An Instance of the Fingerpost (56 page)

I have done much in my life which I regret and, if I had the opportunity, there is much I would now do differently. But my task was all important, and I feel reassured that I am acquitted of any serious offence. The Lord has been good, and though no man deserves it, my salvation has been no injustice. I would not have so much, and such a tranquillity of mind, had I not been blessed by His Merciful Providence. In Him I place all my trust, and have endeavoured only to serve as best I can. My vindication is my assurance of His favour.

The Idols of the Theatre have got into the human Mind from the different Tenets of Philosophers and the perverted Laws of Demonstration. All Philosophies hitherto have been so many Stage Plays, having shewn nothing but fictitious and theatrical Worlds
.

Francis Bacon,
Novum Organum Scientarum
,
Section II, Aphorism VII

HAVING BEEN SENT
the collected notes of the papist Marco da Cola, I feel it necessary to comment, lest others also come across his outrageous scribblings and believe what he says. So let me state it plainly that this Cola is a pernicious, deceitful and arrogant liar. The wide-eyed naïveté, the youthful enthusiasm, the openness he presents in his narration are nothing but the most monstrous of frauds. Satan is a master of deception, who has taught his servants his tricks. ‘Ye are of your father the devil . . . for he is a liar, and the father of it’ (John 8:44). I intend to expose the full extent of the duplicity he reveals in this memoir of his, this true account (as he has it) of a voyage to England. This Cola was the worst of men, the most savage of murderers, and the greatest of deceivers. It was only by the grace of Providence that I escaped that night when he tried to poison me, and it was the greatest misfortune that Grove took the bottle for himself and died in my place. I had half-expected some attempt once he arrived in Oxford, but had thought more in terms of a knife in the back: I never conceived of such a cowardly assault, and was not prepared for it. As for the girl, Sarah Blundy, I would have spared her had that been possible, but could not do so. An innocent died, one more of Cola’s many victims, but many more would have done so had I not kept my counsel. It was a hard decision to take, but still I try to acquit myself of wrong. The danger was great, and my own sufferings were hardly less.

I say this calmly and with consideration, but it has cost me much to do so, for the arrival of the manuscript came as the greatest shock. Lower, indeed, had not intended to send it to me; it was only when I heard of its existence that I demanded to see it and made it clear I would brook no refusal. My intention was to expose the manuscript as a piece of imposture as I could not believe it genuine, but now I
have read it I know my initial assumption was wrong. Contrary to my belief, and the assurances of those I had reason to trust, it is clear that Marco da Cola really is still alive.

I do not know how this can be and I most certainly wish it were not so, since I did my best to ensure his death and was certain I had succeeded; I was told that he had been taken to the edge of the boat and there pushed into the North Sea, that his deeds might be punished and his lips for ever sealed. The captain himself told me the boat had hove to for many minutes until the man sank beneath the waves. The knowledge had given me some solace over the years and it is cruel to have that consolation so rudely ripped away, for that manuscript shows plain that those I trusted lied to me and my triumph ended in fraud. I do not know why, but it is now too late to discover the truth. Too many of those who might know the answer have died and I now serve new masters.

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 humours 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 endeavoured at all times to act by moderate
principles in compliance with the powers then 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 fulfilment 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 also 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 vainglorious 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 further than the giant himself. More than this, I could have seen further 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 favour, 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 favour 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 travelled to London to attend a meeting of like-minded natural philosophers at Gresham College. This organisation, 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 endeavour 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 for ever? Now its members are like a bunch of ants, forever collecting their 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 endeavours, 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 lustre.

Afterwards, 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.

The next day, accordingly, I presented myself, half expecting to be hurled into the midst of a formal levée, surrounded by petitioners and claimants all wanting the attention of a man close to the court. There were indeed a few people there, but not many and they were ignored. I concluded from this that Mr Bennet’s star had not yet risen too far or, for reasons of his own, he was keeping his connections, and even his presence in London, fairly quiet.

I cannot say that he was pleasant; indeed, he had a formality of manner which verged on the grotesque, so keen was he to observe all the niceties of protocol, and maintain rankings in a clear form. It came, I believe, from spending too long in Spain, which is notoriously prone to such excesses. He took the trouble to explain to me that he had provided a chair with a padded seat, as befitted my dignity as a doctor of the university; others, it seemed, had to make do with a hard seat or remain standing, depending on their station. It would have been unwise of me to hint that I considered such punctiliousness absurd: I did not know what he wanted and the government was about to send a visitation to the university to eject members inserted by the Commonwealth. As I had been so inserted, Mr Bennet was not a man to annoy. I wanted to keep my position.

‘How do you consider the state of His Majesty’s kingdom?’ he said abruptly, not being a man to waste too much time putting his guests at ease or winning their confidence. It is a trick often played by men in power, I find.