47 8 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
the Society, and was often present at their experiments in his 
gardens, his parks, or on the Thames ; and he even condescended 
to chide them “ on the slowness of their proceedings.” 
In 1663 he presented them with their mace. The charter and 
the mace are the only substantial favours which Charles II. appears 
to have conferred upon the Royal Society, and for a long period 
they worked on, by means of the genuine enthusiasm of the 
fellows, with no funds at their disposal for scientific purposes. I 
think it is amusing to observe that Sir Robert Moray so far con- 
trived to give a Scottish character to the Society, that their mace 
was decorated all over with the thistle, and that St Andrew was 
chosen as their patron saint. 
As soon as the Royal Society was established, its members con- 
nected it with the name of Bacon. Bishop Sprat, who published a 
history of the Society in 1667, writes : — “The Royal Society was a 
work well becoming the largeness of Bacon’s wit to devise, and the 
greatness of Clarendon’s prudence to establish.” Oldenburg, the 
first secretary of the Society, says : — “ The enrichment of the store- 
house of natural philosophy was a work begun by the single care and 
conduct of the excellent Lord Verulam, and now prosecuted by the 
joint undertakings of the Royal Society.” Glanvil, in his work 
called Plus Ultra , or the Advancement of Knowledge since the 
days of Aristotle , after alluding to the New Atlantis , says : — 
“ This the great man desired, and formed a society of experimenters 
in a romantic model ; but he could do no more — his time was not 
ripe for such performances. These things, therefore, were considered 
by later virtuosi, who several of them combined together, and set 
themselves to work upon his grand design.” Professor Napier 
quotes several other more obscure authorities, to show the .same 
opinion of Lord Bacon entertained in the minds of Englishmen. 
One Dr Power, in 1664, in a work on the discoveries of Galileo, 
Torricelli, and Pascal, calls Bacon “the patriarch of experimental 
philosophy.” Another writer, of the same year, with the unfortunate 
name of Mr Havers, says that “ Lord Bacon’& way of experiment, as 
now prosecuted by sundry English gentlemen, affords more proba- 
bilities of glorious and profitable fruits than the attempts of any age 
or nation whatsoever and Dr Childrey entitled his work on the 
Natural Rarities of England , “ Britannia Baconicaf in order to 
