The Wonderful Mr Willughby Read online

  The Willoughby family tree.

  So it was that our Francis emerged in the elegant half-timbered Hall at Middleton. Precious little is known of his childhood, other than that his formal education began at the free school at nearby Sutton Coldfield, where he was taught by William Hill, previously a Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and well known for his abilities in Greek, Latin and physics. Francis and William must have started at Sutton Coldfield School at about the same time, when Francis was five or six years old, for after the death of his wife in 1641 (when Francis was six), Hill moved to London to relaunch his career as a doctor of medicine. His second marriage, to the daughter of a physician, was marred by the scandal associated with the birth of a son just seven months later, whom Hill claimed was conceived within the marriage5 – which is not impossible since some babies are born this prematurely.

  It is frustrating that we know so little of how or in what way Hill helped to shape the young Francis. The fact that in her account of her father’s life, our Francis’s daughter Cassandra commented that Hill was the ‘most famous schoolmaster of his time’ suggests that the family recognised the importance of Hill’s influence on Francis’s early education – presumably in his proficiency in both Latin and Greek. The value that Francis’s parents placed on learning is captured in a portrait of his mother where she appears holding an open book in an attitude identical to one in which her son was later portrayed.6

  For the landed gentry education was de rigueur, at least for their sons. Although they had no need of a profession as such, a university education helped to ensure that young men acquired ‘acceptable behaviour’ and became ‘rationall and graceful speakers’.7 In addition, and crucially, familiarity with the law meant that they were better able to defend themselves against legal claims associated with inheritances. Such claims were common at the time and, as we shall see, were to dominate the last few years of Francis’s life.

  Throughout Francis’s schooldays the country was engulfed in the English Civil War. The Willoughbys were Royalist sympathisers, and somehow managed to stay out of trouble – and indeed, they were one of the few Royalist families to survive unscathed. Nonetheless, it must have been an extraordinarily tense time as the Parliamentarians ruthlessly plundered Royalist estates. The once-unified gentry community was divided by loyalties and disloyalties, trust and distrust. Information circulated via pamphlets, but as is so common under such circumstances, no one knew who, or what, to believe. In addition to the pitched battles, killing was random and rife in the countryside, and disease widespread. The death toll was extraordinary. In England around 85,000 people were killed, and a further 100,000 died of disease, out of a population of just five million.

  Some three years after Charles I was beheaded, and with England under Parliamentary rule, the sixteen-year-old Francis entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in September 1652. Why the family decided to send him there rather than to Magdalen College, Oxford, where his father had studied, is not clear. It could have been that by then Trinity was considered the better institution. It may also have been because of the family’s political sympathies. The fact that Trinity retained a renowned Royalist tutor – James Duport – may also have made that college especially attractive. Whatever the reason, Trinity could hardly have been a better choice.

  Admission to Cambridge in the seventeenth century was organised hierarchically – based on wealth – under a number of different headings. At the lowest level were the sons of poor parents, known as sub-sizars, who paid no fees but earned their keep either by assisting in the college kitchen or by undertaking menial tasks for wealthier students, such as cleaning or serving food. Above them were sizars, less poor students who received financial assistance either in the form of reduced fees or the cost of their lodgings. The next level above, pensioners, paid for their own tuition and keep (referred to as ‘commons’). They were a notch below the Fellow-commoners, who in turn were placed below the sons of noblemen. All of these were students inasmuch as they each had a tutor, who in turn was either one of Trinity’s sixty Fellows or, very occasionally, the Master himself. Fellows were those who had been students, won a scholarship in either their second or third year of study, completing their Batchelor of Arts (BA) in the fourth and final year of their course and then were selected after being examined by the Master and senior fellows. The eight most senior Fellows were simply those who had been around the longest, and it was they who effectively ran the college. Most Fellows expected eventually to become clergymen, leaving Trinity and permitting those below them to move up the social ladder.8

  Trinity’s hierarchy was reinforced, and is apparent in numerous ways, including the so-called buttery books, in which each student’s weekly food bill was logged. Financially secure if not obviously rich, Francis entered Trinity as a Fellow-commoner. This meant that he, or rather his father, paid double tuition fees, permitting Francis certain privileges, including dining with the Fellows – hence Fellow-commoner. During one of his first weeks at Trinity, Francis and the other eleven Fellow-commoners each spent just over seven shillings on meals, whereas the other students spent about one-third of this, reflecting the difference in the quality and quantity of food they consumed.

  Most of those entering Trinity as either Fellow-commoners or noblemen were not interested in academic success or in acquiring a degree, since their family’s wealth precluded the need for a profession. In contrast, less privileged students often worked hard to succeed and secure a profession. Isaac Barrow, for example, just a few years older than Francis, who became his friend – and was later famous for his development of calculus – started as a pensioner at Trinity. John Ray, the son of a blacksmith, who later became Francis’s tutor, mentor and lifelong friend, was admitted to Trinity in 1644 as a sizar. In 1661, a decade after Francis Willughby, Isaac Newton – arguably the greatest physical scientist ever – started as a sub-sizar at Trinity.9

  By the time Francis entered Trinity as an undergraduate, progression through the college hierarchy had been disrupted by the ejection of several Royalist Fellows in 1645 as a result of the political unrest. To maintain the statutory sixty Fellows, the college had been forced to import Fellows from other colleges. Another consequence of this disruption was that Trinity was much more relaxed about how long Fellows could remain at the university before entering holy orders, for example, and moving on.

  In Willughby’s day Trinity College was – and still is – one of the foremost, largest and wealthiest of the Cambridge colleges. Founded in 1546 as one of the last acts of Henry VIII, and funded by monies resulting from his dissolution of the monasteries, Trinity’s magnificent buildings were constructed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The college as we see it today, with its elegant towers, chimneys and cloistered walkways, looks, with few exceptions, much as Francis Willughby experienced it.

  On his arrival from Middleton, Willughby entered the college from Trinity Street, through the Great Gate, emerging into the Great Court, a huge quadrangle – breathtaking in its expansiveness – bordered by honey-coloured buildings, at the centre of which spouts the ornate fountain from which the college drew its water. Through an archway on the western side of the court, entered via a smaller quadrangle, was Nevile’s Court overlooking the river Cam along which ponies pulled barges laden with goods. Thomas Nevile had been Trinity’s Master in the 1590s and was responsible for much of the college’s beautiful design.

  Retracing his steps, Willughby passed the Master’s House – at this time John Arrowsmith – towards the medieval clock tower. Adjacent to that tower was the chapel where Willughby among other students would assemble at dawn each day for prayers, and beyond which lay the Fellows’ bowling green.

  Trinity College Cambridge in the 1600s.

  Since at least medieval times education and religion had been inextricably intertwined for the simple reason that ‘superior erudition was the church’s vital weapon’.10 Scholars were revered and valued by both royal rulers and the Church f
or a variety of reasons. Henry VIII used university-trained men to justify both his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his breach with the Catholic Church. It is hardly surprising then that in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the main role of England’s two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, was to defend and reinforce Anglican values through the training of intellectually astute clergymen-cum-politicians.

  In addition to divinity, however, a university education was essential for those anticipating a career in either medicine or the law. Starting in Elizabethan times, as the strategic value of educated men became increasingly apparent, the number of students attending university increased and continued to do so until the start of the English Civil War. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as now, universities trained undergraduates to think, to argue and to make a case – to become philosophers. And it did so through an arts-orientated curriculum comprising Greek, Latin, history, drama and poetry, but also logic, rhetoric, moral and natural philosophy.

