OXFORD UNIVERSITY

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oxford University HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2,785 BCE

A barrow was constructed, by someone, at what is now Oxford, England.

Oxford

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Oxford University “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2,000 BCE

The “Rollright Stones” were set up, by someone, at what is now Oxford, England.

Oxford

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Oxford University “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1,395 BCE

A cemetery was begun, by someone, at what is now Oxford, England.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Oxford University “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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400 BCE

Land in the vicinity of what is now Oxford, England began to be cultivated by agriculturalists. Trade routes were being formed along the Thames valley. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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150 BCE

Pottery has been found that was made, by someone, at this point in time, near what is now Oxford, England.

Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

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100 BCE

Construction of a ditch from the Thames to the Chiltern, possibly as a boundary between the Dobunni and the Catuvellauni tribes. (This line would serve later as a defense against the Romans.) OXFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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43 CE

A civilian town developed at what is now Oxford, England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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70 CE

Romano-British settlements at what is now Oxford, England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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185 CE

An earthwork rampart was erected in the vicinity of what is now Oxford, England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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250 CE

Outgrowing the earlier scatter of Romano-British potteries on both banks of the Thames, production was becoming concentrated on the Oxford potteries, producing red-coated ware. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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350 CE

A bath suite installed at what is now Oxford, England sported mosaic floors. Ah, Roman luxury! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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420 CE

Another cemetery was created at what is now Oxford, England.

St. Jerome, (S.E. Hieronymus), born 340?, Latin scholar. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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571 CE

Success by the Anglican invader Ceawlin over the island Britons. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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639 CE

In Britain, Birinus was baptized as King. At his death Agilbert the Frank would be consecrated, but much later he would become the Bishop of Paris.

At about this point a Tibetan king Srontsen Gampo established the Tibetan capital at Lhasa, and ordered that the Tibetan language be written in the Kashmiri script of North India. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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740 CE

Wattle fences dating to this period have been found at what is now Oxford, England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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823 CE

Egbert beat Ceolwulf at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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886 CE

Since King Alfred committed the defence of the navigable Thames to Ethered of Oxford, we infer that in this period that area must have been able to field a significant military force. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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912 CE

The burghal hideage for what was then known as “Oxna forda” shows that what is now known as Oxford was the centre for 2,400 hides. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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924 CE

King Alfred’s son Aelfweard died at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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925 CE

Two Oxford moneyers struck coins signed “MO OX URBIS.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1002

November 13, Friday (Old Style): On St. Brice’s Day, the Danish community in Oxford was massacred. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1004

Secular canons were established at St. Frideswide’s Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1009

The Danes burned the town of Oxford, England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1013

Lyfing became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Oxford surrendered and gave hostages. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1018

Cnut chose Oxford for the meeting at which the Danes and the English swore to uphold the law of Edgar. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1117

Theobald of Etampes (a secular priest) and magister Oxenefordie lectured in Oxford to audiences to up to a hundred clerks. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1133

Robert Pullen lectured in theology at Oxford.

At the Augustinian priory and hospice that Rahere, a German court jester famed for his juggling, had established at Smithfield, to help the monks pay for their charitable activities, in this year King Henry I allowed the beginning an annual fair similar to ones held in Markgröningen, Rothenburg, and Urach in southern Germany. With Saint Bartholomew being the patron saint of butchers and shepherds, with the special day of this saint being August 24th, the Bartholomew’s Fair would be held during the month of August. For many years Rahere himself would be Lord of the Bartholomew’s Fair at the Smithfield meat market, and that market would come to be associated not only with juggling, but also with fire walking and pugilism (holy charity has very many faces). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1167

The Lombard League was founded.

King Dermot MacMurrough returned to Leinster with a small force. IRELAND

King Henry II ordered all English students on the Continent to return to England. Many of these students decided to settle in Oxford in an attempt to create the kind of university they had seen in Europe. Disputes between the students and residents led to riots. Some of these students fled to Cambridge where they established a new university. The loss of Oxford’s students hurt the local economy and in 1214 traders and merchants invited them back again. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1190

Oxford burned.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1201

John Grim was master of the schools at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1209

The 1st students arrived in Cambridge after fleeing from rioting in Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1214

June 20, Friday (Old Style): A Papal legate issued an ordinance laying down the PRIVILEGES OF STUDENTS and mentioning the need to appoint a university chancellor, after Robert Grosseteste (Great Head) served briefly as interim master of schools. Geoffrey de Lucy was confirmed as First Chancellor. OXFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1227

Oxford Jews established a synagogue on land at Pennyfarthing Street given by St. Frideswide’s. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1231

Henry III ordered that NO CLERK SHOULD REMAIN AT OXFORD who was not UNDER THE DISCIPLINE OR TUITION of one of the masters of the schools, thus strengthening the position of University Halls.The Liber Augustalis law code, for Sicily. OXFORD

Oxford

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II paraded through Ravenna with his personal menagerie including camels, panthers, elephants, and possibly the 1st giraffe to pay a visit to Europe (a gift from Egyptian sultan al-Kamil). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1238

King Henry III of England had the Roman wall in the vicinity of the Tower of London demolished to make way for the construction of a great new curtain wall round the east, north and west sides. The new wall doubled the area covered by the fortress, enclosing the neighboring church of St. Peter ad Vincula (St. Peter in Jail). The wall was reinforced by nine new towers, the strongest at the corners (the Salt, Martin and Devereux). Of these all but two (the Flint and Brick) remain much as originally built. The fortress was surrounded by a moat that was flooded with water from the Thames. William le Marish, accused of conspiring to kill the King at Woodstock, was ordered to be so loaded with irons during his sojourn in the Tower that there could be no chance of his escape prior to execution. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Rioting Oxford students provoked an interdict on the city. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1249

University College, the 1st college of Oxford University, was founded by William of Durham. Balliol would start up in 1263 (finally receiving a charter in 1282) and Merton, the 1st residential college, would be getting itself started during 1262-1264 (beginning of course with the eight nephews of Walter de Merton). Merton would set the collegiate pattern which would become standard in both Oxford and Cambridge. These colleges would be self-governing institutions in which teachers and students lived together as a community. Fourteen other colleges would be founded by the end of the 16th century: St Edmund Hall (1278), Exeter College (1314), Oriel College (1326), Queen’s College (1340/1341), New College (1379), Lincoln College (1427), All Souls College (1438), Magdalen College (1458), Brasenose College (1509), Corpus Christi College (1517), Christ Church College (1546), Trinity College (1554), St John’s College (1555) and Jesus College (1571). Penbroke College would be founded in 1624. Hertford College was created in 1740. Four more colleges would be established in the 19th Century including two for women (Margaret Hall in 1878 and Somerville College HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in 1879). Cambridge

Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1252

Oxford students participated in a bloody affray against the Irish.

King Henry III directed that all freemen controlling property valued at 40 to 100 shillings, when ordered to report for military service, needed at their own expense to bring along a sword, a bow and arrows, and a dagger. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1260

The Baliol family, its roots in Picardy, France, had derived its name from the municipality of Bailleul-en- Vimeu. John Balliol, with extensive estates both in England and France, who had been one of King Henry II of England’s most loyal Lords during the Barons’ War of 1258-1265, wed a Scottish Princess, Dervorguilla of Galloway, and their son, another John Balliol, would be King of Scots from 1292 to 1296. In about this year, with guidance from the Bishop of Durham, he decided that as a substantial act of charity he would rent a house in the suburbs of Oxford and maintain there some poor students. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1262

Walter de Merton founded a college for his 8 nephews. OXFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1263

John Baliol, immensely wealthy, had in about 1260, with guidance from the Bishop of Durham, decided that as a substantial act of charity he would rent a house in the suburbs of Oxford and maintain there some poor students. In about this year his scheme to do some good in the world seems to have gone into operation (we know that it was in effect for sure by June 1266 because at that point its dependence on him would be mentioned in a royal writ). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1269

John Baliol, immensely wealthy, had in about 1263, with guidance from the Bishop of Durham, rented a house in the suburbs of Oxford and begun to maintain there some poor students. There were at first 16 students residing in this building with each one being doled out an allowance of 8 pence a week. When in this year he died, his widow Dervorguilla put this arrangement on a permanent basis by providing a capital endowment.

A rebuilding of Westminster Abbey was being initiated. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1282

John Baliol, immensely wealthy, had in about 1263, with guidance from the Bishop of Durham, rented a house in the suburbs of Oxford and begun to maintain there some poor students. When he died, his widow Dervorguilla had put this arrangement on a permanent basis by providing a capital endowment. At this point she formulated Statutes for the institution. She would provide the College with its first seal (it still has this in its possession). Although the College would remain small for centuries, it would soon produce notable alumni such as John Wyclif, who would serve as its Master for several years around 1360. William Gray, the bibliophile Bishop of Ely, would also be also a member. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1286

The Trinitarian Friars came to Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1288

Merton College acquired a horologium. OXFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1293

A disease in Oxford was ascribed to making ale with corrupt water. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1297

At Oxford, Franciscan eminence began with Duns Scotus’s lectures on the sentences (this eminence would be maintained until 1304, and it would be upheld again by William of Occam between 1317 and 1319). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1298

At Oxford, a bloody riot between students and town bailiffs.

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1324

Oriel College was founded. OXFORD

Oxford

ORIEL COLLEGE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1340

During this year and the following one at Oxford, Queen’s College would be being founded under the patronage of Queen Philippa. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1355

A marble memorial slab was created in a church in Hungerford in the Berkshires of England. (Fast forward a few centuries, to the year 1616, and the writing on the slab would be rendered illegible by a graffitum provided by one Willm Yong, and, fast forward another few hundred years, to the year 1859, and Cl. Hopper would be complaining in NOTES AND QUERIES about this William Young’s “wanton defacement” of said inscription.)

Because neighboring villagers were attacking the students of Oxford, the Chancellor hurried to Woodstock. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1357

When David II returned to Scotland from exile and actively assumed the role of monarch, John Barbour received a letter of safe-conduct to travel through England to the University of Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1377

John Ball, although excommunicated for having the temerity to advocate elimination of class distinctions, continued to preach in the marketplace and in other public spaces. Perhaps in this year, or by the year 1381, in Latin, John Gower’s VOX CLAMANTIS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This poet wrote in praise for the ruthlessness with which the English aristocracy, led by the new King Richard II, suppressed the common folk and their “Peasants’ Revolt.” The aristocrats were moral and the people immoral — that was the difference between these two orders. VOX CLAMANTIS

Pope Gregory XI issued a bull ordering the chancellor of Oxford to prevent Wycliff’s heresies. He returned from Avignon to Rome. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1379 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In this year, or possibly in the following one, Thomas à Kempis was born at Kempten in Germany.

New College founded in a site described as “a plague pit where thieves use to lie and wait.”

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1380

John Wycliff was master of Balliol. OXFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1424

Richard Winchcombe (florut 1398-1440) began construction of the Divinity School at Oxford — the 1st of the fully detached university buildings. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1427

Lincoln College was founded. OXFORD

Oxford

The Bohemians develop long-barreled hand guns that looked like whistles. Hence their name, pistala, a word meaning “pipes.” (The contemporary Turkish name for similar weapons was tüfek, or “blowpipe.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1438

Archbishop Chichele founded All Souls College. OXFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1448

William of Wayneflete founded Magdalen College. A pestilence was said to be due to “the sleeping of many students in one single dormitory.” OXFORD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1478

February 7, Saturday (1477, Old Style): Thomas More was born on Milk Street, London, the son of John More, a prominent lawyer who would be made a judge, and of Agnes, daughter of Thomas Granger. As a boy he would serve as a page in the household of Archbishop Morton. He would study at Oxford, and the Inns of Court, but would be drawn both to asceticism and to affairs of state. (This day and year are uncertain; the day was possibly the 6th rather than the 7th and the year may possibly have been 1477 rather than 1478.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1492

Thomas More entered Oxford University (he wasn’t yet wearing the bling depicted below). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1496

John Colet lectured at Oxford.

Jesus College was founded at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1497

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam went with delight to Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1498

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam taught at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1502

Arthur, eldest son of King Henry VII of England, died. Margaret, daughter of Henry VII, got married with James IV of Scotland. Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII, founded professorships of divinity at Oxford and Cambridge. Cambridge

Oxford

The Council of Regency lost its effectiveness. Archchancellor Berthold von Henneberg was dismissed by Maximilian I.

Lucas Cranach painted The Crucifixion in Vienna.

Vasco de Gama founded a Portuguese colony at Cochin, India.

Second voyage of the Anglo-Portuguese Syndicate to Newfoundland. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1509

Brasenose College, Oxford and St. John’s College, Cambridge were founded. Cambridge

Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1513

During this year and the following one, without taking a degree, John Heywood may have been at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1516

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was founded. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1517

Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester, founded Corpus Christi College.

Oxford

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1519

After having spent a year or two at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford), John Heywood was receiving 100 shillings each quarter-year for being a “synger” at the court of King Henry VIII. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1525

Cardinal Wolsey having fallen from favor, he needed to return Hampton Court to King Henry VIII.

He endowed Cardinal College, Oxford (which would, in 1546, be refounded as Christ Church College). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1534

John Heywood dedicated his ballad “Give place ye Ladies” to the Princess Mary (or rather due to all the changes at court, to the former Princess Mary).

In the Act of Supremacy, King Henry VIII of England separated his Anglican church from the Holy Roman Catholic Church at Rome and set himself at its head.

During the turmoil of the 16th Century Baliol College in Oxford had been steadfast in its allegiance to the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the Pope in Rome. When the English monarch made his demand for acknowledgement of his supremacy over the Pope, the Master and five Fellows signed and sealed their submission only after adding that they intended “nothing to prejudice the divine law, the rule of the orthodox faith, or the doctrine of the Holy Mother Catholic Church” (other colleges, in making their corporate submissions, seem to have ventured no such qualifications).

John Fisher, the Catholic Bishop of Rochester, was committed to Bell Tower of the Tower of London for having refused to take the oath of submission to King Henry VIII as the new supreme head of the English church. Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More was also committed to Bell Tower. Since he would persist in declining to take the oaths for the Act of Supremacy and for the Act of Succession, he would be found guilty of treason. More was also protesting the divorce of Catherine of Aragón, who had given Henry a living child, the Princess Mary. When the prisoner More was found to be in communication with his friend, he would be deprived of ink — whereupon he would continue to write using a coal. While imprisoned he would be writing both TREATISE ON THE PASSION and DIALOGUE OF COMFORT AGAINST TRIBULATION. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1547

At Oxford, John Warner became the 1st Professor of Medicine.

Oxford

Jasper Heywood matriculated at Merton College, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1550

At some point during this decade, the Oxford Library was destroyed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1553

Jasper Heywood received the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Merton College, Oxford.

A Flemish woman was introducing into England the practice of starching linen.

At least by this year of King Edward VI’s reign, William Hunnis was singing in the King’s Choir while serving as one of the 32 Protestant gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

The chartering of Christ’s Hospital, a school for poor boys at Newgate outside London. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1554

During this year the Tower of London hosted the Princess Elizabeth, for a couple of months before she was relocated to Woodstock (when Queen Mary would die in 1558 this former resident of the Tower would become Queen of England). LONDON

Jasper Heywood was elected probationary fellow of Merton College, Oxford, where he would distinguish himself in public and private disputations, in writing verse translations of Seneca’s dramas, and in acting as Lord of Misrule at the Christmas festivities (he was known among the students as a wild carouser). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1555

Sir Thomas White, a London merchant tailor, founded St. John’s College (Grice’s). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1556

March 21, Saturday, (1555, Old Style): Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake (“CREMATUS VIVIUS”) at Oxford. This required 6 shillings worth of wood plus 3 shillings 4 pence worth of faggots. It also required a new archbishop (which would be Cardinal Pole).

(Note that this medallion has the name as “CRAMMERUS.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1558

England lost Calais, the last of its possessions on the mainland of Europe, and became an island nation.

Jasper Heywood, a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, was compelled to resign on account of carousing, but was then elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (at the beginning of the reign of the Princess Elizabeth as Queen of England he would, for reasons of religious conscience, give up this fellowship at Alsolne Colledge in Oxenforde as well and journey to Rome, where in 1570 he would be received into the Society of Jesus). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1559

Jasper Heywood, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (Alsolne Colledge in Oxenforde), translated the Troades (“Troas,” which was what we now refer to as “The Trojan Women”), the 1st of three of the ten tragedies of Seneca the Younger that he would translate into English verse. This play had been written around 54 CE, largely based on Euripides’s The Trojan Women and Hecuba. This was the initial rendering of the material into English, and was not a straightforward translation. Heywood not only took liberties with the Latin text but also introduced material of his own creation.

Matthew Parker became Archbishop of Canterbury.

