May 27, 2026 • 38 mins
Samuel Hartlib doesn’t exactly spring to mind when thinking about influential figures of the 17th century. But he served as a sort of conduit for information and connections among them as he sought to promote his ideas regarding theology and education.
Research:
- Britannica Editors. "Samuel Hartlib". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Mar. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Hartlib
- Britannica Editors. "Thirty Years’ War". Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Mar. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/event/Thirty-Years-War
- Britannica Editors. "John Dury". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jan. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dury
- Hartlib, Samuel, OR John Dury. “A Further Discoverie Of The Office Of Public Address For Accommodations.” 1648. The Hartlib Papers. University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib/view?docset=main&docname=14A_02_03
- Hartlib, Samuel. “Ephemerides 1635.” The Hartlib Papers. University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib/view?docset=main&docname=29_03_01&term0=transtext_ephemerides#highlight
- Hartlib, Samuel. “Ephemerides 1650.” The Hartlib Papers. University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib/view?docset=main&docname=28_01_49&term0=transtext_ephemerides#highlight
- Hartlib, Samuel. “Ephemerides 1651.” The Hartlib Papers. University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib/view?docset=main&docname=28_02_01&term0=transtext_ephemerides#highlight
- Hartlib, Samuel. “Ephemerides 1659.” The Hartlib Papers. University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib/view?docset=main&docname=29_08_01&term0=transtext_ephemerides#highlight
- McDowell, Nicholas. “The Oxford Handbook of Milton (Oxford Handbooks).” OUP Oxford. 2009. Kindle Edition.
- Masson, Victoria. “The Origins & Causes of the English Civil War.” Historic U.K. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Origins-of-the-English-Civil-War/
- Milton, John. “Tractate on Education. A FACSIMILE REPRINT FROM THE EDITION OF 1673. EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY OSCAR BROWNING, M.Α.” Cambridge University Press. 1890. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=KzsVAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-KzsVAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1
- “Pact Signed By Dury, Comenius And Hartlib, And Later By William Hamilton.” The Hartlib Papers. March 3, 1642. The University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib/view?docset=additional&docname=7E_109T&term0=transtext_pact#highlight
- Trevor-Roper, Hugh. “The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.” Liberty Fund Indianapolis. 1967. https://web.archive.org/web/20061213185209/http://olldownload.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/TrevorRoper0256/Crisis17thC/0098_Bk.pdf
- Turnbull, G. H. “Samuel Hartlib’s Influence on the Early History of the Royal Society.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, vol. 10, no. 2, 1953, pp. 101–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/530806
- Turnbull, G.H. “SAMUEL HAKTLIB A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND HIS RELATIONS TO J. A. COMENIUS.” Oxford University Press. 1920. https://ia801209.us.archive.org/21/items/cu31924027998859/cu31924027998859.pdf
- Webster, Charles. “A Portrait of Samuel Hartlib: In Search of Universal Betterment.” Open Book Publishers. 2025. Accessible online: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0486
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So the Heartlib circle
came up in research recently, and I put it right
on my list because it is this very unique nexus
(00:24):
of scientific and philosophical thought in the seventeenth century right
out of the gate. We got to make a note
on name pronunciation because we're having a lot of these lately.
I know this person, Samuel Hartlib, who will talk about
some more a whole lot today, originally was born in Prussia.
His name is from the German side of his family,
(00:46):
his father's side of the family, which would lead one
to say Heartlib. And it's spelled a million different ways
if you look at various historical documents. But because he
did most of his work in Britain and most of
the writing about him has been in Britain, most scholars
about him pronounced it Heartlib, and so we're just going
(01:08):
to roll with that, recognizing that he too. I don't
know where he landed, if he had a preference or not.
I suspect probably his contemporaries also pronounced it that way
once he was living in London. The name Samuel Hartlib
probably does not exactly spring to mind when people are
thinking about influential figures of the seventeenth century. But he
(01:29):
was very connected to a lot of the names you
would think of, and he served as this sort of
conduitive information to many of them and made connections among
them as he sought to promote his own ideas regarding
theology and education, which he saw as being very closely
tied to government and successful government, as well as this
(01:52):
really overarching goal in his life to provide ready access
to information to anyone and everyone about like the latest
scientific developments. You'll see references to the Heartlib circle in
a lot of writing about these people. Heartlib never called
his network of people that he corresponded with anything. That
(02:14):
name Heartlib Circle wasn't coined until the twentieth century, and
that happened then because there was a surge of scholarship
about his work in the nineteen twenties and thereafter after
a fortuitous turn of events brought his life's work back
to light. Samuel Hartlib was born around sixteen hundred, probably
(02:36):
in Elbing, Prussia, to a German father and an English mother,
so Elbing is part of modern day Poland, and in
Polish it's pronounced very differently from that, more like Elblong.
He's one of the many cases we've had on the
show recently where this early life is not well documented.
In a biography written by gh Turnbull in nineteen twenty,
(03:00):
the biographer notes that there's no record of Heartlib in
the birth records from Elbeing at the time, and there
are also not any records in the baptismal records from
the churches of the city. He doesn't appear in any
of the school records of Elbing from the time when
he would have been a child, so there are just
(03:20):
a lot of question marks about his early life and education.
There are mentions of a George Hartlib who is believed
to have been Samuel's brother. Even Samuel's higher education comes
with a lot of debate. He has long been cited
as attending the University of Cunningsburg starting in sixteen fourteen,
(03:42):
but there are once again no solid records to really
back that up. A more recent biography by Charles Webster,
which came out in twenty twenty five, says that there's
actually more substantiation that Samuel was in Silesia and enrolled
at the Academy at Briggs starting in sixteen five fifteen.
When did he leave there another unanswered question. We do
(04:06):
know that hartleb went to the University of Cambridge, but
that two has inconsistencies regarding the timing. Sixteen twenty eight
is frequently given as the first year that we can
conclusively say he was living in England, but in the
latter twentieth century additional correspondence has come to light that
indicates that he was definitely there before that, in the
(04:27):
mid sixteen twenties. And even in saying he went to Cambridge,
we really have to clarify because he does not appear
to have actually enrolled in the university, but did study
informally with some members of its faculty, and even after
that he returned to Elbing after his time at Cambridge,
So that whole like right up to the late sixteen twenties,
(04:50):
so much guesswork going on regarding his background. It's very foggy. Indeed,
he became friends with John in sixteen twenty eight. Durry
was born in fifteen ninety six in Edinbargh, Scotland, so
he was around the same age as Heartland. Durry was
a Protestant minister and was in Elbing in sixteen twenty eight,
(05:13):
and the two men met there soon after that this,
a series of interlocking conflicts known as the Thirty Years War,
which spanned from sixteen eighteen to sixteen forty eight, made
Elbing an increasingly more dangerous place to be. Sweden was
using this port city as a base and a staging
ground in the struggle for the control of the Baltic Sea.
(05:35):
So Heartland went to England, and this time he stayed there.
Durry did as well for a time, and the two
of them continued to be close friends. On January twentieth,
sixteen twenty nine, Samuel married a woman named Mary Birmingham.
Some accounts show her last name with an M like Birmingham.
(05:55):
Unclear to me which of those is accurate. We also
just don't know a whole lot about Mary, although the
two of them were married for years and they had
at least six children together. Most of what we know
about their kids is because later in their lives they
lived near samuel peeps and he wrote about them. Heartlib
was an active promoter of the need for reform within
(06:18):
schools and Protestant churches. John Durry was his friend, but
also one of his influences and ultimately a collaborator on
many reformist texts. Derry sought to reform the church by
uniting the fractured Protestant factions. Heartlib agreed with this idea,
and he put forth the idea that if the church
(06:39):
could be united in England, then the whole country would benefit.
And this is also where a little bit of a
confession has to come in for me. I wanted so
much to include lots of Heartlib's writings in this episode,
but let me tell you that is a slog He
was deeply verbose, and in addition to the somewhat stilted
(07:01):
writing of the day that you might see in any text,
he was even more stilted than that. As an example,
here is a portion of a pamphlet that he wrote
in sixteen forty seven titled Considerations tending to the Happy Accomplishment.
So the point of this work is to make the
case that if England can reform its religion, everyone will benefit.
(07:22):
As Tracy just mentioned, this is the most easily accessible
passage in terms of messaging that I could find quote,
and least any might make a doubt of this last position,
let us a little enlarge ourselves thereon, to make it
more apparent from the undoubted maxims and reasons of a
true reformed Christian state, such as we are now called
(07:45):
to be. If we take notice of our condition first,
then we conceive that the glory and happiness of a
state go hand in hand together, so that everything which
may add unto the true glory is also fit to
increase the happiness, a vice versa. On the other side,
whatsoever doth add unto the true happiness, is also fit
(08:05):
to increase the glory of a state. Basically, if we're
all happy, the whole country will be happy. But he
has to put a lot of extra words in there.
Samuel Hartlib also believed that education was vital for everyone,
and one of the efforts he made early on during
his time in England was the establishment of a school.
(08:27):
This attempt was in Chichester in sixteen thirty. Although that
school did not draw enough students to stay open, Heartlb
closed it almost immediately after founding it. It lasted for
less than a year. Not long after that, he started
a correspondence with John Amos Comenius, who became another huge influence.
(08:48):
For a little background, John Amos Comenius was born in Moravia,
in an area that is now part of the Czech Republic.
You'll often see him described as being Czech if you
look him up today. He was a minister and an educator,
and he developed an ideology that he thought could lead
to a deeper connection among the warring countries and cultures
of Europe, and that was universal education. Comenius thought that
(09:12):
if everyone was truly educated, they would understand and accept
their fellow humans better and would be less likely to
start conflicts with one another. One of the cornerstones of
this idea was that everyone should learn to read Latin.
He thought that this would improve access to a wide
range of historical information and open up the wealth of
Western knowledge to all to heartlive in a lot of
(09:35):
his colleagues, these ideas of educational access and a united
religion were two sides of the same coin. This was
at the heart of Hartleeb's thinking. He believed that God
granted every person a talent, and that if they shared
that talent with others, everyone would learn from one another.
They would all know more, They would understand each other better,
(09:57):
and people would recognize a divine fine hand in play
for all of that to happen. Teaching everyone to read
would also ensure that they could study the scriptures and
become better Christians. Coming up, we will talk more about
the influence of Comenius on Heartlib, and we will get
to that after a sponsor break. The writings of Comenius
(10:27):
were very important to Heartlib in his ideology Comenius is
sixteen thirty two. Writing the Gait of Tongues Unlocked was
one of many that really captured Heartlib's attention and formed
the foundation of his thinking regarding education. He started translating
the writing of Comenius for the English audience, and this
offers another opportunity to share his proclivity for using just
(10:51):
lots and lots of words. The title for this translation
of Comenius, as one of his many writings, was a
Reformation of Schools, designed in two excellent treatises, The first
whereof summarily showeth the great necessity of a general reformation
of common learning? What grounds of hope there are for
such a reformation? How it may be brought to pass?
(11:13):
Written many years ago in Latin by the reverend godly
learned and famous divine mister John Amos Comenius, one of
the seniors of the exiled Church of Moravia, and now
upon the request of many, translated into English and published
by Samuel Hartlib for the general good of this nation.
So brevity was not his strong sush we love a
(11:36):
long title on this, but I was reading many of
his titles, I was like, oh, oh, my friend, goodness.
But that relationship that he developed with Comenius really established
Heartlib as a connecting point of European intellectuals. Comenius actually
visited England in sixteen forty one on the invitation of Heartlib,
(11:56):
and he stayed there for several months, meeting with many
of London's preeminent thinkers and scientists. Heartlib was associated with
so many other famous names of the seventeenth century in
the Western world. I don't think Holly mentioned in the outline,
but he came up in our John Evelyn episode like
somebody had given him a paper and he gave that
(12:17):
to John Evelin was another example. John Milton's pamphlet of
Education was dedicated to Heartlib, and that's because the Reformer
had convinced Milton to write it. The entire thing is
addressed to Heartlib. It opens with quote, mister Hartlib, I
am long since persuaded that to say or do ought
(12:38):
worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect should sooner
move us than simply the love of God and of mankind. Nevertheless,
to write now the reforming of education, though it be
one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be
thought on, and for the want whereof this nation perishes,
(12:59):
I had not yet at this time been induced, but
by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements. Milton goes on
to share there at the beginning of the book that
Hartley is somebody who deeply respects and at the same
time could be said of quote men of most approved
wisdom and some of highest authority among us. Yeah, basically
(13:22):
just saying, like all of us smart guys think Hertleib
is great. But despite the numerous people that Hartlib was
connected to and the network of correspondence he developed, it
was the friendships Heartlib had with John Durry and Comenius
that were the most important to him. On March thirteenth,
sixteen forty two, the three men signed a pact written
(13:45):
in Latin that outlined their shared goals for promoting reform
and education and religious unity. And the document is really
fascinating because, in addition to those goals, it also has
this very cute vibe, in my opinion, of we will
BFFs forever, and this is our secret. We are going
to read only the most abbreviated versions of the points
(14:08):
of the pact, and they are as follows. Number One,
that we shall have before us the sole aim of
manifesting God's glory and of promoting public support for our
fellow men. Two, so that with God in his goodness,
we may pursue this end, We set ourselves the task
of recalling to a better and fuller accord in their
(14:30):
profession of religion, those who have already been called to
acknowledge Christ. Three to the end that we may have
God's favor toward us. In this our purpose, we shall
strive in daily prayers before Him, in turn, both for
ourselves and for all those others wheresoever they may be, who,
(14:51):
whether we are aware of them or not, are now
stirred by God to like endeavors, or will be stirred hereafter.
Or we meanwhile promise one another that in these matters
we shall do nothing except it be by mutual design
and consent. Five. We promise that no one of us
(15:11):
will conceal from the other any of his thoughts, even
his innermost thoughts, which have to do with this proposed goal. Six,
That no one of us will take an inflexible stand
against the purposes agreed among the others, but will rather
yield to them, even if he may not perhaps be
able to perceive fully the strength and weight of the
(15:32):
reasons that are put forward. Seven, we promise that we
will preserve complete faithfulness in our dealings with one another. Eight.
We also take it upon ourselves to freely admonish one another,
but as between close friends, for any errors that may
be committed out of human ignorance. Nine it has seemed proper,
(15:54):
and we faithfully so promise not to divulge to others
these conditions of our pact entered into in the side
of God, chiefly for our conscience's sake, unless by common consent,
and then to those alone of whose suitability for future
association in our treaty we are assured. Ten. Finally, if
(16:16):
anything further is discerned by common accord as likely to
benefit this our religious fellowship in God. It must be
subscribed to. These conditions of this are packed and will
be equal to them in force. So they struck this
pact just as the conflict between parliamentarians and the Crown
in England was reaching a boiling point. We've talked about
(16:39):
the English Civil War and its causes in a bunch
of other episodes, so we won't go into depth here.
