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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/58036 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. Thoroughly English: County Natural History, c. 1660-1720 David Beck University ID Number 0200818 Submitted in part fulfilment for the degree of PhD in History at the University of Warwick July 2013 i Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iii List of Illustrations ...........................................................................................................iv Declaration ...................................................................................................................... v Conventions .................................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 Indigenous knowledge .................................................................................................... 4 The Construction of Space and the Landscape since the Linguistic Turn ..................... 13 Disenchantment and Utility .......................................................................................... 29 “Mouldy” Antiquarians, Historical Sensibility and Nature ............................................ 41 Chapter Structure ......................................................................................................... 49 CHAPTER ONE- THE LANDSCAPE OF COUNTY NATURAL HISTORY: MEMORY, PATRONAGE, AND SOCIABILITY .. 53 Before County Natural History: Antiquarianism in Tudor and Early Stuart England .... 59 The Civil War: Rupture or Catalyst? .............................................................................. 81 The Restoration of Learning and the Birth of County Natural History ......................... 96 Post-Revolution County Natural History ..................................................................... 112 Conclusions- Change and Continuity .......................................................................... 120 CHAPTER TWO- “SEARCHING INTO NATURAL KNOWLEDGE”: PRACTICES OF COLLECTION, DESCRIPTION, AND VERIFICATION ...................................... 123 Far from Random Perambulations. ............................................................................. 132 ‘A Great Deal of Pains… But With a Great Delight’ ..................................................... 149 Literary Technologies .................................................................................................. 155 Editing, Illustration, and Textual References .............................................................. 171 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 189 CHAPTER THREE: ‘FAITHFUL REPRESENTATION’ ....... 193 Antiquarianism and the Epistemology of ‘Historia’ .................................................... 200 “The Improvement of Knowledge” ............................................................................. 211 Fidelity and Empiricism ............................................................................................... 220 Utility and Curiosity..................................................................................................... 236 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 247 i CHAPTER FOUR- “THE CARE AND WISDOM OF THE GREAT CREATOR”............................................................................................. 250 ‘The Great Magnificence of God’- Description and Display ........................................ 262 Fossils and the Universal Deluge: Physico-Theology in Practice ................................ 277 “All Thy Marvellous Works”: The Landscape and Man ............................................... 288 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 304 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 307 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................... 318 Manuscript Sources .................................................................................................... 318 Printed Primary Sources (pre-1800) ........................................................................... 319 Editions and Collections of Primary Sources (1800 onwards) .................................... 325 Printed Secondary Sources ......................................................................................... 327 Unpublished Theses .................................................................................................... 347 Web Pages................................................................................................................... 347 ii Abstract This thesis focuses upon the county natural history, a genre of writing unique to England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century which spanned subjects which we might now refer to as genealogy, heraldry, cartography, botany, geology, and mineralogy, among others, while retaining a focus on a single county. It situates the genre firmly as a successor to local antiquarianism and chorography in Tudor and early Stuart England. In focusing on a single genre which spans both historical and natural topics, methodologies of enquiry from several historiographic fields are utilized: particularly heavily drawn upon are historical geography, historical epistemology, as well as cultural histories of both history and religion. The thesis aims to make two specific historiographic contributions. Firstly, it demonstrates the value of integrating cultural histories of natural objects and the landscape with historical epistemology. As well as being an object of philosophical or “scientific” knowledge, nature and the landscape held significant cultural meaning, particularly when located in historical narratives and understood as part of God’s world. This is exposed particularly clearly in chapter four’s discussion of physico- theology’s duality: both biblical and natural study combined to emplace God in the landscape. Secondly the thesis offers a reflection on the meanings of locality, place, and the construction of the landscape utilized in historical geography and the history of science. In this period both the nation and physical landscape were envisaged as constructed from discrete “parts”, counties. This is set in the context of earlier, and better known, ‘nation’ constructions, Camden’s construction of the nation by analogy to the human body around the turn of the seventeenth century, and Defoe’s construction of the nation as a trade network centred upon London in 1724. iii List of Illustrations Figure 1- Map of Middlesex. Source: Norden, Speculum Britanniae, pp. 14-15. ............ 66 Figure 2- Amended Copy of Norden’s Map of Middlesex. Source: Camden, Britain (1610), pp. 418-9............................................................................................................... 68 Figure 3- Map Illustrating Social Ranks. Source: Speed, Theatre of the Empire, pp. 5-6.69 Figure 4- Illustrated Echoes. Source: Plot, of Oxfordshire, pp. 16-17. ........................... 159 Figure 5- Specific Density of Samples. Source: Morton, of Northamptonshire, p. 132. 162 Figure 6- Shard of Flint, Plot, of Stafford-shire, pp. 396-7 ............................................. 164 Figure 7- "Mock Sun". Source: Plot, of Stafford-shire, pp. 28-29. ................................. 167 Figure 8- Table 22. Source: of Staffordshire, pp. 266-7 .................................................. 177 Figure 9- Ingestre Hall. Source: Plot, Of Staffordshire, pp. 298-9 ................................... 179 Figure 10- Shells. Source: Morton, of Northamptonshire, pp. 220-21. .......................... 180 Figure 11- Coins. Source: Leigh, of Lancashire, vol. 3, p. 109. ..................................... 182 Figure 12- Belemnite. Source: Plot, of Oxfordshire, p. 100 ........................................... 224 Figure 13- Depressed Orbicular Stones. Source: Morton, of Northamptonshire, pp. 184- 85. ................................................................................................................................... 227 Figure 14- Cloak Button-like Stone. Source: Plot, of Stafford-Shire, pp. 198-99. ......... 228 Figure 15- Summer Solstice at Leek. Source: Plot, Of Stafford-Shire, p. 28. ................. 234 iv Declaration This thesis is entirely my own work. The thesis has not been submitted for a degree at another university. An article based on Chapter Four has been published as David Beck, ‘Regional Natural History in England: Physico-Theology and the Exploration of Nature’, Society and Politics 6 no. 2, special issue: God and the Order of Nature in Early Modern Thought (Nov. 2012), pp. 8-25. Conventions Except where indicated I have modernized spellings, but retained original capitalization, punctuation
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