William Hunnis got married with the recently widowed Margaret Brigham. By about the middle of the year she was on her deathbed, and made him sole heir of everything she had, and executor of her will, with the exception that she left her Allmes House, the tenements and mansion house lying at Westchester, to her cousin Francis Brigham, with her husband William being allowed the use of that home for his lifetime. By the 12th of October she was dead, for that was the date on which her will was proved by Thomas Willot “procurator for William Hunnis.”1

1. It seems that this inheritance was contested by a Brigham relative and that the decision was in his favor, but that when he ousted William Hunnis from the Allmes House, Queen Elizabeth took care of the matter by the granting to her choirmaster of other patents. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Anglican church was restored in England and the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER was published.2

2. The edition illustrated is THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS, AND OTHER RITES AND CEREMONIES OF THE CHURCH, ACCORDING TO THE USE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: TOGETHER WITH THE PSALTER OR PSALMS OF DAVID, PRINTED AS THEY ARE TO BE SUNG, OR SAID, IN CHURCHES, that would be printed by John Baskett, printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, for the University of Oxford in 1716. There is a phrase “noble army of Martyrs” in the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER that may explain Henry Thoreau’s remark about becoming willing to kill, or to die, to end enslavement. The phrase may have come into the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER from the TE DEUM, quite a bit older. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1560

Queen Elizabeth was presented with presumably the 1st pair of black silk stockings made in the West.3

(Although this English queen can be fitly acclaimed as the 1st lady to wear sexy black silk stockings of local manufacture, she has also been acclaimed as the 1st to translate Horace’s ARS POETICA into English verse. The fact of that matter, however, is that although this queen of England did prepare a full translation into English of the works of Boethius, we cannot actually say that she prepared the ARS POETICA because only fragments of such an effort still exist — it is possible that she didn’t get very far into this project and it is likely that she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see what she had managed to complete.)

Jasper Heywood, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (Alsolne Colledge in Oxenforde), translated the Thyestes, the 2d of three of the ten tragedies of Seneca the Younger that he would translate into English verse. The play had been written at some time during the 1st Century CE. This was the initial rendering of the material into English, and was not a straightforward translation. Heywood not only took liberties with the Latin text but also introduced material of his own creation.

John Heywood’s “The Play of the Wether, a new and mery interlude of all maner of Wethers” was printed by A. Kytson, his “Play called the foure PP; a newe and a very mery interlude of a palmer, a pardoner, a potycary, a pedler” was printed by W. Copland, and his A FOURTH HUNDRED OF EPYGRAMS was printed by T. Berthelet. HEYWOOD’S EPYGRAMS

3. Of course, instantly one wonders when presented with such Eurocentric factoids, for how many centuries such articles of apparel had been being fashioned in the East! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1561

During Queen Elizabeth of England’s reign the guest apartments at the Tower of London would be kept full. Bishops, archbishops, knights, barons, earls and dukes would be languishing for months, some for years, in its various towers. In this year Sir Anthony Fortescue was taken to the Tower (this one would make good an escape). LONDON

Jasper Heywood, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (Alsolne Colledge in Oxenforde), translated the Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), the 3d of three of the ten tragedies of Seneca the Younger that he translated into English verse. This was the initial rendering of the material into English, and was not a straightforward translation. Heywood not only took liberties with the Latin text but also introduced material of his own creation. (His verse translations of Seneca would be supplemented by translations of other of Seneca’s ten tragedies contributed by Alexander Neville, Thomas Nuce, John Studley, and Thomas Newton, and collected by Newton in 1581 into a single edition, SENECA, HIS TENNE TRAGEDIES TRANSLATED INTO ENGLYSH (1581).

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Oxford University “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1566

Richard Edwardes died.

A poor boy, William Camden did attend Magdalen College at Oxford, but probably he was there only as a servitor or chorister. After finding that they were not going to grant him any demyship, he would switch over to Broadgates Hall –and then to Pembroke College –and then to Christ Church College. Finally at Christ Church he would be supported during his studies, by a canon, his friend Dr Thomas Thornton.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

The Puritans began to appear in England.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

August 31, Saturday (Old Style): Queen Elizabeth arrived to spend the week in Oxford. Te Deum in the Cathedral.

Well, it wasn’t all tedium. Richard Edwardes’s Palamon and Arcite would be performed for the monarch’s amusement and the stage would collapse — three killed and five injured, but in order not to spoil the evening, after the moment of panic and a bit of cleanup the performance would continue.

Do you suppose a poor boy like William Camden would have had a chance to stand in the back, and glimpse Her Majesty? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1570

William Camden supplicated for the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Christ Church College, Oxford. This supplication would be unavailing and, although he would be allowed to file a renewed application for this degree in 1573, nobody’s sure he ever was able to get his hands on that actual sheepskin.4

4. Wabash College for Hoosier males in Crawfordsville, Indiana ia one of the few remaining institutions of higher education that, seeking some easy way to stand head and shoulders above others, still does its diplomas in Latin on actual sheepskin — you can see here the telltale high gloss, the surface waviness, and the doofus penmanship/spelling: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Hakluyt began his education at Westminster School and then at Christ Church in Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1571

Hugh ap Rice founded Jesus College.

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1573

According to one story, at this point William Camden was finally able to secure the degree of Bachelor of Arts from Christ Church College, Oxford.

(According to another story, due to the hostility of the Roman Catholics of England he would actually never be able to secure any sort of university degree, and all that actually happened during this year was that he was allowed to renew his application for that diploma.)

Abraham Ortelius’s contacts in England included William Camden, Richard Hakluyt, Thomas Penny, the Puritan controversialist William Charke, and Humphrey Llwyd. At this point Ortelius published 16 supplementary maps under the title ADDITAMENTVM THEATRI ORBIS TERRARVM. His English contact Humphrey Llwyd contributed the map of England and Wales (four more such ADDITAMENTA would follow, with the final one appearing in 1597). CARTOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1577

Richard Hakluyt received his MA from Christ Church at Oxford.

Oxford

In this year the name of Thomas Hariot appears in the registry of St Mary Hall, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 8, Friday (1576, Old Style): Robert Burton was born in Lindley in Leicestershire and would spend his entire life in the area of Oxford and Leicestershire. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1579

Samuel Daniel was admitted as a commoner to Magdalen Hall at Oxford University (founded in 1448, building erected in 1487, Magdalen would be the alma mater of Thomas Hobbes, and is combined with Hart Hall, founded 1282, building erected 1284, to form “Hertford College”; he would be leaving after a few years HDT WHAT? INDEX

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without a degree). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1580

Albericus Gentilis was relieved and maintained by Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Richard Hakluyt took holy orders.

Thomas Hariot graduated from St Mary Hall at Oxford. He would become Sir Walter Raleigh’s mathematics tutor and write a treatise on navigation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1581

December 1, Friday (Old Style): Catholic faith had remained strong at Balliol College until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Saint Alexander Briant, of this College, after torture at the Tower of London intended to “wring from him the knowledge of things as shall appertain” (claiming to experience no pain on the rack, or while having needles forced under his nails), was hanged, drawn, and quartered for high treason at Tyburn at the age of 25. At the point of his hanging he stated that he was innocent of any offense against the Queen, not only in deed but even in thought. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1583

John Donne matriculated at the University of Oxford at the age of 11, where he would study for three years but take no degree. Presumably that was because a degree would have involved taking an oath of allegiance — which as a Catholic he couldn’t do. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1585

Balliol College began to prosper (until 1635). During this period, Laurence Kemis, one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s captains, John Evelyn the diarist, and the Nathanael Konopios who supposedly introduced coffee-drinking to England, were members. The Civil War, however, would bring an abrupt drop in student numbers, and a consequent reduction in revenue. To make matters worse the school would be obliged to support the King’s army, and “lend” (the “debt” would not ever be repayed) not only most of their ready cash (£210) but also all their domestic silver (evaluated at £334) during 1642/1643. The College’s finances would by 1665 be in a parlous state, with unpaid bills from tradesmen for its basic supplies, and unpaid tuition by defaulting members. The great fire of London in 1666, which destroyed some of its property, almost forced it to shut down its operation. The college would not financially recover until the end of the Mastership of Roger Mander (1687-1704). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1586

Some say that after leaving the University of Oxford without a degree, John Donne would study for three years at the University of Cambridge but also there take no degree. (Presumably that was because a degree would have involved taking an oath of allegiance, which as a Catholic he couldn’t do.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1588

England began its own papermaking, although it would never be enough to forestall importation of quality paper, mostly of course from Holland.

Robert Greene published another romance, PANDOSTO: OR, THE HISTORIE OF DORASTUS AND FAWNIA. PANDOSTO

His ALCIDA: GREENES METAMORPHOSIS, VVHEREIN IS DISCOUERED, A PLEASANT TRANSFORMATION OF BODIES INTO SUNDRIE SHAPES, SHEWING THAT AS VERTUES BEAUTIFIE THE MIND, SO VANITIES GIUE GREATER STAINES, THAN THE PERFECTION OF ANY QUALITY CAN RASE OUT: THE DISCOURSE CONFIRMED WITH DIUERSE MERRY AND DELIGHTFULL HISTORIES; FULL OF GRAUE PRINCIPLES TO CONTENT AGE, AND SAWSED WITH PLEASANT PARLEES, AND WITTY ANSWERES, TO SATISFIE YOUTH: PROFITABLE FOR BOTH, AND NOT OFFENSIUE TO ANY. BY R.G. (Printed by George Purslowe).

In July he was made an Academiae Utriusque Magister in Artibus of Oxford University.

At about this point, in a stage play “The Wounds of Civil War,” Thomas Lodge became the first English playwright to feature lusty rapier work during a secular entertainment. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1589

November: Richard Barnfield matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1591

After doing both Oxford and Cambridge without benefit of degree, John Donne became a member of Thavies Inn. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1592

February (1591, Old Style): Richard Barnfield graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford. He would continue into the masters program, but would then leave the university abruptly without obtaining an advanced diploma. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1593

Michael Drayton’s historical poem THE LEGEND OF PIERS GAVESTON. His IDEA: THE SHEPHERD’S GARLAND, a collection of pastorals in which under the pen name “Rowland” he reprocessed his love-sorrows.

It is conjectured that at this point, when Richard Barnfield left grad school at Brasenose College without an advanced diploma, he probably went to London and there presumably made the acquaintance of Thomas Watson, Michael Drayton, and possibly Edmund Spenser (bear in mind that in the preceding year one resident in every ten in this teeming capital city had died in an outbreak of the plague, and that in this year the spasm of mortality was moving on to the university town of Oxford).

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Plague, said to be due to the multitude “who came to Oxford to see the plays” — plays which may have HDT WHAT? INDEX

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included Hamlet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Sir Martin Frobisher Commander of the English Fleet slain in the quarrel of H. King of Navarr.

The last voyage of Sir Francis Drake, and Sir John Hawkins to the West-Indies with six ships of the Queens, and twelve other ships and Barks containing 2400 men and boyes, in which voyage they both dyed, and Sir Francis Drake’s Coffen was thrown over board near Porto bello.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1597

Magdalen Newport Herbert, George Herbert’s mother, met John Donne at Oxford.

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1599

Robert Burton was elected a student (life fellow) of Christ Church (one of the colleges of Oxford University), and would live there the rest of his life.

CHRIST CHURCH HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1602

Sir Thomas Bodley opened his library at Oxford, the “Bodelian Library” which would become entitled by law to receive one free copy of each new book published in England.

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1603

William Browne matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford. He would reside initially at Clifford’s Inn.

EXETER COLLEGE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 25, Sunday (Old Style): Queen Elizabeth having died on March 23rd, on this day King James VI of Scotland was

crowned in London (he was, not incidentally, alleging his Stuarts to be descended from the King Arthur of British fakelore). In his service Francis Bacon would flourish. On this day of the new king’s coronation Bacon was knighted, becoming Sir Francis. He would rise to become Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans and Lord Chancellor of England. His fall would come about in the course of a struggle between King and Parliament. He would be accused of having taken a bribe while a judge, and found guilty as charged. He thus would lose his personal honor, as well as his fortune and his place at court.

By the coronation of James VI of Scotland as James I, King of England (1603-1625), the idea that the educated, informed, and sometimes conflicting and confused voices of esquires, merchants, lawyers, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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clergymen might be tolerated and even encouraged had received the sanction of decades of experience.

JAMES I

(The portrait above does not reveal a couple of significant things about the person of this scholarly monarch. His tongue was too large for his mouth, and he had some sort of neurological condition in his legs that was causing numerous stumbles, and injuries.)

This monarch would extend and modify the Lieutenant’s house at the Tower of London, which had been built in the 1540s and now is referred to as the Queen’s House. He would relocate his royal lions to better dens in the west gate barbican. He would come to refer to his kingdom as “Great Britain.”

Sir Walter Raleigh, accused of treason against him (“him” = James, not “him” = Arthur), was imprisoned in the Tower. King James’s efforts to suppress dissent would alienate many of his citizen-subjects, and then his son, ruling as Charles I, would attempt even greater rigour, reasserting censorship with a comprehensiveness not before experienced in England. Thus, after the English civil war, it would be due not to John Milton’s AEROPAGITICA but rather to a Hobbesian pragmatism, that the need to inform the general public, if only in a rudimentary manner, would be becoming accepted as an integral part of English politics. AN INFORMED CITIZENRY

But perhaps at this point we should not be speaking of “a Hobbesian pragmatism,” for at this point Master Thomas Hobbes, barely 15 years of age, was just beginning his studies at Magdalen Hall in Oxford: It is not to be forgotten that before he went to the University, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he had turned Euripides’ MEDEA out of Greek into Latin iambics.

Michael Drayton, who had gotten along well with the court of Queen Elizabeth, would address a poem of compliment to James on his accession as King of England — but his effort would be ridiculed and this court would rudely reject his services.

With James Stuart (I and VI) coming to the throne, with a single crown for England and Scotland, with the Treaty of Mellifont in which O’Neill surrendered, with the end of the Elizabethan Wars and the enforcement of English law, with the municipality of Belfast being founded upon the former estate of late Earl of Donegall in order to recover his debts, there began in Ireland, particularly in Ulster, the period of the English encroachment by plantation, which would endure until 1641. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1605

August 29, Thursday (Old Style): A debate upon the topic of tobacco at Oxford had as its most important participants King James I, against use of the substance, and the Presbyterian Reverend Francis Cheynell, for its use. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1608

Henry King was chosen to become a student at Christ Church, Oxford.

CHRIST CHURCH

It was in about this year that John Donne was writing his BIATHANATOS, a half-serious celebration of suicide (published posthumously, in 1644). The poet reconciled with his father-in-law so that his wife could receive her dowry.

Thomas Heywood’s THE TRAGEDY OF THE RAPE OF LUCRECE. BRITISH CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thomas Hobbes graduated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford and was selected as companion to the eldest son of Lord Cavendish of Hardwicke, afterwards created Earl of Devonshire.

[Founded in 1448, building erected in 1487, Magdalen would be the alma mater of Samuel Daniel and is HDT WHAT? INDEX

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combined with Hart Hall, founded 1282, building erected 1284, to form “Hertford College.”] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June: At 13 years of age, Thomas Carew matriculated at Merton College, Oxford.

John Ford had somehow secured enough money to gain readmission to the Middle Temple of London.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oxford University HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1609

January 20, Friday (1608, Old Style): The brothers Henry King and John King matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford.

Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1610

The Stationers’ Company undertook to provide to Sir Thomas Bodley’s open-access library at Oxford, henceforward, a copy of each new book printed in England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1611

William Laud became President of St. John’s College.

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Early in the year: Thomas Carew received the degree of BA from Merton College in Oxford. He would study for the law –or would pretend to do so– at the Middle Temple. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 19, Wednesday (Old Style): Henry King was admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Christ Church, Oxford.

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1613

Oxford University was first granted the right to have two MPs. The vote was given to proctors and all living masters of arts of the university, wherever they lived. The two Tory candidates were almost always guaranteed success. Around 1,300 people voted in elections. Between 1817 and 1829 one of Cambridge’s two MPs was Sir Robert Peel. However, Peel’s support for Catholic Emancipation made him unpopular in Oxford and he HDT WHAT? INDEX

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was defeated by 146 votes in February 1829.

July: Isaac Casaubon, coming from King Henri IV of France, was by invitation of King James I admitted to Christ’s College at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1614

July 7, Thursday (Old Style): Henry King was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts at Christ Church, Oxford.

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1615

Samuel Purchas was admitted at Oxford University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1616

Robert Burton became the vicar of St. Thomas’ Church at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1618

William Camden had come to be in poor health. Before his death he would “give back” by creating a lectureship in history at the University of Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1622

William Camden funded a history lectureship at Oxford University by endowing the income from the manor of Bexley and appointed, as the first lecturer to hold this position, his friend Degory Wheare (the present beneficiary of this endowment is known as Brasenose College’s “Camden Professor of Ancient History”). CAMDEN PROFESSOR

Thanks, Bill! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1623

During this year and the next the Reverend John Donne was writing his DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS, in which his serious illness was cast as a local version of the world’s spiritual disease. This is the text that includes the celebrated snippet “No man is an island entire of itself.... Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Having received his preparatory education at Winchester College, Thomas Browne matriculated at Oxford University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1624

Penbroke College was founded.

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April: Lord Herbert of Cherbury returned to England from his diplomatic travels in Europe, bringing his fun travel companion Thomas Carew back with him.

William Browne returned to Exeter College, Oxford, this time as tutor to Robert Dormer, afterward earl of Carnarvon.

