The Wonderful Mr Willughby Read online

  THE

  WONDERFUL

  MR WILLUGHBY

  Contents

  Preface

  1Bitten by the Snake of Learning

  2John Ray and the Cunning Craftsmanship of Nature

  3A Momentous Decision

  4Continental Journey: The Low Countries

  5Images of Central Europe

  6Italian Sophistication and Spanish Desolation

  7Back at Middleton

  8Curious about Birds, Illness and Death

  9Into the Light: Publication

  10A Sustained Finale: Willughby’s Buzzard Takes Flight

  Acknowledgements

  Appendix 1: A Timeline of Francis Willughby’s Life

  Appendix 2: Brief Biographies of the Principal Players in Willughby’s Life

  Appendix 3: The Story of Willughby’s Charr

  Appendix 4: Identification of Birds Listed on Page 61 and Named in the Ornithology

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Picture Credits

  Index

  A Note on the Author

  Plates

  Preface

  He digested the whole history of nature with that spirit and judgement that it always appeared new; with that care and diligence that he was always constant to himself; and with that integrity that he has ever been esteemed a faithfull interpreter of nature

  Memorial to Francis Willughby in Middleton Church

  Until very recently Francis Willughby was a little-known seventeenth-century natural historian overshadowed by his brilliant Cambridge tutor, friend and collaborator, John Ray. Having barely begun his scientific career, Willughby died in 1672 at the age of just thirty-six. Ray, through his own much longer lifetime, brought Willughby’s ‘works’ to fruition, and made sure they were published. Paradoxically, this selfless act resulted in Ray unwittingly monopolising the accolades – not without some justification – for what was very much a joint effort. The widespread perception of Ray’s intellectual superiority over Willughby is largely a consequence of an adulatory biography of Ray dating from 1942, by Canon Charles Raven, whose motivation, in part at least, was to correct an earlier perception that Willughby was the true genius of the two. However, when Raven’s book was ‘in press’ he learned that there existed an extensive Willughby family archive. Realising what he might have missed, he was able to do little more than add a note to the proofs saying: ‘Some day a book on him & his collection must certainly be written.’ The Middleton Collection as it is now known, lodged in the Nottingham University Library, provided much of the material for the present book, and now allows us to paint a far more complete portrait of Willughby’s short life. Some sense of the collection’s richness can be gleaned from the fact that after being invited to view Willughby’s bird paintings and pressed plants in April 1942, after his book was published, Raven wrote to thank Lord Middleton and to tell him that it was one of the most thrilling experiences of his working life.

  My own involvement with Francis Willughby was the result of assuming Canon Raven’s persuasively detailed case to be correct and that Ray was the intellectual tour de force behind his and Willughby’s published works. I had gone to the Willoughby* family home to photograph their portrait of Francis for a book I was writing, whose title, The Wisdom of Birds, and content, celebrated the contribution that John Ray had made to ornithology, in part through his book The Wisdom of God (1691). After I had photographed the portrait, the elderly Lord Middleton (Francis Willughby’s descendant) and his wife invited me for lunch. During our conversation I commented on Ray’s brilliance, partly because it was true, but also because I knew so little about Francis Willughby. Lady Middleton’s reaction was a rebuke of such ferocity that it took my breath away. Her husband, embarrassed I suspect, said nothing. Lady Middleton made it very clear to me that the genius was Willughby rather than Ray, who, she said, was a mere servant. What I did not realise at the time, as will become apparent, was that by attributing the success of their joint ventures to Ray I had reopened a deep wound inflicted some three and a half centuries earlier. Hastily, I moved the conversation on, but as I drove home later that day, I reflected on Lady Middleton’s reproach and in a flash it came to me that Francis Willughby was in need of some attention.

  Soon after starting my investigations it became clear why Willughby has been so neglected by those interested in the history of science: most of his original notes and letters have been lost. This loss is a consequence of Willughby dying before his time and before his talents had been fully recognised; but also – paradoxically – it is due to the efforts of his friends and family, when they eventually realised his significance, as they exchanged vital documents in an effort to preserve Willughby’s memory. In contrast, John Ray lived long enough to become famous during his own lifetime, while his colleagues took care to preserve his correspondence and notes after his death. Ray was a prolific, diligent letter-writer and note-keeper, and by publishing much of his own work he guaranteed his efforts a permanence that Willughby’s lacked. On top of this, the lives of the two men were intimately intertwined: they studied together, travelled together, discussed ideas together, and lived and worked under the same roof for years. This means that while the writings of John Ray provide a wealth of material about Willughby, we have little choice but to view the latter largely through Ray’s eyes. Given the priority that the two men gave to objectivity in the way they conducted their science, it is unfortunate that Ray’s early portrait of Willughby is not an entirely neutral one.

  After my visit to the Middleton home, I sought and obtained funding from the Leverhulme Trust for what they called an International Network Grant: a scheme to bring together academics from different countries to focus on a single project. The Willughby Network comprised fifteen members with expertise spanning a wide range of topics in the history of science and linguistics, with myself as the sole scientist. A major source of information for us all has been the hoard of Willughby material held by the family, which Raven was unable to use in his book. Those papers, together with other remarkable discoveries, allow us to rebuild Francis Willughby’s reputation.

