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A 'Philosophical Storehouse': the Life and Afterlife Of 1 A ‘Philosophical Storehouse’: The life and afterlife of the Royal Society’s repository Jennifer M. Thomas Submitted for PhD examination 2 - ABSTRACT - In June 1781, the Royal Society’s repository was transferred to the British Museum. Though ostensibly as a result of the limited space in the Royal Society’s purpose-built accommodation at Somerset House, the Society were perhaps also a little relieved to relinquish a collection that had proved to be somewhat burdensome during its residence at the Society and which was frequently criticised for its decaying specimens, broken items and missing, possibly stolen, objects. However this seems to be only part of the story. Drawing upon manuscript material in the Royal Society and the British Library, this study will examine the repository’s pattern of usage, collecting strategies and intellectual output throughout its life, in addition to exploring its afterlife at the British Museum using the British Museum’s, Royal College of Surgeon’s and Natural History Museum’s extensive archives. This thesis will seek to reveal an alternative account of the Royal Society’s repository arguing that it was comprised of a substantial and significant collection that the British Museum, at least initially, appears to have been grateful to receive and which, periodically, played a central role in the Society’s and naturalists' work. 3 - TABLE OF CONTENTS - List of Figures 4 Acknowledgements 5 Notes on Transcription 6 Introduction 7 A ‘Philosophical Storehouse’: The life and afterlife of the Royal Society’s Repository Chapter One 17 ‘A Safe and Lasting Repository’? The Life and Transfer of the Royal Society’s Museum Chapter Two 47 ‘Compiling God’s Great Book [of] Universal Nature’: The Royal Society’s collecting strategies Chapter Three 82 ‘For Considerable Philosophical and Usefull Purposes’: The use of the Royal Society’s repository Chapter Four 119 ‘[Preserved] out of regard to the memory of Swammerdam’: The Afterlife of the Royal Society’s repository Chapter Five 148 ‘The Soul of the Collection’: The documentation of the British Museum’s natural history collections, 1781-1836 Conclusion 186 List of Appendices 194 Appendix 1 196 Royal Society Archive Appendix 2 210 British Library Archive Appendix 3 212 British Museum Archive Appendix 4 215 Royal College of Surgeons Archive Appendix 5 222 Natural History Museum, Tring Archive Bibliography 228 4 - LIST OF FIGURES - 1. Plan of Repository drawn circa 1730 28 2 Comparison of the objects in the repository in 1681, and the projected 34 and actual figures in 1734 3 Comparison of the objects in the repository in 1681, 1734, 1765 and 125 upon transfer to the British Museum in 1781 4 Tooth of a mastodon, or Tetrabelodon angustidens 136 5 Three teeth of the woolly rhinoceros, or Coelodonta antiquitatis , found 137 in Chartham, Kent 6 Jawbone of the woolly rhinoceros, or Coelodonta antiquitatis , found in 139 Chartham, Kent 7 Frontlet and horns of the type Bos nanus 141 8 Specimen of the frog orchid or Coeloglossum viride 144 9 Sample pages of the ‘Old Catalogue’ 161 10 Handwriting difference between records 334 and 335 166 11 Table indicating the arrangement of the ‘Vellum Catalogues’ in 170 comparison with Coenraad Temminck’s system 12 Sample page of the ‘Vellum Catalogue’ 172 5 - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - I could not have produced this thesis without the help of so very many people who kindly gave their time to assist me. My thanks go first to my supervisor, Professor Lisa Jardine, and more generally to all at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, particularly Dr Robyn Adams and Dr Jan Broadway, for all their help, advice and support. Special thanks go to the Drapers Company of the City of London for funding my PhD and to the Librarians and Archivists at the Royal Society, particularly for their enthusiasm for my project and encyclopaedic knowledge of their archives. Thanks also go to the archivists at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, the British Museum, and the Royal College of Surgeons. Many thanks also to Dr Robert Prys Jones from the Natural History Museum, Tring who advised on drafts of Chapter Five and helped with all matters ornithological. Finally, thanks to all my family and friends, particularly Mum, Dad, Liz and Matt, without whose unwavering support and belief in me, this project would not have been possible. 6 - NOTES ON TRANSCRIPTION - Whilst the aim of this study is to produce transcripts that are faithful to the originals, for ease of reading the following editorial decisions have been taken. First, line endings have not been retained, though the end of a paragraph is marked by leaving a blank line. Second, whilst page breaks for transcriptions quoted in the body of the thesis are not indicated, a change of page number is noted in square brackets for transcripts included in the appendices. In addition, the original spelling, punctuation and capitalisation have been retained, though for ease of reading, ‘þ’ has been silently expanded to ‘th’, the long ‘s’ has been modernised as has the usage of ‘u’ and ‘v’ and ‘i’ and ‘j’. Ampersands have been retained as have Roman numerals. Although superscript letters have been silently lowered, the contractions that they represent have been preserved. Finally, insertions have been silently included whilst deletions have largely been omitted without comment, unless they directly contribute to the argument of this study. 