William Sprigg and the Cromwellian Revolution

Abstract

To BE truly successful revolutions need competent philosophers. Those men who were selected to serve as the philosophers of the Puritan Revolution in the i640's were Baconians interested in the reform of society, and especially reform in education. Patronized and supported by such men as John Pym, John Selden, Lord Brooke, and Bishop John Williams, these philosophers of reform were the Bohemian Jan Comenius, the Prussian Samuel Hartlib, and the son of an exiled Scottish minister, John Dury.' Their program of reform was frustrated at the very outset by the Irish Rebellion, the increasing differences between Lords and Commons, and the unhappy rift between Pym and Williams. Comenius, the prince of these reformers, left England a disappointed man in 1642, though Dury and Hartlib remained behind to continue their work. The subsequent Cromwellian triumph did not mean a discontinuation of governmental interest in their Baconian-Comenian ideals. In fact, those general ideals were shared by Cromwell himself. Both Hartlib and Dury were, however, given diplomatic assignments by Cromwell. The former was given the task of surveying Ireland, whereas Dury was dispatched in 1654 as a special envoy to the Netherlands, the Swiss cantons, and Germany. Comenius was not forgotten, inasmuch as Hartlib, almost certainly with the personal approval of Cromwell, invited him to return to England after the establishment of the Protectorate. Although the invitation was refused, it was subsequently renewed after the Poles razed Comenius' village of Leszno in 1656. This time Hartlib suggested that the educational reformer and his fellow townspeople settle in Ireland, but once again the invitation was refused. Cromwell, therefore, remained without the services of a suitable philosopher of reform. In the meantime significant reforms were nevertheless occurring at Oxford. Following the collapse of the Presbyterian cause in 1648, Oxford had been purged and infused with new academic life. The noted mathematician John Wilkins had been appointed Warden of Wadham College (1648); the Copernican advocate Seth Ward had become Savilian Professor of Astronomy (1648-1649); John Wallis had been appointed Savilian