Peter C. Mancall | Peter C. Mancall on Robert Plot's Natural History of Oxford-Shire | Environmental History, 9.2

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Peter C. Mancall on Robert Plot's Natural History of Oxford-Shire

DONALD WORSTER began his history of ecological thought in the West with an essay on the English pastor Gilbert White and his frequently reprinted Natural History of Selborne. That was a logical place to start, especially given that White's book had the virtue of being a work of literature as well as empirical science.¹ Yet a century before White published his history of Selborne in 1789, an Oxford-trained scholar named Robert Plot wrote The Natural History of Oxford-Shire, Being an Essay toward the Natural History of England. Published in Oxford in 1677, the book included sixteen carefully rendered full-page illustrations. The picture here is a composite diagram of Oxfordshire's antiquities. Though modern readers might find this an odd image for a book of natural history, setting in into its context reveals how nature was understood by one seventeenth-century observer.

The picture and the book that contained it present a pre-Linnaean scheme for describing an environment. As such, the image suggests how one early modern European understood the natural world and disseminated information about it. Born at a time when Europeans were filling their personal cabinets of curiosity with natural and human-made artifacts from across the world, Plot believed that works of humans and works of nature all logically fit a work of natural history. Nor was Plot troubled by the effects of human innovation on the environment. He could look out over his pre-industrial landscape without the anxieties that later prompted crafters of natural history to seek a nature away from what Worster elegantly labeled the "unpleasant aspects of modernity."²

To a modern observer, the picture contains a series of seemingly unrelated objects. But there was an order to it. Plot intended the viewer to read the image from top to bottom. The early modern owner of this copy (now at the Huntington Library) recognized Plot's intention, for he or she added folio references to relate passages in the text to the images. At the extreme upper right corner there is a stone that stood nine feet high, and nearby lay a circle in which the tallest of the stones stood at seven feet; two furlongs away in real life, and down and to the right on the picture, lay a group of five other stones, with the tallest again reaching nine feet. Similar clustering of standing stones elsewhere in the county had spawned a legend among "the common people" who called them "Rollrich-stones, and dream[ed] they were somtimes men, by miraculous Metamorphosis turned into hard stones."³

Reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

The center of the picture brings the viewer closer to the modern age. The largest object is the baptismal font for Edward the Confessor, which had been rescued from its ruined church and erected in the garden of Sir Henry Brown. The coin depicted to the left of the font represented Edward's divine ability to cure scrofula since he possessed what Plot termed "the gift of Sanation," which he bequeathed to his successors. The three interlocked rings below it were produced by either the Saxons or the Danes (Plot was not sure), possibly worn by "some ordinary person" since the largest ring (the "armilla") was made of copper with which "only the vulgar adorned themselves."⁴

The final image, depicted on the bottom right of the engraving (next to the praise of Sir Thomas Spencer, who had supported Plot's work), is perhaps the most unusual in the entire volume. It was a stone carving excavated from Spencer's garden. Plot surmised that the piece could not be too ancient since it was written in Chinese. Though it was possible that the stone had come to England in the age of King Alfred (who had sent the bishop of Sherbourn to India), Plot thought it more likely that it was found sometime after Vasco de Gama had reawakened Europeans to the existence of China at the end of the fifteenth century. That meant that it could not have been in England more than 160 years by Plot's calculation.⁵

But what, exactly, was this stone? Plot noted that it had "an odd kind of texture, and colour too, not unlike (to sight) some sort of cheese, exactly of the figure and bigness as engraven in the Table; and most likely of any thing to have been one of their Togrâ's, or Stamps, wherein the chiefpersons of the Eastern Countries usually had their names cut in a larger sort of Character, to put them to any Instruments at once, without further trouble." This explanation made sense to Plot's English readers who already knew of the existence of such things from histories of China. "[I]n all probability the letters on this stone contain only the name, and perhaps the office, or other title of some person of Quality, and therefore hard to be found out," Plot concluded, "and that it was brought hither by some Traveller of the Honorable Family of the Spencers, and either casually lost, or carelessly thrown out as a thing of no value."⁶