7 - INTRODUCTION - A ‘Philosophical Storehouse’: 1 The life and afterlife of the Royal Society’s repository For historians of science, museums and collections in the first half of the long eighteenth century, the story of the Royal Society’s repository is probably fairly familiar. First formerly referred to by the Society’s administrative records in October 1663, it was initially curated by Robert Hooke and significantly swelled during its early life by the purchase of Robert Hubert’s cabinet of rarities using a donation of £100 from Daniel Colwall. 2 Nehemiah Grew’s catalogue of the collection, Musæum Regalis Societatis , was published in 1681, with two further editions appearing in 1686 and 1694. 3 Although initially the repository was praised, 4 by 1702 things appear to have taken a turn for the worse; the collection was portrayed as consisting of ‘memorandums of mortality’ and ‘antiquated trumpery’ by Edward Ward, whilst Frans Burman described how its magnets had been ‘carelessly thrown against many of different size’.5 Soon after, in 1710, perhaps the most damning, and most often quoted, criticisms of the repository were made by Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach who described the majority of the collection as being ‘in no sort of order or tidiness’, ‘covered with dust’ and with parts ‘utterly broken and ruined’.6 The collection was 1 References to the repository and the Society more generally as a storehouse, are particularly evident in the first ten years of the repository’s existence, see for example RS, Original Journal Book, vol. 4, 23 November 1671, p. 214, RS, Original Journal Book, vol. 5, 19 February 1673, p. 12 and ‘Letter from Henry Oldenburg to Sir George Oxendon’, London, Royal Society (RS), Original Letter Book, vol. 2, 6 April 1667, p. 1. 2 For the Society’s first reference to their repository see, RS, Original Council Minutes, vol. 1, 19 October 1663, p. 34. 3 Nehemiah Grew, Musæum Regalis Societatis, or a Catalogue & description of the Rarities belonging to the Royal Society & preserved at Gresham College. Made by N. Grew. Where unto is subjoined the comparative anatomy of stomachs and guts (London: W. Rawlins, 1681) with subsequent editions published in London in 1686 by Thomas Malthus and 1694 by Hugh Newman. 4 See for example comments made by Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo III in 1669 in Lorenzo Magolotti, Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, through England, during the Reign of King Charles the Second (London: J. Mawman, 1821), p. 188 and those made by Christiaan Huygens in 1689 discussed in Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The man who measured London (London: Harpur Collins, 2003), p. 311; both of which will be discussed in the first chapter. 5 Edward Ward, The London Spy Compleat, In Eighteen-Parts (London: J. How, 1703), pp. 57-9 and J. E. B. Mayor, ed., Cambridge Under Queen Anne (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1911), p. 313 discussed in A. D. C. Simpson, ‘’Newton’s Telescope and the Cataloguing of the Royal Society’s Repository’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society , 38 (1984), 187-214 (p. 191). 6 W. H. Quarrell and M. Mare, trans., London in 1710: from the travels of Zacharias Von Uffenbach (London: Faber and Faber, 1934), p. 98, this is also quoted in slightly abbreviated form in Mayor, p. 365. 8 then transferred to purpose-built accommodation at Crane Court which was possibly designed by Christopher Wren and likely to have been partly financed using a legacy from Robert Hooke. 7 During the Society’s stay in Fleet Street, it struggled to preserve its objects and, in consequence, committees were periodically set up to revive the collection’s ailing state. The repository’s story ends at the British Museum, where it was transferred in 1781, due to lack of space in the Society’s new rooms at Somerset House. As a collection of artificial and natural objects belonging to a scientific society, the Royal Society’s repository has received a great deal of attention from various academic disciplines. However given the wealth of critical literature devoted both to the collection as a whole and its component parts, it is interesting that very little has focussed in detail on the repository’s history in the later years of its life, on its transfer to the British Museum, or, more generally, on the mechanics of collecting, containing, maintaining and using the collection throughout its occupancy at the Royal Society.
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