Nor is it less evident that, over and above the political and public

interest of the things done, or initiated, by the new comers in their

adopted country, the personal and family annals of the exiles possess,

in not a few instances, a remarkable though subsidiary interest of their

own. In certain cases, to trace the fortunes of a refugee family, is at

once to throw some gleams of light on obscure portions of our commercial

history, and to tell a romantic story of real life.

One such instance presents itself in the varied fortunes of the

COURTENS. [Sidenote: THE COURTENS; THEIR ADVENTURES AND ENTERPRISES.]

That family attained an unusual degree of commercial prosperity, and

attained it with unusual rapidity. In the second generation it

seemed—for a while—to have struck a deep root in our English soil. It

owned lands in half-a-dozen English counties, and its alliance was

sought by some of the greatest families in the kingdom. In the next

generation its fortunes sank more rapidly than they had risen. In the

fourth, the last of the COURTENS was for almost half his life a

wanderer, living under a feigned name, and he continued so to live when

at length enabled to return to his country. The true name had been

preserved only in the records of interminable litigation—in England,

Holland, India, and America—about the scattered wreck of a magnificent

property. But the enterprise of the family, in its palmy days, had

planted for England a prosperous colony. It had opened new paths to

commerce in the East Indies, as well as in the West. And its last

survivor found a solace for many ruined hopes in the collection of

treasures of science, art and literature, which came to be important

enough to form no small contribution towards the eventual foundation of

the British Museum.

[Sidenote: THE FOUNDER OF THE FAMILY.]

In 1567 William COURTEN, a thriving dealer in linens and silks, living

at Menin in Flanders, was together with his wife, Margaret CASIER,

accused of heresy. COURTEN was thrown into the prison of the

Inquisition, but contrived both to make his escape into England, and to

enable his wife soon to join him. He established himself in London, in

the same business which had thriven with him at home. [Sidenote: Family

Records of the Courtens; in MS. Sloane, 3515, _passim_. (B. M.)] His

wife shared in its toils, and by skilfully adapting her exertions to

those tastes for finery in the families of rich citizens which were now

striving with some success against the rigour of the old sumptuary laws

made the business more prosperous than before. It expanded until the

poor haberdasher of 1567 had become a notability on the London Exchange.

In 1571 a son was born to the exiles. This second William COURTEN was

bred as a merchant rather than as a tradesman. He had good parts, and

seems to have started into life with a passion for bold enterprise. His

early training in London was continued at Haerlem, and there he laid a

foundation for commercial success by marrying the daughter of Peter

CROMMELINCK, a wealthy merchant. First and last, his wife brought him a

dowry of £40,000, of which sum it was stipulated by the father’s will

that not less than one half should be laid out in the purchase of lands

in England, to be settled on the eldest son that should be born of the

marriage.

[Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM COURTEN AND HIS MERCANTILE PURSUITS.]

By the time of his attaining the age of five and thirty William COURTEN

had already become—for that period—a great capitalist. He then, in 1606,

established in London a commercial house which added to the ordinary

business of merchants on the largest scale, that of marine insurers, and

also that of adventurers in the whale fishery. His partners in the firm

were his younger brother, Peter COURTEN, and John MOUNCEY. One half of

the joint stock belonged to the founder; the other half was divided

between the junior partners.

For nearly a quarter of a century this mercantile partnership prospered

marvellously. Its annual returns are said to have averaged £200,000. It

built more than twenty large ships, and kept in constant employment more

than four hundred seamen and fishermen. The head of the firm gradually

acquired a large landed property which included estates in the several

counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Leicester, Nottingham, Essex, and

Kent.

This great prosperity had, of course, its drawbacks. Amongst the

earliest checks which are recorded to have befallen it was a Crown

prosecution of COURTEN (in company with several other foreign merchants

of note, among whom occur the names of BURLAMACHI, VANLORE, and DE

QUESTER) on the frequent charge—so obnoxious to the political economy of

that age—of ‘the unlawful exportation of gold.’ [Sidenote: _Domestic

Corresp._, James I, vol. cix, § 90; 96; vol. cx, § 86; vol. cxi, § 66.

_Signs Manual_, vol. xii, § 26. (R. H.)] COURTEN was brought into the

Star Chamber and was fined £20,000; a sum so enormous as to excite a

suspicion of the accuracy of the record, but for its repeated entry. The

prosecution was instituted in June, 1619; the defendant’s discharge

bears date July, 1620. But it may fairly be assumed that only a portion

of the nominal fine was really exacted.

Another and much more serious check to the prosperity of the

enterprising merchant came from his embarking in the grand but hazardous

work of planting colonies.

[Sidenote: 1626. COLONIAL ENTERPRISES OF SIR WM. COURTEN.]

In 1626, William COURTEN—then Sir William, having received the honour of

knighthood at Greenwich, on the 31st of May, 1622—petitioned the King

for ‘licence to make discoveries and plant colonies in that southern

part of the world called _Terra Australis incognita_, with which the

King’s subjects have as yet no trade,’ and his petition was granted.

[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. xiv, § 33.] What ensued

thereupon is thus told in an authoritative manuscript account preserved

in the Sloane collection:—

‘Sir William COURTEN being informed, by his correspondents in Zealand,

that some Dutch men-of-war sent out upon private commission against the

Spaniards had put into the island of Barbados, and found it uninhabited,

and very fit for a plantation, did thereupon, at his own charge, set

forth two ships provided with men, ammunition, and arms, and all kinds

of necessaries for planting and fortifying the country, who landed and

entered into possession of the same in the month of February, 1626

[1627, N.S.]... Afterwards, in the same year, he sent Captain POWELL

thither, with a further supply of servants and provisions, who, in 1627,

fetched several Indians from the mainland, with divers sorts of seeds

and roots, and agreed with them to instruct the English in planting

cotton, tobacco, indigo, &c. Sir William COURTEN having, by his partners

and servants, maintained the actual possession for the space of two

years, and peopled the island with English, Indians, and others, to the

number of eighteen hundred and fifty men, women, and children, thought

fit to make use of the Earl of PEMBROKE’S name in obtaining a patent

particularly for Barbadoes, although he had before a general grant from

the king to possess any land within a certain latitude, wherein this

island was comprehended. His Majesty having thus granted, by his Letters

Patent, dated 25 February, 1627 [1628, N.S.] the government of this

island unto the Earl of PEMBROKE, in trust for Sir William COURTEN, with

power to settle a colony according to the laws of England, Captain

POWELL had a commission to continue there as Governor, in their behalf.

The Earl of CARLISLE,’ continues the MS. narrative, ‘having, before this

Patent to the Earl of PEMBROKE, procured a grant, dated 2nd July 1627,

of all those islands lying within 10 and 20 degrees of latitude by the

name of Carliola, or Carlisle Province, with all royalties, and

jurisdictions, as amply as they were enjoyed by any Bishop of Durham,

within his bishopric or county palatine, and having also got another

patent, for the greater security of his title, dated 7th April 1628,

sent one Henry HAWLEY with two ships, who, arriving there in 1629,

invited the Governor on board, kept him prisoner, seized the forts, and

carried away the factors and servants of Sir William COURTEN and the

Earl of PEMBROKE. [Sidenote: _Ibid._ Comp. Despatches in _Colonial

Correspondence_, vol. v, §§ 1, 9, 13, 101, seqq.] The authority of the

Earl of CARLISLE being thus established was maintained.’

But it was only maintained after a long contest at the Council Board at

home, which contest seems to have been largely influenced by the

fluctuations of Court favour from time to time. A despatch in February,

written in behalf of CARLISLE, is followed in April by another despatch

written in behalf of PEMBROKE and COURTEN. The one fact that becomes

consistently evident throughout the proceedings is that grants of this

kind were made in the loosest fashion, and often in entire ignorance

even of the geographical positions of the countries given by them.[39]

Indeed, the common course of procedure under the STUARTS, when a

courtier had the happy thought of begging a territory in America,

reminds one of those earlier days of the TUDORS, when a favoured

suppliant sometimes obtained the grant of a monastery, or the lease of a

broad episcopal estate, with hardly more trouble than it cost him to win

a royal smile.

To COURTEN and his colonists the issue of this quarrel about Barbadoes

was very disastrous. To some of the latter it brought ruin. But to the

founder himself a check to enterprise in one direction seems to have

brought increased stimulus to new enterprise in another direction. He

now embarked largely in adventures to the East Indies and to China. As

usual, they were planned on a magnificent scale; excited great jealousy

in the breasts of competitors; and were attended, in the long run, with

very mixed results of good and ill.

Meanwhile, Sir William’s growing wealth—greatly exaggerated by popular

renown—and the conspicuous position into which his varied pursuits had

brought him, led to plans of enterprise by others, and of quite another

kind, at home. He had lost his first wife, and also his eldest son. He

had married a second wife,—Hester TRYON, daughter of Peter TRYON. Only

one son survived, but Sir William had three daughters, whose prospective

charms attracted many suitors. In September, 1624, King JAMES wrote a

characteristic letter in which he assured COURTEN that the son of Sir

Robert FLEETWOOD, Lord of the Scottish barony of Newton, would make a

fit match for one of the three daughters, and that the conclusion of

such a match would be very acceptable to the King himself. [Sidenote:

ALLIANCES BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE COURT.] [Sidenote: James I to Sir

Willm. Courten; _Dom. Corr._, vol. clxxii, § 71.] The pretendant would

gladly, and impartially, wed any one of the three ladies, but the King

himself, continues the royal letter, ‘will regard, as a favour, any

increase of portion given to the daughter whom FLEETWOOD may marry, over

and above the portion given to, or intended for, the other daughters.’

But despite so powerful a recommendation the young Baron of NEWTON

failed in his suit. Among the aspirants with whom he stood in

competition were men much higher in social position. Eventually, the

eldest daughter married Sir Edward LYTTELTON of Staffordshire. The

second daughter married Henry GREY, eighth Earl of Kent, of that family.

And the third married Sir Richard KNIGHTLEY of Fawsley.

Royal commendations of suitors were sure, in that age, not to be the

only sample of royal letters—direct and indirect—with which a man in Sir

William COURTEN’S position became familiar. He was favoured with not a

few solicitations for advances of money on privy-seals, and in other

forms of ‘loan.’ Sometimes he complies. Sometimes he remonstrates by

specifying the large sums he contributes to the revenue in the way of

custom’s duties, and the entire incapability thence arising of the

desired response to privy-seals and the like documents. His loans,

however, to JAMES, and to CHARLES, amounted to no less a sum than

£27,000.

[Sidenote: COMMERCIAL COMPLICATIONS IN HOLLAND.]

The death in 1625 of his brother, Sir Peter COURTEN, deprived the firm

of its efficient representative in Holland, and laid a foundation for

great misfortunes by putting in his place an unworthy successor. The

partner resident at Middleburgh had the trust both of a large portion of

the capital of the Company, and of the chief share of its account

keeping.

Peter BOUDAEN was a nephew of the COURTENS, and had been to some extent

admitted as a partner. His uncle Peter made him also his executor. He

thus acquired a great control over the continental affairs of the house,

just at the time when its transactions were expanding in all directions.

[Sidenote: 1631.] He proved unfaithful to his trust, applied his large

local influence to his personal advantage and to the prejudice of his

partners; and at length failed altogether to render due accounts to the

two partners in England. MOUNCEY, the junior of these, went to Holland

in order to enforce an adjustment. He had hardly entered on his task

when he died, after a very brief illness, in BOUDAEN’S house at

Middleburgh. BOUDAEN made a Will for him; asserted that the testator had

executed it, in due form of law, immediately before his death; and found

means to get the document sanctioned by the Dutch Courts, in the face of

strong opposition and of strong presumptive evidence of fraud.

[Sidenote: ESTABLISHMENT BY SIR W. COURTEN OF THE BRITISH FISHERY

ASSOCIATION.]

[Sidenote: _Domest. Corresp._, Charles I, vol. cclxxxvii, § 57; vol.

ccciii, § 75; cccxiii, § 16; cccxvii, § 75.]

Sir William COURTEN, meanwhile, prosecuted with his characteristic

vigour his vast enterprises already established; made new and large

ventures in the reclaiming of waste lands in England; and established

the ‘Fishery Association of Great Britain and Ireland,’ with a view to

the rescue from the Dutch of that productive herring fishery on our own

coasts, which the growing supineness of English governments during at

least two generations had permitted to become almost a monopoly in their

hands. Of this Association COURTEN, during the closing years of his

life, was the mainspring.

The Dutch, as was natural, strove vigorously to retain the advantage

they had acquired, and were little scrupulous about the means of

opposition. English herring busses were occasionally captured. And the

captors had the great incidental advantage in the strife of dealing with

a Government already weak at home, and yearly losing ground.

[Sidenote: THE TRADE WITH INDIA.]

The East Indian adventures were, at length, attended by circumstances

still more complex than those pertaining to the fishery business at

home, or to the trading in Holland. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._,

Charles I, vol. cccxxiii, p. 58; vol. cccxliii, § 19.] For, in the

former, English rivalry had to be encountered, as well as Dutch rivalry.

And the rivalry took such a shape as to make the carrying on of trade

extremely like the carrying on of war. But, as if the care of these

varied interests, in addition to all the toils and anxieties of ordinary

commerce on an extraordinary scale, were all too little to occupy the

mind of a man who had now reached his sixty-sixth year, we find Sir

William COURTEN taking, just at the close of life, a new and leading

part in the business of redeeming captives who had been taken by the

pirates of Morocco and Algiers. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles

I, vol. cccxv, § 16; vol. ccclxviii, § 82.] Nor was this merely an

affair of the provision of money and the conduct of correspondence. It

involved an intimate acquaintance with the circumstances and the needs

of the Barbary States, being carried on, in part, on the principle of

barter.

But all these far-spread activities were now fast approaching their

natural close. COURTEN’S career had been, as a whole, wonderfully

prosperous, until very near its close. Already it contained, indeed, the

germ of a series of reverses, hardly less remarkable; but the growth of

that germ was to depend on the as yet unseen course of public events.

His ambition to ‘found a family’ had also been gratified by the marriage

of his only surviving son[40]—William COURTEN, third of his name—with

the Lady Katherine EGERTON, daughter of John EGERTON, Earl of

Bridgewater. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane, 3515.] On that

son and his heirs, Sir William COURTEN settled landed estates amounting

to nearly seven thousand pounds a year.

Sir William COURTEN died in June, 1636. The commercial enterprises of

all kinds which were in full activity at the time of his death were

continued by his son, who inherited large claims, large

responsibilities, and large perils. And it was of the perils that—after

his succession—he had earliest experience.

[Sidenote: THE THIRD WILLIAM COURTEN.]

Just before the father’s death, a complaint had been made to the Privy

Council that certain ships which he had sent to Surat and other places

had committed acts of ‘piracy near the mouth of the Red Sea.’ [Sidenote:

_Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. cccxliii, § 19.] It appeared

afterwards that the ships which had given cause, or pretext, of

complaint were not COURTEN’S ships, but the accusation entailed trouble,

and was, to the heir, the beginning of troubles to come. The opposition

of the East India Company to the Indian trading of ‘interlopers’ (as

they were called already) was unremitting and bitter. [Sidenote:

_Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane, 3515, p. 38.] In June, 1637, William

COURTEN, with a view to arm himself for the encounter, obtained from the

Crown letters patent which empowered himself and his associates to trade

with all parts of the East, ‘wheresoever the East India Company had not

settled factories or trade before the twelfth day of December, 1635.’

One of his chief associates under the new grant was Endymion PORTER, and

it appears that it was partly by PORTER’S influence at Court that the

grant had been procured.

Renewed activity was now shown in prosecuting the Eastern trade; new and

large ventures were made in it. On some occasions as many as seven

well-appointed ships were sent out by COURTEN and his associates at one

time. Instructions are still extant which were given to the chief

agents, supercargoes, and factors, for the settlement of English

factories at many important places where none had heretofore existed.

They are marked by great sagacity and breadth of view, and, in several

points, contrast advantageously with contemporary documents of a like

kind.

[Sidenote: SEIZURE BY THE DUTCH OF THE BONA ESPERANZA AND HENRY

BONADVENTURE IN THE INDIAN SEAS.]

The enterprise was pursued, as it seems, with satisfactory results until

the year 1643, when, in the Straits of Malacca, two richly-laden vessels

of the COURTEN fleet were seized by the Dutch. Subsequent proceedings

show that the value of the ships and their cargoes, with the contingent

losses, exceeded £150,000. Along with this severe blow came the

interruptions and injuries to trade at home, which were the inevitable

accompaniment of the Civil War. Soon after it, there came indications

that the loss to Sir William COURTEN’S representatives by the misconduct

of Peter BOUDAEN at Middleburgh would but too probably prove to be a

loss without present remedy. It appears to have been established by the

evidence adduced in the course of the almost interminable litigation

which ensued that there was due from BOUDAEN to his partners a sum of

£122,000; none of which, it may be added, seems ever to have been

recovered. And the debt which had been contracted by JAMES THE FIRST and

his successor, though less grievous in amount, was at this time even

more hopeless.

Under the pressure of such a combination of misfortunes, William COURTEN

found himself practically and suddenly insolvent. He met some of the

most pressing claims upon him by the sale of available portions of his

landed property. He assigned other portions of his estates to trustees,

and became himself an exile. He survived the ruin of the brilliant hopes

and expectations to which he had been born about ten years; dying at

Florence in the year 1655. He left, by his marriage with Lady Katherine

EGERTON, one son and one daughter.

[Sidenote: WILLIAM COURTEN, FOUNDER OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM.]

The fourth William COURTEN was born in London on the 28th March, 1642.

He was baptized at St. Gabriel Fenchurch, on the 31st of that month. The

downfall of his family was therefore very nearly contemporaneous with

his own birth, and makes it explicable that no record can now be found

of the places of his education, or of the course of his early years. But

the first trace which does occur of him is in exact harmony with the one

fact which makes his existence memorable to his countrymen. [Sidenote:

_Museum Tradescantianum_, (1656).] He appears, at the age of fourteen,

in the list of benefactors to the Tradescant Museum, at Lambeth, a

collection which afterwards became the basis of the Ashendean Museum at

Oxford.

The Tradescants—father and son—hold a conspicuous place in the history

of Botanical Science in England, and they are especially notable as the

founders of the first ‘Museum’ worthy of the name, which was established

in this country. The next collection of note, after theirs, was that

formed by Robert HUBERT, in his house near St. Paul’s Cathedral. Other

collectors—as for example, John CONYERS and Dr. John WOODWARD—soon

followed the example. But in this path all of them were far outstripped

by COURTEN, who had marked his early bias, and also his characteristic

liberality, by his gift to the TRADESCANTS in 1656.

Part of COURTEN’S youth was passed at Montpelier, where he formed the

acquaintance of several men then, or afterwards, famous for their

scientific acquirements. Amongst them, and with the local advantages for

the study of the natural sciences, in particular, for the possession of

which Montpelier was already noted, his tastes for observation and study

were developed, and his character took the ply which soon became

indelible.

If he ever possessed any share at all of the qualities and

predispositions for mercantile adventure, which had marked so many

generations of his ancestors on the father’s side, that share was far

too weak an element in his composition to resist the discouragements of

adverse circumstances. But as he attained manhood, he found himself

immersed—unwittingly in part—in a sea of litigation which boded ill to

his prospective enjoyment of leisure for scientific studies, whatever

might prove to be its ultimate results upon his worldly fortunes.

[Sidenote: THE SUITS AND CLAIMS INSTITUTED BY GEORGE CAREW, ON BEHALF OF

COURTEN AND OF THE CREDITORS.]

Some of the later enterprises of Sir William COURTEN had been carried on

in conjunction with another famous merchant, Sir Paul PINDAR, who like

himself was a large creditor of the Crown. The administration of

PINDAR’S estate had fallen into the hands of a certain George CAREW, who

seems to have imagined that the restoration of royal authority in

England would bring with it opportunities, to an energetic man, of

winning a new fortune out of the remnants of the old fortunes which the

fall of royalty had helped to ruin. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MSS.

Sloane, 3515; 3961; and 3962.] Just before CHARLES THE SECOND came back,

this man busied himself in buying up claims against COURTEN’S estate as

well as claims against PINDAR’S. He had a stock of energy. He had also

the prospect of acquiring a good standpoint at Court, in addition to his

present possession of a good training in the mysteries of English law.

He was ready to devote all his energies to the business, and to

encounter at once with the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch Republic,

the Government of Barbadoes, and a host of adversaries at home.

There had, however, been no Commission of Bankruptcy. It was necessary

that the battle should be fought as well in the name of the heir and

representative of the family, as in the name of the collective body of

creditors. CAREW used COURTEN’S name and used it, as it appears, for

some years without authority from the legal guardian. COURTEN himself

did not become of age until 1663.

The Restoration was hardly effected before CAREW besieged the King and

the Courts with Petitions, Memorials, Claims, and Bills of Plaint. He

would lose nothing for lack of asking. And he was undeterred by

difficulties or rebuffs.

[Sidenote: THE BARBADOES CLAIM.]

The case of Barbadoes was thus put before the Committee of the Privy

Council for America:—

‘COURTEN claims the whole island of Barbadoes; and, more particularly,

the Corn Plantation, the Indian Bridge Plantation, the Fort Plantation,

the Indian Plantation eastwards, and Powell’s plantation. Sir William

COURTEN’S ships discovered the island in the year 1626, and left fifty

people there. Captain Henry POWELL landed there in February, 1627, built

[houses] for COURTEN’S colony, and left more than forty inhabitants

there. John POWELL erected Plantation Fort, and remained until he was

surprised in 1628 by a force under Charles WOLVERTON, by which the fort

was captured. [Sidenote: _Colonial Correspondence_, vol. xiv, §§ 37, 39,

42.] In 1629, Sir William COURTEN sent eighty men with arms, in the

‘Peter and John,’ and they retook the fort in the name of the Earl of

PEMBROKE, Trustee for COURTEN, according to the royal grant.’ And then

the Petition recites the recapture, under the conflicting Patent of the

Earl of Carlisle, as I have described it already.

There is, of course, no foundation for the statement that Barbadoes was

‘discovered’ by the ships of COURTEN. In other respects, the details

here set forth appear to be sustained by the evidence.

[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles II, vol. xx, § 77; and xlviii, §

48.]

In order to the recovery of the debt from the Crown, CAREW suggested, in

another petition, and quite in the fashion of the day, that the

Petitioners should have ‘leave to raise the money’ due to the COURTEN

Estate from the estates of John LISLE, Thomas SCOTT, Thomas ANDREWS, and

others, concerned in the murder of the late King. In a third petition,

he prayed that ‘a blank warrant for the dignity of a baronet’ might be

granted, in order to sell it to the best bidder, and to apply the

proceeds in partial satisfaction of the debt.

[Sidenote: THE CASE OF THE EAST INDIA SHIPS.]

But it was to the prosecution of the claim upon the Dutch Republic for

the unwarranted seizure, in 1643, of the rich ships of the East India

Fleet that CAREW devoted his best energies. The damages were put at

£163,400. The main facts of the case were fully substantiated. And a

royal letter was addressed to the States General on the 21st of March,

1662, claiming full satisfaction.

A Memorial was delivered at the Hague in the April following, by the

English Ambassador, Sir George DOWNING, in which, after a general

statement of the case at issue, he went on to say: ‘Whereas it may seem

strange that this matter may be set on foot at this time, whereas in the

year 1654 Commissioners were sent to England who did end several matters

relating to the East Indies, and whereas in the year 1659 several

matters of a fresher date were also ended, and thereby a period put to

all other matters of difference which had happened about the same time,

and were known in Europe before the 20th of January in the same year, it

is to be considered that the persons interested in these ships were such

as, for their singular and extraordinary activity to His Majesty, ...

father to the King my master, were rendered incapable of obtaining or

pursuing their just rights, at home or abroad. [Sidenote: _Memorial

delivered to the States General_, at the Hague, 19 April, 1662.] And

upon that account it is that the business of the two ships remains yet

in dispute, though several matters of a much fresher date have been

ended.’

When these proceedings were initiated by Sir George DOWNING at the

Hague, COURTEN himself was still in his minority. But it is probable

that he had already returned to England.