The inclusion of such an image in a book of natural history might not make much sense now, but it fit seventeenth-century notions about cataloging nature. In that sense, Plot was an emblematic figure of his age. Born in Borden in Kent on 13 December 1640, he entered Magdalen Hall at Oxford in December 1658, earning his B.A. in 1661, M.A. in 1664, and a doctorate in civil law in 1671. He was elected as a fellow to the Royal Society on 6 December 1677, became its secretary in 1682, and in January 1683 began to edit its Philosophical Transactions. That year he also became the first professor of chemistry at Oxford. He befriended John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, and, while Pepys was serving as secretary of the Admiralty, Plot even wrote a technical paper on the proper season to fell lumber. His seven major contributions to the Royal Society covered a wide range of topics, from how brine produced both salt and sand, a "discourse of Sepulchral Lamps of the Ancients," an account of Oxford's weather in the year 1684, and a "Catalog of Electrical Bodies."⁷

Plot's study of Oxfordshire testified to his emergence as a scientist keen to observe and describe aspects of the natural world. That sensibility was evident throughout his book. His first chapter, on "the Heavens and Air," informed his readers about stars and weather, including unusual events such as "the appearance of two Parhelia or mock-Suns, one on each side of the true one, at Ensham on the 29th of May, early in the morning, in the year 1673." He also mentioned how the Moon "set her Bow in the clouds, of a white colour, entire and well determined," which lacked the colors of a rainbow but was nonetheless remarkable. In each instance Plot provided a rational explanation for the phenomena that he described: The moon bow seemed related to unusually inclement weather, and the double sun could perhaps be explained as reflection or refraction within the clouds, "or by both, in a great annulary cake of Ice and Snow" as Descartes had suggested.⁸

What followed such speculations provided an early clue to Plot's way to explain natural phenomena: He focused on what he had observed or, on occasion, on what he had heard from reliable authorities. Hence he told about violent storms in the area and echoes to be heard in selected parts of the countryside and in the city, including the different kinds of echoes heard within the walls of particular colleges. His diagrams depicted the appearance of the mock-sun and the ways that echoes could be heard.⁹

Plot's chapters detailed many aspects of the local environment. He followed the chapter on air with another on local waterways, though he included such unlikely events as a schedule listing the meetings of parliaments and councils in Oxford and speculations about the impact of diseases such as smallpox that had no obvious relation to the county's water supplies. The chapter on soils included much precise geological data, such as the kinds of marl to be found in Oxford's hills. Those interested in geology could find more data in the next chapter, which focused entirely on stones, or the long chapter that followed on what Plot called "formed stones." This later chapter included descriptions and diagrams of unusual natural rocks and shells, which "seem rather to be made for his [man's] admiration than use."¹⁰ Chapters on plants (including crops and trees) and beasts followed. As ever, Plot was keen to describe the unusual, such as a cow living near Dorchester in a place called Newington, which gave birth when it was only eleven months old. Since the gestation period for cows was nine months, Plot had "either to admit that she took Bull at about ten or eleven weeks old, or that the Cow her self was at first brought forth pregnant of another," a phenomena that no less an authority than Aristotle had described among mice living in Persia.¹¹

Plot studied humans too, though he quickly moved from general statements about the bodies of men and women to unusual people who inhabited the county. He realized that this chapter did not fit the scheme of the book since it "cannot be expected, that the methods of the other Chapters can be observed here, there being no newspecies of Men to be produced, or not sufficiently noted already." Still, he demonstrated a typical early modern European fascination with extraordinary humans. Multiple births caught his attention, especially since the elder Pliny (who was the most revered authority on nature among learned early modern Europeans) had written that no woman could produce more than three children at a time yet one local woman had delivered four in 1675. He wrote too about women who had children after the age of fifty, generally thought impossible, and of the fact that women could be revived after death more easily than men (though he admitted that in either case such a phenomenon was rare). One woman even recovered from her own hanging (a sentence she received for infanticide), only to be hanged a second time after she came back to life.¹²

Plot concluded his work with a series of observations that bore even less obvious relevance to any work of natural history. Here he focused on works of artifice instead of nature. "Thus having run through all the Natural Bodies I have met with in Oxford-shire, such as either Dame Nature has always retained the same from the beginning, as Waters, Earths, Stones, &c. or freely produces in her ordinary course, as Plants, Animals, with all her extravagancies and defects, or other accidents attending," he wrote, "I am come at length, according to my proposed method, to treat of Arts, and things artificial, that have either been invented or improved in this County[.]" Plot found a number of things worthy of notice, including the use of scientific instruments in astronomy and the corrections of the calendar necessitated by celestial observations. He also thought this the appropriate place to discuss agricultural practices and innovations, or "the Arts relating to the Earths" as he put it. Plot even put in a detailed analysis of music theory, including mathematical formulae explaining the ways to make precise sounds with particular instruments.¹³