But the shorthand is that Charles the first, with no
checks within the government that could stop him, enacted a
number of policies that were damaging for a lot of
his subjects that made him really disliked. That included dissolving
the parliament. He re stated it when he needed help
(17:02):
in the form of financial backing for his war with
the Scots. Parliament began to use its reinstated power immediately,
including prosecuting members at the King's Circle. Five months and
two weeks after Heartlib, Durry, and Commenius signed their pack,
the English Civil War began. Heartlib and his friends were parliamentarians.
(17:23):
He and Durry stayed in the country, but Comenius left. Still,
the pact remained very important to the three men, and
sometimes it is cited as a guiding force in Heartlib's life. Yeah. Also,
just for clarity, Durry didn't stay in England all the time.
He is sometimes described as being sort of itinerant. He
moved around Europe a lot, so just in case shelike,
(17:46):
did he live there the whole time? No. But in
addition to his translation work and his prodigious correspondence was
seemingly everyone, Heartlib also wrote original works. Many of these
works were influenced by by other reformers and thinkers of
the day. For example, Francis Bacon is often cited when
scholars mentioned Heartlib's seventeen page pamphlet An Essay for Advancement
(18:09):
of Husbandry Learning, or Propositions for the erecting a College
of Husbandry, and in order therein too for the taking
in of pupils or apprentices, and also friends or fellows
of the same college or society. He published that in
sixteen fifty one. In it, he laid out the need
for agricultural education that offered a continuous stream of the
(18:31):
latest information and advancements in the field, so that farmers
could produce the best possible livestock and crops. Throughout all
of this work, Hertleib was connecting people to people and
more importantly, people to information. He was supported throughout his
time in England by personal patronage, with people and families
(18:52):
paying him with some degree of regularity so he could
continue in his work, but he wanted to establish something
more official means to disseminate information that would not just
be him working alone, but would have a dedicated staff
sending out published materials and recording new information. This was
what he called the Office of Address. In sixteen forty eight,
(19:16):
Heartlib published a pamphlet that was written either by him
or by John Durry. That comes up a lot when
you look at the HEARTLB papers, where it's like either
Dirry or Heartlib because they've worked on things together sometimes
and their writing style developed in a very similar way.
But that paper was titled a further discovery of the
Office of Public Address for Accommodations, and this read in
(19:39):
part quote, whereby the good of the Kingdom and the
benefit of all inhabitants thereof may be greatly advanced. There
is one very easy to be set afoot, which is
called an office of Address, whereby an orderly and effectual
correspondence and agency will be settled for the advancement of
universal learning, and all manner of arts in ingenuity, whereby
(20:01):
ready helps will be offered to supply the wants of
everyone without prejudice, unto any whereby all manner of commerce
will be mainly facilitated, and whereby everyone will be easily
accommodated with such things as may be lawfully used and
are usefully communicable unto everyone from each other in a
well ordered society or commonwealth, as it is more fully
(20:24):
specified and explained in the printed discourses that describe the
foreset office. Listen, This is one tiny part of a
very very verbose paper. Continuing, it is therefore most humbly
desired that the Parliament would be pleased to resolve upon
these following particulars as the matter of ordinance to be
passed by both houses. One that Samuel hartlib Esquire be
(20:47):
appointed Superintendent General of an offices of address Number one
indicates that there were additional points, and there were points
two through four. Asked that heartlib be paid two hundred
pounds annually for this work, that he could charge users
a small fee to pay the wages of the clerks
and registers, and that quote a convenient great house be
(21:10):
set aside for Heartlib to establish this office. The rest
of the document goes over the particulars of how the
office would be run and emphasizes the great benefit this
would be to all. While the Office of Address was
never formally established, Heartlib was granted an annual pension of
three hundred pounds. That number is sometimes reported as two
(21:33):
hundred or even one hundred pounds, depending on the source,
But as biographer George Turnbull explained in the nineteen twenties,
that payment was not really the portent of success that
it seemed to be. He wrote quote, Ultimately Parliament officially
recognized him and made arrangements for financial support, thereby raising
Heartlib's hopes of the near approach of the millennium to
(21:56):
the highest pitch, but they only flattered to The political
atmosphere was too troubled to allow of the prosecution of
such magnanimous designs, and as has already been indicated, the
financial support promised was irregularly paid and finally ceased altogether.
(22:17):
So this annual payment was more like lip service to
Playkate Heartlib. They didn't even keep up with it. This
must have become a men'sly frustrating for Samuel Hartlib, as
he believed the Office of Address would be the culmination
of all of his life's work. It would enable him
to fully manifest his goal of education for all. He'd
(22:39):
already been doing this sort of work at his own
personal expense, and he knew that people found it valuable,
but it was simply not perceived as valuable enough for
Parliament to put money and resources behind it, Just the
same with the money he was awarded when it was
paid out. Heartlib did continue to expand his personal efforts
(22:59):
to sending materials and correspondents throughout his wide network of associates.
He continued to publish pamphlets offering information on a variety
of topics, although agricultural subjects were particularly frequent. We will
talk about some of Hartlib's other writing and the nature
of his connection to the Royal Society after we hear
(23:20):
from some of the sponsors that keep the show going.
One of the projects that Samuel Hartlib worked on for
decades was something he called ethe Verities. This was an
ongoing record snippets really of information about interesting developments in
(23:44):
the realms of science and culture and things of note
that were related to advancements in human knowledge. It was
sort of like Peep's diary, but it didn't include any
of Hartlib's own day to day doings unless it was
specifically about acquiring some of this information. He started writing
Femerites in sixteen thirty five, and it continued until sixteen
(24:05):
fifty nine. For example, an entry from sixteen thirty five
reads Bortwit knows a countryman of his who is about
to make a collection out of English divinity books nb.
It will confer with Darius about it, as also about
his own work, which is a catechism of conscience. A
sixteen fifty note states, quote the twenty eighth of February,
(24:26):
mister Worsley sent me the receipt to be given to
mister Osmusingh concerning the spirit of Tartar, which he got
from mister Morion as a special present, who seriously affirmed
unto him that it cost five hundred guilders. Spirit of
Tartar was a reference to a distillate that was used
in alchemical experiments, probably why it was so pricey. Uh.
(24:48):
One of these entries from sixteen fifty five reads a
woman in England burning a smock one of her women
neighbors came bouncing at the door and entreated with all
entreaties that she might come in, which if she had
a obtained she would have killed. But not prevailing, she
went home and was found dead. This is a true
story related by doctor Mayerne to the King. These are
(25:09):
the kind of entries in the f Marites in more
Tame Fair. In sixteen fifty four, Hartlib published True and
Ready Way to Learn the Latin Tongue, which was of
course part of his effort to make more religious texts
readable to a wider range of people. He published several
(25:30):
dozen pamphlets and various short books throughout his life. In
sixteen sixty, the Restoration reshaped England's government, as Charles the
Second became king and the monarchy was re established. As
many of the decisions of the Long Parliament were rolled back.
Hartlib officially lost his annual pension. That was also the
(25:52):
same year that the Royal Society was founded, but Heartlib
was not invited to be a member, neither was John Durry.
There were eight fellows elected in the original sixteen sixty group,
and there was some crossover among them with Heartlib's unofficial circle.
You may have heard if you've done any reading about
the early years of the Royal Society of the Invisible College,
(26:16):
and that was another similar group to the Heartlib Circle,
which included men who shared information with one another through
correspondence and in person meetings. George Turnbull and other scholars
have written about this and just how much connection there
was between Heartlib and the founding fellows of the Royal Society.
