Full download Districts Documentation and Population in Rupert s Land 1740 1840 Aaron James Henry pdf docx

Download the Full Version of textbook for Fast Typing at textbookfull.
com
Districts Documentation and Population in Rupert s

Land 1740 1840 Aaron James Henry
https://textbookfull.com/product/districts-documentation-
and-population-in-rupert-s-land-1740-1840-aaron-james-henry/
OR CLICK BUTTON
DOWNLOAD NOW
Download More textbook Instantly Today - Get Yours Now at textbookfull.com

Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.
Revitalizing City Districts Transformation Partnership for

Urban Design and Architecture in Historic City Districts
1st Edition Hebatalla Abouelfadl
https://textbookfull.com/product/revitalizing-city-districts-
transformation-partnership-for-urban-design-and-architecture-in-
historic-city-districts-1st-edition-hebatalla-abouelfadl/
textboxfull.com
James A Michener s Writer s Handbook Explorations in

Writing and Publishing James A. Michener
https://textbookfull.com/product/james-a-michener-s-writer-s-handbook-
explorations-in-writing-and-publishing-james-a-michener/
textboxfull.com
Population-Based Public Health Clinical Manual: The Henry

Street Model for Nurses 3rd Edition Patricia M. Schoon
https://textbookfull.com/product/population-based-public-health-
clinical-manual-the-henry-street-model-for-nurses-3rd-edition-
patricia-m-schoon/
textboxfull.com
Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President James C.

Klotter
https://textbookfull.com/product/henry-clay-the-man-who-would-be-
president-james-c-klotter/
textboxfull.com
This Land Is Our Land An Immigrant s Manifesto Suketu
Mehta
https://textbookfull.com/product/this-land-is-our-land-an-immigrant-s-
manifesto-suketu-mehta/
textboxfull.com
Leadership Philosophy in the Fiction of C S Lewis Aaron

Perry
https://textbookfull.com/product/leadership-philosophy-in-the-fiction-
of-c-s-lewis-aaron-perry/
textboxfull.com
Population Development Challenges in China Family Planning

Policy and Provincial Population Difference Pengkun Wu
https://textbookfull.com/product/population-development-challenges-in-
china-family-planning-policy-and-provincial-population-difference-
pengkun-wu/
textboxfull.com
Kierkegaard s God and the Good Life J Aaron Simmons
https://textbookfull.com/product/kierkegaard-s-god-and-the-good-life-
j-aaron-simmons/
textboxfull.com
Small Business, Big Society Rupert Hodder
https://textbookfull.com/product/small-business-big-society-rupert-
hodder/
textboxfull.com
Districts, Documentation,
and Population in Rupert’s
Land (1740–1840)
Aaron James Henry

Districts, Documentation, and Population
in Rupert’s Land (1740–1840)
Aaron James Henry
Districts,
Documentation,
and Population
in Rupert’s Land
(1740–1840)
Aaron James Henry
Institute of Political Economy
Carleton University
Ottawa, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-030-32729-3 ISBN 978-3-030-32730-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32730-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com
This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Observational Practices in Natural History: Conducts

and Technical Registers (1700–1798) 5
3 Hudson’s Bay Company’s the Right of Seizure, the Fort,

and the Preconditions of District-Inspection 37
4 The Codification of Natural History: From Observation

to Inspection 63
5 District Space and Productive Labour 91
6 District Space, Population, and Biopolitics 107
7 Conclusion: District Space 127
References 135
Index 143
v
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract This introductory chapter situates the rise of district-

inspection in broader practices of colonial administration in Canada and
the commonwealth. The chapter narrows in on three theses advanced in
the manuscript. In particular, it argues that the emergence of the district
as form of spatial documentation was crucial in reforming social vision
between the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. In particu-
lar, the rise of district-inspection allowed population to emerge in HBC
records as an object of administration. It also suggests outlines how the
study will situate the district as development central to the formation of
Canada’s political geography and operation as a colonial state.
Keywords District · HBC · Social vision · Political geography
In 1900, the Indian Agent for the Williams Lake Agency submitted
an annual report to the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs. The
report intended to provide knowledge of the indigenous population and
included a census and inspections of health, economic productivity, its
morality, and the conditions under which the population lived. In par-
ticular, details were offered on the sanitary conditions, the available
resources, and the state of the buildings.1 The report, despite being a
1 1900, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs (Ottawa: Queen’s Press).
© The Author(s) 2020 1

