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John Toland, the druids, and the politics of Celtic scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

J.A.I. Champion
J.A.I. Champion*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Royal Holloway College, University of London
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Extract

In dedicating his Specimen of the critical history of the Celtic religion and learning to Robert, Lord Molesworth, John Toland carefully outlined his attitude to historical writing: the ‘fundamental law of a historian is, daring to say whatever is true, and not daring to write any falsehood; neither being swayed by love nor hatred, nor gain’d by favour or interest: so he ought of course to be as a man of no time or country, of no sect or party: which I hope the several nations, concern’d in this present enquiry, will find to be particularly true of me’. These words, it will be contended, ought to be the starting-point for treating Toland, in the precision of his own words, ‘as a man of no time or country’. Recently there has been a renaissance of historical interest in the significance of the life and thought of Toland; particular attention has been paid to the question of his religious, cultural and national identity. Variously described as the ‘first Irish philosopher’, an adventurer in scholarship, ‘crazy John’, a ‘traditional Irish trickster’, a postmodernist and even a post-nationalist, Toland’s reputation as an elusive and ambiguous figure has replaced an older historiography that was confident in identifying him as a radical deist, or perhaps a ‘pantheist’ on the margins of the Enlightenment canon of philosophers of reason.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 127 , May 2001 , pp. 321 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2001

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References

1 Specimen of the critical history of the Celtic religion and learning (henceforth cited as Specimen of critical learning; usually referred to by Toland as his History of the druids) in Toland, John, A collection of several pieces (2 vols, London, 1726), i, 15Google Scholar.

2 For the older historiography see Hazard, Paul, The European mind (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Venturi, Franco, Utopia and reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simms, J. G., ‘JohnToland (1670-1722), a Donegal heretic’ in I.H.S., xvi, no. 63 (Mar. 1969), pp 304-30Google Scholar; Jacob, M.C., The radical Enlightenment: pantheists, freemasons and republicans (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Sullivan, R.E., John Toland and the deist controversy (Cambridge, Mass., 1982)Google Scholar; Daniel, S.H., John Toland: his methods, manners and mind (Kingston, Ont., 1984)Google Scholar. A recent special issue of the Revue de Synthèse, ii-iii (1995) edited by G. Brykman, John Toland (1670-1722) et la crise de conscience européenne, gives a useful survey of the current state of play.

3 McGuinness, Philip, Harrison, Alan and Kearney, Richard (eds), John Toland’s Christianity not mysterious: text, associated works and critical essays (Dublin, 1997)Google Scholar.

4 For further discussion see Champion, J. A. I., ‘Making authority: belief, conviction and reason in the public sphere in late seventeenth-century England’ in Libertinage et Philosophie au XVII siècle, iii (1999), pp 143-90Google Scholar.

5 Kearney, Richard, ‘John Toland: an Irish philosopher?’ in McGuinness, et al. (eds), John Toland’s Christianity not mysterious, pp 213-15Google Scholar.

6 Philip McGuinness, ‘Christianity not mysterious and the Enlightenment’, ibid., p. 239.

7 Daniel, Stephen, ‘The subversive philosophy of John Toland’ in Hyland, Paul and Sammel, Neil (eds), Irish writing: exile and subversion (New York, 1991), pp 8–9Google Scholar.

8 See Simms, ‘John Toland, a Donegal heretic’, p. 304. The best life remains Sullivan, R.E., John Toland and the deist controversy (Cambridge, Mass., 1982)Google Scholar; but see also Harrison, Alan, John Toland (1670-1722): béal Eiriciúil as Inis Eoghain (Dublin, 1994)Google Scholar. I am currently completing a book, provisionally entitled Republican learning: John Toland and the crisis of Christian culture, c. 1680-1722, to be published by Manchester University Press in 2002.

9 Edmund Gibson to Arthur Charlett, June 1694, quoted in Heinemann, F. H., ‘John Toland, France, Holland and Dr Williams’ in Rev. Eng. Studies, xxv (1949), pp 346-7Google Scholar.

