The enterprise was pursued, as it seems, with satisfactory results until the year 1643, when, in the Straits of Malacca, two richly-laden vessels of the Courten fleet were seized by the Dutch. Subsequent proceedings show that the value of the ships and their cargoes, with the contingent losses, exceeded £150,000. Along with this severe blow came the interruptions and injuries to trade at home, which were the inevitable accompaniment of the Civil War. Soon after it, there came indications that the loss to Sir William Courten’s representatives by the misconduct of Peter Boudaen at Middleburgh would but too probably prove to be a loss without present remedy. It appears to have been established by the evidence adduced in the course of the almost interminable litigation which ensued that there was due from Boudaen to his partners a sum of £122,000; none of which, it may be added, seems ever to have been recovered. And the debt which had been contracted by James the First and his successor, though less grievous in amount, was at this time even more hopeless.
Under the pressure of such a combination of misfortunes, William Courten found himself practically and suddenly insolvent. He met some of the most pressing claims upon him by the sale of available portions of his landed property. He assigned other portions of his estates to trustees, and became himself an exile. He survived the ruin of the brilliant hopes and expectations to which he had been born about ten years; dying at Florence in the year 1655. He left, by his marriage with Lady Katherine Egerton, one son and one daughter.
The fourth William Courten was born in London on the 28th March, 1642. He was baptized at St. Gabriel Fenchurch, on the 31st of that month. The downfall of his family was therefore very nearly contemporaneous with his own birth, and makes it explicable that no record can now be found of the places of his education, or of the course of his early years. But the first trace which does occur of him is in exact harmony with the one fact which makes his existence memorable to his countrymen. |Museum Tradescantianum, (1656).| He appears, at the age of fourteen, in the list of benefactors to the Tradescant Museum, at Lambeth, a collection which afterwards became the basis of the Ashendean Museum at Oxford.
The Tradescants—father and son—hold a conspicuous place in the history of Botanical Science in England, and they are especially notable as the founders of the first ‘Museum’ worthy of the name, which was established in this country. The next collection of note, after theirs, was that formed by Robert Hubert, in his house near St. Paul’s Cathedral. Other collectors—as for example, John Conyers and Dr. John Woodward—soon followed the example. But in this path all of them were far outstripped by Courten, who had marked his early bias, and also his characteristic liberality, by his gift to the Tradescants in 1656.
Part of Courten’s youth was passed at Montpelier, where he formed the acquaintance of several men then, or afterwards, famous for their scientific acquirements. Amongst them, and with the local advantages for the study of the natural sciences, in particular, for the possession of which Montpelier was already noted, his tastes for observation and study were developed, and his character took the ply which soon became indelible.
If he ever possessed any share at all of the qualities and predispositions for mercantile adventure, which had marked so many generations of his ancestors on the father’s side, that share was far too weak an element in his composition to resist the discouragements of adverse circumstances. But as he attained manhood, he found himself immersed—unwittingly in part—in a sea of litigation which boded ill to his prospective enjoyment of leisure for scientific studies, whatever might prove to be its ultimate results upon his worldly fortunes.
Some of the later enterprises of Sir William Courten had been carried on in conjunction with another famous merchant, Sir Paul Pindar, who like himself was a large creditor of the Crown. The administration of Pindar’s estate had fallen into the hands of a certain George Carew, who seems to have imagined that the restoration of royal authority in England would bring with it opportunities, to an energetic man, of winning a new fortune out of the remnants of the old fortunes which the fall of royalty had helped to ruin. |Courten Papers, in MSS. Sloane, 3515; 3961; and 3962.| Just before Charles the Second came back, this man busied himself in buying up claims against Courten’s estate as well as claims against Pindar’s. He had a stock of energy. He had also the prospect of acquiring a good standpoint at Court, in addition to his present possession of a good training in the mysteries of English law. He was ready to devote all his energies to the business, and to encounter at once with the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch Republic, the Government of Barbadoes, and a host of adversaries at home.
There had, however, been no Commission of Bankruptcy. It was necessary that the battle should be fought as well in the name of the heir and representative of the family, as in the name of the collective body of creditors. Carew used Courten’s name and used it, as it appears, for some years without authority from the legal guardian. Courten himself did not become of age until 1663.
The Restoration was hardly effected before Carew besieged the King and the Courts with Petitions, Memorials, Claims, and Bills of Plaint. He would lose nothing for lack of asking. And he was undeterred by difficulties or rebuffs.
