4051527

"Our Lot Is Fallen into an Age of Wonders": John Spencer and the Controversy over Prodigies
in the Early Restoration

Author(s): William E. Burns
Source: Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer,
1995), pp. 237-252
Published by: The North American Conference on British Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4051527 .
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"Our Lot is Fallen Into an Age of Wonders": John Spencer
and the Controversy Over Prodigies in the Early Restora-
tion
Williami E. Burns
England during the early Restoration is a fascinating case of the cultural fertility
of counterrevolution. The problem of the reimposition of authority following
the destruction and revival of such traditional institutions as monarchy, bishops,
and nobility led to a variety of new expedients, rather than simply the return
to old verities that one might expect from the somewhat misleading term "Res-
toration." Historians such as Jonathan Scott and Richard Greaves have remarked
upon the continuing challenge posed by oppositional ideologies dating back to
the Revolution, republican and/or radical Protestant, in the England of the Res-
toration.' Historians such as James Jacob, Margaret Jacob, Patrick Curry, and
Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, have traced the ways in which the new
science and Baconian ideology participated in the effort to find new bases for
authority in the still unstable England of the time following the Civil War and
Interregnum.2 John Gascoigne, in his recent history of Cambridge University
in the eighteenth century, refers to the nexus of establishment politics, rational
religion, and natural philosophy that originated in the Restoration and dominated
the eighteenth century in England as the "holy alliance."3
This article will examine two important, and largely neglected, documents of
the early Restoration, the Discourse Concerniing Prodigies (1663) and the Dis-
course on Vulgar Prophecies (1665), both by the Anglican clergyman and
scholar John Spencer.4 These works, produced in response to a specific challenge
'See Richard Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain 1660-1663 (New
York, 1986); Enemlies Under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain 1664-1677 (Stan-
ford, 1990); and Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to tile Revolution
of 1688-1689 (Stanford, 1992), and Jonathani Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis
1677-1683 (Cambridge, 1991).
2J. R. Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution (New York, 1977); Margaret Jacob, The
Newtonians and the English Revoluition 1689-1720 (Ithaca, 1976); Patrick Curry, Prophecy and
Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Londoni, 1989); and Simon Schaffer and Steveni Shapini,
Leviathan and the Air-Puntip: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimnental Life (Princeton, 1985).
3John Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightennment: Science, Religion anad Politics from
the Restoration to the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1989)
p.
3.
4The second edition of the Discourse Concerning Prodigies appeared in 1665, in a more reader-
friendly octavo, as opposed to the small-print 1663 quarto. Textual differences between the two
editions are minor. References in this article will be to the 1663 edition. When the Discourse
Concerning Vulgar Prophecies was published in 1665, it was bound with the second edition of
Albion 27, 2 (Summer 1995): 237-252. i) North American Conference on British Studies 1995. All Rights Reserved.
238 William E. Burns
to the Restoration state, contributed to the creation of a Baconian scientific
ideology in the 1660s, and its "holy alliance" with Latitudinarian religion. This
article also examines, in turn, Spencer's political, religious, and natural-
philosophical arguments. By demonstrating the connections between them it
demonstrates that the "holy alliance" predated the development of Newtonian
physics, and that Spencer, neither a natuiral philosopher nor one of the well
known Latitudinarian divines, contributed to it.
Spencer's Discourse Concerning Prodigies was a response to one less fre-
quently examined form of opposition to the Restoration order. A series of tracts
put forth by radical sectarian and millenarian opponents of the regime in the
early 1660s took the form of compilations of "prodigies"-strange events ouit-
side the order of nature suich as monstrous births, rains of blood, and battles in
the sky.5 These events were claimed to be signs of God's wrath with the existing
order and presages of impending disaster such as civil war or plaguie. This body
of interpretation of prodigies was one aspect of the providentialism that satturated
early modem thouIghIt.6 The providential interpretation of prodigies followed a
tradition having both Christian roots, most notably in Saint Auguistine, and clas-
sical roots in the ancient historians such as Livy and Josephus, who had related
prodigious occuirrences to subsequient historical events. This tradition survived
the Reformation and was used by Elizabethan Protestant propagandists stuch as
Stephen Batman and John Foxe.7 Use of prodigies for religious propaganda was
the Discourse Concerning Prodigies, and Spencer explicitly presented the two works as part of
the same project. John Spencer, Discourse Concerning Vulgar Prophecies (Cambridge, 1665), p.
7. There are brief discussions of the Discourse Concerning Prodigies in Lorraine Dastoni, "Marvelous
Facts and Miraculotus Evidence in Early Modem Eturope," Critical Enquiry 18 (Autumn 1991): pp.
112, 120; Edward N. Hooker, "The Puirpose of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis," Huntington Library
Quarterly 10 (1946): 128-31; John Gascoigne, "'The Wisdom of the Egyptians' anid the Seculariza-
tion of History in the Age of Newton," in Stephen Gaukroger ed., The Uses of Antiquity: The
Scientific Revolution and the Classical Tradition (Dordrecht, 1991), pp. 176-78; and Victor Harris,
All Coherence Gone (Chicago, 1949), pp. 166-68. Both Harris and Daston ignore the inumediate
political context of Spencer's work.
5The two principal studies of the cultural roles of prodigies in Early Modemn Europe are Jean
Ceard, La Nature et les prodiges: l'insolite au 16e siecle, en France, Travaux d'humanisme et
Renaissance, no. 158 (Geneva, 1977) and Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston, "Unnatural Con-
ceptions: The Study of Monsters in Early Modem France and England," Past & Present 92 (August,
1981): 20-54. Both largely ignore the political dimeensionis of prodigies after the Reformation.
6For the importance of providentialism in seventeenth-cenitury English culture see Keith Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), pp. 78-112; Barbara Donagan, "Godly Choice:
Puritan Decision Making in Seventeenith-Cenitury Englanid," Harvard Theological Review 76 (1983):
307-34; and Blair Worden, "Providence and Politics in Cromwellian Englanid," Past & Present
109 (November, 1985): 55-99.
7Stephen Batman, The Doomne Warning All Men to the Judgement: wherein are contayned all the
straunge Prodigies that hapned in the Worlde, with divers secrete figures of Revelations tending
to mannes stayed conversion towardes God (London, 1581); and John Foxe, Actes and Monuments,
8 vols. (New York, 1965) 4: 543.
Prodigies in the Early Restorationz 239
one aspect of the literature of "particular providences" prodtuced by Calvinisti-
cally inclined clergy of the Church of England in the early Stuart period, as
well as being employed by journalists and historians.
German and other foreign prodigy stories were disseminated in English
newspapers, ballads, and tracts during the Thirty Years' War to emphasize the
apocalyptic nature of the confrontation of true (Protestant) and false (Catholic)
religion.8 The lack of an effective censorship during the civil war period
produced an explosion of prodigy tracts and compilations, mostly on the side
of the Parliament.9 Similar works continued to be issued in the early Restoration,
and took a strongly pro-Dissenter, anti-government line.'? In the first few years
of the Restoration, pamphlets suich as The Lord's Loud Call to Englanid (1660),
by the London Partictular Baptist minister Henry Jessey, and the anonymouis
series published under the umbrella title of Mirabilis Annuiiis (three voluimes,
1661-62), claimed to demonstrate God's displeasure with the new regime, and
the imminence of the last juidgement, by enumerating recent prodigies. These
works were produced by the "Confederacy press," printers and booksellers in-
cluding Livewell Chapman, Giles and Elizabeth Calvert, and Francis Smith,
notorious for their support of radical sectarian religion.
"
These prodigy tracts
and compilations were widely distribuited and influential, as testimony from both
8See The Conitinuiiationi of the Weekely Newes no. 36 (Oct. 5, 1624) pp. 1-3; the ballad "A List of
Hideous Signs" (1638) Wood Collection 402 (67), reprinted in Hyder Rollins, ed., The Pack of
Autolycus; or, Stranige anid Terrible News of Ghosts, Apparitions, Monstrous Births, Showers of
Wheat, Judgmtienits of God, alnd other Prodigious anid Fearful Happelnilngs
as told ill Broadside
Ballads of the Years 1624-1693 (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 21-25; anld Captain L. Brinckmair, The
Warnings of Germiany By Wonderfill
Siglnes anid strange Prodigies seenle in divers parts of that
Countrey of Germtiany, betweeni the Yeare 1618 anid 1638 (Londoni, 1638). Caroline Hibbard, Charles
I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983) p. 274 nll11, idenitifies The Warn7ings of Germiianiy as
part of a burst of English propaganda writings in the late 1630s supportinig the German Protestant
cause coiiiected with the Prince Palatine's visit to Englatnd.
9Amonig many other examples, see Ellis Bradshaw, A True Relation of the Strange Apparition seen
in the air, on Moniday, 25 February, in anid about the Towii of Boltoni in the Mores in the Coiumity
of Lancaster at iiiid-day (Lonidoni, 1650); anid John Vicars, Prodigies and Apparitions (Londoni,
1642). The prodigy literature of the Civil War is discussed in Chris Durstoni, "Signs and Wonders
in the English Civil War," History Today 37 (1987): 22-28; Jerome Friedman, The Battle of Frogs
and Fairford's Flies: Miracles anid the Puilp Press during the English Revolution (New York, 1993);
and Harry Rusche, "Prophecies and Propaganida, 1641-1651," Eniglish Historical Review 84 (1969):
752-70.
10Short discussions of these tracts anid the reaction they provoked can be foLunid in Friedman, The
Battle of Frogs, pp. 248-53; Greaves, Deliver Us fronii Evil, pp. 213-16; Thomas, Religioll alnd
the Decline of Magic, pp. 95-96; J. G. Muddimani, The King's Journalist 1659-1689: Stuidies in
the Reign of Charles II (Londoni, 1923), pp. 132-33, 153-59; Hooker 'Drydeni's Pturpose," pp.
52-57; Bryan Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestanitisml to 1660
(Leiden, 1975), pp. 111-14; and C. E. Whiting, Studies in English Puritanzismti fromii the Restoratior
to the Revoltution 1660-1688 (Londoni, 1931), pp. 546-5 1.
ttFor the "Confederacy Press," see Greaves, Deliver Us Froml Evil, pp. 207-25.
240 William) E. Butrnis
supporters and opponents of the government demonstrates.'2 (In fact, they were
the subject of official concern as far away as Ireland.)"3 The authors of these
works claimed that prodigies showed God's wrath against the new regime,
througlh signs such as the appearance of multiple suns (held to prognosticate
divided authlority in the state), as well as divine extraordinary punishments for
enemies of the Protestant groups dissenting from the restored Episcopal Church
of England, as when the hotuse of a local magistrate who refused to protect
meetings of Dissenters was invaded by swarming masses of frogs and toads.'4
The first Mirabilis AnnZ1us tract drew a clear contrast between the Restoration
order and the one preceding it to the disadvantage of the England of Charles
II:
And if, (according to the opinioni of learned men, such as Luther, Voetius, Weems,
&c.) Prodigies anid signs are especially for the sakes of wicked and ungodly men,
Aaroni's Rod budded for a token against the Rebels, then from the vast disproportion
of their nnTiber this year, to what they were for many years together in the times
foregoing, we may easily guess at the prodigious increase of the most brutish Propha-
nesse, Atheism, uinicleanesse, murders, blasphemy and stuperstition that this single
year hath produced, beyonid all the precedents with which formner times hath ac-
quainited us.15
"This year" was the first year of the Restoration, and the carefuilly unspecified
"times foregoing" the Interregnum, characterized as relatively free of prodigies
and sin.
The publishers, writers, and distributers of these works were the subjects of
official persecuition, and several Royalist tracts and items in official newspapers
attacking the veracity of specific prodigies appeared.'6 However, anti-govern-
ment prodigy writings also required an intellectual and theological response by
the defenders of the new/old regime.
In 1663, when he published the Discourse Concerning Prodigies, John Spen-
cer (1630-1693) was a Cambridge Old Testament scholar and a Fellow of Cor-
pus Christi College. He became Master of Corpus Christi in 1667, despite having
taken his B.A. and M.A. duiring the Interregnum and not having a record of
12For testimony as to the prodigy tracts' circulation from an eminenit Churchmani and an emineii
Dissenter, see SamuLel Parker, History of His Own Time (London, 1730), p. 18; and Richard Baxtei
Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed., Matthew Sylvester (Londoni, 1696), pp. 163-64.
3HMC Hastinigs MS. iv, p. 121.
14Strange and True Newves froin Glouicester (London, 1660).
i5Enianztios Terastios, Mirabilis Annitus, or The Year of Prodigies and Woniders (Londoni, 1661)
Preface.
16Royalist responses to specific alleged prodigies included the ballad The Phanaticke's Plot Dis
covered (Londoni, 1660); Robert Clarke, The Lyinig Wonders, or rather the Wonderful Lyes (Londor
1660); anid A Perfect Narrative of the Phanatick Wonders Seeni in the West of England (Londor
1660).
Prodigies in the Early Restoration 241
support of monarchy before the Restoration.'7 Spencer was one of the few
scholars able to make a successful career at Restoration Cambridge without a
strong Royalist record, although his work strongly supported the Restoration
regime.'8 However, he was noted for charity to non-conformists and had some
acquaintance with Latitudinarian clergy, particularly the future archbishop of
Canterbury Thomas Tenison, also a Fellow of Corpus, who Spencer named the
executor of his will.'9
Spencer, in his Discourse Concerning Prodigies, made the formal theological
statement of one Royalist/Anglican position on prodigies. He did not engage
the Mirabilis Annius material directly, and kept his work mainly on a high
theoretical level. However, he did place it firmly in the context of recent con-
troversies. Explaining why he was writing on the subject, Spencer claimed:
That which further engaged my thoughts uponI this argument, was a consideration of
the seasonableiness thereof. We have beeni so late perswayded by three or four several
impressions of Books (as there never wanted those which would farme the weaklesse
and easiness of the multitude) that England is grown Africa, and presents us every
year (since the return of his Majesty) with a new scene of monstrous and strange
sights, and that our lot is fallen into an Age of Wonders; and all held forth to the
People (like black clouds before a storm) the harbingers of some strange and unusual
plagues approaching in the State.20
Subversive prodigy writers had, in pursuit of their own political and economic
ends, and with the support of popular credulity, made Restoration England into
a monstrous state, according to Spencer, and he viewed his task as one of
dispelling this myth of living in an age of wonders. However, Spencer was not
primarily concerned with denying the reality of specific prodigies, a task ac-
complished by others, but with the more radical project of denying entirely the
relevance of prodigies to religious and political issues.2'
17Gascoignie identifies Spencer as the only head of a Cambridge college appointed in the 1660s
without a strong record of Interregnum royalism (Cambridge, pp. 29, 34). For Newton's regard for
Spencer, whom he referred to once as "Spencerus Noster" see The Correspondence of Isaac Newton,
ed. H. W. Turnbull, 8 vols. (Cambridge, 1961), 3: 185, 291.
18Spencer preached a sermoni of thanksgivinig for the Restoration that was published as The Righteous
Ruler (Cambridge, 1660).
19Biographical infomiationi oni Spencer is from the Dictionary of National Biography and R. Masters,
Master's History of the College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary in the University
of Cambridge with additional Matter and a continuation to the Present Time by John Lamb D.D.
Master of the College (Cambridge, 1831), pp. 193-201. The reference to Spenicer's conunection
with Tenisoni is in ibid., pp. 197-98.
20Joli Spencer, Discourse Concerniilng Prodigies (Cambridge, 1663), Preface. Since Classical an-
tiquity, Africa had been associated for Europeans with the monstrous and strange. See Eldred Jones,
The Elizabethan Imtage of Africa (Charlottesville, 1971), pp. 2-5.
21Although not so firmly rooted in current events as the Discourse Concerning Prodigies, the Dis-
course Concerniing Vulgar Prophecies was also presented as a response to recent events, in this
case the prophecies of Drabicius and others recounted in the pamphlet Lux in Tenebris, by John
242 Williamii E. Buirnis
Spencer used a variety of strategies to discredit belief in prodigies as providen-
tial signs. One obvious tactic was to generalize the Royalist/Anglican interpreta-
tion of the Mirabilis Annus affair into an assertion that belief in prodigies as
divine signs contributed to social discord and resistance to rightly constituted
authority. Although Spencer claimed that rulers in ancient times had used
diviners to uphold their rule by manufacturing oracles, he saw the prodigy
writers of his own time as opponents, not supporters, of authority.22 Those of-
fering prodigious evidence he therefore showed to belong to politically rebel-
lious groups, contrasting them with the ruling and authoritative group.
How mean a value and regard shall the issues of the severest debates, and the Com-
mands of Authority find, if every pitifull Prodigy-monger have credit enolugh with
the People, to blast them, by telling them that heaven frowns upon them, and that
God writes his displeasure against them, in black and visible characters, when some
sad Accident befalls the complyers with them?23
Spencer associated "critical observers of omens and prodigies" with intellec-
tually stigmatized and politically marginalized grotups such as madmen, fortune-
tellers, and women, whereas God, Spencer asserted, gave the gift of prophecy
only to educated men.24 Even the prophets of the Old Testament Spencer
described as "of a pious and leamed education" and as possessing "the knowledg
of the works of Natuire," as well as "a perfect submission to the most inhuiman
Magistrates."25 In discuissing the control over prophecy maintained by the an-
cient pagan states of Greece and Rome through colleges of diviners, he ex-
pounded the figuire of Tiresias, the sexually ambiguous ancient Greek prophet,
as signifying that prophecy is feminine as "credulous, talkative, and impotent,"
but masculine as guided and expounded by wisdom and pruidence.26
The political context of Spencer's critique of prodigy-belief was particularly
evident when he linked prodigy-belief to melancholy, apocalypticism, and "new
and impracticable Ideas of govemment."27 These ideas were all characteristic
Amos Comenius (Vuilgar Propihecies, p. 21). For Lux in Teniebris and Comeniuls, see Hugh Trevor-
Roper, Religion, the Reformiation anid Social Change (2nd ed.; Londonl, 1972) p. 286n1.
22Spencer, Discourse Conicerning Prodigies, Preface.
23Ibid.
24Ibid., pp. 83-84. Spenicer regarded women prophets as particularly characteristic of Roman
Catholicism (Vuilgar Prophiecies, p. 15).
25Spencer, Discouirse Conicerninlg Prodigies, p. 84; Vuilgar Prophecies, pp. 36, 47-48. Frank Manuel
attribuites Spencer's anid Newtoi's belief in the prophet as educated man to the influenice of
Maimonides. This may well be true, as Spenicer often referred to Maimonides, but the reactioni to
the often unilearned and sometimes female prophets of the Interregnium was probably more significalit
(Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton [Oxford, 1974], p. 87).
26Spencer, Vulgar Prophecies, pp. 11-12.
27Spencer, Discourse Conicerninlg Prodigies, pp. 73-74. Spencer handled the embarassing case of
Thomas Jackson, the pre-Civil War Laudian and author of A Treatise Concerninlg the Siglnes of
Prodigies in the Early Restorationi 243
of the Civil War and Interregnum, and opposed to royal authority. Spencer
endorsed the censorship of writings on prodigies, along with astrological predic-
tions and old proplhecies, such materials being "ignes fatui leading to the boggs
of sedition."28 The persecution of the printers and distributors of the Mirabilis
Annus tracts, one can conjecture, would have met with his approval.
Given the generally Christian context of Restoration thought, however, merely
showing that the providential interpretation of prodigies was socially disruptive
and politically dangerous was insufficient. Spencer needed to go beyond this
pragmatic argument and demonstrate the theological error made by believers in
the providential meaning of prodigies. He did this by eliminating the middle
ground between ordinary events and miracles that prodigies had formerly oc-
cuipied. Spencer maintained the traditional threefold distinction between natural,
preternatuiral, and suipernatural wonders.29 Natural prodigies, suich as earthquiakes
and parelii (multiple suns) were those that could be traced to a particular cause,
as multiple suns could be traced to the cloud reflecting the image of the sun.
Supernatural prodigies were miracles, and, following the standard line of Protes-
tant controversialists, Spencer asserted that miracles had ceased with the first
age of the Church. Earlier writers had asserted that preternatural events, such
as monstrous fish and battles in the sky, were events above and beyond, although
not against, the ordinary course of nature. Spencer asserted that preternatural
events were natural or diabolical events, the causes of which were unknown:
"Ignorance calls.. every strange accident, a Prodigy."30 Spencer's universe was
intellecttualist rather than voltuntarist, governed by rationally comprehensible
laws rather than God's arbitrary will. By claiming that prodigies were caused
by God's direct action, therefore, prodigy mongers were claiming that these
prodigies were in fact miracles, thus aligning themselves with Roman
Catholicism. Linking extreme Protestants with Catholics, a common controver-
sial technique, Spencer spoke of "my two Adversaries in this Arguiment, the
Papist and the Enthtusiast."3'
Historically, Spencer traced prodigy belief to the time before the beginning
of Christianity, to the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and pagan Romans, pre-Christian
the Tinres, which had endorsed the providential interpretation of prodigies, by asserting that Jackson
had suffered from melancholia. This required some delicacy, as Jackson was tnow a minor hero of
the Established Church (see Discourse Concerninlg Prodigies, p. 32).
28
"Ignes fatuii" were swamp lights that were reput.ed to lead travelers astray (Spencer, Discouirse
Concerlning Prodigies, p. 84).
29Ibid., pp. 2-3. For a discussion of this classification and the fate of the preternatural in the
seventeenith centuiry, see Daston, "Marvelous Facts."
30Spencer, Discourse Concerning Prodigies, p. 10.
31Spencer, Vulgar Prophecies, p. 20.
244 Williant E. Burns
religion being an area in which he had special expertise.32 The invocation of
pagan Rome enabled Spencer to link his attack on prodigy-belief to the revered
name of Cicero, to whose De Diviniatione he referred.33 Spencer ascribed the
famous prodigies that the ancient Jewish historian Josephus asserted preceded
the conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans, cases very often invoked in prodigy
literature, to the influence that pagan Greek and Latin historians had on
Josephus.34 The association with paganism furthered Spencer's project of dis-
solving the link between prodigy belief and Christian piety. Prodigy belief was
a survival of ancient paganism, to be rejected by Christians. As a theological
error, belief in prodigies as divine signs was not, as prodigy writers claimed,
conducive to repentance and strengthened faith. Rather, it brought religion into
contempt by associating it with trivialities, and led finally to Epicureanism and
atheism.3
Spencer thought that a propensity of the soul that encouraged a false belief
in prodigies as divine signs was the excessive fear with which people approached
36
God. In rejecting fear of God as an appropriate religious emotion he was very
much part of the movement toward rational religion, largely emanating from
his own university, Cambridge, and associated with the Cambridge Platonists
and Latitudinarians.37 God's reasonableness and aimiability were among
Spencer's constant themes. As Spencer argued, prodigy belief:
Detains men unider a constanit Paedagogy to many base and servile fears. Whence
Religion is easily concluded a great adversary to (what it mainly designes to bring
on upon the world) a true generousniess, and universal freedom of spirit, and that its
whole.business is to subdue the spirits of men to some cold and little observances,
pale and feminine fears....Religion can never be aimiable, till it
appears
designed not
to increase the fears of men, but truly to cure and remove them.
Spencer's belief in the benevolence of God led him to characterize prodigy-
believers as having a view of God's relationship with the universe that was
erroneous in that it exaggerated God's wrath and minimized his glory. God's
true natuire, as a benevolent monarch, was to be seen not in monstrous or
32See Dictionary of National Biography article "John Spencer" anid Gascoigne, "Wisdom of the
Egyptians," pp. 175-76.
33Spencer, Discourse Concerninig Prodigies, pp. 3-4.
34Ibid., p. 60.
35Ibid., Preface.
36Ibid., p. 9.
37Despite his frequently proclaimed belief in rational religion, historians of Latitudinarianism have
ignored Spencer. He does not appear in two recent important studies of the Restoration Church of
England, John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646-1689 (New Haven, 1991) or W.
M. Spellman, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England, 1660-1700 (Athens, 1993).
38Spencer, Discourse Concerning Prodigies, Preface.
prodigious events, but in the magnificent regularities of nature. Prodigies served
only the role of throwing the regularities of nature into sharper relief by the
contrast they provided. Those who viewed every untoward event as a sign of
God's wrath actuially wronged God, in that God was primarily beneficent. Com-
ets, for example, were "these wonderfull appearances in heaven, not so much
the monitoturs of his anger, as of his glory."39 Like Cicero, Spencer claimed that
speaking through prodigies was beneath the dignity of a powerful and majestic
God. "Now then what man, that hath any great thoughts of the Majestie of
heaven, can once imagine he ever intended any base or deformed monsters, the
interpreters of any of his great counsels or purposes?"40 God always spoke clear-
ly and directly, as he did by sending the plagues of Egypt, and eschews "stich
winding and squiint-ey'd oracles as the Old Serpent made use of.4' Elsewhere,
Spencer mocked as Iludicrous the idea of looking for the "Jewel" of divine
wisdom on the "duinghill of obscene and monstrous births, apparitions of lying
spirits, strange voices in the air, mighty winds, alterations in the face of heaven,
&c."42 In discussing Josephlus' fall-of-Jerusalem prodigies, which inclulded a
cow that gave birtlh to a lamb, Spencer asked rhetorically "Can any man think
God would ever work so lutdicrous, so cheap, so insignificant a miracle?"43
Some prodigies did have a spiritual cause, but that cauise was not God but
rather the Devil, the "Old Serpent." Like many of the partisans of the "mechani-
cal philosophy" in late seventeenth-centuiry England, Spencer believed in an
active devil, althouiglh he suspected that the Devil had been permitted a larger
field of operation in pagan antiquiity." The Devil was ultimately responsible for
the beiief in prodigies as divine signs, being able to promote it among the
ancient pagans by employing his limited foreknowledge of great events to ar-
range that they be preceded by signs. The Devil did, then, have some limited
power to violate the ordinary laws of nature. As Spencer linked natuire's
regularities with God, so he associated its irregularities with the Devil.45
Ibid., p. 17.
40Ibid., p. 34.
41Ibid.,
p. 7.
42Ibid., p. 10.
43Ibid., p. 60.
44Ibid., pp. 61-62. The tendency to treat the Devil as a force who could be held responsible for
the residue of natural phenomenia not explainiable by mechanism is discussed in Thomas Jobe, "The
Devil in Restoration Scienice: The Glanvill-Webster Witchcraft Debate," Isis 72 (1981): 343-56.
Jobe argues that use of the devil as an explanans was an alternative to the acceptance of occult
forces. I would add that it was also an alternative to "particular providences."
45Despite his belief in an active Devil, Spencer's one reference to witchcraft in either of the works
discussed here was skeptical (Discourse Concerning Prodigies, p. 21).
246 Willianii E. Burns
Spencer also arguied that prodigy believers were in error in believing that
their own time was particularly fertile in monsters and prodigies. Ever since the
sixteenth centuiry prodigy writers had been claiming, often in an apocalyptic
context, that the era in which they were writing was unparalleled in the number
of prodigies occuirring.46 The Mirabilis Aiiinus material had continued this tradi-
tion. Speaking of the present time, the third Mirabilis Annius tract had claimed
that "God's warnings we see do croud in very fast upon us, and the throws of
providence come extream thick: Certainly there is some great thing at the birth,
and the Lord is rising from his place to do his Work, even his strange Work."47
Spencer substituted a vision of a decreasingly prodigious universe for this in-
creasingly prodigious one. He claimed that the universe had been becoming
steadily more regular and uniform since the time of Christ, as he viewed Chris-
tianity as fuindamentally rational and civil:48
But they which talk of and look for any such vehemenit expressions of Divillity now,
mistake the temper and conditioni of that Oeconomy which the appearance of our
Saviour hath now puLt us unider; whereini all things are to be maniaged in a imore
sedate, cool, and silent manniier, in a way suited to, and expressive of the temper otur
Saviour discover'd in the world, who caused niot his voice to be raised in the streets,
anid to the conidition of a Reasoniable Beinlg made to be maniaged by steady anid calm
argumenits.49
The belief that prodigies increased in times of discord Spencer asserted to be
an illusion caused by the fact that prodigies were simply more likely to be
noticed in troubled times than in peaceful ones.50
After having ruiled prodigies out of politics and religion, Spencer asserted that
they properly fell under the jurisdiction of natural philosophers. However, it
was important that these philosophers hold to a particular kind of natuiral
philosophy, Baconian as opposed to occultist. An undisciplined natural
philosophy was vulnerable to prodigy belief for reasons innate to huiman
psychology.
