Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal and to the southeast of the Arabian Sea. The island is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait; the legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the commercial capital and largest city, Colombo. Sri Lanka's documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years, it has a rich cultural heritage and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, the Pāli Canon, date back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BC. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of great strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to the modern Maritime Silk Road. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule as Ceylon. A nationalist political movement arose in the country in the early 20th century to obtain political independence, granted in 1948.
Sri Lanka's recent history has been marred by a 26-year civil war, which decisively ended when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. The current constitution stipulates the political system as a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system, it has had a long history of international engagement, as a founding member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of only two South Asian countries rated "high" on the Human Development Index, with its HDI rating and per capita income the highest among South Asian nations; the Sri Lankan constitution accords Buddhism the "foremost place", although it does not identify it as a state religion. Buddhism is given special privileges in the Sri Lankan constitution; the island is home to many cultures and ethnicities. The majority of the population is from the Sinhalese ethnicity, while a large minority of Tamils have played an influential role in the island's history.
Moors, Malays and the indigenous Vedda are established groups on the island. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names. According to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers' hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Ramayana, the island was referred to as Lankā; the Tamil term Eelam, was used to designate the whole island in Sangam literature. The island was known under Chola rule as Mummudi Cholamandalam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni; the Persians and Arabs referred to it as Sarandīb from Cerentivu or Siṃhaladvīpaḥ. Ceilão, the name given to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese Empire when it arrived in 1505, was transliterated into English as Ceylon; as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon. The country is now known in Sinhala in Tamil as Ilaṅkai. In 1972, its formal name was changed to "Free and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka".
In 1978 it was changed to the "Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka". As the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority; the pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years and even as far back as 500,000 years. The era spans the Palaeolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, which dates back to 37,000 BP, Batadombalena and Belilena are the most important. In these caves, archaeologists have found the remains of anatomically modern humans which they have named Balangoda Man, other evidence suggesting that they may have engaged in agriculture and kept domestic dogs for driving game. One of the first written references to the island is found in the Indian epic Ramayana, which provides details of a kingdom named Lanka, created by the divine sculptor Vishwakarma for Kubera, the Lord of Wealth, it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara.
The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravana's airport. Early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka; the 19th-century Irish historian James Emerson Tennent theorized that Galle, a city in southern Sri Lanka, was the ancient seaport of Tarshish from which King Solomon is said to have drawn ivory and other valuables. According to the Mahāvamsa, a chronicle written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600 BC and other signs of advanced civilisation have been discovered in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese history traditionally starts in 543 BC with the arrival of Prince Vijaya, a semi-legendary prince who sailed with 700 followers to Sri Lanka, after being expelled from Vanga Kingdom (present-day Ben
Sir James Graham, 2nd Baronet
Sir James Robert George Graham, 2nd Baronet, was a British statesman. He was descended from a family long famous in the history of the English border, he was the eldest son of Sir James Graham, 1st Baronet, by Lady Catherine, eldest daughter of the 7th Earl of Galloway. In 1819, he married Fanny Callander, youngest daughter of Sir James Campbell of Craigforth and Ardkinglas Castle. Sir James was created Doctor of Laws at the University of Cambridge in 1835, was Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1840, he was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1830 to 1834 when he resigned on account of the government pressing for a reform of the Irish Church. He became Secretary of the Home Department from September 1841 to July 1846 and again First Lord of the Admiralty from December 1852 until February 1855, he was a member of the Council of the Duchy of Lancaster, Deputy Lieutenant for county of Hertfordshire. He represented Hull from 1818 to 1820. Graham Land in Antarctica is named after him. Graham was born at Naworth, the son of Sir James Graham, 1st Baronet, by his wife Lady Catherine, daughter of John Stewart, 7th Earl of Galloway.
He was taught at a private school at Dalston in Cumberland, kept by the Rev. Walter Fletcher, before attending Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, he left Oxford after two years and while travelling for his pleasure abroad, he took up a position of private secretary to Lord Montgomerie, British diplomat in Sicily, during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. When Montgomerie became ill the responsibility for the mission fell on Graham; when Lord William Bentinck returned to the Embassy he agreed. During this time he conducted the negotiations which led to the separation of Joachim Murat from Napoleon; when the war ended he returned to England. Back in London he became friends with Wilfrid Lawson, to become a politician, a baronet, Graham's brother-in-law and father of another more famous radical. Back in London, Graham immersed himself in political affairs. Although his father was a staunch Tory he made his headquarters in Brooks’s Club where he made many Whig contacts. On 10 June 1818 he announced.
Known at the time as the Yorkshire Dandy on account of his fine appearance and flowery speech, he stood on the Whig doctrine of Parliamentary reform, the abolition of unnecessary positions and pensions, retrenchment, the abolition of the slave trade, religious and civil liberties. After three days of open voting and official scrutiny, Graham entered parliament as the junior member by a mere four votes. However, he had gained the seat at great personal expense and notwithstanding other donations accrued a debt of £6,000. In January 1820, George IV succeeded thus forcing a dissolution of parliament; as a result of his past support for radical measures he failed to gain the necessary support to retain the Yorkshire seat and in consequence he stood and won the Cornish seat of St Ives, heading the poll with 205 votes. At Westminster, Graham maintained his campaign for economy opposing the Government’s proposed increase in the Royal Family’s Civil List; however his parliamentary career, although undistinguished, now became brief, when charged with bribing the electorate, he resigned rather than contest an expensive suit.
Graham returned to Cumberland and began a programme of improving the family estate at Netherby, with the intention that such improvements would benefit both the landowner and the tenant. He began with a one-off gesture, he reduced the number of small uneconomic farms on the estate. He studied the Corn Laws and their affects upon the community, publishing his conclusions in a pamphlet of 114 pages entitled Corn and Currency, which brought him into prominence as a man of advanced Liberal opinions, he argued that liberal economics rather than protection would best serve the interests of the landowners. High duties on foreign corn had failed to help British agriculture and should be cut to a level where they balanced the landowner’s taxes and rates. Whereas high prices increased rents to the benefit of the landowners they conferred no advantage to the labourer and were an injury to the productive and a tax on the unproductive classes of the community, his general conclusions were in favour of free banking.
He was a founder member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. On 8 July 1819, Graham married Frances Callander, of Craigforth and Ardkinglas, a famous society beauty. In 1824 he succeeded to the baronetcy. At the general election of 1826, who stood upon principles identical to those advocated when contesting Hull, became the senior member for the city of Carlisle, it was a remarkable contest. When Sir Philip Musgrave, 8th Baronet, the Tory candidate, ventured into one of the poorest districts of the city, he was confronted by a group of non-electors seeking his opinions relating to the Corn Laws; when his views failed to meet with their approval he received a storm of abuse followed by a shower of stones, a general disturbance ensued. Members of the corporation and the constabulary were thrown into the Milldam. In the course of the a
Calico
Calico is a plain-woven textile made from unbleached and not processed cotton. It may contain unseparated husk parts, for example; the fabric is far less fine than muslin, but less coarse and thick than canvas or denim, but it is still cheap owing to its unfinished and undyed appearance. The fabric was from the city of Calicut in southwestern India, it was made by the traditional weavers called cāliyans. The raw fabric was dyed and printed in bright hues, calico prints became popular in Europe. Calico originated in southwestern India during the 11th century; the cloth was known as "cāliyan" to the natives. It was mentioned in Indian literature by the 12th century when the writer Hēmacandra described calico fabric prints with a lotus design. By the 15th century calico from Gujǎrāt made its appearance in Egypt. Trade with Europe followed from the 17th century onwards. Calico was woven using Sūrat cotton for both the weft. In the 18th century, England was famous for its worsted cloth; that industry, centred in the east and south in towns such as Norwich, jealously protected their product.
Cotton processing was tiny: in 1701 only 1,985,868 pounds of cottonwool was imported into England, by 1730 this had fallen to 1,545,472 pounds. This was due to commercial legislation to protect the woollen industry. Cheap calico prints, imported by the East India Company from Hindustān, had become popular. In 1700 an Act of Parliament passed to prevent the importation of dyed or printed calicoes from India, China or Persia; this caused demand to switch to imported grey cloth instead—calico that had not been finished—dyed or printed. These were printed with popular patterns in southern England. Lancashire businessmen produced grey cloth with linen warp and cotton weft, known as fustian, which they sent to London for finishing. Cottonwool imports recovered though, by 1720 were back to their 1701 levels. Again the woollen manufacturers, in true protectionist fashion, claimed that the imports were taking jobs away from workers in Coventry. A new law passed, enacting fines against anyone caught wearing stained calico muslins.
