Sir Robert Moray Research Articles

The hydrostatical works of George Sinclair ( c .1630–1696): their neglect and criticism

The Scottish natural philosopher George Sinclair (or Sinclar) ( c .1630–1696) was one of the earliest British writers on hydrostatics. He visited London in 1662, when he met Sir Robert Moray and Robert Boyle and left a manuscript treatise at the Royal Society. Receipt of this work was never recorded by the Society, and Sinclair felt that he had been dealt with unfairly. A Latin version, Ars nova et magna gravitatis et levitatis , was published in 1669, followed by his Hydrostaticks in 1672. All Sinclair's works were vituperatively and pseudonymously criticized by James Gregory and William Sanders in The Great and New Art of Weighing Vanity of 1672. Here, Sinclair's life is summarized, and his disputes with the Royal Society and with Gregory and Sanders are examined. It is argued that, despite his other limitations, Sinclair's knowledge of hydrostatics was considerable, and that the criticisms made against him were exaggerated. Yet his work was subsequently neglected. Sinclair's treatment sheds light both on academic rivalries and on the procedures of the early Royal Society.

Lady Sophia's Visions: Sir Robert Moray, the Earl of Lauderdale and the Restoration Government of Scotland

Sir Robert Moray's longest-standing claim to attention has been as one of the founders of the Royal Society. More than one of his contemporaries called him its 'soul' in the early years.1 Thanks to the researches of Professor David Stevenson he has also been identified as a notable early freemason and exponent of neo-stoicism.2 I now want to explore his other major public role, his partnership with the Earl of Lauderdale in the Restoration government of Scotland, and in particular the episode that led to its unexplained break-down. In the words of Gilbert Burnet, who first set down, and then suppressed the only connected account of it: 'so much depended on this in the following administration of Scottish Affairs that I thought it necessary enlarge thus far upon it'.3No account of Moray's origins has been able to add much to the information in Burke's Landed Gentry: that he was born towards the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century, the elder son of a minor gentry family in Craigie, Perthshire.4 Moray's own statement, well buried in one of his letters to Lauderdale, that Fife was 'the shire of my nativity',5 puts him from the beginning much closer to the centre of Scottish affairs. His mother was one of the Halketts of Pitfirrane, near Dunfermline in Fife. His friendship with the nearby Bruces of Culros and the Lindsays of Balcarres (and their cousin Lauderdale), already well established in the 1640s and 50s, probably dated from his early years. Without, apparently, attending any British university, he went to France in his teens and later took service in the Scottish Guards there, acquiring the wide-ranging knowledge that would cause him to be likened to Bacon and Pieresc by a combination of study, experiment, professional training and personal contact with the European intellectuals of his day.6The quality which raised this professional soldier from the minor Scottish gentry to favour with the greatest figures of his day seems to have been an extraordinary personal ascendancy, an ability to influence men of all ranks and attach them to him. It was this, apparently, that caused him in April 1645 to be ransomed for £16,500 Scots by a group of Scottish peers who included the Earls of Crawford, Lauderdale and Cassillis, from incarceration as a prisoner of war at Ingolstadt and brought back to England as a necessary intermediary in the negotiations between the French, the Scots and Charles I. Others who succumbed to his magnetism ranged from Cardinal Richelieu, with whom 'he got into such a degree of favour . . . that few strangers were ever so much considered by him', to the Highlanders with whom he served the failing Stuart cause in the early 1650s, who for 'his great witt and dextrous addresses' thought him 'more Angell then Man', and Charles II, who declared him fit to have been the companion for any prince in Christendom.7'He was the sincerest, the generousest, the Freindlyest and the best natured Man I ever knew, he received all that came to him with the greatest heartiness possible, and was the readiest to oblige all people & to wear out himself in serving them that ever I saw', Gilbert Burnet testified.8 Few could resist this winning combination, nor in particular perhaps Moray's flattering bestowal of his friendship expressly as a tribute to the recipient's intrinsic virtue, a type of spiritual recognition. To his young friend Alexander Bruce he wrote that it was to be measurednot by the friendship you exercise upon others, but by the room you have to receave it . . . You will not onely have so much as you can desire but more than you imagine and that 24 carrats fine . . . Souls are a kind of stuff much more extensible than gold, air, yea than light. The utmost pitch of yours is that I talkt of as the thing I am to help you learn . . . Do not tell me of knowing your friendship by your indeavours and actions. I have tricks to try it better than so. There is a kind of metaphysicall alchemy that I use in such cases that searches the very hirnes of the fountains without looking after the streams . …