  Undergraduate teaching consisted of three broad areas of study, corresponding to three possible professions – divinity, medicine and law – that students might aspire to. First were studies of the sacred texts of Christian religion, essential for defending and upholding the Anglican Church. Second were the writings of classical antiquity – considered then to provide the foundation of all human knowledge. For the study of medicine one needed to understand the writings of ancient Greek and Arabic scholars and, by reading the works of Aristotle, Discorides, Pliny the Elder and others, students were exposed to astronomy, geometry and natural history. The writings of the ancients also provided moral guidance and aesthetic inspiration. Finally, the study of the historical accumulation of legal rights was considered essential for those concerned with safeguarding their inheritance or entering the legal profession.11

  As was typical of his social class, Francis Willughby appears not to have anticipated entering any of these professions. However, unusually for someone of his position, he made full use of his status as a Fellow-commoner to develop and foster his academic abilities.

  Even before the English Civil War the Puritans had made clear their dislike of scholarship for scholarship’s sake. By the interregnum – 1649 to 1660 – their views had become more extreme and they aimed to transform the universities of Oxford and Cambridge into instruments of godly learning and teaching – to the despair of many academics, but especially those with Royalist sympathies. Fearing the demise of educational standards, one was prompted to comment that ‘The garland has been torn from the Head of learning and placed on the dull brows of Disloyal Ignorance.’12 The Puritans’ narrow focus on saving souls through their preaching ministry drove academics away from divinity. Walter Charleton – a physician who later made a small contribution to the study of birds – captured the sentiment in 1657:

  Our late Warrs and Schisms, having almost wholly discouraged men from the study of Theologie; and brought the Civil Law into contempt: The major part of young Schollers in our Universities addict themselves to Physick [medicine]; and how much that conducteth to real and solid knowledge, and what singular advantages it hath above other studies, in making men true Philosophers; I need not intimate to you, who have so long tasted on that benefit.13

  The Puritans’ active encouragement of alternative Christian denominations and the resulting breakdown of the Church of England provided even less incentive for anyone to train for the ministry. With no need to produce Anglican clergy, the universities found themselves with a crisis of purpose. The situation was especially difficult for the older, established and more religious academics, but for those just entering university like Francis, this crisis became an opportunity since its main effect was to shift the focus away from divinity towards law and in particular towards medicine.

  When Willughby entered Cambridge in 1652, education was changing and there was an accelerating interest in what was known as ‘the new philosophy’. The old philosophy was based largely on the unquestioning assumption that God dictated man’s place in nature, and on the authoritative knowledge of Ancient Greek authors such as Aristotle. Paradoxically, increasingly detailed study of the ancients’ armchair writings merely identified the shortcomings and limitations of their approach rather than reinforcing its utility. The new philosophy sprouted from the seeds of doubt sown by the critical study of the old philosophy.

  Described as the ‘reasoned knowledge of nature’, the new philosophy, or new science as I shall call it, had its beginnings in the thinking and writings of Francis Bacon. Staggeringly precocious, Bacon had entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573 at the tender age of twelve. As he matured he favoured Renaissance ideas over what he considered the stultifying and unprogressive views of Aristotle and other ancients, and strove to create a new philosophy of science based on hypotheses and experiments. As he said, his approach to science would ‘spark a light in nature that would eventually disclose and bring into sight all that is most hidden and secret in the universe’.14 Bacon’s ultimate aim was to create new, objective knowledge that would serve mankind. Christopher Columbus’s discovery of North America in 1492 inspired Bacon because more than anything else it demonstrated unequivocally that there was new knowledge to be had. Columbus had not only found an unknown continent, but also – eventually – shed light on a veritable treasure trove of unknown animals and plants.