COURTEN’S first personal appearance upon the scene was also made in the

way of presenting a petition to the King. [Sidenote: MS. Sloane 3515.]

In July 1663, he thus alleged that the steps which had been taken were

without his concurrence or knowledge, ‘and, as is feared, with intention

to deprive him of his claims.’ The King referred the petition to Sir

Geoffrey PALMER, who pronounced in COURTEN’S favour.

His position was one of great embarrassment. [Sidenote: THE AGREEMENT

BETWEEN COURTEN AND CAREW.] Some of his family connexions had already

suffered much annoyance from litigation about the COURTEN Estates at

home, and were little inclined to incur further risk or trouble on

behalf of a relative whose inheritance was certain to yield abundance of

immediate vexation and anxiety, and very uncertain in respect to its

prospects of any better harvest in the end. [Sidenote: 1663.] He was

advised to sell the remnant of his entailed estates, to put the product

of the sale out of danger from any adverse issue of pending claims, and

to come to terms with CAREW for the prosecution of the latter—or of some

of them—on a joint account. In accordance with this advice, an agreement

was made, in the course of 1663, by which CAREW was empowered to pursue

the claims against the Netherlands, as well on COURTEN’S behalf as on

his own and that of other creditors. The remaining landed estates in

Worcestershire and other counties—or nearly all that remained of

them—were sold, and a life income was secured.

For the next half dozen years COURTEN’S life was almost that of a

recluse, save that such activities as it admitted of were devoted almost

exclusively to the study of antiquities and of the natural sciences. A

great part of those years was passed at Fawsley with his aunt, Lady

KNIGHTLEY, one of the few relatives whose affection stood the proof of

adversity.

There are several reasons for thinking that the rudimentary foundation

of COURTEN’S Museum had been laid as early as in the time of his

grandfather, Sir William, whose mercantile and colonial enterprises

presented so many opportunities for bringing into England the more

curious productions of remote countries, as well as their merchandise.

Be that as it may, the collection of a museum which should eclipse

everything of its kind theretofore known in England became, from his

attainment of manhood, the leading aim and object of William COURTEN’S

career. It was to him both an ambition and a solace.

The other of the two men who thus came into brief contact in 1663 lived

a life as different from COURTEN’S as can well be conceived. CAREW seems

to have been a glutton in his appetite for contention. [Sidenote:

_Pretentien tegens d’Oost-Indische Compagnie_, &c. (B. M.)] And the

Dutchmen, as far as they were concerned, put no stint upon its

indulgence. There was also ample time for it. Treaty followed by war,

and war leading to renewed treaty, kept the affair of the _Bona

Esperanza_ and the _Henry Bon-Adventure_ both in active historical

memory, and in full legal vigour. Towards the close of 1662 it had been

covenanted by the English government, as a necessary condition of a good

understanding between the two Powers, that there should be a prompt

satisfaction of damages. The Treaty of Commerce of that year was tossed

to and fro on that one point of the COURTEN ships with more obstinate

pertinacity than on any other. To the intrinsic merits of the claim, in

the main, there was really no answer. To the legal technicalities by

which its settlement, if left to Dutch courts of judicature, could be

indefinitely protracted, there was no end. [Sidenote: THE CLAIMS IN

HOLLAND.] When letters of dismissal had been already drawn at Whitehall

for the Dutch envoys of 1662, because they insisted on a clause

extinguishing all outstanding claims on both sides; they skilfully

contrived to substitute leave to litigate[41] for a proviso to satisfy.

And the event justified their forecast.

[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles II, vol. cxiii, § 143.]

During the year 1665, Letters of Marque and Reprisal were granted to

CAREW and his associates, and a special clause of continuance until the

full recovery of debt and damages,[42] notwithstanding the conclusion of

any subsequent Treaty of Peace was inserted. This was done after an

elaborate argument before the Lord Chancellor CLARENDON. Several ships

were taken by CAREW’S cruisers, but they were nearly all claimed by

Hamburghers, Swedes, and others. And at length the cost of the reprisals

exceeded their yield.

In this case, and throughout it, as in so many other and graver cases,

the policy of CHARLES THE SECOND’S ministers was a policy of the passing

exigence. Principle had always to vail to expediency. The Dutch were

permitted, after all, to insert their favorite extinction clause in the

Treaty of Breda (21 July, 1667). Five years later, the Privy Council

advised the King that ‘it is just and reasonable for your Majesty to

insist upon reparation for the debt and damages’ sustained by the

seizure, in 1643, of the _Bona Esperanza_ and her consort. New Letters

of Marque led to the capture of more vessels, duly provided with a

diversity of flag; and to the imprisonment, in England, of the captors,

before trial or inquiry. Meanwhile, CAREW himself was seized abroad, and

put into a Dutch prison. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane,

3515.] And, at length, in 1676, the States of Holland sent express

orders to their courts of judicature, directing that ‘no further

progress shall be made in the pending suits,’ grounding the order upon

the proviso in the treaty of 1667, as extinctive of all claims and

pretensions, whatsoever, advanced by Englishmen against Dutch citizens,

be the foundation and history of such claims what they might. This

decree, therefore, operated in bar, as well of the claims of the

representatives of Sir William COURTEN, for the debt of Peter BOUDAEN,

as of those arising out of the seizure of the ships of the East India

Fleet. It was estimated that the COURTEN claims then pending in the

Courts of Holland amounted, in the aggregate, to £380,000 sterling.[43]

In May, 1683, a petition was presented to the English government, in

which humble prayer was made that that government would be graciously

pleased ‘to perpetuate the memory of Sir William COURTEN and of Sir Paul

PINDAR, by setting up their statues in marble under the piazzas of the

Royal Exchange—Sir William COURTEN’S at the end of the “Barbadoes walk”

at the one side, and Sir Paul PINDAR’S at the end of the “Turkey walk”

of the other side—for encouragement to all merchants, in future ages,

[Sidenote: _Vox Veritatis_, 1683. (B. M.)] to take examples by them for

loyalty and fidelity to their King and country.’

[Sidenote: COURTEN’S SECOND VISIT TO FRANCE, AND HIS TRAVELS.]

COURTEN did his best to avoid any personal share in those unceasing

turmoils, and to keep in the quiet paths of a studious retirement. But

he presently found that, in order to secure his end, he must needs do as

his father had done before him. He must leave England, either for Italy

or for France. When his mind was made up to exile, it was also made up

to the relinquishment of his name. William COURTEN became, even to his

nearest relatives, ‘William CHARLETON.’

The friendships he had already formed at Montpelier, in his youth, and

the local charms of that city for a studious man, incited him to revisit

his old retreat. But he made no permanent abode there. He took long

tours, in France, in Germany, and in Italy; adding everywhere both to

the stores of his knowledge and to the presses and cabinets of his

library and museum. It was during his second stay at Montpelier that he

formed his life-long friendships with a famous Frenchman, Joseph PITTON

DE TOURNEFORT, and with a more famous Englishman, John LOCKE. Here also

began his acquaintance with Dr. (afterwards Sir) Hans SLOANE.

It was at SLOANE’S instance that he made his solitary appearance as an

author, in the shape of a communication to the Royal Society, which was

laid before them in 1679, and afterwards printed in the _Philosophical

Transactions_, [Sidenote: _Philosoph. Transact._, vol. xxvii, pp. 485,

seqq.] under the title: _Experiments and Observations of the Effects of

several sorts of Poisons upon Animals, made at Montpelier_.

Thirteen or fourteen years were thus passed. And then, to the natural

yearning of an exile, there came the strong reinforcement of the call of

large collections for a settled abode. There are few claims to fixity of

tenure better grounded than are those of a Museum or a Library.

[Sidenote: RETURN TO ENGLAND.]

The return was not easy, but the difficulties were faced. It is probable

that he came back to England in the summer of 1684. He did not then own

one acre of that land of which his father had inherited so respectable a

breadth in half a dozen counties. He had not long arrived before one of

his nearest friends wrote him a letter, which seemed to bode ill for his

prospects of a peaceable life. ‘The number of creditors,’ wrote Richard

SALWEY to him, on the 18th August, 1684, ‘is incredible, for the debts

are standing, and multiplied to children and grandchildren, who, so long

as the parchment and the wax can be preserved, will not forego their

hopes nor attempts. And I fear your late so public station[44] will

daily expose you, and that you will at every backstairs and turning be

pulled by the sleeve and provoked. [Sidenote: Salwey to ‘Charlton;’ MS.

Sloane, 3962, f. 191.] Nor yet do I know of any danger consequent in any

suit that can be commenced, except putting you to great trouble and like

expenses;—and I fear you have not a superfluous bank to defray the

charge.’

COURTEN, however, was not seriously molested. He established himself in

London as the occupant of a large suite of chambers in Essex Court,

Middle Temple. Here his collections were conveniently arranged, and they

had space to expand. [Sidenote: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COURTEN MUSEUM.]

Ere long we find mention of his Museum as filling ten rooms.

Of the cost at which it had been gathered, there are now no adequate and

authenticated materials for forming an estimate. But in those days the

man who himself travelled on such a quest had a vast advantage over the

man—howsoever better provided with what in the sixteenth century was

called purse-ability—who sent other men to travel in his stead. In

COURTEN’S days no dealers explored the Continent as an ordinary incident

of their calling. The wreck, too, of such a fortune as that of the

COURTENS was not contemptible. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS.

Sloane, 3962; 303.] When living in France (1677–79) our collector

appears to have had an income of about fifteen hundred pounds a year,

accruing from money invested in mortgages and in annuities.

Although his chief collections were of his own gathering, he had many

helpers. Among them was the future inheritor of his Museum, Hans SLOANE.

In the year 1687, when about to set out on his voyage to the West

Indies, SLOANE wrote to him: ‘I design to send you what is curious from

the several islands we land at,—which will be most of our plantations.’

[Sidenote: Sloane to ‘Charlton;’ _Ib._, 308.] The writer was then a

young man. Probably his acquaintance with COURTEN was at that time of

not greater standing than eight or nine years, but he writes of the

obligations COURTEN had then already conferred upon him: ‘I am extremely

obliged to you, beyond any in the world.’[Sidenote: _Ibid._]

The use this Collector made of his treasures was as liberal as the zeal

with which he had amassed them was indefatigable. The friend whose

correspondence has just been quoted said, after COURTEN’S death, that he

was wont to show his Museum very freely, and to make his stores

contribute, in various ways, ‘to the advancement of the glory of God,

the honour and renown of the country, and the no small promotion of

knowledge and the useful arts.’

Many notices are extant—scattered here and there in the _Diaries_ and

among the correspondence of the day—of visits made to COURTEN’S Museum

by men who were able to judge of what they saw. Those notices confirm

the general statement made by SLOANE, and show the comprehensiveness of

the collector’s tastes as well as the geniality of his character. Two

such notices have an especial interest, which is not lessened by the

fact that both of them are to be found in diaries that are well known.

They record the visits to Essex Court of John EVELYN, and of John

THORESBY.

[Sidenote: EVELYN’S VISIT TO COURTEN’S MUSEUM.]

EVELYN paid his first visit in charming company. It was made in

December, 1686. He thus tells of it in his journal: ‘I carried the

Countess of SUNDERLAND to see the rarities of one Mr. CHARLTON, in the

Middle Temple, who showed us such a collection as I had never seen in

all my travels abroad—either of private gentlemen, or of princes. It

consisted of miniatures, drawings, shells, insects, medals, ...

minerals; all being very perfect and rare of their kind; especially his

books of birds, fishes, flowers, and shells, drawn and miniatured to the

life. He told us that one book stood him in three hundred pounds.

[Sidenote: _Diary_, &c., vol. ii, p. 260. (Edit. of 1854.)] It was

painted by that excellent workman whom the late GASTON, Duke of Orleans,

employed.[45] This gentleman’s whole collection, gathered by himself

[while] travelling over most parts of Europe, is estimated at eight

thousand pounds. He appeared to be a modest and obliging person.’

EVELYN records two other visits, which he made at subsequent times. It

is obvious that during almost the whole period which elapsed between

COURTEN’S return to England and his death, his museum was a place of

frequent and fashionable resort; notwithstanding the warning which its

owner had received as to the perils of a ‘public station,’ under his

peculiar circumstances. To the celebrated diarist himself, his visits

seem to have suggested a very natural thought of the public value of

such an institution, to be maintained by and for the country at large.

