is KKCOKi) OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 



John \Yulli>, D.I). 

 Kdmmid Wai! 



. 



- Wlllughby, K 

 William Win- 



John Winthrop, Esq. 

 Matthew Wren, Esq. 

 Thomas Wren, M.D. 

 Christofer Wren, LL.D. 

 Edmund Wylde, Esq. 



A special interest is attached to the foregoing list, inasmuch as 

 it affords an indication of the spirit in which the early founders 

 of the Royal Society chose the men whom they wished to be 



.-iated with them in one common fellowship for the further- 

 ance of natural knowledge. The first feature to be noticed is the 

 comparatively small proportion of men who had much claim to 



onsidcrcd scientific. The number of such men in the whole 

 community at that time was certainly not large. 1 At one of the 



t ings, held eighteen months before the granting of the Charter, 

 it had been resolved *that the stated number of this Society be 



and fifty \ as if the intention had been to confine the member- 

 ship to those who were actually engaged in the pursuit of 

 experimental philosophy or at least had shown themselves to 

 he keenly interested in its progress. But during the interval 

 between December 12, 1660, and May 20, 1663, a much wider 

 conception was entertained as to the composition of the infant 

 society. The men of science, properly so called, who appear in 

 the list, are hardly one-fifth of the whole number. But they 

 include some whose names are held in remembrance wherever the 

 history of modern science is known the Honourable Robert 

 Koyle, the most prominent man of science of his day, who in 

 many branches of investigation opened out paths that have led 

 to the modern development of chemistry and physics; John 

 \Vilkins, Warden of Wudham College, afterwards Bishop of 

 Chester, one of the ablest and most active in the group of 

 originators of the Uoyal Society, who, besides successively filling 

 high offices if) the Church and the Universities, produced a 

 t scientific writings that displayed great mathematical 

 acumen, and forecasted the submarine navigation of the sea and 

 tin- practicability of the navigation of the air; John Waliis, 



1 In }]< "*' Krbniary 1(5, 1(546-7, already quoted, after his eulogium of the 



mMM}>-r> nf tin- ' imUil.lc colic-,. ', } u , concludes with the recital of ' their chiefest fault, 

 which j> \. r y in :!:n<M all good things ; and that is, that there is not enough of 



tin-in '. 



