John Toland (1670–1722), Donegal heretic

¹ This paper was originally delivered in Trinity College, Dublin, on 18 Apr. 1968, as a lecture in the O’Donnell series. I am grateful to Professor H. F. Nicholl for allowing me to make use of his unpublished thesis, ‘The life and work of John Toland’, and to Mr W. Dieneman for allowing me to make use of his unpublished ‘Bibliography of John Toland’.

² Apology for Mr Toland (1697), pp 16–17; self-composed epitaph in J. Toland, Collection of several pieces, pp lxxxviii-ix, edited by Pierre Desmaiseaux (1726), who prefixes a life of Toland. A less reliable biography is that of [Curll, E.], Historical account of the life of John Toland (1722). The fullest contemporary biography is the introduction to Mosheim, J., Vindiciae antiquae Christianae disciplinae adversus celeberrimi viri Johannis Tolandi, Hiberni, Nazarenum (2nd ed., Hamburg, 1722). Local tradition makes his birth-place Ardagh in the parish of Clonmany ( Doherty, W.J., Inis-Owen and Tirconnell, p. 150). Another version is that he was born in France of an Irish father and a French mother and did not come to Ireland till he was ten or twelve years old (Edmund Gibson to Dr Charlett, 21 June 1694, in Bodl., Ballard collection, v, 27).

³ Apology for Mr Toland, p. 16. He says that he went from Redcastle (which is on Lough Foyle); his biographers have assumed that he went to school there, but he may have meant that it was the point of embarkation.

⁴ Corr. quoted in Heinemann, F. H., ‘John Toland and the age of reason’ and ‘John Toland, France, Holland, and Dr Williams’ in Rev. Eng. Studies, 20 (1944), pp 127–8; xxv (1949), pp 346–7. The certificate is in B.M., Add. MS 4465, f. 1.

⁵ Edinburgh university was under the control of the town council ( Grant, A., Story of the university of Edinburgh, 1, 183–4).

⁶ Coutts, J., History of the university of Glasgow, pp 160–4. For Scottish interest in radical thought at this time see Robbins, C., The eighteenth-century commonwealthman, pp 177 ff. In 1722 the Glasgow students showed their addiction to free thought by electing as rector Toland’s friend and patron, Lord Molesworth, who was active in supporting the rights of the students against the university authorities, possibly under Toland’s influence ( Coutts, , p. 201; H.M.C, var. 8, PP 347–52).

⁷ Toland, Christianity not mysterious, pp ix, xiii.

⁸ Collection, i, xi. For Williams see D.N.B. He had been a minister in Dublin, where his assistant was Gilbert Rule, who became rector of Edinburgh University shortly after Toland took his degree.

⁹ P. Coste to Locke, 23 June 1699, quoted by Heinemann, in Review of English studies, 25. 348–9.

¹⁰ Benjamin Furley to Locke, 19 Aug. 1693 (ibid.).

¹¹ Toland to—, Jan. 1694 (Collection, ii, 293).

¹² E. Lhwyd to J. Aubrey, 9 Jan. 1694 ( Gunter, R.T., Early science at Oxford, 14, 217).

¹³ Collection, i, 204–28. The Breton words were supplied by Dr Mill, and Toland himself gave what he thought to be the Irish equivalents. I am grateful to Professors R. Hemon and D. Greene of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies for examining the lists. Professor Hemon informs me that the first section (pp 205–11) consists of words taken from G. Quicquer, Dictionnaire et colloques françois et breton, first published in 1626 and frequently reissued. The edition used must have been prior to 1671, as the form of the words is late middle Breton; from 1671 editions of Quicquer were in modern Breton. The rare Breton word ‘tremenguae’, meaning field-path or stile, was wrongly rendered into French by Quicquer as ‘escalier’; Toland made the same error in giving the Irish equivalent as ‘dremire’. Toland’s second section (pp 212–19) contains a mixture of Breton and Welsh words, in which the spelling is in the early modern form of Breton. The spelling corresponds almost exactly with Grégoire de Rostrenen, Dictionnaire françois-celtique ou françois-breton, 1732. Grégoire’s dictionary contains a number of words marked ‘alias’ (his term for ‘obsolete’), which have long puzzled scholars. Several of these, both Breton and Welsh, occur in Toland’s second section. As Grégoire died before the end of the seventeenth century, they cannot be derived from the Collection of Toland’s pieces (published in 1726). Unless Mill got them from Grégoire himself, both must be derived from a common source. Toland’s third section (pp 220–6) contains religious texts, numerals and a few colloquial sentences, all taken from Quicquer. His Irish equivalents are of interest.

¹⁴ Lhwyd to Lister, n.d. (Gunter, p. 278).

¹⁵ —to Toland, 4 May 1694 (Collection, ii, 295).

¹⁶ Collection, i, 1–203. It was published in 1740 under the title A critical history of Celtic religion and reissued in 1814.

¹⁷ Ibid., pp 23, 104–5.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp 36–7, 51. The book of Ballymote disappeared from the college library some time before 1742 (T.C.D. MS D 1. 6, f. 1).

¹⁹ Davanzati, Bernardo, A discourse of coins; translated from the Italian by John Toland (1696). Locke’s copy of the book is in the Goldsmiths’ Library, University of London.

²⁰ Christianity not mysterious (1696), pp 102–3.

²¹ Ibid., pp 37–8, 147.

²² Browne, P., A letter in answer to a book intituled Christianity not mysterious, pp 9, 96, 148, 196.

²³ P.R.O., S.P. 32/11, ff 76-7, quoted in Francis, A.D., The Methuens and Portugal, pp 356–8.

²⁴ Molyneux to Locke, 6 Apr. 1697 ( Locke, , Familiar letters to his friends, p. 190).

²⁵ Locke to Molyneux, 3 May 1697 (ibid., p. 206).

²⁶ Molyneux to Locke, , 27 May 1697 (Familiar letters, p. 216).

²⁷ Same to same, 20 July 1697 (ibid., pp 227–8).

²⁸ Commons’ jn. Ire. (1798), ii, 190 (9 Sept. 1697); Molyneux to Locke, II Sept. 1697 (Familiar letters, pp 236–7); Richard Cox to—, 14 Sept. 1697 (H.M.C., Portland MSS, iii. 586).

²⁹ Collection, i, xxvi.

³⁰ King, W. to archbishop of Canterbury, 13 Sept. 1697 (T.C.D. MS Ν 3. ι, p. 86); same to bishop of Waterford, Sept. 1697 (ibid., p. 91).

³¹ Toland, , Life of John Milton (ed. of 1761), pp 22, 140.

³² Darbishire, Helen, Early lives of Milton (1932), pp xxviii–ix. Toland’s life is reproduced in full in the book.

³³ Life of Milton, p. 77

³⁴ Ibid., p. 161.

³⁵ Toland, , Vindicius liberus (1702), pp 126–7.

³⁶ For Harrington as a commonwealthman and for the relations between Toland and Shaftesbury see C. Robbins, op. cit., pp 34–41, 125–33.

³⁷ Published in 1705; the second and enlarged edition (1706) was translated into French and German; another edition was published in 1714.

³⁸ Account of the courts (ed. of 1714), pp 55–78. Toland’s correspondence with Leibniz is in Collection, ii. 383-402. See also Heinemann, F.H., ‘Toland and Leibniz’ in Philosophical Review, liv (1945), 439–57

³⁹ Heinemann, F.H., ‘John Toland and the age of enlightenment’ in Rev. Eng. Studies, 20, 135.

⁴⁰ Elisha Smith to Thomas Hearne, 23 June 1706 (Bodl., Rawl. MS G 146, f. 47); Toland to Harley, 16 May 1707 (H.M.C., Portland MSS, iv, 408–10); Toland, Description of Epsom (1711).

⁴¹ Toland to Harley, 7 Dec. 1711 and c. 1712 (Portland M SS, ν, 126–7, 259–60).

⁴² The grand mystery laid open (1714), p. 4.

⁴³ Danaher, K. and Simms, J.G., The Danish force in Ireland, 1690–1, pp 6–11 ; Robbins, op. cit., pp 88–133.

⁴⁴ Reasons most humbly offered to the honourable house of commons (1720).

⁴⁵ Letters to Serena, p. 7.

⁴⁶ Leibniz to Toland, 30 Apr. 1709; Toland to Leibniz, 14 Feb. 1710 (Collection, ii, 383–94).

⁴⁷ Toland, , Tetradymus (1720), p. xix.

⁴⁸ Rigg, L.L., The gospel of Barnabas (1907). The manuscript is now in the Austrian National Library.

⁴⁹ The manuscript is Harleian 1802 and was written in 1138, though Toland tried to make out that it was much older (B.M., Cat. Ir. MSS, ii, 428–32).

⁵⁰ Nazarenus, pt ii, p. 51. For the Guidées see Kenney, , Sources, pp 468–71. Modern scholars render the term ‘clients of God’, but Toland’s interpretation was also that of Charles O’Conor of Belanagare, Dissertation on the… Scots in North-Britain (1766), p. 34. Nicolson, W., Irish historical library (1724), pp xxix–xxxii, criticised Toland’s rendering.

⁵¹ Nazarenus, pt ii, pp 43–50. The controversy was continued in O’Conor’s edition of O’Flaherty’s Ogygia vindicated (1775), which makes no reference to Toland. According to the most recent opinion, ‘history knows nothing of any settlement of Scots in Scotland earlier than about 500’ ( Donaldson, G., The early Scottish monarchy, p. 10, 1967).

⁵² Toland to Bamham Goode, 30 Oct. 1720 (B.M., Add. MS 4295, f. 39v).

⁵³ See Lantoine, A., Un précurseur da la franc-maçonnerie : John Toland3 suivi de la traduction du Pantheisticon (1927); Wade, I.O., The clandestine organisation and diffusion of philosophie ideas in France from 1700 to 1750 (1938).

⁵⁴ Molesworth’s letters are in Collection, ii, 484–94. The list of Toland’s books is given in B.M., Add. MS 4295, f. 41.

⁵⁵ English version in B.M., Add. MS 4295, f. 76. There is also a Latin version, in which he claimed to know ten languages.

⁵⁶ See ‘An account of Jordan Bruno’s book of the infinite universe and innumerable worlds’ (Collection, i, 316–49).

⁵⁷ ‘Argument against abolishing Christianity’ in Swift, Works, ed. Temple Scott, iii, 18.

⁵⁸ Berkeley, Works, ed. Luce, A.A. and Jessop, T.E., 3, 176 ; Johnston, G.A., The development of Berkeley’s thought, pp 36–40.

⁵⁹ Quoted in Torrey, N. L., Voltaire and the English deists (1930), P. 15.

⁶⁰ Topazio, V.W., D’Holbach’s moral philosophy (1956), pp 39–41.

⁶¹ Crocker, L.G., The embattled philosopher (1955), pp 317, 320, 322.

⁶² Doherty, W.J., Inis-Owen and Tirconnell (1895), p. 150.