And he was very far from keeping the idea to himself. EVELYN lived to a

more than ordinary term of years, but not long enough to see his idea

carried into act. He had, however, helped to prepare the way.

His incidental statement about the estimated money value of the COURTEN

Museum does not invalidate a foregoing remark in this chapter. The

estimate can hardly have been founded upon better ground than mere

conjecture. But it is curious to note the near approach of the guess of

1686 to another guess, on the same small point, made nine years later.

THORESBY’S visit occurred in May, 1695. He records it thus: ‘Walked to

Mr. CHARLTON’S chambers at the Temple, who very courteously showed me

his Museum, which is perhaps the most noble collection of natural and

artificial curiosities, of ancient and modern coins and medals, that any

private person in the world enjoys. It is said to have cost him seven or

eight thousand pounds sterling.... [Sidenote: Thoresby, _Diary_, 1695,

May 24, vol. i, p. 299.] I spent the greatest part of my time amongst

the coins; for though the British and Saxon be not very extraordinary,

yet his [collection of] the silver coins of the Emperors and Consuls is

very noble. He has also a costly collection of medals of eminent persons

in Church and State, and of domestic and foreign Reformers. But, before

I was half satisfied, an unfortunate visit from the Countess of PEMBROKE

and other ladies from Court prevented further queries.’

The visits of the ‘ladies from Court’ may not have seemed quite so

unfortunate to the host who had to entertain them, as to the zealous

antiquary whose recondite questions they broke off. At all events, such

visits must have been to COURTEN like renewed glimpses of the gayer life

of which he had known something in his early days.

In learned leisure, and in quiet pleasures such as these, his life

passed gently to its end. He kept up his correspondence as well with

some of the surviving friends of his youth, as with two or three of the

eminent scholars and naturalists with whom he had made acquaintance

during the travel-years of middle life. Failing to raise his fortunes to

the height of his early hopes, he yet won contentment by bringing down

his desires to the level of his means. He ceased to trouble himself with

claims on the Dutch Republic, or with pretensions to a proprietorship in

the Island of Barbadoes, or even about his interest in debts contracted

by the Crown of England. He had been able, in spite of all losses, to

open to his contemporaries means of culture and of mental recreation

which, on any like scale, had been before unknown to them. Only in the

most famous cities of Italy had the like then been seen. And he had the

final satisfaction of making the secured continuance of his Museum the

means of further securing, at the same time, the comfort and prosperity

of some humble friends and dependants whose faithful attention had

helped to solace his own closing years. Nor had he neglected those

consolations which are supreme.

William COURTEN’S Will was made on his death-bed, in March, 1702. Having

bequeathed certain pecuniary legacies—increased two days afterwards by

codicil—and having provided for the payment of his debts, he made Dr.

Hans SLOANE his residuary legatee and sole executor. He forbade all

display at his funeral. He died, at Kensington, on the 26th of March,

1702, wanting two days of the completion of his sixtieth year.[46] He

was buried in Kensington churchyard, near the south-east door of the

church. By his friend and executor an altar-tomb, carved by Grinling

GIBBONS, was placed above his remains, with this inscription:—

Juxtà hic sub marmoreo tumulo

jacet GULIELMUS COURTEN, cui Gulielmus pater, Gulielmus avus,

mater, Catharina, Joannis Comitis de Bridgwater filia,

Paternum vel ad Indos præclarum Nomen;

qui tantis haudquaquam degener parentibus,

Summâ cum laude vitæ decurrit tramitem;

Gazarum per Europam indagator sedulus,

quas hinc illinc sibi partas negavit nemini,

sed cupientibus exposuit humanissimè,

Non avaræ mentis pabulum, sed ingenii

si quid naturæ, si quid artis nobile

Opus, id quovis pretio suum esse voluit

ut musis lucidum conderet sacrarium;

ast mortis hæc non sunt curæ!

Hic Musarum cultor tam eximius,

Hic tam insignis viator,

Obiit, Quievit, 7 Cal. Apr. A.D. 1702.

Vixit annos 62, menses xi, dies 28.

Pompa, quam vivus fugit, ne mortuo fieret, testamento cavit,

sed hoc qualecumque monumentum,

et quam potuit immortalitatem,

bene merenti mœrens dedit

HANS SLOANE, M.D.

Sir Hans SLOANE was the seventh and youngest son of Alexander SLOANE, a

Scotchman who had married one of the daughters of Dr. George HICKES,

Prebendary of Winchester, and who had settled in Ireland on receiving

the appointment of receiver-general of the estates of the Lord CLANEBOY,

afterwards Earl of CLANRICARDE. [Sidenote: LIFE OF SIR HANS SLOANE.] He

was born at Killileagh, in the county Down, on the 16th of April, 1660.

We learn that almost from earliest youth, Hans SLOANE evinced his

possession of quick parts and of keen powers of observation. And he gave

early indications of that happy constitution of mind and will which now

and then permits the union of intellectual ambition and aspiration, with

not a little of prudential shrewdness. A special bias towards the study

of the natural sciences was—as it has often been in like cases—one of

the things that were soonest taken note of by those about him. Faculties

such as these naturally pointed to medicine as a fitting profession for

their early possessor. His home studies, however, were checked by a

severe illness which threatened his life, and from some of the effects

of which he never quite recovered. But that illness helped to qualify

him for his future profession. If it took away, for life, the likelihood

that the bright promises of the dawn would be altogether realized in his

maturity, it seems to have strengthened, in an unusual degree, both the

prudential element which already marked his character, and his

predisposition to rely mainly, for the success of his plans, upon

plodding industry. From youth to old age an unweariable power of taking

pains was his leading characteristic.

In his eighteenth year he came to London with the immediate object of

studying chemistry and botany, before he entered on other studies more

distinctively medical. [Sidenote: EARLY STUDIES IN LONDON;] [Sidenote:

1677–1682.] He learned chemistry under STAPHORST,[47] and of botany he

acquired a good deal of knowledge by frequenting, with much assiduity,

the recently founded Botanical Garden at Chelsea. In the latter pursuit

he met with assistance from the intelligent keeper of the garden, Mr.

WATTS. [Sidenote: _MS. Corresp._] And ere long he acquired the

friendship of John RAY, and of Robert BOYLE.

After six years of steady educational labours, both scientific and

medical, he went to Paris, which possessed in 1683—and long

afterwards—facilities for medical education far superior to any that

could then be found in London. [Sidenote: AND IN FRANCE.] [Sidenote:

1683–4.] His companions in the journey were Dr. Tancred ROBINSON and Dr.

WAKELEY.

SLOANE had scarcely got farther into France than the town of Dieppe,

before it was his good fortune to make the acquaintance of Nicholas

LEMERY, and to find himself able to communicate to that eminent chemist

the results of some novel experiments. [Sidenote: _Eloge_, in _Mém. de

l’Acad. des Sciences_ (1753); and _MS. Correspondence_. (B. M.)] They

journeyed together from Dieppe to Paris, and the acquaintance thus

casually formed was productive of good to both of them. The studies

begun in Ireland, and assiduously continued in London, were now matured

in Paris under men of European fame. And the young botanist who

heretofore could profit only by the infant garden established by the

London apothecaries at Chelsea, and by an occasional botanizing ramble

into the country, could now expatiate at will in the magnificent _Jardin

des Plantes_ of the King of FRANCE. In that botanical university SLOANE,

too, had TOURNEFORT—four years his senior—for his frequent companion and

fellow-student.

In July, 1683, he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine in the

University of Orange. Thence he went to Montpelier, where he resided

until nearly the end of May, 1684. After visiting Bordeaux, and some

other parts of France, he returned to Paris. There were few towns, in

which he made any stay, that had not given him some friend or other, in

addition to a valuable accession of knowledge. And the friendships he

had once formed were but rarely lost.

Towards the close of 1684 Dr. SLOANE returned to England, whither the

reputation of his increased acquirements had preceded him. In January,

1685, he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society, and exactly one year

afterwards he was proposed for election as Assistant-Secretary. Among

the other candidates were Denis PAPIN and Edmund HALLEY. On the first

scrutiny, SLOANE had ten votes; HALLEY sixteen. The majority was not

enough, but on a second ballot HALLEY was chosen. Early in 1687 he

became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. He had thus early laid

some foundation for a London practice that would lead him to social

eminence, as well as to fortune. And for the good gifts of fortune he

had a very keen relish.

Loving wealth well, he loved science still better. But he had already

good reason to hope that both might be won, in company. He had become

known to Christopher MONK, second Duke of ALBEMARLE, and when that

nobleman received, in 1687, the office of Governor-General of the West

India Colonies, SLOANE received an invitation to sail with him, as the

Duke’s physician and as Chief Physician to the fleet; and he was desired

to name his own conditions, if disposed to accept the appointment.

He did not take any long time to think over the offer. If it presented

no very brilliant prospect of monetary profit, it opened a large field

for scientific research. [Sidenote: THE VOYAGE TO JAMAICA.] And, in the

main, the field was new. [Sidenote: 1687.] No Englishman had ever yet

been tempted to take so long a journey in the interests of science. He

knew that he had excellent personal qualifications for turning to good

account the large opportunities of discovery that such a voyage was sure

to bring. Nor was it less certain that it would bring innumerable

occasions for enlarging his strictly professional knowledge. And he had

on his side the vigour of youth, as well as its curiosity and its

enthusiasm.

In annexing to his reply the conditions of his acceptance he wrote thus:

‘If it be thought fit that Dr. SLOANE go physician to the West Indian

Fleet, the surgeons of all the ships must be ordered to observe his

directions.... He proposes that six hundred pounds, _per annum_, shall

be paid to him quarterly, with a previous payment of three hundred

pounds, in order to his preparation for this service; and also that if

the Fleet shall be called home he shall have leave to stay in the West

Indies if he pleases.’ The proposed terms were approved. [Sidenote:

_Corresp._ in MS. Sloane, 4069, ff. 86, 87.] The Doctor embarked at

Portsmouth, in the Duke’s frigate _Assistance_, on the 12th of

September.

His work as a scientific collector began at Madeira. [Sidenote: _Ibid._,

MS. Sloane, 3962, f. 310.] To botanize in that pleasant island was an

enjoyment all the more welcome after an unusual share of suffering from

seasickness, in the midst of professional toil. For it was honourably

characteristic of SLOANE that, under all circumstances and forms of

temptation, medical duties had the first place with him. What he

achieved for science, throughout his life, was achieved in the intervals

of more immediate duty.

He reached Barbadoes in November. Thence he wrote to COURTEN: ‘This is

indeed a new world in all things. You may be sure the task I have is

already delightful to me.’ [Sidenote: Sloane to Courten; _Ib._, 1687,

Nov. 28.] Then he continues: ‘I am heartily sorry that I, being new

landed here, cannot now send [what I have collected for you] with this

letter. What I had at Madeira cannot be come at. What is here I have

not, as yet, gathered. But you may assure yourself that what these parts

of the West Indies afford is all your own, the best way I can send

them.’

The collections begun thus favourably were continued at the beginning of

December in the islands of Nevis, St. Christopher, and Hispaniola. The

fleet reached Port Royal on the 19th of that month. Jamaica was explored

with ardent enthusiasm and with minutest care. Its animals and minerals,

as well as its plants; its history, as well as its meteorology, were

thoroughly studied. [Sidenote: Medical Cases appended to _Voyage to

Jamaica_; vol. i (1708).] And the medical skill of the new-comer was put

as heartily at the service of the toil-worn negro as at that of the

wealthiest planter, or of the highest officer of the Crown.

But presently SLOANE himself needed the care and skill he so willingly

bestowed. ‘I had a great fever,’ he says, ‘though those about me called

it a little seasoning.’ He had scarcely recovered before his knowledge

of the natural history of Jamaica was suddenly and unpleasantly

increased.

