Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T03:17:26.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Politics, Patronage and Newtonianism: the Cambridge Example

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John Gascoigne
John Gascoigne
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Oxford has never quite recovered from Matthew Arnold's description of his beloved alma mater as a ‘home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names and impossible loyalties’. 1 While in popular stereotype Oxford is associated with such movements as the laudians, the Jacobites and the tractarians, Cambridge, by contrast, is seen as the home of more radical and reformist creeds: the puritans, the latitudinarians and the academic reformers of the nineteenth century. Consequently, we are predisposed to think it unremarkable that in the early eighteenth century Cambridge almost totally shed the last vestiges of the scholastic academic order which had its origins in the Tiigh middle ages and, in its place, adopted a style of education which, in its overriding emphasis on mathematics, departed significantly from the curriculum offered at Oxford.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Arnold, M., Lectures and essays in criticism (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 290Google Scholar.

2 The correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. Turnbull, H. W. et al. (7 vols., Cambridge, 1959–1977), II, 415Google Scholar.

3 Hans, N., New trends in education in the eighteenth century (London, 1951), pp. 32–3Google Scholar.

4 Frank, R. G., ‘Science, medicine and the universities of early modern England: background and sources’, History of Science, XI (1973), 240Google ScholarPubMed.

5 Edleston, J., Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes… (London, 1850), pp. xcixcviiiGoogle Scholar and Westfall, R. S., ‘Isaac Newton in Cambridge: The Restoration university and scientific creativity’, in Culture and politics from puritanism to the Enlightenment, ed. Zagorin, P. (Berkeley, 1980), p. 161Google Scholar.

6 Hall, A. R., ‘Newton's first book’, Archives Internationales d'HistoiredesSciences, L (1960), 55–61Google Scholar.

7 King's College, Cambridge, Keynes Collection, MS 135.

8 Whiston, W., Memoirs of the life and writings of Mr. William Whiston… (London, 1753), p. 32Google Scholar.

9 Ibid. p. 36. Eagles, C. in her article, ‘David Gregory and Newtonian science’, British Journal for the History of Science, x (1977), 216–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar points out that Whiston was probably confusing David Gregory with his brother, James, whose disputation topics as Edinburgh's first professor of mathematics are still extant in Clare College (Whiston's college).

10 Keynes MS 133.

11 Ibid. MS 130.5.

12 Newton, Correspondence, III, 154–5.

13 Cohen, I. B., Introduction to Newton's ‘Principia’ (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 188–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Manchester Central Library, MS 922.3 N 21, fo. 7.

15 East Sussex Record Office, Danny MS 356.

16 Wordsworth, C., Social life at the English universities in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1874), p. 14Google Scholar.

17 Fowler, E., The principles and practices of certain moderate divines of the Church of England… (London, 1670) p. 10Google Scholar.

18 Burnet, G., History of his own times, ed. Airy, O. (2 vols., Oxford, 1897–1900), 1, 335Google Scholar.

19 Smith, G., Remarks upon the life of the most rev. Dr. John Tillotson compiled by Thomas Birch (Loodon, 1755), p 10Google Scholar.

20 P[fatrick], S., A brief account… (London, 1662), p. 3Google Scholar. T. A. Birrell in his preface to the Augustan Reprint Society edition of this work (Los Angeles, 1963) summarizes the strong case that exists for attributing the pamphlet to Patrick.

21 Baxter, R., Autobiography (London, 1931), p. 177Google Scholar.

22 Hearne, T., Remarks and collections (11 vols., Oxford, 1885–1921), 1, 92Google Scholar.

23 T. A. Birrell, preface to A brief account and C[ambridge] U[niversity] L[ibrary], Add. MS 20, fos. 23V–26V.

24 Nicolson, M. (ed.), The Conway letters… (New Haven, 1930), p. 243Google Scholar. See also Nicolson, M., ‘Christ's College and the Latitude-Men’, Modem Philology, xxvii 1929), 35–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Gascoigne, J., ‘“The holy alliance”: The rise and diffusion of Newtonian natural philosophy and latitudinarian theology within Cambridge from the Restoration to the accession of George II’, Cambridge Ph.D., 1980, pp. 16–21Google Scholar.