The case of Barbadoes was thus put before the Committee of the Privy Council for America:—
‘Courten claims the whole island of Barbadoes; and, more particularly, the Corn Plantation, the Indian Bridge Plantation, the Fort Plantation, the Indian Plantation eastwards, and Powell’s plantation. Sir William Courten’s ships discovered the island in the year 1626, and left fifty people there. Captain Henry Powell landed there in February, 1627, built [houses] for Courten’s colony, and left more than forty inhabitants there. John Powell erected Plantation Fort, and remained until he was surprised in 1628 by a force under Charles Wolverton, by which the fort was captured. |Colonial Correspondence, vol. xiv, §§ 37, 39, 42.| In 1629, Sir William Courten sent eighty men with arms, in the ‘Peter and John,’ and they retook the fort in the name of the Earl of Pembroke, Trustee for Courten, according to the royal grant.’ And then the Petition recites the recapture, under the conflicting Patent of the Earl of Carlisle, as I have described it already.
There is, of course, no foundation for the statement that Barbadoes was ‘discovered’ by the ships of Courten. In other respects, the details here set forth appear to be sustained by the evidence.
In order to the recovery of the debt from the Crown, Carew suggested, in another petition, and quite in the fashion of the day, that the Petitioners should have ‘leave to raise the money’ due to the Courten Estate from the estates of John Lisle, Thomas Scott, Thomas Andrews, and others, concerned in the murder of the late King. In a third petition, he prayed that ‘a blank warrant for the dignity of a baronet’ might be granted, in order to sell it to the best bidder, and to apply the proceeds in partial satisfaction of the debt.
But it was to the prosecution of the claim upon the Dutch Republic for the unwarranted seizure, in 1643, of the rich ships of the East India Fleet that Carew devoted his best energies. The damages were put at £163,400. The main facts of the case were fully substantiated. And a royal letter was addressed to the States General on the 21st of March, 1662, claiming full satisfaction.
A Memorial was delivered at the Hague in the April following, by the English Ambassador, Sir George Downing, in which, after a general statement of the case at issue, he went on to say: ‘Whereas it may seem strange that this matter may be set on foot at this time, whereas in the year 1654 Commissioners were sent to England who did end several matters relating to the East Indies, and whereas in the year 1659 several matters of a fresher date were also ended, and thereby a period put to all other matters of difference which had happened about the same time, and were known in Europe before the 20th of January in the same year, it is to be considered that the persons interested in these ships were such as, for their singular and extraordinary activity to His Majesty, ... father to the King my master, were rendered incapable of obtaining or pursuing their just rights, at home or abroad. |Memorial delivered to the States General, at the Hague, 19 April, 1662.| And upon that account it is that the business of the two ships remains yet in dispute, though several matters of a much fresher date have been ended.’
When these proceedings were initiated by Sir George Downing at the Hague, Courten himself was still in his minority. But it is probable that he had already returned to England.
Courten’s first personal appearance upon the scene was also made in the way of presenting a petition to the King. |MS. Sloane 3515.| In July 1663, he thus alleged that the steps which had been taken were without his concurrence or knowledge, ‘and, as is feared, with intention to deprive him of his claims.’ The King referred the petition to Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who pronounced in Courten’s favour.
His position was one of great embarrassment. |The Agreement between Courten and Carew.| Some of his family connexions had already suffered much annoyance from litigation about the Courten Estates at home, and were little inclined to incur further risk or trouble on behalf of a relative whose inheritance was certain to yield abundance of immediate vexation and anxiety, and very uncertain in respect to its prospects of any better harvest in the end. |1663.| He was advised to sell the remnant of his entailed estates, to put the product of the sale out of danger from any adverse issue of pending claims, and to come to terms with Carew for the prosecution of the latter—or of some of them—on a joint account. In accordance with this advice, an agreement was made, in the course of 1663, by which Carew was empowered to pursue the claims against the Netherlands, as well on Courten’s behalf as on his own and that of other creditors. The remaining landed estates in Worcestershire and other counties—or nearly all that remained of them—were sold, and a life income was secured.
For the next half dozen years Courten’s life was almost that of a recluse, save that such activities as it admitted of were devoted almost exclusively to the study of antiquities and of the natural sciences. A great part of those years was passed at Fawsley with his aunt, Lady Knightley, one of the few relatives whose affection stood the proof of adversity.
There are several reasons for thinking that the rudimentary foundation of Courten’s Museum had been laid as early as in the time of his grandfather, Sir William, whose mercantile and colonial enterprises presented so many opportunities for bringing into England the more curious productions of remote countries, as well as their merchandise. Be that as it may, the collection of a museum which should eclipse everything of its kind theretofore known in England became, from his attainment of manhood, the leading aim and object of William Courten’s career. It was to him both an ambition and a solace.
The other of the two men who thus came into brief contact in 1663 lived a life as different from Courten’s as can well be conceived. Carew seems to have been a glutton in his appetite for contention. |Pretentien tegens d’Oost-Indische Compagnie, &c. (B. M.)| And the Dutchmen, as far as they were concerned, put no stint upon its indulgence. There was also ample time for it. Treaty followed by war, and war leading to renewed treaty, kept the affair of the Bona Esperanza and the Henry Bon-Adventure both in active historical memory, and in full legal vigour. Towards the close of 1662 it had been covenanted by the English government, as a necessary condition of a good understanding between the two Powers, that there should be a prompt satisfaction of damages. The Treaty of Commerce of that year was tossed to and fro on that one point of the Courten ships with more obstinate pertinacity than on any other. To the intrinsic merits of the claim, in the main, there was really no answer. To the legal technicalities by which its settlement, if left to Dutch courts of judicature, could be indefinitely protracted, there was no end. |The Claims in Holland.| When letters of dismissal had been already drawn at Whitehall for the Dutch envoys of 1662, because they insisted on a clause extinguishing all outstanding claims on both sides; they skilfully contrived to substitute leave to litigate[41] for a proviso to satisfy. And the event justified their forecast.
During the year 1665, Letters of Marque and Reprisal were granted to Carew and his associates, and a special clause of continuance until the full recovery of debt and damages,[42] notwithstanding the conclusion of any subsequent Treaty of Peace was inserted. This was done after an elaborate argument before the Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Several ships were taken by Carew’s cruisers, but they were nearly all claimed by Hamburghers, Swedes, and others. And at length the cost of the reprisals exceeded their yield.
In this case, and throughout it, as in so many other and graver cases, the policy of Charles the Second’s ministers was a policy of the passing exigence. Principle had always to vail to expediency. The Dutch were permitted, after all, to insert their favorite extinction clause in the Treaty of Breda (21 July, 1667). Five years later, the Privy Council advised the King that ‘it is just and reasonable for your Majesty to insist upon reparation for the debt and damages’ sustained by the seizure, in 1643, of the Bona Esperanza and her consort. New Letters of Marque led to the capture of more vessels, duly provided with a diversity of flag; and to the imprisonment, in England, of the captors, before trial or inquiry. Meanwhile, Carew himself was seized abroad, and put into a Dutch prison. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515.| And, at length, in 1676, the States of Holland sent express orders to their courts of judicature, directing that ‘no further progress shall be made in the pending suits,’ grounding the order upon the proviso in the treaty of 1667, as extinctive of all claims and pretensions, whatsoever, advanced by Englishmen against Dutch citizens, be the foundation and history of such claims what they might. This decree, therefore, operated in bar, as well of the claims of the representatives of Sir William Courten, for the debt of Peter Boudaen, as of those arising out of the seizure of the ships of the East India Fleet. It was estimated that the Courten claims then pending in the Courts of Holland amounted, in the aggregate, to £380,000 sterling.[43]
In May, 1683, a petition was presented to the English government, in which humble prayer was made that that government would be graciously pleased ‘to perpetuate the memory of Sir William Courten and of Sir Paul Pindar, by setting up their statues in marble under the piazzas of the Royal Exchange—Sir William Courten’s at the end of the “Barbadoes walk” at the one side, and Sir Paul Pindar’s at the end of the “Turkey walk” of the other side—for encouragement to all merchants, in future ages, |Vox Veritatis, 1683. (B. M.)| to take examples by them for loyalty and fidelity to their King and country.’
Courten did his best to avoid any personal share in those unceasing turmoils, and to keep in the quiet paths of a studious retirement. But he presently found that, in order to secure his end, he must needs do as his father had done before him. He must leave England, either for Italy or for France. When his mind was made up to exile, it was also made up to the relinquishment of his name. William Courten became, even to his nearest relatives, ‘William Charleton.’