‘Ever since the beginning of February,’ I find him writing to the Lord

Chief Justice HERBERT (who seems to have been one of the earliest of the

many patients who became also friends): ‘I dread earthquakes more than

heat. For then we had a very great one. Finding the house to dance and

the cabinets to reel, I looked out of window to see whether people

removed the house (a wooden structure) or no. Casting my eyes towards an

aviary, I saw the birds in as great concern as myself. Then, another

terrible shake coming, I apprehended what it was, and betook me to my

heels to get clear of the house; but before I got down stairs it was

over. If it had come the day after, it had frighted us ten times more.

[Sidenote: Sloane to Lord Chief Justice Herbert; MS. Sloane, 4069, ff.

277, 278.] For the day it happened there arrived a Spanish sloop from

Porto Bello, giving an account of the destruction of great part of the

kingdom of Peru.’

Long before this letter was written the exploring studies and expedition

had been resumed with all the activity of renewed health, and they were

carried on—at every available interval, as I have said, of pressing

medical duty—throughout the year 1688. That eventful year, during which

the thoughts and anxieties of the mass of his countrymen were so

differently engrossed, was to SLOANE the especial seedtime of his study

of Nature. All that he was enabled to effect in that attractive path may

now seem very small and dim, when viewed in the light of subsequent

achievements. But it was great for that day, when, in England, the path

was so newly opened that the possession of a taste for collecting

insects was thought, by able men of the world, to be a strong

presumption of lunacy. And it soon fired the ambition of a multitude of

inquirers who rapidly carried the good work of investigation onward, in

all directions.

Towards the close of the year, the Duke of ALBEMARLE suddenly died. The

contingency for which SLOANE had had the foresight to make provision had

arisen, but in a quite unexpected way; so that his forecast failed to

secure him that time for continued research which he had coveted and

contracted for. The Duchess of ALBEMARLE had accompanied her husband in

his voyage, and, after the first shock of his death had been borne, was

naturally desirous to leave the colony. SLOANE could not allow her to

take the return voyage without his attendance. He hastened to gather up

his collections and prepared to come home. The fleet set sail from Port

Royal on the 16th of March, 1689.

[Sidenote: THE RETURN VOYAGE OF 1689.]

The voyage was full of anxiety. Such news from England as had yet

reached the West Indies was very fragmentary. And the lack of authentic

intelligence about the outbreak of the Revolution and its results, had

been eked-out by all sorts of wild rumours. The voyagers looked daily

with intense eagerness for outward-bound ships that might bring them

news, and were especially anxious to know if war had broken out between

England and France. When they caught sight of a sail so wistfully

watched for, they commonly observed in the other vessel as great a

desire to avoid a meeting, as there was amongst themselves to ensure

one.

The Duchess of ALBEMARLE had with her a large amount of wealth in plate

and jewels, as well as a large retinue. Her anxieties were not lessened

when the captain of the frigate said to her Grace, two or three weeks

after the departure from Port Royal: ‘I cannot fight any ship having

King JAMES’ commission, from whom I received mine.’ On hearing this

assurance—which seemed to open to her the prospect, or at least the

possible contingency, of being carried into France—the Duchess resolved

to change her ship. With SLOANE and with her suite she left the

_Assistance_, and re-embarked, first in the late Duke’s yacht, and then

in one of the larger ships of the fleet.

After this separation, ‘our Admiral’ says SLOANE, ‘pretended he wanted

water and must make the best of his way for England, without staying to

convoy us home, which accordingly he did.’ The voyage, nevertheless, was

made in safety.

[Sidenote: _Voyage to Jamaica_, &c., vol. ii, p. 344.]

They learned very little of what had happened at home, until they had

arrived within a few leagues of Plymouth. Then SLOANE himself went out,

in an armed boat, with the intention of picking up such news as could be

gathered from any fishermen who might be met with near the coast. The

first fishing vessel they hailed did her best to run away, but was

caught in the pursuit. [Sidenote: _Ibid._, p. 347.] To the question,

‘How is the King?’ the master’s reply was, ‘What King do you mean? King

WILLIAM is well at Whitehall. King JAMES is in France.’

[Sidenote: EARLY YEARS IN ENGLAND.]

SLOANE landed at Plymouth on the 29th of May, with large collections in

all branches of natural history, and with improved prospects of fortune.

The Duchess of ALBEMARLE behaved to him with great liberality, and for

some years to come he continued to be her domestic physician, and lived,

for the most part, in one or other of her houses as his usual place of

residence. In 1690 much of his correspondence bears date from the

Duchess’ seat at New Hall, in Essex. In 1692 we find him frequently at

Albemarle House, in Clerkenwell. He had also made, whilst in the West

Indies, a lucky investment in the shape of a large purchase of Peruvian

Bark. [Sidenote: _Sloane Corresp._, in MSS. Sloane.] It was already a

lucrative article of commerce, and the provident importer had excellent

professional opportunities of adding to its commercial value by making

its intrinsic merits more widely known in England.

The botanists, more especially, were delighted with the large accessions

to previous knowledge which SLOANE had brought back with him. ‘When I

first saw,’ said John RAY, ‘his stock of dried plants collected in

Jamaica, and in some of the Caribbee Islands, I was much astonished at

the number of the capillary kind, not thinking there had been so many to

be found in both the Indies.’

The collector, himself, had presently his surprise in the matter, but it

was of a less agreeable kind. ‘My collection,’ he says, ‘of dried

samples of some very strange plants excited the curiosity of people who

loved things of that nature to see them, and who were welcome, until I

observed some so very curious as to desire to carry part of them

privately home, and injure what they left. This made me upon my guard.’

[Sidenote: 1693.]

On the 30th of November, 1693, SLOANE was elected to the Secretaryship

of the Royal Society. A year afterwards he was made Physician to Christ

Hospital. It is eminently to his honour that from his first entrance

into this office—which he held for thirty-six years—he applied the whole

of its emoluments for the advantage and advancement of deserving boys

who were receiving their education there. For that particular

appointment he was himself none the richer, save in contentment and good

works.

[Sidenote: THE CATALOGUE OF WEST INDIAN PLANTS, AND THE CONTROVERSY WITH

PLUKENET.]

In 1696 he made his first appearance as an author by the publication of

his _Catalogus Plantarum quæ in insula Jamaica sponte proveniunt, vel

vulgo coluntur cum earundem synonimis et locis natalibus: Adjectis aliis

quibusdam quæ in insulis Madeira, Barbadoes, Nevis, et Sancti

Christophori nascuntur_. [Sidenote: 1696.] He had already seen far too

much of the world to marvel that his book soon brought him censure as

well as praise. By Leonard PLUKENET, a botanist of great acquirements

and ability, many portions of the Jamaica Catalogue were attacked,

sometimes on well-grounded objections; more often upon exceptions rather

captious than just, and with that bitterness of expression which is the

unfailing finger-post of envy. PLUKENET’S strictures were published in

his _Almagesti Botanici Mantissa_.[48] SLOANE made no rash haste to

answer his critic. Where the censure bore correction of real error or

oversight, he carefully profited by it. Where it was the mere cloak of

malice, he awaited without complaint the appropriate time for dealing,

both with censure and censor, which would be sure to come when he should

give to the world the ripened results of the voyage of 1687.

A passage in Dr. SLOANE’S correspondence with Dr. CHARLETT, of

Cambridge, written in the same year with the publication of the Jamaica

Catalogue, shows that even whilst he was still almost at the threshold

of his London life, he was able steadily to enlarge his museum.

[Sidenote: Charlett to Sloane, in MS. Corresp., 4043, f. 193.] At that

early date, CHARLETT, who had seen it during a visit to London, calls it

already ‘a noble collection of all natural curiosities.’[49] The

collector, when he landed its first fruits at Plymouth, had yet before

him—such was to be his unusual length of days—almost sixty-four years of

life. Not one of them, probably, passed without some valuable accession

to his museum. And those sixty-four years were the adolescent and

formative years of the study of the Physical Sciences in Britain. They

were years, too, in the course of which there was to be a great

development of British energy, both in foreign travel and in colonial

enterprise. Very many were to run to and fro in the earth, so that

knowledge might be largely increased. As a traveller, SLOANE had already

done his spell of work. But just as that was achieved, he was placed, by

his election to the secretaryship to the Royal Society, precisely in the

position where he could most extensively profit by a wide correspondence

with men of like scientific pursuits all over the world, and could

exercise a watchful observation over the doings and the opportunities of

explorers.

[Sidenote: RESUMPTION OF THE ‘PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS.’]

But the most immediate result of his secretaryship was the resumption of

the suspended _Philosophical Transactions_. The interruption of a work

which had already rendered yeoman service to Science, abroad as well as

at home, had been caused by a combination of unfavourable circumstances.

The death of its first and energetic editor, Henry OLDENBURG; some

diminution in the Society’s income; and some personal disagreements at

its Council board, seem all, in their measure, to have concurred to

impede a publication, the continuance of which the best men in the Royal

Society knew to be inseparable from the achievement of its true

purposes. SLOANE bestirred himself with the steady vigour which had been

born with him; impressed his friends into the service; profited by the

foreign connections he had formed ten years earlier at Paris, Bordeaux,

and Montpelier, and so found new channels by which to enrich the pages

of the _Transactions_, as well as to extend their circulation.

He did it, of course, in his own way, and under the necessary influence

of his habits and predispositions. One natural result of his labours, as

secretary and as editor, was a frequent prominence of medical subjects,

both at the meetings and in the subsequent selections for permanent

record. If such a prominence might now and then give, or seem to give,

fair ground of complaint to men whose thoughts were absorbed in the

calculus of fluxions, or whose eyes were wont to search the heavens that

they might learn the courses of the stars, it had at least the excuse

that it tended to the elevation—in all senses of the word—of a

profession in the thorough education and the dignified status of which

all the world have a deep interest.

If SLOANE, in his day, occasionally made scientific men somewhat more

familiar with medical themes than they cared to be, he did very much to

make medical men aware of the peculiar duty under which their profession

laid them of becoming also men of true science. And in this way he

exerted an influence upon medical knowledge, which was none the less

pregnant with good and enduring results because it was in great measure

an indirect influence. It was one of the minor, but memorable, results

of the establishment of the Royal Society that it tended powerfully to

lift medical practice out of the slough of quackery.

This frequent reading of medical papers during the Doctor’s

secretaryship could not fail to give an opening, now and again, for the

wit of the scorner. A physician, in his daily practice, is constantly

seeing the power of small things. He may well, at times, over estimate

trifles. In the year 1700, Dr. SLOANE was made the subject of a

satirical pamphlet which appeared under the title of ‘_The

Transactioneer, with some of his Philosophical Fancies_.’ The author of

the satire was Dr. William KING, but, for a considerable time, the

authorship was unknown. There was great anxiety to discover it, not only

on SLOANE’S part individually, but on the part of the Council at large.

The whole affair was trivial, and would be unworthy of memory but that

it led to some dissensions within the Society itself, which for a long

time left marks of their influence.

[Sidenote: SLOANE AND WOODWARD.]

SLOANE conceived that _The Transactioneer_ was the production of Dr.

John WOODWARD—the author of _Natural History of the Earth_—who was

himself a member of the Royal Society’s Council. WOODWARD, in denying

the imputation, endorsed the satire. ‘Whether there was not some

occasion given,’ he said to the Council, ‘may be worth your

consideration. This I am sure of: The world has been now, for some time

past, very loud upon that subject. [Sidenote: _Newton Correspondence and

Papers_; cited by Brewster, in _Memoirs_, &c. (2nd Edit.), vol. ii, ff.

185, 186.] And there were those who laid the charges so much wrong, that

I have but too often had occasion to vindicate the Society itself, and

that in public company.’ The ill feeling thus excited lasted a long

time. It seemed at length, that the Society must lose either the

services of its laborious Secretary or those of his active-tongued

opponent.

The petty dissension came to a height when SLOANE chanced to make some

passing medical comment on the words ‘the bezoar is a gall-stone,’

occurring in a paper which he was reading to the Society, from the

Memoirs of the Parisian Academy of Sciences. SLOANE’S casual remark drew

from WOODWARD the offensive words, ‘No man who understands anatomy would

make such an assertion.’ On another occasion he interrupted some

observation or other made by SLOANE, by exclaiming—‘Speak sense, or

English, and we shall understand you.’ A friend or two of WOODWARD tried

hard to back him by enlisting the illustrious President on their side.