26 Sharpe, T., The life of John Sharp… (2 vols., London, 1825), 1, 15Google Scholar. John Moore was a beneficiary under More's will. Nicolson, Conway letters, 483.

27 Sharp, Sharp, 1, 24.

28 Robert Grove, a former fellow of St John's College, Cambridge who became bishop of Chichester after the Glorious Revolution attempted to counter such high church attacks on ‘this fearful Bugbear of Latitudinarianism’ in his Pamphlet, , Vindication of the conforming clergy from the unjust aspersions of heresie… (London, 1680), p. 25Google Scholar.

29 Bennett, G. V., ‘King William and the episcopate’, in Essays in modern English church history, ed. Bennett, G. V. and Walsh, J. D. (London, 1966), pp. 104–31Google Scholar .

30 William Whiston commented in his Memoirs (p. 27) ‘that the far greatest part of those of the university and clergy that then took the oaths to the government, seemed to me to take them with a doubtful conscience, if not against its dictates’.

31 Sykes, N., Church and state in England in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1934), p. 332Google Scholar.

32 Ken, T., Prose works, ed. Benham, W. (London, 1889), p. 306Google Scholar.

33 Birch, T., Life of the most rev. Dr. John Tillotson (London, 1752), p. 324Google Scholar.

34 Wordsworth, Social life, pp. 32–3.

35 Bennett, G. V., The tory crisis in church and state 1688–1730: the career of Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975), p. 47Google Scholar.

36 Comber, T., The autobiographies and letters…, Surtees Soc, Pubs., CLVI–CLVII (2 vols., Durham, 1946–1947), 11, 193Google Scholar.

37 Bennett, Tory crisis, pp. 48–9.

38 Every, G., The high church party 1688–1718 (London, 1956), p. 101Google Scholar.

39 Bahlman, D. W. R., The moral revolution of 1688 (New Haven, 1957), pp. 87–90Google Scholar.

40 McAdoo, H. R., The spirit of anglicnism. A survey of anglican theological method in the seventeenth century (London, 1965), p. 175Google Scholar.

41 Jacob, M. C., The Newtonians and the English revolution 1689–1720 (Hassocks, 1976), pp. 143–61Google Scholar.

42 Patrick, Brief account, p. 3.

43 The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. , A. R. and Hall, M. B. (10 vols. to date, Madison, 1965-), VI, 372Google Scholar. (Cited in Hunter, M., Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), p. 118Google Scholar.) John North, master of Trinity College, 1677–83, also noted that ‘it hath been observed that the Latitudinarians are generally Cartesians’. B[ritish] L[ibrary], Add. MS 32, 514, fo. 176V.

44 Cragg, G. R., From puritanism to the age of reason (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 61Google Scholar 86 and McAdoo, Anglicanism, pp. 156–239.

45 Patrick, Thus Simon published a translation of Grotius's De veritate religionis Christianae in 1680Google Scholar.

46 Douglas, D. C., English scholars 1660–1730 (London, 1951), p. 322Google Scholar.

47 Birch, Tillotson, p. 349.

48 Sharp, Sharp, 1, 10.

49 CUL, MS Dd. 14.9, fo. 53.

50 Oldenburg, Correspondence, VII, 494.

51 Every, High church party, p. 116.

52 Kenyon, J. P., Revolution principles. The politics of party 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 32–4Google Scholar.

53 This argument was also employed by Newton when, as M.P. for Cambridge, he attempted to convince the university of the validity of the Revolutionary Settlement. Newton, Correspondence, 111, 12.

54 Bodleian Library, MS d. 1232, fos. 2, 3. In response to Patrick's arguments someone (probably the nonjuror, Francis Turner) has written on the back of the MS ‘Jewish Hypocrisy abt ye Oaths’.

