Jewel House Research Articles

Ayesha Mukherjee.Penury into Plenty: Dearth and the Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England.

In this, her first book, Ayesha Mukherjee addresses the cultural centrality of dearth, or rather the fear of it, in 1590s England—a subject that might at first glance appear narrow, but actually opens up deep questions about how early modern English men and women understood and responded to the social, economic, and environmental changes they were experiencing. At the heart of the study is the intriguing character of Sir Hugh Platt, polymathic author and experimenter who recently appeared in Deborah E. Harkness’s The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (2007), the title of which Harkness borrowed from Platt’s own central publication. Whereas Harkness depicted Platt’s London as the crucible of the scientific revolution in England, Mukherjee emphasizes its vulnerability, particularly in the dismal 1590s, when dearth was a pressing fear. To Mukherjee, this was the overriding concern that united Platt’s eclectic interests—ranging from medicine, food preservation, and manuring to cookery, limning, and pencil making—although this “dearth science” (as Mukherjee labels it) was much more than the obsession of an eccentric individual. Son of one of London’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, Platt enjoyed strong connections with London’s artisans, as well as the rich gentry, and his shop (the original “Jewel House”) was at the center of networks that extended throughout the city and beyond. From this vantage point Platt was able to compile information on a breathtaking range of innovative techniques—twenty-five recipes for black ink, to take one example cited from his manuscripts—that he would then absorb into his own experimental practices, publish, or simply make available for sale.

The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution- by Deborah E. Harkness

<i>The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution</i>- by Deborah E. Harkness

:The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution

:The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution

Elizabethan London and scientific practiceHarknessDeborah E.The jewel house: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. Yale University Press, New Haven2007. Pp. xviii+348, £19.99.10: 0300111967; 13: 978-0300111965.

Deborah E. Harkness. The jewel house: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. Yale University Press, New Haven 2007. Pp. xviii+348, £19.99. 10: 0300111967; 13: 978-0300111965. The jewel house is a nuanced analysis of the community of gardeners, instrument makers, engineers, alchemists

The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, by Deborah Harkness

"The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, by Deborah Harkness." Canadian Journal of History, 43(2), pp. 293–294

The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (review)

Reviewed by: The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution Peter R. Dear (bio) The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. By Deborah E. Harkness. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. xviii+349. $32.50. London in the late Elizabethan period produced most famously, in the history of science, Francis Bacon. Bacon’s stress on utility, and the potential role of a form of natural philosophy in promoting the practical interests of the state, provides a constant backdrop to Deborah Harkness’s wide-ranging examination of knowledge enterprises already occurring in London at just this time. Such enterprises range from alchemy and medicine to harbor- dredging and mathematical-instrument making. But the star of this book is the city of London—by 1600, as Harkness notes, the second largest in Europe. The archival digging and reconstruction that have gone into Harkness’s six case studies are impressive and result in the presentation of detailed accounts of various groups and individuals who inhabited the warren of narrow and crowded streets constituting the cultural microcosm of the great city. One of her most successful chapters concerns the Flemish immigrant James Cole and the group of naturalists of which he was a part, all gathered in close proximity on Lime Street. It provides a picture of a community, closely linked to the Continent and engaged in shared pursuits, and it seems to encapsulate Harkness’s ambitions for the book as a whole. In a somewhat different way, the chapter on medical groups such as the guild of barber-surgeons, and focused on Paracelsian medicine and unlicensed medical practitioners, is tight and convincing, showing some of the practical realities of London life and claims to expertise. Other chapters, also the results of indefatigable archival work, are differently directed: that on William Cecil’s role as the Crown’s agent, concerned not just with the issuing of letters-patent to various enterprises and inventors but also for a time with direct financial investment in such endeavors, has much less to do with the tracing of social networks and more to do with Elizabethan state involvement in matters of potential economic interest. Here the implicit relationship to Bacon’s subsequent ambitions for the state seems to be the chief raison d’être. Harkness justifies the multiplicity of her areas of interest by reference to a supposed unifying concept, designated by the word “science.” Throughout the book, a wide variety of people do a wide variety of things, but all are routinely described as being centrally concerned with “nature” or “natural knowledge.” Accordingly, some pages at the beginning are devoted to “A Note about Science,” in which Harkness explains her use of that termin connection with this sixteenth-century material. While acknowledging possible anachronism, she justifies placing all the diverse issues and activities with which the book deals under the umbrella term “science” with various arguments. [End Page 793] The most sustainable is that the historian need not be restricted to the usages of the historical actors. If one sees people in the past “doing science” (an expression that Harkness employs quite often), then that is what one calls it. Such an approach would require evidence that the variety of things placed under that single label did indeed constitute, in some sense, a common endeavor. Some readers might question whether Harkness’s account provides such evidence—emerging from the sources, as she characterizes it (p. 256). Rather, a common endeavor is assumed from the outset, as with the frequent characterization of individuals as “practitioners” with, usually, no specification of what it is that they practice (once, indeed, there are “science practitioners” [p. 221]).Why, for example, is the subject of chapter 5, Clement Draper, whose clearly fascinating notebooks concern alchemy, characterized as “doing science” in the chapter’s title? Why is he not simply an “alchemist”? Readers of this journal will not likely see the issue as a quibble over empty words. Chapter 4, on Cecil and Crown involvement in improvement and economic projects, is called “‘Big Science’ in Elizabethan London”; Harkness leaves aside monopolies granted for such things as the manufacture of vinegar (p. 179) in favor of ones for techniques...