  This is a biography of science recounted through the activities of one man and his like-minded colleagues, at the dawn of the scientific revolution. Francis Willughby’s short life spanned one of the most remarkable periods of history – an age when it became clear that science or the ‘new philosophy’, as he and his colleagues called it, had the potential to explain the wonders of the natural world. It has been a challenge for me to imagine a world on the brink of scientific discovery: I have had to keep checking myself from criticising Francis for knowing so little. Things that seem so blindingly obvious today were far from obvious then, and it is surprisingly difficult to throw off three and a half centuries of natural history knowledge and imagine oneself so ignorant and uncertain. One way of doing this is to draw comparisons between what we know today and what was known in the past, but herein lies the potential trap of what historians of science call ‘Whiggishness’, that is, interpreting past events through a modern lens. I have tried to avoid this, but as a scientist I have felt it essential to place Willughby’s observations in a modern context so as to better evaluate them. I have also tried to relive some aspects of Willughby’s life – including the excitement and sheer novelty of discovering the external features and internal anatomy of birds in his quest for essential identification marks. Francis’s brief journey was full of excitement and, among other things, the realisation that discovery is a way of knowing. It is a pleasure I have shared, both through him, but also through my own ornithological research. There’s nothing like the quest for knowledge for getting you out of bed in the morning.

&n
bsp; Francis Willughby has been referred to as a ‘virtuoso’, a term used to distinguish him, and people like him, from others in the seventeenth century who were ‘academics’, employed at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere. The term ‘virtuoso’ reflects Willughby’s status as an amateur whose social position as a member of the landed gentry freed him from the necessity of earning a living at a university. Of course, ‘virtuoso’ also implies unique expertise and an interest in many things: in short, a polymath.

  Today’s scientists, by contrast, are almost all specialists, even though they are expected to be both experts and generalists. Knowledge is now so extensive and growing at such a rate that few academics have the intellectual appetite, ability or opportunity to be polymaths. The surge in knowledge following the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century was so great that by the mid-1800s it was deemed impossible for anyone to know everything, although it was still possible to be an expert on a wide range of subjects. Francis Willughby didn’t know everything of course, but he was considered to be more knowledgeable about natural history than anyone else in the mid-1600s. By a fortunate set of circumstances he found himself at the right place at the right time surrounded by the right group of people engaged in an entirely novel way of looking at nature. Willughby was there at what I consider to be the inception of modern science, and became one of its most interesting and impressive proponents.

  He didn’t act alone. In the 1600s for the first time there was a community – a small one – of would-be scientists and natural philosophers in Britain and on the continent who could exchange ideas, challenge each other, and use their combined knowledge to generate new ideas and better understanding. This tiny community eventually helped to form the Royal Society, whose motto, Nullius in verba or ‘Take nobody’s word for it’, captured the spirit of the endeavour, enabling the members to cast aside the mantle of Ancient Greek knowledge. The fledgling Royal Society, of which Francis was an ‘original member’, provided the beginnings of a scientific infrastructure that would foster science in future generations. The Royal Society provided a meeting-place for those with similar interests; it offered demonstrations of scientific or natural history phenomena, and, perhaps most important of all, it provided a place where the new philosophers could publish – and hence share – their findings with a wider audience. It still does. Francis Willughby’s innovative work and industry inspired three major natural history volumes. One on birds: Francisci Willughbei: Ornithologiae Libri Tres (1676), written in Latin, whose English translation, The Ornithology of Francis Willughby (1678), I shall simply refer to as the Ornithology; one on fishes, Historia Piscium (1686), and one on insects, Historia Insectorum (1710), both written in Latin, but which for simplicity I shall occasionally refer to as the History of Fishes and the History of Insects, respectively. These formed the foundation of a new type of natural history, with the study of birds being the most significant.

  Given Francis’s varied interests and achievements, why have I focused on his success as an ornithologist? There are three reasons. First, birds were the initial focus of his efforts; second, birds set a model for how his studies of other animals, such as fish and insects, would subsequently be organised; and third, of his works – all published after his death – that on birds, while not well known, is certainly the best known, and by far the most interesting. This is the story of the man who began the scientific study of birds.

  *Francis Willughby spelt his name as here, but previous and subsequent generations of his family spelt it ‘Willoughby’ (Cram et al. 2003:1).

  1

  Bitten by the Snake of Learning

  The sky is a clear speedwell blue. It is hot, almost 35oC, but there’s a welcome westerly breeze. Earlier in the week Francis Willughby and his servant, whose name we don’t know, rode through the foothills of the Pyrenees at Banyuls-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast of France and into Spain. They are now heading southwards on mule-back towards Valencia and to avoid the heat and bandits they travel mostly in the late afternoon and at night. Willughby – twenty-eight years old – is eagerly anticipating the forbidden territory that is seventeenth-century Spain. The country is not recommended. Yet this is precisely why Willughby is here. He’s testing new terrain and himself in the hope of new discoveries.

