Funciones básicas utilizadas en el sistema Ovation: Red Ovation

The first chapter picks up on two recent examinations of the Tudor and Early Stuart antiquary which have situated antiquarianism in this period as part of gentry culture, by Jan Broadway and Angus Vine. I take their work forward through the Restoration, asking to what extent the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century local historian, endowed with strong natural historical interests, new scientific practices and a more empirical than imaginative mind- set, was occupying an analogous socio-cultural space to his predecessors. The chapter demonstrates that county natural historians represent an evolutionary, not revolutionary, step from the antiquarians who preceded them, interacting with a memorial and gentry culture which would be clearly recognisable from the Tudor and early Stuart Age. At the same time, following the generational gap for local study provided by the Civil War and Interregnum, the increasing importance of the ‘new science’ surrounding the Royal Society encouraged the integration between natural history and antiquarianism which is at the heart of the thesis.

Chapter two, focusing particularly upon a journey into Kent made in August 1693 by Robert Plot and Thomas Browne (1646/7-??),110 _{explores the}

methodologies employed by county natural historians in an attempt to preserve the natural and man-made landscape around them. It discusses the extensive preparation that went on before trips such as this one, involving library research

110 _{The son of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82). I infer his year of birth from T. Browne and}

S. Wilkin, Sir Thomas Browne's works, including his life and correspondence (London, 1968).:p. lxxv: ‘he sent his second son, Thomas, to France in 1660, at the age of fourteen.’

and correspondence, along with in many cases sending questionnaires to locals and recalling personal experiences of the area, all of which was used to plan a route along which to travel, and to help determine when to go “off-route” to explore. While travelling they conversed with locals, observed the world around them, collected objects, commissioned illustrations, undertook basic experiments and transcribed a wide variety of lay and ecclesiastical records. In order to demonstrate these to the reader the main method used was the personal narrative, giving enough detail that the reader could experience, at a distance, the phenomena discussed and, if they so wished replicate it themselves. These narratives were backed up with references to collected objects, illustrations commissioned from engravers, and in the case of published works further textual research was undertaken, all of which were, the chapter will demonstrate, used to add authenticity to the accounts. The chapter closes by discussing the various practices by which these permanent records were disseminated through the collection of objects in the Ashmolean, the printing of the texts on which this thesis focuses, and the use of manuscript circulation for instance through the Royal Society and Bodleian.

Chapter three turns to historical epistemology to investigate the works produced by the county natural historians. It seeks to look at the basic epistemic concepts which underpinned the production of knowledge in the latter seventeenth century, with the aim of demonstrating that the County natural historians utilized a specific style of empiricism that I shall label faithful representation, or fidelity. It will argue that the aim of the county natural

historians was not to provide examples of well known axioms (the “Aristotelian fact”), nor to provide data for generalisation by natural philosophers (the “modern fact”), nor indeed to produce catalogues of deracinated particulars, but was to provide historical, descriptive and above all local knowledge which was culturally meaningful in itself. The chapter closes by situating faithful empiricism in the context of recent work by Daston and Galison, and in particular their conception of ‘truth-to-nature’ in the eighteenth century.

Chapter four looks at the significant change in the meanings encoded in the study of the natural world, following anthropologically-inspired historiography by arguing that this was not a removal of meaning. Instead, using the embedded religious and medical meanings which particular natural objects held, the chapter argues that the period saw a redefinition of the meanings encoded in the landscape. The county natural historians, whether physico- theologists or not, all believed that through the natural curiosity of humanity the study of the natural world would enable us ‘to take a clearer view of the infinite wisdom of the great creator’, who provided people with everything they needed in the natural world.111 _{When county natural historians did share potentially}

useful information, as in the case of the health properties of the landscape and in particular natural springs, I will demonstrate that they did so in such a way as to embed the properties within the landscape itself, rather than the people who inhabited it. By associating both God and health with the landscape they were

observing our authors demonstrate the particular power of natural history to “naturalise” the economic, moral and social ideas of the times.

The conclusion, in addition to drawing together the arguments advanced by the thesis, will briefly explore the way in which both antiquarianism and natural history progressed as disciplines in the eighteenth century. Even for local study, the two were clearly separated as disciplines, as we can see from William Borlase’s two works: The Antiquities of Cornwall (1754) and The Natural History of Cornwall (1758). While Borlase’s interests still spanned both antiquities and natural history, and much besides, his understanding of genres had them clearly separated. Antiquarianism retained the thoroughly local focus seen in county natural histories, while natural history (with some exceptions) became predominantly focused upon classifying, naming, and the production of general descriptions.

Chapter One- The landscape of County Natural History: