Halley the Londoner

Halley the LondonerAuthor(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Jul., 1993), pp. 163-177Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/531783 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 47 (2), 163-177 (1993)

HALLEY THE LONDONER

by

SIR ALAN COOK, F.R.S.

Selwyn College, Cambridge CB3 9DQ

INTRODUCTION

Edmond Halley was a Londoner born and bred, he married into a London family and lived most of his life in or near London: London made his life and work possible.

Halley's public life is generally well known and documented, yet there are

important gaps in the record. One was his survey and fortification of harbours in Dalmatia in 1703, at the direct command of Queen Anne, and his consequent election to the Savilian chair of geometry in 1704.1 More generally, it has been recognized that Halley could not have done many of the things he did without influential support from powerful patrons.2 In this article I suggest that the source of his patronage is to be found in his London connections.

Halley moved in very influential circles from his schooldays at St Paul's. He was in the party that chose the site of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1675.3 King Charles II himself promoted his expedition to St Helena and, on his return, Halley received the AM degree from Oxford at the command of Charles. It was Halley, rather than Pepys, the close associate of James II and President of the Royal Society, who presented Principia to the King. Halley seems at first to have come under

suspicion from William III but had the support of Queen Mary for his later Atlantic and Channel cruises, on which, although a civilian, he was in command of Paramore and commissioned as a post-captain in the Royal Navy. His Adriatic surveys were at the direct command of Queen Anne.

I believe that to understand how Halley could rely on such support we must look at his London background and connections, and in this article I consider his extended family, his links with the Tower and his associations with the London trading companies, in the early part of his life before he went to Oxford in 1704.

HALLEY'S LONDON

Halley's father, a soap-boiler and freeman of the Salter's Company, lived in Winchester Street (figure 1) and Halley certainly lived there for part of his early life.

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FIGURE 1. Outline plan of part of the City of London and suburbs, showing places with which Halley was connected.

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Halley the Londoner

Winchester Street is an L-shaped street between London Wall and Broad Street, close to Bethlehem Hospital and for the greater part in the parish of All Hallows, London Wall. Robert Hooke lived in Gresham College in Broad Street, just opposite Winchester Street, as did his successor, Andrew Tooke (F.R.S.). Winchester Street is partly in the parish of St Peter le Poer, one of the most notable parishioners of which was Sir John Buckworth, the ground landlord of numerous houses that

Halley's father owned in Winchester Street. Another neighbouring parish was St Helen's Bishopsgate where Robert Hooke was buried and which was the parish of

Halley's wife's grandparents. Winchester Street lay in Broad Street ward. That was one of the Inner City wards

(as were the adjacent wards of Cornhill and Bishopsgate Within) where the most prosperous and powerful city merchants lived. On the west however, remote from Winchester Street, it marched with Coleman Street ward, which was a poorer part of the City, a significant fact in London politics in the early eighteenth century.4 Two churches with Huguenot congregations were nearby, the Dutch Church in the parish of St Peter le Poer, and the French church in Threadneedle Street.

There were family connections with St Giles Cripplegate. The father is known to have paid hearth tax on a large house there; Halley' s mother died there, and his sister was christened there; Halley at one time shortly after his marriage lived in Golden Court outside the Wall, in the parish. Later, in 1716, he had a house in Bridgewater St. near Bridgewater Square. There was also some association with St Benet's, Paul's Wharf, below St Paul's, for one of Halley's daughters was christened there. Many other Halleys appear in the registers of that parish and they seem to belong to the family of a Doctor Halley who was presumably a civil lawyer in Doctors' Commons.5

Halley went to school at St Paul's where he was taught by Thomas Gale (F.R.S.), subsequently Dean of York and Secretary of the Royal Society, and where he made a lifelong friend of Robert Nelson (F.R.S.), religious writer and philanthropist. The first St Paul's school was burnt down in the Great Fire, as noted by Pepys (an Old Pauline), and Halley must have attended the second.6 Pepys himself took a great interest in later life in the school and old Paulines, Halley among them. Many of the places associated with the Halley family escaped the Fire - Winchester Street itself, St Giles Cripplegate, St Helen's Bishopsgate - and some of the buildings that Halley knew can still be seen, although All Hallows London Wall was rebuilt in the eighteenth century and Hooke's Bethlehem Hospital has disappeared. The present Liverpool Street extends across Bishopsgate into Devonshire Row leading to Devonshire Place where at a later period than Halley's many of the Levant Company merchants had their houses and where it is possible that some already lived in Halley's day.7