55 J. P. Kenyon, Revolution principles, p. 22.

56 Birch, Tillotson, p. 277.

57 Cooper, C. H., Annals of Cambridge (5 vols., Cambridge, 1842–1908), IV, 2Google Scholar.

58 Hearne, Remarks, 1, 53. On John Laughton see Westfall, R. S., Never at rest; a biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 557–8Google Scholar.

59 Newton, Correspondence, III, 184.

60 Whiston, Memoirs, p. 24.

61 Sykes, N., ‘Queen Anne and the episcopate’, English Historical Review, L (1935), 451Google Scholar.

62 Hartshorne, A. (ed.), Memoirs of a royal chaplain, 1720–1763: the correspondence of Edmund Pyle…with Samuel Kerrick (London, 1905), p. 53Google Scholar.

63 Masters, R., History of the college of Corpus Christi…, ed. Lamb, J. (London, 1831), p. 210Google Scholar.

64 Disney, J., Memoirs of the life and writings of Arthur Ashley Sykes (London, 1785), p. 3Google Scholar.

65 R. Masters, Corpus, p. 372.

66 A. Hartshorne, Memoirs, p. 53.

67 Whiteside, D. T. (ed.), The mathematical papers of Isaac Newton (7 vols. to date, Cambridge, 1967–), I, xxiii, n. 27Google Scholar.

68 Disney, Sykes, p. 5.

69 Tenison had earlier gained for Montagu, a member of an influential whig family, the post of clerk to the (royal) closet. Lambeth Palace, MS 942, fo. 107.

70 Keynes MS 130.

71 The correspondence of Richard Bentley, ed. Wordsworth, C. (2 vols., London, 1842), II, 448Google Scholar.

72 Monk, J. H., Life of Richard Bentley (2 vols., London, 1830–1833), 1, 38Google Scholar.

73 Bentley, Correspondence, 1, 186.

74 Whiston, Memoirs, p. 180.

75 Richard Laughton of Clare should be distinguished from John Laughton of Trinity. Though the two men shared similar political views there is no evidence that they were related.

76 Wardale, J. R. (ed.), Clare College, letters and documents (Cambridge, 1903), p. 128Google Scholar.

77 Edleston, Newton and Cotes, p. lxxiv.

78 Wardale, Clare documents, p. 125.

79 Ibid. p. 136.

80 Moore, C., John Moore (London, 1885), p. 20Google Scholar.

81 Ferguson, J., An eighteenth-century heretic, Dr Samuel Clarke (Kineton, 1976), p. 40Google Scholar.

82 Moore, J., Sermons on several subjects (London, 1715), pp. i–iiGoogle Scholar.

83 CUL, MS Oo. 6. 111, fos. 6–8.

84 Nichols, J., Literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century (9 vols., London, 1812–1815), 111, 328Google Scholar. Laughton's interest in Newton's work is also evident in his papers, which include a transcript of Newton's Lectiones opticae (which was on deposit in the university library) and an annotated copy of the Principia. Fellows' Library, Clare College, Cambridge, MSS P. 5.16 and G. 6.14. (I am grateful to the Fellows' Librarian of Clare for showing me the Laughton and Morgan MSS.)

85 Monk, Bentley, 1, 286–8.

86 BL, Stowe MS 750, fo. 219; MS 799, fo. 138.

87 Williams, B., Stanhope. A study in eighteenth-century war and diplomacy (Oxford; 1932), pp. 401, 456–8Google Scholar.

88 Clare Fellows' Library, MS G. 3.21.

89 See note 9.

90 Whiston, W., A vindication of the ‘New theory of the earth’ … (London, 1698), p. 8Google Scholar.

91 Whiston, W., A new theory of the earth… (London, 1708 ed), p. 7Google Scholar.

92 Whiston, Memoirs, p. 38.

93 Farrell, M., ‘The life and work of William Whiston’, University of Manchester Ph.D., 1973, p. i, 41Google Scholar.

94 Wardale, J. R., Clare College (London, 1899), p. 154Google Scholar.

95 Clare Fellows' Library, College letterbook, fos. 90b, 91 and Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R. 2.42, fo. 159.