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November: William Browne was awarded the MA degree at Exeter College, Oxford.

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1625

May 19, Thursday (Old Style): Henry King and his brother John King were admitted to the degrees of D.D. and B.D. as accumulators and compounders at Christ Church, Oxford.

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1626

The Plymouth colonists who considered themselves “Brownists” and “First Comers” built a pinnace at the Manomet River (the Aptucxet), with a house to maintain it. The pinnace was used to voyage to Narragansett Bay to attempt to make an entry in the wampum trade.

Thomas Browne graduated from Pembroke College, Oxford. He would study medicine in various universities on the continent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1627

King Charles I requested the punishment of Oxford students who killed his game in Woodstock park. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1633

At the Oxford botanical gardens, in this year the wall and the gate were completed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1640

January 25, Saturday (1639, Old Style): Robert Burton died at Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1641

John Evelyn at the age of 21, a portrait by Hendrick van der Borcht.

On the basis of a family fortune largely gained in the business of gunpowder manufacture, the young gentleman had been able to obtain his education at Balliol College, Oxford and at the Middle Temple. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At the age of 36, Dr. Thomas Browne got married with 20-year-old Dorothy Mileham, a daughter of Edward Mileham of Burlingham St. Peter, Norfolk (he would make a Lady of her, and she would bear for him ten or a dozen children).

...I was never yet once, and am resolved never to be married twice ... The whole Woman was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman: man is the whole world and the breath of God; woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this triviall and vulgar way of coition.... I speak not in prejudice, nor am I averse from that sweet sexe, but naturally amorous of all that is beautifull.... “ HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1642

May 3, Tuesday (Old Style): John Aubrey entered Trinity College, Oxford as a gentleman commoner. Due to the outbreak of smallpox and civil war he would not have an opportunity to complete these studies.

TRINITY COLLEGE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1643

After studying in the Middle Temple, London, and at Balliol College, Oxford, and after a brief period of service with the Royalist army during the English Civil War, John Evelyn decided to avoid further involvement in the conflict by traveling abroad, first in France and then to Rome, Venice, and Padua.

January 2, Monday (1642, Old Style): APPEAL OF INJURED INNOCENCE describes how on this day because of the English Civil War the House of Lords instructed Thomas Fuller as one member of a party of gentlemen to convey a Westminster Petition to King Charles I at Oxford. Their deputation was to have the use of two coaches, four or six horses, and eight or ten attendants.

During the progress of the war Sir Henry Vane would be placed on all commissions such as this one, that would be empowered to negotiate with the monarch. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 27, Monday (Old Style): It being expected that a favorable result would attend the negotiations at Oxford, Thomas Fuller preached a sermon at Westminster Abbey, on the anniversary of King Charles I’s accession, on the text, “Yea, let him take all, so my Lord the King return in peace.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1644

The Reverend Thomas Shepard proposed to the Confederation of New England that each family give to Harvard College annually a quarter-bushel of wheat, or the equivalent in money. The result was an income to the new college of almost £270. Why was this new ministerial “Colledg in Newtowne,” which would eventually be named in honor of its early benefactor, the deceased Reverend John Harvard, situated in this new town, and that town redesignated Cambridge in honor of the seat of learning in England? The reason, largely, was that this was where the Reverend Shepard was situated, he being, until his early death at the age of 43, this college’s unofficial chaplain.

For refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, most of the Masters and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge were ejected, among them Abraham Cowley (who was such a royalist that two years earlier he had even committed the unforgivable sin of writing a play to be performed for the King’s entertainment). He went to live at Oxford, a stronghold of the royalists, and then fled in the suite of Lord Jermyn, Queen Henrietta Maria’s chief officer, to join the group of exiles that was accumulating in Paris. He would remain in exile with the royal family for a dozen years.

The Parliamentary visitors appointed Ralph Cudworth as Master of Clare Hall, as their replacement for a Royalist whom they were ejecting. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1646

March 21, Saturday (1645, Old Style): In the English Civil War, the Parliamentarians won the Battle of Stow-on-the- Wold.

The Reverend Thomas Fuller was awarded Oxford University’s Bodleian lectureship. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1647

John Aubrey studied at Trinity College, Oxford.

June 17, Thursday (Old Style): The Royalists holding Exeter and Oxford University having surrendered and been disarmed, and the surrounding forces of the Parliament having then allowed them peaceably and with dignity to disperse into the countryside, the Reverend Thomas Fuller gave up his Bodleian lectureship. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1650

At this point both coffee and tea were virtually unheard-of as hot beverages in Europe and America, although coffee had been playing a minor role as a medication. Tea, Camellia sinensis, was still merely a Chinese crop, and it was alcoholic beverages that remained the universal unchallenged daily drink of “Europeans” everywhere. The New England colonies would be attempting to establish a precise definition of drunkenness that would include the time spent drinking, the amount that was drunk, and the related behavior. However, the 1st shipment of tea was received in New Amsterdam during this year, plus, as of this year the beverage made from the scorched Arabica bean was being introduced into England at a head shop “at the [sign of the] Angel HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the parish of St. Peter in the East” in the university town of Oxford.

By 1675 there would be over 3,000 such coffee houses in England.

Rumor has it that the proprietor of this 1st coffee shop was a Jew from the Lebanon. Soon there would also be a similar outlet in Exeter in Devonshire, which would be being patronized by the spiritual descendants of Walter Raleigh not only for the consumption of the beverage from Arabia but also for the “drinking” of the smoke from the burning of the leaves of a plant from America, the tobacco. Although many coffee houses HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would also serve beer and wine, the spread of coffee use in Europe’s rapidly growing cities would be facilitated by growing resentment against the effects of alcohol and the need for a center for sober social intercourse and intellectual discussions. In general, tobacco use would begin among the upper classes and aristocrats and then be copied by the lower and middle classes as prices declined. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1652

John Locke entered Christ Church College, Oxford.

CHRIST CHURCH HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1653

Robert Hooke took up a poor scholar’s place at Christ Church, Oxford University, at the time one of the prime science schools of England. He would be employed by the anatomist Dr. Thomas Willis as a chemical assistant. During his college years he would be a close friend of Christopher Wren, another “Alumnus Westmonasteriensis” who had come up to Wadham in 1650.

John Wray or Ray became a lecturer in mathematics at Cambridge University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1656

Upon his return to England with the Restoration, Abraham Cowley both published his POEMS and began the study of medicine at Oxford. (He would receive a medical doctorate but never have a practice as a physician.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: Two of Friend George Fox’s “Valiant Sixty,” Thomas and Elizabeth Holme, together with Alice Birkett, succeeded in establishing ten or eleven centres of Quaker meetings around Cardiff and began to extend this progress into Pembrokeshire around Tenby, Pembroke and Haverfordwest.

Being released from our imprisonment, we got horses, rode towards Humphrey Lower’s, and met him upon the road. He told us he was much troubled in his mind concerning us, and could not rest at home, but was going to Colonel Bennet to seek our liberty. When we told him we were set at liberty, and were going to his house, he was exceeding glad. To his house we went, and had a fine, precious meeting; many were convinced, and turned by the Spirit of the Lord to the Lord Jesus Christ’s teaching. * Soon after we came to Exeter, where many Friends were in prison; and amongst the rest James Nayler. For a little before we were set at liberty, James had run out into imaginations, and a company with him, who raised a great darkness in the nation. He came to Bristol, and made a disturbance there. [Thomas Carlyle has described the incident, in which Friend James Nayler allowed some persons to give him a Triumphal Entry into Bristol as if he were Christ returning in the flesh, in the following manner: “In the month of October, 1655, there was seen a strange sight at Bristol in the West. A procession of eight persons: one a man on horseback, riding single; the others, men and women, partly riding double, partly on foot, in the muddiest highway, in the wettest weather; singing, all but the single-rider, at whose bridle splash and walk two women: ‘Hosannah! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth!’ ... The single-rider is a raw-boned male figure, ‘with lank hair reaching below his cheeks’; hat drawn close over his brows; of abstruse ‘down look’ and large, dangerous jaws, strictly closed; he sings not; sits there covered, and is sung to by the others, bare. Amid pouring deluges and mud knee-deep: ‘so that the rain ran in at their necks, and they vented it at their hose and breeches,’ a spectacle to the west of England and posterity! Singing as above; answering no questions except in song. At the High Cross, they are laid hold of by the Authorities; turn out to be James Nayler and Company.” On December 16th, 1656, the Parliament missed assigning the death penalty by a vote of 96 over 82. He was sentenced instead to be pilloried for two hours, then to be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster to the Old Exchange in the city, then after two days to be pilloried for another two hours, then to have his tongue bored through with a red-hot iron and to be branded in the forehead with the letter B, then in that condition to be again flogged through the streets of Bristol, and then to be placed in solitary confinement at hard labor during the pleasure of Parliament.] From thence he was coming to Launceston to see me; but was stopped by the way, and imprisoned at Exeter; as were several others, one of whom, an honest, tender man, died in prison there. His blood lieth on the heads of his persecutors. The night that we came to Exeter I spoke with James Nayler: for I saw he was out, and wrong, and so was his company. The next day, being First-day, we went to visit the prisoners, and had a meeting with them in the prison; but James Nayler, and some of them, could not stay the meeting. There came a corporal of horse into the meeting, who was convinced, and remained a very good Friend.

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The next day I spoke to James Nayler again; and he slighted what I said, was dark, and much out; yet he would have come and kissed me. But I said that since he had turned against the power of God, I could not receive his show of kindness. The Lord moved me to slight him, and to set the power of God over him. So after I had been warring with the world, there was now a wicked spirit risen amongst Friends to war against. I admonished him and his company. When he was come to London, his resisting the power of God in me, and the Truth that was declared to him by me, became one of his greatest burdens. But he came to see his out-going, and to condemn it; and after some time he returned to Truth again; as in the printed relation of his repentance, condemnation, and recovery may be more fully seen. [Death from his injuries and from exposure came not long after his release, and according to JAMES NAYLER’S ANSWER TO THE F ANATICK H ISTORY AS FAR AS IT RELATES TO HIM, just before giving up the ghost he wrote these immortal words: “There is a spirit which I feel, which delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong; but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it; for its ground and spring is the mercy and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness; its life is everlasting love unfeigned. It takes its kingdom with entreaty, and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth, but through sufferings; for with the world’s joy it is murdered. I found it alone; being forsaken. I have fellowship therein, with those who lived in dens and desolate places in the earth; who through death obtained this resurrection, and eternal, holy life!”] On First-day morning I went to the meeting in Broadmead at Bristol, which was large and quiet. Notice was given of a meeting to be in the afternoon in the orchard. There was at Bristol a rude Baptist, named Paul Gwin, who had before made great disturbance in our meetings, being encouraged and set on by the mayor, who, it was reported, would sometimes give him his dinner to encourage him. Such multitudes of rude people he gathered after him, that it was thought there had been sometimes ten thousand people at our meeting in the orchard. As I was going into the orchard, the people told me that Paul Gwin was going to the meeting. I bade them never heed, for it was nothing to me who went to it. When I was come into the orchard, I stood upon the stone that Friends used to stand on when they spoke; and I was moved of the Lord to put off my hat, and to stand a while, and let the people look at me; for some thousands of people were there. While I thus stood silent, this rude Baptist began to find fault with my hair; but I said nothing to him. Then he ran on into words; and at last, “Ye wise men of Bristol,” said he, “I marvel at you, that you will stand here, and hear a man speak and affirm that which he cannot make good.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Then the Lord opened my mouth (for as yet I had not spoken a word), and I asked the people whether they had ever heard me speak, or had ever seen me before; and I bade them take notice what kind of man this was amongst them that should so impudently say that I spoke and affirmed that which I could not make good; and yet neither he nor they had ever heard me or seen me before. Therefore that was a lying, envious, malicious spirit that spoke in him; and it was of the devil, and not of God. I charged him in the dread and power of the Lord to be silent: and the mighty power of God came over him, and all his company. Then a glorious, peaceable meeting we had, and the Word of life was divided amongst them; and they were turned from darkness to the Light, — to Jesus their Saviour. The Scriptures were largely opened to them; and the traditions, rudiments, ways, and doctrines of men were laid open before the people; and they were turned to the Light of Christ, that with it they might see these things, and see Him to lead them out of them. I opened also to them the types, figures, and shadows of Christ in the time of the law; and showed them that Christ was come, and had ended the types, shadows, tithes, and oaths, and put down swearing; and had set up yea and nay instead of it, and a free ministry. For He was now come to teach the people Himself, and His heavenly day was springing from on high. For many hours did I declare the Word of life amongst them in the eternal power of God, that by Him they might come up into the beginning, and be reconciled to Him. And having turned them to the Spirit of God in themselves, that would lead into all Truth, I was moved to pray in the mighty power of God; and the Lord’s power came over all. When I had done, this fellow began to babble again; and John Audland was moved to bid him repent, and fear God. So his own people and followers being ashamed of him, he passed away, and never came again to disturb the meeting. The meeting broke up quietly, and the Lord’s power and glory shone over all: a blessed day it was, and the Lord had the praise. After a while this Paul Gwin went beyond the seas; and many years after I met him in Barbadoes. Soon after we rode to London. When we came near Hyde Park we saw a great concourse of people, and, looking towards them, espied the Protector coming in his coach. Whereupon I rode to his coach side. Some of his life-guard would have put me away; but he forbade them. So I rode by his coach side with him, declaring what the Lord gave me to say to him, of his condition, and of the sufferings of Friends in the nation, showing him how contrary this persecution was to the words of Christ and His apostles, and to Christianity. When we were come to James’s Park Gate, I left him; and at parting he desired me to come to his house. The next day one of his wife’s maids, whose name was Mary Sanders, came to me at my lodging, and told me that her master came to her, and said he would tell her some good news. When she asked him what it was, he told her, “George Fox is come to town.” She replied “That is good news indeed” (for she had received Truth), but she said she could hardly believe him till he told her how I met him, and rode from Hyde Park to James’s Park with him. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After a little time Edward Pyot and I went to Whitehall to see Oliver Cromwell; and when we came before him, Dr. Owen, vice-chancellor of Oxford, was with him. We were moved to speak to him concerning the sufferings of Friends, and laid them before him: and we directed him to the Light of Christ, who had enlightened every man that cometh into the world. He said it was a natural light; but we showed him the contrary; and proved that it was divine and spiritual, proceeding from Christ the spiritual and heavenly man; and that that which was called the life in Christ the Word, was called the Light in us. The power of the Lord God arose in me, and I was moved in it to bid him lay down his crown at the feet of Jesus. Several times I spoke to him to the same effect. I was standing by the table, and he came and sat upon the table’s side by me, saying he would be as high as I was. So he continued speaking against the Light of Christ Jesus; and went his way in a light manner. But the Lord’s power came over him so that when he came to his wife and other company, he said, “I never parted so from them before”; for he was judged in himself. After this I travelled into Yorkshire, and returned out of Holderness, over Humber, visiting Friends; and then returning into Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, among Friends, I had a meeting at Edge-Hill. There came to it Ranters, Baptists, and several sorts of rude people; for I had sent word about three weeks before to have a meeting there, so that hundreds of people were gathered thither, and many Friends came to it from afar. The Lord’s everlasting Truth and Word of life reached over all; the rude and unruly spirits were chained down; and many that day were turned to the Lord Jesus Christ, by His power and Spirit, and came to sit under His blessed, free teaching, and to be fed with His eternal, heavenly food. All was peaceable; the people passed quietly away, and some of them said it was a mighty, powerful meeting; for the presence of the Lord was felt, and His power and Spirit was amongst them. Thence I passed to Warwick and to Bagley, having precious meetings; and then into Gloucestershire, and so to Oxford, where the scholars were very rude; but the Lord’s power came over them. Great meetings we had as we travelled up and down. Thus having travelled over most of the nation, I returned to London again, having cleared myself of that which lay upon me from the Lord. For after I was released out of Launceston jail, I was moved of the Lord to travel over the nation, the Truth being now spread in most places, that I might answer, and remove out of the minds of the people, some objections which the envious priests and professors had raised and spread abroad concerning us. In this year the Lord’s Truth was finely planted over the nation, and many thousands were turned to the Lord; insomuch that there were seldom fewer than one thousand in prison in this nation for Truth’s testimony; some for tithes, some for going to the steeple-houses, some for contempts (as they called them), some for not swearing, and others for not putting off their hats. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Having stayed some time in London, and visited the meetings of Friends in and about the city, and cleared myself of what services the Lord had at that time laid upon me there, I left the town and travelled into Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, visiting Friends. I had great meetings, and often met with opposition from Baptists and other jangling professors; but the Lord’s power went over them. We lay one night at Farnham, where we had a little meeting. The people were exceeding rude; but at last the Lord’s power came over them. After meeting we went to our inn, and gave notice that any who feared God might come to our inn to us. There came abundance of rude people, the magistrates of the town, and some professors. I declared the Truth to them; and those people that behaved themselves rudely, the magistrates put out of the room. When they were gone, another rude company of professors came up, and some of the chief of the town. They called for faggots and drink, though we forbade them, and were as rude a people as ever I met. The Lord’s power chained them, that they had not power to do us any mischief; but when they went away they left all the faggots and beer, for which they had called, in the room, for us to pay for in the morning. We showed the innkeeper what an unworthy thing it was; but he told us we must pay it; and pay it we did. Before we left the town I wrote to the magistrates and heads of the town, and to the priest, showing them how he had taught his people, and laying before them their rude and uncivil carriage to strangers that sought their good. Leaving that place we came to Basingstoke, a very rude town; where they had formerly very much abused Friends. There I had a meeting in the evening, which was quiet; for the Lord’s power chained the unruly. At the close of the meeting I was moved to put off my hat and to pray to the Lord to open their understandings; upon which they raised a report that I put off my hat to them and bade them good night, which was never in my heart. After the meeting, when we came to our inn, I sent for the innkeeper, as I was used to do; and he came into the room to us, and showed himself a very rude man. I admonished him to be sober, and fear the Lord; but he called for faggots and a pint of wine, and drank it off himself; then called for another, and called up half a dozen men into our chamber. Thereupon I bade him go out of the chamber, and told him he should not drink there; for we called him up to speak to him concerning his eternal good. He was exceeding mad, rude, and drunk. When he continued his rudeness and would not be gone, I told him that the chamber was mine for the time I lodged in it; and called for the key. Then he went away in a rage. In the morning he would not be seen; but I told his wife of his unchristian carriage towards us.