10 See Toland, Collection, i, pp v-vi. Toland is confirmed as being from an ‘honesta, nobili, & antiquissima Familia, que per plures cente nos annos, ut Regni Historia & continua monstrant memoria, in Peninsula Hiberniae Enis-Oen dicta, propre urbem Londino-Deriensem in Ultonia, perduravit’. This document seems very odd, given Toland’s expertise at debunking the authority of all sorts of textual documentation. One might raise a number of questions about its status. First, how did these signatories know Toland? Even if they did, what status did confirmation by Roman Catholic friars bring to Toland, and to whom would it have been acceptable?

11 See Richard Anderson to St George Ashe, 18 Sept. 1694 (Bodl., MS eng. lett. c. 29); Ashe to Henry Dodwell, 25 Sept. 1694 (ibid., MS eng. lett. c. 28). I am very grateful to Dr Patrick Kelly for passing transcriptions of these letters on to me.

12 In his Latin epitaph he claimed he had ‘ac linguarum plus decem sciens’: Toland, Collection, i, p. lxxxviii. (This is not noted in the English version: see B.L., Add. MS 4295, f. 76.)

13 There are remarks scattered throughout his works, from the apologia of the late 1690s and 1700s to the last works like Specimen of critical learning.

14 Hayton, D. W., ‘The Stanhope/Sunderland ministry and the repudiation of Irish parliamentary independence’ in E.H.R., cxiii (1998), pp 610-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See Harrison, Alan, ‘John Toland (1670-1722) and Celtic studies’ in Celtic languages and Celtic peoples: proceedings of the second North American Congress of Celtic Studies (Halifax, N.S., 1992), pp 555-76Google Scholar.

16 See Champion, J. A. I., ‘Cultura sovversiva: erudizione e polemica nell’ Amyntor canonicus di Toland, c. 1698-1726’ in Santucci, Antonio (ed.), Filosofia e cultura nel Settecento britannico (2 vols, Bologna, 2000), i, 343-70Google Scholar.

17 See Toland, John, Nazarenus, ed. Champion, J A.I. (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

18 See Edward Lhwyd to John Aubrey, 9 Jan. 1694 (Gunther, R. T. (ed.), Early science in Oxford, xiv: Life and letters of Edward Lhwyd (Oxford, 1945), p. 217Google Scholar). On Lhwyd see Daniel, Glyn, ‘Edward Lhywd, antiquary and archaeologist’ in Welsh Hist. Rev., iii (1967), pp 345-59Google Scholar; Emery, F. V., ‘Edward Lhwyd and the 1695 Britannia’ in Antiquity, xxxii (1958), pp 172-82Google Scholar.

19 The phrases are from Kearney, ‘John Toland: an Irish philosopher?’, pp 210-11.

20 Eagleton, Terry, Crazy John and the bishop: and other essays on Irish culture (Cork, 1998), p. 54Google Scholar.

21 Kearney, ‘John Toland: an Irish philosopher?’, p. 220.

22 See Harrison, Alan, ‘John Toland’s Celtic background’ in McGuinness, et al. (eds), John Toland’s Christianity not mysterious, pp 243-60Google Scholar; idem, ‘John Toland and the discovery of an Irish manuscript in Holland’ in Ir. Univ. Rev., xxii (1992), pp 33-9Google Scholar; idem, ‘Sur les origines Celtes de John Toland’ in Revue de Synthèse, iv (1995), pp 345-55Google Scholar.

23 Sullivan, Robert, ‘John Toland’s druids: a mythopoeia of Celtic identity’ in Bullán, iv(1998), p.22Google Scholar.

24 See Barnard, T.C., ‘Protestants and the Irish language, c. 1675-1725’ in Jn. Ecc. Hist., xliv (1993), pp 243-72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leerssen, Joep, Mere Irish and fíor-Ghael: studies in the idea of Irish nationality, its development and literary expression prior to the nineteenth century (Cork, 1996)Google Scholar; Smyth, Jim, ‘“Like amphibious animals”: Irish Protestants, ancient Britons, 1691-1707’ in Hist. Jn., xxxvi (1993), pp 785-97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Hayton, D. W., ‘From barbarian to burlesque: English images of the Irish, c. 1660-1750’ in Ir. Econ. & Soc. Hist., xv (1988), pp 5–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Lurbe, Pierre, ‘John Toland, cosmopolitanism and the concept of nation’ in O’Dea, Michael and Whelan, Kevin (eds), Nations and nationalism: France, Britain, Ireland and the eighteenth-century context (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, cccxxxv, Oxford, 1995), pp. 251-60Google Scholar.

