Some early reactions to the Royal Society

Abstract

BY the autumn of 1667 when Sprat’s History of the Royal Society was published the Society had been in officially recognized existence for seven years and incorporated by Royal Charter for five. The early years of the Society up to the end of the seventeenth century form as interesting a period as any in its history, and the glimpses of the Society’s members and activities revealed in letters and diaries, in prefaces to books written by or dedicated to its members, in numerous pamphlets, in descriptive accounts in the journals and ‘ voyages ’ of foreign visitors, and in the Minute Books and Philosophical Transactions , are not only interesting but often most entertaining. Without them Sprat’s so-called ‘ History ’ provides a very inadequate picture. However, to write a proper history, as Sprat acknowledged, was not really his aim ; nor is it the purpose of this essay which is concerned to inquire into some of the reactions to the Royal Society in its early days. To do this it will be necessary only to consider the Society’s history in very general terms in order to set it in its place in the broad movements of thought and ideas of the time. Since Sprat himself has provided just such a view of the Society it will be simplest to look at it through his History . Prefaced to the History is an Ode to the Royal Society by Abraham Cowley, one of its first members, who had already in 1661 published a Proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy .