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THE FISHERTON MONSTER: SCIENCE, PROVIDENCE, AND POLITICS IN EARLY RESTORATION ENGLAND*

Part of: Retrospect: Science in History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2016

HARRIET LYON
HARRIET LYON*
Affiliation:
Christ's College, Cambridge
*
Christ's College, Cambridge, cb2 3bu[email protected]
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Abstract

This article reconsiders the significance of an episode of monstrous birth in Fisherton Anger, Wiltshire, in 1664. Tracing the influence of natural philosophical, spiritual, and providential impulses in extant accounts of the Fisherton birth, it suggests that in order wholly to comprehend this material it is necessary to move beyond debates about the ‘rise of science’. It therefore explores the contemporary claims made about the Fisherton monster against the backdrop of the aftermath of the Civil Wars and Interregnum, suggesting that the rampant politicization of monstrosity after the outbreak of war in 1642 provides the key to understanding the emphasis on different kinds of natural, spiritual, and moral truth in accounts of physiological abnormality after 1660. A case-study of early Restoration efforts to negotiate the instability of past events, this article further argues that the impulse to forget which underpinned the Indemnity and Oblivion Act (1660) found different expression elsewhere in the form of censorship and beyond the political sphere in the field of natural philosophy. Considered in light of this early Restoration culture of amnesia, the Fisherton monster embodies a series of attempts to forget the passions of a turbulent political past.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 333 - 362
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I am very grateful to Alex Walsham both for supervisory guidance during the preparation of the M.Phil. dissertation upon which this article is based and for commenting on its various drafts. I also wish to thank Carys Brown, Liesbeth Corens, and David Reynolds for reading and commenting on earlier versions, Sachiko Kusukawa for guidance on the role of images at the Royal Society, and Phil Withington and the anonymous referees for the Historical Journal for their helpful suggestions. I acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the award of an M.Phil. studentship.

References

1 Stephen Pender, ‘“No monsters at the resurrection”: inside some conjoined twins’, in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., Monster theory: reading culture (Minneapolis, MN, and London, 1996), pp. 143–67, at pp. 143–5. See also A. W. Bates, Emblematic monsters: unnatural conceptions and deformed births in early modern Europe (Amsterdam and New York, NY, 2005), pp. 99–100.

2 Pender, ‘“No monsters at the resurrection”’, p. 145.

3 David Cressy, Bonfires and bells: national memory and the Protestant calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1989), ch. 11; idem, ‘Remembrancers of the Revolution: histories and historiographies of the 1640s’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68 (2005), pp. 257–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Matthew Neufeld, The Civil Wars after 1660: public remembering in late Stuart England (Woodbridge, 2013); Mark Stoyle, ‘Remembering the English Civil Wars’, in Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver, eds., The memory of catastrophe (Manchester, 2004), pp. 19–30; Blair Worden, Roundhead reputations: the English Civil War and the passions of posterity (London, 2002).

4 See Neufeld, Civil Wars after 1660, p. 4; Poole, Ross, ‘Enacting oblivion’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 22 (2009), pp. 149–57Google Scholar.

5 Neufeld, Civil Wars after 1660, p. 5 and passim.

6 Paul Slack, ‘Poverty and politics in Salisbury, 1597–1666’, in Peter Clark and Paul Slack, eds., Crisis and order in English towns, 1500–1700: essays in urban history (London, 1972), pp. 164–203, at p. 165.

7 Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe, eds., The correspondence of Robert Boyle (6 vols., London, 2001), ii, pp. 423–4.

8 Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The diary of Samuel Pepys (11 vols., London, 1970–83), v, p. 319.

9 Chippenham, Wiltshire, and Swindon History Centre, 1902/1.

10 Bates, Emblematic monsters, pp. 17–18 and appendix.

11 Ibid. See also Dudley Wilson, Signs and portents: monstrous births from the middle ages to the Enlightenment (London, 1993), chs. 2–4.