The human souil was vuilnerable to prodigy belief duie to its propensity to be
impressed by the strange and bizarre, which, following Bacon, Spencer saw as
intellectually dangerouis. "For things rare and unuisual.. call forth the soul to a
very quiick and gratefuill attendance, whilst matters of greater worth and moment,
of more familiar occurence, (like things often handled and blown upon) lose
46Aniother context in which it was claimed that the number of prodigies had beeni increasinig was
that of the decay of natuire. This idea had lost much of its power by the Restoration, however (see
Harris, All Coherenice Gone, pp. 148-72).
47Mirabilis Annus Secundus or the Second Part of the Second Years Prodigies (Londoll, 1662),
Preface.
48Spencer, Discouirse Concerninig Prodigies, pp. 11-12.
49Ibid., p. 11.
50Ibid., p. 9.
their value and lustre in its eye."5' In natural philosophy as in religion, an ex-
cessive attention to irregularities was harmful if it led to uindervaltuing
regularities.
Spencer's linking of prodlgy belief to huiman psychology extended beyond
this into a critiquie of the way of thinking that Michel Fotucault labeled "Renais-
sance" and William Ashworth has recently characterized as the "emblematic
world view"-based on an idea of the universe as a web of resemblances and
connections,52 a way of thinking in terms of parallels and analogies particularly
characteristic of Renaissance magic, occultism, and natural history.53 This view
would, to use one of Ashworth's examples, treat the fact that the peacock is a
symbol of pride, and that it is associated with the goddess Juno, as essential
facts about the peacock.54 Similarly, prodigy writers considered rains of blood
to be essentially connected with war and slaughter. Prodigy literature indicates
that "Renaissance" thinking persisted past the mid-seventeenth century that both
Ashworth and Foucatilt claim to have been when it was replaced by a view of
natural phenomena severed from their cultuiral associations, a characteristic of
the Scientific Revolution. Mirabilis Ann/1us had firmly aligned itself with the
emblematic world view.
We shall be bold to hint this much, that accidents of this kinid do protend [sic] the
ftituritioni or manifestationi of some thinigs as yet not existent or not knownl, which
usually carry in them some kind of agreement or assimilation to the Prodigies them-
selves, as (according to the opinioni of some learned men) the rainiing of blood may
signifie much slaughter, the noise of Guls and the apparition of Armies in the Air,
wars and commoiliotionls, great inlunidatiols, popular tumults and insurrections.55
Spencer saw this habit of tlhinking in terms of parallels and similarities as innate
to the souil and a fertile souirce of error.
It is the Nature of the Soul to be greatly impressive to a perswaysioni of parallels,
equalities, siniilitudes, in the frame and governmenlt of the world: and that (indeed)
so far, as to make them (by the poetry of phanicy) where it canllot really discover
them; that it so may please and solace itself in some supposed lines and figures of
its ownl ulniform atid haniloiious nlature pouIrtrayed uponl the world; and t'were easy
51Ibid., Preface.
52Michel Foucault, Thte Order of Tltinigs (New York, 1973); and William Ashworth, "Natural History
and the Emblematic World View," in David Lindberg and Robert Westman, eds., Reappraisals of
the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 1990),
pp.
303-32.
53See Brian Vickers, "On the Funlctioni of Analogy in the Occult," in I. Merkel and A. G. Debus,
eds., Heritneticisii and tlte Reniaissance: Initellectuial History and the Occult in Early Modern Euirope
(Cranfield, N.J., 1988) pp 265-90.
54Ashworth, "'Emblematic World View," p. 306.
55Mirabilis Anniius, Preface. Note that the examples in this passage are all related to war and civil
discord.
248 Williai E. Burnis
to shew how this temper hath betray'd it to a great many pretty dreams, both in
science and common life.56
Spencer's work is closely linked to the anti-occultist critique of analogical
reasoning recently discussed by Brian Vickers.57 Spencer's use of anti-analogical
arguments in attacking prodigy belief indicates that these arguments could also
be appropriate in attacking people who would not have considered themselves
occultists, such as the radical Dissenters who produced the Mirabilis Annus
tracts. He brought together his historical and psychological arguments by linking
the emblematic, "Renaissance," or occultist world-view to the religion, and the
divinatory systems, of the ancient heathens. "They regarded the whole world,
and all the parts thereof, buit as so many.. .oracles: not a Star or Comet in the
Firmament, not a monster on Earth, not a Staff in the Wood, not a Gut in the
Sacrifice, not a Line in the Hand, but was thought prophetical."58 Spencer used
some of the most common types of prodigies to illustrate how the inappropriate
use of metaphoric and analogical thinking resulted in the misconstrual of strange
events as divine signs of impending catastrophe when they were really ex-
plainable in natural terms:
Thus, (as it is called) the rainiing of bloud (which is but water tinctur'd by the conI-
dition of the soyl whenice it ariseth, or, rather, where it falls) shall strongly sollicite
the fear of some great effusion of bloud in the state; the appearence of two Suns at
onice (which is but the figure and glory of the SuIn drawn by its own beams upon a
disposed cloud) doth greatly encourage the phancy of two competitours for Royalty
in a Nation; some great Eclypse seems (to a soft imaginationi) to hang the world
with black agaitnst the approaching funeralls of some Great Person; the Casual parting
of the River Ouse in Bedfordshire, seem'd (after the evenit a presage of the suc-
ceeding division between the house of York and Lancaster.
Spencer asserted that God's miracles "carried no similitudes of the things
whereof they were signs (as the apparitions of armies in the air seem to do of;.
some succeeding battel) that so none might be encouraged to regard them as
omens...."fi? Prodigies could be metaphoric, but only as purely linguistic
metaphors, as rebellion could be described as the eclipse of right authority in
church and state.6' Prodigies fuinctioned as metaphors for Spencer only within
56Spencer, Discourse Concerning Prodigies, p. 26. But Spencer did not always reject anialogical
and emblematic thought; see p. 91 where he accepted the doctrine of signatures, medicinal herbs
that resemble the part of the body whose ills they cure.