  For the past eighteen months he and three friends – who have either returned home or remained behind in France – have enjoyed and endured a grand tour of Europe, travelling variously by horse, barge and cart through the Low Countries, central Europe, Italy and France. It has been an extraordinary expedition whose aim – amply fulfilled – was the acquisition of new knowledge in natural history, language, industry and indeed anything else that took their fancy. These were men on a mission. The 1650s and 1660s marked the beginning of the scientific revolution and in their quest for information Willughby and his friends had travelled hard, with little time for relaxation. They visited other scientists, savants and philosophers to scrutinise their cabinets of curiosities, purchase specimens and illustrations, dissect birds and fish, and most significantly, to take notes – lots of notes – recording everything they saw. It was a journey that changed them, and it would change ornithology as well.

  The road to Valencia, little more than a track, is dry and dusty, the air redolent with the scent of grass scorched by a relentless sun. On either side, the hills are covered by a sea of yellow star-thistle and other unfriendly vegetation. Blue-winged grasshoppers explode from under the mules’ hooves, and the hot air rattles with cicadas. Looking up from under the brim of his hat, Francis is surprised by a sky full of birds. Reining in his mule, he stops and, shielding his eyes with his hand, watches in awe as hundreds of birds trace swirls of interlocking spirals as the sunlight creates golden windows in their dark-edged wings. Obviously raptors, but what are they: puttocks? gleads? more-buzzards? honey-buzzards? Because the birds are so far away, it is hard to tell. Francis watches as they gain height, and then, almost as though at a signal, the tiny silhouettes cease circling and on stiff wings they glide swiftly away one after the other to the south.

  They were honey-buzzards. Pouring out from their central European breeding grounds and heading towards the Strait of Gibraltar where they would cross the Mediterranean and continue onwards to their winter quarters in central Africa. But Francis did not and could not have known what they were nor where they were headed.

  He knew the species, however, for it was he who, a few years previously, had examined a honey-buzzard in the hand and recognised that it differed from the common buzzard. And it was Willughby who made the first accurate description of this new species.

  Little could Francis Willughby have imagined that far in the future, his brief lifetime of ornithological research – encapsulated in a ground-breaking encyclopedia, known now as the Ornithology – would be rewarded with his name being tied to this particular bird.

  As a boy, Francis probably had little interest in birds or any other aspect of natural history, except perhaps as objects to hunt. Later, at university, however, a remarkable set of circumstances was to awaken a passion that resulted in him becoming the most accomplished naturalist of his day.

  The family’s ancestry can be traced back to the early thirteenth century when Ralphe Bugge, a wool merchant, purchased land near the tiny village of Willoughby in the Nottinghamshire Wolds. Adopting the name, the family became ‘de Willoughby’ and eventually simply Willoughby, or in Francis’s case, the distinctive ‘Willughby’. Through careful marriages and financial management the family accrued land and wealth such that by the late 1500s they had estates in over twenty English counties: they were landed gentry.

  Francis was born ‘on Sunday about six of the clocke in the morning being the two and twentieth of November 1635 at the family seat of Middleton Hall, Warwickshire’.1 He had two older sisters, Lettice, born 17 March 1627, and Katherine, who was born 4 November 1630. Francis was a family name, providing plenty of opportunity for confusion among those later
researchers concerned with Willoughby history. Our Francis’s father is referred to as Sir Francis, although there were other Francis Willoughbys, both earlier and later, with that same title. Middleton Hall – first mentioned in the Doomsday Book in 1086 – had been in the family for several generations, but Francis’s parents were the first to make it their home. The principal seat of the Willoughby family was near Nottingham, at Wollaton Hall, a monumental property constructed at great expense during the 1580s, by our Francis’s great-grandfather, another Sir Francis Willoughby, known as ‘Francis the Builder’.

  In the late 1500s the income of the Willoughby family came mainly from coal, iron ore and the blue textile dye, woad. Wollaton Hall – said to be the ‘architectural sensation of its age’2 – was an extravagance too far that, combined with Francis the Builder’s lavish lifestyle and some failed speculations, plunged the family into debt, until they were forced to live in what was euphemistically referred to as ‘financial embarrassment’.3 Despite his evident ability to erect an enormous architectural artefact, Francis the Builder was unable to produce a male heir. Of a total of seven children, from two marriages, his only son died as an infant. Sir Francis therefore arranged for his daughter Bridget to marry a distant cousin, Sir Percival Willoughby, thereby safeguarding what little was left of the family’s fortune.

  It was Sir Percival’s son, Sir Francis (our Francis’s father), together with his wife Cassandra Ridgeway, whose careful management of the estates got the Willoughby family back onto a firm financial footing. Betrothed in 1610, Sir Francis and his young wife – she was just fifteen – took up residence in the relatively modest Middleton Hall, north Warwickshire, in 1615. Middleton was a gift from Sir Percival, and, fortuitously, it allowed the couple to maintain a low profile during the political troubles. After Bridget’s husband, Sir Percival, died in 1643, she joined her son at Middleton.4