CHAPTER I 



EARLY SOCIAL LIFE OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 



IN the first half of the seventeenth century the group of 

 remarkable men, who in 1650 laid the first foundation of the 

 Royal Society, were in the habit of assembling weekly for the 

 purpose of discussing questions in physics and other parts 

 of human learning, and of making experiments in the spirit 

 of the New or Experimental Philosophy. These meetings 

 were most frequently held in some tavern, particularly the 

 Bull Head in Cheapside, but sometimes at the lodging of one 

 of the company, and in term time at Gresham College, or other 

 place not far distant. When the organisation of the Royal 

 Society was completed by the grant of a Royal Charter 

 from Charles II. on I5th July 1662, the movement in 

 favour of the active prosecution of scientific enquiry re- 

 ceived a great impulse. The meetings for discussion and 

 experiment were held regularly at Gresham College, where 

 a suite of apartments was provided as the home of the 

 Society. The philosophers, thus launched on their career 

 of observation and experimentation, were, however, con- 

 vivial Englishmen who, associated as fellow-workers in 

 scientific pursuits, became personal friends. The intimacy 

 thus created could not be restricted to the meeting-room or 

 the laboratory, but would necessarily demand the genial 

 intercourse of the table. It was the Age of Taverns. Men 

 felt then, as Johnson felt a century later, that " there is no 

 private house in which people can enjoy themselves so 

 well, as at a capital tavern," and that there is " nothing 