Halley's London was concentrated around Winchester Street but with more extended links to the west. The family associations in fact went still wider. Halley

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Humphrey I = Katherine Mewse

William Robinson

John Cawthorn = Elizabeth Ann = William Humphrey II

Robert = Joane = Edmond = Anne Cleetor

Tooke

Pike = Francis Mary = John

Katharine Huphrey Edmond = Mary

Francis

FIGURE 2a. The Halley Family

himself lived for some while at Islington. It is said that he was born, or at least christened, in the parish of St Leonard's Shoreditch in 1656, but the parish registers for that time have disappeared and the place and date of Halley's birth seem to be lost. The family also had a connection with Barking in Essex. Halley's grandfather was married there and he and the grandmother, as well as Halley's father and mother, were buried there (although the mother' s death is registered at St Giles Cripplegate). The grandfather retired to Alconbury and two of his sons, Halley's uncles, lived in Peterborough.8 One uncle, William, had an interest in City property in Mincing Lane and Fenchurch Street, which he had purchased from a Susanna Sandwith who had received an annuity in the grandfather's will; Halley subsequently had an interest in that property.9

Halley was an habitue of the coffee houses frequented by Hooke and his associates, as Hooke's diary tells us. The one they most patronized was Jonathan's, in Exchange Alley, off Comhill and Lombard Street.

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Halley the Londoner

HALLEY'S FAMILY

Halley's paternal grandfather was a Vintner and alderman'° (Figure 2a). Halley's father (also Edmond) was a citizen, freeman and Salter." The Salters ranked among the most substantial City companies who dominated City elections, whereas the Vintners were among the lower rank of artisan companies. Soap-boilers had a

monopoly and the father was well off though far from one of the richest in London - his personal estate at his death was £4000 (about £1 million now) and he could allow Halley £300 for St Helena and about the same for continental travels. Halley himself was a member of no City company and seems to have taken no part in City affairs; he is described as a 'gentleman', no doubt on account of his Oxford AM.

Halley's mother, Anne Robinson, was probably of a legal family; she died in the

parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, in the same year as the grandfather, when Halley was 15 or 16, but was buried at St Margaret's, Barking.

The father later remarried a lady known only as Joane, possibly when Halley was abroad in 1680/1. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1684, probably murdered, and he was buried at Barking, 'in linen'. Joane then married Robert Cleeter, gentleman, in 1685, at the church of St George the Martyr, Southwark. The father had died intestate and there were disputes between Halley and his step-mother, and actions in Chancery from which comes much of the information about Halley's circumstances in the 1680s. After his father's death Halley had an annual income in

James Tooke Gilbert Kinder = Margaret

John Charles Ralph Philip Edward Christopher = Margaret

James John William George Charles Ursula

Smith = Dorothy

Halley

Edmond = Mary Margaret = Mould Dorothy = English Elizabeth = Pierson

FIGURE 2b. The Tooke Family

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rents from houses in Winchester Street of about £200,12 and almost certainly he had other property interests as well, in particular the houses he lived in and the property in Mincing Lane. Joane and Robert Cleeter, with their daughter Mary were living in the parish of All Hallows London Wall in 1695 - no doubt this was Halley's stepmother and they were in the family house that Joane was allowed to keep in Winchester Street.13

Joseph Chomat (merchant) is recorded in the Chancery action as a particular friend of Joane and a Joe Chomat married Anne Cawthorne at St James, Duke's Place.14 I have found no other reference to any Chomat (the name has a French sound and he

may have been of Huguenot extraction, as were some others of Halley's acquaint- ance). Grandfather Halley had one daughter, Elizabeth, who married a John Caw- thorne. Cawthorne, of the north east of England, seems to be an unusual name for London, but a Phillip Cawthorne was Master of the Salter's Company in 1670 and a Richard Cauthore was a Common Councillor in 1687. Humphrey Halley, an uncle, besides bequests to Halley and his brother, also Humphrey, left money to Katherine, Anne, William and Humphrey Cawthorne.15 Clearly Cawthores were relatives of the Halleys and there is the possibility that Joane was some connection.

Halley married Mary Tooke at St James, Duke Place, in 1682; her father, uncles and father's father (Figure 2b), were Inner Temple lawyers,16 while her mother's father, Gilbert Kinder, was a mercer in the parish of St Helen' s Bishopsgate. Kinders and Tookes are also to be found in the registers of St Peter le Poer. Marriages in St James, Duke Place, near the present church of St Katherine Cree, on the east of the

City, could be celebrated without the usual notice of banns because, so the incumbent claimed, the church was a City peculiar; it seems from the entries in the registers that some notable city families, for instance Buckworth and Hussey (who were related by marriage), made use of that facility and Halley, in being married there, followed distinguished custom.

The Tookes were a legal family, and, like the Halleys, were litigious. Shortly after her marriage Mary engaged in a Chancery action with her sisters to obtain payment of a legacy from an uncle (Charles) who was the executor of another uncle, Edward, who had died in 1668. She also inherited lands from her father.17 Andrew Tooke, Hooke' s successor as Gresham Professor of Geometry, would surely have been well known to Halley, even if not of Mary' s family; he was born in 1673, son of Benjamin, citizen and stationer, and matriculated from Clare College, Cambridge.18 He was elected F.R.S. in the same year that Halley was elected to his Oxford chair. The Royal Society met in his rooms in Gresham College.

THE TOWER

An entry in the Calendar of State Papers (Domestic) for 1682 at the time of the unrest connected with the exclusion of James, Duke of York, concerns a petition

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submitted by an Edmond Halley pleading that Yeoman Warders of the Tower should not be called on to serve in City Train Bands because their duty was to the body of the sovereign. Halley himself was in France at that time and it seemed unlikely that

Halley's well-to-do father should have been a Yeoman Warder of the Tower, but an item of two quarters' salary from the Tower among the assets of the father's estate and entries in the Dividend Book of the Warders show that the petitioner was indeed

Halley's father.19 It seems that some of the Warders saw their company as a fashionable social club and were unlikely to have welcomed action against riotous

apprentices. Perhaps it was an alternative to service in the City regiments. It may have been through that association that Halley himself came early to the notice of Sir Jonas Moore (F.R.S.), who was Surveyor-General of the Ordnance and lived in the Tower.

Jonas Moore was a man of influence in the early years of the reign of Charles II. He had been Vermuyden's surveyor in the drainage of the Fens and when James II, then Duke of York and a boy of about 13, was imprisoned by the Parliament at Syon House in 1646/7, Moore had been for a short while his tutor. Apparently Moore did well in both capacities so that at the Restoration he stood well with the Court and was able to gain the Ordnance appointment.20 He was the patron of Flamsteed and the principal proponent of the scheme for a Royal Observatory. Halley must already have been known to Moore in 1675 when the two of them went with Flamsteed and Hooke to Greenwich, to view the site of the proposed observatory.21

When in 1676, Halley, still an undergraduate at Oxford, had the idea of comple- menting Flamsteed's observations in the north with observations of positions of southern stars, he was supported by Moore and Sir Joseph Williamson, a Secretary of State who had been Provost of Halley's college of Queen's at Oxford and a

Secretary of the Royal Society. As a result of their interest Charles II asked the East India Company to give Halley passage on one of their ships to St Helena, which was a possession of the Company, and to maintain him there for a year.22 It is also

possible that Pepys met Halley through Moore, for Pepys, the naval administrator, would have been in constant contact with Moore, who had to provide the ordnance for Pepys's ships.

THE TRADING COMPANIES

Hooke in his diary for Monday 24 July 1693, records: '2 East India ships said to be taken by French in India. Hot, clear. Hallys trade taken by French.'23

The passage might seem to mean that Halley was trading with the East India

Company and his goods were on a ship taken by the French in India, but Halley does not appear in lists of stockholders or traders with the Company nor in any accounts (that does not rule out his having been an undersharer). In fact there are three distinct

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items in the entry, the East India rumour, the news about Halley, and, separating them, the note on the weather.

The date of the entry is that on which it became generally known in London that a fleet of some 400 English and Dutch merchantmen sailing to the Levant had been attacked by a French fleet off Lagos in the south of Portugal, with heavy losses. The sailing of the fleet had been delayed for more than a year. It was convoyed to just beyond Ushant by the main allied battle fleet but left to continue into the Mediter- ranean escorted by a much smaller squadron commanded by Sir George Rooke. A large French squadron had earlier sailed from Brest and had joined up with the Toulon squadron under de Tourville and they attacked the merchant fleet on 20 June; Rooke avoided action but more than 80 merchantmen were sunk, burnt or captured, the largest number of them Dutch. Both Houses of Parliament held enquiries into the actions of the admirals and the Secretaries of State.24

The records of the Levant Company are less complete than those of the East India Company and it is not possible to say whether or not Halley had shipped goods in the ravaged fleet. He was not a member of the Company. However, Tookes were Levant merchants and a possible interpretation of Hooke's entry is that Halley or Mary were associated with some of the Tooke relatives in the Levant trade, What can be said is that Halley had important connections among Levant merchants.25

The Levant Company was a closed chartered company restricted for the most part to close relatives of existing or past members and with high entry fees for the few others. It had a monopoly of the trade to Venice and Turkey in which English goods, among which cloths and tin dominated, were traded for silk, spices and currants. Levant Company merchants were among the richest in the City and many were powerful in the government of the City as well as in national affairs.

The most notable of Halley' s Levant acquaintances was Sir John Buckworth, who was for many years until his death in 1687, the Deputy Governor of the Company. He held other important offices such as Commissioner of the Mint (which was in the Tower) and also of Excise.26 He was, as mentioned above, Halley's ground landlord in Winchester Street. When after his father's death, a dispute arose between Halley and his stepmother Joane about the division of the father's personal property (for he had left no will), Halley and Joane agreed that a trust should be set up to administer the estate, and the trustees were Sir John Buckworth, nominated by Halley, and Richard Young, Esquire, merchant,27 nominated by the stepmother. Halley, together with the Cleeters, was sued by Richard Young in 1693 (after Buckworth' s death), because the trust had not been ended and Young feared he might be responsible for outstanding debts if Halley went abroad28 - this was at the time when Middleton and Halley were first suggesting an extensive cruise to observe the Earth's magnetic field. A Richard Young was from time to time a member of the Court of Assistants of the Levant Company and is mentioned in the Court Minutes in other respects; another reference is to a Richard Young as living in the parish of

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St Andrew Undershaft.29 It seems reasonable that the references are to one and the same person (I have come across only one other reference to Richard Young and that in association with many of the other persons mentioned in this article30), and that Halley and his stepmother could call on the help of senior members of the Levant Company to settle their disputes.

Halley had another link with the Levant Company through Robert Nelson (F.R.S.), a member of the Company. Halley and Nelson had been at school together and Nelson accompanied Halley on his tour in France and Italy in 1681/2. Many years later Halley, in a letter to Nelson,31 wrote of their friendship since their childhood. Nelson was the son of a Levant Company merchant, who died while Robert was still at school. His mother, whom Halley must surely have known well, was the sister of Sir Gabriel Roberts who lived in the parish of All Hallows, London Wall and who, like Buckworth, was prominent in the councils of the Company and an alderman. Nelson wrote devotional works that were widely read, and after 1689 he became a non-juror. He was a philanthropist who set up funds to provide libraries for country clergy and he was one of the founders of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

One of Halley's notable deductions, which has had far-reaching consequences, was that a certain inscription in Palmyra implied that the Moon's motion had accelerated in historic times. The Palmyra inscriptions were discovered and made known in England by members of the Levant Company.32

I have concentrated on members of the Levant Company because it seems that it is with them that Halley is most likely to have had contacts, but many Levant merchants, Sir John Buckworth for instance, were also in the East India Company and in the Royal African Company. They also were among the most numerous and influential governors and stockholders of the original Bank of England.