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We then travelled to Exeter; and at the sign of the Seven Stars, an inn at the bridge foot, had a general meeting of Friends out of Cornwall and Devonshire; to which came Humphrey Lower, Thomas Lower, and John Ellis from the Land’s End; Henry Pollexfen, and Friends from Plymouth; Elizabeth Trelawny, and diverse other Friends. A blessed heavenly meeting we had, and the Lord’s everlasting power came over all, in which I saw and said that the Lord’s power had surrounded this nation round about as with a wall and bulwark, and His seed reached from sea to sea. Friends were established in the everlasting Seed of life, Christ Jesus, their Life, Rock, Teacher, and Shepherd. Next morning Major Blackmore sent soldiers to apprehend me; but I was gone before they came. As I was riding up the street I saw the officers going down; so the Lord crossed them in their design, and Friends passed away peaceably and quietly. The soldiers examined some Friends after I was gone, asking them what they did there; but when they told them that they were in their inn, and had business in the city, they went away without meddling any further with them. We passed through the countries [the counties of Wales], having meetings, and gathering people in the name of Christ, their heavenly teacher, till we came to Brecknock, where we put up our horses at an inn. There went with me Thomas Holmes and John ap-John, who was moved of the Lord to speak in the streets. I walked out but a little into the fields; and when I returned the town was in an uproar. When I came into the chamber in the inn, it was full of people, and they were speaking in Welsh. I desired them to speak in English, which they did; and much discourse we had. After a while they went away. Towards night the magistrates gathered in the streets with a multitude of people, and they bade them shout, and gathered up the town; so that, for about two hours together, there was a noise the like of which we had not heard; and the magistrates set them on to shout again when they had given over. We thought it looked like the uproar amongst Diana’s craftsmen. This tumult continued till night, and if the Lord’s power had not limited them, they would likely have pulled down the house, and torn us to pieces. At night the woman of the house would have had us go to supper in another room; but we, discerning her plot, refused. Then she would have had half a dozen men come into the room to us, under the pretence of discoursing with us. We told her, “No person shall come into our room this night, neither will we go to them.” Then she said we should sup in another room; but we told her we would have no supper if we had it not in our own room. At length, when she saw she could not get us out, she brought up our supper. So she and they were crossed in their design; for they had an intent to do us mischief, but the Lord prevented them. Next morning I wrote a paper to the town concerning their unchristian carriage, showing the fruits of their priests and magistrates; and as I passed out of town I spoke to the people, and told them they were a shame to Christianity and religion. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After this we returned to England, and came to Shrewsbury, where we had a great meeting, and visited Friends all over the countries [counties] in their meetings, till we came to William Gandy’s, in Cheshire, where we had a meeting of between two and three thousand people, as it was thought; and the everlasting Word of life was held forth, and received that day. A blessed meeting it was, for Friends were settled by the power of God upon Christ Jesus, the Rock and Foundation. At this time there was a great drought; and after this general meeting was ended, there fell so great a rain that Friends said they thought we could not travel, the waters would be so risen. But I believed the rain had not extended as far as they had come that day to the meeting. Next day, in the afternoon, when we turned back into some parts of Wales again, the roads were dusty, and no rain had fallen there. When Oliver Cromwell sent forth a proclamation for a fast throughout the nation, for rain, when there was a very great drought, it was observed that as far as Truth had spread in the north, there were pleasant showers and rain enough, while in the south, in many places, the fields were almost spoiled for want of rain. At that time I was moved to write an answer to the Protector’s proclamation, wherein I told him that if he had come to own God’s Truth, he should have had rain; and that the drought was a sign unto them of their barrenness, and their want of the water of life. We passed through Montgomeryshire into Wales, and so into Radnorshire, where there was a meeting like a leaguer [like a besieging army], for multitudes. I walked a little aside whilst the people were gathering: and there came to me John ap-John, a Welshman, whom I asked to go to the people; and if he had anything upon him from the Lord to them, he might speak in Welsh, and thereby gather more together. Then came Morgan Watkins to me, who was become loving to Friends, and said, “The people lie like a leaguer, and the gentry of the country are come in.” I bade him go up also, and leave me; for I had a great travail upon me for the salvation of the people. When they were well gathered, I went into the meeting, and stood upon a chair about three hours. I stood a pretty while before I began to speak. After some time I felt the power of the Lord over the whole assembly: and His everlasting life and Truth shone over all. The Scriptures were opened to them, and the objections they had in their minds answered. They were directed to the Light of Christ, the heavenly man; that by it they might see their sins, and Christ Jesus to be their Saviour, their Redeemer, their Mediator; and come to feed upon Him, the bread of life from heaven. Many were turned to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to His free teaching that day; and all were bowed down under the power of God; so that though the multitude was so great that many sat on horseback to hear, there was no opposition. A priest sat with his wife on horseback, heard attentively, and made no objection.

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The people parted peaceably, with great satisfaction; many of them saying they had never heard such a sermon before, nor the Scriptures so opened. For the new covenant was opened, and the old, and the nature and terms of each; and the parables were explained. The state of the Church in the apostles’ days was set forth, and the apostasy since was laid open; the free teaching of Christ and the apostles was set atop of all the hireling teachers; and the Lord had the praise of all, for many were turned to Him that day. I went thence to Leominster, where was a great meeting in a close, many hundreds of people being gathered together. There were about six congregational preachers and priests amongst the people; and Thomas Taylor, who had been a priest, but was now become a minister of Christ Jesus, was with me. I stood up and declared about three hours; and none of the priests were able to open their mouths in opposition; the Lord’s power and Truth so reached and bound them. At length one priest went off about a bow-shot from me, drew several of the people after him, and began to preach to them. So I kept our meeting, and he kept his. After awhile Thomas Taylor was moved to go and speak to him, upon which he gave over: and he, with the people he had drawn off, came to us again; and the Lord’s power went over all. From this place I travelled on in Wales, having several meetings, till I came to Tenby, where, as I rode up the street, a justice of the peace came out to me, asked me to alight, and desired that I would stay at his house, which I did. On First-day the mayor, with his wife, and several others of the chief people of the town, came in about the tenth hour, and stayed all the time of the meeting. A glorious meeting it was. John ap-John being then with me, left the meeting, and went to the steeple-house; and the governor cast him into prison. On Second-day morning the governor sent one of his officers to the justice’s to fetch me; which grieved the mayor and the justice; for they were both with me in the justice’s house when the officer came. The mayor and the justice went to the governor before me; and awhile after I went with the officer. When I came in I said, “Peace be unto this house,” and before the governor could examine me I asked him why he cast my friend into prison. He said, “For standing with his hat on in the church.” I said, “Had not the priest two caps on his head, a black one and a white one? Cut off the brims of the hat, and then my friend would have but one: and the brims of the hat were but to defend him from weather.” “These are frivolous things,” said the governor. “Why, then,” said I, “dost thou cast my friend into prison for such frivolous things?” He asked me whether I owned election and reprobation. “Yes,” said I, “and thou art in the reprobation.” At that he was in a rage and said he would send me to prison till I proved it. I told him I would prove that quickly if he would confess Truth. I asked him whether wrath, fury, rage and persecution were not marks of reprobation; for he that was born of the flesh persecuted him that was born of the Spirit; but Christ and His disciples never persecuted nor imprisoned any. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He fairly confessed that he had too much wrath, haste and passion in him. I told him that Esau was up in him, the first birth; not Jacob, the second birth. The Lord’s power so reached the man and came over him that he confessed to Truth; and the other justice came and shook me kindly by the hand. As I was passing away I was moved to speak to the governor again; and he invited me to dinner with him, and set my friend at liberty. I went back to the other justice’s house; and after some time the mayor and his wife, and the justice and his wife, and diverse other Friends of the town, went about half a mile out of town with us, to the water-side, when we went away; and there, when we parted from them, I was moved of the Lord to kneel down with them, and pray to the Lord to preserve them. So, after I had recommended them to the Lord Jesus Christ, their Saviour and free Teacher, we passed away in the Lord’s power; and He had the glory. We travelled to Pembrokeshire, and in Pembroke had some service for the Lord. Thence we passed to Haverford West, where we had a great meeting, and all was quiet. The Lord’s power came over all, and many were settled in the new covenant, Christ Jesus, and built upon Him, their Rock and Foundation; and they stand a precious meeting to this day. Next day, being their fair-day, we passed through it, and sounded the day of the Lord, and His everlasting Truth, amongst them. After this we passed into another county, and at noon came into a great market-town, and went into several inns before we could get any meat for our horses. At last we came to one where we got some. Then John ap-John being with me, went and spoke through the town, declaring the Truth to the people; and when he came to me again, he said he thought all the town were as people asleep. After awhile he was moved to go and declare Truth in the streets again; then the town was all in an uproar, and they cast him into prison. Presently after several of the chief people of the town came, with others, to the inn where I was, and said, “They have cast your man into prison.” “For what?” said I. “He preached in our streets,” said they. Then I asked them, “What did he say? Had he reproved some of the drunkards and swearers, and warned them to repent, and leave off their evil doings, and turn to the Lord?” I asked them who cast him into prison. They said, the high-sheriff and justices, and the mayor. I asked their names, and whether they understood themselves; and whether that was their conduct to travellers that passed through their town, and strangers that admonished and exhorted them to fear the Lord, and reproved sin in their gates. These went back, and told the officers what I had said; and after awhile they brought down John ap-John, guarded with halberts, in order to put him out of the town. Being at the inn door, I bade the officers take their hands off him. They said that the mayor and justices had commanded them to put him out of town. I told them I would talk with their mayor and justices concerning their uncivil and unchristian carriage towards him. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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So I spoke to John to go look after the horses, and get them ready, and charged the officers not to touch him. After I had declared the Truth to them, and showed them the fruits of their priests, and their incivility and unchristian carriage, they left us. They were a kind of Independents; a very wicked town, and false. We bade the innkeeper give our horses a peck of oats; and no sooner had we turned our backs than the oats were stolen from our horses. After we had refreshed ourselves a little, and were ready, we took horse, and rode up to the inn, where the mayor, sheriff, and justices were. I called to speak with them, and asked them why they had imprisoned John ap-John, and kept him in prison two or three hours. But they would not answer me a word; they only looked out at the windows upon me. So I showed them how unchristian was their carriage to strangers and travellers, and how it manifested the fruits of their teachers; and I declared the truth unto them, and warned them of the day of the Lord, that was coming upon all evil-doers; and the Lord’s power came over them, that they looked ashamed; but not a word could I get from them in answer. So when I had warned them to repent, and turn to the Lord, we passed away. At night we came to a little inn, very poor, but very cheap; for our own provision and that for our two horses cost but eight pence; but the horses would not eat their oats. We declared the Truth to the people of the place, and sounded the day of the Lord through the countries [counties]. Passing thence we came to a great town, and went to an inn. Edward Edwards went into the market, and declared the Truth amongst the people; and they followed him to the inn, and filled the yard, and were exceedingly rude. Yet good service we had for the Lord amongst them; for the life of Christianity and the power of it tormented their chaffy spirits, and came over them, so that some were reached and convinced; and the Lord’s power came over all. The magistrates were bound; they had no power to meddle with us. After this we came to another great town on a market-day; and John ap- John declared the everlasting Truth through the streets, and proclaimed the day of the Lord amongst them. In the evening many people gathered about the inn; and some of them, being drunk, would fain have had us come into the street again. But seeing their design, I told them that if there were any that feared God and desired to hear the Truth, they might come into our inn; or else we might have a meeting with them next morning. Some service for the Lord we had amongst them, both over night and in the morning; and though the people were slow to receive the Truth, yet the seed was sown; and thereabouts the Lord hath a people gathered to Himself. In that inn, also, I but turned my back to the man that was giving oats to my horse, and, looking round again, I observed he was filling his pockets with the provender. A wicked, thievish people, to rob the poor, dumb creature of his food. I would rather they had robbed me.

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Thence we went to Beaumaris, a town wherein John ap-John had formerly been a preacher. After we had put up our horses at an inn, John went and spoke through the street; and there being a garrison in the town, they took him and put him into prison. The innkeeper’s wife came and told me that the governor and magistrates were sending for me, to commit me to prison also. I told her that they had done more than they could answer already; and had acted contrary to Christianity in imprisoning him for reproving sin in their streets and gates, and for declaring the Truth. Soon after came other friendly people, and told me that if I went into the street, the governor and magistrates would imprison me also; therefore they desired me to keep within the inn. Upon this I was moved to go and walk up and down in the streets. And I told the people what an uncivil, unchristian thing they had done in casting my friend into prison. And they being high professors, I asked them if this was the entertainment they had for strangers; if they would willingly be so served themselves; and whether they, who looked upon the Scriptures to be their rule, had any example in the Scriptures from Christ or His apostles for what they had done. So after awhile they set John ap-John at liberty. Next day, being market-day, we were to cross a great water [from Anglesey across Beaumaris Bay to the mainland]; and not far from the place where we were to take boat, many of the market-people drew to us. Amongst these we had good service for the Lord, declaring the Word of Life and everlasting Truth unto them, proclaiming amongst them the day of the Lord, which was coming upon all wickedness; and directing them to the Light of Christ, with which He, the heavenly man, had enlightened them, by which they might see all their sins, and all their false ways, religions, worships and teachers; and by the same Light might see Christ Jesus, who was come to save them, and lead them to God After the Truth had been declared to them in the power of God, and Christ the free teacher set over all the hireling teachers, I made John ap-John get his horse into the boat, which was then ready. But there being a company of wild “gentlemen,” as they were called, gotten into it (whom we found very rude, and far from gentleness), they, with others kept his horse out of the boat. I rode to the boat’s side, and spoke to them, showing them what an unmanly and unchristian carriage it was; and told them that they showed an unworthy spirit, below Christianity or humanity. As I spoke, I leaped my horse into the boat amongst them, thinking John’s horse would follow when he had seen mine go in before him. But the water being pretty deep, John could not get his horse into the boat. Therefore I leaped out again on horseback into the water, and stayed with John on that side till the boat returned. There we tarried, from the eleventh hour of the forenoon to the second in the afternoon, before the boat came to fetch us; and then had forty- two miles to ride that evening; and by the time we had paid for our passage, we had but one groat left between us in money.