They reminded NEWTON that he had been often himself impatient under the

medical dissertations, and they praised Dr. WOODWARD’S acquirements in

philosophy. ‘For a seat in the Council,’ replied Sir Isaac, ‘a man

should be a moral philosopher, as well as a natural one.’ [Sidenote:

Records of the Royal Society.] Eventually, it was resolved: ‘That Dr.

WOODWARD be removed from the Council, for creating a disturbance by the

said reflecting words upon Dr. SLOANE.’ The latter was of a very

forgiving temper, and he soon sought to be reconciled with his

adversary.

His professional course, meanwhile, was steadily upward. A friendship

which he had contracted in 1705 with Dr. SYDENHAM greatly aided his

progress. SYDENHAM was retiring from practice, and gave to SLOANE his

cordial recommendations. In 1712[50] he was made Physician Extraordinary

to the Queen, whom he attended, two years afterwards, on her death bed.

He filled the office of Physician-in-Chief to GEORGE THE FIRST, by whom,

on the 3rd April, 1716, he was created a Baronet. He was, I believe, the

first physician who received that dignity. In 1719 he became President

of the College of Physicians. In 1727 he received the crowning honour of

a life which, to an unusual degree, had already been replete with

honourable distinctions of almost every kind. He was placed in the chair

of the Royal Society, as the next successor of NEWTON.

Eighteen years before, he had been welcomed into the illustrious Academy

of Sciences, the establishment of which at Paris had followed so quickly

upon the foundation of the Royal Society. Both academies had worked with

conspicuous success. Both had been adorned by a long line of eminent

members. They had frequently, and in many ways, interchanged friendly

communion. To SLOANE himself, the reception at Paris had been the

prelude of many like invitations from other learned societies in various

parts of Europe. No man of his time had a worthier estimate of the

dignity involved in the freemasonry of science, nor had any a more

conscientious sense of the duties and responsibilities which it entails.

As President of the Royal Society, one of his earliest proposals to the

Council was that, for the future, no pecuniary contribution should be

received from foreign members whose fellowship it invited as an honour.

He urged this step, notwithstanding that the Society was at the time in

debt from an unusual arrear of subscriptions,—an arrear so great that he

felt it to be right that the Council should be recommended to sue their

offending brethren in the law courts. His third proposal, like both the

others, had for its object the incontestible advantage and honour of the

Society. He checked some nascent abuses in elections by making it

necessary that there should be an express approval of every new

candidate by the Council, on the recommendation of not less than three

fellows, before proceeding to a ballot in the Society at large.

[Sidenote: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF JAMAICA.]

The work by which SLOANE holds his chief place in the literature of

science, the _Natural History of Jamaica_, was the work of no less than

thirty-eight years. Its materials, as we have seen, were collected in

the years 1687 and 1688. The first volume was not published until 1708.

Seventeen additional years elapsed before the completion of the second.

The fact indicates how crowded with avocations its author’s life was, as

well as the marked conscientiousness and thoroughness which from youth

to age characterized his doings.

The Jamaica book cannot be opened without some appreciation, even at

first sight, of this faculty of thoroughness. For it is shown not more

by the elaboration and beauty of the illustrations, than by the copious

citation of authorities, on all points in relation to which authority is

valuable. That all previous labourers in his field should have their

full meed of acknowledgment is with SLOANE a prime anxiety.

[Sidenote: SLOANE’S SERVICES TO ARBORICULTURE.]

The West Indian Voyage of 1687–89 had had, it may here be remarked,

other results besides that of exciting new emulation—at home and

abroad—in the study of natural history, and in the amassing in cabinets

and presses of the dried and preserved objects of that study. It gave a

marked impulse to arboriculture, both in England and in Ireland. What

SLOANE had to show, and to tell of, led to the sending oversea of

vessels expressly prepared for the transport of living trees; and

several noble ornaments of our parks and pleasure grounds date their

introduction to English and Irish soil from the expeditions so set on

foot.

The _Natural History of Jamaica_ excited considerable interest abroad,

as well as at home. [Sidenote: Corresp. of Sloane and Briasson; in MS.

Sloane, 4039, ff. 136–140.] Bernard de JUSSIEU offered to undertake the

editorship of a French translation, and BRIASSON, a Parisian bookseller

of some eminence, wrote to SLOANE that he was willing to incur the

charges and risk of publication, on condition that the author would send

the copper plates of the original work to Paris, for use in the new

edition. Sir Hans, however, objected to incur the risk of this

transmission across the channel, but was willing to have the needful

impression worked off in London; an arrangement to which the Parisian,

in his turn, was disinclined to assent, being of opinion—perhaps not

unjustly—that, in 1743, the art of copperplate printing was better

understood in Paris than in London. On these grounds the negotiation was

broken off.

[Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM.]

Amidst these varied avocations, the growth of the library and museum

went on unceasingly. Friends and foes contributed, in turn, to its

enrichment. The year 1702 saw the incorporation with the original

gatherings of the West India voyage of the splendid collections of

COURTEN, the friend of SLOANE’S youth. In 1710, Sir Hans acquired the

valuable herbaria of his old assailant, Leonard PLUKENET. In 1718 he

purchased the extensive collections, in all departments of natural

history, of another friend of early years, James PETIVER. The herbarium

of Adam BUDDLE, a botanist little remembered now but of note in his

generation, came to SLOANE, as a token of friendship, from the death-bed

of its collector. [Sidenote: MS. Sloane, 4069, _passim_.] The scientific

possessions of Dr. Christopher MERRET were purchased from his son, and

from time to time, when valuable collections were known to be on sale

upon the Continent, agents went across to buy.

Of these numerous sources of augmentation the museum of PETIVER was next

in importance to that of COURTEN—but with a considerable interval. It is

said (in the contemporary correspondence, as I think) that its cost to

SLOANE was four thousand pounds. But remembering what four thousand

pounds was a hundred and fifty years ago, there is reason to suspect

some exaggeration in the statement.

[Sidenote: THE NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS OF PETIVER.]

James PETIVER, when Sir Hans first became acquainted with him, was

serving, as an apprentice, the then apothecary of St. Bartholomew’s

Hospital. He afterwards became apothecary to the Charter House. He had,

in one way or other, made for himself a singularly extensive

acquaintance amongst seafaring men; and by their help had established an

almost world-wide correspondence with people interested in natural

history, or possessed of special opportunities for gathering its

rarities. Of such rarities, SLOANE somewhere says, ‘He had procured, I

believe, a greater quantity than any man before him.’ But in course of

time his collections overpowered his means, or his industry, for the

work of preservation and arrangement. When, at the collector’s death,

they passed into the possession of his friend, choice specimens were

found, not in order, but in heaps. The due classification and ordering

occupied many hands during many months.

[Sidenote: SLOANE’S CORRESPONDENCE, AND HIS CHARITIES.]

The charities of human life were not, in the breast of Sir Hans SLOANE,

choked either by the various allurements and preoccupations of science,

or by the ceaseless toils of a busy and anxious profession. He was a

very liberal giver, and also a discriminating and conscientious giver. I

have rarely seen a correspondence which mirrors more strikingly than

does that of SLOANE, a just and equable attention to multifarious and

often conflicting claims.

The multiplicity of the claims was, indeed, as notable as was the

patience with which they were listened to. Not to dwell upon the

innumerable gropings after money of which, in one form or other, every

man who attains any sort of eminence is sure to have his share (but of

which Sir Hans SLOANE seems to have had a Benjamin’s portion) or upon

interminable requests for the use of influence, at Court, at the

Treasury, at the London Hospitals, at the Council Boards of the Royal

Society or of the College of Physicians, and elsewhere; his fame brought

upon him a mass of appeals and solicitations from utter strangers,

busied with less worldly aims and pursuits. Enthusiastic students of the

deep things of theology sought his opinion on abstruse and mystical

doctrines. Advocates of perpetual peace, and of the transformation, at a

breath, of the Europe of the eighteenth century into a new Garden of

Eden, implored him to endorse their theories, or to interpret their

dreams.

His replies are sometimes both characteristic and amusing; none the less

so for the fact that his power of writing was, at all times, far beneath

his other mental powers and attainments. Now and then, though rarely, a

touch of humour lights up the homeliness of phrase.

To one of the enthusiasts in mystic divinity, who had sent for his

perusal an enormous manuscript, he replied: ‘I am very much obliged for

the esteem you have of my knowledge, which, I am very sure, comes far

short of your opinion. [Sidenote: Sloane to Gabriel Nisbett, May, 1737,

MS. Sloane, 4069, f. 38.] As to the particular controversies on foot in

relation to Natural and Revealed Religion, and to Predestination, I am

no ways further concerned than to act as my own conscience directs me in

those matters; and am no judge for other people.... I have not time to

peruse the book you sent.’

To the worthy and once famous Abbé DE SAINT PIERRE, who would fain have

established with SLOANE a steady correspondence on the universal

amelioration of mankind, by means of a vast series of measures,

juridical, political, and politico-economical, which started from the

total abolition of vice and of war, and descended to the improvement of

road-making by some happy anticipation—a hundred years in advance—of our

own MACADAM, he wrote thus: ‘I should be very glad to see a general

Peace established, for ever. [Sidenote: Sloane to St. Pierre, MS.

Sloane, 4069, f. 44.] Rumours of war are often, indeed, found to be

baseless, and the fears of it, even when well grounded, are often

dissipated by an unlooked-for Providence. But poor mortals are often so

weak as to suffer, in their health, from the fear of danger, where there

is none!’

Letters on high themes like these had their frequent variety, in the

shape of proffers of contributions, to be made upon terms, for the

enlargement of the Museum, the fame of which had now spread into very

humble ranks of society. A single specimen in this kind will suffice: ‘I

understand,’ wrote a correspondent of a speculative turn, ‘you are a

great virtuoso, and gives a valuable consideration for novelties of

antiquity,’—on getting thus far in the perusal, one can imagine Sir Hans

murmuring ‘not willingly, I assure you,’—‘a pin has been many hundred

years in our family, and was, I am told, the pin of the first Saxon king

of the West Angles,’ and so on.

[Sidenote: ACQUISITION OF THE MANOR OF CHELSEA.]

Until the year 1741, a few months after his resignation of the chair of

the Royal Society on the score of old age, Sir Hans SLOANE continued to

live chiefly in London; though often removing, for part of the summer

months, to his Manor House in the then charming suburb of Chelsea. He

had purchased that valuable manor, from the family of Cheyne, in 1714.

The fine old House abounded in historical recollections and amongst

them, as most readers will remember, in associations connected with the

memory of Sir Thomas MORE. It had the additional attraction of a large

and beautiful garden, close to that other garden in which the now Lord

of the Manor had pursued, with all the energies of youth, the study of

botany. One of his earliest acts of lordship had been a graceful gift to

the Company of Apothecaries, of the freehold in the land of which till

then they had been tenants. In 1741 he transferred his Museum and

Library from Bloomsbury to Chelsea. His former house—situated in Great

Russell Street, near the corner of what is now Bloomsbury Square—had

been capacious, but the new one admitted of a greatly improved

arrangement and display of the collections.

[Sidenote: A ROYAL VISIT TO THE SLOANE MUSEUM AT CHELSEA.]

The state and character of the Sloane Museum, in the fullness to which

the collector had brought it during these latest years of his life, can

scarcely be exemplified better than in a contemporary account of a visit

which was paid to the Manor House at Chelsea by the Prince and Princess

of Wales, in the year 1748. I quote it, almost verbally, from the

_Gentleman’s Magazine_ of that year, but with some unimportant

omissions.

[Sidenote: G. M., vol. xviii, pp. 301, 302. (July, 1748.)]

At that date, the Manor House formed a square of above a hundred feet on

each side, enclosing a court. Three of the principal rooms were, on the

occasion of this royal visit, filled successively—as the visitors passed

from one room into another—with the finest portions of the collections

in its most portable departments. The minerals were first shown. The

tables were spread with drawers filled with all sorts of precious stones

in their natural beds, as they are found in the earth, except the first

table, which contained stones found in animals, such as pearls, bezoars,

and the like. Emeralds, topazes, amethysts, sapphires, garnets, rubies,

diamonds, ... with magnificent vessels of cornelian, onyx, sardonyx and

jasper, delighted the eye, says the attendant describer, and raised the

mind to praise the great Creator of all things.