(26:36):
Many of those men are certainly mentioned in his correspondence.
Irish chemist Robert Boyle, who came up recently in Our
Modern Inventions that Aren't Episode and who is on my
short list, wrote to Heartlib on more than one occasion,
and there's evidence of direct connection with others who were
Founding Fellows and even Mormon who were invited to become
(26:57):
fellows later. There were clearly a number of them in
his correspondence network, and quite a few of them sent
information to him to be cataloged and shared, and in
some cases he consulted with them to get their take
on various scientific matters. In some cases, Samuel Hartlib also
acted as a sort of informational middleman, receiving information from
(27:19):
one of these men with instructions to give it only
to one specific person. Another one of these men who
became a fellow. He was clearly trusted and was considered
knowledgeable about all manner of subjects. So for a lot
of people, the question arises, why then, was Heartlib not
included in the Royal Society. Turndall lays out some reasons.
(27:41):
For one, Heartland may have been seen as a trusted
friend and a conveyor of information, but maybe not as
an equal quote Heartlib seems to have gone little further
with these men than to act as a receiver, seeker
and disseminator of information, including letters and writings about them
and them, and thereby to help them in their work.
(28:04):
Turnbull also cites several instances where people mentioned that Heartlib
appears to be very interested in the collection and dissemination
of their scientific writing, but not in the writing itself.
And in one case there's a letter to Hartlib from
German theologian Henry Oldenberg that states that, quote, you care
(28:25):
not much for the philosophical discourses of our clubs. So
he wasn't directly involved in the activities of the group
that eventually became the Royal Society, although he was clearly
on friendly terms with its members. It also seems like
Hartlib himself was not all that interested in the Royal Society.
He saw it as a piece of a bigger vision
(28:46):
that he had of a democratized knowledge utopia. Yeah, he
wrote about this idea of a utopia many times, and
the founding of a society like this seemed like, of course,
that's the next step to get to my utopia. Following
the loss of his occasional pension from Parliament, Hartley really
had a very difficult time financially. He had never really
(29:10):
had a lot of money, and what he did have
he largely funneled into this universal Education project. Even before
sixteen sixty, though, when that money was cut off, Hartlebb
was having a variety of health issues, including ulcers and
possibly kidney stones. His son in law, Amanding Claudius, was
his doctor and worked to manage his various ailments, although
(29:33):
it sounds like there really wasn't a lot of relief there.
When he did get relief, it was quite temporary. In
sixteen sixty he had some sort of attack that left
him with temporary limb paralysis, although he did recover. I
was reading various descriptions of it, and it didn't quite
sound like a stroke to me, although it could have been.
(29:54):
But that incident scared him a lot, and he became
constantly fearful that it was going to happen again and
that he would be what he called useless to make
things worse. He also had a number of significant life
stressers in the early sixteen sixties. His wife Mary died
in sixteen sixty. In sixteen sixty one, he had some
(30:15):
sort of problem with the business associate that had been
storing his books and he lost all the remaining copies
of his book catalog. Then there was a fire at
his house. He blamed a young member of the house
staff for mishandling a stove for starting that fire. While
the fire was caught before it could burn the house down,
(30:36):
it did cause a lot of damage. Heartlib died on
March twelfth, sixteen sixty two, in his London home. Yeah,
it is possible he had another one of those intense
events that caused some paralysis, may or may not have
been a stroke, etc. Were it not for a somewhat
wild series of events, Heartlib may have faded almost entirely
(30:57):
from history. His papers, which were extensive and included his
years and years of correspondence were purchased after his death
by a man named William Brereton, a member of the
Royal Society, who took them to his family's estate. After
they were organized with the help even of some of
Hertlb's associates. They were stored there at Brereton Hall, and
(31:18):
then everybody kind of forgot them. The Brereton estate stayed
in the family until eighteen seventeen, when it was sold
to a merchant named John Howard, and then the house
changed hands at least one more time, and possibly more
than that before George Turnbull, who we've referenced a couple times,
who wrote that nineteen twenty biography we mentioned earlier, was
(31:38):
contacted by a lawyer who said that he had a
huge stash of HEARTLB papers that had been brought to
him by the current owner of the property because they
had found them, did not want them, but thought they
might be useful. Turnbull, who was teaching at the University
of Sheffield at that time, and this, by the way,
happened after he had published his biography, had become the
(32:00):
or most Heartlib scholar that anybody could think of, so
he was the obvious recipient of these papers. And he
accepted them, and he brought them home where he worked
with them until the end of his life in the
nineteen sixties, and at that point Turnbull's wife gave the
papers to the University of Sheffield. The school started a
digitization project with the collection in the nineteen nineties and
(32:22):
today the entirety of the heartlib papers is available online
for free. And it is through these papers that modern
historians have really learned and understood the true extent of
Heartlib's influence and impact, and new analyzes of these connections
continue to be published today. As we said, that other
biography just came out months ago, and that biography is
(32:45):
also in the spirit of Heartlib, available for free online.
Even though it's a nice book, it is in our
show notes, so to a look for it. It is
the one that is written by Charles Webster. It is
going to be one of the last ones in our
show notes. Paid yeah, and you can go there's literally
on the publisher's page. It's like get book for free
(33:06):
and you just pop right there and get the whole
thing is PDF, nice, perfect, perfect. So if you want
to get the in depth, real real on Samuel Hartlin,
do it there. You go. You have some listener mail.
I do, and this is how to title an email
to make sure I read it. Boys and Barry Murder. Yeah,
(33:27):
this is from our listener. I don't know if it's
pronounced Andrea or Andrea either who writes. I'm a high
school history teacher, so I just wanted to thank you
for the continual outlet to learn and grow. I am
very behind and just listen to the eponymous Fruits episode.
I grew up in Anaheim, California, very near Pearson Park
that was mentioned as part of Rudy Boysen's development project
(33:50):
for the city. The park also has a cactus garden
named after him. We also have a boys in Park
in Anaheim named after him as well. I currently live
in Fullerton, that was mentioned as the city mister Boyson
lived in. My house is over one hundred and ten
years old, which is ancient for the West Coast. When
I moved in, there was a strange growth of boison
berries in my backyard. When you mentioned boison had berries
(34:13):
growing in a ditch in his yard, I immediately had
an overwhelming feeling of guilt. What if my house was
mister Boyson's house. I felt guilt because I intentionally killed
those berries a few years back. They were riding my
last nerve and pricked me one too many times. Anyways,
I may have murdered a historic plant, and I will
feel guilty until I'm able to find mister Boyson's exact
(34:35):
address to vindicate myself. I plan on doing some research
in the City Library history room during my summer break.
I've had my PhD in stuff you missed a history class,
but since having twins, I have been continually behind. Listen,
no shame in that game. I don't have twins and
I can't keep up with anything. No uh, Andrea continues
only my second time emailing. In these frustrating times, I
(34:58):
have appreciated the allusions to fred strations in politics because
I have had to deactivate social media and stop listening
to NPR as a form of self preservation. The positive
is I am catching up on your podcast much faster.
Attached are some pictures of pie from a three fourteen
Pie Day celebration. The moon pie reminded me of George Maliez,
(35:18):
and I just thought you would enjoy the Lichtenstein pie.
