CHAPTER XIII. 



THE Invisible College in England continued to hold its 

 meetings in Oxford and in Gresham College, but in 1659, 

 upon the fall of Richard Cromwell, the members were 

 scattered, and their gathering-place converted into bar- 

 racks. The advent of King Charles, however, gave them 

 new courage; and in 1660, twenty-one persons, including, 

 among others, Sir Kenehn Digby, Dr. Wilkins and Mr. 

 John Evelyn, regularly organized themselves into a society 

 for the promotion of all kinds of experimental philosophy. 1 



The prospects of the new society were not flattering. 

 At best it might plant a few seeds of sound knowledge of 

 which chance might favor the growth, or maintain a cult 

 which now and then might attract a disciple. But for 

 the great body of the English people, exhausted after 

 twenty years of incessant strife, and still in the turmoil 

 and excitement of the Restoration, physical science prob- 

 ably possessed no more immediate living interest, than it 

 had for the troublesome savages in the Irish bogs. So the 

 new philosophy had little to expect by way of speedy ad- 

 vancement; nor had it the inherent motive power capable 

 of diffusing it through the vast and sodden mass of popu- 

 lar ignorance and indifference; still less the more potent 

 impetus required to effect the substitution of new learning 

 for old, in minds which the latter had saturated and there 

 become stagnant. 



Nevertheless, it numbered among its members such men 

 as John Wallis, the mathematician; John Wilkins, after- 

 wards Bishop of Chester; Seth Ward, later Bishop of Salis- 

 bury; Jonathan Goddard, warden of Merton; Sir William 

 Petty, and most eminent of all, Robert Boyle. And per- 



1 Thomson: Hist. Roy. Society. London, 1812. 

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