County Natural History: Indigenous Science in England, from Civil War to Glorious Revolution

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Notes

1 Poovey, Modern Fact, 9–13.

2 Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions, 64. Yeo cites, for instance, Bacon's Novum organum: ‘a store of natural history and experience as is required for the work of understanding, or of philosophy’: see Yeo, ‘Between Memory and Paperbooks’, 8.

3 Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, 32; Cook, ‘Cutting Edge’, 59–60.

4 Poovey, Modern Fact, 9.

5 For example: Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous; Vine, In Defiance.

6 Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous, 21–50, 116–151. Also see Pugliano, ‘Non-Colonial Botany’, 321–328.

7 See especially the seminal works of Elliott, The Old World and the New; Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions; Said, Orientalism. Recent works placing the history of science in a global context include: Cook, Matters of Exchange; Delbourgo and Dew, Science and Empire; Smith and Findlen, Merchants & Marvels; MacLeod, Nature and Empire; Schiebinger, Plants and Empire.

8 See especially Everitt, The Community of Kent; Change in the Provinces; and The Local Community.

9 Colman, Prose on Several Occasions, 54–55. On this see: Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 117.

10 Shepard and Withington, Communities. On news, see Bellany, Politics of Court Scandal; Raymond, Invention of the Newspaper. On population mobility see Coward, Social Change and Continuity, 7–9.

11 Woolf, The Social Circulation, 86–91. On chorography see: Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 105–148; Cormack, ‘Good Fences’, 657–658; Helgerson, ‘The Land Speaks’; Hall, ‘From Chronicle to Chorography’; McRae, God Speed, 231–226.

12 Adrian, Local Negotiations, 1–3, 179–181.

13 Plot, Of Oxfordshire, 13.

14 Braddick, God's Fury, xxii.

15 John Aubrey ‘The North Division of Wiltshire’, Aubrey Manuscripts 3, Bodleian Library, 148, 151, 181v. Hereafter Aubrey, ‘of Wiltshire’.

16 Thomas Ford to John Covel, n.d., Covel transcripts, Mm 6.50, Cambridge University Library, 204–205.

17 Donagan, War in England, 86.

18 Larminie, ‘Gentry Culture’, 124–125; Broadway, ‘No historie so meete’, 40; Mendyk, ‘Speculum Britanniae,’ 24.

19 Habington to Archer, 27 November 1642, Correspondence: Archer of Tamworth, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-Upon-Avon, DR37/2/87/103.

20 Saxton, Saxton's Survey, 10–15, 22.

21 Josten, Elias Ashmole, 1617–1692, vol. 4, 35–37, 43.

22 Gibson, ‘Dobson, William.’ Dobson was a well-known portrait painter.

23 Aubrey and Barber, Brief Lives, 8; ‘Osney Marina’; Varley, The Siege of Oxford, 66, 106.

24 Edward Steele's Parish Notes, vol. 1, 1712, Topographic Manuscripts gen. e. 79, Bodleian Library, 248v.

25 Hamper, Sir William Dugdale, 9.

26 Ibid., 72–73.

27 Broadway, ‘No historie so meete’, 50–51.

28 Mendyk, ‘Speculum Britanniae', 24; Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1, 3, 267, 487, 637.

29 Mendyk, ‘Speculum Britanniae', 173–175.

30 John Aubrey, ‘Monumenta Britannica’, Topographic Manuscripts gen. c. 24–5, Bodleian Library, vol. 1, 23. Hereafter Aubrey, ‘Monumenta Britannica’.

31 Aubrey, The Natural History of Wiltshire; Aubrey, Wiltshire: The Topographical Collections.

32 Thirsk, ‘Agricultural Innovations and their Diffusion’, 522–558.

33 Mendyk, ‘Speculum Britanniae', 139. Also see Webster, The Great Instauration, 479–483.

34 Tylden-Wright, John Aubrey: A Life, 124.

35 Aubrey, ‘of Wiltshire.’

36 Aubrey, ‘Monumenta Britannica,’ vol. 1, 23

37 Powell, John Aubrey and His Friends, 59–64.

38 Aubrey, ‘Monumenta Britannica’, vol. 1, 24.

39 Powell, John Aubrey and His Friends, 149.

40 Ibid., Appendix B: ‘Aubrey's Library’, 295–310.

41 For disinclination to print in the seventeenth century, see Love, The Culture and Commerce of Texts.

42 Aubrey, of Surrey.

43 Hall, ‘The Royal Society's Role’, 175–176; Goldberg, Writing Matter; Stewart and Wolfe, Letterwriting in Renaissance England; Schneider, The Culture of Epistolarity; Whyman, The Pen and the People.