PEOPLE AND POLITICS

We may identify at least three circles in which Halley moved, his family and his wife's, the Levant Company and the Royal Society. We have seen that those circles overlapped through shared interests and family connections. We also know that Halley is supposed to have professed indifference to the political swings and roundabouts of the day, while at the same time coming under some suspicion at the accession of William III. Can any of the circles in which Halley moved have been particularly identified with the interests of James II or William?

I have not come across any indication that Halley's father was influential in City affairs, but clearly he had connections with the Tower and with Levant Company merchants in and around Winchester Street. Mary Halley's family brought together

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lawyers and Levant Company merchants and possibly a Fellow of the Royal Society, as did other families known to Halley.33

Through his family, Halley would be in touch with lawyers, Salters and Levant traders, but his Royal Society circle seems to stand rather apart. Those with whom

Halley consorted in Jonathan's after the Society's meetings were for the most part gentlemen with no evident City or trading links. Wren was the Surveyor to the King, and Hooke had the key appointment as the City's Surveyor. Gale was headmaster of St Paul's but others, Aubrey, Boyle, Lodwick, Pepys, Pitfield and Waller, seem to have had no City position. They were among those most active in the Society at the time. There were of course, prominent City men, such as Sir Edward Cooke, Robert Nelson or Edward Nelthorp, who were Fellows and probably well known to

Halley, but they took little part in the activities of the Society.34 Much is known of the political affiliations of prominent City men, in particular

whether they supported the Court or whether they were in effect Republicans. Many with whom Halley may have associated were Tories and supported the Court, Buckworth for instance, but others were Whigs and opposed it. It seems that members of the Levant Company were predominantly Whig.35 After 1688 many Tories accepted William and Mary and none of those mentioned here went abroad then. It is hardly possible to draw any conclusion from the networks in which Halley moved about his own politics. There is one entry in Hooke's diary that might be suggestive. On 22 January 1688/9, at Jonathan' s, Halley was 'much concerned about seasing persons about Lord Essex'36. The then Earl of Essex was only nineteen and a supporter of William and Mary, so that the significance of the entry is unclear, but it might refer to associates of the Earl's father, who committed suicide in the Tower after the Rye House plot.

COURT AND CHURCH

Halley was thought by some in his own day and subsequently to have been

irreligious and to have taken a very detached attitude to politics of the day. It is also said that he failed to be elected to the Savilian chair of astronomy on account of

Stillingfleet's inquisition. I have previously argued that in 1704 other factors influenced the electors to the Savilian chair of geometry, who chose him in part for his public service,37 and no doubt for his mathematics - at a later period, after he had gone to Oxford, the Berouillis refer to him in their correspondence as one of the three or four outstanding English mathematicians.

If I am right in my reading of the evidence I have put forward above, Halley was from his earliest years in good standing with the courts of Charles II and James II as a result of his relations with Moore, Wren, Pepys and their associates, and because of his deep concern with matters of seamanship and navigation which so interested both monarchs and especially perhaps, James. He would therefore probably be seen



Halley the Londoner

by William III as perhaps unreliable, and the fact that he was a close friend of Nelson, and associated with Pepys, could well have led Stillingfleet to suspect him of being a non-juror. Certainly he moved in non-juring circles.

The religious as well as the political affiliations of prominent Londoners around 1682 have been documented, but again nothing very conclusive can be inferred about

Halley's own position. On the whole the people with whom he consorted were

Anglicans but some were not. In fact the Broad Street ward seems to have been marked by low church Anglicanism, as at St Peter le Poer, and by dissent, especially among Huguenots in the Dutch and French churches. It is also notable that a number of Levant Company merchants whom Halley almost certainly knew, Houblons, Leithieulliers, Papillon, Palavicino, were of Huguenot descent. In religion as in

politics, it seems that Halley did not restrict his acquaintanceship and it would be hazardous to speculate on his views from his associations so far as we know them.

