SOME CONTEXT
Roger North died in 1734. In the ten years following his death his second son and literary executor, Montagu North, edited and then saw through the press three books written by his father: the Examen in 1740, and two volumes of Lives, in 1742 and 1744 [See Bibliography, below]. Although Roger North had published books and pamphlets throughout his life these were his first publications under his own name.
The Lives relate three careers of three of Roger’s brothers: in the first volume the life of Francis a lawyer and courtier, in the second the lives of Dudley a merchant and public official, and John a scholar and churchman (there were other brothers, but that is part of another story). The law, the world of politics and trade, the universities, and the Church – from the biographies alone we have immediate account of a larger, if not ‘complete’, past world. We also get a lot of local colour, the Lives are an entertaining read. The Lives were published as part of a project made explicit in the subtitle to the Examen,
… an Enquiry into the Credit and Veracity of a Pretended Complete History; shewing the Peverse and Wicked design of it, and the many falsities and abuses of Truth contained in it. Together with some Memoirs occasionally inserted. All tending to vindicate the Honour of the late King Charles the Second, and his Happy Reign, from the intended aspersions of that foul pen ...
It was a project to redress a recent revision of history – the books were part of a ‘culture war’, to use a present-day term. The ‘foul pen’ apostrophised in the subtitle of the Examen was that of White Kennett, the (anonymous) author of the third volume of the Complete History of England (1706). The first two volumes of the Complete History comprise previously existing texts by various (named) authors: John Milton, Sir Thomas Moore, Samuel Daniell, John Habington, Edward Hall, Raphael Hollinshed, George Buck, Sir Francis Bacon, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, John Hayward, Francis Godwin, William Cambden and Arthur Wilson; the third volume, however, was attributed to ‘a Learned and Impartial Hand’, it covered the most recent and most controversial past – the reigns of Charles II and James II. The Complete History of England, was a remarkable publication issued through a number of London publishing houses. One could consider it the earliest complete (so to speak) synthesis of what we now call the ‘whig account of history’. The Complete History was published nearly forty years before the Examen and the Lives, Roger North had nourished a long-standing resentment against it, spending all of those intervening years gathering together evidence and arguments. He first wrote against it in an anonymous pamphlet of 1711 noting that ‘If he [i.e., White Kennett] had nam’d it any thing but History, he had come off better.’ Roger North was not only debating the truth of Kennett’s account of the past, he was also making a sophisticated point about what history is in relation to the past. In the Examen he argued that we get a better insight into the past, especially the immediate past, if we anchor the history to the personal testimony of named witnesses, as we do in listening to the evidences in a court of law (hence the name of the book). He argued that all historical accounts are prejudiced, are limited, are positioned. He declared that the historian of recent history must therefore declare their name (as he had done, or as his son had done on his behalf) so that the prejudice, limitation and position can be taken into account, and accounted for. [note 1]
All this is to give some context to the manuscripts discussed below. In his final draft of the biography of John North, the scholar, Roger North included a digression on Newtonian science which was neither part of any previous draft, nor included in the published Life. The digression introduces a dissonant and polemical tone quite at odds with the biography into which it was dropped. It would seem that late in the preparation of his biographies, Roger North considered extending or supplementing his anti-Whig historical project, the Lives, to engage with recent turns in science. As we will see, this was a late development, and of a particular moment, and as we will also see, Montagu North determined that the digression was not published.
THE TEXT – APOLOGYE, INTRODUCTION AND DISSERTATION
The attached texts are taken from British Library Add. MS 32514. The volume contains two manuscripts. Both are neat copies only lightly corrected. The first is a draft of the ‘Life of Dr. North’, the second, ‘Notes of Dr. North’. The first manuscript is that rare thing, a dated Roger North manuscript (it is dated 1728), and would seem to be the final draft of the biography of his brother John North. This version contains everything that is to be found in the published Life, but it also includes material – an ‘Apologye’, an ‘Introduction’ and a ‘dissertation of the new and moderne new philosofie’, the digression on Newtonian science mentioned above – which was not published. The second manuscript, the ‘Notes of Dr. North’, contains a short account of John North’s philosophical and scientific ideas. This is a revision of jottings on various subjects made by John North in a loose-leaf notebook, the contents are here re-organised thematically so as to represent something approaching a system of thought. A previous draft of the Notes, apparently transcribed directly and therefore in no particular order, is to be found in Add. MS 32517 (which volume also contains the earliest draft of John North’s biography; for further information on the several manuscript drafts of the Life in the British Library, also on the two drafts of the Notes, see the Appendix below). No original autograph notebook by John North has ever come to light.