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We rode about sixteen miles, and then got a little hay for our horses. Setting forward again, we came in the night to a little ale-house, where we thought to have stayed and baited. But, finding we could have neither oats nor hay there, we travelled all night; and about the fifth hour in the morning got to a place within six miles of Wrexham, where that day we met with many Friends, and had a glorious meeting. The Lord’s everlasting power and Truth was over all; and a meeting is continued there to this day. Next day we passed thence into Flintshire, sounding the day of the Lord through the towns; and came into Wrexham at night. Here many of Floyd’s people came to us; but very rude, wild, and airy they were, and little sense of truth they had; yet some were convinced in that town. Next morning one called a lady sent for me, who kept a preacher in her house. I went, but found both her and her preacher very light and airy; too light to receive the weighty things of God. In her lightness she came and asked me if she should cut my hair; but I was moved to reprove her, and bade her cut down the corruptions in herself with the sword of the Spirit of God. So after I had admonished her to be more grave and sober, we passed away; and afterwards, in her frothy mind, she made her boast that she came behind me and cut off the curl of my hair; but she spoke falsely. From Wrexham we came to Chester; and it being the fair time, we stayed a while, and visited Friends. For I had travelled through every county in Wales, preaching the everlasting gospel of Christ; and a brave people there is now, who have received it, and sit under Christ’s teaching. But before I left Wales I wrote to the magistrates of Beaumaris concerning the imprisoning of John ap-John; letting them see their conditions, and the fruits of their Christianity, and of their teachers. Afterwards I met with some of them near London; but, oh, how ashamed they were of their action! Soon we came to Manchester, and the sessions being there that day many rude people were come out of the country. In the meeting they threw at me coals, clods, stones, and water; yet the Lord’s power bore me up over them that they could not strike me down. At last, when they saw they could not prevail by throwing water, stones, and dirt at me, they went and informed the justices in the sessions, who thereupon sent officers to fetch me before them. The officers came in while I was declaring the Word of life to the people, plucked me down, and haled me into their court. When I came there all the court was in a disorder and a noise. I asked, “Where are the magistrates that they do not keep the people civil?” Some of the justices said that they were magistrates. I asked them why, then, they did not appease the people, and keep them sober, for one cried, “I’ll swear,” and another cried, “I’ll swear.” I declared to the justices how we were abused in our meeting by the rude people, who threw stones, clods, dirt, and water; and how I was haled out of the meeting and brought thither, contrary to the instrument of government, which said that none should be molested in their meetings that professed God, and owned the Lord Jesus Christ; which I did. The Truth so came over them that when one of the rude followers cried, “I’ll swear,” one of the justices checked him, saying “What will you swear? hold your tongue.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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FOX’S JOURNAL:

At last they bade the constable take me to my lodging, and there secure me till they sent for me again to-morrow morning. So the constable took me to my lodging. As we went the people were exceedingly rude; but I let them see the fruits of their teachers, how they shamed Christianity, and dishonored the name of Jesus which they professed. At night we went to see a justice in the town who was pretty moderate, and I had a great deal of discourse with him. Next morning we sent to the constable to know if he had anything more to say to us. He sent us word that he had nothing to say to us; we might go whither we would. The Lord hath since raised up a people to stand for His name and Truth in that town over those chaffy professors. We passed from Manchester, having many precious meetings in several places, till we came to Preston. Between Preston and Lancaster I had a general meeting, from which I went to Lancaster. There at our inn I met with Colonel West, who was very glad to see me, and meeting with Judge Fell he told him that I was mightily grown in the Truth; when, indeed, he was come nearer to the Truth, and so could better discern it. We came from Lancaster to Robert Widders’s. On the First-day after I had a general meeting of Friends of Westmoreland and Lancashire near Sandside, when the Lord’s everlasting power was over all. In this meeting the Word of eternal life was declared, and Friends were settled upon the foundation Christ Jesus, under His free teaching; and many were convinced, and turned to the Lord. Next day I came over the Sands to Swarthmore, where Friends were glad to see me. I stayed there two First-days, visiting Friends in their meetings thereabouts. They rejoiced with me in the goodness of the Lord, who by His eternal power had carried me through and over many difficulties and dangers in His service; to Him be the praise for ever!

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1657

Though Abraham Cowley received a medical doctorate from Oxford in this year, he would never practice.

Bishop Henry King, D.D.’s POEMS, ELEGIES, PARADOXES AND SONETS.

John Wray or Ray became a praelector at Cambridge University, and a junor dean. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1659

John Wray or Ray became a college steward at Cambridge University.

During this year William Penn, while a student in Oxford University, came under the influence of the preaching of Thomas Loe. During this last year before the restoration of the monarchy, Quakers became intensely active in the republican and sectarian agitation which brought down the Protectorate. In May the Rump of the Long Parliament was restored. In August, volunteer regiments including Quakers were raised to crush the Presbyterian-Royalist risings. Then General Monck’s army marched south from Scotland, to connect up with the rising led by the former General Lord Fairfax in York. Their target was the “fanatics” — Quakers, Baptists, the Rump and the Army.

Young Penn had been knocked about, and would continue to knock about for quite a number of years, getting himself expelled from Oxford, studying for the law at Lincoln’s Inn, studying at the Huguenot school l’Académie Protestante at Saumer in France, with the Christian humanist Moïse Amyraut, and managing his father’s estates in Ireland. It would not be until 1666 that he would formally make a commitment to the Quakers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1660

John Wray or Ray continued as a college steward at Cambridge University.

Having been educated at Christ Church College at Oxford, John Locke became a lecturer there in Greek, rhetoric, and philosophy.

August 27, Monday (Old Style): With the restoration of Charles II as monarch of England, John Milton had been placed under arrest as a notorious defender of the Commonwealth. He soon was released but on this date, at Oxford, his PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO and ICONOCLASTES were consigned to the flames. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1664

October 25, Tuesday (Old Style): When John Evelyn would speak in 1666-1667 in his PUBLICK EMPLOYMENT, &C. PREFER’D TO SOLITUDE of “spots in the sun” that were “easily discerned” by an available “optic,” his astronomical metaphor may have had its origin in his visit to Oxford on this day of which he speaks in his DIARY, as he watched Boyle and Christopher Wren trying to observe the transit of Mercury across the sun’s face. The projected image of the sun allows sunspots to be observed and he may have had the process explained to him then, or on some previous occasion. SKY EVENT John Evelyn’s Diary

… I went to visite Mr. Boyle now here, whom I found with Dr. Wallis & Dr. Chr[istopher] Wren in the Tower at the Scholes, with an inverted Tube or Telescope observing the Discus of the Sunn for the passing of Mercury that day before the Sunn; but the Latitude was so greate, that nothing appeared: So we went to see the rarities in the Library, where the Library keepers, shewed me my name, among the Benefactors: They have a Cabinet of some Medails, & Pictures of the Muscular parts of Mans body: Thence to the new Theater, building now at an exceedingly & royal Expense by the L[ord] A[rch] B[ishop] of Canterbury, to keepe the Acts in for the future, ’til now being in St. Maries church: The foundation being but newly laied & the whole, Design’d, by that incomparable genius, & my worthy friend Dr. Chr[istopher] Wren, who shewed me the Model, not disdaining my advise in some particulars: Thence to see the Picture on the Wall over the Altar at All- Soules, being the largest piece of Fresco painting (or rather in Imitation of it, for tis in oyle [of Terpentine] in England, & not ill design’d, by the hand of one Fuller: yet I feare it will not hold long, & seemes too full of nakeds for a Chapell: Thence to New-Coll[ege] & the Painting of Magdalens Chapell, which is on blue cloth in Chiaro Oscuro by one Greeneborow, being a Cœna Domini & Judgement [on] the Wall by Fuller, as is the other, somewhat varied: Next to Waddam, & the Physik Garden where were two large Locust Trees, & as many Platana, & some rare Plants under the Culture of old Bobart.

THIS DAY IN PEPYS’S DIARY

In 1843, during Thoreau’s lifetime, a cycle of sunspots would be discovered and described. ASTRONOMY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1682

Elias Ashmole sent twelve cart-loads of rarities to what would become the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1683

The Convocation of Oxford, Thomas Hobbes’s alma mater, caused his book LEVIATHAN to be publicly burnt.

ENGLISH TRAITS: Oxford is old, even in England, and conservative. Its foundations date from Alfred, and even from Arthur, if, as is alleged, the Pheryllt of the Druids had a seminary here. In the reign of Edward I., it is pretended, here were thirty thousand students; and nineteen most noble foundations were then established. Chaucer found it as firm as if it had always stood; and it is, in British story, rich with great names, the school of the island, and the link of England to the learned of Europe. Hither came Erasmus, with delight, in 1497. Albericus Gentilis, in 1580, was relieved and maintained by the university. Albert Alaskie, a noble Polonian, Prince of Sirad, who visited England to admire the wisdom of Queen Elizabeth, was entertained with stage-plays in the Refectory of Christchurch, in 1583. Isaac Casaubon, coming from Henri Quatre of France, by invitation of James I., was admitted to Christ’s College, in July, 1613. I saw the Ashmolean Museum, whither Elias Ashmole, in 1682, sent twelve cart-loads of rarities. Here indeed was the Olympia of all Antony Wood’s and Aubrey’s games and heroes, and every inch of ground has its lustre. For Wood’s ATHENAE OXONIENSES, or calendar of the writers of Oxford for two hundred years, is a lively record of English manners and merits, and as much a national monument as PURCHAS’S PILGRIMS or HANSARD’S REGISTER. On every side, Oxford is redolent of age and authority. Its gates shut of themselves against modern innovation. It is still governed by the statutes of Archbishop Laud. The books in Merton Library are still chained to the wall. Here, on August 27, 1660, John Milton’s PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO, and ICONOCLASTES were committed to the flames. I saw the school-court or quadrangle, where, in 1683, the Convocation caused the LEVIATHAN of Thomas Hobbes to be publicly burnt. I do not know whether this learned body have yet heard of the Declaration of American Independence, or whether the Ptolemaic astronomy does not still hold its ground against the novelties of Copernicus.

JOHN MILTON HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1695

Simon Ockley became a lecturer in Hebrew at Oxford while still but 17 years of age. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1697

Simon Ockley received his BA at Oxford (his career as a historian would be somewhat marred by incautiously accepting as a factual source one particular writing about the Middle East, a manuscript FUTÚH AL-SHÁM by Pseudo-Wakidi, which would turn out to have been more a romance than anything else). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1701

Simon Ockley received his MA at Oxford.

Oxford

October 9, Thursday (Old Style): The Saybrook Collegiate School was chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Elihu Yale, a success story type of guy who hadn’t been to the American colony for some time and in fact never would return, donated some £800 worth of his books, in various cartons in various shipments, toward this 3rd school, which eventually would be known as Yale College, an additional venue for the training of ministers and magistrates for New England.5 Harvard College and Yale together would be conceived as reform models for Cambridge and Oxford Universities in old England.6

5. Elihu Yale’s epitaph at Wrexham, in County Denbigh, bordering on Cheshire, England reflects the general scandal of his administration as Governor in the Madras Presidency of the East India Company, an administration which became so notorious for embezzlement that he would be forced quite out of India: “Much good, some ill, he did; so hope all’s even.” 6. This Elihu Yale who gave the school a name really didn’t have all that much to do with the institution. He merely passed along to it some cartons of books that turned out to have a significant, but not overwhelmingly grand, cash value. Yale’s first scholarships, its first endowed professorship, and its library endowment would be based on less innocent money than the money Yale had earned in India through his graft and craft and greediness: money from the slave trade. The college would chisel the names of slavetraders, as “Worthies,” on its tower. It would use the names of slavemasters when naming some of its colleges. In 1831, when there was a proposal to establish in New Haven a separate college for black scholars, Yale would argue that even harboring such students in the same town would be “incompatible with the prosperity, if not the existence” of Yale. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1710

Simon Ockley received his BD at Oxford. He would become a fellow of Jesus College, and vicar of Swavesey, Cambridgeshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Reverend John Checkley, Oxford-educated, at this point returned to New England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1711

Simon Ockley was chosen Arabic professor of Oxford. He would have a large family, and his latter days would be embittered by pecuniary embarrassments (his fate would deserve a chapter in D’Israeli’s CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS — the preface to the 2nd volume of his THE HISTORY OF THE SARACENS would actually be prepared HDT WHAT? INDEX

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while in debtors’ prison). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1712

June 20, Friday (Old Style): Richard Grey matriculated at Lincoln College, Oxford.

LINCOLN COLLEGE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1714

Joseph Butler, casting his vote for the established Church of England after obtaining the most reluctant consent of his dissenting father, matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford (eventually this would prove to have been a wise choice when he would be made rector at Stanhope, a rich living).

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Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1716

Abel Boyer’s COMPLEAT AND IMPARTIAL HISTORY OF THE IMPEACHMENTS OF THE LAST MINISTRY. Also during this year, his THE INTEREST OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Richard Grey received his BA at Lincoln College, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1719

January 16, Friday (1718, Old Style): Richard Grey received his MA at Lincoln College, Oxford and was ordained. He became chaplain and secretary to Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1726

Theophilus Leigh, whose chief qualification was that he was the nephew of somebody important, was elected Master. The election was achieved by declaring one of the nay votes to be invalid, as having been cast by a person who was insane. The torpor for which 18th-Century Oxford would become notorious would soon begin.

After a rather bad spell, from 1726 onwards the Oxford garden was immensely improved by the learning and generosity of an amateur botanist, Dr. William Sherrard. He had persuaded Dillenius to come to England and made him Superintendent of his own garden at Eltham in Kent, where the German made a Hortus Elthamensis for his patron. According to Carl von Linné, Sherrard made Oxford pre-eminent among all the universities of Europe for the study of botany. BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1730

At the age of 13 Hugh Blair matriculated at the University of Edinburgh.

The Reverend Richard Grey’s MEMORIA TECHNICA; OR A NEW METHOD OF ARTIFICIAL MEMORY. MEMORIA TECHNICA

His system for the recitation of dates and figures of chronology, geography, history, astronomy, Jewish, Grecian, and Roman coins, weights and measures, etc. consisted in changing the last syllable of a name into letters that represented numbers, so that lists of these modified names could be assembled into “rap” lines in hexameter beat (this memory system would continue in use at least until 1861). For instance, by carefully constructing and then memorizing the following three lines: Pardel Roul Madreis Vienke Copsa Genevos. Moscass Praul Gibrabs Warsnu Stoup Dantziky Constasg. Baboky Nazky Samol Dambuz Antig Dan-a-béerdoz. this prelate of the Church of England was able readily to recall the distances of 13 major European cities from London, plus the distances of 6 cities of the Middle East from Jerusalem. The above three lines of rap lyric reminded him that Paris was 225 miles from London, Rome 950 miles from London, yada yada, Constantinople 1,600 miles from London, Babylon 480 miles from Jerusalem, yada yada, Dan 240 miles from Beersheba, yada yada! (Of course if anyone at the party had asked him how far it was from London to Jerusalem he would have been very much at a loss, if anyone asked him in what direction Beersheba lay from Babylon he would again draw a blank. This system was of use only for memorization, but was entirely useless for thinking. Henry Thoreau would consider adopting such a memory system — but would elect not to do so.

Also, in this year, the Reverend Richard Grey produced his A SYSTEM OF ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL LAW, EXTRACTED FROM THE “CODEX JURIS ECCLESIASTICI ANGLI” OF BISHOP EDMUND GIBSON, FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS FOR HOLY ORDERS. ECCLESIASTICAL LAW

In recognition for this latter tome, which would in a very few years be three times republished, the University of Oxford would grant to him its degree of D.D. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1731

Lord Chesterfield took part in the negotiation of a 2d Treaty of Vienna opening the door for a grand Anglo- Austrian alliance.

A Magyar apostate named Ibrahim Muteferrika introduced printing presses into the Ottoman Empire (the texts produced on these presses would consider military and political developments, rather than religion). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Reverend Richard Grey received the degree of DD from the University of Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1733

Thomas Morell received a MA degree from Oxford. For several years he would be serving unofficially as the curate of the chapel of St Anne in Kew Green, although officially he was still a sub-curate there. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1736

Carolus Linnaeus visited England, where he had heard that Dillenius was improving the Oxford Garden. Although Dillenius disagreed with Linné’s system, he so admired this young botanist that he offered him half his salary and half his house if only he would remain at Oxford — and burst into tears when the young Swede turned him down. BIBLIOTHECA BOTANICA (Amsterdam). FUNDAMENTA BOTANICA (FUNDAMENTALS OF BOTANY) (Amsterdam). MUSA CLIFFORTIANA FLORENS HARETCAMPI (CLIFFORD’S FLOWERING BANANA AT HARTEKAMP) (Leyden) Johan Friedrich Gronovius, botanist and physician, realizing the importance of his SYSTEMA NATURAE (SYSTEM OF NATURE), paid for its Leyden publication. This was Linné’s fundamental work in which plants, animals, and minerals were organized into classes, orders, genera, and species. In an important sense, he was working up the idea of the “economy of nature.” Because of the simplicity that his binomial naming system brought to the chaotic nomenclatures currently in use, his classifications would be rapidly accepted throughout Europe, England, and North America. The work would grow to 12 editions during his lifetime, the 10th in 1758 and the 12th in 1766 being multivolume compendia. In GENERA PLANTARUM and the SPECIES PLANTARUM of 1753, which would become the basis for modern systematic botany, Linné was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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classifying plants in accordance with their reproductive equipment. BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1740

Hertford College was created.

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1743

After a preliminary education at Basingstoke, Gilbert White had gone on to Oriel College, Oxford, and in this year he received his BA degree. He was at this point an avid shootist. He was an erect, slender man, but 5' 3'' tall (which puts him at the same altitude as St. Francis of Assisi, Voltaire, Gandhi, Sammy Davis, Jr., Daniel Ricketson, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea).

All nature is so full, that the district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. — Gilbert White’s THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE, as quoted on page 4 of William Least Heat- Moon’s PRAIRYERTH (A DEEP MAP) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991].