A. J. Henry, Districts, Documentation, and Population in Rupert’s Land
(1740–1840), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32730-9_1
2 A. J. HENRY
rather uninspiring read, is an important artefact in Canada’s history of

centralizing rule over indigenous populations.
However, what makes it the starting point for this study is that all
of these details are framed around the spatial designation of the dis-
trict. The knowledge of indigenous populations, where they live, where
they hunt, and their resources, is studied, recorded, and encoded within
the designation of districts. This is not unique to Canada. A researcher
conversant with the records of the colonial office will quickly note that
its archives are awash with reports on districts plucked from the vari-
ous corners of the British colonial empire. District reports can be found
on Colonial India, colonial projects in Africa, New Spain, and the East
Indian Company.
Though it extends outside the scope of this study, the district makes
a sustained appearance at the close of the eighteenth century in Jeremy
Bentham’s initial plan for the New Poor Law System in England. In his
1787 writings, Bentham proposed dividing England and Wales into 200
districts, each a perfect square of 225 miles. Doing this would district
to optimize the management of the poor laws and “put everything at
all times under the eye of persons of all ranks on whom management
depends”.2 The salience of the district to organizing early nineteenth-
century relations of rule is easily overlooked as our experience today
with district as a form of spatial designation and administration is shot
through by many banal iterations: school districts, electoral districts,
shopping districts, etc.
I claim in this book through that the historical emergence of the
district was central to a new ordering of colonial knowledge of rule. In
particular, the district supported a new form of knowledge, a knowledge
of human life as a population that could be delimited, controlled, clas-
sified, and managed in relation to a delimited milieu. As I will demon-
strate, the forms of information that populated the Indian Agent’s report
on Williams Lake district did not originate with the Department of
Indian Affairs. Rather, we can trace the knowledge and form of inspec-
tion that underpins early twentieth-century colonial reports in Canada
to the nineteenth-century district reports produced by the Hudson’s Bay
Company (HBC).
2 J. Bentham, Collective Works of Jeremy Bentham: Writing on the Poor Laws vol. 1, ed.
Michael Quinn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 [1796]), 204.

1 INTRODUCTION 3
As such, the central focus of this book is the lineage of the HBC
district report in structuring forms of knowledge and regimes of
surveillance that became central to the company’s knowledge and
control over indigenous people in British North America. In developing
this lineage, I pursue three theses.
The first thesis is that the emergence of the district as social field of
inspection radically reshaped how colonial knowledge captured and rep-
resented human beings. As I demonstrate in Chapter 2, up until the
close of the eighteenth-century human life remained captured in a reg-
ister that focused on typologies and generalized attributes furnished by
the Linnaean system of classification. This system of classification was
produced from a conduct to observe grounded in physico-theology that
encouraged the practice of observing people and nature to gather metic-
ulous details and reveal God in nature. Throughout the eighteenth cen-
tury, this conduct to observe produced a form of knowledge that sought
to understand human life in set typologies. These typologies put limits
on the historical appearance of population as an object of rule. I suggest
these epistemological limits can be found in Thomas Malthus’ text on
population.
Far from displacing this conduct to observe, the rise of the district
allowed the eighteenth-century categories of observation to be refined
into standardized modes of inspection. It is these modes of inspection,
organized at the level of the district, allowed registers to emerge that
captured indigenous people as both individualized subjects and as popu-
lations. Tracing the emergence of the district and biopolitical knowledge
back to a religious conduct to observe forces us to confront the role
religion should play in our readings of biopolitics and governmentality.
I argue that the district emerged as part of this conduct to observe but
also served to mould an excess of details into knowledge of people, land,
and things as a milieu. This milieu became a key way to target humans as
economic subjects and rule them through biopolitical forces.
The second thesis is that the district report was integral to a shift in the
gaze of sovereign power from the eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth
century. Reviell Netz has argued that by the nineteenth century, colo-
nial power had shifted from headquarter sites over lines of trade, moun-
tain passes, and harbours and became a gridded field of view exercised
over “area”. Michel Foucault theorized similarly that power shifted from
a relation to land to that of territory. Unlike land, territory operated as
a field of rule that comprised subjects, resources, and topography. As a
4 A. J. HENRY
process of intrication among land, people, and things, this new relation of
power eventually became inextricable from population as a target of rule.
My claim is simply that these transformations in power were
contingent upon new regimes of documentation that developed as HBC
colonial administrators sought to impose a reliable, permanent, and con-
sistent field of view over subject populations, economic resources, and
geography. In Rupert’s Land, the district report was a form of documen-
tation that enhanced the capacity of the HBC to use details and infor-
mation captured in these reports to further its rule over its servants and
indigenous populations. Thus, if we want to understand the inversion of
the field of power and the shift of sovereign power from the violence
of the sword to the administration of life, we must examine the district
report as a technique of documentation that was inseparable from mod-
ern colonial rule. I develop the place of the district in this transformation
of rule in Chapters 3 and 4 of the project. Chapter 3 focuses on the role
the fort played in supporting HBC rule during the eighteenth century
and how ruling from the fort conditioned a spatial field of rule centred
on rivers, roads, and other arteries of trade. Chapter 4 focuses on the
transformation of the fort from a headquarter site of power to that of
a post, a nodal point responsible for bringing the district into view as a
consistent field of rule.
The third thesis is that the deployment of the district in Rupert’s
Land affords insight into the sedimentation of historical geogra-
phies of colonial rule in British North America. To date the focus has
been framed as a modern form of colonial rule shaped by projects of
systematic and forced dispossession, the making of white settler space
and native space, as Colin Harris has framed it and a pre-modern com-
mercial order of the HBC. A study of ruling through districts directs us
towards the colonial spatial orders that emerged before the consolidation
of rule under the Canadian state. In particular, I stress that the creation
of a system of districts shifted the rule of the company way from the
colonial fort towards an even and continuous field of rule. In my con-
clusion, I suggest that the geography of rule that emerged in Canada
and elsewhere relied heavily on the district to create the knowledge for
a new social and economic order. In this sense, the district report was at
the vanguard in reshaping land to support modern relations of state rule
throughout the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER 2
Observational Practices in Natural History:

Conducts and Technical Registers
(1700–1798)
Abstract This chapter theorizes the formation of observation within

natural history during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
chapter explores how the practice of observation emerged from physico-
theology, which connected the attentiveness to detail and collection
of information as a practice that linked the observer closer to God.
I argue that the conduct of observation created historical limitations on
the representation of human life throughout the eighteenth century,
which foreclosed on the emergence of population in colonial registers.
I illustrate this point through an analysis of Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the
Principle of Population. At the same time, I argue that the attentiveness
to detail, the duty to record information, that was instilled through the
conduct of observation would later inform the conditions of possibility
for the HBC district.
Keywords Physico-theology · Natural history · Observation ·

Malthus · Biopolitics
In this chapter, I interrogate the historical formation of the naturalist’s

observation as a mode of social vision. Late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-
century currents of physico-theology constructed the naturalist as a subject
that scrutinized nature as the evidence of divine law. Theorizing the forma-
tion of the naturalist as a subject provides some insight into how the social
practices of observing—especially the attentiveness to detail and collection
© The Author(s) 2020 5

A. J. Henry, Districts, Documentation, and Population in Rupert’s Land
(1740–1840), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32730-9_2
6 A. J. HENRY
of information—structured the conditions of possibility for the emergence

of district-inspection as a practice used by the HBC.
There are three main sections in this chapter. First, I review Foucault’s
analysis of the eighteenth century as a period characterized by the emer-
gence of a political anatomy of detail as a form of knowledge. I engage
with Foucault to recover the place of the naturalist as a subject that
played a role in the development of political knowledge about human
beings (a role that Foucault maligns). Second, I examine the observa-
tions of several eighteenth-century HBC employees in order to trace
how the Linnaean system of classification produced a distinct representa-
tion of human life. The final section demonstrates that this system of
observation formed the epistemological limits of Malthus’ Essay on the
Principle of Population.
Foucault’s History of Detail

Foucault is one of the few scholars to focus on a history of detail over
the eighteenth century and chart its movement towards the formation
of panoptic-inspection. Yet his theorization largely forecloses on “the
naturalist” and natural history as sites in which details were put in ser-
vice of relations of rule. Countering this point is therefore important for
understanding the history of inspection as it developed within the HBC.
To begin, Foucault understands the relation of the naturalist’s observa-
tion to panoptic power as such:
One finds in the programme of the panopticon a similar concern with indi-
vidualizing observation, with characterization and classification, with the
analytical arrangement of space. The panopticon is a royal menergie; the
animal is replaced by man, individual distribution by specific grouping, and
the king by the machinery of furtive power. With this exception, the pano-
pticon also does the work of the naturalist.1
In the conclusion of his chapter on “Panopticism”, Foucault dismisses

the possibility of contact points between panoptic-inspection and the
observation of the naturalist by suggesting that, despite the similarity of
their programmes, each was the product of a different rationality—one
1 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books,
1995 [1975]), 203.

2 OBSERVATIONAL PRACTICES IN NATURAL HISTORY … 7
was “the science of man” and the other was the “science of nature”.2
The science of nature was an outgrowth of practices of investigation:
“the great empirical knowledge that covered the things of the world
and transcribed them into the ordering of an indefinite discourse that
observes, describes and establishes the facts”.3 The naturalist’s observa-
tion belongs, in contrast, to “the science of man” and the disciplines or,
as Foucault’s writes, to the “calm knowledge of the animals, the plants or
the earth”.4 Despite being productive of similar ways of knowing objects
as inspection (i.e. individualization, classification, and the making of
details), the science of nature was thus separated from projects of politi-
cal rule.
Foucault argues that the eighteenth century saw the formation of a
“political anatomy of detail” as a form of knowledge of political rule.5
This knowledge was produced by joining the “meticulous observation of
detail” with an appreciation that knowledge of details could be harnessed
for the control and use of men.6 Within particular institutional contexts
(the school, the barracks, the hospital, or the workshop), this general
interest in “little things” was hardened into a set of material practices
that ensured “the meticulousness of the regulations, the fussiness of the
inspections, the supervision of the smallest fragment of life and of the
body”.7 An attention to detail formed the basis for a political knowledge
that achieved both a refinement and generalization through the discipli-
nary mechanism of panoptic-inspection.
In contrast, for Foucault, the naturalist’s observation appears as a for-
mation conditioned by the classical age’s episteme of “the table”. The
practices of observation were the outgrowth of a general set of concerns
over:
how one was to arrange botanical and zoological gardens and construct
at the same time rational classifications of living beings…how one was to
inspect men, observe their presence and absence and constitute a general
2 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 226.