The draft biography begins with an ‘Apologye’. The Apologye opens with the conventional rhetoric of unworthiness – the Author has had the task of biography pressed upon him, he is, of course, not up to that task. The writer then apologises for the inclusion of an ‘academick dispute’ (referring to the so-called dissertation) in a work of biography. The Author, we are told, was the victim of an uncontrollable ‘impulsus philosoficus‘ and the reader is given due warning lest they fall among academic ‘thorns, and … thickets’. As for the Author, his defence was that he meant no ill, and that furthermore he wrote nothing offensive to morality, religion or government, and that he merely demanded the privilege of thinking and debating, of speaking his mind, of being a voice in a ‘philosofical State, wch is a pure Democracy’. This is the ideal democracy (of the public sphere, of the printed page), where there is no privilege of rank, where any cobbler might be a statesman and where all are expected to be reasonable. And, the writer concludes, if this defence appears weak, perhaps better and stouter advocates could step forward. Roger North was both writer and Author, he spoke, so to speak, with two voices, a performance of ventriloquism that remained long hidden from view since the Apologye was not published until 1984. [note 2]
Actually, there is a third person present on this first page of the manuscript. At the foot of the title, just above the Apologye, we are told that the manuscript was written by ‘A Freind’ (see ill. 1 in the transcription). The logic of handwriting makes us read the Freind as the Author, and both as rhetorical projections of the writer whose hand (… this is a manuscript) incorporates them. Had this version of the Life been printed exactly as it is here, the publisher or printer might have been assumed by the reader to have been the writer, making the Freind and the Author into other, separate persons. A common-sense reading suggests that Roger North was being playful, that he was teasing future readers, as well as his editor, his literary executor, his son, Montagu. Perhaps he was satirising the impulsus mercatorius of an imagined publisher or printer, someone who might hope to benefit from the scandalous implications of anecdotal and private information seeped into the public sphere. A 21st-century readership might be the ideal audience for such a charade where the author/writer conceit can be read for through the conventional anxieties of the family drama – the text is, after all, the testimony of a self-effacing younger brother. Roger North frequently refers to himself in the Lives as the ‘freind’ of his brothers, it saved him having to put himself forward, naming and explaining himself. Being recognisably a reference to his own person, it verified and authorised the anecdotal information it accompanied.
This biographer-as-witness role is consistant with Roger North’s observations on the role of anecdote in History as expressed in his now celebrated, long unpublished,’General Preface’, as well as in his Examen. [note 3] The epitaph on the title page of the first volume of the Lives was ‘Unus oculatus testis praestat auritis decem’, that is: ‘One spectator is better witness than ten listeners’. This is a misquotation of a line from the second act of Plautus’ Truculentus, the implication is that the testimony of a direct witness has greater value than that of any number of eavesdroppers, or mere hearsay. On the title page of the second volume we are told that the book is by: ‘the HONOURABLE ROGER NORTH, Esq; Ea complectitur quibus ipse interfuit. Cic. de Leg. Lib. i.’, that is: ‘In which he himself [i.e., Roger North] bore a part’. The quotation comes from a passage early in De Legibus where the companions of Cicero seek to persuade him to write a history of his times, of the events in which he played a part.
As we read Add. MS 32514 the fact of its being a manuscript, that it is written by hand, dramatises the writer’s disguising and his play with authorial performance. (Benvenuto Cellini, at the beginning of his autobiography, apologises for the text being in a handwriting not his own, he explains that he is old and sick and that he has employed a local boy as an amanuensis. His voice declares itself albeit in another’s hand. We must assume that Cellini could only ever have imagined his text being read in manuscript where the identifiable trace of a hand, like the recognisable sound of a voice, would have granted authority and authenticity. Coincidentally, and I love these things, Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography first appeared in print in the same year that Roger North wrote this draft, 1728.). [note 4]
An ‘Introduction’ follows the Apologye (there is no Introduction in the published edition). In it the author, now happily constituted in the first person, gives expression to several quite different anxieties from those expressed in the Apologye. He hopes that he will be able to remain free of prejudice, adding that no philosopher ever completely managed to do that. He hopes that he will not appear merely to have advanced hypotheses of his own. He hopes to avoid fatiguing his reader and using jargon. He fears that although the biography may be accepted by many, the dissertation would only be read by ‘accademicks’ who on account of their qualifications would most likely be prejudiced against it. He advises that good Latin is required and adds, a propos of that, that many philosophers have tended to focus upon words and concepts rather than addressing the world of experience and things. Lastly he confesses that he, the author, will need a command of good English in order to present his arguments. For all these reasons he is hesitant, and inclined to keep back the dissertation so that it can be ‘perused onely by Candid freinds’.
About halfway through this first manuscript in the volume, on f. 62r, the narrative is interrupted with the announcement: ‘[h]ere follows a dissertation of the new, and Moderne New philosofye’ (see ill. 3 in the transcription). Once again we are advised that we are free, according to our knowledge and taste, either to read it or to pass on to the continuation of the biography at f. 227. The interruption occurs during a brief survey of John North’s intellectual life, introduced two pages earlier by a marginalia declaring that he was a ‘Master of ye (then) New. philosofie, and Managed disputes’ – apparently he enjoyed chairing philosophical discussions in his rooms. We read that he had studied the works of Descartes, that he had considered them in relation to ancient philosophy with a view to writing on the matter, and we are told also that he was not dogmatic, preferring to keep his options open. [note 5]
At several points in the Life Roger North plays upon the distinction of ‘new’ and ‘modern’ in relation to systems of natural philosophy. On the first page of the manuscript, above the Apologye, we read of ‘a dissertation of the New and Moderne (New) philosofye’. Here and in the Introduction this repetition of the terms draws our attention to the distinction Roger North makes between a heroic new philosophy (Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon and his followers, Descartes and his followers) which had tested Aristotle against the evidences of the senses by means of experiment and reasoning, and produced true knowledge, albeit limited by the degree to which even the senses can fail us, and a modern new philosophy (Paracelsus and the Alchemists, Newton and the mathematicians, proponents of gravitational attraction) which exploited the innovations of the new philosophy, compromising it with the re-introduction of Aristotelian concepts such as ‘Intrinsick natures, variety of Quallitys, attractions, Influences, Alchimias, tendency’s, conatuses, and all that Misty, unphilosoficall tribe, that perverts the knowledg of things’ (f. 112v). This betrayal narrative, of the ‘new’ by the ‘modern new’, is at the heart of Roger North’s critique of Newton.