In consolation, we will offer that the good reverend was considerably taller than his garden Tortoise Timothy even when she stretched to her fullest extent to savor a blossom. Table of Altitudes

Yoda 2 ' 0 '' Lavinia Warren 2 ' 8 '' Tom Thumb, Jr. 3 ' 4 '' Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) 3 ' 8 '' Hervé Villechaize (“Fantasy Island”) 3 ' 11'' Charles Proteus Steinmetz 4 ' 0 '' Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (1) 4 ' 3 '' Alexander Pope 4 ' 6 '' Benjamin Lay 4 ' 7 '' Dr. Ruth Westheimer 4 ' 7 '' Gary Coleman (“Arnold Jackson”) 4 ' 8 '' Edith Piaf 4 ' 8 '' Queen Victoria with osteoporosis 4 ' 8 '' Linda Hunt 4 ' 9 '' Queen Victoria as adult 4 ' 10 '' Mother Teresa 4 ' 10 '' Margaret Mitchell 4 ' 10 '' length of newer military musket 4 ' 10'' Charlotte Brontë 4 ' 10-11'' Tammy Faye Bakker 4 ' 11'' Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut 4 ' 11'' HDT WHAT? INDEX

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jockey Willie Shoemaker 4 ' 11'' Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 4 ' 11'' Joan of Arc 4 ' 11'' Bonnie Parker of “Bonnie & Clyde” 4 ' 11'' Harriet Beecher Stowe 4 ' 11'' Laura Ingalls Wilder 4 ' 11'' a rather tall adult Pygmy male 4 ' 11'' Gloria Swanson 4 ' 11''1/2 Clara Barton 5 ' 0 '' Isambard Kingdom Brunel 5 ' 0 '' Andrew Carnegie 5 ' 0 '' Thomas de Quincey 5 ' 0 '' Stephen A. Douglas 5 ' 0 '' Danny DeVito 5 ' 0 '' Immanuel Kant 5 ' 0 '' William Wilberforce 5 ' 0 '' Dollie Parton 5 ' 0 '' Mae West 5 ' 0 '' Pia Zadora 5 ' 0 '' Deng Xiaoping 5 ' 0 '' Dred Scott 5 ' 0 '' (±) Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty 5 ' 0 '' (±) Harriet Tubman 5 ' 0 '' (±) Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (2) 5 ' 0 '' (±) John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island 5 ' 0 '' (+) John Keats 5 ' 3/4 '' Debbie Reynolds (Carrie Fisher’s mother) 5 ' 1 '' Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) 5 ' 1 '' Bette Midler 5 ' 1 '' Dudley Moore 5 ' 2 '' Paul Simon (of Simon & Garfunkel) 5 ' 2 '' Honore de Balzac 5 ' 2 '' Sally Field 5 ' 2 '' Jemmy Button 5 ' 2 '' Margaret Mead 5 ' 2 '' R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller 5 ' 2 '' Yuri Gagarin the astronaut 5 ' 2 '' William Walker 5 ' 2 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Horatio Alger, Jr. 5 ' 2 '' length of older military musket 5 ' 2 '' 1 the artist formerly known as Prince 5 ' 2 /2'' 1 typical female of Thoreau's period 5 ' 2 /2'' Francis of Assisi 5 ' 3 '' Vol ta i re 5 ' 3 '' Mohandas Gandhi 5 ' 3 '' Sammy Davis, Jr. 5 ' 3 '' Kahlil Gibran 5 ' 3 '' Friend Daniel Ricketson 5 ' 3 '' The Reverend Gilbert White 5 ' 3 '' Nikita Khrushchev 5 ' 3 '' Sammy Davis, Jr. 5 ' 3 '' Truman Capote 5 ' 3 '' Kim Jong Il (North Korea) 5 ' 3 '' Stephen A. “Little Giant” Douglas 5 ' 4 '' Francisco Franco 5 ' 4 '' President James Madison 5 ' 4 '' Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili “Stalin” 5 ' 4 '' Alan Ladd 5 ' 4 '' Pablo Picasso 5 ' 4 '' Truman Capote 5 ' 4 '' Queen Elizabeth 5 ' 4 '' Ludwig van Beethoven 5 ' 4 '' Typical Homo Erectus 5 ' 4 '' 1 typical Neanderthal adult male 5 ' 4 /2'' 1 Alan Ladd 5 ' 4 /2'' comte de Buffon 5 ' 5 '' (-) Captain Nathaniel Gordon 5 ' 5 '' Charles Manson 5 ' 5 '' Audie Murphy 5 ' 5 '' Harry Houdini 5 ' 5 '' Hung Hsiu-ch'üan 5 ' 5 '' 1 Marilyn Monroe 5 ' 5 /2'' 1 T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia” 5 ' 5 /2'' average runaway male American slave 5 ' 5-6 '' Charles Dickens 5 ' 6? '' President Benjamin Harrison 5 ' 6 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

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President Martin Van Buren 5 ' 6 '' James Smithson 5 ' 6 '' Louisa May Alcott 5 ' 6 '' 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 5 ' 6 /2'' 1 Napoleon Bonaparte 5 ' 6 /2'' Emily Brontë 5 ' 6-7 '' Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 5 ' ? '' average height, seaman of 1812 5 ' 6.85 '' Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. 5 ' 7 '' minimum height, British soldier 5 ' 7 '' President John Adams 5 ' 7 '' President John Quincy Adams 5 ' 7 '' President William McKinley 5 ' 7 '' “Charley” Parkhurst (a female) 5 ' 7 '' Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 7 '' Henry Thoreau 5 ' 7 '' 1 the average male of Thoreau's period 5 ' 7 /2 '' Edgar Allan Poe 5 ' 8 '' President Ulysses S. Grant 5 ' 8 '' President William H. Harrison 5 ' 8 '' President James Polk 5 ' 8 '' President Zachary Taylor 5 ' 8 '' average height, soldier of 1812 5 ' 8.35 '' 1 President Rutherford B. Hayes 5 ' 8 /2'' President Millard Fillmore 5 ' 9 '' President Harry S Truman 5 ' 9 '' 1 President Jimmy Carter 5 ' 9 /2'' 3 Herman Melville 5 ' 9 /4'' Calvin Coolidge 5 ' 10'' Andrew Johnson 5 ' 10'' Theodore Roosevelt 5 ' 10'' Thomas Paine 5 ' 10'' Franklin Pierce 5 ' 10'' Abby May Alcott 5 ' 10'' Reverend Henry C. Wright 5 ' 10'' 1 Nathaniel Hawthorne 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 Louis “Deerfoot” Bennett 5 ' 10 /2'' 1 Friend John Greenleaf Whittier 5 ' 10 /2'' HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1 President Dwight D. Eisenhower 5 ' 10 /2'' Sojourner Truth 5 ' 11'' President Grover Cleveland 5 ' 11'' President Herbert Hoover 5 ' 11'' President Woodrow Wilson 5 ' 11'' President Jefferson Davis 5 ' 11'' 1 President Richard M. Nixon 5 ' 11 /2'' Robert Voorhis the hermit of Rhode Island < 6 ' Frederick Douglass 6 ' (-) Anthony Burns 6 ' 0 '' Waldo Emerson 6 ' 0 '' Joseph Smith, Jr. 6 ' 0 '' David Walker 6 ' 0 '' Sarah F. Wakefield 6 ' 0 '' Thomas Wentworth Higginson 6 ' 0 '' President James Buchanan 6 ' 0 '' President Gerald R. Ford 6 ' 0 '' President James Garfield 6 ' 0 '' President Warren Harding 6 ' 0 '' President John F. Kennedy 6 ' 0 '' President James Monroe 6 ' 0 '' President William H. Taft 6 ' 0 '' President John Tyler 6 ' 0 '' John Brown 6 ' 0 (+)'' President Andrew Jackson 6 ' 1'' Alfred Russel Wallace 6 ' 1'' President Ronald Reagan 6 ' 1'' 1 Venture Smith 6 ' 1 /2'' John Camel Heenan 6 ' 2 '' Crispus Attucks 6 ' 2 '' President Chester A. Arthur 6 ' 2 '' President George Bush, Senior 6 ' 2 '' President Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 ' 2 '' President George Washington 6 ' 2 '' HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Gabriel Prosser 6 ' 2 '' Dangerfield Newby 6 ' 2 '' Charles Augustus Lindbergh 6 ' 2 '' 1 President Bill Clinton 6 ' 2 /2'' 1 President Thomas Jefferson 6 ' 2 /2'' President Lyndon B. Johnson 6 ' 3 '' Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 6 ' 3 '' 1 Richard “King Dick” Seaver 6 ' 3 /4'' President Abraham Lincoln 6 ' 4 '' Marion Morrison (AKA John Wayne) 6 ' 4 '' Elisha Reynolds Potter, Senior 6 ' 4 '' Thomas Cholmondeley 6 ' 4 '' (?) Franklin Benjamin Sanborn 6 ' 5 '' Peter the Great of Russia 6 ' 7 '' Giovanni Battista Belzoni 6 ' 7 '' Thomas Jefferson (the statue) 7 ' 6'' Jefferson Davis (the statue) 7 ' 7'' 1 Martin Van Buren Bates 7 ' 11 /2'' M. Bihin, a Belgian exhibited in Boston in 1840 8 ' Anna Haining Swan 8 ' 1''

After a preliminary education at Basingstoke, Gilbert White had gone on to Oriel College, Oxford, and in this year he received his BA degree. He was at this point an avid shootist. He was an erect, slender man, but 5' 3'' tall (which puts him at the same altitude as St. Francis of Assisi, Voltaire, Gandhi, Sammy Davis, Jr., Daniel Ricketson, and Kim Jong Il of North Korea).

All nature is so full, that the district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. — Gilbert White’s THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE, as quoted on page 4 of William Least Heat- Moon’s PRAIRYERTH (A DEEP MAP) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991].

In consolation, we will offer that the good reverend was considerably taller than his garden Tortoise Timothy even when she stretched to her fullest extent to savor a blossom. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1744

Gilbert White was made a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.

All nature is so full, that the district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. — Gilbert White’s THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE, as quoted on page 4 of William Least Heat- Moon’s PRAIRYERTH (A DEEP MAP) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991]. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Thomas Warton entered Trinity College, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1746

Gilbert White received his MA from Oriel College, Oxford.

The language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood.

— Gilbert White’s THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE, as quoted on page 417 of William Least Heat- Moon’s PrairyErth (a deep map) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991].

ORIEL COLLEGE

CHRIST CHURCH HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Thomas Percy matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1747

Thomas Warton obtained his BA at Trinity College, Oxford University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1748

William Gilpin obtained his MA at Queen’s College, Oxford University.

QUEEN’S COLLEGE

He would initially serve as a curate, then as a master, at Cheam School. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1750

Thomas Percy received the Bachelor’s degree at Christ Church, Oxford.

Thomas Warton received the Master’s degree at Trinity College, Oxford.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oxford University HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1751

The Reverend Gilbert White was serving his alma mater, Oriel College at Oxford, as Junior Proctor. In this year, also, he began the GARDEN KALENDAR7 which he would maintain for two decades.

7. See the facsimile published in 1975 with an introduction by John Clegg. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Thomas Warton became a fellow at Trinity College, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1753

Thomas Percy received the Master’s degree at Christ Church, Oxford and was appointed as the vicar of Easton Maudit in Northamptonshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1757

The Reverend Thomas Warton, D.D. became Professor of Poetry at Oxford University (until 1767).

Richard Grey, D.D. was made archdeacon of Bedford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1759

January 15, Monday: The Library of the British Museum opened its doors to the public, in fact to “any decent person who may apply,” at the Montague House in Bloomsbury near London, to receive henceforth along with the library at Oxford a copy of each publication being copyright in Britain.

There were only three departments — Printed Books, Manuscripts, and Natural and Artificial Productions. In addition to King George II’s royal library, the materials placed in the Natural and Artificial Productions display included the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, M.D., 1st Baronet, PRS (a significant proportion of Dr. Sloane’s collection would become the basis for the Natural History Museum). HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1762

Benjamin Franklin redesigned the harmonica as a musical instrument and received the degree of LL.D. from Oxford and from Edinburgh (but not on account of the harmonica), whereupon he returned to America. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1766

When Robert Chambers succeeded the famous William Blackstone as Vinerian Professor of Law at Oxford University, he found himself so daunted by his new duties that he asked Samuel Johnson to write most of his lectures for him. Johnson would keep this a secret from Boswell. (Might this Robert Chambers be the father of the twins William and Robert Chambers, born in 1802?) HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1771

Just before his 19th birthday, Vicesimus Knox II was elected to a fellowship at his father’s alma mater, St. John’s College, Oxford. He would remain at this institution for an unusually long period, eight years, studying the classics like a man possessed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1772

At the age of 28 John Brand matriculated at the Lincoln College of Oxford University, where he where he would obtain the BA bachelor’s degree. In his final year at the university he would publish a poem “On illicit Love, written among the Ruins of Godstow Nunnery, 1775.”8

LINCOLN COLLEGE

8. A celebrated mistress of King Henry II, named Rosamond, had been buried there. The poem favors chastity. Brand would not marry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1775

John Brand graduated from the Lincoln College of Oxford University.

A poem was published pleading the case for chastity, “On illicit Love, written among the Ruins of Godstow HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Nunnery, 1775.”9 BRAND “ON ILLICIT LOVE”

With this degree in his briefcase, he became secretary to the Duke of Northumberland, at Northumberland House.

9. A celebrated mistress of King Henry II, named Rosamond, had been buried there. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1782

January 14, Monday: Henry Headley was admitted a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford under the tuition of the Reverend Charles Jesse.

TRINITY COLLEGE HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

May 27 (Trinity Monday): Henry Headley was elected scholar at Trinity College, Oxford. Other students there, the critic William Lisle Bowles and the classicist William Benwell, would become his friends. Headley would fall under the influence of Poet Laureate Thomas Warton, then a fellow of this college.

Aaron Lopez was in a carriage, returning to Newport, Rhode Island, and stopped off at Scott’s Pond in Smithfield to let his horse drink. The horse bolted into deep water, the carriage overturned, and the rich man drowned.10

On this day the course of instruction at the College of Rhode Island atop College Hill in Providence was resuming after the wartime hiatus. Long live peace! BAPTISTS BROWN UNIVERSITY

10. To get some idea of just how easily one might become entangled in apparatus and unable to extricate oneself underwater from the wreckage of this sort of conveyance, you might take a close look at John Brown’s “chariot” — which is stored behind the John Brown mansion in Providence, Rhode Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1784

Thomas Harwood matriculated at Oxford as a commoner of University College. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1785

Henry Headley’s anonymous FUGITIVE PIECES (these had been written during the previous year, while he was 19, and had already appeared severally in print). Telling no-one, he walked away from his education at Trinity College, Oxford.

The Reverend Professor Thomas Warton, D.D. was appointed Poet Laureate of England and became Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University (he would hold both posts until his death)

The Poets Laureate of England

1591-1599 Edmund Spenser 1599-1619 Samuel Daniel 1619-1637 Ben Jonson 1638-1668 William Davenant 1670-1689 John Dryden 1689-1692 Thomas Shadwell 1692-1715 Nahum Tate HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

The Poets Laureate of England

1715-1718 Nicholas Rowe 1718-1730 Laurence Eusden 1730-1757 Colley Cibber 1758-1785 William Whitehead 1785-1790 Thomas Warton 1790-1813 Henry James Pye 1813-1843 Robert Southey 1843-1850 William Wordsworth 1850-1892 Alfred Lord Tennyson 1896-1913 Alfred Austin 1913-1930 Robert Bridges 1930-1967 John Masefield 1967-1972 Cecil Day-Lewis 1972-1984 Sir John Betjeman 1984-1998 Ted Hughes 1999- Andrew Motion HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1786

May 16, Tuesday: Henry Headley returned to Trinity College, Oxford to receive the degree of BA. He would choose to reside at Norwich, and occupy himself with the study of the old English poets. Using the pen name “C.T.O.,” he would contribute several articles, mostly dealing with the works of John Milton, to Gentleman’s Magazine. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1793

Walter Savage Landor entered Trinity College, Oxford and immediately displayed rebelliousness in his informal dress. He was so taken with the ideals of French republicanism that he would become notorious as a “mad Jacobin.” He impressed his tutor Dr Benwell but unfortunately his education at this school, like his previous experience at Rugby School, would be brief.

TRINITY COLLEGE HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1799

John Josias Conybeare was awarded the Oxford University Under-graduate’s prize, for a poem in Latin entitled “Religio Brahmæ.”

Henry Hallam graduated at Christ Church College, Oxford. He would practice law for some years on the Oxford circuit.

CHRIST CHURCH HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1803

John Kidd was Oxford’s first professor of Chemistry.

Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1804

Thomas De Quincey first took opium, while at Worcester College, Oxford, to cope with the pain of facial neuralgia.

In this year, also, he first met Charles Lamb. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1808

January: Samuel Taylor Coleridge delivered his initial lecture on poetry and principles of taste at the Royal Institution in London.

Thomas De Quincey would be seeing Coleridge daily to assist him in this lecture series.

During his final exams in this year De Quincey would suddenly leave Oxford, not completing the exams and therefore sacrificing any expectation of receiving a diploma from Worcester College.

WORCESTER COLLEGE

During this year De Quincey would obtain an introduction to John Wilson, who would become the “Christopher North” of Blackwood’s Magazine, and they would become chums. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1810

William Turner, the water-color painter, was probably at his best with “Oxford from above Hinksye.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1811

Richard Whately was elected as a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.

ORIEL COLLEGE HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1812

The Reverend Professor John Josias Conybeare became Regius Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

May 16, Saturday: William John Broderip graduated from Oriel College, Oxford. He would enter the Inner Temple, and study in the chambers of Godfrey Sykes alongside Sir John Patteson and Sir John Taylor Coleridge.