Nelson (the 'pious Robert Nelson') was a non-juror but he also did much as a

philanthropist to advance the established Church of England through parochial libraries, the SPCK and the SPG, and his devotional writings are in the mainstream of Anglican piety. He was related by marriage to Sir Gabriel Roberts, also a Levant Company merchant, and to Sir John Buckworth, a Royalist in 1682, but a supporter of the more puritan wing of the Church of England. Thus among the City merchants that Halley knew, there was a range of religious views within the Church of England, between close colleagues and relatives. The list of subscribers to the church of King Charles the Martyr at Tunbridge Wells throws an interesting light on that. The feast day of Charles the Martyr was a celebration of the Restoration and of the Church of England, and more acceptable to Tories than to Whigs; but it was celebrated annually by the whole City, and the subscribers to the Tunbridge Wells church include Whigs and Tories, High Churchmen and Dissenters, merchants and gentlemen, a cross section of all the influential people in the City of all persuasions. A tolerant Halley would be acceptable to them, it is doubtful if an openly irreligious one would be.

Religion was inseparable from politics in Halley's London. Most people in the

City as elsewhere in England accepted William and Mary but without great enthusi- asm or initial commitment. Documents such as Hooke's diary, records of trading companies and so on, show that daily life continued with little disruption when James II departed. Even Pepys continued in office under William III for a few months.

Halley would certainly have found William far less interested in nautical matters than James, but by the time he was putting forward his scheme for cruises to measure the magnetic field of the Earth, the monarchs whom he had to convince were the Stuart queens, Mary and Anne, daughters of James. Halley himself may not have been a non-juror, but his associations could have made William III suspicious and Stillingfleet hostile, as he was to non-jurors in general. Here again, it may be that

Halley's London background holds the clues. It seems unlikely that Halley would have maintained his childhood friendship with the 'pious' Robert Nelson through

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two years together travelling in France and Italy and for almost forty years thereafter, if Halley's views had been repugnant to Nelson.

CONCLUSION

I have set out evidence, a great deal of it circumstantial, for the circles in which Halley would have moved, circles that overlap, for one often finds the same people connected with the Tower, in the merchant companies, or in the Inns of Court or as common councillors and alderman. Some were Fellows of the Royal Society, but here a distinction occurs. The active Fellows of Hooke's circle who met in Jona- than's coffee-house after meetings of the Society, and where Halley was often to be found, were not for the most part prominent in the merchant companies or elsewhere in the City, and likewise, those merchants and City politicians who were Fellows of the Society, such as Nelson or Sir Edward Cooke or Nelthorpe, were not active in the Society.

A fuller knowledge of Halley's London connections would help in understanding how he came by opportunities and resources for his major undertakings, including the stimulus, the support and publication of Principia, and his Atlantic and Channel cruises. No doubt it was because he moved in influential circles of the City and the Court that he could pursue his projects. I hope I have made some progress towards that understanding, but at the same time there are gaps.

Some gaps are likely to remain unfilled. Records of the time have been lost, Halley does not seem to have left many personal letters. What was the Halley connection with Barking and whom else did they know there? Did Halley, perhaps through his wife's relatives, engage in the Levant trade? Who was his stepmother, who Cleeter (a gentleman), who Chomat? And does it matter that we do not know? The question of trade may be significant. I have shown elsewhere that Halley could hardly have been in financial straits after his father's death, as is sometimes said, but if he did

subsequently want for money, and he did ask Newton to help him get some post, that could be due to trading losses in 1693.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have had particular help from staff of the Guildhall Library, the Corporation of London Records Office, the City Archives, the Greater London Record Office, the Essex County Record Office, the Bodleian Library, the Library of the University of Basle (Dr Fritz Nagel) and the Royal Society, and the secretary to the Clerk of the Salter's Company (Miss Victoria Rogers). I am grateful to Miss Fiona Greenwood (Selwyn College, Cambridge) for calling my attention to the lists of the Tunbridge Wells subscribers that she transcribed and used in an undergraduate thesis, and for allowing me to make use of them. I have had helpful comments from Dr Allan

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Chapman, Dr Mark Goldie, Dr Valerie Pearl, Dr David Smith, Dr Frances Willmoth and a referee.

A grant from the Royal Society contributed to my expenses.

NOTES

1 A.H. Cook, 'Halley in Istria, 1703; Navigator and Military Engineer', J. Navigation 37, 1-23 (1984); 'The Election of Edmond Halley to the Savilian Professorship of Astron- omy', J. Hist. Astron. 15, 34-36 (1984); and 'An English Astronomer on the Adriatic. Edmond Halley's Surveys of 1703 and the Imperial Administration', Mitt. Ost. Staatsar- chivs 38, 123-162 (1985).

2 See articles in N.J. Thrower (ed.), Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1990).

3 H.W. Robinson and W. Adams (eds), Hooke's Diary, 1672-80, entries for 1675: June 22, 23, 30, July 2, 28.

4 See G.S. de Krey, A Fractured Society: the Politics of London in the first Age of Party, 1688-1715 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1985).

5 Register of St Benet, Paul's Wharf. 6 M.F.J. McConnell, A History of St Paul's School (London, 1909). 7 R. Davis, Aleppo and Devonshire Square (London, 1967). 8 For references see Alan Cook, 'Edmond Halley and Newton's Principia', Notes Rec. R.

Soc. Lond. 45(2), 129-138 (1991). 9 For the Mincing Lane property see PRO, Close Rolls, vol. 53, Indenture of 1694 April 21. 10 J.R. Woodhead, The Rulers of London, 1660-1689 (London and Middlesex Archaeologi-

cal Society, 1965). The genealogy of Halley's family, shown in figure 2 depends primarily on the material assembled by E.R. Pike (Correspondence and Papers of Edmond Halley, Oxford, 1932). I have checked and supplemented that material from the parish registers of All Hallows London Wall, St Peter le Poer, St Benet's Paul's Wharf, St Giles Cripplegate, St Helen's Bishopsgate, St Margaret Westminster, Westminster Abbey, St George Southwark, St Margaret's Barking and St James Duke's Place, and from the Chancery actions of notes 11, 18 and 19. The issues are often not straightforward.

11 Public Record Office: Whittington, Bundle 222, No.27; Robert Cleeter and Joane his wife vs Sir John Buckworth, Richard Young and Edmond Halley. April 1686.

12 See Alan Cook, 'Edmond Halley and Newton's Principia', Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 45(2), 129-138 (1991).

13 D.V. Glass, London Inhabitants within the Wall, 1695 (1966). 14 For marriages at St James Duke's Place, see the transcript of the registers. Among those

married there were Buckworths and Husseys and very large number of Cookes (see note 33).

15 The Salter's Company, Court Minutes and Lists of Yeomanry; will of Humphrey Halley, PRO PCC reg. Bence fo. 66.

16 James Tooke was Auditor of the Court of Ward and Liveries. John, the eldest son, matriculated from Pembroke College, Cambridge, 1634-5, was admitted to the Inner Temple 1635-6, when his address was Aldersgate Street, barrister 1644. Charles, the second son, was admitted to the Inner Temple 1638, barrister 1648. Edward, the third son, matriculated from Christ's College, Cambridge in 1639 (aged 15), admitted to the Inner

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Temple 1639, barrister 1648. Another Tooke, Ralph, second son of William, admitted 1629, barrister in 1637, Bencher 1652, may have been related. See Members admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547-1660, Venn, Alumni Cantabrigensii.

17 Public Record Office, Bridges, 367/19,27 June 1683, Edmond Halley and Mary, Anthony English and Dorothy, Robert Pearson and Elizabeth, vs Charles Tooke and Francis Bostock Fuller (of the Temple); will of Christopher Tooke, PRO, PCC reg Juxon, fo 42, pr 3 March 1662. I have no information about Francis Bostock Fuller, but Edward Bostock Fuller was a colleague of the surveyor Gregory King and with him produced in 1687 a manuscript map of 'the Hospital and Precint of St Catherine's near the Tower of London' now in the Guildhall Library.

18 Venn, Alumni Cantabrigensii. 19 Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1682 April 5 and Cleeter and Cleeter vs Buckworth, Young

and Halley (note 11). 20 Frances Willmoth, 1991, Cambridge PhD thesis on Sir Jonas Moore. 21 Hooke's Diary - see note 3. 22 British Library, Indian and Oriental Section: Court minutes of the East India Company. 23 Hooke's Diary for 24 July 1693, in Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, (Oxford, 1935). 24 J. Ehrmann, The Navy in the War of William III. 25 For lists of admissions to freedom, see Minutes of the Court of Assistants of the Levant

Company (PRO, SP 105-153), Aleppo correspondence (to June 1698 and March 1701, PRO. SP 105-332,pp.37 and 48) and (to 1701) Bodleian Library, pamphlet Fol. 665, ff 97, 98. A comparison with the lists in the Minute Book shows that the pamphlet list is almost but not quite complete. The pamphlet is a collection of printed Parliamentary papers, Acts, Bills, Committeee cases, of about 1716, on many of which have been written notes relating to naval and commercial matters of earlier years. The compiler is nowhere named but a possible clue to his identity is a printed notice (f 141) of 1694 sent to Mr Thomas Cooke, merchant of Mare St., Hackney (see note 33), notifying merchants of the imposts made by the Court of Assistants of the Levant Company upon goods saved from the ships driven into Cadiz at the Lagos disaster.

26 J.R. Woodhead, The Rulers of London, 1660-1689 and Dict. Nat. Biog. 27 See note 11. 28 PRO C.9 Reynardson 142/57. Richd. Young vs Robt and Joanne Cleeter and Edmond

Halley. 29 PRO SP 105-133, Court Minutes; D.V. Glass, Inhabitants of London within the Walls,

1695. 30 Lists of over two thousand subscribers to the building of the Church of King Charles the

Martyr at Tunbridge Wells in 1676 to 1684 and 1688 to 1696 have survived on tables in the church. Most of the subscribers are local, but a substantial group is from London, headed by Princess Anne. More than eighty are Fellows of the Royal Society including seven of the eight presidents of the period, Wren being the only absentee, but the design of the church is close to that of some of his City churches and may well have come from his office. Hooke also is absent. Halley is missing, but was at first too young and later was abroad a great deal. Members of the Levant and East India Companies are prominent in the lists and Halley would have known many of them, for example, the Buckworths, Richard Young, Robert Nelson (FRS) and his wife, Edward Nelthorp (FRS), Sir Edward Cooke (FRS) and other Cookes, Houblons, Lethieulliers, and probably many others.

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31 Edmond Halley to Robert Nelson, 1714, printed in F. Brokesby, 1715, Life of Dodswell, pp. 611-38.

32 E. Halley 'Emendationes ac Notae in vetustas Albatenii Observationes Astronomicas cum restitutione Tabularum Lunisolarium ejusdem Authoris' Philos Trans. 17, No. 204, 913-921 (1693); and 'Some Account of the Ancient State of the City of Palmyra with Short Remarks upon the Inscriptions found there', Philos Trans. 19, 160-75 (1695).

33 An example of such an extended family is that of Cooke who, around 1680, appeared in the marriage registers of St James, Duke's Place more than twelve times each year. They were also in the Levant Company, particularly Nicholas who seems to have been active in the Court of Assistants and otherwise, and Thomas (of Mare Street, Hackney - see note 25). There were two Thomas Cookes at Hackney, the other being Sir Thomas, Kt in 1690, goldsmith and alderman. Three John Cookes and a Ralph were Common Councillors and Sir Edward (FRS), John, Nicholas, Richard and Thomas are in the Tunbridge Wells lists (note 30). An Edward, a John and a William were Salters in the 1670s and an Edward (perhaps the Sir Edward of the Tunbridge Wells lists) was Master of the Salters Company in 1678 (Court Minutes and Lists of the Yeomanry in the archives of the Salters Company). The Salter Cookes were almost certainly known to the Halleys and so may the Levant Company merchants have been.

34 M. Hunter, The Royal Society and its Fellows, 1660-1700 (The British Society for the

History of Science, 1982). 35 See G.S. de Krey, A Fractured Society: the Politics of London in the first Age of Party,

1688-1715 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1985). 36 Hooke's Diary, 22 January 1688/9, in Gunther, Early Science in Oxford (Oxford, 1935). 37 A.H. Cook, 'The Election of Edmond Halley to the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy',

J. Hist. Astron. 15, 34-36 (1984).

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