Neckcloths and fustians were exempted. The Lancashire manufacturers exploited this exemption. There now was an artificial demand for woven cloth. In 1764, 3,870,392 pounds of cotton-wool were imported; this change in consumption patterns, as a result of the restriction on imported finished goods, was a key part of the process that reduced the Indian economy from sophisticated textile production to the mere supply of raw materials. These events occurred under colonial rule, which started after 1757, were described by Nehru and some more recent scholars as "de-industrialization." Early Indian chintz, that is, glazed calico with a large floral pattern. Were produced by painting techniques; the hues were applied by wooden blocks, the cloth manufacturers in Britain printing calico used wooden block printing. Calico printers at work are depicted in one of the stained glass windows made by Stephen Adam for the Maryhill Burgh Halls, Glasgow. Confusingly and silk printed this way were known as linen calicoes and silk calicoes.
Early European calicoes would be cheap plain-weave white cotton fabric with equal weft and warp plain weave cotton fabric in, or cream or unbleached cotton, with a design block-printed using a single alizarin dye fixed with two mordants, giving a red and black pattern. Polychromatic prints were possible, using two sets of an additional blue dye; the Indian taste was for dark printed backgrounds while the European market preferred a pattern on a cream base. As the century progressed the European preference moved from the large chintz patterns to smaller, tighter patterns. Thomas Bell patented a printing technique in 1783 that used copper rollers, Livesey and Company put the first machine that used it into operation near Preston, Lancashire in 1785; the production volume for printed cloth in Lancashire in 1750 was estimated at 50,000 pieces of 30 yards In 1850 it was 20,000,000 pieces. After 1888, block printing was only used for short-run specialized jobs. After 1880, profits from printing fell due to overcapacity and the firms started to form combines.
In the first, three Scottish firms formed the United Turkey Red Co. Ltd in 1897, the second, in 1899, was the much larger Calico Printers' Association 46 printing concerns and 13 merchants combined, representing 85% of the British printing capacity; some of this capacity was removed and in 1901 Calico had 48% of the printing trade. In 1916, they and the other printers formed and joined a trade association, which set minimum prices for each'price section' of the industry; the trade association remained in operation until 1954, when the arrangement was challenged by the government Monopolies Commission. Over the intervening period much trade had been lost overseas. In the UK, Australia and New Zealand: Calico – simple, cheap equal weft and warp plain weave fabric in white, cream or unbleached cotton. Muslin – a fine, light plain weave cotton fabric. Muslin gauze – muslin. Gauze – soft and fine cotton fabric with a open plain weave. Cheesecloth – gauze. In the US: Calico – cotton fabric with a small, all-over floral print Muslin – simple, cheap equal weft and warp plain weave fabric in white, cream or unbleached cotton and/or a fine, light plain weave cotton fabric.
Muslin gauze – the lightest, most open weave of muslin. Gauze – any light fabric, genera
Chief secretary (British Empire)
Chief secretary was the title of a senior civil servant in various colonies of the British Empire. Prior to the dissolution of the colonies, the chief secretary was the second most important official in a colony of the British Empire after the Governor termed the colonial secretary and an office held by the premier or a similar politically elected minister, with a portfolio which were equivalent to what was termed the Home Secretary's office; the secretary to the governor as well as secretary of the colony this office was at first known as the colonial secretary or principal secretary outside British North America, where the equivalent title was provincial secretary. In 1821, Governor of New South Wales Philip Gidley King wrote that the colonial secretary: "Has the custody of all official papers and records belonging to the colony; the colonial secretary in the Colony of New South Wales and most of the other Australian colonies during the nineteenth century was a political position and not the position of a civil servant.
The colonial secretary was thus a government minister and politician, the position was fundamentally equivalent to the term home secretary, it was held by the colonial prime minister referred to as premier. The function of colonial secretary and secretary to the governor were thus separated in 1824, several Australian colonies renamed their'colonial secretary' as'home secretary' during the 1890s and just before separation. After the grant of responsible government, this office like its British equivalent, the First Lord of the Treasury was the formal position held by the colonial premier because the office of premier was not mentioned in any legislation; the Cape Colony was unusual in giving the colonial secretary at the Cape responsibility for defence. Several of the Australian states and territories retained the title for many decades, the chief secretary's departments evolving into the modern Premier's Departments in those states, although the chief secretary position itself became separate from that of the Premier, evolved differently in different jurisdictions: in some places it became the equivalent of the British Home Secretary or a Minister of the Interior elsewhere.
New Zealand abolished the office in 1907. Territories with chief secretaries included Nigeria and Tanganyika. Smaller territories, like British Guiana, used the term colonial secretary instead. Provincial Secretary Secretary of State for the Colonies Chief Secretary’s Building in Sydney Secretary of State for Canada
Henry Grey, 3rd Earl Grey
Henry George Grey, 3rd Earl Grey, known as Viscount Howick from 1807 until 1845, was an English statesman. Grey was the eldest son of Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, by his wife The Honorable Mary Ponsonby, daughter of William Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby, he entered parliament in 1826, under the title of Viscount Howick, as Whig member for Winchelsea, briefly for Higham Ferrers before settling for a northern constituency. Northumberland in 1831 was followed by North Northumberland after the Great Reform Act 1832, he remained in the parliaments dominated by his party and by Lord Melbourne as Prime Minister. On the accession of the Whigs to power in 1830, when his father became prime minister, he was made Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies; this gave him responsibility for Britain's colonial possessions and laid the foundation of his intimate acquaintance with colonial questions. He belonged at the time to the more advanced party of colonial reformers, sharing the views of Edward Gibbon Wakefield on questions of land and emigration, resigned in 1834 from dissatisfaction that slave emancipation was made gradual instead of immediate.
In 1835 he entered Lord Melbourne's cabinet as Secretary at War, effected some valuable administrative reforms by suppressing malpractices detrimental to the troops in India. After the partial reconstruction of the ministry in 1839, he again resigned, disapproving of the more advanced views of some of his colleagues; these repeated resignations gave him a reputation for crotchetiness, which he did not decrease by his disposition to embarrass his old colleagues by his action on free trade questions in the session of 1841. After being returned unopposed at the first three general elections in Northern division of Northumberland, Howick was defeated at the 1841 general election, he returned to the Commons after a few months absence, when he was elected for the borough of Sunderland at by-election in September 1841. During the exile of the Liberals from power he went still farther on the path of free trade, anticipated Lord John Russell's declaration against the corn laws. When, on Sir Robert Peel's resignation in December 1845, Lord John Russell was called upon to form a ministry, who had become Earl Grey by the death of his father in the preceding July, refused to enter the new cabinet if Lord Palmerston were foreign secretary.
He was censured for perverseness, when in the following July he accepted Lord Palmerston as a colleague without remonstrance. His conduct afforded Lord John Russell an escape from an embarrassing situation. Becoming colonial secretary in 1846, he found himself everywhere confronted with arduous problems, which in the main he encountered with success, his administration formed an epoch. He was the first minister to proclaim that the colonies were to be governed for their own benefit and not for the mother countries; the concession by which colonies were allowed to tax imports from the mother-country ad libitum was not his. In the West Indies he suppressed; the least successful part of his administration was his treatment of the convict question at the Cape of Good Hope, which seemed an exception to his rule that the colonies were to be governed for their own benefit and in accordance with their own wishes, subjected him to a humiliating defeat. In 1848 Grey was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council representing the City of Melbourne despite never visiting the colony.
This election was a protest against rule from Sydney and in 1850 Grey introduced the Australian Colonies Government Act which separated the district from New South Wales to become the colony of Victoria. After his retirement he wrote a history and defence of his colonial policy in the form of letters to Lord John Russell, he resigned with his colleagues in 1852. No room was found for him in the Coalition Cabinet of 1853, although during the Crimean struggle public opinion pointed to him as the fittest man as minister for war, he never again held office. During the remainder of his long life he exercised a vigilant criticism on public affairs. In 1858 he wrote a work on parliamentary reform. In his latter years he was a frequent contributor of weighty letters to The Times on land, tithes and other public questions, his principal parliamentary appearances were when he moved for a committee on Irish affairs in 1866, when in 1878 he passionately opposed the policy of the Beaconsfield cabinet in India.
He supported Lord Beaconsfield at the dissolution, regarding William Ewart Gladstone's accession to power with much greater alarm. He was a determined opponent of Gladstone's Home rule policy. Lord Grey married on 9 August 1832, to Maria, daughter of Sir Joseph Copley, 3rd Baronet of Sprotborough, they had no children. She died in September 1879. Lord Grey survived her by fifteen years and died on 9 October 1894, aged 91, he was succeeded in the earldom by Albert Grey. The suburb of Howick in Auckland, New Zealand, is named after the earl. Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl Grey image of the E
Lincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. Lincoln's Inn is recognised to be one of the world's most prestigious professional bodies of judges and lawyers. Lincoln's Inn is situated in Holborn, in the London Borough of Camden, just on the border with the City of London and the City of Westminster, across the road from London School of Economics and Political Science, Royal Courts of Justice and King's College London's Maughan Library; the nearest tube station is Chancery Lane. Lincoln's Inn is the largest Inn, it is believed to be named after 3rd Earl of Lincoln. During the 12th and early 13th centuries, the law was taught in the City of London by the clergy. Two events happened which ended this form of legal education: firstly, a papal bull in 1218 that prohibited the clergy from teaching the common law, rather than canon law; the secular lawyers migrated to the hamlet of Holborn, near to the law courts at Westminster Hall and outside the City.
As with the other Inns of Court, the precise date of founding of Lincoln's Inn is unknown. The Inn can claim the oldest records – its "black books" documenting the minutes of the governing Council go back to 1422, the earliest entries show that the Inn was at that point an organised and disciplined body; the third Earl of Lincoln had encouraged lawyers to move to Holborn, they moved to Thavie's Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery expanding into Furnival's Inn as well. It is felt that Lincoln's Inn became a formally organised Inn of Court soon after the Earl's death in 1310. At some point before 1422, the greater part of "Lincoln's Inn", as they had become known, after the Earl, moved to the estate of Ralph Neville, the Bishop of Chichester, near Chancery Lane, they retained Thavie's and Furnival's Inn, using them as "training houses" for young lawyers, purchased the properties in 1550 and 1547 respectively. In 1537, the land Lincoln's Inn sat on was sold by Bishop Richard Sampson to a Bencher named William Suliard, his son sold the land to Lincoln's Inn in 1580.
The Inn became formally organised as a place of legal education thanks to a decree in 1464, which required a Reader to give lectures to the law students there. During the 15th century, the Inn was not a prosperous one, the Benchers John Fortescue, are credited with fixing this situation. Lincoln's Inn had no constitution or fundamental form of governance, legislation was divided into two types. A third method used was to have individual Fellows promise to fulfill a certain duty; the increase of the size of the Inn led to a loss of its democratic nature, first in 1494 when it was decided that only Benchers and Governors should have a voice in calling people to the Bar and, by the end of the sixteenth century, Benchers were entirely in control. Admissions were recorded in the black books and divided into two categories: Clerks who were admitted to Clerks' Commons. All entrants swore the same oath regardless of category, some Fellows were permitted to dine in Clerks' Commons as it cost less, making it difficult for academics to sometimes distinguish between the two – Walker, the editor of the Black Books, maintains that the two categories were one and the same.
During the 15th century, the Fellows began to be called Masters, the gap between Masters and Clerks grew, with an order in 1505 that no Master was to be found in Clerks' Commons unless studying a point of law there. By 1466, the Fellows were divided into Benchers, those "at the Bar", those "not at the Bar". By 1502, the extra barram Fellows were being referred to as "inner barristers", in contrast to the "utter" or "outer" barristers. In Lord Mansfield's time, there was no formal legal education, the only requirement for a person to be called to the Bar was for him to have eaten five dinners a term at Lincoln's Inn, to have read the first sentence of a paper prepared for him by the steward. A Bencher, Benchsitter or Master of the Bench is a member of the Council, the governing body of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn; the term referred to one who sat on the benches in the main hall of the Inn, which were used for dining and during moots, the term had no significance. In Lincoln's Inn, the idea of a Bencher was believed to have begun far earlier than elsewhere.
William Holdsworth and the editor of the Black Books both concluded that Benchers were, from the earliest times, the governors of the Inn, unlike other Inns who started with Readers. A. W. B. Simpson, writing at a date, decided based on the Black Books that the Benchers were not the original governing body, that the Inn was instead ruled by Governors, sometimes called Rulers, who led the Inn; the Governors were elected to serve a year-long term, with between four and six sitting at any one time. The first record of Benchers comes from 1478, when John Glynne was expelled from the Society for using "presumptious and unsuitable words" in front
Royal Society
The President and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge known as the Royal Society, is a learned society. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as "The Royal Society", it is the oldest national scientific institution in the world. The society is the United Kingdom's and Commonwealth of Nations' Academy of Sciences and fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, fostering international and global co-operation and public engagement; the society is governed by its Council, chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows; as of 2016, there are about 1,600 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS, with up to 52 new fellows appointed each year.
There are royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members, the last of which are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS. The Royal Society President is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who took up the post on 30 November 2015. Since 1967, the society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London, used by the Embassy of Germany, London; the Invisible College has been described as a precursor group to the Royal Society of London, consisting of a number of natural philosophers around Robert Boyle. The concept of "invisible college" is mentioned in German Rosicrucian pamphlets in the early 17th century. Ben Jonson in England referenced the idea, related in meaning to Francis Bacon's House of Solomon, in a masque The Fortunate Isles and Their Union from 1624/5; the term accrued currency for the exchanges of correspondence within the Republic of Letters. In letters in 1646 and 1647, Boyle refers to "our invisible college" or "our philosophical college".
The society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Three dated letters are the basic documentary evidence: Boyle sent them to Isaac Marcombes, Francis Tallents who at that point was a fellow of Magdalene College and London-based Samuel Hartlib; the Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at a variety of locations, including Gresham College in London. They were influenced by the "new science", as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from 1645 onwards. A group known as "The Philosophical Society of Oxford" was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library. After the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College, it is held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society. Another view of the founding, held at the time, was that it was due to the influence of French scientists and the Montmor Academy in 1657, reports of which were sent back to England by English scientists attending.
This view was held by Jean-Baptiste du Hamel, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Melchisédech Thévenot at the time and has some grounding in that Henry Oldenburg, the society's first secretary, had attended the Montmor Academy meeting. Robert Hooke, disputed this, writing that: makes Mr Oldenburg to have been the instrument, who inspired the English with a desire to imitate the French, in having Philosophical Clubs, or Meetings. I will not say, that Mr Oldenburg did rather inspire the French to follow the English, or, at least, did help them, hinder us. But'tis well known who were the principal men that began and promoted that design, both in this city and in Oxford, and not only these Philosophic Meetings were. On 28 November 1660, the 1660 committee of 12 announced the formation of a "College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning", which would meet weekly to discuss science and run experiments. At the second meeting, Sir Robert Moray announced that the King approved of the gatherings, a royal charter was signed on 15 July 1662 which created the "Royal Society of London", with Lord Brouncker serving as the first president.
A second royal charter was signed on 23 April 1663, with the king noted as the founder and with the name of "the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge". This initial royal favour has continued and, since every monarch has been the patron of the society; the society's early meetings included experiments performed first by Hooke and by Denis Papin, appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their subject area, were both important in some cases and trivial in others; the society published an English translation of Essays of Natural Experiments Made in the Accademia del Cimento, under the Protection of the Most Serene Prince Leopold of Tuscany in 1684, an Italian book documenting experiments at the Accademia del Cimento. Although meeting at Gresham College, the Society temporarily moved to Arundel House in 1666 after the Great Fire of London, which did not harm Gresham but did lead to its appropriation by the Lord Mayor; the Society r
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Tennent, Sir James Emerson". Encyclopædia Britannica. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