The dissertation is not itself a work of natural philosophy. In that way it differs from many of Roger North’s other writings on this website. [note 6] It is a polemic, an ‘academick dispute’. It sometime feels like a legal disputation. It is comprised of 77 paragraphs (numbered up to 76, there are 2 paragraphs number 34). It is addressed almost entirely to refuting Newton.
We might ask why Newton was to be refuted in a dissertation written to be inserted into the biography of a man, a man whose biography was only eventually published more than sixty years after his death, a professor of Greek and a churchman, a man who had died in 1683, four years before the publication of the first edition of the Principia.
During the Drs life, there was No glimps of the Newtonian model of pholosophy Extant, as since his death hath at large appeared; therefore nothing of it is found In his Notes (of wch I am to give an account.) but much of the Cartesian, Wch in his time flamed out In the university. [f. 62r]
We might note that both in the manuscript (that is, in those parts excluding the dissertation), and in the published Life, Newton is mentioned by name only twice. On each occasion we are encouraged to compare John North and Isaac Newton, and each comparison encourages us to favour North. I quote here from the 1744 published version of the Life, which scarcely differs from the manuscript. The first reference to Newton is linked to a criticism of Newton’s ambition and arrogance.
As for Arts and Sciences that flourished in his Time, he [i.e., John North] desired to be a Stranger to none, but did not professedly pursue them. Upon this Account he applied to the Mathematicks, but as a Friend and not as a Lover. He used to converse much with Dr. Barrow [note 7] (who, in those Sciences had gone great lengths), which one would have thought should have fired him; but it had a most contrary Effect, for it cooled him, and made him abandon the Study … the Doctor perceived that if he pursued Mathematics he must adhere, and neglect all his other Studies and Designs in which he found himself much advanced. Sir Isaac Newton was in the College a Contemporary, and being made by Nature and Inclination for mathematical Studies, had much Encouragement and Assistance therein from Dr. Barrow who, some say, first hinted to him the Plan of his great Cosmographical System. But, however, it falls out odly that to the best of my Rememberance Dr. Barrow is not so much as mentioned in any of his writings. This being so, old Aristotle himself, consulting his own Fame, could not have done better. (Lives, vol 2, 1744, p. 260-1). [This last sentence makes sense when we note that on the previous page Roger North had written of Aristotle, and by implication of Newton: “What imports Aristotle’s having had a transcendent Genius, if his insufferable Domineering, and Contempt of others, led him to divide from Truth, and to take up with certain Schemes of Words that signify nothing, whereby to make all his own?”]
The second reference to Newton is neutral, although it is used rather to sanctify John North’s own obsessive tendencies. [note 8]
He [i.e., John North] kept himself bent with perpetual Thinking and Study, which manifestly impaired his Health. Even Conversation, which relieved others, was to him an Incentive of Thought. He was sensible of this, but did not affect any Expedients of Relief to his Mind. I have heard him say that he believed if Sir Isaac Newton had not wrought with his Hands in making Experiments, he had killed himself with Study. A Man may so engage his Mind as almost to forget he hath a Body which must be waited upon and served: The Doctor could overlook in himself what plainly appeared to him in others. After Dinners and in Evenings, he kept Company with the Fellows and Fellow Commoners in the Garden; but not long, for he could not be pleased with such insipid Pastime as Bowls, or less material Discourse, such as Town Tales, or Punning, and the Like. (Lives, vol. 2, 1744, p. 243.)
The lives of John North and Isaac Newton ran in asymmetrical parallel for more than twenty years. Newton had arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge in the summer of 1661 at the age of eighteen, he was three years older than North, he had previously spent a short time trying his hand at farming. He registered as a ‘subsizar’, i.e., a student whose education was sponsored by short term scholarships, perhaps involving the performance of menial tasks in return. North had entered Jesus College in February 1661 and lived modestly as a fellow-commoner, meaning that he paid his own fees and accommodation. They both graduated in 1663/4. Within months of graduation North was granted a fellowship at Jesus. Newton was awarded a scholarship at Trinity. Both left Cambridge during the plague year when the whole University closed down. While at home in Lincolnshire Newton developed calculus, observed the fall of apples, and noted the refraction of light through a prism. In 1667 he returned to complete his MA and accept a Fellowship at Trinity. Two years later Isaac Barrow renounced his Lucasian professorship in Mathematics in Newton’s favour. The rules of the Lucasian Professorship did not require that the holder be ordained. Newton held this post for thirty-three years, he never took up holy orders. John North was eventually ordained in 1670. In 1672 he was appointed Regius Professor of Greek, another professorship previously held by Barrow, which title he held for the following two years. At the same time he transferred from Jesus to Trinity, presumably encouraged by Barrow, who was appointed Master of Trinity in that year. If the two men had not known each other before, and they likely would have done since both were proteges of Isaac Barrow, then they must have known each other from this date. The biography on the Trinity College website, which is very thorough in its relation of John North’s academic career, claims that he was Newton’s closest friend, Roger North’s Life makes no such claim. [note 9] Barrow remained Master of Trinity from 1672 until his death five years later when North was appointed to replace him. Given North’s family connections and his court career (by the age of thirty he was a prebend of Westminster and Clerk of the Closet, that is, chaplain to the King), this could only have been a political appointment.