12 The originals do not survive but Boyle copied their content verbatim to Oldenburg. See London, Royal Society (RS), EL/B1/82.

13 A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, eds., The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (13 vols., Madison, WI, 1965–86), ii, p. 280 n. 4. For the letter, see RS, EL/OB/21.

14 RS, EL/B1/82. On the popularity of monsters at the Society, see da Costa, Palmira Fontes, ‘The medical understanding of monstrous births at the Royal Society of London during the first half of the eighteenth century’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 26 (2004), pp. 157–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 158–9.

15 RS, EL/B1/82.

16 Thomas Birch, The history of the Royal Society of London, for improving of natural knowledge (4 vols., London, 1756–7), iv, p. 480.

17 On the ‘new experimental science’, see Smith, Pamela H., ‘Science on the move: recent trends in the history of early modern science’, Renaissance Quarterly, 62 (2009), pp. 345–75CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at p. 345.

18 Francis Bacon, The new organon, ed. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, 2000), p. 33.

19 Ibid., p. 225.

20 Ibid., p. 149.

21 Daston, Lorraine J., ‘Baconian facts, academic civility and the pre-history of objectivity’, Annals of Scholarship, 8 (1991), pp. 337–63Google Scholar, at pp. 346–7.

22 Oldenburg, Henry, ‘The introduction’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1 (1665), pp. 1–2 Google Scholar.

23 Hunter, Michael, ‘The Royal Society and the decline of magic’, Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 65 (2011), pp. 103–19Google ScholarPubMed, at p. 104.

24 Paula Findlen, Possessing nature: museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, and London, 1996), p. 207.

25 RS, Cl.P/13/2.

26 Though they are not signed by Hann, the detail of the images and the ink used suggests that they were his work. They are preserved with his letter in RS, Cl.P/13/2.

27 Kusukawa, Sachiko, ‘Picturing knowledge in the early Royal Society: the examples of Richard Waller and Henry Hunt’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 65 (2011), pp. 273–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; eadem, Picturing the book of nature: image, text, and argument in sixteenth-century human anatomy and medical botany (Chicago, IL, 2012); da Costa, Palmira Fontes, ‘The making of extraordinary facts: authentication of singularities of nature at the Royal Society of London in the first half of the eighteenth century, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 33 (2002), pp. 265–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 270–6.

28 Parshall, Peter, ‘Imago contrafacta: images and facts in the Northern Renaissance’, Art History, 16 (1993), pp. 554–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 555.

29 Kusukawa, ‘Picturing knowledge’, p. 289.

30 Dear, Peter, ‘Totius in verba: rhetoric and authority in the early Royal Society, Isis, 76 (1985), pp. 144–61, at pp. 152–3Google Scholar.

31 Kusukawa, ‘Picturing knowledge’, p. 288.

32 RS, EL/OB/23.

33 RS, EL/B1/82.

34 Hall and Hall, eds., Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ii, p. 109.

35 Da Costa, ‘Extraordinary facts’, p. 276.

36 Steven Shapin, A social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, IL, and London, 1994), p. xxvi.

37 RS, EL/B1/82.

38 Hunter, Clericuzio, and Principe, eds., Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ii, p. 395.

39 RS, Cl.P/13/2.

40 Da Costa, ‘Extraordinary facts’, p. 281.

41 Hunter, Clericuzio, and Principe, eds., Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ii, p. 385.

42 For the etymology of ‘monster’ see Bates, Emblematic monsters, p. 12.

43 Brammall, Kathryn M., ‘Monstrous metamorphosis: nature, morality, and the rhetoric of monstrosity in Tudor England’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 27 (1996), pp. 3–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 15–18. On the providential and political character of monstrosity, see William E. Burns, An age of wonders: prodigies, politics, and providence in England, 1657–1727 (Manchester, 2002), pp. 1–5; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in early modern England (Oxford, 1999), ch. 4.

44 Brammall, ‘Monstrous metamorphosis’, p. 6.

45 The kingdomes monster uncloaked from heaven: the popish conspirators, malignant plotters, cruell Irish, in one body to destroy kingdome, religion and lawes (London, 1643).

46 A declaration of a strange and wonderfull monster: born in Kirkham parish in Lancashire (London, 1646), p. 1.

47 See for example The soundheads description of the Roundhead or the Roundhead exactly anatomized in his integralls and excrementalls, by the untwisting a three-fold knott (London, 1642) and contrast with the portrayal of the Cavaliers in Englands wolfe with eagles clawes (London, 1647).

48 Michael Hunter, Science and the shape of orthodoxy: intellectual change in late seventeenth-century Britain (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 14.

49 Marie Boas Hall, Henry Oldenburg: shaping the Royal Society (Oxford, 2002), p. 56.

50 Marie Boas Hall, ‘Oldenburg, Henry (c. 1619–1677)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (ODNB).

51 Michael Hunter, ‘Introduction’, in idem, ed., Robert Boyle reconsidered (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1–18, at p. 6.

52 Barbara Beigun Kaplan, ‘Turberville, Daubeney (1612–1696)’, ODNB.

53 Though it should be noted that Sprat's History was written without the close supervision of the Society. See Michael Hunter, ‘Latitudinarianism and the “ideology” of the early Royal Society: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667) reconsidered’, in idem, Establishing the new science: the experience of the early Royal Society (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 199–216.

54 Thomas Sprat, The history of the Royal Society of London, for the improving of natural knowledge (London, 1667), sig. G2r.

55 Ibid., sigs. O4r–Pr.

56 Dear, ‘Totius in verba’, p. 159.

57 Max Weber, The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London and New York, NY, 1992). For Weber's influence on early modern historiography, see for example Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England (4th edn, London, 1997), and on the history of science, see Thomas S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions (Chicago, IL, 1962). For two important qualifications of the ‘disenchantment’ thesis, see Scribner, R. W., ‘The Reformation, popular magic, and the “disenchantment of the world”’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1993), pp. 475–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The Reformation and the “disenchantment of the world” reassessed’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008), pp. 497–528 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Daston, Lorraine J. and Park, Katharine, ‘Unnatural conceptions: the study of monsters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France and England’, Past and Present, 92 (1981), pp. 20–54 Google Scholar, at p. 24. See also Lorraine J. Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the order of nature, 1150–1750 (New York, NY, 1998), p. 336.

59 Walsham, Providence, pp. 194–5.

60 Bates, Emblematic monsters, p. 21.

61 Findlen, Possessing nature, p. 55.

62 Katie Whitaker, ‘The culture of curiosity’, in N. Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary, eds., Cultures of natural history (Cambridge, 1996), p. 81.

63 Ibid., p. 82.

64 Hunter, Clericuzio, and Principe, eds., Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ii, p. 423.

65 Ibid., ii, p. 424.

66 On the civility of science, see Daston, ‘Baconian facts’, pp. 352–3; Jonathan Sawday, The body emblazoned: dissection and the human body in Renaissance culture (London and New York, NY, 1995), pp. 242–5; Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin, Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 1985); Whitaker, ‘Culture of curiosity’, p. 75.

67 Baskett is described as a ‘gentleman of Salisbury’ in the ODNB entry for his son, John. See William Gibson, ‘Baskett, John (1664/5–1742)’, ODNB.

68 Hunter, Clericuzio, and Principe, eds., Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ii, p. 424.

69 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Aubrey 3.

70 J. R. Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution (New York, NY, 1977), p. 4.

71 The true picture of a female monster born near Salisbury (London, 1664).

72 Natures wonder? Or, an account how the wife of one John Waterman an ostler in the parish of Fisherton-Anger, near Salisbury, was delivered of a strange monster upon the 26th of October 1664 (London, 1664).