The picture here comes from the last chapter, which focused on antiquities. Plot had not originally intended to include such material in the book since he believed that the chapter on arts had "finish'd the Natural History of Oxford-shire" and prompted him "accordingly [to] here put a period to my Essay[.]" But he believed that other chroniclers of England had either ignored such artifacts or "imperfectly mention'd" them. It thus fell to him to describe what he had "met with in this kind, whether found under ground, or whereof there yet remain any foot-steps above it; such as ancient Mony, Ways, Barrows, Pavements, Urns, ancient Monuments of stone, Fortifications, &c. whether of the ancient Britains, Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans."¹⁴

Once he had finished describing the small Chinese stone, Plot ended his study. He recognized that his work soon would be superceded, that "new matter will daily present itself, to be added to some one or other of these Chapters." Even since the first chapters had been printed, he had gained exciting information that should have appeared in its early pages, such as an observation of a new kind of echo and a surgeon's ability to remove an obstruction from under one man's tongue.¹⁵

Plot never stopped observing the natural world around him. Almost a decade after writing his study of Oxford he produced a natural history of Staffordshire. In 1683, the year he assumed his academic post at Oxford, Elias Ashmole appointed him to be the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. He held that post when twelve cartloads of material from the Tradescants' collection already acquired by Ashmole arrived in Oxford from London. When the museum opened in May of that year, the city of Oxford presented James, then Duke of York (but soon to accede to the throne), with a presentation copy of Plot's book. Five years later, King James II appointed Plot to be Historiographer Royal, a post that reduced the time he could spend on his various duties in Oxford. He resigned his professorship in 1689, and the next year gave up his position at the museum as well.¹⁶

To Plot, there was nothing odd about including an image of a stone circle or a life-size depiction of a Chinese stamp in a work that detailed Oxford's natural environment. His book fit an age before the development of the discipline of ecology. As such, it is a reminder of a time when modern sensibilities were beginning to take shape, but before the assault on the environment so characteristic of the industrial world. In Plot's time, scientists who wanted to write about nature's wonders did not eschew writing about people and their inventions too. Robert Plot died in 1696, a generation before the birth of Linnaeus (in 1707) and White (in 1720). His was perhaps the last of the generations unafraid of humans' ability to reshape the landscape.

Peter C. Mancall, professor of history at the University of Southern California and director of the USD-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, is the editor of Land of Rivers: America in Word and Image (Cornell, 1996). He currently is working on an environmental history of the sixteenth-century North Atlantic.

Notes

^1. Donald Worster, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 3–25.

^2. Ibid., 16.

^3. Robert Plot, The Natural History of Oxford-Shire (Oxford, 1677), 336–7.

^4. Ibid., 351–2 (baptismal fount), 345–47 (rings, quotation at 347).

^5. Ibid., 356–7.

^6. Ibid., 357.

^7. All biographical details not otherwise cited can be found in Anthony Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses. An Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops ... of Oxford, 2 vols. (London, 1721), II: 1121–22; and Dictionary of National Biography, 58 vols. (London: 1885–1900), xlv, 424–26.

^8. Plot, Natural History of Oxford-Shire, 1–4.

^9. Ibid., 4–6 (storms), 7–17 (echoes), 16 (diagrams).

^10. Ibid., 20–21 (parliaments), 23–24 (smallpox), 53–54 (marls, Pliny), 69–79 (stones), 80–142 ("formed" stones; quotation at 80).

^11. Ibid., 143–74 (plants), 175–91 ("brutes"; quotation at 189).

^12. Ibid., 192 (on people in his scheme), 194–5 (multiple births and births to older women), 197 (women recovering from death), 199–200 (hanging).

^13. Ibid., 214 (on including the arts in the book), 214–27 (astronomy and calendar), 239–50 (agriculture), 288–99 (music).

^14. Ibid., 308.

^15. Ibid., 357–8.

^16. Details about Plot's tenure at Oxford and his relationship to the Ashmolean can be found in R. F. Ovenall, The Ashmolean Museum, 1683–1896 (Oxford, 1986), 31–63. For the arrival of the Tradescant's collection and the presentation of Plot's history to James see Martin Welch, "The Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum," in Arthur Macgregor, ed., Tradescant's Rarities: Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum 1683 (Oxford, 1983), 51–52.

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