Colonial Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 1661-1788

Abstract

I. Statutes relating to the admission of Fellows of the Royal Society. That inhabitants of the British colonies in America were sometimes elected Fellows of the Royal Society of London has been known since the foundation of the Society, but no one has attempted to prepare from the Society’s original records a complete list of colonial Fellows.2 Such a list, as it may indicate the names of those colonial scientists, both amateur and professional, who, by constant intercourse with Fellows of the Royal Society in England and with the Society itself as a corporate body, contributed most to the introduction and development of * 34 experimental philosophy ’ in the New World, it is the purpose of this paper to supply. From the aims and practices both of its immediate predecessors, the groups that met in Oxford and in London, and of a number of its earliest Fellows, the Royal Society inherited as a prime motive of its existence the accurate collection, classification, and interpretation of scientific data from all parts of the world. Such an undertaking required collaborators in remote places, and in the first charter of the Society (15 July 1662),4 for the improvement of the experiments, arts, and sciences of the aforesaid Royal Society/ Charles II granted to the President, Council, and Fellows of the Society, and to their successors, the privilege `. . . to enjoy mutual intelligence and knowledge with all and all manner of strangers and foreigners, whether private or collegiate, corporate or politic, without any molestation, interruption, or disturbance whatsoever: Provided nevertheless, that this our indulgence, so granted as it is aforesaid, be not extended to further use than the particular benefit and interest of the aforesaid Royal Society in matters or things philosophical, mathematical, or mechanical.’ 3