My pet tax is my dogs, Barack Obama and my
cane Corso mix Rosie the riveter German shepherd and Loki,
my twelve year old black cat. Wishing you positive vibes
in these wild times. I can't remember and I did
not go back and look at my outline for that one,
(35:39):
but I think the original ditch got identified, so I
think you're probably safe because you would know, and those
original you know, the bois And farm that is still
producing boisonberries today has plants in some cases that are
from or directly related to those original plants. So I'm
here to you of your guilt. You're fine. You didn't
(36:02):
kill anything historical. The history grows on in many places. Also, man,
Loki looks like my kind of cat, and Tracy's all black,
but the facial expression is the real cell that is
a like yeah for real with the pictures kind of face.
Your pups are so sweet. I want to kiss those snoots.
(36:22):
And I love pictures of pie for sure. The moonpie
is very beautiful and I love it. These are spectacular.
So thank you, thank you, thank you, because this is
a very fun email to read. Thank you again for
being an educator. I feel like we cannot think educators
enough right now. Thank you for sharing your story and
I'm glad that I can banish your guilt. I hope.
(36:47):
I had this vision in my head of like a
rosary meat out of boys and berry somebody else, but
to anybody but me anyway, Thank you, thank you, thank you.
If you would like to write to us and tell
you about plants that may or may not be historical
that you're worried you've killed somehow destroyed history again you haven't,
(37:08):
you can do that history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find the show notes for all of our episodes,
and this one, of course included at Mistonhistory dot com.
Like I said, that last openly available biography that was
written by a really well researched scholar just last year
(37:30):
is available online and it's the last entry in the
show notes there. Just scroll on down and click right through.
If you would like to subscribe to the podcast and
you haven't done that yet, you can do that on
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(37:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your face for shows, m
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So the Heartlib circle
came up in research recently, and I put it right
on my list because it is this very unique nexus
(00:24):
of scientific and philosophical thought in the seventeenth century right
out of the gate. We got to make a note
on name pronunciation because we're having a lot of these lately.
I know this person, Samuel Hartlib, who will talk about
some more a whole lot today, originally was born in Prussia.
His name is from the German side of his family,
(00:46):
his father's side of the family, which would lead one
to say Heartlib. And it's spelled a million different ways
if you look at various historical documents. But because he
did most of his work in Britain and most of
the writing about him has been in Britain, most scholars
about him pronounced it Heartlib, and so we're just going
(01:08):
to roll with that, recognizing that he too. I don't
know where he landed, if he had a preference or not.
I suspect probably his contemporaries also pronounced it that way
once he was living in London. The name Samuel Hartlib
probably does not exactly spring to mind when people are
thinking about influential figures of the seventeenth century. But he
(01:29):
was very connected to a lot of the names you
would think of, and he served as this sort of
conduitive information to many of them and made connections among
them as he sought to promote his own ideas regarding
theology and education, which he saw as being very closely
tied to government and successful government, as well as this
(01:52):
really overarching goal in his life to provide ready access
to information to anyone and everyone about like the latest
scientific developments. You'll see references to the Heartlib circle in
a lot of writing about these people. Heartlib never called
his network of people that he corresponded with anything. That
(02:14):
name Heartlib Circle wasn't coined until the twentieth century, and
that happened then because there was a surge of scholarship
about his work in the nineteen twenties and thereafter after
a fortuitous turn of events brought his life's work back
to light. Samuel Hartlib was born around sixteen hundred, probably
(02:36):
in Elbing, Prussia, to a German father and an English mother,
so Elbing is part of modern day Poland, and in
Polish it's pronounced very differently from that, more like Elblong.
He's one of the many cases we've had on the
show recently where this early life is not well documented.
In a biography written by gh Turnbull in nineteen twenty,
(03:00):
the biographer notes that there's no record of Heartlib in
the birth records from Elbeing at the time, and there
are also not any records in the baptismal records from
the churches of the city. He doesn't appear in any
of the school records of Elbing from the time when
he would have been a child, so there are just
(03:20):
a lot of question marks about his early life and education.
There are mentions of a George Hartlib who is believed
to have been Samuel's brother. Even Samuel's higher education comes
with a lot of debate. He has long been cited
as attending the University of Cunningsburg starting in sixteen fourteen,
(03:42):
but there are once again no solid records to really
back that up. A more recent biography by Charles Webster,
which came out in twenty twenty five, says that there's
actually more substantiation that Samuel was in Silesia and enrolled
at the Academy at Briggs starting in sixteen five fifteen.
When did he leave there another unanswered question. We do
(04:06):
know that hartleb went to the University of Cambridge, but
that two has inconsistencies regarding the timing. Sixteen twenty eight
is frequently given as the first year that we can
conclusively say he was living in England, but in the
latter twentieth century additional correspondence has come to light that
indicates that he was definitely there before that, in the
(04:27):
mid sixteen twenties. And even in saying he went to Cambridge,
we really have to clarify because he does not appear
to have actually enrolled in the university, but did study
informally with some members of its faculty, and even after
that he returned to Elbing after his time at Cambridge,
So that whole like right up to the late sixteen twenties,
(04:50):
so much guesswork going on regarding his background. It's very foggy. Indeed,
he became friends with John in sixteen twenty eight. Durry
was born in fifteen ninety six in Edinbargh, Scotland, so
he was around the same age as Heartland. Durry was
a Protestant minister and was in Elbing in sixteen twenty eight,
(05:13):
and the two men met there soon after that this,
a series of interlocking conflicts known as the Thirty Years War,
which spanned from sixteen eighteen to sixteen forty eight, made
Elbing an increasingly more dangerous place to be. Sweden was
using this port city as a base and a staging
ground in the struggle for the control of the Baltic Sea.
(05:35):
So Heartland went to England, and this time he stayed there.
Durry did as well for a time, and the two
of them continued to be close friends. On January twentieth,
sixteen twenty nine, Samuel married a woman named Mary Birmingham.
Some accounts show her last name with an M like Birmingham.
(05:55):
Unclear to me which of those is accurate. We also
just don't know a whole lot about Mary, although the
two of them were married for years and they had
at least six children together. Most of what we know
about their kids is because later in their lives they
lived near samuel peeps and he wrote about them. Heartlib
was an active promoter of the need for reform within
(06:18):
schools and Protestant churches. John Durry was his friend, but
also one of his influences and ultimately a collaborator on
many reformist texts. Derry sought to reform the church by
uniting the fractured Protestant factions. Heartlib agreed with this idea,
and he put forth the idea that if the church
(06:39):
could be united in England, then the whole country would benefit.
And this is also where a little bit of a
confession has to come in for me. I wanted so
much to include lots of Heartlib's writings in this episode,
but let me tell you that is a slog He
was deeply verbose, and in addition to the somewhat stilted
(07:01):
writing of the day that you might see in any text,
he was even more stilted than that. As an example,
here is a portion of a pamphlet that he wrote
in sixteen forty seven titled Considerations tending to the Happy Accomplishment.
So the point of this work is to make the
case that if England can reform its religion, everyone will benefit.
(07:22):
As Tracy just mentioned, this is the most easily accessible
passage in terms of messaging that I could find quote,
and least any might make a doubt of this last position,
let us a little enlarge ourselves thereon, to make it
more apparent from the undoubted maxims and reasons of a
true reformed Christian state, such as we are now called
(07:45):
to be. If we take notice of our condition first,
then we conceive that the glory and happiness of a
state go hand in hand together, so that everything which
may add unto the true glory is also fit to
increase the happiness, a vice versa. On the other side,
whatsoever doth add unto the true happiness, is also fit
(08:05):
to increase the glory of a state. Basically, if we're
all happy, the whole country will be happy. But he
has to put a lot of extra words in there.
Samuel Hartlib also believed that education was vital for everyone,
and one of the efforts he made early on during
his time in England was the establishment of a school.
