Proceedings of Public Societies. 



[Feb. 1, 



power and ■pedal tfi^ace, and In coiislder- 

 acioii of the wives aforesaid, and to the 

 end the world may be replenished with 

 catholikes, that may hereafter oppose 

 themselves, and make resistance against 

 the-e Turkish intidells, Hu^onots, and 

 therefore have ordeyncd, and doeyrdeyne 



by good proofs. Furthermore we will or* 

 deyne and comand, that if anie of these 

 wyves cannot a<!;ree together, the hus- 

 band shall put her away that is most 

 troublesome, only giving her her apparel, 

 and nothing els ; and we do permit, by 

 the authoritie aforesaid, that the same man 



and by these presents, that all men, of may take another, such as he shall lyke, 



what condicion soever they be, except men 

 of the Church only, shall, uppon pain of 

 eXcommunicacion, take and marry two 

 honest women, and those :-ucb as njay be apt 

 to conceve and heare children, for and to 

 the end to multiplie the world asaine with 

 catholikes, which are fo sore decayed, and 

 moreover, we do ordeyne that this dispen- 

 sacion shall continue for the space of one 

 hundred yeres, if in case by our succes- 

 sor's fathers and Bishops of Rome, the 

 same tynie be not abridged. And we eo- 

 maiid that these our ordinances, without 

 dissimnlacion, be observed of all men that 

 are good xtians and catholikes, that is 

 cverie man to marry two wyves, as is 

 aforesaid, upon pain of excommunicacion, 

 and to incur our malediction and curse ; 

 exempting all those men which ar anie 

 maner of way insufficient, snch shall be 

 dispensed withal, after they have been vi- 

 sited and their impediments dewlj sertified 



and for the better advancement of our 

 decree and determinacion, we do authorise 

 all Bishopes, spiritual conimisioners, and 

 curates, of all parishes of France aud Low 

 Countries, to the end that all thinges may 

 be ordered in peace, amatie, and mutuale 

 agreement, and do therefore straightly 

 chardge andcomande all onrarchbishopes, 

 bishopes, officials, curates, and vicars, that 

 they do publishe and deliver in all parishes 

 as well as churche»and chappelles in the 

 townes aud cities in the aforesaid realme 

 of Fr.iunce and Low Countries, the afore- 

 said graces and ordinances by us or- 

 deyncd, denouncing all therein excommu- 

 nicated, not to be absolved but by our 

 successours, Popes and Bishops of Rome, 

 for so is our good-will and pleasure. 



Geven iu our Great Church of St. PeteT 

 at Rome, the 8th of October, and of our 

 Popedom the 8th yere. 



Cole, 46, 338. 



PROCEEDINGS OF PUBLIC SOCIETIES. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



ON taking (he chair, ou Thursday, 

 Dec. 7i the President, Sir H. 

 Davv, proceeded in a short discourse, 

 to point out (he objects of the Royal 

 Society in particular, and its re- 

 lation to various other scientific in- 

 stitutions, assembled for the purpose 

 of pursuing individual branches of in- 

 quiry. He then adverted to (he present 

 state of the Sciences, and to the im- 

 portant part taken by the Fellows of 

 the Royal Society in (heir improve- 

 ment and extension ; aud enumerated 

 the different subjects of natural know- 

 ledge that stood most in need of accu- 

 rate research, in nearly the following 

 terms : 



In pure mathematics, though their 

 nature, as a work of intellectual com- 

 bination, framed by the highest efforts 

 of human intelligence, renders them 

 incapable of receiving aids from the 

 observation of external phaenomena, or 

 the invention of new instruments ; yet, 

 they are, at this moment, abundant iu 

 the promise of new applications ; aud 

 many of the departments of philoso- 

 phical inquiry which appeared for- 

 merly to have no relation to quantity, 

 weight, figure or number, as I shall 



more particularly mention hereafter, 

 are now brouglit tinder the dominion 

 of that sublime science, which is, as it 

 were, the animating principle of all 

 the other sciences. 



When the boundary of tlie Solar 

 System was, as it were, enlarged by 

 the discovery of the Georgiuni Sidus, 

 and the remote parts of space accu- 

 rately examined by more poi^erful in- 

 struments than had ever bcfuro been 

 constructed, there seemed little pro- 

 bability that new planetary bodies 

 should be discovered nearer to our earth 

 than any of those already known ; yet 

 this supposition, like most others, in 

 which our limited conceptions are ap- 

 plied to nature, has been found erro- 

 neous. The discoveries of Piazzi, and 

 those astronomers who have followed 

 him, by proving the existence of Ceres, 

 Pallas, Vesta, and Juno, bodies smaller 

 than satellites, but, having the motions 

 of primary planets, have opened to us 

 new views of the arrangements of the 

 Solar System. Astronomy is the most 

 autient and the nearest approaching to 

 perfection of (he sciences ; ye(, relating 

 to the immensity of the universe, how 

 unbounded are the objects of inquiry it 

 presents, and amongst them, how many 



grand 