26 Of course, as Pierre Lurbe very astutely comments, the resources that Toland created did become posthumously the cultural infrastructure for the reawakening of an Irish nationalist consciousness (ibid., p, 259).

27 See Carabelli, Giancarlo, Tolandiana . .. (Florence, 1975), pp 265-7Google Scholar.

28 For an account of Toland’s involvement in the circulation of manuscript work see Champion, J. A. I., ‘Publiés mais non imprimés: John Toland et la circulation des manuscrits, 1700-1722’ in La Lettre Clandestine, vii (1999), pp 301-11Google Scholar.

29 Toland, Collection, i, 4. Evidence of his early interest in Celtic languages can be seen in the preservation of his ‘A specimen of the Amorican language’, dated December 1693 at Oxford (and published in the 1726 collection).Toland’s linguistic skills intruded him briefly into the project for a new edition of Camden’s Britannia, organised by Gibson: see Piggott, Stuart, ‘William Camden and the Britannia’ in Brit. Acad. Proc.,xxxvii (1951), pp 199–217, esp. pp 211-12Google Scholar.

30 Toland to Southwell, 1718 (B.L., Add. MS 4465, f. 13).

31 Toland to ‘Mr C***’, June 1718 (ibid., f. 16). The evidence of his library listings shows that he had a number of the key works: see Toland, Nazarenus, ed. Champion, appendix: ‘Toland’s library, c. 1722’, pp 302-14.

32 Toland to Molesworth, June 1718 (B.L., Add. MS 4465, f. 16).

33 Molesworth to Toland, 1 Aug. 1719 (ibid., f. 19).

34 Toland to Molesworth (draft), n.d. (ibid., f. 36).

35 For full details see Toland, Nazarenus, ed. Champion, pp 312-14.

36 See Asher, R.E., National myths in Renaissance France: Francus, Samothes and the druids (Edinburgh, 1993)Google Scholar; and, for some general discussion of similar themes, Kidd, Colin, British identities before nationalism: ethnicity and nationhood in the Atlantic world, 1600-1800 (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Craith, Mícheál Mac, ‘Gaelic Ireland and the Renaissance’ in Williams, Glanmor and Jones, R. O. (eds), The Celts and the Renaissance: tradition and innovation .. . (Cardiff, 1990), pp 57–89Google Scholar.

37 See Seaton, Ethel, Literary relations of England and Scandinavia in the seventeenth century (Oxford, 1935)Google Scholar.

38 See Parry, Graham, The trophies of time: English antiquarians of the seventeenth century (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; Mendyck, S.A.E., ‘Speculum Britanniae’: regional study, antiquarianism, and science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto, 1989)Google Scholar; see also Hunter, M. C. W., ‘The Royal Society and the origins of British archaeology’ in Antiquity, lxv (1971), pp 113-21, 187-92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Emery, F. V., ‘English regional studies from Aubrey to Defoe’ in Geographical Magazine, cxxiv (1958), pp 315-25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 For some background see Emery, F. V., ‘The geography of Robert Gordon, 1580-1661, and Sir Robert Sibbald, 1641-1722’ in Scottish Geographical Magazine, lxxiv (1958), pp 3–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 For an account of these texts see Leerssen, Mere Irish & fíor-Ghael; Emery, F. V., ‘Irish geography in the seventeenth century’ in Ir. Geography, iii (1954-8), pp 263-76Google Scholar.

41 See Haycock, D. A. B., ‘Dr William Stukeley (1687-1765): antiquarian and Newtonian in eighteenth-century England’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1998)Google Scholar.

