Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  34. David Boyd Haycock and Patrick Wallis, “Quackery and Commerce in 17th-Century London: The Proprietary Medicine Business of Anthony Daffy,” Medical History Supplement, 25 (2005), pp. 1–37.

  35. “Philalethes,” True Light of Alchemy, p. 98.

  36. William Salmon, The London Almanack for the Year of Our Lord, 1692 (London, 1692), sig. A2v.

  37. Samuel Garth, The Dispensary: A Poem (London, 1699), p. 25, canto III, ll. 6–7, where an apothecary lays “S— Works” under his head in order to lull himself to sleep. The identification of “S—” as William Salmon was made in A Compleat Key to the Seventh Edition of the Dispensary (London, 1716), p. 11. Salmon, who died in 1713, is there described as “a late Quack Doctor, and indefatigable Scribbler.”

  38. G.N. Clark, A History of the Royal College of Phyisicians (2 vols, Oxford, 1964–6), vol. 2, chs 1–5; William Salmon, Rebuke to the Authors of a Blew-Book, Call'd the State of Physick in London (London, 1698), pp. 5, 7; Cook, Trials of an Ordinary Doctor, ch. 7, esp. pp. 180–3.

  39. “Eyrenaeus Philoctetes,” Philadelphia, or Brotherly Love to the Studious in the Hermetick Art (London, 1694), pp. vi–vii.

  40. “Philadept,” An Essay Concerning Adepts (London, 1698), pp. 5, 8.

  41. Ibid., p. 39.

  42. Ibid., pp. 45–6.

  43. Ibid., p. 50.

  44. [Anon.], Annus Sophiae Jubilaeus. The Sophick Constitution: or, the Evil Customs of the World Reform'd (London, 1700), p. 22.

  45. Ibid., pp. 50, 59, 65.

  46. Daniel Defoe, An Essay upon Projects (London, 1697), pp. 20, 28. Defoe associates the rise of projects with Prince Rupert, a promoter of the Royal Society as well as an alchemist, and Bishop John Wilkins, author of Mathematical Magick; ibid., p. 25.

  47. Rae Blanchard, ed., The Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele (London, 1941), pp. 11, 21, 429–30, 433–4, quotations on p. 435.

  48. Delarivier Manley, The New Atalantis, ed. Ros Ballaster (London, 1992), pp. 102–4, quotation on p. 102.

  49. Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, in Herbert Davis, ed., The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. 1: A Tale of a Tub with Other Early Works, 1696–1707 (Oxford, 1939), pp. 79, 95, 96, 104–5, 118–19; and for Paracelsus again, Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books, in Davis, ed., Prose Works of Swift, vol. 1, pp. 152, 156.

  50. “J.D.,” A Letter to Dr. John Freind, on the Bill Now Depending, for the Inspection of Drugs and Medicinal Compositions in Apothecaries, Chymists, and Druggists Shops (London, 1724). Freind, a doctor and Member of Parliament, had written a noted textbook on chemistry.

  51. B.L., Sloane 3646, f. 130. Kellum's papers are in B.L., Sloane 3632–6, 3657, 3686–9, 3697–9, 3715.

  52. Paul Hopkins, “Sham Plots and Real Plots in the 1690s,” in Eveline Cruickshanks, ed., Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759 (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 89–110.

  53. [Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and others], The Spectator (8 vols, London, 1713–14), vol. 3, no. 225, 17 Nov 1711, pp. 317–18; Lawrence Klein, “Liberty, Manners and Politeness in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Historical Journal, 32, 3 (1989), pp. 583–605.

  54. Thomas Tryon, The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness: or, A Discourse of Temperance (3rd ed., London, 1697), pp. 18, 19, 21.

  55. See, for example, the course of chemistry offered by J.F. Vigani of Verona at Cambridge University in 1705: GUL, Ferguson Mss. 62, 165.

  56. An excellent study of the role of the Company in this period is Timothy Feist, The Stationers’ Voice: The English Almanac Trade in the Early Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia, 2005).

