Claude Nicolas Ledoux Architecture and Utopia in

the Era of the French Revolution 2nd Edition

Anthony Vidler pdf download

https://ebookmeta.com/product/claude-nicolas-ledoux-architecture-
and-utopia-in-the-era-of-the-french-revolution-2nd-edition-
anthony-vidler/

Download more ebook from https://ebookmeta.com

We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit ebookmeta.com
to discover even more!

Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution 2nd

Edition Paul R Hanson

https://ebookmeta.com/product/historical-dictionary-of-the-
french-revolution-2nd-edition-paul-r-hanson/

The French Revolution A Document Collection 2nd Edition

Laura Mason

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-french-revolution-a-document-
collection-2nd-edition-laura-mason/

On Wide Seas The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era 1st

Edition Claude Berube

https://ebookmeta.com/product/on-wide-seas-the-us-navy-in-the-
jacksonian-era-1st-edition-claude-berube/

Metallurgy in Ancient Ecuador A Study of the Collection

of Archaeological Metallurgy of the Ministry of Culture
Ecuador 1st Edition Roberto Lleras Perez

https://ebookmeta.com/product/metallurgy-in-ancient-ecuador-a-
study-of-the-collection-of-archaeological-metallurgy-of-the-
ministry-of-culture-ecuador-1st-edition-roberto-lleras-perez/
Dealing with Difficult People: 24 lessons for Bringing
Out the Best in Everyone (The McGraw-Hill Professional
Education Series) 1st Edition Brinkman

https://ebookmeta.com/product/dealing-with-difficult-
people-24-lessons-for-bringing-out-the-best-in-everyone-the-
mcgraw-hill-professional-education-series-1st-edition-brinkman/

Finally Right Personal Request Book 5 1st Edition Kayla

Kelly

https://ebookmeta.com/product/finally-right-personal-request-
book-5-1st-edition-kayla-kelly/

Ulrich Beck: Theorising World Risk Society and

Cosmopolitanism 1st Edition Klaus Rasborg

https://ebookmeta.com/product/ulrich-beck-theorising-world-risk-
society-and-cosmopolitanism-1st-edition-klaus-rasborg/

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away,

Where It Goes, and Why It Matters 1st Edition Oliver
Franklin-Wallis

https://ebookmeta.com/product/wasteland-the-dirty-truth-about-
what-we-throw-away-where-it-goes-and-why-it-matters-1st-edition-
oliver-franklin-wallis/

The Way of the Cocktail Japanese Traditions Techniques

and Recipes Julia Momosé Emma Janzen

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-way-of-the-cocktail-japanese-
traditions-techniques-and-recipes-julia-momose-emma-janzen/
Florida & the South's National Parks (National Parks
Guide) 1st Edition Anthony Ham

https://ebookmeta.com/product/florida-the-souths-national-parks-
national-parks-guide-1st-edition-anthony-ham/
C L A U D E -N I C O L A S L E D O U X
ANT HONY VIDLE R

CLAUDE-NICOLAS
LEDOUX
ARC HIT ECT UR E AN D U T O P I A
IN T HE E R A OF T HE
F R ENCH R E VOLUT ION

Second and expanded edition

Birkhäuser
Basel
GRAPHIC DESIGN (ORIGINAL EDITION): Sylvie Milliet
TYPESETTING AND LAYOUT (EXPANDED EDITION): Amelie Solbrig
COVER DESIGN: Floyd Schulze, Amelie Solbrig
COPY-EDITING: Michael Wachholz, Ria Stein
PROJECT COORDINATION (EXPANDED EDITION): Ria Stein
PRODUCTION: Amelie Solbrig
EDITORIAL COORDINATION (ORIGINAL EDITION): Chloé Jarry
IMAGE RESEARCH (ORIGINAL EDITION): Françoise Carp and Isabelle Sallé
PAPER: Magno Volume, 135g/m2
PRINTING: Beltz Grafische Betriebe GmbH, Bad Langensalza

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021940252

Bibliographic information published by the German National Library

The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet
at http://dnb.dnb.de.

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or
part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting,
re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in
other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the
­copyright owner must be obtained.

The French original edition Claude-Nicolas Ledoux by Anthony Vidler was

­published in 2005 by Editions Hazan. © Editions Hazan, Paris, 2005
An English and German edition of this original edition was published in 2005
by Birkhäuser.

This second and expanded edition was published in German under the title
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Architektur und Utopie im Zeitalter der Französischen
Revolution. Zweite und erweiterte Ausgabe (Print-ISBN 978-3-0356-2079-5).

ISBN 978-3-0356-2081-8
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-0356-2083-2

Second and expanded edition

© 2021 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel
P.O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland
Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Printed in Germany

987654321

www.birkhauser.com
 C ONT EN T S
P R EFACE 6

INTRO DUCTION 8

P ART I : A CARE E R OPE N TO TALE NT, 1760–1789

1. CLASSICAL MAXIMS 16

2. EMBLEMS OF NOBILITY 24

3. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 34

4. THE ARCHITECTURE OF PRODUCTION 40

5. LANGUAGES OF CHARACTER 68

6. GALLO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY 78

7. THEATRICAL VISION 82

8. PHYSIOGNOMIES OF JUSTICE 94

9. THE PROPYLAEA OF PARIS 106

P ART I I : F ROM NE W TOWN TO UTOPIA, 1776–1806

10. PHYSIOCRATIC REGIONALISM 118

11. AGRONOMIC ARCHITECTURE 128

12. TEMPLES OF SOCIABILITY 134

13. UTOPI A OR REVOLUTION 146

CONCLUSION: L’ARCHITECTE MAUDIT 164

N O T ES 172

CH R O N O L O G Y 176

B I B LI O GR A P H Y 178

I N D EX OF P E R S O N S 180


I N D EX OF L O C A T I O N S A N D P R O J E C T S 182

AB O U T TH E A U T H O R 183

I LLU S T R A T I O N C R E D IT S 184
P RE F AC E
The buildings, designs and writings of Claude- out as an exemplar of architectural hubris, an
Nicolas Ledoux, have, since his death in 1806, architecte maudit (archi­tect condemned) to ob-
been dismissed or appreciated as anti-architec- scurity, living in poverty and u
­ nalloyed resent-
tural, impossibly utopian, brilliantly visionary, pro- ment after loss of his practice a
­ fter 1789.
to-modern, absurdly caricatural, or simply mar- This book, first published by Hazan in French in
ginal to history. Confronted with this panoply of 1987, and in a revised version by Hazan and
opinions in the late 1960s, I was interested to Birkhäuser in 2005, is an abridged version of the
­discover why, following one of the most success- monograph I published in English in 1990 with MIT
ful careers in the 18th century, supported by the Press; it represents my attempt to bring these par-
court and its courtesans, the aristocracy and tial assessments of his career into focus, to devel-
the new bureaucracy of engineers and financiers, op an understanding of Ledoux’s wide-ranging
­educated as a professional in the values of the practice as a natural outcome of the reforms insti-
Enlight­enment, and receiving some of the most tuted by the French State and Académies after
prestigious commissions of the pre-Revolutionary 1750, ­informing his quasi-utopian enthusiasm for
period, Le­doux had suffered so divisive a posthu- raising aesthetic expression to a social art, his be-
mous reception.1 lief in the philosophes’ idea of progress, while sym-
Certainly, as his arrest and subsequent interroga- pathising with the ”return to origins” of Rousseau,
tion testified, he was hardly a Republican revolu- his response to the technological innovations pro-
tionary. Certainly, too, his work for the hated Tax moted by the Encyclopédie and the Académie des
Farm, culminating in the construction of a wall ­Sciences, and his hybrid training as an architect
with more than sixty tollgates around the city of and engineer. If Ledoux stood out among his archi-
Paris, had opened him to violent popular and aes- tectural peers, it is more because he took the
thetic criticism. But then most of his former col- ­Enlightenment at its word, so to speak, and was
leagues in the Academy were forced into exile less ­inhibited by architectural tradition in seeking
­until the advent of the Empire without damage to apply the new aesthetics of communication and
to their architectural reputations. And many in experience to the invention of new forms.
his circle, notably Étienne-Louis Boullée, had In this new edition, I have rewritten the preface
dreamed of impossibly monumental, if not utopi- and introduction, updated each chapter and incor­
an, projects, and written texts that were equally porated further insights and the results of new
ambitious in the support of archi­tecture in its so- ­research. I have taken the opportunity to substan-
cial role. But almost alone, Ledoux was signalled tially expand the chapter “Utopia or Revolution”

6
 Frontispiece: Following double page:
Barrière de Monceau, Saline d’Arc-et-Senans,
Park Monceau, view of the eastern
Paris. ­semi-­circular arc.

and rewrite the final sections on Ledoux’s post- shepherded the exceptional Italian translation of
Revolutionary life, providing an interpretation of the 1990 monograph. I have benefited from the
the difficult but unique text and engravings of his critique of Robin Middleton; from a correspond-
L’Architecture. A new conclusion surveys his shift- ence with ­André Corboz on the foundation of
ing reputation through the 19th and 20th centu- ­Versoix; from discussions with the late Hubert
ries, his historiographical reception, and consider- Damisch on the “Kantian” Ledoux; from the work
able influence on architects in the 20th century. of Antoine Picon on the formation of the École na-
Throughout I have re-accentuated the role of En- tionale des ponts et chaussées, and the relations
lightenment economic and social thought in the between ­architects and engineers in the late 18th
development of Ledoux’s architectural ideals, and, century, and from the generosity of Paul Turner,
responding to recent environmental perceptions of who provided the clue to a source of Ledoux’s uto-
the Enlightenment’s vision of nature and produc- pian imagination in the Renaissance treatise
tion, I have taken stock of Ledoux’s projects in the Hypnero­tomachia Poliphili. I will always be indebt-
context of what might now be named the “Physio- ed to the support and firm friendship of Richard
cratic Anthropocene.” Finally, I have expanded the Edwards during his tenure as Director of the Fon-
bibliography and added illustrations. dation Ledoux, and for the commission to design
In my work on Ledoux, I have been much aided by a ­Musée Ledoux in the form of a permanent exhi-
colleagues in France, Monique Mosser, Daniel Ra- bition of models of Ledoux’s in the Saline Royale,
breau, Bruno Fortier, and above all by the friend­ completed with ­architect Pierre Schall in 1989.
ship and remarkable understanding of Mona The continuing support of his successor, Jean
Ozouf. Hélène Lipstadt provided initial insights Dedolin, led to the curation of subsequent ex­
into Ledoux’s reception by the critics and re- hibitions at the Saline. Jean-Christophe Bailly ed-
viewed the state of the archives on the barrières. ited the first edition of this abridged Ledoux in
An invitation to join the research group headed by 1987 and Jean-François Barrielle and Chloé Jarry
Jean-Claude Bonnet of the CNRS led to the oppor- of E
­ ditions Hazan saw to a second edition in
tunity to broaden the research to encompass French in 2005 while A
­ ndreas Müller, oversaw the
­Revolutionary art and literature. Giorgio Ciucci si­multaneous German and English edition for
provided the initial inspiration to write a mono- ­Birkhäuser and Ria Stein the 2021 editions.
graph on the Saline de Chaux, eventually unpub-
lished; Georges Teyssot supported its expan- Anthony Vidler,
sion into a more general study; Francesco Dal Co New York, December 2020