8 A. J. HENRY
and permanent register of the armed forces; how one was to distribute
patients, separate them from one another, divide up the hospital space and
make a systematic classification of diseases.8
The “table” as a procedure of knowing draws heavily on Foucault’s

earlier work, The Order of Things (1966), in which the “table” is a key
element in constituting the “episteme” of representation. By drawing
heavily on this earlier work, Foucault abstracts “observation” from any
distinct social context. The episteme mobilizes and conditions observa-
tion across the entire social field (whether in zoology, military discipline,
schools, medicine, etc.). Consequently, observation appeared as part of
a modality of knowing that was over and above real, definite individuals
and the specific historical relations they both confronted and produced.
For the purposes of analysing the formation of observation as a social
practice, two questions emerge from Foucault’s historical sketch of par-
allel development of panoptic-inspection and the naturalist’s observation.
First, what is the history of detail? Do observational techniques accumu-
late political details outside the enclosed sites that Foucault privileges?
Indeed, are there some contact points between observation and ques-
tions of political rule that existed outside the so-called enclosed sites of
the school, barracks, and workshop? Foucault’s analysis suggests that the
eighteenth-century naturalist’s observation was grounded exclusively in
nature, unable to capture human life in a way that made it into an object
of political knowledge. In contrast to the close relation other schol-
ars have established between naturalists and colonial ventures, Foucault
views the registers of natural history as having played no part in the
consolidation of knowledge over the human beings encountered in the
so-called New World by European explorers.9 In Foucault’s telling, it
seems that naturalists merely brought back flora and fauna.
Second, in trying to account for the historical formation of inspec-
tion, classification, and permanent observation, Foucault burdens the
8 Foucault,
Discipline and Punish, 148.
9 See
also Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New
York: Routledge Press, 1992); Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial
Britain and the Improvement of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000);
Fa-Ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire and Cultural Encounters
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
panopticon with too heavy a task. Foucault’s discussion of the panopti-

con as a technique that allowed “inspection” to travel across the social
body, though useful, has overshadowed some of the other conducts
and social relations that generated inspection as a social practice. I pro-
pose that it may not be the case that the panopticon merely began to
do the work of the naturalist. What social forms and attitudes emerged
from the naturalist’s practical activity of observing nature? To what
extent did the observation of nature become productive of knowledge
over human life as an object of rule? I argue that the relations consti-
tuting nineteenth-century practices of inspection can be located in the
registers of observation that developed in the domains of natural his-
tory over the eighteenth century. To trace the formation of a conduct to
observe among naturalists, I must first make a foray into the domains of
physico-theology.
Physico-Theology and the Birth of a Moral Practice

There have been a number of studies of natural theology as an out-
growth of Protestantism and of the connections between natural theol-
ogy and the formation of scientific practices.10 In the interest of brevity,
I focus on the practices and conducts that developed out of physico-the-
ology during the eighteenth century through two very specific lines of
inquiry: first, in broad terms, what was the social, political, and economic
context in which natural religion was mobilized at the close of the seven-
teenth century? Second, how did physico-theology condition practices of
observing nature?
From Elizabethan England to the close of the seventeenth century,
physico-theology was drawn on to support theological debates.11 The
removal of King Charles I, however, created uncertainty within English
society over the stability of the government and the established order.
10 For instance, see Robert Merton’s thesis in Science, Technology and Society in
Seventeenth Century England that Protestantism, and by association natural theology,

played a role in propagating scientific practices. See Robert Merton, Science, Technology and
Society in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970).
11 See John Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and
the English Revolution: 1689–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976); Neal
Gillespie, “Natural History, Natural Theology, and Social Order: John Ray and Newtonian
Ideology,” The Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 20, no. 1 (1987): 1–49.
10 A. J. HENRY
According to Mary Poovey, the subsequent disillusionment in the power

of an absolute ruler to guarantee order forced the ruling class in England
to rethink the mechanisms through which the order of English society
was governable.12 The proposals for government advanced by mem-
bers of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century, such as Sir William
Petty’s political arithmetic, relied on a form of sovereign power that was
co-extensive with the social field—the power to know everything and
rule all accordingly.13 The absence of an absolute sovereign generated an
interest in how to cultivate subjects capable of self-rule. The eighteenth
century, then, can be characterized as a period traversed by projects to
establish relations of rule structured by liberal governmentality.14 The
removal of a king who embodied infallible divine power on earth pre-
sented a formidable challenge to sovereign rule. Physico-theology was
meant to resolve this challenge.
Recent studies have focused on the fraught relationship between
Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes as a conflict of the different episte-
mological claims made by the two thinkers.15 Less noted these days is
that Boyle considered physico-theology as a means “to shew that in
physics themselves [Hobbes’] opinions and even his ratiocinations [had]
no advantages over those of some orthodox Christian Naturalists”.16
Boyle’s “A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature”
(1686) is illustrative of this engagement. Boyle attempted to provide a
clear definition of the word nature, as it is “so frequently and yet so skill-
fully employed, both in books and discourses by all sorts of men both
learned and illiterate”.17 Boyle argued “nature” was ultimately used
to describe eight different orders of phenomena, from denoting that
12 Mary Poovey, The History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of
Wealth and Society (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), 145.

13 Poovey, The History of the Modern Fact, 146.
14 Poovey, The History of the Modern Fact, 147.
15 Bruno Latour, “Part 2: Constitution,” in We Have Never Been Modern, trans.
Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Steven Shapin and
Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985).
16 Robert Boyle, “MS Notes on a Good and an Excellent Hypothesis,” in Selected
Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle (New York: Manchester Press, 1992), 191.
17 Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature: Made in an
Essay Addressed to a Friend (London: H. Clark for John Taylor Printer, 1698), 177.
“men exist partly corporeal and partly immaterial” to “the use of nature
as forces and phenomena”.18
Boyle constructed his argument by insisting that when describing
the existence of corporeal and ethereal forms of life, often referred to
as “naturae naturans”, the term God was the most suitable word to
express “the profound reverence we owe the divine majesty”.19 To
describe the existence of human life as nature than as God “[made] the
Creator differ too little by far from the created”.20 Boyle suggested it
was an error “to have the nature of everything to be the only law that
was received from the Creator, and accordingly to which it acts on all
occasions”.21 Law existed only as a “notional rule of acting according to
the declared will of a superior”.22 As such, the patterns in nature could
only become laws if beings were able to “either conform or deviate from
[them]”.23 Boyle concluded, “God [impressed] determinate motions
upon the parts of matter, and [guided] them as he [thought] requisite
for the primordial constitution of things”, and only humans were capable
of either conforming with or deviating from these motions as they alone
could realize “determinate motions” as “laws”.24
Boyle perceived his redefinition of nature as a means to confront
Hobbesian atheism, which he and other members of the Royal Society
and the Church of England believed had intensified following the
Glorious Revolution.25 After all, Hobbes argued in Leviathan, the mor-
tal sovereign was the outcome of the equal powers of each individual
to deprive the other of life and property. For Hobbes, this “equality of
powers” was the consequence of the mechanical motions attributed to
each individual by the laws of nature.26 By redefining nature as God,
18 Boyle, A Free Enquiry, 178.

25 See Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1976), 96; Gillespie, “Natural History, Natural Theology, and
Social Order,” 19.
26 C.B. Macpherson, Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Oxford: Clarendon University
Press, 1973), 226.

12 A. J. HENRY
Boyle could reassert the essential difference between created and creator,
which Hobbes, in the course of rendering human political society the
creation of man’s own naturally given motions, had effaced. By con-
ceiving “nature” as the substance of God, Boyle advanced the idea that
human society ought to be reinstated as the product of divine providence
and design, not as worldly human artifice.
It followed, then, that by knowing these divine laws, it was possible
to differentiate societies into two distinct orders: societies that were
in accordance with the laws of God and those societies organized by
human will, which deviated from divine law (like the model of society
suggested in Leviathan). Because divine laws organized nature, studying
nature revealed both God and the established order willed by God. In
his last will and testament, Boyle left a legacy to establish public lectures
intended to “prove the Christian religion” and ensure that political
power remained out of the hands of “the crafty and ill-principled”.27
These lectures emphasized that the laws of the divine were embedded
in natural things and that the study and observation of natural objects
were morally virtuous. Together, these two beliefs—the moral virtue
of observing natural things and the presence of divine laws in natural
objects—structured observation in England throughout the eighteenth
century.
The Moral Virtues of Observation

Samuel Clarke’s 1705 Boyle Lecture, “The Evidences of Natural and
Revealed Religion”, preached,
There is no such thing as what men commonly call the course of nature, or
the power of nature. The course of nature, truly and properly speaking, is
nothing else but the will of God producing certain effects in a continued,
regular, constant and uniform manner, which course or manner of acting
being in every moment perfectly arbitrary is as easy to be altered at any
time as to be preserved.28
27 Boyle, 1744 [1690], 105; John Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Jacob, The Newtonians, 125, 147.
28 Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural
Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation (London: W. Botham St.
Paul’s Church-Yard, 1705), 86–87.
As Margaret Jacob notes, Clarke’s insistence on the existence of a con-