44 Blakiston, ‘Pullen, Josiah (1631–1714)’.

45 ‘Dr. Plot to the Reverend Dr. John Fell’ in Gunther, Early Science in Oxford. Vol. 12, 337.

46 ‘Oxford testimonial to Dr. Plot’, in Gunther, Early Science in Oxford. Vol. 12, 345–346.

47 Burne, ‘Early Staffordshire Maps’, 70. Quote from Plot, of Stafford-shire, 61.

48 Much to the irritation of his correspondent Charles King. See ‘King to Plot, March 26 1684’, in Gunther, Early Science in Oxford. Vol. 12, 345–346. Charles King (dates unknown) was the chaplain and amanuensis of Walter Chetwynd, a Staffordshire gentleman – see Greenslade, The Staffordshire Historians, 41–49.

49 MacGregor, ‘The Ashmolean’, 30; Swann, Curiosities and Texts, 50–54. Also see Ovenell, The Ashmolean Museum, 1683–1894.

50 John Aubrey to Anthony Wood, 23 January 1693/4. Wood Manuscripts F39, Bodleian Library, 8.

51 Leigh, Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak, ‘The authors vindication of himself, from some calumnies lately cast upon him’, 191.

52 Bowen, Empiricism and Geographical Thought, 3.

53 Hunter, Establishing the New Science, 27; Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 18–25.

54 Leigh, ‘Concerning Digestion’; Plot and Bobart, ‘Effects of the Great Frost’, Plot, ‘Incombustible Cloth’; Aubrey, ‘Concerning a Medicated Spring’; Plot ‘Catalogue of Electrical Bodies’; Leigh, ‘Strange Epileptick Fits’; Morton, ‘Shells Digg'd Up’.

55 Birch, The History of the Royal Society, 272. The plan is now at Manuscripts General 131, Royal Society Archive, London, 67.

56 For wider discussion of styles of empiricism, see Pomata and Siraisi, Historia.

57 Daston and Galison, Objectivity, 42.

58 Ibid., 58.

59 Browne, Proposals by Way of a Contribution, 2.

60 Plot, of Oxford-shire, 93–94.

61 Morton, of Northampton-shire, 82.

62 Aubrey, of Surrey.

63 Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis, 150–1.

64 Aubrey, ‘of Wiltshire’, 8.

65 John Aubrey to Anthony Wood, 17 November 1670. Wood Manuscripts F39, Bodleian Library, 128.

66 For a wider discussion of the interrelationship between religion and the study of nature, see Mandelbrote, ‘The Uses of Natural Theology’, 451–480. And on the county natural historians in particular, see Beck, ‘Regional Natural History in England’, 8–25.

67 King James Bible, Psalms 92:95, 96.

68 Ibid., 77:11.

69 Plot, of Oxford-shire, 39.

70 Ibid., 60–61.

71 Ibid., 78.

72 Ibid., 69.

73 Morton, of Northampton-shire, ‘Preface'.

74 Aubrey, ‘Brief lives’, vol. 1, 232.

75 John Aubrey to Anthony Wood, 15 November 1673. Wood Manuscripts F39, Bodleian Library.

76 ‘Oxford testimonial to Dr. Plot’, in Gunther, Early Science in Oxford. Vol. 12, 345–346.

77 Morton, of Northampton-shire, 158.

78 Leigh, ‘Strange Epileptick Fits’, vol. 1, 6–8.

79 John Aubrey to Anthony Wood, 13 December 1673. Wood Manuscripts F39, Bodleian Library, 243.

80 John Morton to Hans Sloane, 1703/4. MS Sloane 4040, British Library, 154.

81 Yeo, ‘The Multitude of Books’.