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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2020
From 8 February until at least 19 April 1686, the Dublin Philosophical Society was occupied with a prodigiously talented young girl whose name was never recorded. She was less than eleven years of age, but still much older than the society itself, which had begun meeting less than three years previously. Although one of many wonders engaging the curiosity of the nascent society, this girl served a surprising range of purposes, so that accompanying her anonymity was a curious malleability. Pressed into several different roles and identities, her exploitation affords a glimpse into the various qualities that could make a spectacle useful in a philosophical climate that was unique among the British Isles. The use of this girl therefore not only sheds light on the needs of a less familiar learned society, but also shows how these could differ from those of its better-understood counterparts. For a period of time, it was the versatility not of the gentlemen in Dublin, but of the prodigy they used, that best served this group on the periphery.
I would like to thank Prof. Ofer Gal and Dr Elena Serrano for some helpful conversations on material discussed in this article. Two anonymous referees and Amanda Rees, the editor of the BJHS, also provided useful comments and suggestions.
1 For this first recorded appearance and those afterwards see the minutes reproduced with helpful annotations in Papers of the Dublin Philosophical Society: 1683–1709 (ed. Hoppen, K. Theodore), 2 vols., Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2001, vol. 2, pp. 79–80Google Scholar.
2 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 79.
3 This version of events is set out in Molyneux, William, ‘A Continuation of the Account of Our Family, Written by Me to My Brother, in July, 1694’, in Molyneux, Capel and Molyneux, Thomas Phillips (eds.), An Account of the Family and Descendants of Thomas Molyneux, Kt. Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, Evesham: J. Agg., 1820, p. 64Google Scholar. For discussion of this account see Hoppen, Theodore K., The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century: A Study of the Dublin Philosophical Society, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970, p. 23Google Scholar.
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11 For an identification of her father as ‘Mr Lidcote’ see Aubrey, John, Aubrey on Education: A Hitherto Unpublished Manuscript by the Author of Brief Lives (ed. Stephens, J. E.), London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 98–99Google Scholar.
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16 For these see the discussion below.
17 For more on Tolet (sometimes spelled ‘Tollet’) see the biographical notes in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, p. 933; and Taylor, E.G.R., The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 270Google Scholar.
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21 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 84.
22 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 86.
23 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 86.
24 Birch, Thomas, The History of the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge, from its First Rise. In which the Most Considerable of those Papers communicated to the Society, which have hitherto not been published, are inserted in their proper order, as a Supplement to the Philosophical Transactions, 4 vols., London, 1756, vol. 4, p. 468Google Scholar.
25 For the minutes of the Oxford Philosophical Society recording receipt of the Dublin minutes see Gunther, R.T., Early Science in Oxford, 14 vols., Oxford: Butler and Tanner Ltd, 1939, vol. 4, pp. 173, 179Google Scholar.
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29 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), p. 81.
30 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), p. 85.
31 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), p. 81.
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38 For the attention that these generated see Royal Society Archives EL/P1, no. 36, f. 59, Bodleian Library Lyell Empt. 32, ff. 62–63v.
39 After a long hiatus, Petty seems to have resumed work on these experiments in 1684. For example, see British Library Add MS 72855, f. 34.
40 Petty, op. cit. (36), pp. 90–91. Although it is worth pointing out that Petty's experiments were anything but ‘cheap’.
41 For the coolness displayed towards Petty's projects by the Royal Society see, for example, the minutes for 27 May 1663 in Birch, op. cit. (24), vol. 1, p. 249.
42 Lord Clarendon to John Evelyn, 14 February 1685/1686, in Singer, op. cit. (33), vol. 1, p. 250.
43 Singer, op. cit. (33), p. 250.
44 Petty, op. cit. (36), p. 91.
45 William Molyneux to John Flamsteed, 13 May 1684, in Forbes, Eric G., Forbes, Maria, Murdin, Lesley and Willmoth, Frances (eds.), The Correspondence of John Flamsteed, the First Astronomer Royal, 3 vols., Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1997, vol. 2, p. 166Google Scholar; Hoppen, op. cit. (3), p. 90.