96 Morgan's copy of the second edition of the Principia is still extant in Clare Fellows' Library (P. 5.13). After Cotes's death in 1716 Morgan received copies of many of his manuscripts from Cotes's cousin and executor, Robert Smith, along with copies of a number of Newton's manuscripts (ibid. N. 1.2.9, G. 3.14, Kk. 5.14).

97 Trinity College, MS R. 2.42, fo. 156.

98 Clare Fellows' Library, fo. 89 b.

99 Ibid. Morgan's library catalogue.

100 Rohault, J., Physica (London, 1718 edn)Google Scholar, preface p. [iii].

101 Ball, W. W. Rouse, A history of the study of mathematics at Cambridge (Cambridge, 1889), p. 75Google Scholar. Though Clarke's tutor, Ellis, may have played some part in encouraging Clarke's scientific interests since he was a friend of Newton and assisted him in his astronomical observations. Newton, Correspondence, 11, 347 n. 6. Ellis had previously taught Henry Wharton (MA Caius 1687), who appears to have been the only Cambridge undergraduate to examine Newton's mathematical manuscripts. Whiteside, Newton's mathematical papers, VI, xvi.

102 Whiston, W., Historical memoirs of the life of … Samuel Clarke (London, 1730), p. 6Google Scholar.

103 Hoskin, M. A., ‘“Mining all within”: Clarke's notes to Rohault's Traité de physique’, The Thomist, XXIV (1961), 353–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent discussion of Samuel Clarke's wider significance as a Newtonian apologist see Shapin, S., ‘Of Gods and kings: natural philosophy and politics in the Leibniz-Clarke disputes’, Isis, LXXII (1981), 187–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 Clare Fellows Library, G. 3.14.

105 Clarke, S., Works, with preface by Hoadly, B. (4 vols., London, 1738), 1, iGoogle Scholar.

106 Trinity College, R. 1. 54–8.

107 Wordsworth, Social life, p. 48.

108 [Middleton, C.], A full and impartial account of all the late proceedings in the University of Cambridge (London, 1719), p. 5Google Scholar and Monk, Bentley, 11, 12–13.

109 Ibid. 1, 290.

110 Bentley, Correspondence, 11, 448–9.

111 Cotes, R., Hydrostatical and pneumatical lectures, ed. Smith, R. (Cambridge, 1738)Google Scholar , preface, p. [i].

112 Trinity MS R. 2.42, fos. 162, 164, 166 and Edleston, Newton and Cotes, pp. 225–7.

113 Vigani had been resident in Cambridge since about 1683; a draft of one of Newton's letters from the early 1680s refers to the Italian chemist as one ‘who has been performing a course of Chymistry to several of our University much to their satisfaction…’. Westfall, Newton, p. 339. On Vigani see Coleby, L. M. J., ‘John Francis Vigani, first professor of chemistry in the University of Cambridge’, Annals of Science, viii (1952), 46–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114 Edleston, Newton and Cotes, p. 192.

115 Rowbottom, M., ‘The teaching of experimental philosophy in England, 1700–1730’, Acts of the eleventh international congress for the history of science, Warsaw, iv (1968), 50Google Scholar.

116 Tanner, J. R. (ed.), The historical register of the university of Cambridge… to the year 1910 (Cambridge, 1917), p. 86Google Scholar.

117 Newton, Correspondence, iv, 473.

118 Cohen, I. B., Introduction to Newton's ‘Principia’ (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 216–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Newton, I., Mathematical principles of natural philosophy…, translated Motte, A., ed. Cajori, F. (2 vols., Berkeley, 1974), p. xxxiiiGoogle Scholar.