The friendships he had already formed at Montpelier, in his youth, and the local charms of that city for a studious man, incited him to revisit his old retreat. But he made no permanent abode there. He took long tours, in France, in Germany, and in Italy; adding everywhere both to the stores of his knowledge and to the presses and cabinets of his library and museum. It was during his second stay at Montpelier that he formed his life-long friendships with a famous Frenchman, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, and with a more famous Englishman, John Locke. Here also began his acquaintance with Dr. (afterwards Sir) Hans Sloane.
It was at Sloane’s instance that he made his solitary appearance as an author, in the shape of a communication to the Royal Society, which was laid before them in 1679, and afterwards printed in the Philosophical Transactions, |Philosoph. Transact., vol. xxvii, pp. 485, seqq.| under the title: Experiments and Observations of the Effects of several sorts of Poisons upon Animals, made at Montpelier.
Thirteen or fourteen years were thus passed. And then, to the natural yearning of an exile, there came the strong reinforcement of the call of large collections for a settled abode. There are few claims to fixity of tenure better grounded than are those of a Museum or a Library.
The return was not easy, but the difficulties were faced. It is probable that he came back to England in the summer of 1684. He did not then own one acre of that land of which his father had inherited so respectable a breadth in half a dozen counties. He had not long arrived before one of his nearest friends wrote him a letter, which seemed to bode ill for his prospects of a peaceable life. ‘The number of creditors,’ wrote Richard Salwey to him, on the 18th August, 1684, ‘is incredible, for the debts are standing, and multiplied to children and grandchildren, who, so long as the parchment and the wax can be preserved, will not forego their hopes nor attempts. And I fear your late so public station[44] will daily expose you, and that you will at every backstairs and turning be pulled by the sleeve and provoked. |Salwey to ‘Charlton;’ MS. Sloane, 3962, f. 191.| Nor yet do I know of any danger consequent in any suit that can be commenced, except putting you to great trouble and like expenses;—and I fear you have not a superfluous bank to defray the charge.’
Courten, however, was not seriously molested. He established himself in London as the occupant of a large suite of chambers in Essex Court, Middle Temple. Here his collections were conveniently arranged, and they had space to expand. |Establishment of the Courten Museum.| Ere long we find mention of his Museum as filling ten rooms.
Of the cost at which it had been gathered, there are now no adequate and authenticated materials for forming an estimate. But in those days the man who himself travelled on such a quest had a vast advantage over the man—howsoever better provided with what in the sixteenth century was called purse-ability—who sent other men to travel in his stead. In Courten’s days no dealers explored the Continent as an ordinary incident of their calling. The wreck, too, of such a fortune as that of the Courtens was not contemptible. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3962; 303.| When living in France (1677–79) our collector appears to have had an income of about fifteen hundred pounds a year, accruing from money invested in mortgages and in annuities.
Although his chief collections were of his own gathering, he had many helpers. Among them was the future inheritor of his Museum, Hans Sloane. In the year 1687, when about to set out on his voyage to the West Indies, Sloane wrote to him: ‘I design to send you what is curious from the several islands we land at,—which will be most of our plantations.’ |Sloane to ‘Charlton;’ Ib., 308.| The writer was then a young man. Probably his acquaintance with Courten was at that time of not greater standing than eight or nine years, but he writes of the obligations Courten had then already conferred upon him: ‘I am extremely obliged to you, beyond any in the world.’|Ibid.|
The use this Collector made of his treasures was as liberal as the zeal with which he had amassed them was indefatigable. The friend whose correspondence has just been quoted said, after Courten’s death, that he was wont to show his Museum very freely, and to make his stores contribute, in various ways, ‘to the advancement of the glory of God, the honour and renown of the country, and the no small promotion of knowledge and the useful arts.’
Many notices are extant—scattered here and there in the Diaries and among the correspondence of the day—of visits made to Courten’s Museum by men who were able to judge of what they saw. Those notices confirm the general statement made by Sloane, and show the comprehensiveness of the collector’s tastes as well as the geniality of his character. Two such notices have an especial interest, which is not lessened by the fact that both of them are to be found in diaries that are well known. They record the visits to Essex Court of John Evelyn, and of John Thoresby.