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53 Hooke, op. cit. (52), A2r.
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58 Molyneux, op. cit. (3), pp. 63–64; Hoppen, op. cit. (3), p. 23.
59 St George Ashe, ‘St George Ashe's speech to Lord Clarendon (15 January 1685–6)’, in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, pp. 898–900, analogy at 899. For discussion see Hoppen, op. cit. (3), p. 93. For an example of the supposed rarity of these animals in Ireland see the table of ‘Rare animals in Ireland’ reproduced with notes in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 464. For the appearance of this belief in conceptions of the Anglican minority generally see Smyth, Jim, ‘“Like amphibious animals”: Irish Protestants, ancient Britons, 1691–1707’, Historical Journal (1993) 36(4), pp. 785–797CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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65 Ashe, op. cit. (64), p. 605.
66 St George Ashe to William Musgrave, 18 March 1685/1686, in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, pp. 606–607, 605; Hoppen, op. cit. (3), p. 36.
67 Ashe, op. cit. (66).
68 Ashe, op. cit. (66), pp. 606–607.
69 Ashe, op. cit. (66), p. 607.
70 Ashe, op. cit. (66), p. 607.
71 Ashe, op. cit. (66), p. 606.
72 Hooke, op. cit. (52), A1r.
73 Boyle, op. cit. (56), p. 166.
74 St George Ashe to William Musgrave, 18 March 1685/1686, in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, p. 606. For references to the ‘globes’ see the minutes for 1 March in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, p. 81.
75 Hooke, op. cit. (52), A1r; Lawson, op. cit. (52).
76 Hoppen, op. cit. (3), p. 157.
77 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 57; Hoppen, op. cit. (3), p. 157.
78 Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 79.
79 Sprat, op. cit. (55), p. 110.
80 William Molyneux to Edmond Halley, 8 April 1686, in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, pp. 614–618.
81 Molyneux, op. cit. (80), p. 615.
82 Molyneux, op. cit. (80), p. 615.
83 Molyneux, op. cit. (80), p. 615.
84 Thomas Gale to St George Ashe, 27 March 1686, in Hoppen, op. cit. (1), vol. 2, p. 608.
85 Aubrey, op. cit. (11), pp. 98–99.
86 See, for example, Coppola, Al, The Theatre of Experiment: Staging Natural Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britiain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, esp. pp. 33–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daston and Park, op. cit. (12), pp. 303–313. The subsection head is from Ashe, op. cit. (59), p. 899.
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90 Mazzotti, The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, op. cit. (8), p. 19.
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92 Petty, op. cit. (36), p. 91.
93 Ashe, op. cit. (59), pp. 898–900.
94 Ashe, op. cit. (59), pp. 899–900.
95 For reports of this see, for example, Aubrey's, John Brief Lives with an Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers (ed. Bennett, Kate), 2 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, vol. 1, pp. 44–47Google Scholar; BL Add MS 72850, particularly ff. 110–111v.
96 Lord Clarendon to John Evelyn, 14 February 1685/1686, in Singer, op. cit. (33), vol. 1, p. 251.
97 Clarendon, op. cit. (96), pp. 250–251.
98 John Evelyn to the Countess of Clarendon, 14 August 1686, in Chambers, Douglas D.C. and Galbraith, David (eds.), The Letterbooks of John Evelyn, 2 vols., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014, vol. 2, p. 804Google Scholar.
99 The Countess of Clarendon to John Evelyn, 29 January 1686/1687, in Singer, op. cit. (33), vol. 2, p. 149.
100 It was also helpful in firming up relations with the Royal Society, since it nudged Clarendon into telling Evelyn, ‘they deserve the patronage of your society at London, and all the encouragement you can give them’. For more on this point see Clarendon, op. cit. (96), p. 251.
101 Clarendon, op. cit. (96), p. 251.
102 It is difficult to find any mention of her after appearing in the Countess of Clarendon's letter to John Evelyn of 29 January 1686/1687, for which see Clarendon, op. cit. (99), p. 149.