But unlike Newton, North was never a productive academic. During his entire career he had one student (his ‘freind’ and brother) and published under his own name only a sermon, a contribution to a book and one slim volume. [note 10] His unproductivity was attributed by Roger North to a morbid perfectionism. He left a large number of manuscript folios which, according to the terms of his will, were to be burned after his death. [note 11] So we will never know. John North’s achievement is more effectively measured in gifts received. The Life gives a comprehensive account of his accumulation of academic and ecclesiastical appointments and distinctions, including a doctorate. [note 12] Roger North notes at more than one point that John North’s preferments earned him little respect or affection from his academic colleagues. Newton was elected to the Royal Society in 1672, the record of his achievements is a matter of public record. The two men followed different paths, but is hard to read the Life without feeling encouraged to compare the two of them, as suggested by the quotations above. Both were introverted, difficult and gifted. Newton is acknowledged to have been a supremely talented mathematician, but he was driven and combative, while John North, although hardly a saintly recluse, was a gentler creature, unpopular and uncomfortable at Jesus, happier at Trinity, but worn down by his responsibilities in his public roles – especially after becoming Master at Trinity when he found himself disliked again. [note 13] In 1679 he suffered the first of several strokes following a confrontation with colleagues, thereafter he was an invalid.
Newton and North may not have agreed on many things but it is likely that their lives did not overlap enough, even in the confines of a Cambridge College, for any conflict. The evidence we have suggests that they got along well enough. In the year that he assumed the Mastership of Trinity John North felt that he could approach Newton for an opinion on his older brother’s, Francis North’s, A Philosophical Essay of Musick. Newton’s reply is cordial, even affectionate, and he engages thoughtfully with the arguments where he felt qualified to do so, commending and criticising from the point of view of his own calculations, experiments and experience, and modestly acknowledging his own lack of expertise in music. Newton’s letter remains a family treasure in Rougham (there is another ‘original’ at the Royal Society). [note 14] In the dissertation Roger North’s attitude to Newton runs from respect to distrust and even as far as contempt (more for what he was rather than for who he was), sometimes it seems to be a combination of all three. His presentation of Newton can be read within the developing critique we find in his scientific manuscripts, especially in the years after 1710. As Friesen has shown, Roger North was one of a number of Tory critics of Newton. [note 15] The Newton we encounter in the Life is a historical Newton, in the dissertation we encounter a meta-character, a demon formed out of anti-Newtonianism, one coloured and shaded by the politics of science in the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
No one reading the dissertation then and no one reading this transcription now would be persuaded that they were reading the opinions of the pious doctor. His opinions are best represented by the Notes. The Notes reveal a thoughtful and sceptical intelligence at work, a scholar who seems at ease with ideas, who seems free of dogma (given his profession, time and place), and who expresses an immediate engagement with a wide range of texts, mostly correctly cited (unlike Roger North’s own referencing), and presented with an engaging directness (they are, after all, personal notes).
THE TEXT – JOHN NORTH’S NOTES
In the published Life Roger describes two ‘pocket-Books in Octavo’ which escaped the bonfire of John North’s manuscripts,
… containing some of his extemporaneous Thoughts upon various Subjects, out of all Order, some with Ink, but most with red Chalk, or black Lead, clapt down there on a sudden, lay out of the Way, and escaped this general Conflagration … [Lives, vol. 2, 1744, vol. 2, p.265],
in the early Add. MS 32517 Roger had described them more fully,
2. portfolio cover’s, of the oblong duodecimo In wch with ribbon, he had fastened paper to be taken out and shifted when full. All the wrighting in them is with black lead, & Nothing (to Speak of) with Ink. The use of them was, that In travelling, or any absence from his Study, at freinds houses, Solitary, or Court waiting, & the like, In all wch circumstances, he kept his mind at work [f. 69r-69v].
The notebooks range across John North’s wide but linked interests embracing religion, philology and the history of reading texts, politics (with a critique of Hobbes) and, as one would expect, philosophy, notably Descartes and considerations on the ‘New philosofy’. They were well summarised in the published version of the Life, [note 16] Roger North’s deployment of them illustrating once again the value and effectiveness of intimate materials revealed in a public representation. Roger North re-organised them into a coherent-ish thesis, that is, the version of Dr. North’s Notes’ in Add. MS 32514 which are here transcribed. Maybe they had been re-organised (and even with a contents page included!) with publication in mind.
CONCLUSION
The dissertation arrived late in the writing of the Life of Dr. North. As Mary Chan has noted with regard to the many versions of the Life of Francis North (she discusses six, dating from the 1680s to the late 1720s), any reading of the drafts of the Lives leads one to the conclusion that Roger North’s purpose in writing ‘changed over the years of rewriting’, and represents the history of his ‘struggle with his anger at the perceived injustice of the way in which eighteenth-century historians treated his [i.e., Francis’] memory’. Such an analysis would explain changes in the development, through successive drafts, we find in any of the Lives, including that of John North. [note 17] In this context, Millard’s argument that the dissertation was out of place as an adjunct to the telling of John North’s life, bearing ‘absolutely no relation to the Life’ (see note 3) misses the point, it bears a great deal of relation to the context of the developing strategy of the Lives. At a particular moment, in 1728, Roger tells us that he wrote the dissertation under an ‘impulsus philosoficus’. Newton had died in 1727, a third Latin edition of the Principia had appeared in 1726, an English translation, much heralded and anticipated, was to appear in 1729. Newton had, the world would come to believe, ‘won’ the debates on natural philosophy and would become increasingly famous thanks to the rise of a new paradigm long affirmed in Roger Cotes’ 1713 Preface to the second Latin edition of the Principia. [note 18] In this paradigm Newton’s science had inaugurated the present state of knowledge and all its possible futures. We have already seen how the Examen and the Lives were published to redress the whiggish revision of history advanced by White Kennett and others. In that ‘modern new’ history the reputations of the Stuarts and their friends and allies, such as the North brothers, had suffered. When the Norths were mentioned at all it might be inaccurately; they were forgettable and were being forgotten, a damnatio memoriae. In the dissertation we see Roger North under an impulsus to extend his range of targets to include the ‘Great Author’ himself.