Evelyn paid his first visit in charming company. It was made in December, 1686. He thus tells of it in his journal: ‘I carried the Countess of Sunderland to see the rarities of one Mr. Charlton, in the Middle Temple, who showed us such a collection as I had never seen in all my travels abroad—either of private gentlemen, or of princes. It consisted of miniatures, drawings, shells, insects, medals, ... minerals; all being very perfect and rare of their kind; especially his books of birds, fishes, flowers, and shells, drawn and miniatured to the life. He told us that one book stood him in three hundred pounds. |Diary, &c., vol. ii, p. 260. (Edit. of 1854.)| It was painted by that excellent workman whom the late Gaston, Duke of Orleans, employed.[45] This gentleman’s whole collection, gathered by himself [while] travelling over most parts of Europe, is estimated at eight thousand pounds. He appeared to be a modest and obliging person.’
Evelyn records two other visits, which he made at subsequent times. It is obvious that during almost the whole period which elapsed between Courten’s return to England and his death, his museum was a place of frequent and fashionable resort; notwithstanding the warning which its owner had received as to the perils of a ‘public station,’ under his peculiar circumstances. To the celebrated diarist himself, his visits seem to have suggested a very natural thought of the public value of such an institution, to be maintained by and for the country at large. And he was very far from keeping the idea to himself. Evelyn lived to a more than ordinary term of years, but not long enough to see his idea carried into act. He had, however, helped to prepare the way.
His incidental statement about the estimated money value of the Courten Museum does not invalidate a foregoing remark in this chapter. The estimate can hardly have been founded upon better ground than mere conjecture. But it is curious to note the near approach of the guess of 1686 to another guess, on the same small point, made nine years later.
Thoresby’s visit occurred in May, 1695. He records it thus: ‘Walked to Mr. Charlton’s chambers at the Temple, who very courteously showed me his Museum, which is perhaps the most noble collection of natural and artificial curiosities, of ancient and modern coins and medals, that any private person in the world enjoys. It is said to have cost him seven or eight thousand pounds sterling.... |Thoresby, Diary, 1695, May 24, vol. i, p. 299.| I spent the greatest part of my time amongst the coins; for though the British and Saxon be not very extraordinary, yet his [collection of] the silver coins of the Emperors and Consuls is very noble. He has also a costly collection of medals of eminent persons in Church and State, and of domestic and foreign Reformers. But, before I was half satisfied, an unfortunate visit from the Countess of Pembroke and other ladies from Court prevented further queries.’
The visits of the ‘ladies from Court’ may not have seemed quite so unfortunate to the host who had to entertain them, as to the zealous antiquary whose recondite questions they broke off. At all events, such visits must have been to Courten like renewed glimpses of the gayer life of which he had known something in his early days.
In learned leisure, and in quiet pleasures such as these, his life passed gently to its end. He kept up his correspondence as well with some of the surviving friends of his youth, as with two or three of the eminent scholars and naturalists with whom he had made acquaintance during the travel-years of middle life. Failing to raise his fortunes to the height of his early hopes, he yet won contentment by bringing down his desires to the level of his means. He ceased to trouble himself with claims on the Dutch Republic, or with pretensions to a proprietorship in the Island of Barbadoes, or even about his interest in debts contracted by the Crown of England. He had been able, in spite of all losses, to open to his contemporaries means of culture and of mental recreation which, on any like scale, had been before unknown to them. Only in the most famous cities of Italy had the like then been seen. And he had the final satisfaction of making the secured continuance of his Museum the means of further securing, at the same time, the comfort and prosperity of some humble friends and dependants whose faithful attention had helped to solace his own closing years. Nor had he neglected those consolations which are supreme.
William Courten’s Will was made on his death-bed, in March, 1702. Having bequeathed certain pecuniary legacies—increased two days afterwards by codicil—and having provided for the payment of his debts, he made Dr. Hans Sloane his residuary legatee and sole executor. He forbade all display at his funeral. He died, at Kensington, on the 26th of March, 1702, wanting two days of the completion of his sixtieth year.[46] He was buried in Kensington churchyard, near the south-east door of the church. By his friend and executor an altar-tomb, carved by Grinling Gibbons, was placed above his remains, with this inscription:—
Sir Hans Sloane was the seventh and youngest son of Alexander Sloane, a Scotchman who had married one of the daughters of Dr. George Hickes, Prebendary of Winchester, and who had settled in Ireland on receiving the appointment of receiver-general of the estates of the Lord Claneboy, afterwards Earl of Clanricarde. |Life of Sir Hans Sloane.| He was born at Killileagh, in the county Down, on the 16th of April, 1660.