(08:27):
This attempt was in Chichester in sixteen thirty. Although that
school did not draw enough students to stay open, Heartlb
closed it almost immediately after founding it. It lasted for
less than a year. Not long after that, he started
a correspondence with John Amos Comenius, who became another huge influence.
(08:48):
For a little background, John Amos Comenius was born in Moravia,
in an area that is now part of the Czech Republic.
You'll often see him described as being Czech if you
look him up today. He was a minister and an educator,
and he developed an ideology that he thought could lead
to a deeper connection among the warring countries and cultures
of Europe, and that was universal education. Comenius thought that
(09:12):
if everyone was truly educated, they would understand and accept
their fellow humans better and would be less likely to
start conflicts with one another. One of the cornerstones of
this idea was that everyone should learn to read Latin.
He thought that this would improve access to a wide
range of historical information and open up the wealth of
Western knowledge to all to heartlive in a lot of
(09:35):
his colleagues, these ideas of educational access and a united
religion were two sides of the same coin. This was
at the heart of Hartleeb's thinking. He believed that God
granted every person a talent, and that if they shared
that talent with others, everyone would learn from one another.
They would all know more, They would understand each other better,
(09:57):
and people would recognize a divine fine hand in play
for all of that to happen. Teaching everyone to read
would also ensure that they could study the scriptures and
become better Christians. Coming up, we will talk more about
the influence of Comenius on Heartlib, and we will get
to that after a sponsor break. The writings of Comenius
(10:27):
were very important to Heartlib in his ideology Comenius is
sixteen thirty two. Writing the Gait of Tongues Unlocked was
one of many that really captured Heartlib's attention and formed
the foundation of his thinking regarding education. He started translating
the writing of Comenius for the English audience, and this
offers another opportunity to share his proclivity for using just
(10:51):
lots and lots of words. The title for this translation
of Comenius, as one of his many writings, was a
Reformation of Schools, designed in two excellent treatises, The first
whereof summarily showeth the great necessity of a general reformation
of common learning? What grounds of hope there are for
such a reformation? How it may be brought to pass?
(11:13):
Written many years ago in Latin by the reverend godly
learned and famous divine mister John Amos Comenius, one of
the seniors of the exiled Church of Moravia, and now
upon the request of many, translated into English and published
by Samuel Hartlib for the general good of this nation.
So brevity was not his strong sush we love a
(11:36):
long title on this, but I was reading many of
his titles, I was like, oh, oh, my friend, goodness.
But that relationship that he developed with Comenius really established
Heartlib as a connecting point of European intellectuals. Comenius actually
visited England in sixteen forty one on the invitation of Heartlib,
(11:56):
and he stayed there for several months, meeting with many
of London's preeminent thinkers and scientists. Heartlib was associated with
so many other famous names of the seventeenth century in
the Western world. I don't think Holly mentioned in the outline,
but he came up in our John Evelyn episode like
somebody had given him a paper and he gave that
(12:17):
to John Evelin was another example. John Milton's pamphlet of
Education was dedicated to Heartlib, and that's because the Reformer
had convinced Milton to write it. The entire thing is
addressed to Heartlib. It opens with quote, mister Hartlib, I
am long since persuaded that to say or do ought
(12:38):
worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect should sooner
move us than simply the love of God and of mankind. Nevertheless,
to write now the reforming of education, though it be
one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be
thought on, and for the want whereof this nation perishes,
(12:59):
I had not yet at this time been induced, but
by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements. Milton goes on
to share there at the beginning of the book that
Hartley is somebody who deeply respects and at the same
time could be said of quote men of most approved
wisdom and some of highest authority among us. Yeah, basically
(13:22):
just saying, like all of us smart guys think Hertleib
is great. But despite the numerous people that Hartlib was
connected to and the network of correspondence he developed, it
was the friendships Heartlib had with John Durry and Comenius
that were the most important to him. On March thirteenth,
sixteen forty two, the three men signed a pact written
(13:45):
in Latin that outlined their shared goals for promoting reform
and education and religious unity. And the document is really
fascinating because, in addition to those goals, it also has
this very cute vibe, in my opinion, of we will
BFFs forever, and this is our secret. We are going
to read only the most abbreviated versions of the points
(14:08):
of the pact, and they are as follows. Number One,
that we shall have before us the sole aim of
manifesting God's glory and of promoting public support for our
fellow men. Two, so that with God in his goodness,
we may pursue this end, We set ourselves the task
of recalling to a better and fuller accord in their
(14:30):
profession of religion, those who have already been called to
acknowledge Christ. Three to the end that we may have
God's favor toward us. In this our purpose, we shall
strive in daily prayers before Him, in turn, both for
ourselves and for all those others wheresoever they may be, who,
(14:51):
whether we are aware of them or not, are now
stirred by God to like endeavors, or will be stirred hereafter.
Or we meanwhile promise one another that in these matters
we shall do nothing except it be by mutual design
and consent. Five. We promise that no one of us
(15:11):
will conceal from the other any of his thoughts, even
his innermost thoughts, which have to do with this proposed goal. Six,
That no one of us will take an inflexible stand
against the purposes agreed among the others, but will rather
yield to them, even if he may not perhaps be
able to perceive fully the strength and weight of the
(15:32):
reasons that are put forward. Seven, we promise that we
will preserve complete faithfulness in our dealings with one another. Eight.
We also take it upon ourselves to freely admonish one another,
but as between close friends, for any errors that may
be committed out of human ignorance. Nine it has seemed proper,
(15:54):
and we faithfully so promise not to divulge to others
these conditions of our pact entered into in the side
of God, chiefly for our conscience's sake, unless by common consent,
and then to those alone of whose suitability for future
association in our treaty we are assured. Ten. Finally, if
(16:16):
anything further is discerned by common accord as likely to
benefit this our religious fellowship in God. It must be
subscribed to. These conditions of this are packed and will
be equal to them in force. So they struck this
pact just as the conflict between parliamentarians and the Crown
in England was reaching a boiling point. We've talked about
(16:39):
the English Civil War and its causes in a bunch
of other episodes, so we won't go into depth here.
But the shorthand is that Charles the first, with no
checks within the government that could stop him, enacted a
number of policies that were damaging for a lot of
his subjects that made him really disliked. That included dissolving
the parliament. He re stated it when he needed help
(17:02):
in the form of financial backing for his war with
the Scots. Parliament began to use its reinstated power immediately,
including prosecuting members at the King's Circle. Five months and
two weeks after Heartlib, Durry, and Commenius signed their pack,
the English Civil War began. Heartlib and his friends were parliamentarians.
(17:23):
He and Durry stayed in the country, but Comenius left. Still,
the pact remained very important to the three men, and
sometimes it is cited as a guiding force in Heartlib's life. Yeah. Also,
just for clarity, Durry didn't stay in England all the time.
