1 8 Contemporary Historical JLvents 



week and year after year, as if they were living in a time of 

 profoundest peace. We may be sure, however, that at the 

 Club dinners the exciting events of the time were often 

 the subject of the conversation. Some of the members of 

 the Club and many of their guests had been actors in the 

 great world-wide drama. A number of them had shared 

 in the suppression of the Jacobite up-risings of 1715 and 

 1745. At least one of them had seen the final collapse of 

 the rebellion on the field of Culloden. Others had played a 

 notable part in the struggles of the American colonies against 

 Indians on the one side and Spanish and French rivals on 

 the other. There were naval and military men who had been 

 in the continental wars and could tell unpublished details 

 of battles in which the English navy and army had been 

 engaged. At intervals too there came times of peace 

 when men of science from this country could revisit France 

 and renew their intimacy with the philosophers there, or 

 when these philosophers crossed the Channel and received 

 in this country the cordial welcome which no international 

 disunion could chill. And after such short interludes of 

 peace there would again come times of war, when the men 

 who had met in friendly concourse at the meetings and 

 dinners of the Royal Society were once more separated into 

 hostile camps, and the same navigator who had been dis- 

 cussing here plans for the discovery of the North-west 

 Passage might be embarked in the French fleet under De 

 Grasse, while our naval men who had enjoyed his society 

 might be ranged in the opposing navy under Rodney or 

 Hood. In the latter half of the century, the revolt of the 

 American colonies and the long series of consultations and 

 conferences which preceded it must have been a frequent 

 subject of anxious discussion, for at least one of the fore- 

 most delegates of the colonies at the conferences in London 

 was an honoured Fellow of the Royal Society and a frequent 

 guest at the Dining Club. And lastly there came the con- 

 vulsion of the French Revolution and the long wars which 

 ensued until a reign of peace was reached in 1815. That 

 the meetings of the Royal Society should have been regularly 



