Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science pp 19–40Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Botanizing at Badminton House: The Botanical Pursuits of Mary Somerset, First Duchess of Beaufort

  • Chapter

Abstract

In the last decades of the seventeenth century, Mary Somerset, the third Marchioness of Worcester and first Duchess of Beaufort, actively collected, identified, and classified thousands of plants from around the world. She worked with her gardener, George Adams, and several famous botanists to grow, study, catalogue, distribute, dry, and paint her specimens. Friends, family, and colleagues from both Oxford and the Royal Society of London contributed to her collection. Yet she also obtained many plants and seeds through conventional garden suppliers, and she commissioned agents to hunt down and collect specimens within the British Isles and abroad. The report of just one such shipment, received in 1696, indicates that she had hundreds of seeds, leaves, cuttings, saplings, and even several large trees shipped to her from Barbados. This particular consignment was so large that the first 11 tubs were split between five ships, with eight more promised in the next fleet. Each tub was large enough to contain, in one instance, one fern tree, seven water common trees, and one white mangrove tree, and, in another, one great bay tree and 50 saplings.1 In this way, Somerset amassed an exceptionally large and diverse collection of plants at the family estate of Badminton House in Gloucestershire, which provided the foundation for her botanical pursuits.

Keywords

  • Royal Society
  • Philosophical Transaction
  • British Library
  • East India Company
  • Unpublished Note

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD   129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. C. Linnaeus (1737) Critica botanica.

    Google Scholar 

  2. C. Linnaeus (1753) Species Plantarum.

    Google Scholar 

  3. W. Stearn (1971) ‘Sources of Information about Botanic Gardens and Herbaria’, Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society, 3, 225–33: 229.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  4. E. Kent (1829) ‘Considerations on Botany, as a Study for Young People…’, The Magazine of Natural History and Journal of Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology, and Meteorology, 1, 124–35: 132.

    Google Scholar 

  5. William Withering, Jr. (1830) An Arrangement of British Plants (Birmingham), pp. xxxviii–ix.

    Google Scholar 

  6. E. Dolan (2008) Seeing Suffering in Women’s Literature of the Romantic Era (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 107–8.

    Google Scholar 

  7. M. Cavendish (1666) Observations on Experimental Philosophy (London) pp. 102–3.

    Google Scholar 

  8. F. Harris (1997) ‘Living in the Neighbourhood of Science: Mary Evelyn, Margaret Cavendish and the Greshamites’, in L. Hunter and S. Hutton (eds) Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society (Stroud: Sutton Publishing), p. 210.

    Google Scholar 

  9. M. Evelyn to R. Bohun, 4 January [1674], in W. Bray (1859) Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, 4 Vols. (London: Bohn), Vol. 4, pp. 31–2, as quoted in Harris, ‘Living in the Neighbourhood’, p. 213.

    Google Scholar 

  10. A. Shteir (1996) Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora’s Daughters and Botany in England, 1760 to 1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 4, 76–7.

    Google Scholar 

  11. M. Creese (1998) Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British Women in Science, 1800–1900 (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press), p. 367.

    Google Scholar 

  12. E.B. Keeney (1992) The Botanizers Amateur Scientists in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), pp. 69–82.

    Google Scholar 

  13. D. Chambers (1997) ‘“Storys of Plants”: The Assembling of Mary Capel Somerset’s Botanical Collection at Badminton’, Journal of the History of Collections, 9, 49–60: 59 no. 15. I have confirmed this by comparing the handwriting of documents in the British Library with a document obtained from Badminton estate: M. Somerset to H. Somerset [1678], Badminton Muniments, Badminton House, Gloucester (hereafter Bad. Mun.), FmE 4/1/6.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  14. M. McClain (2001) Beaufort: The Duke and his Duchess, 1657–1715 (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 116, 121.

    Google Scholar 

  15. A.R. Hall and M.B. Hall (eds) (1965) The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, 13 Vols. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), Vol. 10, pp. 16, 85.

    Google Scholar 

  16. J. Munroe (2011) ‘“My innocent diversion of gardening”: Mary Somerset’s Plants’, Renaissance Studies, 25, 111–23: 112.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  17. C. Horwood (2007) Potted History: The Story of Plants in the Home (London: Frances Lincoln), p. 37.

    Google Scholar 

  18. B.D. Henning (1983) ‘Capel, Hon. Henry (1638–96), of Kew, Surr.’, in B.D. Henning (ed.) The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660–1690 (London: The History of Parliament Trust), http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/capel-hon-henry-163896, date accessed 17 September 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  19. H. Durant (1973) Henry 1st Duke of Beaufort and his Duchess, Mary (Pontypool: The Griffin Press), p. 35.

    Google Scholar 

  20. E.H. Whittle (1989) ‘The Renaissance Gardens of Raglan Castle’, Garden History, 17, 83–94: 85.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  21. A.P. Usher (1929) A History of Mechanical Inventions (New York: Dover Publications), pp. 343–7. On the range of family disputes see: McClain, Beaufort, pp. 13–5, 37, 94, 132.