He is sometimes described as being sort of itinerant. He
moved around Europe a lot, so just in case shelike,
(17:46):
did he live there the whole time? No. But in
addition to his translation work and his prodigious correspondence was
seemingly everyone, Heartlib also wrote original works. Many of these
works were influenced by by other reformers and thinkers of
the day. For example, Francis Bacon is often cited when
scholars mentioned Heartlib's seventeen page pamphlet An Essay for Advancement
(18:09):
of Husbandry Learning, or Propositions for the erecting a College
of Husbandry, and in order therein too for the taking
in of pupils or apprentices, and also friends or fellows
of the same college or society. He published that in
sixteen fifty one. In it, he laid out the need
for agricultural education that offered a continuous stream of the
(18:31):
latest information and advancements in the field, so that farmers
could produce the best possible livestock and crops. Throughout all
of this work, Hertleib was connecting people to people and
more importantly, people to information. He was supported throughout his
time in England by personal patronage, with people and families
(18:52):
paying him with some degree of regularity so he could
continue in his work, but he wanted to establish something
more official means to disseminate information that would not just
be him working alone, but would have a dedicated staff
sending out published materials and recording new information. This was
what he called the Office of Address. In sixteen forty eight,
(19:16):
Heartlib published a pamphlet that was written either by him
or by John Durry. That comes up a lot when
you look at the HEARTLB papers, where it's like either
Dirry or Heartlib because they've worked on things together sometimes
and their writing style developed in a very similar way.
But that paper was titled a further discovery of the
Office of Public Address for Accommodations, and this read in
(19:39):
part quote, whereby the good of the Kingdom and the
benefit of all inhabitants thereof may be greatly advanced. There
is one very easy to be set afoot, which is
called an office of Address, whereby an orderly and effectual
correspondence and agency will be settled for the advancement of
universal learning, and all manner of arts in ingenuity, whereby
(20:01):
ready helps will be offered to supply the wants of
everyone without prejudice, unto any whereby all manner of commerce
will be mainly facilitated, and whereby everyone will be easily
accommodated with such things as may be lawfully used and
are usefully communicable unto everyone from each other in a
well ordered society or commonwealth, as it is more fully
(20:24):
specified and explained in the printed discourses that describe the
foreset office. Listen, This is one tiny part of a
very very verbose paper. Continuing, it is therefore most humbly
desired that the Parliament would be pleased to resolve upon
these following particulars as the matter of ordinance to be
passed by both houses. One that Samuel hartlib Esquire be
(20:47):
appointed Superintendent General of an offices of address Number one
indicates that there were additional points, and there were points
two through four. Asked that heartlib be paid two hundred
pounds annually for this work, that he could charge users
a small fee to pay the wages of the clerks
and registers, and that quote a convenient great house be
(21:10):
set aside for Heartlib to establish this office. The rest
of the document goes over the particulars of how the
office would be run and emphasizes the great benefit this
would be to all. While the Office of Address was
never formally established, Heartlib was granted an annual pension of
three hundred pounds. That number is sometimes reported as two
(21:33):
hundred or even one hundred pounds, depending on the source,
But as biographer George Turnbull explained in the nineteen twenties,
that payment was not really the portent of success that
it seemed to be. He wrote quote, Ultimately Parliament officially
recognized him and made arrangements for financial support, thereby raising
Heartlib's hopes of the near approach of the millennium to
(21:56):
the highest pitch, but they only flattered to The political
atmosphere was too troubled to allow of the prosecution of
such magnanimous designs, and as has already been indicated, the
financial support promised was irregularly paid and finally ceased altogether.
(22:17):
So this annual payment was more like lip service to
Playkate Heartlib. They didn't even keep up with it. This
must have become a men'sly frustrating for Samuel Hartlib, as
he believed the Office of Address would be the culmination
of all of his life's work. It would enable him
to fully manifest his goal of education for all. He'd
(22:39):
already been doing this sort of work at his own
personal expense, and he knew that people found it valuable,
but it was simply not perceived as valuable enough for
Parliament to put money and resources behind it, Just the
same with the money he was awarded when it was
paid out. Heartlib did continue to expand his personal efforts
(22:59):
to sending materials and correspondents throughout his wide network of associates.
He continued to publish pamphlets offering information on a variety
of topics, although agricultural subjects were particularly frequent. We will
talk about some of Hartlib's other writing and the nature
of his connection to the Royal Society after we hear
(23:20):
from some of the sponsors that keep the show going.
One of the projects that Samuel Hartlib worked on for
decades was something he called ethe Verities. This was an
ongoing record snippets really of information about interesting developments in
(23:44):
the realms of science and culture and things of note
that were related to advancements in human knowledge. It was
sort of like Peep's diary, but it didn't include any
of Hartlib's own day to day doings unless it was
specifically about acquiring some of this information. He started writing
Femerites in sixteen thirty five, and it continued until sixteen
(24:05):
fifty nine. For example, an entry from sixteen thirty five
reads Bortwit knows a countryman of his who is about
to make a collection out of English divinity books nb.
It will confer with Darius about it, as also about
his own work, which is a catechism of conscience. A
sixteen fifty note states, quote the twenty eighth of February,
(24:26):
mister Worsley sent me the receipt to be given to
mister Osmusingh concerning the spirit of Tartar, which he got
from mister Morion as a special present, who seriously affirmed
unto him that it cost five hundred guilders. Spirit of
Tartar was a reference to a distillate that was used
in alchemical experiments, probably why it was so pricey. Uh.
(24:48):
One of these entries from sixteen fifty five reads a
woman in England burning a smock one of her women
neighbors came bouncing at the door and entreated with all
entreaties that she might come in, which if she had
a obtained she would have killed. But not prevailing, she
went home and was found dead. This is a true
story related by doctor Mayerne to the King. These are
(25:09):
the kind of entries in the f Marites in more
Tame Fair. In sixteen fifty four, Hartlib published True and
Ready Way to Learn the Latin Tongue, which was of
course part of his effort to make more religious texts
readable to a wider range of people. He published several
(25:30):
dozen pamphlets and various short books throughout his life. In
sixteen sixty, the Restoration reshaped England's government, as Charles the
Second became king and the monarchy was re established. As
many of the decisions of the Long Parliament were rolled back.
Hartlib officially lost his annual pension. That was also the
(25:52):
same year that the Royal Society was founded, but Heartlib
was not invited to be a member, neither was John Durry.
There were eight fellows elected in the original sixteen sixty group,
and there was some crossover among them with Heartlib's unofficial circle.
You may have heard if you've done any reading about
the early years of the Royal Society of the Invisible College,
(26:16):
and that was another similar group to the Heartlib Circle,
which included men who shared information with one another through
correspondence and in person meetings. George Turnbull and other scholars
have written about this and just how much connection there
was between Heartlib and the founding fellows of the Royal Society.
(26:36):
Many of those men are certainly mentioned in his correspondence.
Irish chemist Robert Boyle, who came up recently in Our
Modern Inventions that Aren't Episode and who is on my
short list, wrote to Heartlib on more than one occasion,
and there's evidence of direct connection with others who were
Founding Fellows and even Mormon who were invited to become
(26:57):
fellows later. There were clearly a number of them in
his correspondence network, and quite a few of them sent
information to him to be cataloged and shared, and in
some cases he consulted with them to get their take
on various scientific matters. In some cases, Samuel Hartlib also
acted as a sort of informational middleman, receiving information from
(27:19):
one of these men with instructions to give it only
to one specific person. Another one of these men who
became a fellow. He was clearly trusted and was considered
knowledgeable about all manner of subjects. So for a lot
of people, the question arises, why then, was Heartlib not
included in the Royal Society. Turndall lays out some reasons.
(27:41):
For one, Heartland may have been seen as a trusted
friend and a conveyor of information, but maybe not as
an equal quote Heartlib seems to have gone little further
with these men than to act as a receiver, seeker
and disseminator of information, including letters and writings about them
and them, and thereby to help them in their work.
(28:04):
Turnbull also cites several instances where people mentioned that Heartlib
appears to be very interested in the collection and dissemination
of their scientific writing, but not in the writing itself.