42 See Asher, National myths, passim.

43 See Haycock, ‘Stukeley’,passim.

44 See Keating, Geoffrey, The general history of Ireland (London, 1723), p. 21Google Scholar, which rejects the legend of Fiontan, who was either supposed to have survived the flood or to have been resurrected afterwards. On Keating as a source see Cunningham, Bernadette, ‘Seventeenth-century interpretations of the past: the case of Geoffrey Keating’ in I.H.S., xxv, no. 98 (Nov. 1986), pp 116-28Google Scholar; Berman, David and Harrison, Alan, ‘John Toland and the translation of Keating’s History of Ireland’ in Donegal Annual, xxxvi (1984), pp 25-9Google Scholar. On the more general account of Irish origin narratives see Jackson, K.H., The oldest Irish tradition: a window on the Iron Age (Cambridge, 1964)Google Scholar; Corráin, Donncha Ó, ‘Irish origin legends and genealogy: recurrent aetiologies’ in Nyberg, Tore (ed.), History and heroic tale: a symposium (Odense, 1985), pp 51–97Google Scholar; Cuív, Brian Ó, ‘Literary creation and Irish historical tradition’ in Brit. Acad. Proc., xlix (1963), pp 237-8Google Scholar. For related contemporary accounts of Welsh origins (especially by Lhwyd) see Daniel, Glyn, ‘Who are the Welsh?’ in Brit. Acad. Proc., xl (1954), pp 145-67Google Scholar.

45 See the preface to Jones’s English translation of Pezron, P.Y., The antiquities of nations; more particularly of the Celtae or Gauls (London, 1706)Google Scholar, where, meditating upon chapter 10 of Genesis, ‘I found great difficulties occur’d to me therein’ which prompted a ‘design to search into the origin of nations’.

46 Haycock, ‘Stukeley’, p. 233.

47 See Piggott, Stuart, The druids (London, 1968)Google Scholar. Kendrick, T.D., The druids: a study in Keltic prehistory (London, 1927)Google Scholar reproduces many of the key passages. Tierney, J. J., ‘The Celtic ethnography of Posidonius’ in R.I.A. Proc., lx (1960), sect. C, pp 189-275Google Scholar, discusses the classical sources in detail. Some attention is also paid to the classical sources in Owen, A.L., The famous druids: a survey of three centuries of English literature on the druids (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

48 Specimen of critical learning, p.17.

49 One eighteenth-century critic, Borlase, complained that Toland provided accounts of many monuments without providing particular details and measurements: see Haycock, ‘Stukeley’, p. 137.

50 Specimen of critical learning, pp 67-8.

51 Ibid., pp 67,104.

52 Ibid., p. 114 (see also pp 31, 144 for statements about wishing to do more research).

53 Ibid., p.82.

54 Ibid., pp 106-7.

55 Ibid., p.75.

56 Ibid., p. 115. Toland commented on the Dwarfy-Stone: ‘I wish it were in Surrey, that I might make it a summer study.’

57 Ibid., p.ll8.

58 Ibid., pp 18-19.

59 Ibid., p. 33.

60 See Skinner, Quentin, Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 See Smith, Nigel, ‘The English Revolution and the end of rhetoric: John Toland’s Clito (1700) and the republican daemon’ in Essays and Studies: 1996 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 14Google Scholar.

62 See Toland, ‘Preface’ to Nazarenus (1718).

63 Quoted in Skinner, Reason and rhetoric, p. 92.

64 Specimen of critical learning, pp 121-4; cf. The works of Lucian of Samosata, ed. H., W. and Fowler, F. G. (4 vols, Oxford, 1905), iii, 256-9Google Scholar.

65 Specimen of critical learning, p. 34.

66 Ibid., p.35.

67 Ibid., p.43.

68 Phurnutus was an alternative though less well-known name used by Toland for the historian Lucius Annaeus.

69 See Calder, George (ed.), Auraicept na n-éces: The scholars’ primer (Edinburgh, 1917)Google Scholar.

70 On Ogam script see McManus, Damian, A guide to Ogam (Maynooth Monographs, no. 4, Maynooth, 1991), esp. pp 147-51Google Scholar; see also Rankin, H. D., Celts and the classical world (London, 1987), pp 282-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.I am very grateful to Sam Barnish for guidance in these matters.

71 Specimen of critical learning, p. 47.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid., pp48-9.

74 Ibid., p.58.

75 Ibid., p59.

76 For some background see Hawkes, C.F.C., Pytheas: Europe and the Greek explorers (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar.

77 Toland also cited Robert Sibbald’s Essay concerning the Thule of the ancients (Edinburgh, 1693)Google Scholar: see Specimen of critical learning, p. 157.