7
I NTRODUC T ION
“Are we fallen into such a degree of misery eaux et forêts, in Burgundy and Franche-Comté, Turgot and the Marquis de Condorcet in their ad-
that we should be forced to admire the barrières he nonetheless gained recognition for his talent- vocacy of economic reform and progress, and, ap-
of Paris?” ed interior decoration and ingenious hôtel plan- parently paradoxically, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in
Victor Hugo 2
ning in the 1760s, noticed by the newly adopted his ­vision of a return to natural conditions. For ar-
mistress to Louis XV, Madame du Barry for her chitecture, this meant both a return to the roots
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s reputation as a “utopi- residence at Louveciennes, and rewarded with of a French antiquity, in Gallo-Roman forms and
an,” associated with other “visionaries” by histo- the commission that was to form the centre of his 17th century classicism, and a renewed vocabu-
rians in the 20th century, has obscured both his theoretical and design preoccupations for the lary based on the re-discovery of Greece in the
historical importance as a practicing architect at rest of his life: the new saltworks built in Arc-­et- 1750s and the publication of David Le Roy’s en-
the end of the Ancien Régime, and the special Senans between 1773 and 1779. With this pro- gravings of the Acropolis.
­nature of his idealisation of architecture at the be- ject, under the administration of the Ferme géné- In the 1960s when I first began to be interested
ginning of the modern era. While his elder con- rale, or Tax Farm, he was ensured of a steady in Ledoux, it was tempting, given the debates
temporary and fellow member of the Académie patronage until the Revolution, building offices against utopianism in architecture, launched by
Royale d’Architecture, Étienne-Louis Boullée, and warehouses for the Ferme, culminating in the Karl Popper and supported by critics like Colin
painted idealistic images of vast monumental in- encircling tollgates and tax wall around the city of Rowe, to take the path of least resistance, and
stitutions for an imaginary republic, and was more Paris. Forced into retirement in 1789, arrested deny the validity of architecture as a social art or
preoccupied with teaching then practicing; and and imprisoned in 1793, he was to spend the last practice. My own interest in Ledoux, however,
the younger Jean-Jacques Lequeu, was to remain years of his life engraving and writing his architec- sparked by Emil Kaufmann’s study of the Europe-
in obscurity as a draughtsman to state bureaucra- tural testament: the first volume of a planned six an Enlightenment in architecture, linking Ledoux
cies, Ledoux from the outset pursued an active was published in 1804, two years before his as a proto-modernist to Le Corbusier, and by a
career as a public and private architect. Less priv- death, under the ambitious title, L’Architecture close reading of the text and engravings of
ileged than many of his contemporaries, without considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des mœurs et L’Archi­tecture, was initially concentrated on the
the experiences and contacts gained by the Prix de la législation. The publication endeavour re- Saline ­royale d’Arc-et-Senans, as a prime exam-
de Rome, his education nevertheless allowed him mained uncompleted. ple of a utilitarian building endowed with all the
to pursue a career supported by his talents as If this career stands out from those of his contem- “attributes” (i.e. the decorative elements) of
a designer. From a modest family, with a scho­ poraries, it was the result of his insistence on the archi­tecture. If Ledoux was uto­pian, I felt, then he
larship to a Parisian college, and entering the vital role of architecture to society envisaged in must have been so from the o
­ utset.
­public school of architecture opened by Jacques-­ the terms advanced by the philosophes of the En- Preparing a monograph on the complex history of
François Blondel, he was constrained to work as lightenment: Montesquieu in his De l'esprit des the planning, construction and operation of these
an ­apprentice engraver for his living. Interning in lois, Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert saltworks, I was responding to the increased Brit-
the provinces as an engineer for the Service des in the Encyclopédie, François Quesnay, Jacques ish interest in industrial archaeology, and ­beyond

10
this, the shift in Industrial Revolution studies to- duct from Salins to Arc-et-Senans, for the struc- In this context, the saltworks, an industry of ex-
wards histories of labour, and the control of work- tural foundations of the Saline as well as the traction, was, for Ledoux’s clients, both an instru-
er life by management. Here the social history saltworks’ daily labour registers, and contempo- ment of progress and a participant in the natural
­approaches of E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm rary accounts of its operation in the former “circular” economy of Physiocratic theory, from
in Britain, and the technological histories of Ber- ­archives of the salt production company that had Quesnay to Turgot. Here, the research of Antoine
nard Gille, were supported by more gen­eralised continued to operate the works in the 19th centu- Picon into the relations between architects and
studies of power and control by Michel Foucault, ry, demonstrated that Ledoux was ­entirely aware engineers in the late 18th century, and his in­
work that had been taken up by ar­chitect-histo­ of the social and architectural implications of the terpretation of Ledoux within the tradition later
rians like Bruno Fortier in Paris and R
­ obin ­Evans in commission and confirmed my sense that far established in the École Polytechnique by Saint-­
London. The Saline seemed a perfect case-study from an imaginary utopia, Ledoux’s project for a Simon, points to Ledoux’s own early employment
of these processes at work in a designed environ- new town surrounding the Saline de Chaux was building bridges and restoring canals in Burgundy
ment; a test-case of architecture in the service grounded in his experiences in Burgundy and and Franche-Comté. Indeed, it would not be hard
of power. Franche-Comté as an architect-engineer for the to show that entire passages of ­Le­doux’s book,
Accordingly, I began research into the saltworks Département des eaux et forêts, in his knowledge which describe the canal systems and water-
at Arc-et-Senans, first visiting the site in 1967, of the complex relations between the forest, its works of Franche-Comté and Bur­gundy, were par-
and completed a monographic study of the Saline workers, the policing of forest and taxes, and the aphrased, if not directly lifted, from the reports of
royale d’Arc-et-Senans, with the sense that the provisioning of the saline, the techniques and his associate engineers.
building of a factory community in the 1770s rep- economy of salt production itself. Beyond this, his While these activities have been largely obscured
resented more than a utopian gesture; an intui- claim that the idea of a new town was advanced by a later attempt to divide the engineering
tion that was confirmed by the archives in Lons- in 1776 was entirely credible, as in every respect ­profession from architectural (i.e. aesthetic) con-
le-Saunier and Paris. This was not only the last a fulfilment of Jacques Turgot’s mandate to com- cerns, Ledoux’s assertion of engineering tech-
saltworks to be constructed before the Revolu- pete with Geneva after the failure of plans to de- nique ­allied to, and expressed through, architect­
tion -- an attempt by the Académie des Sciences velop the new town of Versoix, and the “ideal” ural form, was shared by many; including his
and the Ferme générale, or Tax Farm, to revive an town that followed over the next thirty years a log- colleague in Burgundy, the engineer Émiland Gau­
industry in Franche-Comté that was provoking ical development. This was confirmed by a map of they, whose bridges, churches (such as Saint-
civil unrest at the poor quality of salt produced, the saltworks in the forest of Chaux dating at the Pierre-et-Saint-Paul at Givry, 1772–1791), thea-
exacerbated by the enforced levels of taxation – latest from 1785. In this sense, as a number of tres, and town halls (in Tournus, 1771) attest to
but also a design that responded to the encyclo- commentators have noted, Ledoux’s f­ inal project his not at all frustrated ambition to practice a tru-
paedic discourse of Diderot and his contributors was less a “utopia” – “no place” in Thomas More’s ly monumental and public architecture in their
to rationalise industrial production in France. Dis- original formulation – than a “euchronia” – or a ­Roman forms and free g
­ eometric play, interest-
covery of the engineering drawings for the aque- “good era” achieved over time. ingly similar to the contemporary work of Ledoux.

