was vested in long outmoded principles. The 2nd-century Alexandrian work of Ptolemy was considered a good enough guide to the celestial system, expounding the notion that the Earth was the fixed centre of the Universe, while in matters of natural philosophy Aristotle prevailed. They were taught nothing of atomic structure, only that everything existed in varying combinations of the four basic elements: earth, water, fire and air. It did not take them long, however, to recognize that true alchemy was far from being a foolish medieval cult. Moreover, it emerged that geometry and numerology were at the hub of all alchemical learning. They were not taught mathematics since it was not in the interests of their masters that they learn anything of real consequence.
John Wilkins knew that within his circle were some of the most inventive young minds in Britain—minds that should not be confined to shady backroom sessions. It was determined, therefore, that they must come out into the open with something to transform philosophy into an accredited science. Undoubtedly, what they needed were precedents—new scientific laws that would rock the establishment to its foundation. Christopher Wren and his friend Robert Hooke were especially fascinated by the stars and, in due course, the pair were destined to become the foremost masters of astronomy since Galileo. Indeed, eventually their pioneering approach was to demolish and overawe the restrictive teaching methods of all the major academies.
In 1657, wonderful news arrived from London, when Christopher Wren (still only 27) was offered the position as Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College in Bishopsgate. Astronomy, though regarded with suspicion at Oxford, was now officially recognized at Gresham despite the punitive regulations that applied. The college founder Sir Thomas Gresham (the Tudor royal agent in Antwerp) stated in the early 1600s that no more than 10 thinkers in Europe were prepared to accept the heliocentric principle of Nicolas Copernicus!10 Established in 1597, Gresham College was associated from the outset with cutting-edge research, and Sir Thomas’s daughter Anne was married to Nathaniel, brother of the Rosicrucian Grand Master, Sir Francis Bacon.
After Wren’s lecture, members of a London-based philosophical group explained to their Oxford counterparts that life had been tough for them in the City. Cromwell’s soldiers had invaded and disrupted their meetings, filling them with trepidation and fear for their lives. They had moved the venue numerous times to settle at the Bull’s Head tavern in Cheapside, but now the Gresham College door was opened by virtue of Wren’s fortuitous appointment. The New Philosophy, declared Wren, had been constrained for long enough. It was now time to straddle the divide and put science firmly on the map of academia.
Through the use of books brought in from Europe, they discovered the existence of theorems from ancient times—general propositions which were not self-evident (as conventional science was supposed to be), but were proven by chains of reasoning. They learned too about problems which could be expressed as symbols or formulae and solved by algebraic application. They found that astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo had made revelations concerning the sun and the solar system, without the help of official tutoring, along with a new celestial concept of the heavenly bodies which completely overturned what they had been taught by the university clerics. In the event, it was not long before Robert Hooke (by then Professor of Geometry at Gresham College) reinvented the telescope with his own uniquely manufactured lenses, discovering not only the secret of Orion’s alignment, but emerging as the first to determine sun-spots and Jupiter’s rings, and to calculate Jupiter’s rotation.
In all this, a prevailing mystery was the anomalous nature of their founder John Wilkins, for he was a reverend gentleman quite unlike any other. He had taken Holy Orders before 1645, but his Mathematicall Magick had a strong alchemical flavour which flew in the face of Church doctrine. Even more baffling to the group (considering his family alliance with Cromwell) was that Wilkins was chaplain to Charles Louis, Prince Palatine of the Rhine—eldest son of the King and Queen of Bohemia,11 and a sworn enemy of the Lord Protector. Moreover, the Palatinate was steeped in Rosicrucian alchemy.
Rosicrucians were, by Inquisitional definition, heretics and meddlers in the occult. Back in the days of Elizabeth I, the Queen’s adviser John Dee was a noted Rosicrucian,12 as was the hermetic philosopher Robert Fludd who aided the translation (from Greek into English) of the King James Bible. In practice, however, Rosicrucians were student chevaliers of the Rosi-crucis—the enigmatic symbol of the grand enlightenment (see chapter 13).
An intriguing, but poignant, aspect of post-1723 Freemasonry is that, whilst Euclid is revered in the Charges (although wrongly dated) there is no mention of John Dee. He had written the famous preface to the English translation of Euclid—the most remarkable monument to sacred geometry in which he urged the revival of the Euclidian art. James Anderson clearly knew of this work since he almost quotes from it on occasions. For example, concerning the 1stcentury reign of Augustus Caesar, Dee wrote: ‘…in whose days our heavenly Archmaster was born’. On the same subject of Emperor Augustus, Anderson wrote: ‘…when the great Architect of the Church was born’. Just as Hanoverian Freemasonry ignored Elias Ashmole’s hermetic interests, it also paid no heed to the work of John Dee, even though the 47th Proposition of the 1st Book of Euclid (the Pythagoras Theorem) is pictorially demonstrated (bottom centre) in Anderson’s 1723 frontispiece (see plate 5), and is a traditional symbol of masonic perfection. The reason once again is that Dee’s Rosicrucian connection was anathema to the newly devised straitlaced Freemasonry of Georgian times.
Wilkins’ Mathematicall Magick specifically referenced the sepulchre of Frater Rosicrosse, as detailed in the 1614-15 Fama Fraternitatis of the Rosicrucian Manifestos. (Also incorporating the Confessio Fraternitatis, the Manifestos were German works that announced an impending age of new enlightenment and hermetic liberation in which certain universal secrets would be unlocked and made known.) Wilkins’ work was also substantially based upon the mechanics section of Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Geomi Historia (published in the Palatinate in 1619). Additionally, Wilkins frequently cited the late Stuart Chancellor, Sir Francis Bacon, who had been a master craftsman of the Rosicrucian Order. Indeed, it was Bacon’s one-time vision of a fraternal scientific institute which led Wilkins to envisage the Oxford fraternity at a time when the Bohemian research of the Palitinate had been curtailed by the Thirty Years’ War in Europe (1618-48).
The apparent dichotomy of Dr Wilkins was a mystery to all. But for his group to thrive and survive, he made a strict masonic ruling from the outset: Whatever else might be discussed, the subjects of religion and politics were prohibited. Notwithstanding this, the Bible became a subject of continued study from the time of Wren’s Gresham College lecture in 1657, particularly in respect of chronology and astronomical time frames. In fact, this lecture was a manifesto of things to come from the group, since it referred to the tyranny of the Greek and Roman cultures upon which all 17th-century academic society was based.
Despite his scientific genius, the Eton-educated Robert Boyle was short-sighted and not particularly adept at mathematics, so Robert Hooke helped him a good deal with calculations and experiments. Both were fascinated by the power of exerted pressures, so Boyle concentrated on air pumps, while Hooke investigated springs. In the course of their collaborative work, important mathematical formulae relating to compressed air and compressed springs were discovered. They become known respectively as Boyle’s Law and Hooke’s Law—two of the most crucial precedents in the world of emergent science, and equally important today.
A Royal Charter
In time, and specifically from 1660, the Rosicrucian aims of the group emerged into the open with the Restoration of the flamboyant King Charles II. Quite suddenly, and irrespective of clerical opinion, they gained approval and recognition by way of a Stuart charter in 1662, to become known henceforth as the Royal Society. Their motto was established as Nullis in verba, which translates roughly to ‘Take no one’s word for it’—a motto which had been used previously by Sir Francis Bacon.
The
