‘A Constant Prodigy?’ Empirical Views of an Unordinary Nature

Abstract

PRODIGY - From the Latin 'prodigium, (i.e. contra Naturam)'1. 'A thing (generally) that comes to pass beyond the Altitude of man's imagination, and begets in him a miraculous contemplation, yea oftentimes horror and amazement...'2. 'A thing monstrous, marvellous, wonderful, and against the common current, or course of Nature; a sight unusual.'1'The land of England hath for these many years been accounted the Land of Wonders', an anonymous author declared in 1662.2 Indeed, numerous strange and unusual events had been reported in the preceding years. In 1646, a ball of sulfurous fire fell in Cambridgeshire, consuming an acre of grain. In 1659 hundreds claimed to see a black coffin flying between Leicester and Nottingham, while in 1661 came a report of the discovery of the body of a giant in Derbyshire whose skull held at least a bushel.3 Although Protestant England officially had no miracles, it was still a land of wonders and prodigies.4 A prodigy was an unusual event which 'deflects and declines from' what Francis Bacon had called the 'usual course' of nature.5 Celestial phenomena such as comets, eclipses and rainbows could all be prodigious, as could terrestrial events such as floods, hauntings and monstrous births. Prodigies generally divided into two varieties. Signal prodigies could be natural (earthquakes, meteors), preternatural (lightning strikes, apparitions) or supernatural (verging on miracles). Penal prodigies were judgments upon particular people or nations (plagues, military defeats) which could invite speculation and partisan interpretation.6 Because prodigies neither constituted everyday occurrences, nor necessarily required divine intervention, they held an uneasy and shifting middle ground between the mundane and the miraculous. Prodigies became a dilemma for both British science and crown after the Restoration as they threatened to overturn the new order imposed by recent religious and political settlements. These unnatural phenomena both defied efforts at organization by natural historians and offered the potential for radical political interpretation to challenge the status quo. Efforts to constrain the revolutionary possibilities of prodigies engaged the scientific and political realms in an attempt to bring regularity and stability to both worlds. Rather than naturalizing prodigies in order to neutralize their political power, seventeenth-century empiricism incorporated the study of prodigies into natural philosophy, viewing nature itself as potentially prodigious.The history of studying prodigies went back at least to Roman times, when historians like Suetonius believed such signs and portents forecast the fate of Caesars.7 In seventeenth-century England, it was still common to interpret prodigies as omens of the future, often foretelling disaster or expressing divine disapproval. Puritans especially held that prodigies were the 'immediate demonstrations and fore-runners of Gods high indignation'.8 The chaotic period from 1640 to 1660 was especially fertile ground for unusual sightings.9 Thus the beginning of the civil wars, the execution of Charles I and the death of Oliver Cromwell were all supposedly predicted by prodigies.10 In this tense climate such curiosities could also take on political significance. During the Interregnum, Royalists had seen portentous signs condemning regicide and heralding the return of the monarchy.11 After the Restoration returned Charles II to the throne, defeated republicans looked to these same prodigies for signs of God's disfavour with the new regime.12In the summer of 1660, just weeks after Charles II returned from the continent, an anonymous tract recorded the appearance of a plague of frogs in Gloucestershire. Some radicals quickly seized upon a portent with such obvious biblical precedents as an indication of God's disapproval of the new 'pharaoh'.13 Subsequently, sectarians in London began publishing accounts of other prodigious occurrences and interpreting them as omens for the future. …