The jewel house: Elizabethan London and the scientific revolution

The jewel house: Elizabethan London and the scientific revolution

The Fertile Banks of the Thames

The Jewel House . Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. By Deborah E. Harkness . Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2007. 371 pp. $32.50. ISBN 9780300111965. The author discusses the activities of Francis Bacon's London contemporaries whose practices helped set the stage for the scientific revolution.

Ambassadorial plate of the later Stuart period and the collection of the Earl of Strafford

Ambassadorial plate was a perquisite received from the royal Jewel House to enhance the standing of a diplomat abroad. While it had obvious connotations of magnificence, there were also practical consequences relating to its value as specie. Although the plate was specifically lent only for the period of the embassy, attitudes towards the perquisite changed after the Restoration and, increasingly, diplomats viewed it as their own property. This is evidenced by their involvement in commissioning and designing the silver, and the increased number of ambassadors retaining it for their private use. In the light of detailed records relating to the Earl of Strafford's collection, commissioned between 1711 and 1713 while he was ambassador at The Hague, and using other diplomatic sources from the period, this article demonstrates the changing attitudes to diplomatic plate and sheds light on the importance of silver in the increasingly cosmopolitan worlds of fashion and sociability.

Book Reviews

“Jeweled Bugs and Butterflies”; “Paulding Farnham: Tiffany’s Lost Genius”; “The Crown Jewels: The History of the Coronation Regalia in the Jewel House of the Tower of London”; “Colored Stones of Yakutia and Places of Their Origin”; “Gemmologia Europa VII—European Gemmologists on the Emerald”; “Mughals, Maharajas and the Mahatma”

The Crown Jewels: The History of the Coronation Regalia in the Jewel House of the Tower of London

The Crown Jewels: The History of the Coronation Regalia in the Jewel House of the Tower of London

Chaston Chapman Gift to the University of Leeds

IN 1933 Mrs. Chaston Chapman presented to the University of Leeds her late husband's extensive working library of modern books on chemistry, together with complete runs of a large number of periodicals. Mrs. Chaston Chapman has now presented his collection of works on alchemy to the University of Leeds, where they are housed in the Brotherton Library. There is a small section of French books and a more extensive section of English books. Noteworthy among the latter are “The Mirror of Alchimy, Composed by the thrice-famous and learned Fryer, Roger Bachon”, London, 1597; the rare “Secrets Reveal'd: or, An open entrance to the Shut-Palace of the King: Containing The greatest Treasure in Chymistry, Never yet so plainly Discovered”, 1669; Plat, “The Jewel House of Art and Nature”, 1653; and many other rare works. Translations into English include Geber, “The Works of Geber, the most famous Arabian prince and philosopher”, 1678; Beguin, “Tyro-cinium Chymicum”, 1669; Paracelsus, “The Chym-ical Transmutation of Metals”, 1657; Glauber, “The Golden Ass Well Managed”, 1670; Gesner, “The newe lewell of Health”, 1576; Le Febure, “A compleat Body of Chymistry”, 1670; the 1677 and 1686 translations of Lemery, “A Course of Chymistry” and “New Curiosities in Art and Nature”, 1711, by the same author.

The Jewel house

The Jewel house

XXI. Particulars relative to that Portion of the Regalia of England which was made for the Coronation of King Charles the Second. Communicated by Robert Cole, Esq. in a Letter to Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.R.S., Secretary

The interest occasioned by the removal of the Regalia from the Jewel House to a place of greater safety, during the late fire at the Tower, will, I trust, be a sufficient excuse for the liberty I take in requesting the favour of your communicating to the Society of Antiquaries the following particulars relative to that portion of the Regalia which was made for the Coronation of Charles the Second.

X. Memoir upon the King's Jewel-House, with an Account of the ancient Rights of its Master and Treasurer, by Sir Gilbert Talbot, Knt.: Communicated by Henry Ellis, Esq. F.R.S. in a Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Aberdeen, K. T. President

Having already communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, through your Lordship's hands, two Memoirs by Sir Gilbert Talbot upon subjects of English History, I consider his name to be somewhat known to the Society; and shall therefore make but a short introduction to another Memoir from the same pen upon the King's Jewel House, with the ancient rights of the Master and Treasurer. Both of these characters were sustained by Sir Gilbert himself, not only at the time of compiling the Memoir, but also when the celebrated Colonel Blud attempted to steal the Crown, and I have to acquaint your Lordship and the Society, that the particulars relating to that extraordinary theft are preserved in a fourth Memoir by Sir Gilbert, from which the common received Account in our later histories has been taken. This last Narrative (however it may have been pillaged and extracted from) becomes doubly interesting when we learn that the writer of it was in that official station which provided him with the most certain particulars of the robbery.

XXIV. An Inventory and Appraisement of the Plate in the Lower Jewel House of the Tower, Anno 1649. Communicated by the Rev. John Brand, Secretary, from the original MS. in his Possession

“A true Inventorie and Appraisement of all the Plate now being in the Lower Jewell House of the Tower in the Custodie of Mr.Carew Mildmay,made and taken13Aug.1649.”