Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [195]
60 In 1663 Christiaan Huygens was again in London with his father, and frequented the Royal Society, which made him a foreign Fellow.
61 See e.g. Pepys diary, cit. note 59 above, and Moray’s exchanges with Huygens about the new-design clock he is trying to get William Davidson to collect from The Hague for him in early 1665.
62 See L.D. Patterson, ‘Pendulums of Wren and Hooke’, Osiris 10 (1952), 277–321; 283.
63 Having examined the Trinity College Cambridge Hooke papers myself, I am now confident that sheets A–L of the longitude papers are from the early 1660s, but that everything thereafter is from the 1670s, possibly as late as 1678–79. I am grateful to the Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, for giving me access to these papers.
64 Richard Waller, Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke (1705), p.v. On the Moray negotiations with Bruce and Huygens see the Kincardine papers (RS transcript), pp.406–7.
65 I base this account on the important article by Michael Wright, ‘Robert Hooke’s longitude timekeeper’, in M. Hunter and S. Schaffer (eds), Robert Hooke: New Studies (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989), pp.63–118. Wright’s compilation of key recorded moments in Hooke’s spring-regulated timekeeper development is at pp.76–8.
66 Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 5, pp.503–4 (letter 1481). This is one of the two letters Hooke considered to constitute a betrayal of his confidence to Huygens on Moray’s part. The other is that of 22 July 1665. Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 5, pp.426–8 (letter 1436).
67 ‘Mr. Hooke having made a proposition of giving the discovery of the longitude, as he conceived it, to the society, it was ordered, that he should choose such persons to commit this business to, as he thought good, and make the experiment; that by such persons chosen, the council might be satisfied of the truth and practicableness of his invention, and proceed accordingly to take out a patent for him.’
68 Richard Waller, Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke (1705), p.v.
69 Ibid.
70 I am extremely grateful to Felix Pryor for assisting me in tracking down this document, and giving me sight of a legible photocopy.
71 See Waller, Posthumous Works, p.vi.
72 Holmes was already carrying out tests of deep-sea sounding devices for the Royal Society.
73 Holmes’s account of this incident is recorded in the Journal Books of the Royal Society for 11 January 1665. See Birch 2, pp.4–5.
74 Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 5, p.204 (letter 1315). See also ibid., pp.222–3 (letter 1324).
75 Ibid., p.224 (letter 1325).
76 Philosophical Transactions 1, 6 March 1665.
77 The grave outbreak of plague in July 1665, which necessitated the removal of the Court first to Hampton Court and then to Oxford, and the dispersal of the Royal Society members to the safety of the country, marked the end of this phase in Hooke’s longitude timekeeper aspirations.
78 See below, Chapter 12.
79 It is via the Isle of Wight route that Holmes’s path crossed that of Robert Hooke (born on that island). It has been plausibly argued that Grace, Robert’s niece, was the mother of Holmes’s illegitimate daughter Mary. See L. Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London (London: HarperCollins, 2003).
80 Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 5, p.224 (letter 1325). Huygens’s attitude to his first longitude clocks was entirely consistent: he doubted their suitability from the start (Oeuvres Complètes 4, p.285).
81 Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 5, p.256 (letter 1345).
82 Birch 2, p.21.
83 For a clear sense of the concern caused by Holmes’s conduct on that voyage, and Pepys’s lack of trust of him, see Pepys, Diary 6, p.43.
84 Ibid., p.56.
85 Birch, A History of the Royal Society 2, p.23.
86 Moray also added two further experiments Holmes claimed to have carried