11
In this context, Ledoux’s designs for public insti- thuis. It was also clear that the text of his last and narrated in a form that was drawn from a
tutions, notably the new theatre of Besançon, the book, with the portentous title Architecture Con­ ­Renaissance utopian romance – the Hypneroto­
prison and palace of justice for Aix-en-Provence, sidered in Relation to Art, Mores and Legis­lation, machia Poliphili – at once a love story and a visit
and the tollgates for Paris, were, I believe, all ­offered clues that had escaped previous read- to the ruins of classical arcadia.
c­onceived within his overarching vision for a new ers who were convinced that architects’ writings For Ledoux, architecture’s role in the constitution
­architecture and a new form of urban settlement, were less important than their works. of a newly restored social order was both pro-
hypothetically developed in the surroundings of These sources were enriched by Michel Gallet’s grammatic – the invention of spatial organisations
the completed saltworks. Certainly, a number of publication of what he called Inédits pour un tome to shape new communal and individual practic-
unbuilt projects from the mid-1780s, including III of Ledoux’s magnum opus; a portfolio of en- es – and communicative – the way in which the
the church, market, stock exchange of Chaux, os- gravings, evidently collected by Daniel Ramée and “character” of building was manifested in form in
tensibly drawn in response to programmes issued remaining unpublished at the time of his first two such a manner that the buildings could “speak to
by the Académie d’Architecture, and engraved be- volumes in 1847. They consisted of a major por- the eyes.” This was a central preoccupation of
fore the Revolution, were also intended to take tion of what Ledoux had announced as a volume post-Enlightenment language theory that from
their place in his imaginary city, supplemented by collecting his designs for country and city houses, Leibniz and Locke had speculated over the poten-
a roster of purely utopian institutions designed ­together with post-Revolutionary designs for rural tial nature of a universal language. For Ledoux,
­after the Revolution. and urban institutions and idealised depictions of Boullée and many of their circle this meant utilis-
For these ideal projects, Ledoux adopted symbol- the Parisian tollgates. The diverse architectural ing the “original” forms of neo-Platonic and New-
ic forms that were clearly influenced by his affili- vocabularies employed, including Egyptian and tonian geometries as primary symbols, with add-
ation with the Freemasonic clubs and associa- Medieval references, demonstrated Ledoux’s in- ed inscriptions and sculptural attributes. Ledoux,
tions of the 1780s. In these circles, as confirmed creasing historical eclecticism, albeit still con- pressing this idea to an extreme, invented a pic-
by research in the archives of the Grand Lodge trolled by abstract geometrical outlines. In the togrammatic architecture that would render his
held in the Bibliothèque nationale, Ledoux, while context of the post-Enlightenment interest in the utopia entirely legible; later critics named this
not inscribed in existing registers, was only one of history and architecture of Medieval France, ­architecture parlante.
hundreds of architects and their clients demon- these designs complement Ledoux’s long-stand- It was in this vein that the interpretation of Ledoux
strating membership or engagement with Free- ing nostalgia for the classicism of Louis XIV, allow- in the “postmodern” 1970s and 1980s shifted, in-
masonic or secret societies and their visual icono- ing for a description of his “utopianism” that terpreting Ledoux less as prefiguring modernism,
graphies. The memoirs of the British Orientalist looked back to the mythical sources of the nation than as a forerunner of the semiotic theories of
author William Beckford recount a visit to a secret with the memory of its Gallo-Roman remains, ­architecture being re-thought in the 1980s, them-
lodge with Ledoux, often thought to be largely im- chivalric heraldry and aristocratic lineage, all sub- selves finding sources – as in Noam Chomsky’s
aginary, that proved to coincide with Ledoux’s sumed within a general nostalgia for the classical Cartesian Linguistics (1965) -- and, more general-
work at the estates of Bourneville and Mauper­ ordering of this nation in the era of the Sun King, ly, as the ancestor of the search for Meaning in

I N T R O DU CT ION 12
 Following double page:
Perspective view of the town
of Chaux.

­Architecture, the title of a 1969 essay collec- es ­unleashed by warring gods. In this context, Le­ attendance at the newly established École des
tion edited by George Baird and Charles Jencks. doux’s soliloquies on the taming of nature, the arts of Jacques-François Blondel; continuing with
Ledoux’s technique of stripping down architec­ role of the architect in staving off the chaos and a discussion of his first designs for Parisian hôtels
tural forms to pure geometry and adding attrib- ever-present danger of disasters, equal those that and regional châteaux, his activity in Burgundy
utes and text to his walls, seemed to anticipate pervade Diderot’s Encyclopédie, and reinforced and Franche-Comté for the corps of Ponts and
the work of Léon Krier, Michael Graves, Robert by Ledoux’s actual experience of the ever-present chaussées under Perronet, culminating in the
­Venturi and Aldo Rossi. Rossi himself had pub- floods and destruction wreaked by the rivers of commission for the Saline royale d’Arc-et-Senans.
lished reviews of Kaufmann in Casabella, and even Franche-Comté – the Furieuse, the Doubs and the The chapters of the second part, “From New Town
translated Boullée’s unpublished treatise into Loue. A reader of Hesiod’s Works and Days and to Utopia,” discuss his built and projected work
­Italian, seeing Ledoux as a proto-neo-­Rationalist. Plato’s Timaeus, Ledoux conceived of architec- until 1789, while registering its place in his evolv-
More recently, in the re-awakened ecological ture as created from a cosmos rent by the conflict ing ideas towards an ideal town, his commitment
­consciousness of the 21st century, I have been of the elements, threatened by earthquakes, fires to industrial progress and agricultural ­reform,
­tracing another aspect of Ledoux, one, as Pierre and floods; his rational geometries may be under- ending in his post-Revolutionary imprisonment,
­Lacroix already noted in the 1970s, was serious- stood as embodying allegories of their chaotic and the production of his collected works. A con-
ly concerned with the environment, and the po- ­origins, sheltering social and industrial life in all cluding chapter traces his posthumous reputa-
tentially destructive effects of natural disasters. its turbulence. L’Architecture, indeed, might be tion, and influence, both scholarly, and among
Recent re-interpretations of the art and artifice ­envisaged, not so much as prefiguring the ration- generations of architects, as he was seen pre­
of the 17th century gardens of Versailles have alism of Le Corbusier, but rather more recent paring the way for the geometrical exercises of
­emphasised the powerful images of natural cha- ­environmental discourses and debates over the ­Napoleon’s bâtiments civils, studied as a forerun-
os, ­elemental metamorphosis, in sculpture, water nature of “nature” from Félix Guattari’s ecologies ner of abstract modernism by Russian Construc-
displays and masques that played within its other­ of chaosmosis, to Bruno Latour’s critique of the tivists, French Purists, hailed as a suitable mega-
wise strict geometrical frame.3 It is notable that disciplinary modes of existence. lomaniacal monumentalist for the Third Reich,
these images re-emerge in the later architectural In this book, a concise introduction to Ledoux’s resurrected by Italian neo-Rationalists, adopted
theories of the Enlightenment, under the a
­ egis of life and work, I have developed his architectural as a figural expressionist by postmodernists, or
new interpretations of the sublime, of a nature and social ideas thematically, and roughly chron- more recently revived as a model for late modern-
­always ready to disrupt conventional ascriptions ologically. The first part of the book, “A Career ism. Which is to say that, throughout his posthu-
of rationalism and progress. Fueled by the re-­ Open to Talent,” to use Eric Hobsbawm’s charac- mous life, Ledoux has acted as a bellwether for
discovery of Greece in the 1750s, and the result- terisation of the new professionals of the 18th modernity in architecture through his idiosyncrat-
ing i­mmediacy of the texts of Hesiod and Ovid, century, begins with an account of Ledoux’s edu- ic combination of geometrical purity, iconograph-
­nature was now seen in terms of origin and be- cation, first as a pensioner at the Collège de Beau- ical inventiveness and E
­ nlightenment ideology.
coming, its forms emerging from the void, its forc- vais, with its courses in the classics, and then his