  57. Bernard Capp, English Almanacs, 1500–1800: Astrology and the Popular Press (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), p. 238.

  58. [John Partridge], Mene Tekel: Being an Astrological Judgment on the Great and Wonderful Year 1688 (London, [1689]).

  59. [John Gadbury], Merlini Liberati Errata: or, The Prophecies and Predictions of John Partridge, for the Year of Our Lord 1690 (London, 1692), p. 20.

  60. John Partridge, Merlinus Liberatus … 1692 (London, 1692), sig. C8v; John Gadbury, EΘΗΜΕΡΙΣ … 1692 (London, 1692), sig. A2.

  61. John Gadbury, ΕΘΗΜΕΡΙΣ … 1693 (London, 1693), part 2, pp. 1–15.

  62. The Athenian Mercury, vol. 9, no. 8, Saturday, 7 Jan. 1692 [i.e. 1693]. Gadbury was defended by “A Student of Astrology” in Athenian Mercury, vol. 10, no. 23, 13 June 1693.

  63. John Partridge, Opus Reformatus: or, A Treatise of Astrology, in Which the Common Errors of That Art Are Modestly Exposed and Rejected (London, 1693), p. ii.

  64. Ibid., pp. 15–16.

  65. Ibid., pp. x–xi.

  66. John Gadbury, ΕΘΗΜΕΡΙΣ … 1695 (London, 1695), sigs C1–C6v.

  67. John Partridge, Defectio Geniturarum: Being an Essay towards the Reviving and Proving the True Old Principles of Astrology, Hitherto Neglected, or At Leastwise, Not Observed or Understood (London, 1697), sig. b2.

  68. Ibid., p. 91.

  69. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (8 vols, New York, 1923–58), vol. 8, pp. 302–4.

  70. John Gadbury, ΕΘΗΜΕΡΙΣ … 1698 (London, 1698), pp. 3–15.

  71. John Partridge, Flagitiosus Mercurius Flagellatus: or The Whipper Whipped: Being an Answer to a Scurrilous Invective Written by George Parker in his Almanack for MDCXCVII ([London, 1697]), pp. 3, 8, 15. This pamphlet was appended to Defectio Geniturarum but is separately paginated. Partridge continued to pummel Parker in Merlinus Liberatus … 1699 (London, 1699), sigs C7v–C8.

  72. George Parker, Mercurius Anglicus … 1698 (London, 1698), sigs A1v–C8v. Parker had declared his admiration for Halley, Kepler, Galileo and Tycho Brahe as early as 1692: Mercurius Anglicus … 1692 (London, 1692), sigs A3–A6.

  73. John Partridge, Merlinus Liberatus … 1698 (London, 1698), sigs C6–C7v.

  74. Henry Coley, Merlinus Anglicus Junior … 1698 (London, 1698), sig. C2v.

  75. John Partridge, Merlinus Liberatus … 1708 (London, 1708), sigs C7v–C8.

  76. Ibid., sigs C1v–C2v.

  77. B.L., Add. Ms. 27986, ff. 4v, 59, 61v, 65, 72, 78v. The long quotation is on f. 57v. Gadbury can be identified as the author of the notebook from internal evidence relating to members of his family.

  78. B.L., Add. Ms. 27986, f. 25v.

  79. John Gadbury, ΕΦΗΜΕΡΙΣ: or, A Diary Astronomical and Astrological for the Year of Grace 1679 (London, 1679), sigs C7v–C8v.

  80. B.L., Egerton 2378, ff. 2v, 25v, 34v. By “the War,” Partridge meant the Great Northern War, which lasted beyond the end of the War of the Spanish Succession.

  81. Ibid., ff. 9v, 20v, 35v, 37v, long quotation from f. 31v.

  82. Ibid., f. 21v.

  83. Ibid., ff. 3v, 33v.

  84. William A. Eddy, “Tom Brown and Partridge the Astrologer,” Modern Philology, 28, 2 (1930), pp. 163–8; William A. Eddy, “The Wits versus John Partridge, Astrologer,” Studies in Philology, 29, 1 (1932), pp. 29–40. Eddy's references to Partridge's early life are not reliable, and are corrected in George Mayhew, “The Early Life of John Partridge,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 1, 3 (1961), 31–42.

  85. “Isaac Bickerstaff” [Jonathan Swift], Predictions for the Year 1708 (London, 1708), in Davis, ed., The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. 2: Bickerstaff Papers and Pamphlets on the Church (Oxford, 1940), pp. 141–3.

  86. Ibid., p. 145.

  87. John Partridge, Mr. Partridge's Answer to Esquire Bickerstaff's Strange and Wonderful Predictions for the Year 1708 (London, 1708), in Davis, ed, Prose Works of Swift, vol. 2, pp. 203–7.

  88. “Isaac Bickerstaff” [Jonathan Swift], A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq; Against What Is Objected to Him by Mr. Partridge, in his Almanack for the Present Year 1709 (London, 1709), in Davis, ed., Prose Works of Swift, vol. 2, pp. 159, 161, 162.

  89. “Isaac Bickerstaff” [Richard Steele and others], The Tatler, ed. George A. Aitken (2 vols, London, 1899), vol. 1, no. 1, 12 April 1709, p. 42; no. 7, 26 April 170
9, p. 88; no. 11, 5 May 1709, p. 124; no. 14, 12 May 1709, p. 147; no. 36, 12 July 1709, p. 312; no. 44, 21 July 1709, p. 265; vol. 2, no. 56, 18 Aug. 1709, p. 54; no. 59, 25 Aug. 1709, p. 72; no. 73, 27 Sept. p. 177; no. 76, 4 Oct. 1709, p. 200; no. 96, 19 Nov. pp. 319, 323; no. 99, 26 Nov. 1709, p. 339.

  90. John Partridge, A Letter to a Member of Parliament from Mr. John Partridge, Touching his Almanack for the Year 1710 (London, 1709), in Records of the Stationers’ Company, Reel 98, B4/i. Patrick Curry's biography of Partridge in ODNB contains details of the dispute.

  91. The Wills and Testaments of J. Partridge, Student in Physick and Astrology, and Dr. Burnett, Master of Charter-House (London, 1716).

  92. Wellcome Lib., Ms. 4021.

  93. Edmund Calamy, The Nonconformist's Memorial: Being an Account of the Ministers, Who Were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration, ed. Samuel Palmer (2 vols, London, 1777), vol. 1, pp. 370–1.

  94. GUL, Ferguson Ms. 86, p. 18.

  95. Ibid., p. 100.

  96. Swift, A Tale of a Tub, pp. 104–5.

  97. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 3, ch. 6, sect. 11, p. 325.

  98. Ibid., book 4, ch. 12, sect. 12.

  99. “Copy of a Letter Sent to the Bishop of Glocester, by the Rev. Mr. Arthur Bedford, Late Vicar of Temple, in the City of Bristol,” in Henry Durbin, A Narrative of Some Extraordinary Things That Happened to Mr. Richard Giles's Children, at the Lamb, without Lawford's Gates, Bristol; Supposed to Be the Effect of Witchcraft (Bristol, 1800), pp. 56–60; GUL, Ferguson Ms. 125, following p. 546; Jonathan Barry, “Piety and the Patient: Medicine and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Bristol,” in Roy Porter, ed., Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-industrial Society (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 157, 160–1.

  100. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Ballard 66; Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawl. D.1067. The invocations in the latter manuscript are based on the Little Key of Solomon.

  101. B.L., Harley 6481–7.

  102. A careful reconstruction of the sources of these manuscripts is found in Arthur Edward Waite, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (London, 1924), pp. 397–401.

  103. B.L., Harley 6483, f. 1. This work has appeared in print: Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, eds, The Goetia of Dr. Rudd (Singapore, 2007). The editors equate “Dr. Rudd” with the military engineer Thomas Rudd (d. 1656), which seems unlikely. The identification was first suggested by Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972), pp. 258–9.

