even quality letters of introduction could not protect a traveler. After only three weeks in Brittany, which he spent hard at work collecting notes on the Breton language (“Armorican” to Lhuyd), his studies were interrupted by the intendant des marines of Brest. The intendant sent a messenger to Lhuyd’s lodgings to arrest him on suspicion of treason:
The messenger found me busy in adding the Armoric words to Mr Rays Dictionariolum Trilingue with a great many letters and small manuscripts about the table, which he immediately secured, and then proceeded to search our pockets for more. All these papers he ty’d up in a napkin, and requiring me to put three seals thereon, added three more of his own. I told him I had brought letters of recommendation to the Theologal of the City, who is the third person in the Diocese; upon which he went with me to him. The gentleman own’d it, and deliver’d him the letter, adding another in our behalf to his master, the Intendant, and a third to a captain of a man of war at Brest. Having secur’d our papers, he granted us the favour of going to Brest before them, a-part, that the country might not take notice of our being prisoners.91
By Lhuyd’s account, the messenger found him busy catching up on his philological note taking. He used the vocabulary lists in Ray’s trilingual dictionary as a basis for his own collections of Celtic words and compiled his vocabularies in a copy of Ray’s book, working from notes taken over the course of his travels. In that moment he was working on adding the Breton words to his master copy. This activity of writing, which required a profusion of “letters and small manuscripts,” was immediately suspicious as spy work. Despite letters from a high-ranking cleric (the “Theologal”), Lhuyd was held on suspicion of being a spy for just under two weeks in the jail in the castle at Brest. Initially refused an allowance for food and having only letters of credit with local merchants rather than cash to pay for his own, Lhuyd bargained with some Irish soldiers at the castle to pass him viands through the groundfloor window of his jail cell.92 He was released after an interpreter studied the papers that had been seized—many of which were written in Welsh and Cornish—and determined that “they contain’d nothing of Treason.” Lhuyd was aided in part by the interpreter’s vanity. Though unable to read Welsh and Cornish, he was “loath to own himself puzl’d; so told {the French officials} in general, without any exception, none of my papers related to Statematters” (which they did not, being primarily Welsh and Cornish poetry, word lists, and other philological resources, but how could the translator know that?).93 Lhuyd was released, and his papers were given back to him, but he was ordered to return immediately to England. Although he had originally intended to travel on to Paris, where his patron Martin Lister had important contacts, Lhuyd turned around and took the next boat back to England.94
As Lhuyd’s experience indicates, the difficulties facing the naturalist and antiquarian traveler were often social in nature. When traveling, naturalists and antiquarians frequently dealt with officials and other locals who had little knowledge of or respect for their credentials. Compared to these problems, bad roads and terrible weather seem hardly to have been worth remarking upon. Lhuyd rarely mentioned these inconveniences, instead dwelling on the negotiations and introductions that ensured access and assistance from local landowners. Letters of introduction to or from local notables were necessary but sometimes not sufficient to ensure access and protect them against harassment. The traveling naturalists and antiquarians struggled to gain access to private land and private libraries. Once access was granted, they had to convince private gentlemen to permit them to copy, take away, or buy samples of what they found on those gentlemen’s land and in their libraries. Beyond access to things, there was also access to information. Lhuyd noted this in his proposals for the natural history of Wales, when he spoke of the necessity of carrying money along to pay small sums to local workers, particularly miners, for information, such as details surrounding the collection of specimens.
For the traveling naturalist, such as Lhuyd, patronage was dispersed across many correspondents, acquaintances, informants, and subscribers, and yet he still had to find ways to align his interests with patrons who were not, at heart, naturalists. This made his situation both like and unlike that described in many classic studies of patronage in science and the arts, which focused on court patronage and the absolute (or would-be absolute) ruler.95 At the court all energy was focused on the ruler, and status and power were measured in one’s distance therefrom. The concentration of patronage in the absolute ruler meant that clients sought to align their interests with the ruler at all times in order to maintain patronage, which could create courts devoted to specific sciences or areas of investigation. Driven by the interests of the Landgraf, for example, the court of Hesse-Kassel under Prince Moritz (1572–1632) was a center of research into alchemy, Paracelsian thought and practice, chemical medicine, and the associated hermetic arts.96 Courtly patronage could also lead to the cultivation of certain styles of doing science: according to William Eamon, curiosity and virtuosity emerged in this period as scientific virtues precisely because they were the virtues that the learned prince sought to display in encouraging scientific activity at his court.97
Lhuyd’s situation was like that of the client of an absolute ruler in that he had to find ways to align his interests with those of his patrons, that is, his subscribers and those who assisted him as he traveled. This is reflected in the way he framed his appeals to subscribers, both in the initial subscription proposals for his research and in the questionnaires he issued. However, with over two hundred subscribers, he was not beholden to any one individual. The dispersal of patronage thus set Lhuyd on a somewhat more equal footing with his patrons than, say, the average alchemist in the court of Hesse-Kassel. He was not free from the necessity of designing and promoting his research to appeal to the shared interests of his subscribers. But, because Lhuyd needed no one of his subscribers in particular, he was free not to tailor his research to any of their individual needs. If one gentleman would not give his shilling, within limits, Lhuyd could find another.
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