13
Other documents randomly have
different content
rights, and privileges. The establishment of monasteries and colleges
with administrative officers tended to retain in residence graduates
who were not lecturing; through them the house of non-regents
grew in power, and finally in many questions obtained concurrent
jurisdiction with that of the regents—the result was a very complex
constitution. At first the University had no buildings of its own; the
regent and non-regent houses met in St Benet’s or St Mary’s church,
and lectures were given wherever accommodation could be
obtained. After this digression I return to the position of the students
in the early University.
Numerous
184 monasteries were established in Cambridge during the
thirteenth century, and from this I infer that the number of members
of the religious Orders studying in the University steadily increased
during that century. Of monastic Houses in Cambridge previous to
the foundation of the University I have already mentioned those of
the Augustin Canons, founded in connection with St Giles’ church,
about 1092, and moved in 1112 to Barnwell where their priory
became in time one of the largest conventual buildings in England,
and of the Austin Brethren of Frost’s or St John’s Hospital, built
about 1135 on ground now occupied by St John’s College. Shortly
after the organization of a studium in the town, five important
Orders established Houses here. These were the Franciscan or Grey
Friars, who, from their first home situated near the present Divinity
Schools and used from 1224 to 1294, removed in 1294 to a site now
occupied by Sidney Sussex College, where their church was one of
the conspicuous architectural features of medieval Cambridge; the
Dominican or Black Friars, who built in 1274 on ground now
occupied by Emmanuel College; the Carmelite or White Friars, who,
having previously lived in houses at Chesterton and Newnham,
removed in 1290 to a site now occupied by Queens’ and King’s
Colleges;
185 the Augustine Friars, who built, about 1290, a home on or
near ground now occupied by the university examination halls and
lecture rooms, in the basement of which some fragments of the old
friary may be found; and the Sempringham or White Canons, who
about 1290 obtained possession of St Edmund’s Priory which had
been built before 1278 near the Trumpington Gate. The Houses of
the Bethlehem Friars, opened in 1257, of the Friars of the Sack,
opened in 1258, and of the Friars of St Mary, opened in 1273, were
suppressed in 1307, and probably were never important foundations.
I believe that the presence in Cambridge of these great
establishments, always housing a certain number of students, gave
stability to the nascent University, and tended to prevent its
dissipation in times of stress: this is a point in our early history which
is sometimes overlooked. Students from Houses of the Benedictine
or Black Monks were also sent to Cambridge, but until 1428 they
seem to have had no special home of their own: in that year the
Order built for them a hostel known as Buckingham House which
now forms part of the first court of Magdalene College.
These conventual Houses were outside town and university authority,
but their wealth and position made them influential. Striking
evidence of this is afforded by the facts that they secured to their
members
186 the right to proceed direct to degrees in divinity without
graduating in arts—a privilege not granted to students in law or
medicine—and that at every congregation of the University the
senior religious doctor present could veto the offer of any grace and
so block all business. These privileges suggest that monastic
students were the dominant class in the early days of the University.
They were, however, naturally distrusted by other students, for
admittedly they owed allegiance to outside bodies, and no man can
serve two masters. By the end of the thirteenth century the monastic
movement had spent its force, and thenceforth the religious students
took a constantly decreasing share in university activities; of course
they disappeared at the reformation, when the monasteries
throughout the country were suppressed.
I come next to the question of the secular students in arts, most or
all of whom would be clerks in major or minor orders. Rejecting the
migration theory of the origin of the University, I do not suppose that
in its earliest days these secular students were numerous, for the
vicinity cannot have provided many such men, but as soon as the
University acquired reputation as a centre of higher teaching they
would be attracted to it from a wide area, and their numbers would
be increased by many glomerels who would continue their course as
students
187 in arts. In the course of the thirteenth century these secular
students became strong enough to assert themselves against the
position and privileges assumed by the religious students, and after
that century graces were constantly passed (ex. gr. in 1303) to
prevent monastic interference in academic affairs, or (as in 1369) to
limit the number of monastic graduates.
A non-graduate student in arts was, before admission, expected to
know Latin, and, on admission, apprenticed to a master or doctor
who acted as a tutor in scholastic matters: in 1276 this system of
apprenticeship was made compulsory. The full medieval course
lasted several years. Students who entered as boys stayed, if they
took the full course, till they were grown men, gradually taking up
teaching as part of their course of study. The bachelors may have
assisted in the education of the younger arts students and of the
glomerels who are mentioned below, but normally instruction in the
arts course was given by masters, and in the higher faculties by
doctors. The degree of master was a license to teach, and newly
created masters were required to teach and to reside for two years
(or later at least one year) for that purpose. This pre-reformation
scheme is in marked contrast to the modern plan where the students
enter as young men, all of about the same age, with a normal course
lasting
188 three years or so, and with their studies sharply differentiated
from those of a limited number of post-graduate and research
students and of a separate body of teachers. Mullinger estimated
that during the medieval period the number of resident regents
varied from one hundred to two hundred, and the number of
students (apparently exclusive of monastic students) never exceeded
two thousand of whom the great majority were of humble birth; no
doubt there were wide variations in the numbers at different times.
The history of Guilds in the University cannot be given with any
certainty. It may be that in the early years of the University most
secular students and teachers from any particular locality were
associated together as a guild, and perhaps every student on arrival
was expected to join his local guild, and through it become a
member of the University. The guilds imposed on their members
definite rules for their conduct in relation to one another, and
enforced such regulations by means of money fines, refusal of
assistance, and in extreme cases expulsion. The relations between
the members of different guilds were, however, often unfriendly or
worse; in particular there was constant friction between the guilds
connected with localities north and south of the Trent. It has been
suggested that at one time one of the proctors represented the cis-
trentine
189 guilds and the other the trans-trentine guilds: this seems to
have been the case at Oxford, but there is no evidence of such a
custom at Cambridge where, according to Peacock, these trentine
disputes were less violent than at the sister University.
We may take it that the master to whom a secular non-graduate
student was apprenticed looked after his studies, and probably
officers of the guild to which he belonged looked after him when sick
or maltreated. In other matters, however, he was left to take care of
himself, and thus was constantly liable to extortion. To meet this evil,
the University early obtained powers enabling it to settle, without
consulting the citizens, various local matters such as the prices of
lodging and food.
Besides students in arts there was also another class of secular
students consisting of boys, known as glomerels (grammarians) and
rhetoricians, who were under a special officer of the University called
the master of glomery. I conjecture that originally these were the
boys at the local grammar-schools, that after the foundation of the
University such boys were regularly treated as glomerel members of
it, and that for this reason we hear nothing more of the local
grammar-schools which had at first supplied them: most students of
this type must have lived at home and come from the town or
immediate neighbourhood. I suppose that in later times the number
of
190glomerels was swollen by the entry among them of students who
had come to Cambridge, and were found to be ignorant of Latin
grammar, and so inadmissible to the arts faculty.
The chief study of a glomerel was Latin grammar, and on attaining
reasonable proficiency in it he could change over to the arts faculty if
he wished. If a student continued in the glomerel faculty, the degree
of master in grammar (or rhetoric) was open to him, but in
processions of the University, such graduates took a lower place than
students in arts, and their inferior position was emphasized by a
statute which, while regulating the attendance of regents at the
funeral of a regent master or student in arts, stated that graduates
and scholars in grammar were not entitled to such recognition—Illis
tantummodo exceptis, qui artem solam docent vel audiunt
grammaticam, ad quorum exequias nisi ex devotione non veniant
supradicti.
The ceremony of graduation in grammar has often been described: it
involved the beating openly in the schools of a shrewd boy obtained
by the university officers for the purpose, and the presentation to the
new master of a ferule: this suggests that the course was regarded
as a training for a schoolmaster’s career, it also facilitated admission
to orders. As time passed, the glomerels, originally forming a large
and important section of the University here and at Oxford,
decreased
191 in numbers, and in the latter half of the fifteenth century
they ceased to be of much importance in academic life. The faculty
of rhetoric was constituted on similar lines to that of grammar, and
practically treated as part of it. The last degrees in rhetoric and
grammar of which we have notice were conferred in 1493 and 1548
respectively: probably the office of master of glomery fell into disuse
about the beginning of the sixteenth century, though it is possible
that it was held by Sir John Cheke as late as 1547.
The evils consequent on allowing inexperienced students, some of
whom were quite young, to fend for themselves in all matters
outside the schools were obvious, and it was not long before steps
were taken to improve matters by the foundation of colleges and the
licensing of private hostels.
Colleges were designed for selected scholars partly to provide
assistance for them, and partly to protect them from pressure to join
a monastic Order: the advantages offered being shelter, a common
sitting room properly warmed, regular meals, the use of books, and
general supervision. The earliest attempt to provide aid and
protection of this kind for certain scholars was made, about 1275, by
Hugh de Balsham, who arranged for their reception as members of
Frost’s Hospital; but there were constant quarrels between the two
sides
192 of the House, and in 1284 he dissolved the union and moved
the secular students to a building (Peterhouse) of their own. Other
similar foundations were soon created: the King’s Scholars (later
incorporated as King’s Hall) in 1317, Michael-House in 1324, Clare in
1325, Pembroke in 1347, Gonville in 1348, Trinity Hall in 1350, and
Corpus Christi in 1352. Every new college that was established
provided fresh definite ties with the locality, and rendered less likely
the break-up of the University and the scattering of its members—a
serious risk to which in early days it was always subject. Then came
an interval of nearly a hundred years, but in the fifteenth century the
collegiate movement recommenced, and we have the foundation of
God’s House in 1439, of King’s in 1441, of Queens’ in 1448 and
1465, of St Catharine’s in 1473, and of Jesus in 1496. In the
sixteenth century we have the larger and more ambitious
foundations of Christ’s in 1505, St John’s in 1511, Magdalene in
1519, Trinity in 1546, Emmanuel in 1584, and Sidney Sussex in
1596.
The colleges were intended for picked scholars. In the course of the
fourteenth century the problem of the care of other students was
taken up, and they were forbidden to live in lodgings selected by
themselves and under no external supervision. To provide for them,
the University licensed private hostels which were managed by
masters of arts on lines somewhat similar to boarding houses in
public
193 schools to-day. Thenceforth throughout the middle ages the
majority of undergraduates resided in these hostels. Caius gave the
names and sites of twenty-seven private hostels which he had known
and all of which closed their doors during his life, the last in 1540:
Fuller enumerated thirty-four hostels and two “inns” while his editor
mentioned fourteen other hostels, but some of these certainly ought
not to be included under the term. Perhaps we may say that the
number open at anyone time rarely exceeded thirty or fell short of
twenty: some were cheap, some expensive; some were well
managed, others not so. After the development of these hostels the
guilds decreased in importance, and finally disappeared.
With the establishment of colleges and private hostels the University
was fairly launched on its career in a form which lasted till the
middle half of the sixteenth century. My object was to state how, in
my opinion, it originally took shape, and I do not propose here to
follow its history further.

31 Most of the known facts are given in Mullinger’s excellent histories,

Peacock’s Observations on the Statutes, and Rashdall’s Universities of
Europe in the Middle Ages—but all the views of the last-named writer
are not universally accepted.
32 See passim G. Peacock, Observations on the Statutes, London,
1841, p. xxxv.
194
CHAPTER XII.
DISCIPLINE.

hispaper contains some extracts from my notebooks on the way

t in which university and college discipline was maintained in
former days at Cambridge. The records on the subject are scanty,
but I think the facts are worth putting together in a connected form.
There is no reason to suppose that the practices of different colleges
varied materially, and if in the later period I have taken examples
from the records of Trinity it is only because I have had easier access
to them.
In the history of university discipline and social customs abrupt
changes are not to be expected, and none such are noticeable in the
transition from the medieval period, circ. 1200 to 1525, through the
renaissance, circ. 1525 to 1640, and the period of stagnation, circ.
1660 to 1820, to the present age of reconstruction and extension. I
begin naturally with discipline in medieval Cambridge.
In the early days of the University the students lodged in the town
and were of all ages from twelve or thirteen upwards. Except in
strictly academic matters, there was little or no supervision of their
conduct,
195
and, outside the schools, grave disorders were common;
the University, however, claimed power, when it chose, to take
cognizance of all offences contrary to good manners, and at any rate
in later days did so in serious cases. The regulations at Cambridge
and Oxford were so similar that we may fairly draw illustrations from
either University, and the records of the chancellor’s court at Oxford
in the fifteenth century show that fines, imprisonment, and, in
extreme cases, expulsion were customary penalties for serious
offences against university regulations and customs. I have no doubt
that earlier records, if extant, would be of the same general
character.
The first college to be founded at Cambridge was Peterhouse which
took its final form in 1284, and during the next century several other
similar Houses were established: these societies were intended for
selected scholars. The problem of the control of other students was
met in the course of the fourteenth century by preventing them from
living in private lodgings chosen by themselves, and thenceforth,
throughout the middle ages, those who came from a distance were
generally required to reside in private hostels run by masters of arts
on lines somewhat similar to boarding houses in public schools to-
day. Besides the lay and secular students accommodated in colleges,
private hostels, and at their homes, there were also in the medieval
University
196 a considerable number of “religious” students who were
housed in monasteries or monastic hostels. Some of the colleges in
later medieval times received as paying members a few wealthy
pensioners, parochial priests in middle life, and even monks from
distant convents, but probably the number of such favoured students
was never large. With the establishment of colleges and the
organization of private hostels discipline improved; inside their walls
as well as in the monastic hostels it is probable that order was well
maintained, but outside them, at least among the students at private
hostels, discipline was left to the university authorities who did little
or nothing in the matter.
The colleges took seriously their responsibilities for discipline, and all
things contrary to good manners and morals were prohibited. For the
gravest offences, such as contumacy, crimes of violence, and heresy,
expulsion was usually ordered. Among less serious delinquencies,
explicitly forbidden and therefore we may assume not unknown,
were bringing strangers into the house, sleeping out, and absence
without leave; using insulting language, drunkenness, gambling, and
frequenting taverns; keeping company with loose women; throwing
missiles and carrying arms; and the keeping of dogs, hawks, falcons,
and ferrets. In the regulations of many colleges, a course of study
was
197 indicated, and directions given that idleness was to be punished.

Regular attendance at religious exercises was assumed, and was

explicitly directed on certain occasions: I suppose that students
performed such duties without much external pressure, and I know
no record of the infliction of any penalty in early times for non-
attendance. In the middle ages Latin was the language generally
enforced, though occasionally French was permitted; this remained
the rule until the seventeenth century. Conversation during dinner
and supper was forbidden in many colleges, and of course was
impossible in those cases where some book was then read aloud. At
King’s College, jumping and ball throwing, and at Clare College
meetings in bedrooms for feasting and talking were also forbidden.
At a somewhat later date Caius ordered his students to be in bed by
eight o’clock at night, but they made up for this by rising very early
in the morning. In general the punishment for minor faults was left
to the discretion of the authorities. This was only reasonable, for a
medieval college was a mixed community of lads and men, the
members being of all ages from about fourteen or fifteen upwards;
and rules enforced on boys of fourteen could not be applied to men
of twenty-three or twenty-four, who were in fact already taking part
in the teaching of the junior scholars.
For
198 all members, the ultimate penalty for the gravest offences was

expulsion. For less serious misconduct, fines, restrictions on the food

supplied, impositions, and confinement within the walls, are believed
to have been common penalties, at any rate for adolescents; but, as
I explain below, I think that corporal punishment was constantly
inflicted on non-adults in lieu of a fine, which indeed boys would
have had considerable difficulty in paying. As far as the younger
students and the bachelors at colleges were concerned the extant
regulations in regard to their exercises, amusements, incomings and
outgoings, suggest that they were treated much like the junior and
senior boys in a rather strict public school in the first half of the
nineteenth century; and perhaps the senior graduate members were
treated somewhat like residents in colleges at the same period.
Membership of a college was a privilege confined, in general, to
scholars specially nominated, and no doubt the standards of work
and discipline there were higher than in the private hostels. Naturally
we know less of life in these hostels, but it is likely that disciplinary
rules were originally made by or with the approval of the elder
residents, and that the normal discipline in them was of the same
general character as that exercised in colleges, though, as the
members
199 paid for themselves, money fines were possible and usual
penalties, especially in the case of the older members. There must
have been more variety in the discipline of hostels than of colleges,
and we may safely say that some hostels were well conducted,
others not so.
It is possible that finally the University claimed the right to examine
and supervise the internal regulations of the hostels. A set of rules,
thus enforced on an unendowed hall at Oxford in the fifteenth
century, has been discovered and printed by Rashdall: they do not
differ much from those usual at a college, except that some of the
penalties specified are pecuniary, and that the principal was given
explicit permission, if he wished, to flog a student, even though the
lad’s own master (i.e. the master to whom he had been apprenticed)
had certified that he had already corrected him or was willing to do
so.
Was corporal punishment commonly used in medieval times? Until
recently it was accepted without argument that this was the case;
and certainly in the fifteenth century and later when we get detailed
information on the subject, the younger students were subject to it.
Rashdall, however, has argued that the absence of its mention in
earlier times implies that the birch was unknown in the ordinary
university regulations till towards the end of the sixteenth century or
later, though he admits in various places that glomerels were liable
to
200it: his authority is accepted by Rait. It is true that in the statutes
given in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, birching is not
mentioned explicitly, but, since the punishments for petty offences
are rarely specified in detail, this proves nothing. In the fifteenth
century corporal punishment is mentioned as a recognized penalty.
For instance, the statutes given by Henry VI to King’s College,
Cambridge, prescribed that scholars and young fellows might be
punished by stripes, and a year or two later, the statutes of
Magdalen College, Oxford, directed that the demies should be
subject to flogging. In later regulations of various colleges, to some
of which I refer below, whipping is mentioned as a recognized
punishment, but often as one to which only the younger students
were liable.
I have already argued that in medieval colleges discipline must have
varied according to the age of the offender, and I conjecture that
adults were never regularly subject to corporal punishment, but that
boys were always so, and that the use of the rod was regarded as
needing no explicit statutable authority. Its employment was no
strange thing, for adult offenders against the law, apprentices, and
boys at school, were all flogged at times. And what else, it has been
well asked, could the authorities do with a troublesome boy of
fourteen? In general a fine was impossible for he had no pocket-
money.
201 Most of the colleges were designed for poor scholars, and in
such foundations usually the allowance for commons was so small
that without risk to health any reduction for more than a day or two
was difficult; little leisure was allowed for recreation or exercise, and
thus heavy impositions were impossible; and confinement to the
precincts of the House was so common that gating was no
punishment. A lad of seventeen or eighteen had more liberty and
privileges, and in general on reaching that age was as safe from the
chance of corporal punishment as was a boy of the same age at a
public school fifty years ago.
Somewhat similar arguments apply to the private hostels, and the
regulations of an unendowed hall at Oxford, to which I have already
referred, show that the use of the rod or birch was recognized there.
If as I suppose is likely, Clement Paston was at a private hostel, we
have a definite instance of the similar use of the rod at Cambridge,
for among the Paston letters is one dated 28 January 1458 from
Dame Agnes Paston, about her boy, Clement, in which she says
“prey Grenefeld to send me feythfully word by wrytyn who (how)
Clement Paston hathe do his dever i lerning. And if he hathe nought
do well, nor wyll nought amend, prey him that he wyll trewly
belassch (i.e. flog) him tyll he wyll amend, and so ded the last
Maystur
202 and ye best, that ev’ he hadd at Cambrege.” Clement was
born in 1442, so he was then fifteen years old.
I asserted above that school-boys in the middle ages were liable to
the birch or cane. I suppose this will not be questioned, but by way
of parenthesis I add that this liability seems to have been a well-
established practice for centuries. It goes back to classical times for
in the schools of Rome the less serious offences were punished by
the cane applied to the hand, and graver faults by the birch applied
to the back; and there is a curious fresco at Herculaneum of the
application of the latter to a boy, horsed by one schoolfellow and
with his feet held by another. The royal whipping boys in the courts
of Western Europe remind us that, at least vicariously, princes were
subject to this discipline as well as commoners.
In more recent times the deeds of Busby and Keate at Westminster
and Eton respectively are preserved in tradition, while the reputation
of Udall at an earlier time, circ. 1530, may be gathered from the
remarks of Thomas Tusser, a choirboy at St Paul’s Cathedral, who
subsequently went to Eton: Tusser says, “From Paul’s I went, to Eton
sent, To learn straightways the Latin phrase Where fifty-three stripes
giv’n to me, at once I had. For faults but small, or none at all, It
came
203 to pass thus beat I was.” The similar vigour of Udall’s
successor, Cox, is mentioned by Ascham. In short, the old saw:
“Spare the rod, and spoil the child, Solomon said in accents mild, Be
it boy or be it maid, Whip ’em and wallop ’em Solomon said”
represented the current belief and practice of former days; though
the dictum attributed to that king is stronger than the passage in
Proverbs, xiii, 24 warrants.
In the sixteenth century the colleges opened their doors to the
admission of pensioners and fellow-commoners. Collegiate teaching
and arrangements were superior to those of the private hostels, and
before the middle of the century the latter had disappeared: their
revival was rendered impossible by a regulation that membership of
the University should be confined to those who were members of a
college. Shortly afterwards it became the custom not to require
residence for degrees after the baccalaureate, and thus a course
limited to three or four years became usual for the average student.
These changes were of far-reaching importance.
In the course of this century new statutes were given to the
University and colleges, and subsequently we possess records, fairly
complete, of the domestic life of students. Early in the following
century, the average age of entry began to rise, and before its close,
it had become common for students to defer entry until about
seventeen years old.
University
204 decrees regulating the conduct of students in many
matters now appear, notably one in 1595 by Goad, then vice-
chancellor, which gives a summary of what was expected. Expulsion,
suspension from degrees, and refusal of leave to graduate until after
a specified time, were normal punishments for serious offences, for
trivial misconduct fines are now constantly prescribed, and physical
punishments for non-adults are also directed in many cases.
In colleges, the Tudor statutes generally enjoined good conduct on
all students. The regulations about the punishment of offences were
mostly concerned with grave matters for which admonitions, and
finally expulsions, were the recognized punishments. Penalties for
the non-performance of religious exercises now appear: thus, at
Christ’s College, Cambridge, and at Balliol College, Oxford, whipping
was prescribed as a penalty for absence from chapel, though
probably restricted to the younger students; so too at Peterhouse,
students over eighteen who were absent from prayers were to be
fined, while younger students so offending were to be deprived of
dinner, and if persistent in their neglect flogged in hall.
As in medieval times, the authorities were generally left a free hand
in settling the regulations for the maintenance of normal discipline.
Probably
205 fines, impositions, restrictions on the food supplied, and
gatings continued to be ordinarily used. Reading the bible aloud at
meal times in hall, dining apart on bread and water, and being
deprived of commons, are definitely mentioned in the 1520 statutes
of St John’s College, Cambridge, as possible penalties; similarly at
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, being compelled to eat alone at a
small table in the middle of the hall and restriction to bread and
water are specified as suitable punishments.
The use of the birch was now constantly prescribed, though probably
in practice always confined to lads. Thus, at Christ’s College,
Cambridge, a whipping for lads and a fine for adults; and at
Brasenose, Oxford, a fine or a flogging, at the discretion of the
principal, were statutable punishments for various faults, including at
the latter College the making of odious comparisons in conversation.
At other Houses too, for instance, at Corpus Christi, Oxford, Wolsey
(Christ Church), Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Gonville and
Caius, Cambridge, the use of the cane or birch is sanctioned in the
case of lads. I have no doubt this was also the general rule in earlier
days, and nothing in the Tudor codes indicates that any material
change was made in the existing practice, but on the whole I
conjecture that the regulations were more humane, and I am
inclined
206 to think, contrary to Rashdall’s view, that discipline was less
severe after the renaissance than before it. In colleges the deans
were and are the chief officers responsible for discipline; in the
University, the proctors.
A part of the fifth chapter of the Trinity statutes of 1560 relating to
the office of deans may be summarized as indicating what was then
customary, or at any rate desired, in the matter of chapel attendance
and in certain questions of petty discipline. The statute, which is in
Latin, is to the following effect:
In every community regard should be paid to correctness of morals and
general probity of life, accordingly there shall be two deans to give their
sedulous attention to these objects; at least one of such deans shall be a
bachelor of divinity and chosen from the eight senior fellows, and the other, a
master of arts or a bachelor of divinity.
The deans shall provide for the fitting performance of public worship; see that
all fellows, scholars, pensioners, sizars, and subsizars attend on Saints’ days
and Sundays at morning and evening prayers, the litany, the communion, and
sermons; and see that the same persons are on other days regularly present
at prayers between five and six o’clock in the morning. Every fellow who is
absent shall be fined three half-pence, and if he comes in late or goes out
early, one half-penny. The fine for a bachelor scholar who is absent shall be
one penny, and for one who comes in late or goes out early, one half-penny.
Every undergraduate scholar, and every pensioner, sizar, and subsizar who is
absent shall, if his age exceeds eighteen years be fined one half-penny, and if
he comes in late or goes out early, one farthing; but if such student has not
attained this age, he shall be chastised with rods in the hall on the following
207
Friday. Those are to be deemed as coming late who at evening prayers arrive
after the first psalm; at morning prayers, after the Venite; at the Litany, after
the words O Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity; and at the communion service
after the recital of the commandments: anyone who, during service, remains
in the antechapel is to be punished as if he had been absent.
Each week on Friday, at seven o’clock in the evening, the deans shall chastise
non-adult offenders. All scholars (bachelors excepted), pensioners, sizars, and
subsizars shall be present during the infliction of such corporal punishment,
and anyone who does not answer to his name when called, and does not stay
until all the punishments are finished, shall, if an adult, be fined one penny,
and if non-adult be flogged on the next day.
Each week on Thursday, the deans shall appoint two monitors from among
the bachelor scholars for noting offences of bachelors; and six monitors [from
among the undergraduate scholars], two for noting offences of
undergraduates at public worship, and four for noting those who fail to speak
Latin: the monitors shall prepare lists of all who offend in these particulars.
The deans shall also appoint each week six scholars and four sizars for service
at the fellows’ table, and one sizar for the organ.
In order to ensure the decorous celebration of public worship, the deans shall
bring with them to the first vespers of every festival a written schedule of the
 duties of everyone concerned in that festival, and shall further appoint an
inquisitor who shall remind everyone of the duty so assigned to him. Anyone
who shall fail in such duty shall, if a non-adult, be whipt, and, if an adult, be
fined fourpence.
One half of all fines inflicted shall go to the College, the other half shall be
kept by the deans.

The
208 Tudor statutes generally remained in force till the middle of the

nineteenth century, though in time the practices of the colleges came

to differ materially from what was there directed. Briefly we may say
that in the sixteenth century the standard of medieval discipline and
study sank; but in the early years of the seventeenth century things
improved until the civil disturbances threw academic work into
confusion. With the establishment of the commonwealth the age of
entry rose, and thus the use of corporal and puerile punishments
died out, and with the disappearance of boys as members of the
University, rules intended only for young lads became obsolete and
inoperative. Most of the students henceforth were adolescent. The
few who were younger were dealt with like school-boys, but the
comparison is rather with school-boys of recent years than with
those of their own period.
As far back as Sir Simon D’Ewes’s time—and he entered Cambridge
in 1618—the majority of the students were regarded as responsible,
and capable of conducting themselves rationally. They reflected the
virtues and foibles of their time, but they were a select class, and
compare favourably in manners and morals with their
contemporaries elsewhere. Almost without exception they speak
warmly of their development in college from lads to young men, of
friendships
209 formed with their elders as well as their contemporaries,
of the abiding influence of the place, and of their affection for it.
From the restoration to the regency was a period of stagnation.
Discipline deteriorated, and if we may trust contemporary accounts
drunkenness and immorality were far from uncommon. No doubt
there were always some residents who maintained high traditions
and ideals, but on the whole the records of the social life prevalent
then at Cambridge and Oxford make but sorry reading.
The sixteenth century codes indicate lofty aims, but statutes and
rules are not always observed literally, and it may be thought that
those mentioned represented only old customs, perhaps already
obsolete, or what was deemed desirable but was not enforced. It
may be well then to turn to contemporary evidence, to regulations
passed on specific occasions, and to records of definite punishments
—though we can expect the latter to have been preserved only in
grave cases, and cannot hope to learn from them much about
discipline in petty matters.
Contemporary evidence would serve us best if we could get it, but
the diarists and letter-writers are mostly silent on the subject. From
this, however, I conclude that generally the disciplinary regulations
were thought sensible. Life in the University may have been hard
and
210 probably was so, but I do not believe that discipline was
unreasonable. All the evidence is to the contrary. Thus the above-
mentioned Tusser, a student of no special brilliancy, who entered at
Trinity Hall in the early half of the sixteenth century speaks
thankfully of leaving school, and says: “To Cambridge thence ... I got
at last, There joy I felt, there trim I dwelt, There heaven from hell, I
shifted well, With learned men, a number then, the time I passed.”
Coming now to definite punishments, I mention successively corporal
punishments, such as birching, the use of the stocks, and stanging;
fines, direct and indirect; deprivation of days or standing; gatings;
impositions; declaratory confessions; and rustications and
expulsions.
Birching, Flogging. Birching remained a recognized punishment
for the younger students in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
but I think that in practice it was not often inflicted except on boys.
One or two examples of orders directing it will suffice.
On 8 May 1572, the Vice-Chancellor, Whitgift, issued an order which
is so detailed that I write it at length. Here it is:
If any scholar shall go into any river, pool, or other water in the county of
Cambridge; by day or night, to swim or wash, he shall, if under the degree of
bachelor of arts, for the first offence be sharply and severely whipped publicly
211
in the common hall of the College in which he dwells, in the presence of all
the fellows, scholars, and others dwelling in the College, and on the next day
shall be again openly whipped in the public school, where he was or ought to
be an auditor, before all the auditors, by one of the proctors or some other
assigned by the Vice-Chancellor, and for the second offence every such
delinquent shall be expelled his College and the University for ever. But if he
shall be a bachelor of arts, then for the first offence he shall be put in the
stocks for a whole day, in the common hall of his College, and shall, before he
is liberated, pay 10s towards the commons of the College, and for the second
offence shall be expelled his College and the University. And if he shall be a
master of arts, or bachelor of law, physic or music, or of superior degree, he
shall be severely punished, at the judgment and discretion of the Master of his
College.

From this it is clear that at that time undergraduates, even of mature

age, were liable to be flogged as a part of the ordinary discipline of
the University and College, but probably it was unusual to inflict the
penalty.
Thirty years later, after the disturbances of 20 February 1607,
following the performance of a comedy in King’s College, an order
was issued that thereafter every ringleader in any similar
disturbances should be banished from the University: and every less
responsible offender should, if a graduate, pay for the harm done, be
suspended from his degree, and for one year refused leave to take a
further
212 degree; and if a non-graduate should for one year be refused
leave to graduate, and further, if non-adult, be corrected in the
schools by the rod, and, if adult, make an open confession of his
guilt in the schools: also the offender if not a scholar should be set in
the stocks at the bull ring in the market place. Here, it will be
noticed, the punishment by the rod is restricted to those non-adulti.
In a list of punishments inflicted at Corpus Christi College in 1622,
quoted by Lamb, admonitions, fines, suspensions, and whippings are
mentioned. Even as late as 1648 there is a record of “Benton per
Tutorem suum Magistrum Johnson virgis castigandis.”
In 1648 an undergraduate bible-clerk of Peterhouse, age about
seventeen, Tobias Conyers by name was “corrected publicly”—which,
I take it, means flogged—for toasting the king. But times were
abnormal, and if Conyers ventured into the stirring field of politics,
he had to take the consequences.
The liability to a flogging still existed after the restoration. Thus in
the Poor Scholar, by R. Nevile, London, 1662, there are references to
it in Act ii, Scene 6, and Act v, Scene 4, as being still in use in
colleges though whether adults were so liable is uncertain. If the
author’s statements refer to contemporary matters and are
trustworthy
213 it would seem that the punishment was then common,
the culprits being mounted on barrels, and the flogging inflicted at
the butteries. The birch was also still occasionally used in university
discipline, for on 20 March 1674, the vice-chancellor ordered
Ellethorpe of St John’s, and Hodges of Sidney Sussex to be whipped
for having been rude to the junior proctor, Peter Parham, of Caius
College: neither of the offenders had matriculated.
These references provide the strongest evidence with which I am
acquainted for the assertions that flogging was a usual punishment
at Cambridge during the seventeenth century. There is a widely
spread tradition that when at Christ’s College, Milton was flogged,
but Peile has shown that there is no satisfactory evidence for it, and
it is intrinsically improbable. In a disciplinary order of Corpus Christi
College in 1684, the only punishments mentioned are
discommonsings, admonitions, rustications, deprivation of seniority,
and refusal of college testimonials, so, comparing this with the
orders of 1622 and 1648 which I have quoted above, perhaps we
may take it that the use of the rod there had become obsolete.
The above extracts are sufficient to show that corporal punishment
was recognized under the Elizabethan codes, though it seems
probable
214 that public opinion was against its use, unless the students
were quite young; perhaps this was always the practice, and thus, as
the age of entry rose, the use of the birch died out. Incepting
bachelors and senior students were usually punished for serious
offences by deferring their admission to degrees, loss of terms, or
rustication: being adult, they were in effect regarded as not subject
to corporal punishment.
Stocks. Stangs. A couple of other physical punishments—
ignominious and sometimes painful—may be mentioned in passing.
One of these was confinement in Stocks. To this allusion has already
been made in the orders of 1572 and 1607. Another instance is to be
found in the records of Corpus Christi College, where about 1580,
one of the students, Tobias Bland, who had libelled the master, was
compelled to confess his fault publicly, next put in the stocks, and
then expelled. In the old dining hall of Trinity College there were
stocks in the minstrel’s gallery, but there is no evidence that they
were re-erected when the hall was rebuilt in 1605; perhaps the
punishment was then becoming unusual, though against this may be
set the fact that there are references to the college stocks in 1610 at
King’s, in 1625 at Christ’s, and in 1642 at Emmanuel. The stocks at
King’s and Emmanuel, like those at Trinity, were in the hall. Allusions
to
215their use are rare. The punishment continued to be inflicted after

