SOME OF THE EARLY LEADERS 



lawyers were also chosen into the Society in the first selection. 

 Among these we find the names of John Winthrop, Governor of 

 Connecticut, who had come to London bearing a loyal address 

 from his colony to the Kin<r and who subsequently sent many 

 * rarities ' to the Society's Repository ; Sir Cyril Wyche, barrister 

 and ultimately one of the three lords justices entrusted with the 

 government of Ireland, who became President of the Society in 

 1683; Sir Joseph Williamson, who founded the London Gazette, 

 which is still published ; Abraham Hill, Commissioner of Trade, 

 who twice served a period of several years as Treasurer of the 

 Society ; Sir Robert Southwell, English envoy in Portugal, after- 

 wards principal Secretary of State for Ireland and President of 

 the Royal Society for five years from 1690. 



It was natural that as the study of medicine involved practical 

 acquaintance with some departments of science, medical men 

 should be well represented among the original Fellows of the Royal 

 Society. Besides the Gresham Professor of Physic, already 

 referred to, there were William Croone, who was not only a 

 doctor of medicine but also Gresham Professor of Rhetoric, and 

 by whose benefaction the Croonian Lecture Fund of the Royal 

 Society was established ; Francis Glisson, already referred to ; 

 and Daniel Whistler, who was President of the Royal College 

 of Physicians in 1683, and a number of other prominent physicians 

 of the day. 



Of a considerable proportion of the original Fellows of the 

 Society little or nothing is known. They were mostly, to use 

 Sprat's expression, ' gentlemen, free and unconfin'd,' that is, men 

 who were not connected with any of the professions, but ' who 

 by the freedom of their education, the plenty of their estates, and 

 the usual generosity of noble bloud, may be well suppos'd to be 

 most averse from sordid considerations '. l There is, however, one 

 of the company who deserves to be had in remembrance John 

 Graunt, already referred to, the author of the ' Natural and 

 Political Observations on the Bills of Mortality', 1661, of which 

 Sir William Petty made such good use. So much did Graunt's 

 treatment of vital statistics attract attention that the King himself 



1 History, p. 68. 



