Boyle's circle in the Protectorate: Revelation, politics and the millennium”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxviii (1977), 131–40.

Jacob , “Restoration and the Royal Society”, 156–8.

Sprat , History, 32–34, 62–64, 73–75, 426–7.

Davies , op. cit. (ref. 6), 316–17.

Wren Christopher , Parentalia: Or memoria of the family of the Wrens (London, 1750), 196–7.

Jones J. R. , The first Whigs (Oxford, 1970), 214–15.

Kenyon John , The popish plot (London, 1972); and Miller John , Popery and politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge, 1973), ch.8.

Jones , op. cit. (ref. 15); and Pocock J. G. A. , The Machiavellian moment (Princeton, 1975; hereafter Pocock, Moment), 405–22.

Miller , op. cit. (ref. 16), 169–71.

Ibid., 171–3; Schwoerer Lois , No standing armies! (Baltimore, 1974); and Ferguson] Robert , An appeal from the country to the city (London, 1679), 2.

Ibid.; and Pocock , Moment, 412–13.

Kenyon J. P. , The Stuart constitution (Cambridge, 1969), 388–9.

[Ferguson] , op. cit. (ref. 19), 1; Nalson John , The present interest of England: Or a confutation of the Whiggish conspirators anti-monyan principle (London, 1683), 28, 34, 43; and Furley O. W. , “The Whig Exclusionists: Pamphet literature in the Exclusion campaign 1679–1681”, The Cambridge historical journal, xiii (1957), 24.

Houghton John , A collection of letters for the improvement of husbandry and trade (2 vols, London, 1681–3; hereafter Houghton, Collection), i, 23–27.

Child] [Josiah , A treatise wherein is demonstrated: I. That the East India trade is the most national of all foreign trades, ii. That the clamors … made against the present Company are sinister, selfish and groundless (London, 1681); The loyal Protestant , no. 51 (30 August 1681); and The loyal Protestant and true domestick intelligence, no. 143 (18 April 1682), no. 152 (9 May 1682), no. 233 (14 November 1682). These last two citations refer to Tory newspapers.

Houghton , Collection , ii, 119–21, 134–5, 138–41; The Protestant (domestick) intelligence, no. 103 (8 March 1681), and no. 105 (15 March 1681); and [Ferguson], op. cit. (ref. 19), 2.

Birch , History, iv, 5–6.

Houghton , Collection, i, 31–32.

Birch Thomas (ed.), The Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle (5 vols, London, 1744; hereafter WRB), v, 508; Beale to Boyle Robert , Yeovil, 8 July 1682.

Houghton , Collection, ii, 97.

Ibid., 116.

Ibid., 117.

Ibid., 113–14.

Ibid., 114.

Ibid., 119–20.

Ibid., 121, 132, 134–5, 138–9.

Ibid., 128–9, 132–3.

Ibid., i, 25–26. For the development of this view among Houghton and his contemporaries see Appleby Joyce , Economic thought and ideology in seventeenth-century England (Princeton, N. J., 1978), chs 3, 5 and 7.

Houghton , Collection, ii, 97–98.

Robbins Caroline , The eighteenth-century commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 37; Pocock , Moment, 405–22; and Jones , op. cit. (ref. 15), 214.

Pocock J. G. A. , The ancient constitution and the feudal law (New York, 1967), ch. viii. Also see Weston Corinne , “Legal sovereignty and the Brady controversy”, The historical journal, xv (1972), 409–32.

For others see the Tory newspaper The true domestick intelligence, or, news both from city and country, no. 22 (19 September 1679), and no. 24 (26 September 1679), for advertisements of the work of Fellows of the Royal Society (Nehemiah Grew, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, John Evelyn, Plot, and Joseph Moxon are named) and others associated with it (Andrew Yarranton, for example, whose connection with the Royal Society is treated in Sharp Lindsay , “Timber, science and economic reform”, Forestry, xlviii (1975), 61), countering the Whig argument that England had lost its ancient balance and was on the brink of ruin. For the continuation of this Tory counterattack in the 1680s see, besides Houghton Sheridan Thomas , A learned discourse on various subjects (London, 1685); and Pett Peter , The happy future state of England (London, 1688). At the Restoration Pett was a close friend of Boyle and one of the ideologues of the Royal Society (Jacob, “Restoration and Royal Society”, 156–62); Sheridan was elected frs in 1679. I am now writing a book treating more fully of the theme of this essay.

For two other examples see: Rattansi P. , “Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution”, Ambix, xi (1964), 24–32; and Jacob J. R. , “The ideological origins of Robert Boyle's natural philosophy”, Journal of European studies, ii (1972), 1–21.

Kenyon , The Stuart constitution, 472.

Shapiro B. J. , “Latitudinarianism and science in seventeenth-century England”, Past and present, no. 40 (1968), 16–41, reprinted in Webster Charles (ed.), The intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century (London, 1974), 286–316.

Jacob , “Restoration and Royal Society”, 155–76; and Jacob J. R. , “The New England Company, the Royal Society and the Indians”, Social studies of science, v (1975), 450–5.

Houghton , Collection, i, 53–54, and ii, 134–5, 138–9.

See, for instance, his letters in CHO.

WRB, v, 508–10.

The true domestick intelligence, no. 22 (19 September 1679).

Jacob J. R. , “Robert Boyle and subversive religion in the early Restoration”, Albion, vi (1974), 275–93 (hereafter Jacob, “Boyle and subversive religion”).

Bonanate Ugo , Charles Blount (Florence, 1972); Redwood J. A. , “Blount, Deism and English free thought”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxv (1974), 490–98; and Harth John Phillip , Contexts of Dryden's thought (Chicago, 1968), ch. 3.

Jacob , “Boyle and subversive religion”, 284–92.

Jacob J. R. , “Boyle's atomism and the Restoration assault on pagan naturalism”, Social studies of science, viii (1978), 211–33.

WRB, v, 508–10.

Burnet Gilbert , Some letters, containing an account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, &c. written … to T.H.R.B. [The Honourable Robert Boyle] (Amsterdam, 1686). See Jacob M. C. , “Millenarianism and science in late seventeenth-century England”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxvii (1976), 335–41, for Evelyn's slippage away from James.

The 1688 edition of The happy future state of England is dedicated to the Earl of Sunderland. Printed with it is Pett's The obligation resulting from the Oath of Supremacy to assist and defend the pre-eminence or prerogative of the dispensative power belonging to the King, his heirs and successors, also published separately the year before. In a letter to the first Earl of Danby in February 1689 Pett says that the project of publishing the two works in one volume “occasioned my Lord Sunderlands giving a Verbal license for the whole …” (B.L. Add. MS 28053, fol. 390v).

The Royal Society of London, The Boyle Papers, xxxvi. For my interpretation of the allegory see my Robert Boyle and the English Revolution (New York, 1978), 93–96.

Jacob M. C. , The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976).