    Google Scholar 

  22. G. Hiscox (1904) Mechanical Appliances: Mechanical Movements and Novelties of Construction (New York: Norman W. Henley), p. 366.

    Google Scholar 

  23. J. Glanvill (1670) The Way of Happiness Represented in its Difficulties and Incouragements, and Cleared from Many Popular and Dangerous Mistakes (London: James Collins/London: Gedeon Schaw).

    Google Scholar 

  24. Glanvill (1671) The Way to Happiness Represented in its Difficulties and Incouragements, and Cleared from Many Popular and Dangerous Mistakes (London: Gedeon Shaw).

    Google Scholar 

  25. J. Glanvill (1677) Way of Happiness and Salvation Rescued from Vulgar Errours (London: James Collins).

    Google Scholar 

  26. J. Davies (2012) ‘Preaching Science: The Influences of Science and Philosophy on Joseph Glanvill’s Sermons and Pastoral Care’, in M.K. Harmes, L. Henderson, B. Harmes, and A. Antonio (eds) The British World: Religion, Memory, Society, Culture (Toowoomba: University of Southern Queensland), pp. 375–88: 382–5.

    Google Scholar 

  27. J. Dandy (1958) The Sloane Herbarium (London: Trustees of the British Museum), p. 210.

    Google Scholar 

  28. J. Petiver (1692–1703) Museum Petiverianum (London) no. 890.

    Google Scholar 

  29. J. Petiver (1710–1712) ‘An Account of Divers Rare Plants’, Philosophical Transactions, 27, 375–94: 392.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  30. Petiver (1702) Gazophylacium Naturæ & Artis (London), Vol. 1, p. 7.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Leonard Plukenet (1705) Amaltheum Botanicum (London).

    Google Scholar 

  32. Society of Gardeners (1730) Catalogus Plantarum (London), p. vii.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Dandy, Sloane Herbarium, p. 210.

    Google Scholar 

  34. M. Laird (2006) ‘“Perpetual Spring” or Tempestuous Fall: The Greenhouse and the Great Storm of 1703 in the Life of John Evelyn and His Contemporaries’, Garden History, 34, 153–73: 164–5.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  35. W. Stearn (1958) ‘Botanical Exploration to the Time of Linnaeus’, Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London, 169, 173–96.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  36. The Royal Society (2014) ‘Somerset; Charles (1660–1698); Marquess of Worcester’, The Royal Society Archive of Past Fellows, <https://royalsociety.org/library/collections/biographical-records/> (home page), date accessed 17 September 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  37. The Royal Society (1701) Journal Book 1696–1702.

    Google Scholar 

  38. S.I. Mintz (1952) ‘The Duchess of Newcastle’s Visit to the Royal Society’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 51, 168–76.

    Google Scholar 

  39. D. Atkinson (1996) ‘The “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,” 1675–1975: A Sociohistorical Discourse Analysis’, Language in Society, 25, 333–71: 368, n. 7.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  40. S. Hutton (1997) ‘Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish and Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought’, in Hunter and Hutton, Women, Science and Medicine, p. 223.

    Google Scholar 

  41. E. Keller (1997) ‘Producing Petty Gods: Margaret Cavendish’s Critique of Experimental Science’, ELH, 64, 447–71: 447–8.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  42. L. Hunter (1997) ‘Sisters of the Royal Society: The Circle of Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh’, in Hunter and Hutton Women, Science and Medicine, p. 191.

    Google Scholar 

  43. R. Iliffe and F. Willmoth (1997) ‘Astronomy and the Domestic Sphere: Margaret Flamsteed and Caroline Herschel as Assistant-Astronomers’, in Hunter and Hutton, Women, Science and Medicine, p. 249.

    Google Scholar 

  44. S. Brown and J. Petiver (1701) ‘An Account of Part of a Collection of Curious Plants and Drugs, Lately Given to the Royal Society by the East India Company’, Philosophical Transactions, 22, 579–94: 579.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  45. J. Petiver (1713) ‘Botanicum Hortense III’, Philosophical Transactions, 28, 177–221: 204.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  46. see G. Saunders (1995) Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration (Los Angeles: University of California Press).

    Google Scholar 

  47. J. Kip and L. Knyff (1720) Britannia Illustrata (London), Figures 9–12.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Julie Davies
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. DePaul University, USA

    Donald L. Opitz (Associate Professor) (Associate Professor)

  2. Stockholm University, Sweden

    Staffan Bergwik (Associate Professor) (Associate Professor)

  3. Chemical Heritage Foundation, USA

    Brigitte Van Tiggelen (Director) (Director)

Copyright information

© 2016 Julie Davies

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Davies, J. (2016). Botanizing at Badminton House: The Botanical Pursuits of Mary Somerset, First Duchess of Beaufort. In: Opitz, D.L., Bergwik, S., Van Tiggelen, B. (eds) Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137492739_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137492739_2

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55902-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49273-9

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

search

Navigation