When their Royal Highnesses, continues our narrator, had viewed one

room, and went into another, the scene was shifted. When they returned,

the same tables were covered, for a second course, with all sorts of

jewels, polished and set after the modern fashion, and with gems carved

and engraved. For the third course, the tables were spread with gold and

silver ores, and with the most precious and remarkable ores used in the

dresses of men from Siberia to the Cape of Good Hope, from Japan to

Peru; and with both ancient and modern coins in gold and silver.

The gallery, a hundred and ten feet in length, presented a ‘surprising

prospect.’ The most beautiful corals, crystals, and figured stones; the

most brilliant insects; shells, painted with as great variety as the

precious stones; and birds vying with the gems; diversified with remains

of the antediluvian world.

Then a noble vista presented itself through several rooms filled with

books; among these were many hundred volumes of dried plants; a room,

full of choice and valuable manuscripts; and the rich present sent by

the French King to Sir Hans of the engravings of his collections of

paintings, medals, and statues, and of his Palaces, in twenty-five large

atlas volumes.

Below stairs, some rooms were then shown, filled with the antiquities of

Egypt, Greece, Etruria, Rome, Britain, and even America; other rooms and

the Great Saloon were filled with preserved animals. The halls were

decorated with the horns of divers creatures. [Sidenote: G. M., vol.

xviii, pp. 301, 302. (July, 1748.)] ‘Fifty volumes in folio,’ concludes

the enthusiastic bystander who chronicled, for Mr. Sylvanus URBAN, the

royal visit of 1748, ‘would scarce suffice to contain a detail of this

immense Museum, consisting of above 200,000 articles.’

The Prince of WALES, on taking leave of his host, gave expression to a

wish which he did not live long enough to see realised. ‘It is a great

pleasure to me,’ he said, ‘to see so magnificent a collection in

England. It is an ornament to the Nation. Great honour would redound

from the establishing of it for public use, to the latest posterity.’

Plans, more or less definite, of perpetuating those collections for

public use had occasionally engaged their owner’s thoughts almost from

the date of his acquisition of the Museum of William COURTEN, in 1702.

[Sidenote: THE WILL AND CODICILS OF 1749–51.] In 1707, he had watched

with interest a scheme that had been set on foot for the formation of a

Public Library in London by combining the old Royal Collection with the

collections of Sir Robert COTTON and of the Royal Society.[51] But that

scheme failed of execution, until, almost half a century later, it was,

in the main, revived and carried out as the indirect but very natural

consequence of his own testamentary dispositions.

His Will, in its first form, was made at Chelsea in 1748, but was

replaced on the 10th July, 1749, by the following codicil:—

[Sidenote: THE TESTAMENTARY DISPOSAL OF THE COURTEN AND SLOANE MUSEUM.]

‘Whereas I have in and by my said Will given some directions about the

sale and disposition of my Museum, or collection of rarities herein more

particularly mentioned, now I do hereby revoke my said Will, as far as

relates thereto, and I do direct and appoint concerning the same in the

following manner: Having had from my youth a strong inclination to the

study of plants and all other productions of nature, and having through

the course of many years, with great labour and expense, gathered

together whatever could be procured either in our own or foreign

countries that was rare and curious; and being fully convinced that

nothing tends more to raise our ideas of the power, wisdom, goodness,

providence, and other perfections of the Deity, or more to the comfort

and well being of his creatures, than the enlargement of our knowledge

of the works of nature, I do will and desire that for the promoting of

these noble ends, the glory of God, and the good of man, my collection

in all its branches may be, if possible, kept and preserved together

whole and entire, in my Manor House in the Parish of Chelsea, situate

near the Physic Garden given by me to the Company of Apothecaries for

the same purposes; and having great reliance that the right honourable,

honourable, and other persons hereafter named, will be influenced by the

same principles and [will] faithfully and conscientiously discharge the

trust hereby reposed in them, I do give, devise, and bequeath, unto the

Rt. Hon. Charles Sloane CADOGAN ... [_and to forty-nine other persons

whose names follow_,] all that my Collection or Museum at, in, or about,

my Manor House at Chelsea aforesaid, which consists of too great a

variety to be particularly described, but ... which are more

particularly described, mentioned, and numbered, with short histories or

accounts of them, with proper references, in certain catalogues by me

made, containing thirty-eight volumes in folio, and eight volumes in

quarto,—except such framed pictures as are not marked with the word

“_Collection_”—to have and to hold to them and their successors and

assigns for ever, ... upon the trusts, and for the uses and

purposes, ... hereafter particularly specified concerning the same.

‘And for rendering this my intention more effectual that the said

Collection may be preserved and continued entire in its utmost

perfection and regularity, and being assured that nothing will conduce

more to this than placing the same under the direction and care of

learned, experienced, and judicious persons who are above all low and

mean views, I do earnestly desire that the King, H.R.H. the Prince of

WALES, H.R.H. William, Duke of CUMBERLAND, the Archbishop of CANTERBURY

for the time being ... [Sidenote: _Authentic Copies_, &c. (B. M.) 17, p.

12.] [_and twenty-eight others, being chiefly great Officers of State_]

will condescend so far as to act and be Visitors of my said Museum and

Collection; and I do hereby, with their leave, nominate and appoint them

Visitors thereof, with full power and authority for any five or more of

them to enter my said Collection or Museum, at any time or times, to

peruse, supervise, and examine, the same, and the management thereof,

and to visit, correct, and reform, from time to time, as there may be

occasion, either jointly with the said Trustees or separately—upon

application to them for that purpose, or otherwise—all abuses, defects,

neglects or mismanagements, that may happen to arise therein, or

touching and concerning the person or persons, officer or officers, that

are or shall be appointed to attend the same.

‘And my will is and I do hereby request and desire that the said

Trustees, or any seven or more of them, do make their humble application

to His Majesty, or to Parliament at the next session after my

decease,—as shall be thought most proper,—in order to pay the full and

clear sum of twenty thousand pounds unto my executors or to the

survivors of them, in consideration of the said Collection or Museum; it

not being, as I apprehend or believe, a fourth of their real and

intrinsic value; and also to obtain such effectual powers and

authorities for vesting in the said Trustees all and every part of my

said Collection, ... and also my said capital Manor-House, with such

gardens and outhouses as shall thereunto belong and be used by me at the

time of my decease, in which it is my desire that the same shall be kept

and preserved; and also the water of or belonging to my Manor of Chelsea

coming from Kensington, or right of patronage of the Church of Chelsea;

to the end the same premises may be absolutely vested in the said

Trustees for the preserving and continuing my said Museum in such manner

as they shall think most likely to answer the public benefit by me

intended, and also obtain, as aforesaid, a sufficient fund and provision

for maintaining and supporting my said Manor House, ... to be vested in

the said Trustees for ever.... [Sidenote: _Authentic Copies_, &c. (B.

M.) 17, p. 12.] And it is also my will and desire that all such other

powers ... may be added or vested as well in the said intended Trustees

as in the Visitors hereby appointed, as shall by the Legislature be

thought most proper and convenient for the better management, order, and

care, of my said Collection and premises.’

Provision is then made, in subsequent clauses of this codicil, for the

replacement, by the Trustees surviving, from time to time, of vacancies

occasioned by death in the ranks of the Trustees first appointed; and by

surviving Visitors of vacancies so occasioned in those of the original

Visitors.

[Sidenote: LATER CODICILS.]

In September, 1750, another codicil added to the list of Visitors—in

order to supply vacancies which death had already wrought—the Earls of

MACCLESFIELD and SHELBURNE, and the then Master of the Rolls, Sir John

STRANGE, with proviso of succession for the Master of the Rolls of the

time being. Sir John BERNARD, Sir William CALVERT, and Mr. Slingsby

BETHEL were, in like manner, added to the roll of Trustees. The same

codicil excepted the advowson of the Rectory of Chelsea from the bequest

of 1749, and annexed it to the lordship of the Manor.

By his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Mr. LANGLEY, an

Alderman of London, Sir Hans SLOANE had issue two daughters, but no son.

The elder of the daughters, Sarah SLOANE, married George STANLEY, of

Poultons, in Hampshire; the younger, Elizabeth, married Lord CADOGAN. By

the representatives of those co-heiresses the large inheritance was

eventually enjoyed.

A subsequent codicil of 1751, added nine other Trustees, five of whom

were distinguished foreigners. Among the four English names are those of

John HAMPDEN (‘twenty-fourth hereditary lord of Great Hampden,’ and last

lineal male descendant of that famous stock) and William SOTHEBY.

[Sidenote: THE CLOSING YEARS.]

The declining years of a man to whom had been given, not only unusual

length of days, but an unusual span both of bodily and of mental vigour,

so that he remained in the rank of busy men until he had passed his

eightieth year, were necessarily days of seclusion. He had enjoyed not

only the honours[52] and the comforts, but the troop of friends which

should accompany old age. Yet a man who reaches the age of ninety-two

must needs lose the friends of his maturity, as well as the friends of

his youth. Sir Hans SLOANE, in the old Manor House of Chelsea, had

something of the experience which made a famous statesman of our own

day, who was loth to leave the stir of London life, say—with a sigh—‘I

see all the world passing my windows, but few come in.’

His chief recreations, in those latest years, lay in the continued

examination of the stores of nature and of art which never palled upon

his capacity of enjoyment, and in the regular weekly visit of a much

younger man, who was very conversant in the busy world without; who

could talk, and talk well, alike upon public events, upon the novelties

of science, and upon the gossip of the coffee-houses and the clubs. This

friend of old age was George EDWARDS, a naturalist of considerable

acquirements, and the author of some _Essays on Natural History_ which

are still worth reading.

SLOANE’S mental vigour long outlived his power of bodily locomotion. For

years he could move from room to room, or on very bright days from room

to garden, only by the aid of an invalid chair. In other respects, his

health gave a weighty sanction to the counsel which he had been wont to

give, not infrequently, in lieu of an invited but superfluous

prescription. ‘I advise you’ he would say, ‘to what I practice myself. I

never take physic when I am well. When I am ill, I take little, and only

such as has been very well tried.’

The end of a bright, abundant, and most useful life, came at the

beginning of the year 1753. On the tenth of January, George EDWARDS

found him rapidly sinking, and suffering greatly. On the eleventh he

found him at the point of death. ‘I continued with him,’ he wrote,

‘later than any one of his relatives. But I was obliged to retire—his

last agonies being beyond what I could bear; although, under his pain

and weakness of body, he seemed to retain a great firmness of mind and

resignation to the will of God.’ He was buried at Chelsea, in the same

vault in which, twenty-eight years before, he had buried his wife.

[Sidenote: SYNOPTICAL TABLES OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM.]

This indefatigable collector had continued to enrich his Museum with new

accessions as long as he lived. We have the means of estimating its

growth—as regards mere numbers, of course—by comparing a synoptical

table drawn up in 1725—for the purpose of showing to certain grumblers

what had been the nature and aim of those avocations which had delayed

the completion of the _Natural History of Jamaica_—with another table

drawn up by his Trustees immediately after his death.

The comparison of numbers shows that the twenty thousand two hundred and

twenty-eight coins and medals of 1725 had grown, in 1752, to thirty-two

thousand. Other antiquities had increased from eight hundred and

twenty-four to two thousand six hundred and thirty-five. The minerals

and fossils had increased from about three thousand to five thousand

eight hundred and twenty-two specimens. The botanical collection which,

in 1725, had numbered eight thousand two hundred and twenty-six

specimens, together with a _Hortus Siccus_ of two hundred volumes, had

become in 1752 twelve thousand five hundred specimens, with a _Hortus

Siccus_ of three hundred and thirty-four volumes. The other natural

history collections had increased on the average by more than one half.