Thus we can understand, perhaps, why, in 1728, the dissertation might have seemed a Good Idea. Nonetheless we can also understand why in 1744, ten years after his father’s death, Montagu North decided not to publish the dissertation. Its arguments might overwhelm, undermine, or simply detract from the politics of the general project. [note 19] And it might be (it might have been, and we could understand it if it were so) that Montagu did not think the dissertation a very persuasive critique of Newton. The friend and author did not address Newton’s Principia, as a whole, there is little evidence he read beyond the preface and first few pages. Furthermore the dissertation challenges neither the Opticks nor the Principia on (or in) their own terms. Roger North lays out a robust theoretical critique which might have spoken to many contemporaries (Newton was resisted on many points for the next hundred and fifty years or so), but it has to be said that brilliant as it is in some ways, and funny too, the dissertation is really not very good. Montagu did the memory of his father a service by keeping it away from the public in the year of the Great Comet, the year of Tom Jones’ pursuit of Sophia Western across England, the year of the abandoned French invasion to establish James III on the throne, the year before the final crushing of the Jacobite cause, a year when the dissertation might only have attracted ridicule and detracted from the real intellectual, historiographical and human achievement of Roger North’s biographies. I hope I do him some service now in making it public and revealing some aspects of his political history of science.
APPENDIX, DRAFTS AND VERSIONS OF THE LIFE AND NOTES
The chronological order of the drafts of the ‘Life of Dr. North’ appear to be: Add. MSS 32517, 32515, 32516 and 32514. Add. MSS 32517 and 32514 also contain material from two notebooks, the ‘Notes of Dr. North’. Millard dates Add. MS 32517 to the late 17th century on ‘internal evidence’ (not disclosed, but it seems a good guess) and mentions a ‘horn-type’ watermark, he dates the paper to circa 1690. [note 20] Chan and Kassler, [note 21] using their own watermark categories and cross-referencing from dated documents and other external evidence, identify the watermark of Add. MS 32517 as ‘Horn NC/NRI’. They suggest no date, this being the only manuscript on this paper and there being no evidence for dating from the text. Millard observes that the second draft, Add. MS 32515, must be dated to after 1712 owing to the mention of all six of Roger North’s children, but before 1716 since there is no mention of material of a 1716 letter from Hezekiah Bedford, mentioned in the third version, Add. MS 32516. Chan and Kassler identify the watermark in both Add. MSS 32515 and 32516 as ‘Arms/IV (1)’, a paper used frequently over a long period from 1708-26. As has already been stated, Add. MS 32514 is dated 1728 on the first page. According to Chan and Kassler the Life is written on 1-166, ‘Pro Patria (1)’ paper used between 1726-28, the bulk of the Notes are on ‘Arms/DL’, paper used from 1706-10, the addenda and contents list (ff. 225-227) are on ‘?Lion/H’ which was used from 1708-10.
THE NOTEBOOKS: ‘Notes of Dr. N.’ & ‘Notes of Dr. North.’
The first version of the notebooks is found in Add. MS 32517, it runs from f. 1r to f. 62r. The later version is in Add. MS 32514, it runs from ff 167r to 227v. The versions are therefore more or less the same length. The earlier version is written in saturated, blue-black ink. Each paragraph has been marked in the margin with a small cross in a more ‘watered-down’, less saturated version of a similar ink (the ink used throughout Add. MS 32514). The cross indicates that the paragraph has been copied, we find such copy-marks employed elsewhere in North’s manuscripts. Especially in the earlier pages the crosses may be accompanied by headings in the less-saturated ink, e.g. on page opening Add. MS 32517 ff. 7v-8r where we see: ‘Hobbs’, ‘Miracles & oracles’ and ‘Deus Mundus’, with a marginal note ‘qd subterfuge’ (see fig. 4). The later version, which has been organised for easier reading and which attempts a representation of a coherent project, employs headings throughout both for chapters and paragraphs, it even includes an index page. Every paragraph in the earlier draft finds a place in the later version, I have not identified any matter added to the second version not found in the first, excepting minor variations of expression and spelling.