78 Specimen of critical learning, p 177.

79 Ibid., pp 161-3.

80 Ibid., pp 181-2.

81 Ibid., p. 169.

82 Ibid., pp 170-71. Toland gives details of the fertile crop ratios.

83 Ibid., p.l73.

84 Ibid., pp 175-6.

85 Ibid., pp 176-7. Interestingly, there are some intriguing remarks about gender relations and marriage arrangements towards the end of the letter that may be echoes of Toland’s reading of Milton’s works.

86 Ibid., pp 131-5 (quotation from p. 133).

87 Ibid, pp 5,118.

88 Piggott, Druids, p. 77 and passim.

89 Specimen of critical learning, pp 9-10.

90 Ibid., p.46.

91 Chamberlayne to Toland,21 June 1718 (B.L., Add. MS 4295, f. 27).

92 Specimen of critical learning, p. 10.

93 Ibid., p. 16.

94 See Smiles, Sam, The image of antiquity: ancient Britain and the romantic imagination (New Haven, 1994), esp. pp 75–112Google Scholar; Mee, Jon, Dangerous enthusiasm: William Blake and the culture of radicalism in the 1790s (Oxford, 1992), pp 94-5Google Scholar.

95 Specimen of critical learning, p. 31.

96 Ibid., p. 10. Indeed, he suggested that each independent section of a few paragraphs would result in full-length chapters.

97 See Champion, J. A. I., ‘“Manuscripts of mine abroad”: John Toland and the circulation of ideas, c. 1700-1722’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xiv (1999), pp 9–36Google Scholar.

98 For a transcription of this see Champion, ‘Publiés mais non imprimés’, p. 341.

99 It is, of course, possible that the three items were not copies of the same text, but the three separate letters of the printed version.

100 Toland to Molesworth, n.d. (B.L., Add. MS 4465, f. 36).

101 See B.L., Department of Printed Books, call-mark C. 45. c. 1: manuscript additions opposite title-page (dated ‘Putney, September, 1720’). Molesworth’s comments were added after 28 Oct. 1721.

102 See notes by ‘JT’, at pp 29 (‘In this story the superstition is pretty equal on both sides’), 172 (‘our author was a very poor philosopher, & no astronomer at all’), and 230 (‘Protestants we see, may be very superstitious’).

103 See notes at pp 8, 26, 28, 35, 47, 60, 67,68,87,88,113,141,154,249; there is also a reference to ‘my Nazarenus, Letter 2’ at p. 257.

104 Specimen of critical learning, p. 5.

105 Ibid., pp l4,15,16,29,30.

106 John, , Campbell, Baron, Lives of the lord chancellors... (8 vols, London, 1845-69), iv, 393Google Scholar. For an old but useful account of the ministry see Williams, Basil, Stanhope: a study in eighteenth-century war and diplomacy (Oxford, 1932), pp 385–413Google Scholar.

107 See Townend, G. M., ‘Religious radicalism and conservatism in the Whig party under George I: the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts’ in Parliamentary History, vii (1988) pp 24–43Google Scholar; Turner, E. R., ‘The Peerage Bill of 1719’ in E.H.R., xxviii (1913), pp 243-59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beattie, J. M., ‘The court of George I and English politics, 1717-1720’ in E.H.R.,li (1966), pp 26–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, The English court in the reign of George I (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar; Turberville, A.S., The House of Lords in the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar; Naylor, J. F., The British aristocracy and the Peerage Bill of 1719 (New York, 1968)Google Scholar.

108 Robbins, Caroline, The eighteenth-century commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), p. 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109 Molesworth to Toland, 1 Mar. 1721 [/2] (Toland, Collection, ii, 493-4).

110 See British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, B1656D: ‘Thomas Gibson pinxit. P. Pelham fec. 1721’, sold by John Bowles, Mercers’ Hall, Cheapside. On Toland’s translation of passages of Lucian and the editions of correspondence see Carabelli, Tolandiana, pp 231-3.

111 See the exchange of letters between Molesworth and Toland, 1-2 Mar. 1722 (B.L., Add. MS 4465, ff 27, 29).

112 I would like to thank my colleague Sam Barnish for his detailed help in exploring the classical sources that Toland adapted in his Specimen of critical learning. Versions of this paper were delivered in Belfast and London. I am very grateful for the comments and suggestions of those audiences and others.