  104. B.L., Harley 6483, f. 414v.

  105. B.J. Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its Development in England (Cambridge, 1996), chs 7–8; D.P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (London, 1964), ch. 13; Paula McDowell, “Enlightenment Enthusiasms and the Spectacular Failure of the Philadelphian Society,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35, 4 (2002), pp. 515–33; Julie Hirst, Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (Aldershot, Hants, and Burlington, Vt., 2005); [Francis Lee], The State of the Philadelphian Society: or, The Grounds of their Proceedings Consider'd (London, 1697); Bodl. Lib., Ms Rawl. D. 832, ff. 82–8.

  106. [Christopher Walton], Notes and Materials for an Adequate Biography of the Celebrated Divine and Theosopher, William Law (London, 1854), pp. 192, 199–205. The copy in the Bodleian Library, call mark 210.a238, is a presentation copy with Walton's original notes.

  107. Jane Lead, A Fountain of Gardens (2 vols, London, 1697–8), vol. 1, pp. 17–18.

  108. [Francis Lee], “A Letter of Resolution,” in Lead, Fountain of Gardens, vol. 1, p. 504.

  109. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawl. D.832, ff. 62–7.

  110. Bodl. Lib., Ms Rawl. D.833, ff. 27–8, 92.

  111. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawl. D.1152, f. 5.

  112. “Letters from Dr. Ja. Garden … to Mr. J. Aubrey,” in Michael Hunter, ed., The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2001), p. 143; G.D. Henderson, ed., Mystics of the North-East (Aberdeen, 1934), pp. 59, 61–5. Lee's link to the Aberdeen mystics was through the London physician James Keith.

  113. Robert Kirk, “The Secret Commonwealth” (1692), in Hunter, ed., The Occult Laboratory, p. 106; also, Lizanne Henderson and Edward J. Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (Edinburgh, 2001), ch. 6. A more conventional treatment of second sight can be found in a pamphlet by the Episcopal minister John Frazer, entitled ΔEYTEPOΣKOΠIA [Deutoroskipia] or, A Brief Discourse Concerning the Second Sight, Commonly So Called (Edinburgh, 1707), which appears in Hunter, ed., The Occult Laboratory, pp. 187–204.

  114. Kirk, “Secret Commonwealth,” in Hunter, ed., Occult Laboratory, pp. 79, 82.

  115. J. Kent Clark, Goodwin Wharton (Oxford, 1984), pp. 30–1, 218–326.

  116. Kirk, “Secret Commonwealth,” in Hunter, ed., Occult Laboratory, p. 86; “Letters from Garden to Aubrey,” in ibid., p. 143.

  117. See Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles (Baltimore, 1995).

  118. The Athenian Mercury, vol. 3, no. 10, 29 Aug. 1691.

  119. Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock,” in Aubrey Williams, ed., Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope (Boston, 1969), p. 79.

  120. Ibid., canto 1, 1l. 37, 71; canto 3, 1l. 35–6, 152.

  121. The best general explanation of the decline of witch beliefs is James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, 1996), chs 9–11; but see also Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, ch. 6, to which the following discussion is heavily indebted.

  122. A Relation of the Diabolical Practices of the Witches of the Sheriffdom of Renfrew (London, 1697); Michael Wasser, “The Western Witch-Hunt of 1697–1700: The Last Major Witch-Hunt in Scotland,” in Julian Goodare, ed., The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2002), pp. 146–65. For Dumfries and Galloway, see Lizanne Henderson, “The Survival of Witch Prosecutions and Witch-Beliefs in South-West Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review, 85, 1 (2006), pp. 52–74.