57Briani Vickers, "Analogy versus Identity: The Rejection of Occult Symbolism, 1580-1680," in
idem., ed., Occult and Scientific Menitalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 95-163.
59Spenicer, Discourse Conicerning Prodigies, p. 27. Again, the examples given are related to politics,
particularly civil war and the death of monarchs.
60Ibid., p. 61.
61Ibid., pp. 40-1.
the human mind; they did not constitute natural metaphors. The actual physical
order did not mirror the human order, and actually occurring eclipses had no
connection with rebellions. Those who thought that they did exaggerated the
importance of humans in the universe.62
Spencer used the concept of mountebankery to link the interpretation of
prodigies to other discourses that he hoped to see marginalized, and to reinforce
the connection between the interpretation of prodigies and occultism. As
astrologers were mountebanks in astronomy, alchemists and physiognomists in
natural philosophy, and pan-sophists in science, so were prodigy-mongers,
cabalists, and those claiming to have received revelations from God in divinity.63
Spencer believed that the best cure for these ignorant and socially disruptive
applications of metaphoric thinking was an increase in natural knowledge.
Prodigy belief characterized times of ignorance in religion and philosophy, as
well as public tuirbuilence.64 Greater knowledge of natural philosophy, by leading
people to know the natural cauises of things, would lead to the socially and
religiously beneficial weakening of prodigy-belief. In the meantime, however,
the continued existence of belief in the theological significance of prodigies was
a hindrance to the furthler advance of natural knowledge. "For when once Su-
perstition hath advanced these Prodigies into the repute of divine messengers,
it will easily be inferr'd a necessary respect towards them to keep some distance,
and not to approach them too nearly by too busy and curious an enquiry into
their natural and immediate causes."65 Spencer hoped, therefore, to contribute
to the increase of natural knowledge by collapsing prodigies into the category
of natuiral events: "For as Nature is but a constant and durable Prodigy, so a
Prodigy but a more rare and unuisual Nature."66
Spencer did not refer directly to the newly institutionalized science of the
Royal Society, but he shared the belief of Royal Society propagandists such as
Thomas Sprat, auithor of The History of the Royal Society, that the age was one
of rapid progress in natuiral knowledge.6' Like Sprat, Spencer employed
Baconian themes and languiage to discuss the present and fuiture advance of
62Ibid., p. 37.
63Ibid., p. 103.
64Ibid., pp. 8-9.
65Ibid., Preface.
66Ibid., p. 10.
67Spenicer followed closely the propagandists of the New Philosophy in claiminig that in his time
"Nature begins now to be studied more than Aristotle, and men are resolved upon a Philosophy
that bottoms not upon pliancy but experience, a Philosophy that they can prove and use, not that
which commeniceth in faith and concluldes in talk" (Vuilgar Prophecies, p. 5).
250 Williamz E. Burns
natural philosophy. Like Bacon, he used gunpowder as an example of how what
would be considered miraculous in one age can be commonplace in another.68
Spencer also claimed that the work of advancing natural knowledge must be
complemented by the destruction of "vulgar errors":
Now while Wisdom seems thus to have hewn out her seven pillars and her house is
going up so fast, it is a duty to assist her work by removing all the rubbish of
Prodigies, Vulgar Prophecies, and what ever doctrine makes the minds of men soft
and easy (by teaching&men to believe without evidence) and so, unfit to make a due
judgement
of things.
Spencer followed Bacon in calling for a history or compilation of prodigies,
and in rejecting those currently existing as marred by an unsystematic seeking
after wonder, in a passage closely following Bacon's The Advancement of Learn-
ing:70
And therefore if we had a more faithfull History of the Anomals in Nature, (the want
whereof is owing not a little to the stuperstition of men, which stains all it toucheth)
we might be soon able to see beyond the surface of these things, which as yet seem
plac'd in the world, but to confounid and pose us. But the evil is, that as the History
of Times, is usually drawn up, so as it may minister not to truth but to faction [i.e.,
politics], the History of Nature so as to gratifie either interest or curiosity, so the
History of Praeternaturall occurrences, so as it may serve, wonder or superstition,
not in so judicious and faithftull a relation of the criticall circumstances of accidents
as to make a square basis whereupon to erect the steady principles of Philosophy.7f
The subject of unusuial events in nature, therefore, should be taken from
"prodigy-mongers" and given into the hands of natural philosophers. In discuss-
ing the use that natural philosophers will make of prodigies Spencer echoed
Bacon's famous passage in The Advancement of Learniing concerning the hound-
72
ing of Nature to discover her secrets. Prodigies
serve to lead us inlto a more distinct klowledge of the works of Nature. Nature is
the best Interpreter of it self; now (like tortur'd men) she then discovers her secrets,
either when vex'd by art in lesser bodies, or disturb'd by accident in greater. Comets,
new stars, monstrous Eclipses, Earthquakes, Meteors, &c. all serve the knowledge
of one mystery in Nature or other.73
Spencer struck at the entire basis of providential prodigy literature by asserting
that prodigies could not be correlated with subsequent events. He attacked
astrologers and almanac-makers for fabricating a connection between comets
68Francis Bacon, Novun Organuin, in Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, R. L. Ellis,
and D. D. Heath, 14 vols. (Londoni, 1858-1874), 6: 207; Spencer, Discourse Concerning Prodigies,
pp. 66-67.
70Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 3: 330.
71Speiicer, Discourse Concerning Prodigies, p. 45.
72Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 3: 331.