We cannot be certain that the earlier version was directly transcribed from the notebooks. The discontinuity and arbitrariness of order in the earlier transcript suggests shuffled original notes. It is not possible, for example, to be certain what is to be read for by the ellipses and dashes, many carried over into the later version. Their use diminishes during the process of transcription, they are more prevalent at the beginning of the earlier draft. They may indicate increased editorialising, the adoption of paraphrasing and summarising, we might assume that as the transcription advanced Roger North either stopped summarising, or (more likely) stopped representing the process of summarising. Sometimes a series of dots appears to indicate that something has been left out or to be added later (e.g., Add. MS 32517 f. 11v; Add. MS 32514 f. 184v), or that he had run into something illegible or contradictory (viz. ‘qd. a. or no.’ on Add. MS 32517 f. 9v; Add. MS 32514 f. 167v, see also f. 184r and ‘qd no.’ on f. 61v). The ellipses and dashes are usually be found in both versions, although there are some striking exceptions, for example on Add. MS 32514 f. 184r where Roger inserts a series of dots not found in the earlier version (Add. MS 32517 f. 11r), he also inserts into the margin words which do not appear in his first draft. Abbreviations in the earlier version appear to be direct traces of John North’s habits of writing (e.g., ‘SS’ for Holy Scripture, Add. MS 32517 f. 1r, ‘v.c.’ for vis conatus, 20r, and ‘v.’ for viz, 52r.), these are not to be found in Roger North’s other manuscripts. Roger North even ‘translates’ ‘SS’ with a marginal note in the later version (Add. MS 32514 f. 168r), which we could interpret as evidence of him imagining a future reader. Transcriptions from Latin and Greek appear to be more accurate in the earlier version, I have used the earlier draft to check my reading of his (always) clumsy Greek. Finally, as noted below, it is only in the earlier version that we find the admonitory verse from the beginning of the second notebook (see section on Add. MS 32517, below).
It seems that the later version was a synthesis prepared with a view either to publication, perhaps with the Life, or for circulation among friends. At the beginning of the dissertation in the Life (Add. MS 32514, f. 62r) Roger North mentions ‘his [i.e., John North’s] Notes (of wch I am to give an account.)’, which account he does indeed give between ff 131r and 134r (Lives, vol. 2, 1744, pp. 265-7). Note, also, that on Add. MS 32514 f. 225r, having completed and indexed the material as described, Roger North adds a post scriptum, explaining that ‘a few /other\ Notes’ had been found, including notes in Latin ‘set downe upon his Reading over /by way of \ com’place’; he adds that he has transcribed ‘what I find /to have bin\ the Drs. owne observations in latin’, these were not included in the earlier version.
FIRST DRAFT: Add. MS 32517 ‘Some Notes of ye Life of Dr. Jns. North.’.
This first draft of the Life gives only a brief account, a mere 33 pages, f. 63r to f. 79r. There are many corrections and marginalia. It is bound with the earlier version of the ‘Notes of Dr. North … transcribed from black-lead in a pocket book’, discussed above. At the head of the material from the second notebook, on f. 31v, we find a schoolboy verse/curse: ‘I beshrew his heart, who gathers My mind and judgmt from what he finds in this book.’ this is not transcribed into the later version of the Notes, but it does appear, quoted inaccurately/differently, in the published Life (Lives, vol. 2, 1744 p. 268).
The Life is written in unnumbered paragraphs. There is nothing that could properly be called (even an anticipation of) a dissertation. On f. 68r we find the first account of John North’s intellectual interests: ‘His Study’s Seemed to be Circumscribed 1. In learned Antiquity & languages, 2. In the knowledg of philosofy ancient & Moderne. 3. In The Controversie with the Socinians, as to Religion and. 4. With Mr Hobbs as to politie.’ On the opposite page there are marginalia headed ‘A’, ‘B’ & ‘C’ indicating that the material and categories were in development. ‘B’ states ‘He was acquainted with Mathematicks, but No drudg nor professor of them, he was my tutor but left me to My owne Industry & had Not the loss of time as ordinary pupill Mongers have or reading lectures; so philosofy & mathematicks, I hamered out alone. as for ye later, when I Expostulated ye small Import of the first propositions In Euclid, he told me In mathematicks If I did Not delight in them, It was certain I did not understand ’em’. ‘C’ states ‘In phisicks he was throly Informed but no dogmatist. he would be rather a moderator, setting others to dispute rather than [??] holden forth himself, he Entered his Study’s, with ye New philosofy In ye University, and was rather an Encourager of it then [otherwise?]’. These passages recur and echo in the later drafts, but recurrances might be mediated, and their ordering revised, as new materials, digressions and amplifications were added during the process of composition.
SECOND DRAFT: Add. MS 32515 ‘Memoires of the honble John North S.T.P. [i.e., Sanctae Theologiae Professor, i,e., Professor of Sacred Theology) Sometime Master of Trinity Colledge In Cambridg’ is the title used on the first to folios, thereafter ‘The Life of …’.
The second draft of the Life is a much longer text, 177 pages [ff 1r-88v] including an index which links to the now numbered paragraphs. There are numerous additions and corrections, and markings suggesting proposed revisions. One paragraph, two pages in length, is given over to the materials later developed as the dissertation. It is preceded with a ‘gentler’ first version of the anecdote relating to Newton’s debt to Barrow quoted above, thus: ‘[Sir Isaac Newton] was cotemporary with ye Dr In the Colledg, and much /greatly\ Esteemed by him. And it is not to be doubdted but the /great Sr Is.\ was much asSisted by Dr Barrow In his mathematique /Studys\ If Not charged /oblidged\ with Important hints from him, wch he hath Improved to his /owne\ very great fame; (/yet\ however it Happens) that Nothing of that Nature is hinted /Recognized\ in any of his books published since the /masters\ death.'[f. 34r] It is not followed by any reference to Aristotlean vanity that we find in later versions.
The section begins on f. 34r, in para. 31 with the phrase ‘As for the New philosophy …’ (a phrase which is used again in 32516 and 32514) and takes up the whole of para. 32 which begins on f. 35v, ending two pages later on f. 37r. It appears to be concerned principally with the actual opinions of John North as found in the Notes, and is not a draft of the dissertation as we find in later versions, in fact it hardly goes further than the evidence in the notebooks.