Editorial

Editorial

Thomas Vaughan and the Iatrochemical Revolution

Thomas Vaughan has often been called a 'mystical' or 'spiritual' alchemist by his readers, especially since the nineteenth-century edition of A. E. Waite, whose works helped fuel the late Victorian mania for theosophy, hermeticism, and secret societies. While Waite acknowledged that Vaughan had experimented with metals, he believed Vaughan's true subject was the union between God and the soul; thus he regarded Vaughan as one in a long line of 'spiritual' alchemists.1 The conception of alchemy as primarily a form of spirituality was further popularized in this century by Carl Jung, who was interested in alchemy to the extent that it seemed to mirror his own theories of psychological transformation. The writings of Thomas Vaughan, indeed, continue to enjoy a certain celebrity among those interested in esoteric philosophy. Waite's edition of The Works of Thomas Vaughan: Mystic and Alchemist has been frequently reprinted (whereas Alan Rudrum's scholarly edition had only a meagre print run and is virtually unavailable). Contemporary evidence suggests that Vaughan was recognized in his time as an experimental chemist; his activities with Thomas Henshaw in the Christian Learned Society (ca. 1650) and later association with Sir Robert Moray and the chemical circle surrounding Charles II also point to a role in active research. Since the unpublished notebook of Thomas and Rebecca Vaughan, Aqua Vitae , Non Vitis (British Library MS, Sloane 1741), has largely been ignored, the precise nature of his own research consequently has remained obscure. In this essay I would like to shed some light on that research and its part in the iatrochemical or Paracelsian revolution then underway in medicine.Vaughan began his public career, brief though it was, during the turbulent 1650s, and his writings ought to be seen as a part of the firestorm sparked by the fear that Descartes had depicted an atheistic, mechanistic universe. In his first two treatises, Vaughan devoted considerable efforts to refuting the notion of a lifeless universe and aimed his vitriolic barbs at the 'Whymzies of des Chartes'.2 As a youth Vaughan had been fascinated with the hidden forces of the natural world - which '(I know not how) surpris'd my first youth, long before I saw the University'.3 With his first works, Anthroposophia Theomagica and Anima Magica Abscondita published together in 1650 under the pseudonym of Eugenius Philalethes, he established himself as an anti-Aristotelian and a defender of divine immanence in the universe. He also declared his allegiance to the new science by using the well-known epigraph from the title page of Bacon's Novum Organum for Anthroposophia Theomagica: 'Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased' (Daniel 12:4).4 Like Bacon he was committed to the idea that the way to break open the sealed fountain of truth was empirical investigation:But it will be question'd perhaps, how shall we approach to the Lord, and by what means may we finde him out? Truely not with words, but with workes, not in studying ignorant, Heathenish Authours, but in perusing, and trying his Creatures: For in them Lies his secret path, which though it be shut up with thornes and Briars, with outward worldly Corruptions, yet if we would take the pains to remove this luggage, we might Enter the Terrestriall Paradise, that Hortus Conclusus of Solomon, where God descends to walk, and drink of the sealed Fountain.5At the same time as he declared his commitment to the new empirical methodology, Vaughan dedicated the work to the most notorious of the mystical brotherhoods in early modern Europe, Illustrissimis, et vere Renatis Fratribus R. C. ('to the most illustrious and truly reborn brothers of the rosy cross'). These positions are not as cross-purposed as they might at first appear to modern readers, because the Rosicrucian manifestos were written as part of a campaign to foster a similar renewal in the early years of the seventeenth century. …

John Gedde’s bee-house and the Royal Society

In 1672 Sir Robert Moray presented to the Repository of the Royal Society ‘a bee-hive of a peculiar contrivance, sent out of Scotland’. This paper considers how this design, claimed by John Gedde of Falkland in the County of Fife, was marketed in England with the purported support of the Royal Society.