73Spencer, Discourse Concerning Prodigies, p. 44.
and disasters,74 and went so far as to assert that what he claimed to be the most
remarkable and beneficial political event of recent years, the Restoration, had
not been preceded by prodigies.75 The uncertainty of how a given prodigy is to
be interpreted was another argument against the generally practiced approach
to prodigies, at a time when prodigies were being interpreted to portend the
downfall of Church and Crown.
Spencer concluded the discourse on prodigies by calling for a body that could
be entrusted with overseeing and validating prodigious events, a body
uninfluenced either by belief in prodigies as divine signs or by love of wonder.
It is to be wisht that there was a kind of Philosophy-office; wherein all such unusual
occurences were registered; not in such fabulous and antick circumstances wherein
they stand recorded in the writers of Natural Magick (designiing nothinig but wonder
in their Readers) nor with a superstitious observation of any such dreadfull evenits
which such relations are usually stain'd, in the writers which intenid a service to
religion in them: But in such faithfull notices of their severall circumstances, as might
assist the understanidinig to make a true judgement of their Natures and Occasions.76
It is hard not to read this call for a transfer of jurisdiction over prodigies from
unlearned diviners to gentlemen learned in natural philosophy in light of the
development of new scientific institutions. Indeed, the quasi-official manifesto
of the new science, Sprat's History of the Royal Society, also referred to the
possibility of defusing prodigies as a benefit of the new science, although Sprat
was not as radical as Spencer in excluding all possibility of God's direct action
against the laws of Nature.77 An authoritative scientific institution such as the
Royal Society was for Spencer and Sprat the alternative to the suiperstitious and
socially disruptive activities of prodigy pamphleteers.
Although Spencer was not the only defender of the Royalist regime to attempt
a systematic refuitation of providential prodigy-belief, he was the most influen-
tial.78 Providential
prodigy-writing
continuied to be practiced, but Spencer's work
established the contotirs of the argument against it, and, along with the reaction
74Ibid., pp. 17-8.
75Ibid., p. 80.
76Ibid., p. 104.
77Thomas Sprat, The History of tlhe Royal Society (Londoni, 1667), p. 358.
78The other conservative writer who wrote extensively oni prodigies in the early 1660s was the
astrologer John Gadbury, who responded to The Lord's Loud Call to England in A Brief Examination
of that Nest of Sedition and Phanatick Forgeries (London, 1661) and the Mirabilis Annus tracts
in Dies Novissim)a, or Doomsday not so Near as Dreaded (Londoni, 1664). Gadbury's more theoreti-
cal approach to prodigies, in Natuira Prodigiorunm (London, 1660; 2nd ed., 1665) treated them as
holding political meaninig but deemphasized providentialism and suggested that the proper people
to evaluate their meaning were astrologers. Richard Baxter also treated the failure of the Mirabilis
Annus tracts, arguing that they showed that the providential interpretation of prodigies, while valid
in itself, should not be applied to current politics (Reliquiae Baxterianae, pp. 432-33). See also
Baxter, The Certainty of the World of Spirits (London, 1691), pp. 163-64.
252 William E. Burns
to the Mirabilis Anniius tracts, firmly identified the new natural philosophy with
opposition to it.79 The influence of his work outlasted the immediate circuimstan-
ces of its production and was not restricted to England itself. The Latittudinarian
propagandist and Fellow of the Royal Society Joseph Glanvill closely followed
Spencer's argument in his discussion of prodigies in Essays upoIn Several Iha-
portanit Subjects in Philosophy anid Religion (1676), crediting "a late very
elegant Discourse about Prodigies," althouigh he disagreed with Spencer's denial
of any divinatory meaning to prodigies as excessively radical and tending to
impiety.80 In 1682 the English Dissenter Jonathan Tuckney wrote to Increase
Mather, the New England divine and compiler of "Illustrious Providences," as-
serting that "your peece of Prodigies may possibly have been prevented from
efficacy by some we call here Latittudinarians, by a treatise of a Cambridgeman's
(Spencer by name) that came ouit some three years after the King's coming
in...."8I Mather himself spoke with Spencer on the topic of prodigies duiring a
visit to England.82
Spencer offered a pictuire of a uiniverse that was reguilar in its operation, non-
allegorical in its meaning, ruled by a benevolent but somewhat distant God, and
comprehensible principally by an educated elite of natural philosophers. This
adaptation of Baconian nattiral philosophy and Latituidinarian religion was an
approximation of the eighteenth century "holy alliance" of monarchist politics,
organized science, and rational Christianity and a response to a specific political
problem of the Restoration state.
79Ani English work that defended the providenitial interpretationi of prodigies againist Spencer, al-
though without explicitly naminig him, was "A Reverend Divine," A Practical Discourse on the
late Earthquakes, with An Historical Account of Prodigies and their Various Effects (Londoni, 1692),
p. 25.
80Joseph Glanvill, Essays upon Several Imtportant Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (Londoni,
1676) "The Usefulniess of Real Philosophy to Religion," pp. 15-16. The diarist and future President
of the Royal Society Samuel Pepys was also an admirer; he spoke of "reading Mr. Spencer's Book
of Prodigys, which is most ingenliouisly writ, both for matter anid style" and later of "discoursing
anid admiring of the learning of Dr. Spencer" with Henry Moore, the earl of Sandwich's man of
business (Pepys, The Diary of Samnuel Pepys, R. C. Latham and W. Matthews, eds., 11 vols.
[Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970-1983] 5: 165 and 7: 133).
8tCollections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 4th ser. 8 (1868): 354.
82Increase Mather, Angelographia (Boston in New Englanid, 1696), To the Reader. Michael P. Win-
ship, "Prodigies, Puritanism, and the Perils of Nattural Philosophy: The Example of Cotton Mather,"
William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 51, 1 (1994): 98-100, discusses the influence of Spencer
upon Increase and Cottoni Mather.

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"Our Lot Is Fallen into an Age of Wonders": John Spencer and the Controversy over Prodigies

in the Early Restoration

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