Thomas Smith
I’m constantly finding papers relating to the Royal Society outside of the Society’s archive. This week I’ve been looking at some of the letters of Thomas Smith FRS (1638-1710), which are kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. A series of letters to his friend Edward Bernard, Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, give some informal opinions about members of the Society which really bring them to life as characters. For example, after the death of Robert Boyle, Smith reminiscences about taking walks with his friend, and recalls the times when Boyle had asked Smith, the former Ambassador to Constantinople, ‘to give some accompt of the Turks, who hee called my parishioners’. In 1689, Smith also describes to Bernard a chance encounter with Robert Hooke, which demonstrates the closeness of the circles of ‘virtuosi’ of London and Oxford: bumping into Hooke by chance, Smith had asked about ‘the Malabar &c. character’, upon which subject Bernard had written to Boyle, Hooke ‘told me that Mr Boyle had spoken to him about the same curiosity, and putting his hand in his pocket, pulled out your letter which I had conveyed to Mr. B. on coming to town’. Other pen portraits Smith gives of early members are less flattering: for example, Halley’s pretensions to succeed Smith’s friend Edward Bernard as Professor of Astronomy at Oxford are mocked as presumptuous, although Halley is apparently regarded as preferable to Flamstead, who is dismissed as ‘a grievous Whig’. Smith’s letters also reveal some concern about the fortunes of the Society in its early days. For example, in 1677, he wrote ‘there will be methods found out of retrieving the glory of such an excellent institution, which some idle and malicious persons have lately given out was a sinking’.
Comments :
Interesting that Flamstead was thought of as a “whig.” I didn’t know that. Perhaps political differences help to explain, partially, the troubled relationship between Flamsteed and Newton.
This is not a comment but a query. I am currently working on a ms which may have belonged to Peter Courthope, Ray’s friend and a fellow of the RS. So far I have found very little information on him and would particularly like to know whether he was a Catholic and if he travelled extensively across Europe from 1677 to 1679. Thank you very much for your help.
Hi Guillaume, Courthope is not someone I have come across myself but you can find his entry as a fellow here
He was expelled in 1685, so perhaps you could find more about this in the Journal Books or Council Minutes.
He is mentioned in Susan McMahon, ‘John Ray (1627-1705) and the Act of Uniformity 1662′ in NR 2000 vol 54 pp 153-178 (http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/trajejbhtqxef9cv/fulltext.pdf)
From a brief look at this it seems he was a Royalist and an Anglican.
Hope this helps, I’ll keep you posted if I find anything else.