Hevelius’s business: an unpublished letter from Henry Oldenburg to the Earl of Tweeddale

In the years 1672—74 the very existence of the Royal Society hung in Xthc balance. With the deaths of John Wilkins in November 1672 and Sir Robert Moray in July 1673, the Society lost two of its most prominent and energetic Fellows, while the problems of mounting arrears, lack of funds and declining activity grew ever-more acute (1). To make matters worse, the outbreak of the third Anglo-Dutch War in March 1672 seriously disrupted the one facet of the Society’s operations which had flourished hitherto, namely the correspondence of the Society’s Secretary, Henry Oldenburg. As the relevant volumes of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg show, letters continually went astray, and foreign virtuosi often had to reroute their letters through Oldenburg in order to reach destinations rendered inaccessible to them because of the hostilities (2). Many of Oldenburg’s continental contacts were thus inconvenienced in various minor ways by the conflict, but one Foreign Fellow who, in addition, suffered significant financial loss, was the Danzig astronomer Johann Hevelius. In the early months of the war, Hevelius had written to Oldenburg apparently seeking the assistance of his Royal Society colleagues in securing the return of shipping captured by Scottish privateers in which Hevelius had a substantial stake (3). Replying to Hevelius in August 1672, Oldenburg reported that he had enlisted the aid of the Society’s President, Lord Brouncker, on Hevelius’s behalf and that they would attempt to obtain a Royal Letter ordering the release of the vessels which were then being held in Scotland.

Prince Rupert’s drops

On 4 March 1660—61 ‘glass bubbles’ were first introduced to a meeting of the Royal Society. According to the minutes, ‘The King sent by Sir Paul Neile five little glass bubbles, two with liquor in them, and the other three solid, in order to have the judgement of the society concerning them’ (1). The Royal Society responded with remarkable celerity: its amanuensis produced some more drops two days later, which ‘succeeded in the same manner with those sent by the king’ (2). A very full report of the experiments performed was given to the Royal Society on 14 August 1661 by the President, Sir Robert Moray (3). As the Royal Society did not at this time have a normal publication series the report was recorded in the Register Book (4) and first published by Merret as an appendix to his translation of Neri’s Art of Glass (5). Henry Oldenburg lent Sir Robert’s account to the French traveller Monconys in 1663 who made his own translation into French of the prescription for making the drops. Monconys published this prescription in the second part of his Voyages (6). The ‘bubbles’— the solid ones, at least— were what were later to be called ‘Prince Rupert’s drops’. (Those said to contain ‘liquor’ could have been something different, but were probably the same containing vacuoles and no actual liquid.) These objects, glass beads with the form of a tear-drop tapering to a fine tail, made (though that was not generally known at the time) by dripping molten glass into cold water, exhibited a paradoxical combination of strength and fragility not without interest to the materials scientist of the present day, and which could not fail to excite the imagination of natural (and not so natural) philosphers of the 17th century. The head withstands hammering on an anvil, or, as a more modern test, squeezing in a vice, indenting its steel jaws, without fracture: yet breaking the tail with finger pressure caused the whole to explode into powder.

Newton's telescope, an examination of the reflecting telescope attributed to Sir Isaac Newton in the possession of the Royal Society

