94 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2''d S. No 83., Aug. 1. '57. 



were often committed to scraps of paper pro tempore, which 

 ■were occasionally lost." 



A Reader. 



WHEW DID THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND SANCTION 

 THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM OF ASTRONOMY? 



(2°« S. ii. 248.) 



I have been waiting, with no ordinary interest, 

 for a reply from some of your contributors to 

 your correspondent's Query on this subject. In 

 the absence of such reply, I offer two small bits of 

 information, in the hope that they will lead to 

 more. It is known that the great Pole, Koper- 

 iiick (whom Berlin writers call a Prussian, be- 

 cause his native city. Thorn, now belongs to 

 Prussia,) was excommunicated by the church of 

 Rome for his re-establishment, with certain im- 

 provements, of the solar system of Pythagoras ; 

 according to which the sun, and not the earth, is 

 the centre of that system. That excommunica- 

 tion was taken off, or revoked, in the year 1821 : 

 and, consequently, from that year we may date 

 the acceptance of the Pythagorean or Copernican 

 theory by the Pope. 



What I wish to know, in common with your 

 correspondent, is this : When did the Church of 

 England authorise a belief in the Copernican 

 theory ? The latter was only beginning to be 

 popular in England in the seventeenth century. 

 But, at that time. Sir Thomas Browne had no 

 faith in the theory. That the earth moved seemed 

 to him a contemptible and laughable proposition. 

 He says there are many things which he could be- 

 lieve, but which he will not accept because his 

 church disavowed them. For this reason, he per- 

 haps delivered the following modified opinion on 

 the subject ; in which, although he affected to 

 hold the Copernican system in scorn, he lets us 

 obtain a view of, at least, his own uncertainty 

 thereon : — 



" And, therefore, if any affirm the earth doth move, 

 and will not believe with us, it standeth still, because he 

 hath probable reasons for it, and I no infallible sense, nor 

 reason against it, I will not quarrel with his assertion." — 

 Works, vol. i. p. 35. (Bohn). 



Dr. Christopher Wren, the father of the archi- 

 tect, and Dean of Windsor, a contemporary of 

 Browne, stoutly opposed the Copernican system, 

 and upheld the one which seemed to him to be in 

 more strict accordance with Scripture. We may 

 believe, therefore, that though the Ptolemaic 

 system was falling from general favour in the 

 middle of the seventeenth century, the Church 

 still supported it, as far as it was adopted by 

 Tycho Brahe, as consonant with holy writ, and 

 that a " Copernican," in that century, had some- 

 thing of the character of an innovator and dis- 

 senter. I should be glad, however, to-learn some- 



thing more on this subject from correspondents 

 better qualified to treat of it than myself. 



J. DORAN. 



BEMABKABLE SATIBES. 



(2"" S. iv. 7. 68.) 



I have a copy of Mrs. Newcomb's edition of 

 these Satires, and have seen others, all wanting 

 "The Causidicade ;"* this I have, however, in 

 Poems \^Sati7'ical] on Various Subjects, Glasgow, 

 printed by Sawney M'^Pherson, Bvo. 1756. In the 

 British Museum copy of the first tiie missing piece 

 is supplied from this last, and the whole lettered 

 Morgan's Satires, upon the authority of the JEu- 

 ropean Mag., vol. xxiii. p. 253., where, in Notes 

 appended to a Memoir of Lord Mansjfield, K. S. 

 will find the following : 



"On this occasion [the appointment of Murray as Soli- 

 citor-General in place of Sir G. Strange, Nov. 1742] a 

 doggrel poem was published by one Morgan, a person 

 then at the bar, entitled The Causidicade, in which all 

 the principal lawyers were supposed to urge their respec- 

 tive claims to the post. At the conclusion it is said : 



" Then M y prepar'd with a fine Panegyrick 



In Praise of himself would have spoke it like Garrick; 

 But the President stopping him, said, 'As in Truth 

 Your worth and your Praise is in ev'iy one's mouth, 

 'Tis needless to urge what's notoriously known, 

 The Office, by Merit, is yours all must own ; 

 The Voice of the Publick approves of the Thing, 

 Concurring with that of the Court and the K g.' " 



We may take it for granted that it was the 

 same hand who again attacked the rising lawyer 

 in I'he Processionade, published in 1746. There 

 the satirist would swell the outcry by branding 

 Murray as a Jacobite : 



" The new-fangl'd Scot, who was brought up at Home, 

 In the very same School as his Brother at Rome, 

 Kneel'd conscious, as tho' his old comrades might urge, 

 He had formerly drank to the King before George." 



Admitting that Porcupinus Pelagius, the author 

 of these Satires, was one Morgan, I think we may 

 safely draw a little closer and fix them upon Mac- 

 namara Morgan, an Irishman, and a member of 

 Lincoln's Inn at the period, who, by virtue of 

 some dramatic essays, has found a niche in the 

 BiograpJiia Dramatica. Morgan, according to 

 this last authority, was full of national zeal, and 

 no doubt fell in with the humour that these North 

 Britons were getting more than their fair share of 

 the loaves and fishes. He died in 1762.f J. O. 



* The C, a Panegyri-Satiri-Serio-Comic-Dramatical 

 Poem, on the Strange Resignation, and Stranger-Pro- 

 motion. 



t [The last Satire in R. S.'s volume, The Pasquinade, is 

 attributed to Dr. William Kenrick in the British Museum 

 Catalogue, and by Watt. — Ed.] 