  123. A Full and True Relation of the Witches at Pittenweem (Edinburgh, 1704). One pamphlet writer decried the “horrible Murder committed in Pittenweem” and denounced the chief witness as “a Cheat”: An Answer of a Letter from a Gentleman in Fife, to a Nobleman, Containing a Brief Account of the Barbarous and Illegal Treatment, These Poor Women Accused of Witchcraft, Met With from the Baillies of Pittenweem and Others, with Some Few Observations Thereon ([Edinburgh?], 1705). He was answered in A Just Reproof, to the False Reports, Bold, & Unjust Calumnies, Dropt in Two Late Pamphlets (Edinburgh, 1705), a pamphlet that defended the magistrates and blamed the murder (p. 13) on the presence of “a great many Strangers, some Englishmen, some from Orkney.” See also Stuart Macdonald, “In Search of the Devil in Fife Witchcraft cases, 1560–1705,” in Goodare, ed., Scottish Witch-Hunt, p. 44.

  124. “A Lover of the Truth,” Witch-Craft Proven, Arreign'd and Condemn'd in its Professors, Professions and Marks, by Diverse Pungent, and Convincing Arguments (Glasgow, 1697); [John Bell], Tryal of Witchcraft, or, Witchcraft Arraign'd and Condemn'd (Glasgow, 1705). Only one copy of the second pamphlet now exists, in the Scottish National Library. It is summarized in Christina Larner, “Two Late Scottish Witchcraft Tracts: Witch-craft Proven and The Tryal of Witchcraft,” in Sidney Anglo, ed., The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft (London, 1977), pp. 227–45.

  125. Ralph Davis, An Account of the Tryals, Examination and Condemnation of Elinor Shaw, and Mary Philip's (Two Notorious Witches), at Northampton Assizes, on Wednesday the 7th of March 1705 for Bewitching a Woman, and Two Children, Tormenting them in a Sad and Lamentable Manner till they Dyed (London, 1705); Ralph Davis, The Northamptonshire Witches (London, 1705); A Full and True Account of the Tryal, Examination and Condemnation of Mary Johnson a Witch (London, 1706); The Whole Trial and Examination of Mrs. Mary Hicks and her Daughter Elizabeth, But of Nine Years of Age, Who Were Condemn'd the Last Assizes Held at Huntington for Witchcraft; and there Executed on Saturday the 28th of July 1716 (London, [1716]). That the first t
wo pamphlets and the last were written by the same author, and that they did not refer to real incidents, were demonstrated in Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 (Washington, 1911), pp. 375–83. Notestein also pointed out their similarities to an earlier pamphlet describing a fictitious witchcraft case at Worcester in 1645.

  126. Balthasar Bekker, The World Bewitch'd; or, An Examination of the Common Opinions Concerning Spirits … Vol. 1 (London, 1695). See also Andrew Fix, Fallen Angels: Balthasar Bekker, Spirit Belief and Confessionalism in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Republic (Dordrecht, 1999).

  127. John Beaumont, An Historical, Physiological and Theological Treatise of Spirits, Apparitions, Witchcrafts and Other Magical Practices (London, 1705), p. 347.

  128. Ibid., p. 328.

  129. See Margaret C. Jacobs, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978).

  130. A reiteration of this view can be found in The Black Art Detected and Expos'd: or, A Demonstration of the Hellish Impiety, of Being, or Desiring to Be a Wizzard, Conjurer or Witch (London, 1707).

  131. [Joseph Addison], The Spectator, vol. 2, no. 117, 14 July 1711, p. 186.

  132. Arthur Wellesley Secord, ed., Defoe's Review, Reproduced from the Original Editions (9 vols in 22 books, New York, 1965), vol. 8 (book 20), no. 90, 20 Oct. 1711, pp. 361–4.

  133. [Addison], Spectator, no. 117, vol. 2, p. 189.

  134. Phyllis J. Guskin, “The Context of Witchcraft,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15, 1 (1981), pp. 48–71; Victoria County History, A History of the County of Hertford: Volume 3 (London, 1912), pp. 151–8.

  135. For this interpretation of witchcraft, see Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995), as well as Lyndal Roper, The Witch-Craze (New Haven, Conn., 2008).

  136. [Francis Bragge, junior], A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, Practis'd by Jane Wenham of Walkerne in Hertfordshire (2nd ed., London, 1712), preface, [p. iii].