The details are as follows:—

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐

│ Volumes in Volumes in │

│ =1725=. =1753=. │

│ │

│ 2,686 1. MANUSCRIPTS 3,516│

│ 136 2. DRAWINGS 347│

│ 3. PRINTED BOOKS about 40,000│

│ 200 4. HORTUS SICCUS 334│

│ │

│ Specimens in Specimens in │

│ =1725=. =1753=. │

│ │

│ 20,228 5. MEDALS and COINS 32,000│

│ 302 6. ANTIQUITIES 1,125│

│ 81* 7. SEALS, &c. 268│

│ 441* 8. CAMEOS and INTAGLIOS about 700│

│ 1,394 9. PRECIOUS STONES 2,256│

│ │

│ [*See under No. 10. VESSELS OF AGATE, JASPER, &c. │

│ 8.] 542│

│ 1,025 11. CRYSTALS, SPARS, &c. 1,864│

│ 730 12. FOSSILS, &c. 1,275│

│ 1,394 13. METALS and MINERAL ORES 2,725│

│ 536 14. EARTHS, SANDS, SALTS, &c. 1,035│

│ 249 15. BITUMENS, SULPHURS, &c. 399│

│ 169 16. TALCS, MICÆ, &c. 388│

│ 3,753 17. SHELLS 5,843│

│ 804 18. CORALS, SPONGES, &c. 1,421│

│ 486 19. ECHINI, ECHINITES, &c. 659│

│ 183 20. ASTERIÆ, TROCHI, &c. 241│

│ 263 21. CRUSTACEA 363│

│ 22. STELLÆ MARINÆ 173│

│ 1,007 23. FISHES, and their parts 1,555│

│ 753 24. BIRDS, and their parts 1,172│

│ 345 25. VIPERS, &c. 521│

│ 1,194 26. QUADRUPEDS 1,886│

│ 3,824 27. INSECTS 5,439│

│ 507 28. ANATOMICAL PREPARATIONS, &c. 756│

│ 8,226 29. VEGETABLES 12,506│

│ 1,169 30. MISCELLANEOUS THINGS 2,098│

│ 319 31. PICTURES and DRAWINGS, framed 310│

│ 54 32. MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS 55│

└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

On the 27th January—sixteen days after Sir Hans’ death—about forty of

the Trustees named in the Will met at Chelsea, to confer with the

Executors. Lord CADOGAN produced the Will and its Codicils. By these,

should the bequest and its additions be accepted, the manor house and

land, together with the collection in its existing state and

arrangement, would be given to the Public. This, said Lord CADOGAN, will

save the hazard and expense of removal. Mr. William SLOANE then informed

the Trustees that the Executors had thought it prudent temporarily to

remove the medals of gold and silver, the precious stones, gems, and

vases, to the Bank of England, in order to ensure their present safety.

The Earl of MACCLESFIELD was then placed in the chair. A synopsis of the

contents of the Museum was read by Mr. James EMPSON, who had acted as

its curator for many years. Mr. EMPSON was appointed to act as Secretary

to the Trustees, and a form of Memorial to be addressed to the King, in

order to the carrying out of the trusts of the Will, was agreed upon.

The Memorial had—eventually—the desired effect. [Sidenote: THE ACT FOR

ESTABLISHING THE BRITISH MUSEUM.] It led, in the course of the year

1753, to the passing of an Act of Parliament—26 GEORGE II, chapter

22—which is entitled _An Act for the purchase of the_ Museum or

Collection of Sir Hans SLOANE, _and of the_ Harleian Collection of

Manuscripts, _and for providing one General Repository for the better

reception and more convenient use of the said Collections, and of the_

Cottonian Library, _and of the additions thereto_.

The Act recites the tenour of the testamentary dispositions made by Sir

Hans SLOANE. It also recites that a provisional assent had been given by

his Trustees to the removal of his Museum from the Manor House of

Chelsea ‘to any proper place within the Cities of London and

Westminster, or the suburbs thereof, if such removal shall be judged

most advantageous to the Public.’

The Act then proceeds to declare that, ‘Whereas, all arts and sciences

have a connexion with each other, and discoveries in natural philosophy

and other branches of speculative knowledge,’ for the advancement

whereof the Museum was intended, may, in many instances, give help to

useful experiments and inventions, ‘therefore, to the end that the said

Museum may be preserved and maintained, not only for the inspection and

entertainment of the learned and the curious, but for the general use

and benefit of the Public,’ it is enacted by Parliament that the sum of

twenty thousand pounds shall be paid to the Executors of Sir Hans

SLOANE, in full satisfaction for his said Museum.

In this Statute, also, the preceding original Act for the public

establishment of the Cottonian Library (12th and 13th of WILLIAM III, c.

7), together with the subsequent Act on that subject (5th ANNE, c. 30),

are severally recited, and it is declared as follows:—

[Sidenote: FURTHER PROVISIONS OF THE ACT OF INCORPORATION.]

First, ‘Although the public faith hath been thus engaged to provide for

the better reception and more convenient use of the Cottonian Library, a

proper repository for that purpose hath not yet been prepared, for the

want of which the said Library did ... suffer by a fire;’

And secondly, ‘Arthur EDWARDS, late of Saint George’s, Hanover Square,

in the county of Middlesex, Esquire, being desirous to preserve for the

public use the said Cottonian Library, and to prevent the like accident

for the future, bequeathed the sum of seven thousand pounds’—after the

occurrence of a certain contingent event—for the purpose either of

erecting, ‘in a proper situation, such a house as might be most likely

to preserve that Library from all accidents, or—in the event of the

performance by the Public, before the falling out of the contingency

above mentioned, of that duty to which it already stood pledged by Act

of Parliament, then—for the purpose of purchasing such manuscripts,

books of antiquities, ancient coins, medals, and other curiosities, as

might be worthy to increase the Cottonian Library aforesaid;’ to which

end the same public benefactor further bequeathed his own library.

In order therefore to give due effect, at length, both to the primary

donation of Sir John COTTON, and to the additional benefaction made

thereto by Major Arthur EDWARDS, Parliament now enacted that a general

repository should be provided for the several collections of COTTON,

EDWARDS, and SLOANE, and that Major EDWARDS’ legacy of money should be

paid to the Trustees created by the new Act, in accordance with the

provisions heretofore recited in Sir Hans SLOANE’S codicil of 1749.

[Sidenote: THE SERVICES OF MR. SPEAKER ONSLOW IN THE FORMATION OF THE

BRITISH MUSEUM.]

It is to the exertions, at this time, of Arthur ONSLOW, the then Speaker

of the House of Commons, that historical students owe their debt of

gratitude for the preservation of the Harleian Manuscripts from that

dispersion,—abroad as well as at home,—which befel the Harleian printed

books.

When the Memorial of SLOANE’S Trustees was first presented to GEORGE THE

SECOND, he received it with the stolid indifference to all matters

bearing upon science and mental culture, which was as saliently

characteristic of that king as were his grosser vices. ‘I don’t think

there are twenty thousand pounds in the Treasury,’ was the remark with

which he dismissed the proposal. Money could be found, indeed, for very

foolish purposes, and for very base ones. And the bareness of the

Treasury was, very often, the natural result of the profligacy of the

Court. But, in 1753, it was a fact.

Save for Speaker ONSLOW’S exertions, the Memorial would have fared

little better in Parliament than at Court. The then Premier, Henry

PELHAM, was not unfriendly to the scheme, nor was he, like his royal

master, a man of sordid nature; but a Minister who was every now and

then obliged to write to his ambassadors abroad, even in the crisis of

important negotiations, ‘I have ordered you a part of your last year’s

appointments, but we are so poor that I can do no more,’ could hardly be

eager to provide forty or fifty thousand pounds for the purchase of a

new Museum and the safety of an old Library.

[Sidenote: 1753. _Commons’ Journals_, March 19, seqq.]

ONSLOW proposed—eventually—as a means of overcoming these difficulties,

that a sum of money should be raised by a public lottery, and that it

should be large enough to effect not only the immediate objects

contemplated by the Will of Sir Hans SLOANE, and by the prior public

establishment of Sir Robert COTTON’S Library, but to purchase for a like

purpose the noble series of Manuscripts which had passed (just eleven

years before SLOANE’S death) to the executors of the last Earl of

OXFORD, in trust for his widow, the Dowager Countess, and for his

daughter, the Duchess of PORTLAND.

Edward, Earl of OXFORD, had stood at one period of his life, in the rank

of the wealthiest of Englishmen. He was the owner of estates worth some

four or five hundred thousand pounds. He was, too, a man of highly

intellectual and studious tastes; but, in his case, a magnificent style

of living, great generosity, and excessive trust in dependants, did what

is more usually the work of huge folly or of gross sins; they brought

him into circumstances which, for his position in life, might almost be

called those of poverty. But for this comparative impoverishment, his

own act—it is more than probable—would have secured to posterity the

enjoyment, in its entirety, of the splendid library he had inherited and

increased.

To the proposal of a lottery there was much solid objection. What were

then called ‘parliamentary lotteries’ had been introduced expressly to

put down those private lotteries, common in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, which had been fraught with mischief. It was

hoped, or pretended, that a ‘regulated’ evil would be reduced within

tolerable limits, whilst bringing grist to the national mill. But the

forty years that had passed since the first parliamentary lottery of

1709 had shown that the system was essentially and incurably

mischievous. PELHAM was averse to its continuance. As First Lord of the

Treasury, it was his poverty, not his will, that consented to the

adoption of so questionable an expedient for the purchase of the SLOANE

Collections. He had not, individually, any such love of learning as

might have induced an appeal to Parliament to set, for once, an example

of liberal and far-sighted legislation. He merely stipulated that some

stringent provisos should be put into the Act, directed against the

nefarious practices of the lottery-jobbers.

[Sidenote: THE LOTTERY OF 1753 FOR THE PURCHASE OF THE SLOANE AND

HARLEIAN COLLECTIONS.]

Eventually, it was enacted that there should be a hundred thousand

shares, at three pounds a share; that two hundred thousand pounds should

be allotted as prizes, and that the remaining hundred thousand—less the

expenses of the lottery itself—should be applied to the threefold

purposes of the Act, namely, the purchase of the SLOANE and HARLEIAN

Collections; the providing of a Repository; and the creation of an

annual income for future maintenance.

By the precautionary clauses of the Bill, provision was made for the

prolonged sale of shares; for the prevention of the purchase by any one

adventurer of more than twenty shares, or ‘tickets,’ and for other

impediments, as it was thought, to a fraudulent traffic in the combined

covetousness and ignorance of the unwary.

All these precautions proved to be vain. Mr. PELHAM’S opposition was

abundantly justified by the result. Fraud proved to be, in that age,

just as inseparable an element in a Lottery scheme, however good its

purpose, as fraud has proved to be, in this age, an inseparable element

(at one stage or other of the business) in a Railway scheme,—however

useful the line proposed to be made.

It thus came to pass that the foundation of the BRITISH MUSEUM gave rise

to a great public scandal. When evidence was produced that many families

had been brought to misery, as the first incident in the annals of a

beneficent and noble foundation, a somewhat dull Session of Parliament

was suddenly enlivened by an animated and angry debate.

[Sidenote: THE PROSECUTION OF LEHEUP FOR HIS DEALINGS WITH THE MUSEUM

LOTTERY.]

The provident clauses in the Lottery Act of 1753 were made of no effect,

mainly by entrusting the chief share in working the Act to an

accomplished jobber. One Peter LEHEUP was made a Commissioner of the

Lottery. This man had held some employment or other at Hanover, from

which he had been recalled with circumstances of disgrace. [Sidenote:

1753. December.] It is to be inferred, from the way in which his name

points an epigrammatic phrase in one of the letters of BOLINGBROKE,[53]

and in more than one of those of Horace WALPOLE, that it had come, long

before this appointment took place, to have a sort of proverbial

currency, like the names of ‘CURLL’ or of ‘CHARTRES.’ But, be that as it

may, Mr. Commissioner LEHEUP set on foot as thriving and as flagitious a

traffic in SLOANE lottery tickets, as was ever set on foot in railway

shares by a clever promoter of our own day. He wrote circular letters

instructing his correspondents how most effectually to evade the Act. He

sold nearly three hundred tickets to a single dealer by furnishing him

with a list of ‘Roes’ and ‘Does,’ ‘Gileses’ and ‘Stileses’ at

discretion. He supplied himself, with equal liberality; and contrived to

close the subscription, after an actual publicity of exactly six

hours—for the issue of one hundred thousand tickets. In a few days, of

course, tickets in abundance were to be had, at sixteen shillings

premium upon each, and in what looked to be a still rising market. The

trap proved to be brilliantly ‘successful.’