120 Albury, R., ‘Halley's ode on the Principia of Newton and the Epicurean revival in England’ Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxix (1978), 24–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 Moore, L. T., Isaac Newton, 1642–1727: a biography (New York, 1934), p. 557Google Scholar.

122 Edleston, Newton and Cotes, p. 228.

123 Monk, Bentley, n, 168.

124 Wordsworth, C., Scholae academicae (Cambridge, 1877), pp. 66–7Google Scholar.

125 Guerlac, H., Essays and papers in the history of modern science (Baltimore, 1977), p. 221Google Scholar and Steffens, H. J., The development of Newtonian optics in England. (New York, 1977), pp. 27–8Google Scholar.

126 Dictionary of national biography, ‘James Jurin’.

127 Jurin, J., The minute mathematician… (London, 1735), p. 9Google Scholar.

128 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Hartshorne MS XI, fo. 46. (I am grateful to the Librarian of Corpus for permitting me to consult the Hartshome MSS.)

129 Hartshorne, Memoirs, p. 23.

130 Royal Society, MS LBC 16.175 and Edleston, Newton and Cotes, p. 229.

131 Stukeley, W., The family memoirs…, Surtees Soc. Pubs., LXXIII, LXXVI, LXXX (3 vols., Durham, 1882–1887), 1, 134Google Scholar.

132 Hales, S., Vegetable Staticks (London, 1961 edn), p. 112Google Scholar and Statical Essays (London, 1733), Intro., p. [ii]. See Clark-Kennedy, A. E., Stephen Hales, DD, FRS (Cambridge, 1929), p. 27Google Scholar.

133 Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Misc. c. 113: Danny to Stukeley, 23 Feb. 1724/5.

134 Collinson, P., ‘Stephen Hales’, Gentleman's Magazine, XXXIV (1764), 273–4Google Scholar.

135 Piggott, S., William Stukeley (Oxford, 1950), p. 116Google Scholar.

136 Hales, Essays, p. vi.

137 Stewart, L., ‘Samuel Clarke, Newtonianism and the factions of post-revolutionary England’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXXII (1981), 65Google Scholar.

138 Hearne, T., The remains (London, 1966 edn), p. 409Google Scholar. See also Wilde, C., ‘Hutchinsonianism, natural philosophy and religious controversy in eighteenth-century Britain’, History of Science, XVIII (1980), 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar where the anti-Newtonian movement of Hutchinsonianism is described as ‘a High Church response to this association between Low Church principles and Newtonian science’ (p.7).

139 Goldie, M., ‘The revolution of 1688 and the structure of political argument’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, LXXXIII (1980), 503Google Scholar.

140 Baker, T., Reflections on learning (London, 1727), p. 99Google Scholar.

141 Spears, M. K., ‘Matthew Prior's attitude towards natural science’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, LXIII (1948), 495Google Scholar.

142 Marsh, R., The vanity and danger of modern theories (Cambridge, 1699), pp. 3, 8Google Scholar.

143 Greene, R., Principles of natural philosophy (Cambridge, 1712)Google Scholar, preface.

144 On Greene's natural philosophy see Heimann, P. and McGuire, J., ‘Newtonian forces and Lockean powers: concepts of matter in eighteenth-century thought’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, III (1971), 254–61Google Scholar; Schofield, R., Mechanism and materialism. British natural philosophy in the age of reason (Princeton, 1970), pp. 117–21Google Scholar and Thackray, A., Atoms and powers. An essay on Newtonian matter-theory and the development of chemistry (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 126–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

145 Jacob, The English Newtonians, p. 228.

146 Winstanley, D. A., The University of Cambridge in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1922)Google Scholar.

147 In the mid-nineteenth century Godwin Smith, Oxford's Regius professor of history, argued that the Oxford Movement ‘broke up the hard crust of tradition, and launched men's minds onto new seas of speculation’. Roach, J. P. C., ‘The Victorian universities and the national intelligentsia’, Victorian Studies, III (1959), 140–1Google Scholar.