Isaac Newton (1642-1727, F.R.S. 1672, P.R.S. 1703-1727) is generally I credited with the invention of the reflecting telescope, having conceived the idea in 1666* (1, 2, 3). In fact Gregory (4) and others (5) had by that time already considered telescopes employing curved mirrors, but late in 1668 Newton was the first to construct a working model (1,6). This instrument was also the first to employ a small elliptical plane mirror, inclined at 450 to the optic axis, to reflect the convergent beam from the primary mirror to an eyepiece mounted on the side of the telescope tube—a compact and very successful design now universally recognized as the Newtonian reflector. A second instrument made in the Autumn of 1671 (2) proved ‘sensibly better’ than the first. W ord of the invention reached the Royal Society, and Newton was invited to send a telescope for inspection by the Fellows. He dispatched the recentlycompleted second model, and it arrived in London in December 1671 (6, 7). At the meeting held n January 1672 (8) it was announced that the telescope had been examined at Whitehall by the King (Charles II), the President (Lord Brouncker), Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paul Neile, Dr Christopher W ren, and Mr Hooke; and they had formed so good an opinion of it that they had requested the Secretary (Henry Oldenburg) to send a formal description of the instrument to Christiaan Huygens in Paris, in order to secure the rights of the invention to Newton.

Anniversary Dinner 1970, Speech by The Rt Hon. The Lord Boyle at the Anniversary Dinner, The Dorchester, 30 November 1970

It is a very great honour to propose the toast of the Royal Society and. I would like at the start tonight to express the gratitude that I feel for the help which the Royal Society gave me when I was for a few months concerned with higher education and science as a Minister, back in 1964. I remember in particular the help and friendship which I received from Lord Florey who was then President of the Royal Society and also from Sir Patrick Linstead who was then the Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society. We celebrate tonight the 310th anniversary of the historic meeting at Gresham College on 28 November 1660 and no doubt we recall the famous entry in the very first journal of the Royal Society: ‘Met together the Lord Brouncker, Mr Boyle, Mr Bruce, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paul Neile, Dr Wilkins, Dr Goddard, Dr Petty, Mr Ball, Mr Rooke, Mr Wren, Mr Hill. And because they had these frequent occasions of meeting with one another it was proposed that some course might be thought of to improve this meeting to a more regular way of debating things, and according to the manner in other countries, where there were voluntary associations of men into academies for the advancement of various parts of learning, so they might do something answerable here for the promoting of experimental philosophy.’ That was the minute written into the first minute book at this historic meeting on 28 November 1660, and what a remarkable group of men many of them were.

The tercentenary of the Royal Society’s Charter

In July 1960 we celebrated the Tercentenary Year of the formal constitution of the Society by our Founders, when for the first time in history the reigning Sovereign, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, our Royal Patron, graced our meeting with her presence. On 17 July 1962 we celebrate the Tercentenary of the passing of our first Royal Charter by the Great Seal on 15 July 1662, when our meeting will be graced by the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, F.R.S. On 28 November 1660, our twelve Founders met as usual after a lecture by Wren at Gresham College and agreed that they would continue their weekly meetings and pay a subscription towards the expenses. They drew up a list of forty-one suitable persons to be invited to join them. At their next meeting on 5 December, Sir Robert Moray ‘brought in word from the Court that the King had been acquainted with the designe of the meeting. And he did well approve of it and would be ready to give encouragement to it’. On 12 December they adopted simple regulations, ‘concerning the manner of election and Concerning the Officers and Fellows of the Society’. The Officers were to be a President or Director chosen monthly, a Treasurer and a Register.

William, Viscount Brouncker, P. R. S. (1620-1684)

The lack of a definitive study of the life of Lord Brouncker, a spiteful remark of Pepys so often quoted against him (1), and possible confusion with his less reputable brother Henry (2), all combine to prompt an intriguing question. Why was he chosen as the first President of the Royal Society rather than John Wilkins, John Wallis, Robert Boyle or Sir Robert Moray? The wisdom of the choice was proved by the devoted and able service he gave to that high office during the infant years of the Society. William, second Viscount Brouncker of Castle Lyons, in the Irish peerage, was the elder son of Sir William Brouncker, gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles I, and vice-chamberlain to his son, Charles, Prince of Wales. ‘This loyal knight’ Wood records in his Athena Oxonienses ‘who was the son of Sir Henry Bruncker, President of Mounster in Ireland , by Anne, his wife, sister of Henry, Lord Morley, was created Viscount of Castle Lyon in the said kingdom 12 September 1645, and dying in Wadham College, in the middle of November following, was buried on the 20th of the said month.’ We know little of Brouncker’s early life, even the date of his birth, 1620, is conjectural. He was sent to Oxford at the age of sixteen, where he quickly made himself proficient in several languages. He was probably intended to follow the profession of medicine, as in 1647 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Physick at Oxford, but his inclination led him to the study of mathematics, for which he evidently had a flair. He soon began to correspond with distinguished mathematicians, notably John Wallis, and it was not long before his reputation as a mathematician was recognized both at home and abroad.