  Until the early seventeenth century it was assumed that Aristotle and other Greek authors had documented almost everything there was to be known. Medieval scholars laboured to interpret and comment on Aristotle’s extensive works and their studies served to reinforce, but certainly not challenge, its authority, nor was there any incentive to discover anything new. Scholars studied Aristotle in a quest to recover lost knowledge, and studied natural philosophy as a way of interpreting him. The existence of an unbreakable chain of authority linking religion with Aristotle is made clear by those who dared to submit that he might sometimes be wrong. The mathematician Jean Taisnier suggested as much in the 1500s, and was challenged by a representative of the Pope to prove his case.15

  The Church vigorously resisted the idea that there might be anything new to discover. No one was expected to challenge the authority of Aristotle, religion, or even what they could see with their own eyes. For Francis Bacon the discovery of America made it obvious that there was new knowledge to be had. It was also the stimulus to seek new knowledge, strangely perhaps, for Bacon made no discoveries himself other than a method for making them.

  The new philosophy was essentially the scientific revolution, whose impact was first felt in the cosmological changes implicit in Copernicus’s Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres of 1543. This eventually grew into the cosmology that Isaac Newton’s mathematical physics triumphantly endorsed in his Principia of 1687.16 Pioneered by Bacon, Galileo and René Descartes, the new science was based on objective knowledge derived from personal observation and experimentation. At the same time, there was a growing awareness of the value of mathematics for understanding natural phenomena, particularly the movements of celestial bodies – exemplified by Isaac Newton’s work, but also by some of his predecessors at Trinity College.

  Civil turmoil created academic turmoil, with the decline in divinity eliciting an increase in the popularity of the new science. This was an exciting time to enter university. Willughby was doubly fortunate in being surrounded by a group of similarly inspired men, and by being supervised and mentored by James Duport, the most committed and successful of Cambridge tutors. Duport, whose father had been Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity, made numerous translations, including some of Aristotle’s works, but considered himself mainly a poet. He remained a prolific versifier throughout his life, but the well-being and instruction of undergraduates was his true vocation.17

  Being a college tutor brought in additional income and each academic year Duport took on around a dozen tutees, many more than his colleagues. Financial reward was secondary to the personal recompense Duport de
rived from educating his charges. He was popular, tutoring the sons of both Royalists and Parliamentarians without favour. However, Royalist parents probably chose Trinity because of Duport and the way he cared for his students. Meeting daily, he familiarised each new undergraduate with their course of study, directed their reading, and taught them the basics of the different disciplines. Then as now, such close supervision provided not only an extremely effective form of education but an excellent opportunity for tutors and tutees to get to know each other; friendships that in later life served to further careers.18

  The ivory towers of academia were not immune from the troubles that terrorised much of the country during the English Civil War and, as a staunch Royalist and Anglican, Duport had been lucky to survive the Puritans’ purges. In 1644 and 1645 no fewer than forty-nine of his sixty Trinity colleagues had been identified as ‘malignants’ (Royalist) and sacked. Duport seems to have escaped because of his ‘inoffensive and amiable disposition’ together with his ‘talents and scholarship’.19 Although the Puritans deprived him of his archdeaconry at Stowe in Lincolnshire in 1643, Duport was allowed to remain at Trinity and continue teaching. Following another purge in 1650, however, he was forced to resign his Greek professorship for refusing to subscribe to the ‘Engagement for maintaining the Government without King or House of Peers’. So highly did Trinity value him, they made Duport – despite some ‘statuable irregularity’ – a Senior Fellow and allowed him to retain his residence at Trinity. It was in this capacity that Francis Willughby came under Duport’s charge.20

  Duport’s selfless commitment to his tutees included giving them a set of instructions he had written. Duport’s rules provide us today with a wonderful feel both for his teaching philosophy and what he considered important for his students’ education. As one commentator said, those rules suggest that Duport had ‘more than a superficial understanding of the natural slothfulness and waywardness of youth enjoying a first taste of freedom away from the parental home’. For example, he urged his students to regularly attend St Mary’s Church and take notes of the sermon; to come to chapel ‘not drooping [sic] in (after the uncouth & ungodly manner of some)’, and to avoid sleeping during prayers and sermons ‘for that is the sleep of death’. He also advised them to avoid football as a source of recreation, ‘it being … a rude, boisterous exercise being fitter for Clownes than for Schollers’.21