He ‘went Intirely Into ye doctrine of matter & motion, Excluding all finall Causes, & Quality’s; He ascribes very much to the Lord Bacon, as the Harbinger of Reformed philosophye, & Shews that his hints, have bin very usefull. And he used to observe that the Gresham designe of Referring all to experiments had Quite disbanded the Scolastick philosophy wch /for tht Re-lyin on upon words Made way for Eternall dispute, wch plain Matter of fact doth Not admitt.
We are told that he was a Cartesian, an early adopter in Cambridge. Two points are made. Firstly, that (like the ‘moderns’) he made the error (relapsing into neo-Aristotelianism) of reifying motion ‘into a reall Entity distinct from body, Whereas it is but a Comparative mode of body … but an abstract wch is Nothing by /as\ Relation’. And secondly that ‘in the track of lord Bacon’ he criticised ‘Idolising Experiments too Much. ffor Some they Expect More out of Experimts /them\ then is reasonable’. He commended Descartes who ‘scarce goes further /for Experiments\ then obvious Incidents, and from thence makes Conclusions to the whole frame of Nature’. This is all new.
THE THIRD DRAFT: Add. MS 32516 ‘The Life of Dr. Jns. North.’ on the first page, thereafter ‘The life of Dr. North.’.
The Third Draft of the Life runs for 236 pages [fols. 1r-118v] making it the longest of the four draft lives. There is no index. The discussion of John North’s science runs from para. 66 on f. 46v to para. 102 on f. 76r; at just under 60 pages it is half the length of the eventual dissertation. As in the previous (and later) draft the dissertation material is anticipated in the previous paragraph by the phrase ‘As for the New philosophy, whereof Des Cartes was ye celebrated Author’ (f. 45v), and then ‘When he lived, there was No glimps of the Newtonian schemes, all wch appeared Since his death …’ (f. 46r). The ‘dissertation’ begins with a heading in the margin: ‘Mathematicians seldome good phisiologers’. The discussion is not introduced as a separate or separable entity, nor drawn attention to as a specific part of the text. It develops as a comparison of Descartes (plenum, laws of motion, the implications as to a first mover, his reference to experience in the world, his robust materialism) and Newton (vacuum, attraction and gravity, his reliance on calculation, his dogmatism, his theoretical argument, a world described as if it were abstract or the work of clockmaker). We never quite lose touch with the biographical context, for example we are reminded that John North also made the common error of reifying motion as if it were separate from the moving body, as if motion existed in itself, which error is traced back to a mistaking of Descartes’ use of words (f. 59r). There is some, but not much attention to Newton’s terminology (‘motus realis’ and ‘relativus’). In the dissertation in Add. MS 32514 this is all given extended treatment. Roger North makes his central point forcefully ‘there is In the Materiall World but one Single Existent principle; And that is body, and knowne by its Indispensible propertie of filling place wch in the Language of art is Called Impenetrability, and is Ever found and never (without a Miracle) deprived’ (f. 64r). Thus, he argues, ‘space’, per se, is an absurd concept, possible only in language. As is made clear in all of the other texts and commentaries on this site, Roger North did not credit the possibility of vacuum, and argued for the universe as a plenum. All motion was communicated to matter by matter. On f. 68v Roger North again touches ground noting that he is ‘sensible how farr I am carryed out of the Way of a Life history by these philosoficks’, before entering a consideration of the relation of time and space (for him, they are one and the same). The discussion returns to the Dr. and his admiration of Bacon and the practice of experiment, and the Life is resumed.
ENDNOTES
1. The quotation is from North, R., (published anonymously), Reflections, etc., 1711. p. 6; the text of the pamphlet is also included as an appendix to the Examen, where it is signed ‘Your humble Servant, R. North’. See bibliography, below, for full title and authors of A Complete History Of England, etc., and for Roger North’s works. For a fuller account of and discussion of RN’s arguments in the Examen see: Ford, 2013, pp. 170-86.
2. See Millard, 1984. Millard matches the General Preface (see following note) with material from Add. MS 32514. He transcribed the Apologye and Introduction, but he chose not to include the ‘academick dispute’ to which both the Apologye and Introduction referred. He wrote: ‘Whatever interest the digression might have for the historian of science, it bears absolutely no relation to the Life and has therefore been dropped’ (p. 41).
3. See Millard, 1984. The General Preface has become an important document for the history of biography in England. It is an introduction to all three North brothers’ biographies, but it, too, was never published. The manuscript is to be found in St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS James 61. In it Roger North deals with issues of evidence, and grants special weight to insights from those who had been ‘in almost continual conversation or converse with the subjects’ (Millard, op. cit., p. 80). In the opening pages of the Examen (pp. i-xiv), Roger North argued the value of anecdotal, direct witness in history. See Ford, C., 2013, cited in note 1, above.
4, Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, orefice e scultore fiorentino, da lui medesimo scritta, nella quale molte curiose particolarità si toccano appartenenti alle arti ed all’istoria del suo tempo, tratta da un’ottimo manoscritto …, Colonia: Per Pietro Martello; Naples, 1728. The edition was put through the press by Antonio Cocchi, a doctor and an intellectual, a man of remarkable talents who, while we are noting and enjoying coincidences, met Isaac Newton when on a visit to England.