Alexander Bruce, F. R. S., second Earl of Kincardine (1629-1681)

Not very much is known about Alexander Bruce, second Earl of Kincardine. His grandfather, Sir George Bruce, laid the foundations of the family fortune between about 1590 and his death in 1625. He purchased coalfields in the vicinity of Culross, in Fife, purchased or set up salt works, built the ‘Palace of Culross’ in 1597, and was knighted some time between 1604 and 1606. His son, George Bruce, who died in 1643, and who married Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Preston of Valleyfield, was Alexander Bruce’s father. Alexander Bruce was the second son, and it was his elder brother, Edward, who was made first Earl of Kincardine by Charles I in 1647. When he died unmarried in 1662, Alexander Bruce succeeded to the title and the estates. Nothing at all is known of Bruce’s history before 1657, when he was twenty-eight years of age. But there exists a series of letters, now in the possession of Lord Elgin, written to Bruce by Sir Robert Moray, starting in the summer of 1657 and continuing to the summer of 1673, when Moray died. The letters in this remarkable series are not evenly distributed through the years, nearly a half of them—there are almost one hundred and twenty in all—having been written between the autumn of 1657 and the end of 1658; thereafter we have, on the average, only about four letters per year. These letters are the chief source of our knowledge of Bruce’s character, interests and scientific activities.

Sir Robert Moray, F. R. S. (1608?-1673)

Sir Robert Moray, soldier, statesman, scientist and counsellor of kings was a man of independent character who gave a faithful and enduring devotion to the causes he espoused. These causes included the welfare of his native land of Scotland, an intense loyalty to his monarch and an interest in promoting the new experimental philosophy of his time. He was one of the principal architects of the Royal Society. None excelled him in energy and enthusiasm in services designed to establish the Society firmly in circumstances which would secure its successful future. In the period between 28 November 1660 and the granting of the first charter in 1662 the president was elected monthly and Moray acted in this capacity much more frequently than any other. That the company of natural philosophers could count among them one who brought great experience of negotiating important affairs of state, was an intimate friend of King Charles II, in addition to possessing a zealous and widespread interest in scientific matters was a most fortunate circumstance. Huygens, who knew the Society and Moray very well, described Moray as the ‘soul’ of the Society and at the time of Moray’s death in 1673 a contemporary historian, Burnet, used the expression ‘while he lived, he was the life and soul of that body’. By the personal order and expense of the King, Moray was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The Kincardine papers

Sir Robert Moray (1608-1673), first President of the Royal Society, before the Charter, is better known as a states- man and soldier than as a man of science. His life is recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography , 1 and more fully in the posthumous work of Robertson (1922). 2 Moray was an interesting man, but I need say no more about him here. The present note deals only with the documentary evidence on which our knowledge of his life is founded. On page 203 of Robertson's book it is stated that ‘Moray’s career as a man of science and his personal characteristics are illustrated chiefly by (A) the archives of the Royal Society at Burlington House, and (B) the Kincardine MSS. (transcripts), which were in the possession of the late Mr. David Douglas, Edinburgh.’ The ‘Kincardine MSS. (transcripts)’ came into my hands—almost by accident—a few years ago, and it is about them that I now write. The original MSS., from which the transcripts were made, formerly belonged to Cosmo Innes (1798-1874), professor of constitutional law and history at Edinburgh University. How he came to possess them is now unknown; but it is recorded that he was Sheriff of Moray (1840-1852)—where his family once resided—and that he ‘ was an acute and learned student of ancient Scottish records ’ (D.N.B.), so he probably acquired them legitimately in the course of his antiquarian researches.