ORIEL COLLEGE

The Emperor and Empress of France arrived in Dresden accompanied by a torchlight parade. Also in attendance were the various German kings, of Saxony, Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Westphalia.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 16th 5 M 1812// A Season of precious favor this morng finished a letter to James D Ladd of Grancille Mill Virginia this Afternoon — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1815

The orphaned Edgar Allan Poe’s family of affiliation, the Allans, were living in England and Scotland until 1820, due to Mr. Allan’s work as an exporter of tobacco (he was a “sotweed factor”). Poe during this period would be spending three years at a fine classical preparatory school at Stoke Newington.

Having completed his preparation at the Edinburgh High School, 17-year-old Alexander Dyce matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he would be taking his bachelor’s degree in 1819. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1816

Charles Lyell entered Exeter College, Oxford, where the lectures of Dr. Buckland would draw him into the study of geology.

The evangelical Reverend John Bird Sumner, who would in 1848 be made Archbishop of Canterbury, in this year authored a TREATISE ON THE RECORDS OF CREATION AND THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE CREATOR (London). HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1818

While still an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, Alexander Dyce edited John William Jarvis’s attempt at a dictionary of the language of William Shakespeare.

(Lieutenant-General Alexander Dyce of the East India Company’s Madras infantry’s plan was for his son likewise to enter the service of the East India Company — but the college student would soon elect instead to take holy orders.)

We would derive our term “bowdlerize” from Thomas Bowdler’s activities in this year, expurgating a ten- volume edition of William Shakespeare’s plays entitled FAMILY SHAKESPEARE, “in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.”

In the next six years this edition would go through four printings and, emboldened with his success, the expurgator would turn to producing a similarly needed six-volume reduction of Edward Gibbon’s 12- HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

volume THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1819

Alexander Dyce received a BA from Exeter College, Oxford. His father Lieutenant-General Alexander Dyce of the East India Company’s Madras infantry’s idea had been to prepare him to enter the service of the East India Company, but he would elect instead to take holy orders. He would become a curate at the fishing village of Llanteglos near Fowley in Cornwall, and subsequently at Nayland in Suffolk.

December 16, Thursday: At Exeter College, Oxford, Charles Lyell graduated BA 2d class in Classics (although the lectures of Dr. Buckland had drawn him into the study of geology, and although he had been elected a fellow of the Linnaean and Geological Societies, he would be entering Lincoln’s Inn to study for the law).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 16th of 12 M / Silent meeting excepting a few words droped by a friend. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1821

Charles Lyell received the degree of M.A. from Exeter College, Oxford.

The Reverend Richard Whately got married and the newlyweds settled in Oxford. During his residence there he would author HISTORIC DOUBTS RELATIVE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, a jeu d’ésprit mocking those who doubt the historical validity of the Christian gospel narratives.

Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1825

The Reverend Richard Whately, having been appointed principal of St. Alban Hall, brought his family back from Halesworth in Suffolk to Oxford. He prepared a series of ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE PECULIARITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

Oxford HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

The initial edition of John Claudius Loudon’s AN ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF AGRICULTURE: COMPRISING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE VALUATION, TRANSFER, LAYING OUT, IMPROVEMENT, AND MANAGEMENT OF LANDED PROPERTY; AND THE CULTIVATION AND ECONOMY OF THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS OF AGRICULTURE, INCLUDING ALL THE LATEST IMPROVEMENTS; A GENERAL HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE IN ALL COUNTRIES; AND A STATISTICAL VIEW OF ITS PRESENT STATE, WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR ITS FUTURE PROGRESS IN THE BRITISH ISLES. LOUDON’S 1831 EDITION

In this year he began The Gardener’s Magazine. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

The Oxford Botanic Gardens were created. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1826

December 17, Sunday: In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 17th 12 M 1826 / Our Meeting this forenoon was silent & solid. — When we returned home we found a letter from Benjamin Marchall, encouraging us to send John immediately to Hudson to enter his Cotton establishment there, which seemed very sudden & unexpected to us, tho we had calculated on his going there in the Spring or summer coming —- after considering & turning the proposition in our minds for a little while, - I saw no other way than to consult my dear Aged Mother & Uncle & Aunt Stanton on the subject who all have a deep interest in Johns wellfare & accordingly set out on foot & arrived there by sunset. — Our united conclusion was to consult John & say [lay?] the subject fully before him. - Tho’ we all felt seriously affected at the Idea of taking him from the Boarding School at Providence, so suddenly where he seems to be laying a good foundation for the time to come. — I went to bed & rose early on 2nd day [Monday] Morning & got home by 8 OC, & waited the whole day, consulting such of our friends, as came in our way who all seemed to concur with the Idea of leaving the exchange, chiefly to his decision - We accordingly wrote him this eveng, intending it for the Mail tomorrow morning. — The prospect as to the outward is uncommonly good for him, but I see many things which will be a great drawback on prospects of that Kind, but what can we do in our present situation, but to trust him to that Kind Providence which has from his birth to the present day signally favoured him — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Francis Trevelyan Buckland was born at Oxford, England, a son of the Reverend Professor William Buckland, D.D., F.R.S., Dean of Westminster.

His father was a Canon of Christ Church, one of the largest Colleges of the University of Oxford (as well as being a college, Christ Church is also the cathedral church of the diocese of Oxford, to wit Christ Church Cathedral). HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

CHRIST CHURCH

His father was also the geologist and paleontologist who had written the 1st full account of a fossil dinosaur. His father was a friend of Sir Richard Owen, Order of the Bath, a biologist, comparative anatomist, and paleontologist who is remembered today not only as the person who had coined the term “Dinosauria” but also as an opponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of origin of new species by gradual modification and adaptation. His father’s great hobby was the consumption of such unusual items as mice in batter, squirrel pie, horse’s tongue, and ostrich (in fact he was “heavy into” grossing people out big time in every way possible and according to one story he gobbled the preserved heart of King Louis XIV), and this “zoöphagy” would become the portly son’s favorite hobbyhorse as well. THE SCIENCE OF 1826 HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1827

In England, the beginning of the annual Oxford vs. Cambridge rowing competition.

Cambridgeshire parish formed an ice hockey league. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1828

In England at this point, the “levelers” and “nonconformists” and “dissenters” and “disestablishmentarians” and “latitudinarians,” non-Catholic groupings such as the Quakers and the Unitarians and the Baptists and the Methodists who were refusing to conform to the strictures of the Church of England, were beginning to be allowed to perform minor governmental functions — at least at the borough level. (They would not be able, however, to obtain an Oxford or Cambridge degree until the 1850s, and even into the 1860s they would be being forced to pay local church “rates” in support of the local Church of England’s parish parson.)

A year earlier Jemmy Butler had won a boxing match in Darlaston, England, after which the audience had carried him on their shoulders four miles to the nearest pub, where all that night he had been given drinks and adulation. This year in the prize-ring Jemmy was beaten to death.

In about this timeframe William Henry Brisbane was accepted as a new convert at the Pipe Creek Baptist Church, and went off to study at the Furman Academy and Theological Institution in Edgefield, South Carolina. His church would ordain him as its pastor and, successively, he would become pastor at several planter churches in the low country of South Carolina. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Isaac C. D’Israeli’s THE LIFE AND REIGN OF CHARLES I (this would result in the author’s being awarded Oxford University’s degree of DCL). HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1829

The Reverend Richard Whately was elected to the professorship of political economy at Oxford University as the successor to Professor Nassau William Senior (this would be cut short by his appointment in 1831 as Archbishop of Dublin). HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1831

December 15, Thursday: Dr. William Crotch announced his intention to resign his post as principal and professor of harmony at the Royal Academy of Music.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was born “on the estate of my ancestors for six generations, at Hampton Falls NH, and in a dwelling house now [as of 1908] 165 years old”: ... the son of Aaron Sanborn, then Town Clerk of the small municipality, and Lydia Leavitt, his wife — the fifth of their seven children, of whom the eldest died in infancy. I was the second son, my older brother, the late Dr. Charles Henry Sanborn, being ten years my senior, and my youngest brother, Joseph Leavitt Sanborn, who died at St. Louis MO in 1872 being twelve years younger than myself. An intermediate brother, Lewis Thomas Sanborn, was born in October 1834; and my two sisters, Sarah Elizabeth and Helen Maria, had been born, respectively, in 1823 and 1830. My name, which is peculiar in its arrangement (Franklin Benjamin, instead of the customary Benjamin Franklin), is due to a whim of my father, who, as Town Clerk, could enter me by any name he pleased. I was really named for my grandfather, Benjamin Sanborn, and his father of the same name, which he took from a worthy uncle, Deacon Benjamin, grandson of the first emigrant Sanborn, John by name, who was a grandson of the founder of Hampton NH, Rev. Stephen Bachiler, an Oxford scholar of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. But my Grandmother Leavitt, when I went to see her in the fine house under the four elms on the Kensington road, in view of the lovely Kensington hills, used to put her gentle hand on my head and call me “her little Dr. Franklin,” and so the great doctor’s surname was given me for a middle name. But my father, foreseeing that I should be called “Frank,” as I always have been, declared that his son should not be known by his middle name, and therefore registered me in the reverse order of the two names.11 HDT WHAT? INDEX

OXFORD UNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY

1833

Beginnings of the Oxford Movement (until 1841) for revival within the Church of England. Were symbols going to be enough? John Henry, Cardinal Newman began TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

11. James Savage. A GENEALOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE FIRST SETTLERS OF NEW ENGLAND, SHOWING THREE GENERATIONS OF THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE MAY, 1692, ON THE BASIS OF FARMER’S REGISTER. WITH TWO SUPPLEMENTS IN FOUR VOLUMES. Boston, 1860-1862

[WARNING: Although the files of genealogy in the Kouroo database began with the text of James Savage, it has proven to be necessary to extensively modify and supplement these records — and they no longer can be relied upon to read exactly as found in the abbreviated notations of Savage’s 1860-1862 volumes. For the original text, please consult the Internet version of the Savage files.] “John SANBORN of Hampton NH as of 1643, by tradition said to have come from County Derby, and more probably to be son of John SANBORN (anciently SAMBORNE) by a daughter of the Reverend Stephen Bachiler, who left three sons John SANBORN, William SANBORN, and Stephen SANBORN, to the care of their grandfather by whom they were brought in the William and Francis, arriving at Boston from London on June 5, 1632. For 1st wife he took Mary Tuck, daughter of Robert Tuck of Hampton who died December 30, 1668, having borne him John SANBORN in the year 1649; Mary SANBORN on April 12, 1651, who died young; Abigail SANBORN on February 23, 1653; Richard SANBORN on February 4, 1655; Mary SANBORN, again, on March 19, 1657, who died young; Joseph SANBORN on March 13, 1659; Stephen SANBORN on November 12, 1661, who died soon; Ann SANBORN on December 20, 1662; Nathaniel SANBORN on January 27, 1666; Benjamin SANBORN on December 20, 1668; and by 2nd wife, the widow Margaret Page Moulton, daughter of Robert Page, had Jonathan SANBORN on May 25, 1672; was a freeman 1666; lieutenant and representative in 1684 and 1685; and died during October 1692. His widow Margaret Page Moulton SANBORN died on July 13, 1699. “ HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 9, Friday: Waldo Emerson left London on a visit to Oxford.

David Henry Thoreau, accepted as a charity scholar, left home for Harvard College.12 While an undergraduate at Harvard 1833-1837 in what essentially was its “Comp Lit” program, he would reside initially with Charles Stearns Wheeler of Lincoln in an upstairs room, 20 Hollis Hall, that had (has) a fine view of the sunsets across the Common.13 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

12. Since the native-son undergraduates Lemuel Shattuck mentions in Chapter XVI of his history of Concord were in the Harvard College classes of 1834 (George Moore) and 1835 (Hiram Dennis and Ebenezer Hoar), this material would have needed to have been written between May 1833 and May 1834. The earlier date is more likely than the later date since Marshall Meriam, who graduated from Yale College with its Class of 1833, is carried as still an undergraduate there. David Henry Thoreau of Concord was unmentioned as a current Harvard College undergraduate in that 1835 history, therefore, simply because at the time the material was being penned, he had not yet matriculated. 13. He later occupied other rooms nearby in the same dormitory. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Holden Chapel Hollis Hall Hollis

N Fellows Barn

Harvard Hall ’ Stoughton Hall

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He had “many and noisy neighbours, and a residence in the fourth storey.” At that time tuition was $55.00 per year, Harvard had a faculty of perhaps 25 and a student body of perhaps 425, and the library boasted perhaps 40,000 books. Meals at the commons were $1.35 a week. From the 1820s into the 1840s, the regulation student attire was a “black-mixed” suit consisting of pantaloons, waistcoat, coat, tie, hat, shoes, and buttons of prescribed color, and various versions of this regulation attire were available at stores near campus for between $15.00 and $25.00. Thus although the top hat and the cane did not become de rigeur for the Harvard Man until the 1840s, to outfit Freshman Thoreau properly for his college career in 1833 would have required 30% to 50% of his scholarship money, and was just out of the question. In addition, President Josiah Quincy, Sr. informed Thoreau that his performance on the entrance examination had been such that

One branch more, and you had been turned by entirely. You have barely got in.

We need not ask why, in the 19th Century, David Henry was favored by his family over Helen and over Sophia for this expensive education, but one of the unresolved questions in my mind is how it came about that, in a family in which first son and namesake John clearly was regarded as the more capable manchild, and in which there had been talk of apprenticing little brother to a carpenter, it came about that it was young David Henry HDT WHAT? INDEX

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who went off to college to be partly supported by the earnings of his siblings.

THOREAU RESIDENCES During this initial year at Harvard, David Henry would be subjected to a “thorough course” of “Plane Trigonometry, Analytic Geometry, and Algebra with practical application to Heights and Distances, and Surveying and Navigation.” It would appear clear from the presence of a copy of Ebenezer Bailey’s FIRST LESSONS IN ALGEBRA; BEING AN EASY INTRODUCTION TO THAT SCIENCE. DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF ACADEMIES AND COMMON SCHOOLS. BY EBENEZER BAILEY, PRINCIPAL OF THE YOUNG LADIES’ HIGH SCHOOL, BOSTON; AUTHOR OF “YOUNG LADIES’ CLASS BOOK,” ETC. in Thoreau’s personal library, and from the fact that this text was published by Carter, Hendee & Co. during July of this year in Boston, that the book HDT WHAT? INDEX

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must have been useful for this course.

1ST LESSONS IN ALGEBRA This course on navigation is still being offered and happens now to be the longest continuously running subject-matter offered there! “It’s the most practical course you can take at Harvard,” commented Dan Justicz ’91, an alum. “You find your way by watching the movements of the sun and stars. You even construct your own navigation instruments. There’s a minimum of lecturing.” “We use the historical instrument collection at [Harvard] Science Center, maps dating back to the 13th century at Pusey Library, and ships’ logbooks as old as 200 years,” says the instructor, Dr. Sadler. “Students come to appreciate how difficult it was for Columbus, or Magellan, to find their way without accurate clocks.” The course is now offered as endowed under the Francis W. Wright Lectureship in Celestial Navigation. (Thoreau’s Harvard curriculum would include eight terms of Greek under Professor Cornelius Conway Felton and [Instructor?] Dunkin. These eight terms would begin with Greek composition and grammar, and continue into “Greek Antiquities” and works by Xenophon, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Sophocles, Euripides, and Homer. –What, your college education was not like that? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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— Perhaps you didn’t major in Comp Lit! :-)

NEW “HARVARD MEN” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1834

June 10, Tuesday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, John Marshall (1755-1835)’s A HISTORY OF THE COLONIES PLANTED BY THE ENGLISH ON THE CONTINENT OF NORTH AMERICA, FROM THEIR SETTLEMENT, TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THAT WAR WHICH TERMINATED IN THEIR INDEPENDENCE.... (Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1824).

More than 3,000 gathered at Brown’s Race to celebrate Jonathan Child’s inauguration as Rochester, New York’s first mayor.

HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin sailed up the Pacific coast of the South American continent.

In Leipzig, Richard Wagner’s 1st published essay “Die deutsche Oper” appeared in Zeitung fur die elegante Welt.

In Oxford, England, “Captivity of Judah,” an oratorio by William Crotch to words of Schomberg and Owen, was performed for the initial time, at ceremonies installing the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor of the university (also performed was the premiere of Crotch’s ode “When these are days of old” to words of Keble).

