and deserved status, Halley is most popularly remembered for announcing in 1704 that comets are periodic, long after Hooke was recorded by Pepys as pronouncing the very same.
In his 1665 book of microscopic studies entitled Micrographia, Robert Hooke commented on the concentric bands of coloured light which appear around the central area of a tight air-space between two sheets of transparent mica pressed together. From his studies in light waves, he determined that the rings were the result of interference, and that they occur when the separation between the surfaces is of the same order as the wavelength of light. Meanwhile, there was a young fellow studying for his bachelor ‘s degree at Cambridge named Isaac Newton. Many years later, Newton commented on these very same light bands, and today they are known as Newton’s Rings.12
Long before Isaac Newton came into the group’s philosophical arena, Robert Hooke began the first specifically defined research into gravity. Setting a pendulum swinging, he noted that the wider the commencing arc, the longer it took to come to a halt. But why should it come to a halt at all and what force was it that drew the pendulum gradually, through decreasing arcs, to an eventual standstill? The answer was, of course, gravity—a subject which Robert was destined to pursue, for it baffled him that everything pulled or fell downwards, except for the stars which remained in their suspended positions. There had to be scientific laws which determine the nature and function of earthly weight, or the apparent lack of it in the heavens.
Hooke’s Micrographia is one of the greatest scientific volumes ever published, and without doubt the foremost of all works concerning microscopy and biological research. But it was not limited to views through a microscope; there were telescopic observations of the moon and stars, descriptions of his newly invented thermometer, his barometer, his wind gauge and a hygrometer for measuring atmospheric humidity. He distinguished heat from burning, citing that burning ceases when oxygen expires no matter how much heat is applied, and put forward an abundance of revelatory material which brought proven science firmly out of the vague philosophical arena in which it had existed for so long.
This then was the operative scientific world of the Rosicrucian brotherhood in England. In terms of ultimate achievement, however, the Society’s heyday was far from over, and the greatest of all scientists, Isaac Newton, was yet to appear on the scene, 16 years before the 1688 Revolution.
Fire and Pestilence
While Samuel Pepys battled to resurrect a Navy that had fallen into decline during the Cromwellian era, John Evelyn and King Charles prepared a paper concerning plans to improve the environment. Both were troubled by the amount of grime and smoke which enveloped the narrow streets of London, and they called their scheme Fumifugium. But the politicians, with their out-of-town estates, were not remotely interested in the welfare of the city dwellers—only in the revenue derived from them—and so the scheme came to nothing. As it transpired, a little time and thought applied by the reluctant authorities at that stage might have prevented the great disasters which followed soon afterwards.
The poverty ensuing from the harsh Protectorate remained evident in the 1660s, with the towns and cities in a state of filth and decay, while the Whig aristocracy had built themselves fine country mansions with public money. Then came the long, hot summer of 1665, bringing with it the worst of all dreaded diseases: bubonic plague. Pepys recorded that it began in the June when he saw some houses in London’s Drury Lane marked with red crosses and the plea written on their doors, ‘Lord have mercy upon us’. By August, thousands were dying each week. Eventually, the Black Death (carried by rats and fleas) killed nearly 70,000 people in the capital alone—about 15 per cent of the population—as a result of which King Charles made another attempt to save the city. He sensed that another such summer, with severe electric storms, could so easily bring fire to the crowded timber structures that lined the streets and lanes of the capital. He approached the city authorities and gave them express permission to pull down strategically located buildings to create fire breaks, but nothing was done and the consequence was a major calamity.
Again it was Samuel Pepys who gave the news to the King and his brother James, Duke of York, after he had seen a fire spreading on 1 September 1666. He recommended, just as Charles had already suggested, that buildings must be demolished around the fire without delay. But it was too late and the blaze was already moving at an incredible rate. Subsequently, Pepys found the Lord Mayor skulking in Canning Street, knowing the disaster was his fault. With smoke and flames pouring through the alleys and billowing to the sky, King Charles became the director of operations. Hose-in-hand, he laboured among the soldiers and firemen, while his brother James organized the clearing of crucial areas to prevent an outward spread of the conflagration. In the event, however, it was a lost cause and 100,000 residents were made homeless.13
Through some fluke of circumstance, Gresham College and its precious library were spared, but its facilities were temporarily lost to the Royal Society. In order that the merchants and businessmen could maintain the trading economy of London, the College became an interim Royal Exchange. Hence, the Fellows’ research activities were curtailed for a time and the alchemical crucibles were placed on the back burner.
To mark the Great Fire of London as a constant reminder for the generations to come, Robert Hooke designed and built the 202-ft Doric-style Monument (the tallest of its kind in the world) in Fish Hill Street, close to where the fire started, and where the edifice remains a popular visitor attracton (see plate 25). Given the nature of the Royal Society’s cause, however, Hooke also contrived a practical purpose for the Monument, designing it with an internal spiral staircase to double as an astronomical viewing station.14
Gone was the city of Chaucer and Shakespeare; gone was the beautiful old St Paul’s, the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall, the Custom House and the Post Office, along with 87 city churches and the halls of 44 livery companies. Indeed, four-fifths of the city was destroyed, and this accounted for one-tenth of the nation’s wealth production. Quite suddenly it was an age of architects and designers, and none was more prominent than the Royal Society’s Christopher Wren, who entered the fray together with his colleague Robert Hooke. With the clearing of the debris completed by early December, Wren and Hooke began to measure the streets and sites, marking them up for restoration as great piles were driven into the ground.
The Act for Rebuilding was given royal assent in February 1667, stipulating new wider streets; also that buildings were to be of brick or stone, with slate or tiled roofs and no overhanging jetties or exterior woodwork. While Wren considered the more complex architectural work, Hooke was appointed Chief Surveyor, also gaining architectural commissions for the Royal College of Physicians, Montague House and the Bethlehem Hospital. Additionally, he worked on plans for various city companies: Grocers, Merchant Taylors and Mercers, along with Christ’s Hospital School and Bridewell. In preparing the design for the physicians’ college, Hooke made good use of his previous work with pulley-wheels and counterweights for wheel barometers, inventing the first ever sash windows.
Meanwhile, the 34-year-old Surveyor General, Christopher Wren, was faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of replacing innumerable buildings of the greatest magnitude and complexity—so many of which (though he built them to last for ever) were to be lost in the 1940 German air-raid blitz of World War II. Prized as the best known of his city masterworks is St Paul’s Cathedral, but he also rebuilt 51 other churches of the 87 that were lost in the fire. While thousands of new houses and business premises were rising like a phoenix from the ashes, another Wren masterwork was the new Royal Exchange. When this opened for business, the Royal Society moved once more to Gresham College. At the same time, Wren was working on other London buildings outside the central city, including the Chelsea Hospital, St Clement Danes, the Strand, and the area of St James’s where the Royal Society Club was subsequently installed.
If Freemasonry is about geometry, architecture, building, stonemasonry and all such things as are supposedly at its core (via Hiram Abiff,