Calendar of Discovery and Invention

November 28, 1660.—Th first official record of the Royal Society reads as follws: “Memorandum that Novemb. 28, 1660, These persons following, according to the usuall custom of most them, mett together at Greham Colledge to heare Mr. Wren's lecture, viz. The Lord Br , Mr. Boye, Mr. Bruce, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paul Neile. Dr. Walkins, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Petty, Mr. Ball, Mr.Rooke, Mr. Wren, Mr. Hill. And after the leeture was ended, they did according to the usual manner withdraw for mutual eonvere…”

Early Science at the Royal Society

December 28, 1664. Dr. Pell, upon occasion given by Sir Robert Moray, mentioned that he had at his country-house in Essex a wooden hoop, made by his?directions in the year 1645, of twenty inches broad, representing the ecliptic, and at Amsterdam by Mr. Bleau lined with as much of the paper of Mr. Bleau's largest globes, as comprehends all the fixed stars within 10 deg. of the ecliptic on either side, but with the constellations inverted, as they stand in the heavens; the use of this being not only to help young observators, but also for the genuine representation of the variety appearing in the motion of the planets. He mentioned that he was willing to leave it with the Society when they shall have a fit repository to keep such instruments in.

Current Topics and Events

IT is of interest to recall that the date November 23 marks the 260th anniversary of the publication in 1664 of that rare and notable folio by Robert Hooke, entitled “Micrographia: or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries thereupon.” The issue was licensed by Viscount Brouncker, P.R.S. Hooke, who was born in 1635, at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, died in 1703. He was associated in intimate fashion with the early founders of the Royal Society-Moray, Wren, Boyle, Evelyn, and others-and worked with amazing industry to promote its aims. The lineaments of this remarkable man have not been bequeathed to posterity, since no authentic portrait of him exists. Sir Robert Moray had originally suggested Hooke, in 1662, as a curator of experiments to the Royal Society, putting it that “Mr. Hooke should come and sit amongst them” but it was not until November 23, 1664, that the president was desired to declare to the whole Society that the council thought good to have a curator by office, and Dr. Wilkins was deputed to submit that “Mr. Hooke standing for a curator's place be this afternoon nominated.” Robert Boyle was thanked for dispensing with his services, in favour of the Society.

Early Science at the Royal Society

September 27, 1662. The president communicated a letter sent by his majesty to the duke of Ormonde, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, recommending the Royal Society for a liberal contribution from the adventurers and officers of Ireland for the better encouragement of the said society in their designs. Whereupon it was ordered that a copy of the said letter should be taken; and the humble thanks of the society be returned to his majesty by Sir Robert Moray, for this great testimony of his royal favour.—The president was desired to return likewise the thanks of the society to Mr. Secretary Nicholas and Mr. Williamson, for their readiness to assist the society in the king's letters to Ireland without taking fees.

Early Science at the Royal Society

September 6, 1664. Sir Robert Moray produced a letter of Mons. Huygens, dated at the Hague, mention-ing an instrument devised by him for measuring the velocity of descending bodies; as also, a new observation concerning Saturn, made the last spring at Rome, by Campani, viz., that the circle of Saturn had covered a part of its sphere above, and had been covered thereby below, even with a little shadow upon the circle below, and upon the sphere above: which observation Mons. Huygens looked upon as confirming his system, which himself had made.

Early Science at the Royal Society

September 21, 1664. Dr. Wren being desired to defer no longer the making of a larger telescopical moon for the Society, promised to do it against his next coming to London; upon which it was ordered that the treasurer should pay for a globe of that size, which Dr. Wren should choose at Mr. Moxon's. Several experiments were made. [Oldenburg, in a letter to Boyle, dated at London, September 22, 1664, gives some account of what passed at this meeting, where, he observes, they had the company of a Parisian academist, recommended to Sir Robert Moray and himself. I dare say (he says) he will extol our institution and proceedings to the sky, whensoever he comes; though I must say we grow more remiss and careless than I am willing to expatiate upon. Yet this I must say to a person, that I am sure hath a concern for our prosperity, that nothing is done with the king for us.]