stant, uniform manner of “effects” drew heavily from a lecture delivered
by Richard Bentley, in which he suggested that “all the powers of mech-
anism are entirely dependent on the deity” and are “a solid argument for
the reality of his nature”.29 Both Clarke and Bentley were heavily influ-
enced by Newton’s Principia,30 which is not surprising. Newton’s belief
in the existence of a “most subtle spirit, which pervades and lies hid in
all bodies”, was perhaps the surest way to combat Hobbes’ “mechanical
godless materialism”.31 The adoption of a Newtonian view allowed advo-
cates of physico-theology to import an active God into their teachings
and to suggest that the natural order, as well as the political order, was
the product of laws and patterns, which the pious could observe.
As Clarke noted in his lectures, however, it was only in nature that
these laws were distinct and identifiable.32 He stated,
[it] seems to be a very strange thing that through the system of nature
in the material in the inanimate, in the irrational part of the creation,
every single thing should have in itself so many and so obvious, so evi-
dent and undeniable marks of the infinitely accurate skill and wisdom of
their almighty creator…which does not afford such instances of admira-
ble artifice and exact proportion and contrivance as exceeds all the wit of
man…to search out and comprehend; and yet, that in the management
of the rational and moral world…there should not in many ages be plain
evidences…of God or of so much as the interposition of his divine provi-
dence at all, to convince mankind clearly and generally of the world’s being
under his immediate care, inspection and government.33
It was only within nature that the pious observer could locate the laws,
patterns, and uniform effects that revealed the evidence of God. That the
“world politick” was also governed by these laws had to be taken as an
29 Richard Bentley, The Folly of Atheism and (What Is Now Called) Deism, Even with Respect
to the Present Life: A Sermon Preached at Saint Martin’s (London: J.H. Mortlock, 1692), 8.
30 See Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 156.
31 The connection is noted by Martin Tamny in “Newton, Creation, Perception,” ISIS, vol.
70, no. 1 (1979): 54. Cf. Isaac Newton, Principia (Glasgow: MacLehose Press, 1871), 142.
32 Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion,
176.
33 Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion,
177–178.
14 A. J. HENRY
article of faith. Consequently, the world of mortal affairs, to which all of

nature appeared subservient, could not be known as a field of inquiry.
The “world politick” was too messy for divine laws to be successfully
deciphered as the conditioning force of social life. Nature was the only
site where the order of the divine could be successfully observed. The
workings of society were to be decreed first by the order present in
nature. This unevenness between the intelligibility of divine laws mani-
fested in “nature” and the opaque nature of “God’s inspection, care and
government in the moral order of society” was not resolved within the
Boyle Lectures.34
George Turnbull (1698–1747), a philosopher, theologian, and
lecturer in Natural History, drew on Bentley and Clarke’s lectures to
develop his Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy. In this work,
Turnbull introduced a subtle modification to the intellectual frame-
work of physico-theology. In developing “a study of ‘morals’ as formed
through divine providence and design”, Turnbull relied upon the
“Vegetable and Animal fabrick” as proof that divine providence and
design may be studied to discover the “powers and laws of powers” that
generate human beings as “a very noble species of being…rising in scale
of life and perfection”.35 This shift is important.
Clarke and Bentley had introduced a Newtonian model of nature with
laws put in motion by divine power, but stumbled in positing the visi-
bility of these laws in “world politick”. Turnbull overcame this block-
age by declaring that the laws and designs that govern the moral order
of society were not a separate sphere of inquiry but were, in fact, ele-
ments of nature. He wrote: “the order kept in man, as well as in the
other parts of nature within our observation, [constitute] the same sys-
tem”.36 Through the “accurate inspection of this whole, and its constit-
uent parts”, the moral order and individual inward constitutions could
34 For an expanded argument about the Newtonian principles and the dissemination of
physico-theology, see Gillespie, “Natural History, Natural Theology and Social Order.”
35 George Turnbull, The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy: The Principles
of Moral Philosophy Volume 1, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005
[1740]), 7–9.
36 George Turnbull, The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy, vol. 2 (Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund, 2005 [1740]), 469.

“be rendered or preserved or contrariwise, distorted and impaired”.37

Thus, Turnbull managed to make the knowledge of vegetable and
“animal fabricks” double as the knowledge of the laws of the moral order
of society. Given this, the study of nature was also the study of the “good
order” of “man” insofar as a good moral order obeyed the laws present
in nature.
By positing the presence of laws and patterns in nature that were
put in motion by divine power, physico-theology provided an elegant
proof of the existence of God as well as combated Hobbesian material-
ism. However, the proponents of physico-theology saw that proof of the
existence of God was nothing if it did not inculcate “dutiful” worship in
the population. It is from this point that observation became an internal
form of moral conduct.
Ye study of Nature affords infinite pleasure to them ye minde it; that it

satisfied men’s reason and curiousitie above all others: that it heals all
disturbances of ye minde and renders men thinking and active; that it fur-
nishes such as are well seen in it with a treasure of real knowledge; that
it takes away many vices men might be guilty of, in thought or action if
not diverted by this or some such innocent employment; and that it dayly
manifests ye incomprehensible power of our Creator.38
Edward Lhwyd wrote this passage to the naturalist, and former priest,
John Ray before the inauguration of the Boyle Lectures. The passage is
significant insofar as Ray returned to this theme of the moral effects of
the observation of nature into two texts, The Wisdom of God Manifested
in the Works of Creation (1691) and Persuasion to a Holy Life (1700).
The texts treated astronomy, botany, and zoology as evidence of per-
fect design. Ray used these examples to connect the practice of making
observations of the natural world to a moral imperative of piousness and
good virtue.
I know that a new study at first seems very vast, intricate and difficult:
but after a little resolution and progress, after a man becomes a
little acquainted, as I may so say, with it, his understanding is wonderfully
37 Turnbull,The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy, vol. 1: 7.

38 Life
and Letters of Edward Lhwyd, ed. R.W.T. Gunther (London: Dawsons Press,
1945), 78–79.
16 A. J. HENRY
cleared up and enlarged, the difficulties vanish and the thing grows easy
and familiar. Some reproach me thinks it is to learned men that there
should be so many animals still in the world whose outward shape is not
yet taken notice of or described, much less their way of generation, food,
manners, uses, observed. If man ought to reflect upon his creator the glory
of all his works, then ought he to take notice of them all and not to think
anything unworthy of his cognizance.39
Mere knowledge of the Bible alone would not suffice. In fact, given
that individuals “may discern and admire the footsteps of the Divine
Wisdom…in the formation and designation of [natural objects]… it is
reproachable not to reflect upon them”.40 It was necessary that all exter-
nal forms be examined. Ray contemplated this moral linkage between
observation of natural objects and the divine in A Persuasion of the Holy
Life by asking, “how shall we manifest our care of our souls? What shall
we do for them? Our souls are to be fed: the food of the soul is knowl-
edge, especially knowledge of the Things of God”.41 The observation
of nature feeds the soul and “[therein serves] to stir up and increase…
Affections and Habits of Admiration, Humility and Gratitude”.
Although Ray was never a Boyle Lecturer, his formulation of an
imperative to observe natural objects and the “things” of God was
popularized. The Wisdom of God in the Vegetable Creation achieved an
impressive circulation, reaching its twelfth edition in 1759 and remain-
ing in print until 1846.42 It was frequently imitated with the most nota-
ble impression by Henry de Salis, The Wisdom of God in the Vegetable
Creation, which was written towards the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Salis’ work was edited by Joseph Banks, the curator of Kew Royal
Gardens and President of the Royal Society from 1770 to 1820, who
also invited Salis to deliver a lecture to the Royal Society on its chief
principles.43
39 Jon Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (London: Printed for
Samuel Smith, 1691), 124.
40 Ray, The Wisdom, 124.
41 Jon Ray, Persuasion to a Holy Life (London: Samuel Smith, 1700), 242.
42 C.E. Raven, John Ray: Naturalist (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1950), 472.

43 MacKay, “Agents of Empire: The Banksian Collectors and Evaluation of New Lands,”
in Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany and Representations of Nature, ed. David Philip Miller
and Peter Hanns Reill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 53.
Moreover, William Derham, a student of Ray, became a commonly

cited Boyle Lecturer. Echoing Ray, Derham remarked, “my text com-
mends God’s works not only for being great but also approves those
curious and ingenious inquirers that seek them out or pry into them”.44
One must, he went on, “observe with attention, some particular
instances of the divine skill wherein it is conspicuously displayed”.45 This
mode of contemplation created “a due subjection [of] all our appetites
and passions to the government of sober modes of reason”.46 One was
to be attentive, after all the “the eye of the virtuous was curious” and
“the eye of the atheist was incurious”.47 The moral virtue ascribed to
observation spread from a religious concern to the assumed disposition
of the naturalist.
As Linnaeus wrote in his Systema Naturae, “the accurate scrutiny of
nature is a matter of…curiosity worthy of man”.48 To observe nature
was “the first and most sacred [duty]” of man. The further one pried
into nature, “into [its] most consecrated recesses” and attempted to
uncover its points of animation, the laws and patterns that govern its
“oeconomy”, the more “penetrated one is by the wisdom and goodness
of god”.49 Goldsmith’s An History of the Earth and Animated Nature
(1774) reiterated these sentiments. “A description of the earth, its ani-
mals, vegetables and minerals, [was] the most delightful entertainment”
of the mind, and it was also “the most interesting and useful”.50 It was
argued that the “proper business of the natural historian” was to trace
the “greatness and wisdom of the deity” “in all the worlds that sur-
round[ed] [him]”.51 The greater “the exertion [of ones] faculties” in
the study of nature, “the more one [assimilated himself] to his creator”.52
44 William Derham, Astro-Theology: Or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of
God, from a Survey of the Heavens (London: W. Innys at the Prince’s Arms in St. Paul’s
Church-Yard, MDCCXV, 1715 [1713]), 345.
45 Derham, Astro-Theology, 345.
46 Derham, Astro-Theology, 346.
47 Derham, Astro-Theology, 346–348.
48 Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, trans. B. de Graaf, 1964 [1735 edition], 14.
49 Linnaeaus, Systema Naturae, 14.
50 Oliver Goldsmith, An History of the Earth and Animated Nature (London: J. Nourse,
1774), 11.
51 Goldsmith, An History of the Earth, 11.
52 Goldsmith, An History of the Earth, 160.