We learn that almost from earliest youth, Hans Sloane evinced his possession of quick parts and of keen powers of observation. And he gave early indications of that happy constitution of mind and will which now and then permits the union of intellectual ambition and aspiration, with not a little of prudential shrewdness. A special bias towards the study of the natural sciences was—as it has often been in like cases—one of the things that were soonest taken note of by those about him. Faculties such as these naturally pointed to medicine as a fitting profession for their early possessor. His home studies, however, were checked by a severe illness which threatened his life, and from some of the effects of which he never quite recovered. But that illness helped to qualify him for his future profession. If it took away, for life, the likelihood that the bright promises of the dawn would be altogether realized in his maturity, it seems to have strengthened, in an unusual degree, both the prudential element which already marked his character, and his predisposition to rely mainly, for the success of his plans, upon plodding industry. From youth to old age an unweariable power of taking pains was his leading characteristic.
In his eighteenth year he came to London with the immediate object of studying chemistry and botany, before he entered on other studies more distinctively medical. |Early Studies in London;| |1677–1682.| He learned chemistry under Staphorst,[47] and of botany he acquired a good deal of knowledge by frequenting, with much assiduity, the recently founded Botanical Garden at Chelsea. In the latter pursuit he met with assistance from the intelligent keeper of the garden, Mr. Watts. |MS. Corresp.| And ere long he acquired the friendship of John Ray, and of Robert Boyle.
After six years of steady educational labours, both scientific and medical, he went to Paris, which possessed in 1683—and long afterwards—facilities for medical education far superior to any that could then be found in London. |And in France.| |1683–4.| His companions in the journey were Dr. Tancred Robinson and Dr. Wakeley.
Sloane had scarcely got farther into France than the town of Dieppe, before it was his good fortune to make the acquaintance of Nicholas Lemery, and to find himself able to communicate to that eminent chemist the results of some novel experiments. |Eloge, in Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences (1753); and MS. Correspondence. (B. M.)| They journeyed together from Dieppe to Paris, and the acquaintance thus casually formed was productive of good to both of them. The studies begun in Ireland, and assiduously continued in London, were now matured in Paris under men of European fame. And the young botanist who heretofore could profit only by the infant garden established by the London apothecaries at Chelsea, and by an occasional botanizing ramble into the country, could now expatiate at will in the magnificent Jardin des Plantes of the King of France. In that botanical university Sloane, too, had Tournefort—four years his senior—for his frequent companion and fellow-student.
In July, 1683, he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine in the University of Orange. Thence he went to Montpelier, where he resided until nearly the end of May, 1684. After visiting Bordeaux, and some other parts of France, he returned to Paris. There were few towns, in which he made any stay, that had not given him some friend or other, in addition to a valuable accession of knowledge. And the friendships he had once formed were but rarely lost.
Towards the close of 1684 Dr. Sloane returned to England, whither the reputation of his increased acquirements had preceded him. In January, 1685, he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society, and exactly one year afterwards he was proposed for election as Assistant-Secretary. Among the other candidates were Denis Papin and Edmund Halley. On the first scrutiny, Sloane had ten votes; Halley sixteen. The majority was not enough, but on a second ballot Halley was chosen. Early in 1687 he became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. He had thus early laid some foundation for a London practice that would lead him to social eminence, as well as to fortune. And for the good gifts of fortune he had a very keen relish.
Loving wealth well, he loved science still better. But he had already good reason to hope that both might be won, in company. He had become known to Christopher Monk, second Duke of Albemarle, and when that nobleman received, in 1687, the office of Governor-General of the West India Colonies, Sloane received an invitation to sail with him, as the Duke’s physician and as Chief Physician to the fleet; and he was desired to name his own conditions, if disposed to accept the appointment.
He did not take any long time to think over the offer. If it presented no very brilliant prospect of monetary profit, it opened a large field for scientific research. |The Voyage to Jamaica.| And, in the main, the field was new. |1687.| No Englishman had ever yet been tempted to take so long a journey in the interests of science. He knew that he had excellent personal qualifications for turning to good account the large opportunities of discovery that such a voyage was sure to bring. Nor was it less certain that it would bring innumerable occasions for enlarging his strictly professional knowledge. And he had on his side the vigour of youth, as well as its curiosity and its enthusiasm.
In annexing to his reply the conditions of his acceptance he wrote thus: ‘If it be thought fit that Dr. Sloane go physician to the West Indian Fleet, the surgeons of all the ships must be ordered to observe his directions.... He proposes that six hundred pounds, per annum, shall be paid to him quarterly, with a previous payment of three hundred pounds, in order to his preparation for this service; and also that if the Fleet shall be called home he shall have leave to stay in the West Indies if he pleases.’ The proposed terms were approved. |Corresp. in MS. Sloane, 4069, ff. 86, 87.| The Doctor embarked at Portsmouth, in the Duke’s frigate Assistance, on the 12th of September.
His work as a scientific collector began at Madeira. |Ibid., MS. Sloane, 3962, f. 310.| To botanize in that pleasant island was an enjoyment all the more welcome after an unusual share of suffering from seasickness, in the midst of professional toil. For it was honourably characteristic of Sloane that, under all circumstances and forms of temptation, medical duties had the first place with him. What he achieved for science, throughout his life, was achieved in the intervals of more immediate duty.
He reached Barbadoes in November. Thence he wrote to Courten: ‘This is indeed a new world in all things. You may be sure the task I have is already delightful to me.’ |Sloane to Courten; Ib., 1687, Nov. 28.| Then he continues: ‘I am heartily sorry that I, being new landed here, cannot now send [what I have collected for you] with this letter. What I had at Madeira cannot be come at. What is here I have not, as yet, gathered. But you may assure yourself that what these parts of the West Indies afford is all your own, the best way I can send them.’
The collections begun thus favourably were continued at the beginning of December in the islands of Nevis, St. Christopher, and Hispaniola. The fleet reached Port Royal on the 19th of that month. Jamaica was explored with ardent enthusiasm and with minutest care. Its animals and minerals, as well as its plants; its history, as well as its meteorology, were thoroughly studied. |Medical Cases appended to Voyage to Jamaica; vol. i (1708).| And the medical skill of the new-comer was put as heartily at the service of the toil-worn negro as at that of the wealthiest planter, or of the highest officer of the Crown.
But presently Sloane himself needed the care and skill he so willingly bestowed. ‘I had a great fever,’ he says, ‘though those about me called it a little seasoning.’ He had scarcely recovered before his knowledge of the natural history of Jamaica was suddenly and unpleasantly increased.
‘Ever since the beginning of February,’ I find him writing to the Lord Chief Justice Herbert (who seems to have been one of the earliest of the many patients who became also friends): ‘I dread earthquakes more than heat. For then we had a very great one. Finding the house to dance and the cabinets to reel, I looked out of window to see whether people removed the house (a wooden structure) or no. Casting my eyes towards an aviary, I saw the birds in as great concern as myself. Then, another terrible shake coming, I apprehended what it was, and betook me to my heels to get clear of the house; but before I got down stairs it was over. If it had come the day after, it had frighted us ten times more. |Sloane to Lord Chief Justice Herbert; MS. Sloane, 4069, ff. 277, 278.| For the day it happened there arrived a Spanish sloop from Porto Bello, giving an account of the destruction of great part of the kingdom of Peru.’
Long before this letter was written the exploring studies and expedition had been resumed with all the activity of renewed health, and they were carried on—at every available interval, as I have said, of pressing medical duty—throughout the year 1688. That eventful year, during which the thoughts and anxieties of the mass of his countrymen were so differently engrossed, was to Sloane the especial seedtime of his study of Nature. All that he was enabled to effect in that attractive path may now seem very small and dim, when viewed in the light of subsequent achievements. But it was great for that day, when, in England, the path was so newly opened that the possession of a taste for collecting insects was thought, by able men of the world, to be a strong presumption of lunacy. And it soon fired the ambition of a multitude of inquirers who rapidly carried the good work of investigation onward, in all directions.
Towards the close of the year, the Duke of Albemarle suddenly died. The contingency for which Sloane had had the foresight to make provision had arisen, but in a quite unexpected way; so that his forecast failed to secure him that time for continued research which he had coveted and contracted for. The Duchess of Albemarle had accompanied her husband in his voyage, and, after the first shock of his death had been borne, was naturally desirous to leave the colony. Sloane could not allow her to take the return voyage without his attendance. He hastened to gather up his collections and prepared to come home. The fleet set sail from Port Royal on the 16th of March, 1689.