Oxford

Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle moved to 5 Great Cheyne Row (now 24 Cheyne Row) in the Chelsea district of London near the Thames River. He has spent the last quarter of his life in London, writing books; has the fame, as all readers know, of having made England acquainted with Germany, in late years, and done much else that is novel and remarkable in literature. He especially is the literary man of those parts. You may imagine him living in altogether a retired and simple way, with small family, in a quiet part of London, called Chelsea, a little out of the din of commerce, in “Cheyne Row,” there, not far from the “Chelsea Hospital.” “A little past this, and an old ivy-clad church, with its buried generations lying around it,” writes one traveller, “you come to an antique street running at right angles with the Thames, and, a few steps from the river, you find Carlyle’s name on the door.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With the exception of the soundproofed room which the writer would have constructed at the top of the house during the 1850s, the building now preserved by the Carlyle’s House Memorial Trust and by the National Trust still very much echoes this contemporary description, which is of Carlyle’s penning: The House itself is eminent, antique; wainscotted to the very ceiling, and has been all new-painted and repaired; broadish stair, with massive balustrade (in the old style) corniced and as thick as one’s thigh; floors firm as a rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanness, and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. And then as to room ... Three stories besides the sunk story; in every one of them three apartments in depth (something like 40 feet in all; for it was 13 of my steps!): Thus there is a front dining room (marble chimney-piece &c); then a back dining room (or breakfast-room) a little narrower (by reason of the kitchen stair); then out from this, and narrower still (to allow a back- window, you consider), a china room, or pantry, or I know not what, all shelved, and fit to hold crockery for the whole street. Such is the ground-area, which of course continues to the top, and furnishes every Bedroom with a dressing room, or even with a second bedroom ... a most massive, roomy, sufficient old house; with places, for example, to hang say three dozen hats or cloaks on; and as many crevices, and queer old presses, and shelved closets (all tight and new painted in their way) as would gratify the most covetous Goody. Rent £35! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

John Ruskin entered Christ Church college in Oxford.

In this year the Oxford ice-skaters had a simple program of club figures for hand-in-hand skating that, like HDT WHAT? INDEX

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combined skating, required the ability to do the basic figures and skate backwards. The “link” method of holding hands (one hand only) was not as popular as face-to-face handholding and side-by-side, shoulder-to- shoulder handholding in which the male held the female’s right hand with his right and her left with his left. In a method pioneered in Austria, the male skated behind the female with both facing the same direction, and he took her right with his right and her left with his left. There was a version of this Austrian method termed the “Echelon,” which was probably a precursor to what is now known as the kilian position. There were also a few special hand-in-hand progressive united figures, called scuds, in which partners faced one another while holding hands. Ordinarily in these scuds the partners merely skated cross rolls forward and backward from side to side. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1839

William Wordsworth received an honorary degree from Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1842

John Ruskin left Christ Church college in Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1843

September 18, Monday: With publication of his UNIVERSITY SERMONS, finding that he had begun to question the true catholicity of the Church of England, the Anglican Reverend John Henry Newman resigned from his vicarage of St. Mary’s, Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson wrote to Isaac Hecker.

Frederick Douglass, his shattered right hand wrapped up in a bandage, lectured in Noblesville, Indiana.

September 25, Monday: Having resigned from his vicarage of St. Mary’s, Oxford after finding that he had begun to question the true catholicity of the Church of England, the Reverend John Henry Newman preached his last Anglican sermon at Littlemore.

Henry Thoreau was written to by Margaret Fuller. Dear Henry, You are not, I know, deeply interested in the chapter of little etiquettes, yet I think out of kindness you will be willing to read a text therein & act conform- ably in my behalf— As I read the text on the subject of [v]isits or [v]isitations, our hosts martyr themselves every way for us, their guests, while we are with them, in time, temper, & purse, but we are expected to get to them and get away from them as we can. Then I ought to have paid for the carriage which came to take me away[,] though I went in another. But I did not see the man when I got down to the landing[, — I] do not know what is the due, but [E.] Hoar told me the enclosed was enough[,] will you pay it for me wherever it belongs & pardon the care- lessness that gives you this trouble? Immediately after my return I passed two days at Concord, a visit all too short, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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yet pleasant. The cottages of the Irish laborers look pretty just now but their railroad looks foreign to Concord. Mr Emerson has written a fine poem, you will see it in the Dial. Ellery will not go to the West, at least not this year[.] He regrets your absence, you, he says, are the man to be with in the Woods. I remember my visit to Staten Island

Page 2 with great pleasure[,] & find your hist[o]ries and the grand pictures you showed me are very full in my mind[.] I have not yet [dreamt] of the fort, but I intend to some leisure night. With best regards to Mr & Mrs Emerson, whose hospitality I hold in grateful remembrance, yours S.M. Fuller. 25th[.] Septr/43

Address: Mr Henry Thoreau Care W. Emerson Esq 61 Wall St N. York. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1844

Oxford’s first railway station, at Abingdon road, opened.

Although Francis Trevelyan Buckland was not accepted into Corpus Christi College at Oxford, he did get accepted by Christ Church College.

CORPUS CHRISTI CHRIST CHURCH HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1845

August 1, Friday: As soon as he had been provisionally accepted by the visiting provincial of the Redemptorist order, Isaac Hecker, along with Clarence Walworth and James McMaster (converts from the American branch of the Oxford Movement) sailed for their novitiate. These turned out to be the first persons born in America to enter that Belgian order. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1848

On his 2d try Francis Trevelyan Buckland managed to secure his Bachelor of Arts degree from Christ Church College in Oxford, and moved on to London to study surgery at St George’s Hospital. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1853

Edward J. Fitzgerald’s SIX DRAMAS OF CALDERON.

Edward Byles Cowell enrolled at Oxford University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1856

The Unitarian Reverend Charles Henry Appleton Dall, never a Transcendentalist, preached his Christology to his Calcutta audience as a series of lectures entitled “Some Gospel Principles.” In the lecture “Christian Liberty” he stressed the significance to religious history of dissents by such reformers as the Reverends Henry Ware, Joseph Tuckerman, William Ellery Channing, and Noah Worcester. Invoking a name well known to his audience, that of the Hindu founder of the Brahmo Samaj, Rammohan Roy, he made the tactical mistake of comparing Roy with Jesus — this would be found offensive not only to the orthodox Christians back home who would hear of it, but also to Debendranath Tagore, whose instant response was that “he would not hear the name of Jesus spoken in the Samaj.”

James Robert Ballantyne’s translation of the initial part of THE MAHÁBHÁSHYA (PATANJALI’S GREAT COMMENTARY ON PÁNINI’S FAMOUS GRAMMAR), WITH COMMENTARIES and A SYNOPSIS OF SCIENCE IN SANSKRIT AND ENGLISH, RECONCILED WITH THE TRUTHS TO BE FOUND IN THE NYÂYA PHILOSOPHY (Mirzapore).

Edward Byles Cowell graduated from Oxford University. Before departing for his new post in India he came across in the Bodleian Library the Ouseley manuscript of the RUBAIYAT of Omar Khayyám and dispatched a copy to Edward J. Fitzgerald. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

The Reverend Joseph Bosworth became Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1860

Elizabeth Wright’s LICHEN TUFTS, FROM THE ALLEGHANIES. Eventually Lawrence Buell, cherchezing for the femme on page 45 of THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION, would discover the gender of this author to have been of interest: The first fictional recreation of Thoreau was by a woman, Louisa May Alcott (MOODS). The first book, to my knowledge, published by an outsider to the transcendentalist circle that celebrates nature as a refuge from hypercivilization with explicit invocation of Thoreau as model and precursor was written by a woman: Elizabeth Wright’s LICHEN TUFTS, FROM THE ALLEGHANIES (1860). The first Thoreau Society was founded by a group of young women (1891)....

John Gould Veitch sent 17 new species of conifer from Japan to England, as well as seed and plants of other horticulturally valuable stock. His most popular introduction from that trip, however, became Boston ivy, Parthenocissus tricuspidata.

Using a pseudonym, E. Douwes Dekker published his novel MAX HAVELAAR. A former Dutch Colonial Officer in Java, Dekker in this book revealed the inhumane treatment of native workers in Dutch East Indian colonies. The resulting arousal of public concern would force governmental reforms. The Dutch would retain control of Javan and Sumatran spice production until WWII. PLANTS

The Tufts College Alumni Association was formed.

Victoria and Albert visited Oxford privately, to find out how Edward, Prince of Wales was faring at Christ HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Church. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

Our national birthday, Friday the 4th of July: It was the 4th of July in the Year of Our Lord 1862, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 58th birthday and our national birthday. The author had a piece currently appearing in The Atlantic Monthly. A pyrotechnic depiction of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac was taking place in New-York harbor. The wounded Colonel Daniel Butterfield lay on his cot and composed bugle calls on the backs of envelopes. One of the calls he developed was a new one to replace the old final call of the day, which had variously been known as “taps,” as “tattoo,” and as “lights out.” He was trying to make Taps be something that would bring comfort to soldiers who were physically exhausted, and peacefulness to those of troubled mind: The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard beyond the limits of the Butterfield Brigade as it echoed through the valleys. The next morning, buglers from other Brigades came to visit and to inquire about the new Taps and how to sound it.

CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

Nelson J. Waterbury, the head at this point of the Tammany Hall political organization and thus an enormously powerful American politician, declared at this point that the President of the United States of America would need to “set his foot firmly on abolitionism and crush it to pieces.” This would be essential to maintaining the fighting spirit of the Union armies. If there was one thing this civil war could not be about, it could not be about the freeing of America’s slaves. Don’t even think of going there. IRISH

In England, a famous river excursion was taking place. Charles Ludwidge Dodgson, a dean of Christ Church college in Oxford University, had taken the Liddell sisters, prepubescents, for a row on the river and was inventing a charming story which soon he would write down. Dodgson subscribed to the Victorian notion that prepubescent humans were purity incarnate and found their purity to be utterly compelling. He liked to take photographs of little girls with their clothes off, as such naked innocence was emblematic of this compelling purity. For unspecified reasons this dean soon would become a former dean and be more or less banned from the company of little girls. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1870

Following the model of the Oxford library and the Library of the British Museum, the Library of Congress was appointed to be the copyright officer for the United States of America. Henceforth two copies of each publication being copyrighted were to be placed on record for public access in this institution.

The Congressional charter of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company was amended to make it possible for Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company to make loans, and invest in non-governmental securities — of course so that it could achieve better returns for its depositors.

In 1821 the New York State Constitutional Convention had required potential male voters of African origin to be freeholders worth $250.00, a requirement that was not placed upon any other block of potential voters and a requirement that effectively had disenfranchised all or virtually all black New Yorkers. Over the opposition of Tammany Hall, at this point this practice of racial discrimination in voting finally was ended.

The term “blizzard,” which had previously designated the hail of lead produced by a military volley of gunfire, was first used to describe a snowstorm. The coinage occurred in a local paper in Estherville, Missouri, and the pioneer was a local man known locally as “Lightnin’ Ellis.” (His usage would spread.)

E. Cobham Brewer’s THE DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE: “Gryll Let Gryll be Gryll, and keep his hoggish mind. Don’t attempt to wash a blackamoor white; the leopard will never change his spots. Gryll is from the Greek gru (the grunting of a hog). When Sir Guyon disenchanted the forms in the Bower of Bliss some were exceedingly angry, and one in particular, named Gryll, who had been metamorphosed by Acrasia into a hog, abused him most roundly. ‘Come,’ says the palmer to Sir Guyon, ‘Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish mind. But let us hence depart while weather serves, and wind.’ Spenser: FAËRIE QUEENE, book ii. 12.”

Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT. During this year the author also published “A Shadow,” and other essays. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1963

As part of a post-graduate project at Oxford University, a retired US Marine Corps general, Samuel Griffith, published a heavily annotated translation of Sun Tzu’s THE ART OF WAR. Griffith’s reasons for doing the translation included his belief that the United States could no more win a war against the Chinese without understanding Sun Tzu’s 13 chapters than it could win a war against the Nazis without understanding MEIN KAMPF. Other Western generals would insufficiently appreciate Sun Tzu until the United States’s forced withdrawal from Vietnam in 1972.

Sun Tzu had also authored a treatise on mathematics which has never been translated into English. Obviously such an author hadn’t written anything on the art of mathematics that would be of interest to us. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1968

Summer: It is suspected that during this period political and family influence were what was keeping William Jefferson Clinton from being drafted into the US military and seeing service in Vietnam, where our boys were getting killed at the rate of 350 each week. Would that all our lads could enjoy the benefit of such support systems!

Beneficiary

Robert Corrado, the last surviving Hot Springs draft board member from that period, alleged that there had been “some form of preferential treatment” and described how the chairman of the three-man draft panel there had held back Clinton’s file saying “we’ve got to give him time to go to Oxford.” Corrado said he had been telephoned by an aide to J. William Fulbright (then a Democratic Senator from Arkansas) asking them to “give every consideration” to not drafting Clinton, so that he could attend Oxford University. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: Because the Hot Springs draft board continued unaccountably to postpone his preliminary interview and pre- induction physical, William Jefferson Clinton was able to enroll at Oxford University.

Oxford

Vietnam

During this year, resistance to the Vietnam draft was becoming quite popular. For instance, here is a poster featuring singer Joan Baez (left) and her sisters, encouraging young men to engage in draft resistance in what might be described as a most forthright manner:14

14. “Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No,” National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1969

February 2, Sunday: While at Oxford, William Jefferson Clinton took, and passed, a military physical examination. VIETNAM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 3, Monday: With William Jefferson Clinton already at Oxford University, and already on the previous day having taken and passed a military physical examination in England, his draft board in Hot Springs, Arkansas got around to summoning him to appear for his local preliminary interview and pre-induction physical. At this point the young man’s uncle, Raymond Clinton began to personally lobby J. William Fulbright, the Democratic Senator from Arkansas, William S. Armstrong, the chairman of the 3-man Hot Springs draft board, and Lieutenant Commander Trice Ellis, Jr., commanding officer of the local Navy reserve unit, to obtain for his nephew a slot in the US Naval Reserve.

Although the local reserve unit had no open positions, Clinton was granted a slot, and the slot he was granted was not of the usual sort since this would have required him to begin within 12 months to serve two years on active duty, but instead was a slot which had been created especially for him and which involved no such obligation. VIETNAM

July 11, Saturday: A friend of William Jefferson Clinton at Oxford, Cliff Jackson, wrote about how “Clinton is feverishly trying to find a way to avoid entering the Army as a drafted private. I have had several of my friends in influential positions trying to pull strings on Bill’s behalf.”

VIETNAM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 12, Saturday: Allegedly –according to what he would later aver to Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Holmes– 23- year-old William Jefferson Clinton “stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board.” Eventually he would be force to acknowledge that if he had thus stayed up all night composing such a letter — then that letter had not ever actually been posted. VIETNAM

If I tell you I was up all night...

“Killing to end war, that’s like fucking to restore virginity.” — Vietnam-era protest poster

September 14, Monday: The Arkansas Gazette, published in Little Rock, headlined that the President of the United States was considering a restriction of the military draft to permit conscription only of 19-year-olds. In addition, according to this article, “the Army would send to Vietnam only enlistees, professional soldiers, and those draftees who volunteered to go.” (It may be presumed that 23-year-old William Jefferson Clinton became aware of this news story, for he would in fact return to Oxford that fall as he had hoped, for his 2d year.) MILITARY CONSCRIPTION HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 1, Monday: The first draft lottery since World War II was held in New York City. Each day of the year was assigned a number. Those with birthdays on days with low numbers would likely be drafted to serve in Vietnam and would need to serve out their time either in the Army or in prison, while those with birthdays on days with high numbers would likely not be drafted to serve in Vietnam. Are you feeling lucky?

In this first draft lottery, William Jefferson Clinton drew a high number, 311, which virtually assured that he would never be forced to serve in the US military (in any role more lowly or more likely to be shot at than Commander-in-Chief).

December 3, Wednesday: With his lucky number in hand, the callow youth William Jefferson Clinton finally kept a promise he had made and wrote from England to Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Holmes, commander of the University of Arkansas ROTC Program. He informed him that the US draft system was illegitimate, and averred that he would accept being drafted only to maintain his viability as a future candidate for public office. Here is this interesting “Merry Christmas” letter in full: VIETNAM Dear Col. Holmes, I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing about what I want to and ought to say. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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First, I want to thank you, not only for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing that made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC. Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did. I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations October 15 and November 16. Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to “participation in war in any form.” From my work, I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war, which in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation. The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight, if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their country and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above. Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular government) right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best men I know. His country needs men like him more than they know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity. The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason only, to maintain my political viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all finished anyway.) When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and the resistance. Going on with my education, even coming back to England, played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law School because there is nothing else I can do. I would like to have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on some community action project and in the process to decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin putting what I have learned to use. But the particulars of my personal life are not near as important to me as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program itself and all I seem to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I had begun to think that I had deceived you, not by lies —there were none— but by failing to tell you all of the things I'm telling you now. I doubt I had the mental coherence to articulate them then. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my self regard and self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on September 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case where he really couldn’t, and stating that I couldn’t do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible. I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it with me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn’t mail the letter because I didn’t see, in the end, how my going in the army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of the second year of my Rhodes scholarship. And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes and the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is dis-service, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal. Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Colonel Jones for me.

Merry Christmas.

Sincerely, Bill Clinton HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 12, Friday: On or about this date, William Jefferson Clinton was in Norway with Father McSorley, meeting with various peace organizations. VIETNAM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1976

Tim Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen’s College of the University of Oxford with 1st-class honors in theoretical physics.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Oxford University HDT WHAT? INDEX

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: May 7, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.