the restoration, for on 10 April 1680, Thomas Grigson, who had been
rude to the junior proctor, Thomas Verdon of St John’s College, was
ordered to be “sett fast in the stocks, by the heeles for one whole
houre, which was presently effected by the Constable of Saint
Bennett’s Parish in Cambridge.” He had partially atoned for his
offence by begging pardon on his knees, and so escaped a worse
punishment.
The Stang was a wooden pole on which the luckless culprit was tied,
and carried ignominiously through the courts of his college. In John
Ray’s Collection of English Words not Generally Used, London, 1674,
it is said that the “word is still used in some colleges in the University
of Cambridge; to stang scholars in Christmas, being to cause them to
ride on a colt-staff or pole for missing of chappel.” References to the
place where the pole was kept occur in the account-books of Trinity,
St John’s, Queens’, and Christ’s. In Parne’s unpublished manuscript
history of Trinity College, allusion is made to stanging as though at
the beginning of the eighteenth century it had become recently
obsolete. From his language it would seem also that undergraduates
themselves inflicted the punishment on those of their members who
declined to take part in the Christmas revelries.
Fines.
216 Pecuniary fines have been used to enforce discipline from
the earliest times by the University as well as by the colleges: after
the renaissance, the increasing age and means of students made
fines a suitable penalty for many of the less serious offences, such as
participation in forbidden amusements, visits to places out of
bounds, walking across the grass in college courts, smoking in public
places, the failure to wear academic dress when required, non-
attendance at lectures, chapel, hall, etc. Probably grave misconduct
was punished otherwise, or by fines combined with additional
penalties. A fine, if heavy, presses unequally on men of different
means; and thus a system of fines on a fixed scale cannot be
regarded as equitable. Fines are still used as penalties for the
infraction of rules.
Discommonsing. Dissizaring. To be put out of commons was a
well-recognized penalty, applicable chiefly to scholars and sizars, part
of whose emolument consisted of a right to dine in hall and, in some
cases, to have commons (bread, butter, and beer) to a limited
amount each day. To deprive such a student of the right to dine in
hall or of his commons was equivalent to a pecuniary fine, and in the
case of a poor scholar might be a severe, though not a satisfactory,
punishment; probably a modicum of bread and beer was supplied to
students
217 even when discommonsed. In some comments, published
in 1768, on university education at Cambridge, discommonsing is
described as “one of the most idle and anile punishments ... inflicted
rather on the parent than on the young man, who being prohibited
to eat in Hall is driven to purchase a dinner at a tavern or coffee
house.”
Here is an example of an order of discommonsing at Trinity in the
seventeenth century: “Agreed that Cassill should be punisht a
monthes commons.... Agreed at the same time that Pepys besides a
monthes commons, should have an admonition and pay the charges
of the chirurgion for the healinge Cassil’s head wh he broke with a
key.” (Conclusion, 1 August 1643.) Its preservation is due to the fact
that Pepys’ punishment was combined with an admonition, and
evidence that an admonition had been given might be required if
subsequently a question of expulsion arose. The culprit in question
was Thomas Pepys (B.A. 1645) and not the Samuel of immortal
memory.
In 1815, Mansel, master of Trinity and bishop of Bristol, was
accustomed to put men out of sizings and commons if they appeared
in hall in trousers instead of knee breeches, and it would seem then
that to be put out of sizings further deprived the student of obtaining
private supplies from the college kitchens. Half a century ago the
penalty
218
was still in use at Trinity, being imposed on scholars in
waiting, who failed to appear after hall to say grace.
Loss of Days. To qualify for a degree and for an emolument, it is
and has been generally necessary to keep a certain number of days
by residence in each of certain specified terms. At one time a
common form of punishment was to cancel a certain number of days
already kept. Thus the student would be obliged to stay at
Cambridge for so many additional days to make up for the requisite
number which had to be kept in the course of that term. In the
seventeenth century the authorities went further and sometimes
cancelled terms that had been kept. I believe this form of
punishment has long been obsolete.
Gating. Walling. Continuous confinement within the walls of the
college (walling) or confinement during certain hours (gating) was
another form of punishment. A case of walling occurred at one of the
smaller colleges in Cambridge in 1872, but I know of no more recent
instance. Gating is still in force. It causes some social inconvenience.
As far as it goes, it promotes regular hours and economy, and it has
no indirect ill-effects. Accordingly it serves well to mark
dissatisfaction and act as a warning.
Here is an old-time example from the records of Trinity, 19 July
1652,
219 of the infliction of this and other penalties interesting from the
name of the scholar on whom it was inflicted:
Agreed that Dryden be put out of commons for a fortnight at least, and that
he goe not out of the colledg during the time aforesaid, excepting to sermons,
without express leave of the master or vice-master; and that at the end of the
fortnight he read a confession of his crime, in the hall, at the dinner time; at
the three fellowes tables.

His offence was disobedience to the vice-master, and his contumacy

in submitting himself to discipline.
Impositions. Another tolerably obvious punishment was the setting
of impositions. The imposition might be the learning of lines by heart
or the delivery of a declamation on some given subject, or the
production in writing of so many lines of a classical work or of an
analysis of some book. Impositions in writing were constantly done
vicariously, and if so, the punishment was little more than a fine:
apparently this abuse of the practice was well known.
The tasks set were very heavy. In the Gradus, 1803, the learning by
heart of the first book of the Iliad is mentioned as a possible, though
very severe imposition. Similarly, according to J. M. F. Wright, a
thousand lines of Homer would have been regarded in 1815 as an
unusually sharp punishment, but such as might have been given in
lieu
220 of rustication. Other impositions mentioned are the learning by

heart of a satire of Juvenal, and the production of an analysis of

Butler’s Analogy.
At Trinity the deans were provided with long sheets of paper on
which were printed in double columns forms such as the following:
... to transcribe ... lines of Virgil’s Aeneid, beginning at line ... book ..., and to
deliver it to the Junior Dean after morning Chapel on Tuesday.
 ... to transcribe ... lines of Homer’s Iliad, beginning at line ... book ..., and to
deliver it to the Senior Dean after Morning Chapel on Thursday.
... to repeat ... lines of ... by order of the Junior (or Senior) Dean.

These were filled up by the deans, cut off, and distributed by the
chapel-clerk to the men concerned. Customarily in Trinity the senior
dean gave impositions from the Iliad to be delivered on a Thursday,
an the junior dean from the Aeneid to be delivered on a Tuesday.
Forms for putting men out of commons, and admonishing them were
printed in the same way on sheets, to be used as occasions arose.
Impositions were set at Trinity as late as 1830, but I believe the
custom had died out before 1840, though I am told it was still used
in certain Cambridge colleges as late as 1855. At Oxford the practice
continued rather later and indeed at a few colleges seems to have
been in force till near the close of the nineteenth century, for
Rashdall,
221 writing in 1895, speaks of the practice as having been in
force there until recently.
A century ago there seems to have been a sort of recognized scale
of penalties for cutting lectures or chapel. First, a reprimand was
given at an interview or sent in writing by a servant; second, an
imposition was set; third the offender was deprived of commons and
sizings. If these steps were ineffective, the matter might be regarded
as a serious offence against college discipline, and lead to “hauling”
by the tutor, a gating, an interview with the master, a formal
admonition, and in extreme cases to rustication.
The theory of these petty punishments was set out by Whewell in his
Principles of English University Education, 1837. A punishment,
according to him, was to be regarded as the visible expression of
college dissatisfaction with certain conduct: as an infliction it might
be slight, but it emphasized the discontent expressed, and acted as a
definite warning. He suggested a most severe scale; namely, for the
first offence, forfeiture of one month’s commons; for the second, of
three months’ commons; and for the third, expulsion; but there is no
reason to think that this was ever the practice.
Confessions. A public confession was another form of punishment
once
222 used: I believe that this ceased to be employed by the middle
of the eighteenth century.
Statutory Admonitions. Rustication. Expulsion. For the graver
offences, a statutory admonition, rustication (temporary removal
from the college), or expulsion were reserved.
A formal admonition was intended to act as a serious warning, and it
served as a statutory prelude to expulsion. For this reason it was
usually recorded, and in former times an additional sting was added
by compelling the culprit to make also a public or written confession
of his fault. Admonitions are not very common in the records of
Trinity: some thirty or forty occur in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century, only a few in the eighteenth century, and they are rare in
the nineteenth century save for a few relating to irregularity of
attendances at chapel or lectures. The last admonition at Trinity was
given in 1881, shortly before the new statutes of 1882 became
operative. Here are typical instances of the record of admonitions.
Whereas heretofore I have received an admonition from the Master of the
College for my lewd and outrageous behaviour within the same, and have
since that time for like rioting and swaggering in the Town received another
admonition from him before the Vice-Master of the College and my Tutor and
also therewith all public correction, if these admonitions together with due
punishment do not work reformation in me hereafter, I do likewise willingly
223
acknowledge that I am incorrigible and worthy for the next like offence to be
expelled the College. Galen Browne. Circ. 1601. [Browne was elected to a
scholarship in 1602, and graduated B.A. and M.A. in due course, so
presumably he amended his ways.]
Whereas I have very unadvisedly and rashly stricken one Mr Halfhead, a
College servant, to the shedding of blood, I do acknowledge myself to have
received an admonition for that fault tending to expulsion. Thomas Shirley,
22 February, 1621. [Halfhead was the manciple. Shirley was a fellow and
master of arts, so the offence was the more serious, but perhaps the
provocation was great. Shirley was subsequently junior bursar and tutor.]
I, Christopher Offley, do confess that often time and many ways I have
offended against the Statute de Modestia Morum to the displeasure of God,
hurt to myself, the evil example of others, and discredit of the College, and
 also have broken mine oath taken when I was preferred scholar in unreverent
behaviour towards some of the fellows and specially in giving scandalous and
contumelious speeches to Mr Hitch, being the Minister and Fellow of this
College for which misdemeanors and undutiful carriage I am unfainedly sorry
and heartily desire forgiveness both of God, and him, or any other whom I
have offended, and confess I have received a just admonition of the Master
and Seniors by setting my date to this writing. Circ. 1622. [Offley graduated
B.A., 1624, and M.A., 1627, so presumably he amended his ways.]
Whereas we whose names are underwritten, on the fourth of April last, were
guilty of grave irregularity and misbehaviour by insulting the Vice-Master, the
Dean, and other officers of the College and thereby gave just offence to the
Society, we do profess ourselves heartily sorry for the same and acknowledge
the lenity of the Master and Dean in suffering us to return so soon from
224
rustication. And we do hereby engage to be strictly observant of our duty for
the future and take this as our first admonition in order to expulsion. James
Bensley, John Ambler. 29 May, 1754. [Bensley graduated in due course and
was elected to a fellowship: Ambler did not graduate.]
Ordered that ..., for irregular attendance at lectures and neglect of
impositions, be admonished a second time previous to rustication or
expulsion. 29 May, 1844.