73 Hunter, Clericuzio, and Principe, eds., Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ii, p. 424.

74 RS, Cl.P/13/2.

75 Natures wonder?

76 Walsham, Providence, pp. 198–203.

77 I am grateful to Sachiko Kusukawa for the suggestion that the woodcut in Natures wonder? is a copy of the image in The true picture.

78 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Aubrey 3.

79 Strange and true news from Gloucester (London, 1660), p. 2, quoted in Jerome Friedman, Miracles and the pulp press during the English Revolution: the battle of the frogs and Fairford's flies (London, 1993), p. 248.

80 Robert Clark, The lying-wonders, or rather, the wonderful-lyes, which was lately published to the world, in a lying-pamphlet (called strange and true news from Gloucester) (London, 1660); Henry Jessey, The Lord's loud call to England (London, 1660), p. 5, quoted in Friedman, Miracles and the pulp press, p. 251.

81 Clark, The lying-wonders, p. 5, quoted in Friedman, Miracles and the pulp press, p. 249.

82 For two approaches to the instability of truth in this period, see Mark Knights, Representation and misrepresentation in later Stuart Britain: partisanship and political culture (Oxford, 2005); and Frances E. Dolan, True relations: reading, literature, and evidence in seventeenth-century England (Philadelphia, PA, 2013).

83 Friedman, Miracles and the pulp press, pp. 256–7.

84 Burns, Age of wonders, p. 20.

85 Ibid., p. 27.

86 Peter Hinds, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’: Roger L'Estrange and the circulation of political discourse in late seventeenth-century London (Oxford, 2010), pp. 36–7.

87 Calendar of state papers domestic, 1661–2, p. 282, quoted in Beth Lynch, ‘Rhetoricating and identity in L'Estrange's early career, 1659–1662’, in Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch, eds., Roger L'Estrange and the making of Restoration culture (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 7–26, at p. 18; Peter Hinds, ‘“Tales and romantick stories”: “impostures”, trustworthiness and the credibility of information in the late seventeenth century’, in Dunan-Page and Lynch, eds., Roger L'Estrange, pp. 89–107, at p. 106.

88 Annabel Patterson, Censorship and interpretation: the conditions of writing and reading in early modern England (Madison, WI, 1984), pp. 10–11 and passim.

89 Burns, Age of wonders, p. 38.

90 Lynch, ‘L'Estrange's early career’, p. 26.

91 On L'Estrange's politics, see Harold Love, ‘L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616–1704)’, ODNB.

92 On the limits of censorship, see Tim Harris, London crowds in the reign of Charles II: propaganda and politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1990), p. 28; Knights, Representation and misrepresentation, p. 7.

93 Knights, Representation and misrepresentation, p. 24. On polemic targeted at L'Estrange, see Helen Pierce, ‘The Devil's bloodhound: Roger L'Estrange caricatured’, in Michael Hunter, ed., Printed images in early modern Britain: essays in interpretation (Aldershot, 2010), pp. 237–54.

94 Burns, Age of wonders.

95 Peter Elmer, The miraculous conformist: Valentine Greatrakes, the body politic, and the politics of healing in Restoration Britain (Oxford, 2012), p. v.

96 Mary E. Fissell, Vernacular bodies: the politics of reproduction in early modern England (Cambridge, 1991), ch. 6.

97 Peter Elmer, ‘“Saints or sorcerers”: Quakerism, demonology, and the decline of witchcraft in seventeenth-century England’, in Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, eds., Witchcraft in early modern Europe: studies in culture and belief (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 145–180, at p. 174.

98 Pender, ‘“No monsters at the resurrection”’.

99 Cressy, Bonfires and bells, ch. 11; Knights, Representation and misrepresentation, p. 84 and passim; N. H. Keeble, The Restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford, 2002), ch. 6; Neufeld, Civil Wars after 1660; Stoyle, ‘Remembering the English Civil Wars’.