Science in an Enchanted World

Philosophy and Witchcraft in the Work of Joseph Glanvill

Julie Davies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138609891
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429880261
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Best known as the Saducismus triumphatus (1681), Joseph Glanvill's book on witchcraft is among the most frequently published from the seventeenth century, and its arguments for the reality of diabolic witchcraft elicited passionate responses from critics and supporters alike. Davies untangles the intricate development of this text and explores how Glanvill's roles as theologian, philosopher and advocate for the Royal Society of London converge in its pages. Glanvill's broader philosophical method and unique approach to the supernatural provide a case study that enables the exploration of the interaction between the rise of experimental science and changing attitudes to witchcraft.

1
The Right Kind of Friends

Glanvill’s Biography and Networks

That J. G.[lanvill] should seem disturbed at what is in your later writings is no such wonder. There is required a greater measure of humility and judgment to do that which he is displeased at. They were smiling at St. Michael Armyn’s (who was at Bath last summer) when they told the story of the preacher at Bath, how spruce and trim he was, with his white gloves, and handkerchief, and periwig (which must now and then be pulled), and how romantick in preaching.¹

—John Worthington

This famous description of our main protagonist, Joseph Glanvill, reflects the interested, yet polarized treatment he has received from historians in the three hundred years since his death in 1680. In this description, John Worthington provides a characterization of Glanvill which conveys an image of a man who was respected, thought of fondly and yet whose ‘romantick’, flowery passions and penchant for moderate thought and religious toleration was already drawing attention. However, the reader is left puzzled as to which of these aspects of Glanvill’s character was more dominant. Was the tugging of his periwig meant to convey a kind-hearted affection for a light-hearted man with a healthy sense of humour, or an indication that his peers thought Glanvill a joke and enjoyed tampering with his pristinely groomed image? Indeed, these lines and another early characterization by John Beale have been used to suggest that Glanvill was something of a ‘dandy’ prone to ‘Origenian Platonism and extravagant adventures’.² However, it is possible to place too much emphasis on these statements when they are viewed in isolation: Worthington’s critical humour in the passage that mentions Glanvill was directed at a group of other young men who were, according to our diarist, in need of a ‘great deal of purification’, and Beale’s characterization of Glanvill as an extravagant dandy was only part of his realistic assessment of Glanvill’s potential strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, these characterizations do reflect the fact that Glanvill was not of high enough influence and status to be considered beyond reproach or ridicule. These witticisms remind us that Glanvill was a man of modest influence and success—he was not a seventeenth-century force like Robert Boyle.

These comments by Worthington and Beale were made relatively early in Glanvill’s career, in 1666 and 1668 respectively. While evidence of some hesitation, these personal quips also belie the potential which even these very authors saw in Glanvill’s work. Worthington, for example, after reading The Vanity of Dogmatizing, wrote that although Glanvill

is a young man . . . abating some juvenile heat, there are good matters in his book. As one said of the parts of pregnant young men, We may guess what the wine will be; and it will taste better when broach’d some years hence.³

Similarly, though their relationship was more complicated, and will therefore be discussed at length in later chapters, Beale also continued to be supportive of, and often involved in, the production of Glanvill’s works.⁴

Ultimately the faith placed in Glanvill’s potential was realized, for surely Glanvill became a successful man. He maintained relationships with diverse and influential people, including Henry More and Richard Baxter, who continued to assert their relationship with Glanvill in publications well after his death.⁵ His career went from strength to strength as he attained new positions and promotions within the ranks of the clergy. He was, it seems, happily married until his wife passed away in 1679, and his family continued to grow, with the birth of another son shortly after his second marriage. Finally, in spite of a certain amount of controversy, Glanvill remained a Fellow of the Royal Society in the good graces of two of its most important champions, Henry Oldenburg and Robert Boyle. Indeed, according to John Evelyn, this potential was certainly realized. When he wrote to Glanvill, on 24 June 1668, Evelyn assured him that the Royal Society no longer needed to ‘concern themselves for the empty and malicious cavils of these delators’ any further, given Glanvill’s ‘excellent piece’, the Plus ultra (1668).⁶

In revisiting Glanvill’s biography, I have identified several patterns that suggest the earliest years of his career were more formative than has been previously thought. This has allowed me to move beyond the brief correspondence and diary descriptions, and beyond Glanvill’s relationship with the five figures who dominate his publications: More, Baxter, Oldenburg, Beale and Boyle. Glanvill’s success in gaining the support of these key figures demonstrates a level of social agility which conflicts with the ineffectual figure of fun sometimes perceived in the characterizations of Worthington and Beale. Glanvill’s interactions with these five people attest to his skill in securing influential patronage that was thought to be central to many of his successes.⁷ However, a broader picture of Glanvill’s early networks indicates that Glanvill’s intellectual career was more heavily influenced by the interests and experiences of his early mentors, patrons and familial connections than has been previously thought.

Glanvill’s Family and Networks

In the absence of readily available biographical information and correspondence, work on Glanvill’s biography has been limited by a reliance on secondary sources, resulting in the perpetuation of a series of erroneous attributions and assumptions that first emerged in the late nineteenth century. In particular, several issues with Glanvill’s biography can be traced back to the Records of the Anglo-Norman House of Glanville (1882) by W.E.S. Glanville-Richards.⁸ Although Glanville-Richards exerted considerable influence on subsequent scholarship, there are many problems with his account of Glanvill’s life. Although not the first to do so, Glanville-Richards evidently conflated two Joseph Glanvills: Joseph Glanvill, Rector of the Abbey at Bath, and Joseph Glanville, Rector of Wimbish in Essex.⁹ However, by accessing the surviving archival resources, I have produced the following account of Glanvill’s life and patrons.¹⁰ This revised biography has shed new light on the close relationship between Glanvill’s personal life, his very early career and his later intellectual pursuits. It has highlighted the importance of several previously overlooked figures in Glanvill’s life, particularly Francis Rous, and Henry and Mary Somerset, the third Marquess and Marchioness of Worcester when known to Glanvill, and later the first Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. Greater awareness of these relationships suggests that Glanvill’s patronage network was determined much earlier in his career than has previously been thought, providing insight into how he was able to gain the support of some of the most important facilitators of his career, and provides further context for his interest in both the Royal Society and witchcraft.

Glanvill’s Family Biography

We can say with some confidence that Glanvill was born in 1636, and if Anthony Wood is correct, that he was born in Plymouth, for it seems we have a record of his baptism at St. Andrew’s Church on 18 September 1636.¹¹ This record suggests that Glanvill was the son of John and Elizabeth Glandvill [sic] (not Nicholas Glanville as commonly thought¹²) and brother of John Glanvill, who it seems was married to Elizabeth Berry in the same church on 25 August 1646.¹³ These conclusions are all supported by Glanvill’s will, in which he bequeathed his ‘Black Nagg Jimmy’ to his brother ‘John Glanvill of Plymouth in the County of Devon’.¹⁴

It was not until several years after he graduated from Oxford University that Glanvill married and began a family of his own. The registers of Bath Abbey record the baptism of all three children he had with his first wife Mary, which are all also confirmed by Glanvill’s will. Although we don’t have the actual marriage record, we can suppose that Glanvill had married Mary [Stocker] by 1672, as their first child, Sophia, was baptized on 26 April 1673.¹⁵ The couple’s second child, Henry, was baptized on 17 September 1676 and their third child, Mary, on 31 January 1678.¹⁶ Mary died of unknown causes and was interred at Bath on 30 April 1679.¹⁷ Shortly after, Glanvill married his second wife, a widow named Margaret Browning (nee Selwyn) from Gloucester, later in 1679.¹⁸ Glanvill and Margaret also had a son, Charles, who was baptized at Bath Abbey on 16 October 1680, shortly before Glanvill’s death from a fever on 4 November 1680.¹⁹

The confusion about Glanvill’s biography has been endemic in the literature since the eighteenth century, ensuring that any investigations into Glanvill’s patronage networks have yielded little that has been helpful in understanding Glanvill’s social and political motivations. Similarly, there has been little indication that the particulars of Glanvill’s marital relationships would be very important in such endeavours.²⁰ However, a more confident timeline of Glanvill’s family events, and their increasingly close correlation with his career milestones throughout the 1670s, has drawn attention to the most lucrative patronage relationship of his career.

Glanvill and the Marquess and Marchioness of Worcester

According to Anthony Wood, Glanvill’s later career progressions of the 1670s can be attributed to the patronage and support of Henry Somerset, then the third Marquess of Worcester.²¹ This attribution is supported by Glanvill’s preface to Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (1676). Dedicated to the Marquess the year after Glanvill’s promotion to Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles II, this work thanked the Marquess for favours given:

as I owe this Testimony to the merits whereby you serve and oblige the Age, so I should acknowledg the Obligations your Lordship hath conferr’d on my self: but this will be a great duty, and business of my Life; for such empty expressions as these verbal ones, are very unsuitable returns for real and great favours; and if ever better acknowledgments are in my power, I shall still remember what I owe your Lordship.²²

Shortly after the birth of his third child in 1678, Glanvill was presented a prebendary at Worcester Cathedral,²³ and it also appears that by 1680 Glanvill had been promoted to Chaplain in Waiting to Charles II. The title of Chaplain in Waiting is not commonly acknowledged in current scholarship as it seems that the formalities were not completed. Nevertheless, Glanvill’s name was clearly listed in the Lord Chamberlain’s Papers on a list of Chaplains in Waiting scheduled for January 1681. However, his name was, unsurprisingly, crossed out, given his unexpected death in November 1680.²⁴

Anthony Wood provides the earliest indication as to how Glanvill became associated with the Somersets, reporting that Glanvill’s wife ‘pretended some alliance’ to Henry Somerset, third Marquess of Worcester and first Duke of Beaufort.²⁵ When this suggestion is repeated in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• A Note on Citations
• Introduction
• 1 The Right Kind of Friends: Glanvill’s Biography and Networks
• 2 Weighing in on the Witchcraft Debate
• 3 The Lux and the Letter: Glanvill on the Nature of Spirits and Souls
• 4 Poisonous Vapours and the Science of Witchcraft
• 5 Playing a New Tune: The Drummer of Tedworth and Glanvill’s Stylistic Reform
• 6 Defending the High Ground: Glanvill and the Royal Society
• 7 Preaching Science: The Promotion of Experimental Philosophy through Glanvill’s Sermons and Pastoral Care
• 8 Collaboration and Method: Glanvill and the Reception of the Saducismus triumphatus
• Conclusion
• Tables
• Bibliography
• Index