5. In Notes of Me (written between 1693-8, but never published) Roger North had suggested that his brother was rather more circumspect in his admiration for Descartes. He reports John saying that the ‘New Philosofy was a sort of heresie, and my brother cared not to encourage me much in it’ (North, R., ed. Millard, 2000, p. 92). See also the opening remarks in the ‘preface’, BL Add MS 32545, especially fol 3r., also written in the 1690s, where it seems that Roger’s enthusiasm for Descartes was very much his own. But, of course, Roger is also seeking to assert John North’s open mindedness (in contrast to Newton’s dogmatism); in any case, disapproval of Descartes should not have prohibited an interest in Cartesian methods and ideas.
6. ‘The Systeme of the World’ and ‘The Method Regulated’, in Add. MSS 32546, the ‘Reflections concerning Naturall things’ in Add. MS 32545, and the ‘Physica’ in Add. MS 32544; these all provide thorough accounts of Roger North’s system, albeit with the inclusion of a fair amount of polemic (against, amongst others, Isaac Newton). They can be accessed and searched readily using the material available on this site. See also the numerous relevant episodes in Kassler, 2014, to which this essay and transcription serve as a supplement.
7. Isaac Barrow, 1630-77, was at various times (and with interruptions) Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, Gresham Professor of Geometry and fellow of the Royal Society in London, and (the first) holder of the Lucasian Chair in Mathematics at Cambridge, as well as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, previous to John North. RN only ever mentions him with respect and affection.
8. With regard to his personal obsessions, and there are many described in the Life, John North had a strange objection to being depicted, even accidentally. ‘After he had the Government of himself, he would not endure that a Picture should be made of him, though he was much courted and invited by Sir Peter Lely to it. And, what was very odd, he would not leave the Print in his Bed, where he had lain, remain undefaced.’ Lives, vol. 2, 1744, p. 268.
9. See: http://trinitycollegechapel.com//about/memorials/interments/north/, this is based substantially on the Dictionary of National Biography.
10. John North, A sermon preached before the King at New Market, October 8, 1671, Cambridge, 1671; Thomas Gale (ed.), Opuscula mythologica, ethica et physica : Græce & Latine., etc., Cambridge, 1671; John North, Platonis De rebus divinis dialogi selecti Græce & Latine, Cambridge, 1673. ‘The first Sermon, that he preached in a solemn Audience, was before the King at Newmarket, upon a Mission from the University. That was a severe Trial of his Spirits, and he went with great Reluctance of Mind; but Reason and Resolution prevailed; and he was not abashed at so great a Presence. … The King was pleased to signify his Approval of it by saying, as he came out of the Church, that the Preacher would soon be a Bishop: And if his Majesty had lived a little longer, he might have proved himself a Prophet; but his, as well as the Doctor’s, untimely Death, fell in the Way of that Event. The Ladies also were pleased to accept the Doctor’s Discourse. One of them, being asked how she liked Mr. North’s Sermon, said, That he was an handsome Man, and had pretty Doctrine.’ (Lives, vol. 2, 1744, pp. 249-50). Lytton Strachey (Strachey, 1931) produced an intended-to-be hilarious rendering of Roger North’s life of his brother making salacious points regarding his sexual inclinations while missing some main points regarding his psychology.
11. For his constitutional inability to complete work, his further problems after becoming ill, and the terms of his Will, see Lives, vol. 2, 1744, vol. 2, p. 264.
12. ‘His Quality assured to him many Advantages, especially in the Way of Preferment in the Church. A Master of Arts of that College used to say, that he would give all he was worth to be a Lord’s Son; meaning that such a one of ordinary Learning and Morality, could not escape being, early or late, well preferred.’ (Lives, vol. 2, 1744, p. 239). See also the account of the awarding of his doctorate as a favourite of the Duke of Lauderdale in the Life (ibid., pp. 257-8).
13. Among other things for ‘[…] his rigorous Exaction of Duty and Order in the Scholars, and severe Justice in Elections [i.e., elections for Fellowships]’ Lives, vol. 2, 1744, p. 288. He appears also to have been the victim of bullying and physical assault, ibid., p. 275.
14. The book was Francis North’s A Philosophical Essay on Music Directed to a Friend, London, 1677, (published anonymously). See Newton’s letter dated April 21, 1677 in Turnbull, H. W., ed., The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1960 pp. 205-8 (it is also published in Kassler’s excellent The Beginnings of the Modern Philosophy of Music in England, etc., 2007). This is an extremely prompt reply according to my experience of academic peer-reviewing favours, the book had only been published in February of that year.
15. Friesen, 2004.
16. Lives, vol. 2, 1744, vol. 2, pp. 265-7.
17. Chan, 1995, pp. xi-xii.
18. Roger Cotes (1682-1716) edited the second (Latin) edition of the Principia, published in 1713. Cotes had been a student and protege of Newton, he was the first holder of the Plumian Chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge University. In his Preface Cotes explicitly criticised Descartes’ plenum/ether/vortex model, argued that Newton’s work was based on experiment and observation, and defended ‘attraction’ against accusations that it was an ‘occult’ quality. Cotes’ Preface also appeared the third edition (1726) and was translated and served as the Preface for Andrew Motte’s English edition of 1729 (which was based on the 1726 third edition). See https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_Philosophy_(1729).
19. See Millard, 1984, pp. 38-9 for a thoughtful discussion of Montagu’s interventions in the Lives as a whole.
20. Millard, 1984, pp. 40-1.
21. Chan, M. & Kassler, J. C., 1989; their observations on individual MSS are given on pp. 65-100, their observations on watermark categories on pp. 52-64.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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