And in one case there's a letter to Hartlib from
German theologian Henry Oldenberg that states that, quote, you care
(28:25):
not much for the philosophical discourses of our clubs. So
he wasn't directly involved in the activities of the group
that eventually became the Royal Society, although he was clearly
on friendly terms with its members. It also seems like
Hartlib himself was not all that interested in the Royal Society.
He saw it as a piece of a bigger vision
(28:46):
that he had of a democratized knowledge utopia. Yeah, he
wrote about this idea of a utopia many times, and
the founding of a society like this seemed like, of course,
that's the next step to get to my utopia. Following
the loss of his occasional pension from Parliament, Hartley really
had a very difficult time financially. He had never really
(29:10):
had a lot of money, and what he did have
he largely funneled into this universal Education project. Even before
sixteen sixty, though, when that money was cut off, Hartlebb
was having a variety of health issues, including ulcers and
possibly kidney stones. His son in law, Amanding Claudius, was
his doctor and worked to manage his various ailments, although
(29:33):
it sounds like there really wasn't a lot of relief there.
When he did get relief, it was quite temporary. In
sixteen sixty he had some sort of attack that left
him with temporary limb paralysis, although he did recover. I
was reading various descriptions of it, and it didn't quite
sound like a stroke to me, although it could have been.
(29:54):
But that incident scared him a lot, and he became
constantly fearful that it was going to happen again and
that he would be what he called useless to make
things worse. He also had a number of significant life
stressers in the early sixteen sixties. His wife Mary died
in sixteen sixty. In sixteen sixty one, he had some
(30:15):
sort of problem with the business associate that had been
storing his books and he lost all the remaining copies
of his book catalog. Then there was a fire at
his house. He blamed a young member of the house
staff for mishandling a stove for starting that fire. While
the fire was caught before it could burn the house down,
(30:36):
it did cause a lot of damage. Heartlib died on
March twelfth, sixteen sixty two, in his London home. Yeah,
it is possible he had another one of those intense
events that caused some paralysis, may or may not have
been a stroke, etc. Were it not for a somewhat
wild series of events, Heartlib may have faded almost entirely
(30:57):
from history. His papers, which were extensive and included his
years and years of correspondence were purchased after his death
by a man named William Brereton, a member of the
Royal Society, who took them to his family's estate. After
they were organized with the help even of some of
Hertlb's associates. They were stored there at Brereton Hall, and
(31:18):
then everybody kind of forgot them. The Brereton estate stayed
in the family until eighteen seventeen, when it was sold
to a merchant named John Howard, and then the house
changed hands at least one more time, and possibly more
than that before George Turnbull, who we've referenced a couple times,
who wrote that nineteen twenty biography we mentioned earlier, was
(31:38):
contacted by a lawyer who said that he had a
huge stash of HEARTLB papers that had been brought to
him by the current owner of the property because they
had found them, did not want them, but thought they
might be useful. Turnbull, who was teaching at the University
of Sheffield at that time, and this, by the way,
happened after he had published his biography, had become the
(32:00):
or most Heartlib scholar that anybody could think of, so
he was the obvious recipient of these papers. And he
accepted them, and he brought them home where he worked
with them until the end of his life in the
nineteen sixties, and at that point Turnbull's wife gave the
papers to the University of Sheffield. The school started a
digitization project with the collection in the nineteen nineties and
(32:22):
today the entirety of the heartlib papers is available online
for free. And it is through these papers that modern
historians have really learned and understood the true extent of
Heartlib's influence and impact, and new analyzes of these connections
continue to be published today. As we said, that other
biography just came out months ago, and that biography is
(32:45):
also in the spirit of Heartlib, available for free online.
Even though it's a nice book, it is in our
show notes, so to a look for it. It is
the one that is written by Charles Webster. It is
going to be one of the last ones in our
show notes. Paid yeah, and you can go there's literally
on the publisher's page. It's like get book for free
(33:06):
and you just pop right there and get the whole
thing is PDF, nice, perfect, perfect. So if you want
to get the in depth, real real on Samuel Hartlin,
do it there. You go. You have some listener mail.
I do, and this is how to title an email
to make sure I read it. Boys and Barry Murder. Yeah,
(33:27):
this is from our listener. I don't know if it's
pronounced Andrea or Andrea either who writes. I'm a high
school history teacher, so I just wanted to thank you
for the continual outlet to learn and grow. I am
very behind and just listen to the eponymous Fruits episode.
I grew up in Anaheim, California, very near Pearson Park
that was mentioned as part of Rudy Boysen's development project
(33:50):
for the city. The park also has a cactus garden
named after him. We also have a boys in Park
in Anaheim named after him as well. I currently live
in Fullerton, that was mentioned as the city mister Boyson
lived in. My house is over one hundred and ten
years old, which is ancient for the West Coast. When
I moved in, there was a strange growth of boison
berries in my backyard. When you mentioned boison had berries
(34:13):
growing in a ditch in his yard, I immediately had
an overwhelming feeling of guilt. What if my house was
mister Boyson's house. I felt guilt because I intentionally killed
those berries a few years back. They were riding my
last nerve and pricked me one too many times. Anyways,
I may have murdered a historic plant, and I will
feel guilty until I'm able to find mister Boyson's exact
(34:35):
address to vindicate myself. I plan on doing some research
in the City Library history room during my summer break.
I've had my PhD in stuff you missed a history class,
but since having twins, I have been continually behind. Listen,
no shame in that game. I don't have twins and
I can't keep up with anything. No uh, Andrea continues
only my second time emailing. In these frustrating times, I
(34:58):
have appreciated the allusions to fred strations in politics because
I have had to deactivate social media and stop listening
to NPR as a form of self preservation. The positive
is I am catching up on your podcast much faster.
Attached are some pictures of pie from a three fourteen
Pie Day celebration. The moon pie reminded me of George Maliez,
(35:18):
and I just thought you would enjoy the Lichtenstein pie.
My pet tax is my dogs, Barack Obama and my
cane Corso mix Rosie the riveter German shepherd and Loki,
my twelve year old black cat. Wishing you positive vibes
in these wild times. I can't remember and I did
not go back and look at my outline for that one,
(35:39):
but I think the original ditch got identified, so I
think you're probably safe because you would know, and those
original you know, the bois And farm that is still
producing boisonberries today has plants in some cases that are
from or directly related to those original plants. So I'm
here to you of your guilt. You're fine. You didn't
(36:02):
kill anything historical. The history grows on in many places. Also, man,
Loki looks like my kind of cat, and Tracy's all black,
but the facial expression is the real cell that is
a like yeah for real with the pictures kind of face.
Your pups are so sweet. I want to kiss those snoots.
(36:22):
And I love pictures of pie for sure. The moonpie
is very beautiful and I love it. These are spectacular.
So thank you, thank you, thank you, because this is
a very fun email to read. Thank you again for
being an educator. I feel like we cannot think educators
enough right now. Thank you for sharing your story and
I'm glad that I can banish your guilt. I hope.
(36:47):
I had this vision in my head of like a
rosary meat out of boys and berry somebody else, but
to anybody but me anyway, Thank you, thank you, thank you.
If you would like to write to us and tell
you about plants that may or may not be historical
that you're worried you've killed somehow destroyed history again you haven't,
(37:08):
you can do that history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find the show notes for all of our episodes,
and this one, of course included at Mistonhistory dot com.
Like I said, that last openly available biography that was
written by a really well researched scholar just last year
(37:30):
is available online and it's the last entry in the
show notes there. Just scroll on down and click right through.
If you would like to subscribe to the podcast and
you haven't done that yet, you can do that on
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(37:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your face for shows, m
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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