Temporary or permanent removal from the College were penalties

reserved for the gravest offences. They are still recognized as
possible punishments. The fact that there are but few records of the
infliction of these extreme penalties indicates how easily discipline
has always been maintained.
My readers may well think that the results of these notes are
somewhat scanty, but if that nation is happy which has no history,
surely universities and colleges are to be congratulated whose
records of punishment are so few. To sum up the matter, the general
effect left on my mind is that most of the common offences were
due only to youthful exuberance of spirits and not to deliberate
mischief making; and that the rules and sanctions, judged by the
standard of their time, have been neither harsh nor unreasonable,
and have usually been approved by public opinion in the University.
225
CHAPTER XIII.
NEWTON’S PRINCIPIA.

Principia is one of the few scientific books which has

ewton’s

n sensibly affected the methods of scientific research and the ideas

of men about the universe. It is on this aspect of the subject I
propose, in this paper, to make a few remarks. The work itself is a
classic in the history of mathematics: the exposition of the subject,
the enunciation of the principle of prime and ultimate ratios, the
creation of mechanics as a science resting on experiments, and the
theory of universal gravitation with concrete applications to the solar
system, make it a masterpiece. Here I avoid all technicalities, and
confine myself to a general description of its genesis and contents
and the reason why its publication affected scientific thought and
methods.
Newton’s exposition arose from an investigation of the cause of the
motion of the planets round the sun, and this in due course led to
the enunciation and establishment of the Newtonian theory of
attraction. The origin of this theory has been often told, but will bear
repetition. The fundamental idea occurred to Newton in 1665 or
1666, shortly after he had taken his degree at Cambridge, when, as
he
226
wrote later, “I was in the prime, of my age for invention, and
minded Mathematicks and Philosophy more than at any time since.”
His reasoning was as follows. He knew that gravity extended to the
highest hills, he saw no reason why it should cease to act at greater
heights, accordingly he believed that it would be found in operation
as far as the moon, and he suspected that it might be the force
which retained that body in its path round the earth.
This hypothesis he verified thus. If a stone is allowed to fall near the
surface of the earth, the attraction of the earth causes it to move
through sixteen feet in one second: also Kepler’s Laws, if accurate
and applicable, involve the conclusion that the attraction of the earth
on a distant body varies inversely as the square of its distance from
the earth. Now the radius of the earth and the distance of the moon
were known to Newton, and therefore, on this hypothesis, he could
find the magnitude of the earth’s attraction on the moon. Further,
assuming that the moon moved in a circle, he could calculate the
force required to retain it in its orbit. At this time his estimate of the
radius of the earth was inaccurate, and, when he made the
calculation, he found that this force was rather greater than the
earth’s attraction on the moon. The discrepancy did not shake his
faith in his theory, but he conjectured that the moon’s motion was
also
227 affected by other influences, such for example, as the effect of a

resisting medium which might itself be in motion as supposed by

Descartes in his hypothetical vortices.
In 1679 Newton knew with approximate correctness the value of the
radius of the earth. He repeated his calculations, and found the
results to be in accordance with his former hypothesis. He then
proceeded to the general theory of the motion of a particle under a
force directed to a fixed point, and showed that the vector to the
particle would sweep over equal areas in equal times. He also proved
that, if a particle describes an ellipse under a force directed to a
focus, the law must be that of the inverse square of the distance
from the focus, and conversely, that the orbit of a particle projected
in free space under the influence of such a force must be a conic.
The application to the solar system was obvious, since Kepler had
shown that the planets describe ellipses with the sun in one focus,
and that the vectors from the sun to them sweep over equal areas in
equal times. This investigation was made for his own satisfaction and
was not published at the time. In it he treated the solar bodies as if
they were particles, and he must have realized that the results could
be taken as being only approximately correct.
In
2281684 the subject of the planetary orbits was discussed in London

by Halley, Hooke, and Wren. They were aware that, if Kepler’s

conclusions were correct, the attraction of the sun or earth on a
distant external particle must vary inversely as the square of the
distance, but they could not determine the orbit of a particle
subjected to the action of a central force of this kind. It was
suggested that Newton might be able to assist them. Accordingly in
August, Halley went to Cambridge for a talk on the subject, and then
found that Newton had solved the problem some five years
previously, and that the path was necessarily a conic. At Halley’s
request Newton wrote out the substance of his argument, and sent it
to London.
Halley at once realized the importance of the communication, and
later in the autumn returned to Cambridge to urge Newton to
prosecute the theory further. He found that Newton had already
done something in the matter, the results being contained in a
manuscript which he saw. Probably this reference is to the holograph
manuscript, still preserved in the University Library at Cambridge, of
Newton’s lectures in the Michaelmas Term, which served as the basis
of his memoir sent to the Royal Society a few months later. The
great value of these investigations was recognized, and Newton was
persuaded to attack the more general problem. His results are given
in the Principia.
As
229 yet Newton had dealt with the problem as if the sun and the

planets might be regarded as heavy masses concentrated at their

centres. Clearly at the best this was only an approximation, though
considering the enormous distances involved it was not
unreasonable. In January or February, 1685, he considered the
question of the attraction of bodies of finite size, and found, to his
surprise and gratification, that a sphere or spherical shell attracts an
external particle as if condensed into a heavy mass at its centre.
Hence the results he had already proved for the relative motion of
particles were true for the solar system, save for small errors due
partly to the fact that the bodies were not perfectly spherical and
partly to disturbances caused by the planets attracting one another.
It was no longer a question of rough approximation: the problem
was reducible to mathematical analysis, subject to the introduction
of minute corrections, which, given the necessary observations,
could be calculated very closely. This was a new discovery of first-
rate importance, and initiated the modern theory of attractions.
The first book of the Principia was finished before the summer of
1685. It deals with the motion of particles or bodies in free space
either in known orbits or under the action of known forces. In it the
law
230 of attraction is generalized into the statement that every particle

of matter attracts every other particle with a force which varies

directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of
the distance between them. Thus gravitation was brought into the
domain of Science.
The second book was completed by the summer of 1686. It treats of
motion in a resisting medium and of various problems connected
with waves. At the end of it, it is shown that the Cartesian theory of
vortices is inconsistent with the laws of motion, and necessarily leads
to incorrect results. This book opened another world to the
application of mathematics and, in effect, created the science of
hydrodynamics.
The third book was finished in March 1687. In this, the theorems
previously established are applied to the chief phenomena of the
universe, and briefly we may say that all the facts then known about
the solar system and, in particular, the motion of the moon with its
various inequalities, the figure of the earth, and the phenomena of
the tides, were shown to be in accord with the theory. Much of the
material for these calculations was collected by Flamsteed and
Halley.
The Principia, as I have said, is a classic. Like other books to which
that compliment is paid, it is rarely read: indeed, I doubt whether
there
231 are a dozen men in Cambridge who have glanced all through
it, even in a cursory manner. When I was an undergraduate the
course for the Tripos involved five sections (1, 2, 3, 9, and 11) of the
first book, but now, probably with good reason, even this slight
acquaintance with the work is no longer required, and to-day the
character of these investigations is unfamiliar to most
mathematicians, while the fact that it is written in Latin tends to
diminish the number of its readers. I will, then, with your permission,
describe briefly its frame-work.
First, however, let me remark on how different was the knowledge of
mathematics, even among experts, at the time it was written from
that current to-day. In the geometry of the circle and conics
mathematicians were familiar with the methods of Greek science,
and in their application Newton was unrivalled among his
contemporaries, but outside geometry methods of investigation were
far to seek. Analysis had been but little developed; algebraic notation
had only recently taken definite form; trigonometry was still used
mainly as an adjunct to astronomy; analytical geometry had been
invented by Descartes, but no text-books on it of modern type were
available; while nothing about the calculus had been published.
Mechanics, however, had recently been treated as a science—statics
by
232 Stevinus and dynamics by Galileo—and this paved the way for

Newton’s investigations. In particular, Galileo had established

principles which foreshadowed the first two laws of motion, and had
deduced formulae in linear motion like v² = 2fs, s = ½ft², and in
circular motion like f = v² / r.
Newton prefaced the Principia by explaining that the earliest
problems in natural philosophy which attract attention are connected
with the phenomena of motion, and it was with motion). that the
book dealt. To discuss motion effectively, it was necessary to give
precision to the language used, and accordingly he propounded
definitions of mass, momentum, inertia, and so on, which have
settled the language of the subject. He next enunciated his three
well-known laws of motion, and described the experiments on which
he based them. He followed this up by deducing rules for the
composition and resolution of forces, and discussed relative motion.
This preliminary matter is followed by the first book, concerned with
the motion of bodies in an unresisting medium. It is divided into
fourteen sections containing ninety-eight propositions with various
interpolated lemmas, corollaries, and scholia.
The first section is on the method of prime and ultimate ratios, by
the use of which Newton was able, in effect, to integrate. He applied
this
233 to the curvature and the areas of curves, and proved that, at the

very beginning of the motion of a body from rest under any force,
the space described is proportional to the force and the square of
the time.
The second section is concerned with the motion of a particle under
a central force. It contains the well-known propositions that if the
force is central the area swept out by the vector to the centre is
proportional to the time, and conversely that if such area is
proportional to the time the particle is acted on by a central force.
Newton further discussed particular cases of circular, elliptic, and
spiral motion. In the third section he dealt with motion in a conic
under a central force to the focus, showed that in this case the force
must vary inversely as the square of the distance, and conversely
that if a particle be projected from any point in any direction with
any velocity under such a force it must describe a conic about the
centre of force as a focus, and that in such elliptic orbits the periodic
times are in the sesquiplicate ratio of the major axes of the ellipses.
He also explained how to treat the problem if disturbing forces are
introduced. These two sections solved the problem of planetary
motion if the planets could be treated as particles and did not disturb
one another’s motions.
The fourth and fifth sections are given up to the proof of certain
geometrical propositions in conics required for subsequent