The origins of the Royal Society

The official historians of the Royal Society, from Thomas Sprat in 1667 to Sir Henry Lyons in 1944, have not been concerned to probe very deeply into the origins of the Society. The fullest of their accounts of this part of its history is given by C. R. Weld (1848) who briefly summarizes the formation and development of some other academies and scientific societies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their relation to the Royal Society, and investigates, though not in great detail, some of the circumstances which may have led to its foundation. With the exception of Sprat, who wrote too early, the historians have based their account of the origins of the Royal Society on a letter from Dr John Wallis, F.R.S., to Dr Smith of Magdalen College, Oxford, dated 29 January 1696/1697.² In view of this, and in spite of its length, Wallis’s account is quoted here also: . . . About the year 1645, while I lived in London (at a time, when, by our Civil Wars, Academical Studies were much interrupted in both our universities:) beside the Conversation of divers eminent Divines, as to matters Theological; I had the opportunity of being acquainted with divers worthy Persons, inquisitive into Natural Philosophy, and other parts of Humane Learning: And particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy.