I feel I should explain myself; I do not say, you note, justify myself, as I believe that throughout my career I have been consistent. I know that my enemies do not accept this, and I suppose that the reasonableness of my actions in the course of my public career (if such you can call it) has not been absolutely clear to uninformed minds. How is it, they say, that a man can be Anglican, Presbyterian, loyal to the martyr Charles, then become chief cryptographer to Oliver Cromwell, deciphering the most secret letters of the king to aid the parliamentary cause, then return to the established church and, finally, use his skills to defend the monarchy once more when it was restored? Is that not hypocrisy? Is that not self-serving? So say the ignorant.
To which I reply, no. It is not, and anyone who may sneer at my actions knows very little about the difficulties of rebalancing the humors of a polity once it has become subject to disease. Some say that I changed sides from day to day, and always for my own advantage. But do you really believe that I needed to settle merely for the professorship of geometry at the University of Oxford? Had I been truly ambitious, I would have aimed at a bishopric at the very least. And do not imagine I could not have had it—it was not my aim. I have not been governed by selfish ambition and have studied more to be serviceable than great. I endeavored at all times to act by moderate principles in compliance with the powers in being. Since my earliest days when I discovered the secret patterns of mathematics and dedicated myself to their exploration, I have had a passion for order, for in order lies the fulfillment of God’s plan for us all. The joy of a mathematical problem solved with elegance and the pain of seeing the natural harmony of man disrupted are two sides of the same coin; in both cases I believe I allied myself to the cause of righteousness.
Nor did I desire fame and reputation for myself as a reward; indeed, I shunned these as vanity and was content for others to take the great positions of church and state, knowing rather that my secret influence was of far greater weight than theirs. Let others talk; it was my task to act and I did so to the best of my ability; I served Cromwell because his iron fist could bring order to the land and stop the bickering of faction when no one else could, and I served the king when that God-ordained role passed to him on Cromwell’s death. And I served each well; not for their sake certainly, but because by doing so I served my God, as I have tried to do in all things.
My desire for myself was merely to be left in peace to approach the divine through the mysteries of mathematics. But, as I am a servant of God and of the realm as I am of philosophy, I have frequently been constrained to put such selfishness aside. Now there is another who will surpass me, as David surpassed Saul, or as Alexander surpassed Philip, I can do so easily—then it was a real hardship. Mr. Newton says he sees so far because he stands on the shoulders of giants. I hope it will not seem vanitous if I say that my shoulders are among the strongest to support his glory, and I am ever mindful (though too modest to repeat in public) of that saying of Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself. More than this, I could have seen farther myself, and taken some of his great fame, had my duty not called me to other things so insistently.
Now that it is so many years ago, many people assume that the restoration of the kingdom was a simple matter. Cromwell died and in due course the king returned. Would that it had been that straightforward—the secret history of that momentous event is known only to a few. At the beginning I thought that, at best, the king might last six months, a year if he was lucky, before the passion of faction erupted once more. It seemed to me that he would have to fight for his inheritance, sooner or later. The country had been in turmoil for near twenty years; there had been war and strife, property had been trampled on, the rightful rulers of the country killed and expelled, all stations of men upturned. “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree” (Psalms 37:35). Were people who had become used to authority and riches simply going to renounce these baubles? Was it really to be expected that the army, unpaid and discarded, would quietly accept the king’s return and the defeat of everything they had striven to establish? And could it be hoped that the king’s supporters would remain united, when the opportunities for dissent presented to them were so great? Only men without power do not desire it; those who have felt its touch crave ever more of its embrace.
England was a country on the edge, surrounded by enemies within and without—the least spark could have rekindled the flames. And in this powder keg the most powerful men in the kingdom were engaged in a struggle for the king’s favor which only one person could win. Clarendon, Bristol, Bennet; the Duke of Buckingham, Lords Cavendish, Coventry, Ormonde, Southampton—there was not room for all in His Majesty’s favor and only one person could run his government for him, for none would tolerate partners. The battle was fought in the dark, but its consequences sucked many men in; I was one, and took upon myself the task of damping the flames before all was consumed. I flatter myself that I succeeded well, despite the efforts of Marco da Cola. He says at the start of his manuscript that he will leave out much, but nothing of significance. That is his first great lie. He puts in nothing which is of significance; I will have to do that to expose his perfidy.
My involvement in the matter which this Cola tries to hide began near two years before he arrived on these shores, when I traveled to London to attend a meeting of like-minded natural philosophers at Gresham College. This organization, which later became our Royal Society, is not now what it was, despite the presence of luminaries like Mr. Newton. Then it was a ferment of knowledge, and only someone who attended could know what a buzz of excitement and endeavor attended those early meetings. That spirit has gone now, and I fear it will never return. Who now can match that band—Wren, Hooke, Boyle, Ward, Wilkins, Petty, Goddard and so many more names which will live forever? Now its members are like a bunch of ants, forever collecting thek tawdry rocks and bugs, always accumulating, never thinking, and turning away from God. No wonder they come to be despised.
But then all was joyful optimism; the king was back on his throne, the country was peaceful once more, and the whole world of experimental philosophy was there to be explored. We felt, I think, like Cabot’s crew when they first caught sight of the New World, and the excitement of anticipation was intoxicating. The meeting itself was very fine, as befitted the occasion; the king himself attended, and graciously presented a mace to signify his royal condescension in supporting our endeavors, and many of his most powerful ministers came too—some of whom were subsequently elected to our ranks when the Royal Society was officially formed, although, it must be said, they contributed little but luster.
Afterward, once His Majesty had made a pretty speech and we were all given the opportunity of bowing personally to him, and Mr. Hooke had demonstrated one of his more ingenious (and showy) machines to entrap the royal imagination, I was approached by a man of middling stature, with quick, dark eyes and a supercilious manner. He wore an oblong black patch over the bridge of his nose, which covered (so they say) a sword wound received when he was fighting for the late king. Personally I am not so sure; no one ever saw this famed injury, and that patch drew attention to his loyalty more than it covered a wound. Then he was known as Henry Bennet, although the world later knew him as the Earl of Arlington and he had just returned from the embassy of Madrid (though this was not yet common knowledge). I had heard vague reports that he was charging himself with maintaining the stability of the kingdom, and I was swiftly to receive full confirmation that this was, indeed, the case. In brief, he asked me to attend on him the following morning at his house on the Strand, as he wished to make my acquaintance.