18 A. J. HENRY
As Gilbert White mused in Natural History of Selborne, “these nature’s

works, the curious mind employ, inspire a soothing melancholy joy”.53
By the nineteenth century, this relationship between moral refinement
and the observation of nature achieved a more lucid and direct articula-
tion. In particular, in his 1813 Essay on the Philosophy, Study and Use of
Natural History, Charles Fothergill argued that by tracing the “footsteps
of God”, the naturalist developed knowledge necessary to the wel-
fare of humanity and, in turn, regulated his own duties and pleasures
through the knowledge of nature.54 He proposed that: “The mind of
those who [were] employed in the cultivation of Natural History [was]
expanded, made cheerful and refined…in degrees proportioned to the
extent and application of their researches”.55 Observation in nature
became explicitly joined to the formation of the naturalist as a subject.
This analysis of physico-theology as an inculcation of a conduct to
observe allows us to reconsider Foucault’s theorization of how detail
became a feature of eighteenth-century political rule. Foucault claims
that observation and detail became possible through the establishment
of “negative conditions”.56 What remains visible in the eighteenth cen-
tury “are the lines, surfaces, forms and relief” left behind after from a
long process of exclusion.57 In some ways, the naturalist’s tools of
description collaborate Foucault’s claim. “The journal, the table, detailed
precise illustrations” all served to hold the specimen in the narrow space
of individualized analytical examination.58 Yet these negative conditions
that Foucault highlights did not solely structure observation in natu-
ral history.59 The close relation between moral virtue and observation
inherited by natural history from physico-theology was also productive
53 Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne, vol. 1 (London: J. and A. Arch Press,
1822), 119.
54 Charles Fothergill, Essay on the Philosophy, Study and Use of Natural History (London:
White Cochrane and Co. Fleet Street, 1813), 5–6.

55 Fothergill, An Essay on the Philosophy, 14–15.
56 Foucault, The Order of Things, 22.
57 Foucault, The Order of Things, 145.
58 David Allen, The Field Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (London: A. Lane,
1976), 22.
59 Foucault, The Order of Things, 145; Lorraine Daston, “Attention and the Values of
Nature in the Enlightenment,” in Visual Sense: A Cultural Reader, eds. Elizabeth Edwards
and Kaushik Bhaumik (New York: Berg Press, 2008), 108.
of the naturalist’s subjectivity. This subjectivity was grounded in both a

compulsion to observe nature and as relation of self-inspection and culti-
vation. Thus, observation in the eighteenth century was grounded in an
ethos of self-formation.
Almost as if a form of compulsion, the dutiful naturalist was to “seek
out”, “pry into”, and survey nature with great attention. The “eye of
the virtuous [was] curious” and, in an act of reinforcement only “the
virtuous would find fresh springs of instructions and new fountains of
delight” in observing nature, for all others nature will be nothing more
than “a treasure that is hermetically sealed”.60 To be virtuous led one
closer to having cognizance over all little things.
In the mid-eighteenth century, the compulsion to observe nature
started to show traces of solidifying into a form of conduct. John
Bartram, for instance, entitled his journal of his trip to North America,
“Observation on the inhabitants, climate, soils, rivers, vegetable produc-
tions, animals and other matters worthy of notice”.61 By the mid-nineteenth
century, however, the pairing of virtue and observation overstepped
“nature” and become a requisite condition for social observation, as
evidenced by Harriet Martineau’s text, “How to Observe Morals and
Manners”.62 It is, then, hardly surprising that in eighteenth-century
English society, the naturalist was known as a “curious gentleman” and a
“man of god”.63
As a relation of self-inspection, it was assumed that the contempla-
tion of nature, of God’s works, rendered the human mind active and
60 Fothergill, An Essay on the Philosophy, 13.

61 John Bartram, Observations on the Inhabitant, Climate, Soils, Rivers, Vegetable
Productions, Animals and Other Matters Worthy of Notice Made by Mr. John Bartram, in His
Travels from Pensilvania to Onondago, Oswego and the Lake Ontario, in Canada (London,
Reprinted by Cambridge University Press, 2014 [1751]), see preface [my italics].
62 According to Martineau, for the observer to make accurate observations “[he] himself
must be perfect as every prejudice, every moral perversion, dims or distorts whatever
the eye looks upon”. Harriet Martineau, How to Observe Morals and Manners (London:
Samuel Bentley, 1838), 28.
63 This corresponds with Steven Shapin’s findings that in the eighteenth century, the
practitioner of science, in particular natural history, was perceived as both “a scholar and a
gentlemen”. It can be argued that this shift, in part, has to do with relation of self-cultiva-
tion that had developed towards observation of nature. See Steven Shapin, “A Scholar and
a Gentleman,” History of Science, vol. 29 (1991): 162; see also Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel
Writing and Transculturation.
20 A. J. HENRY
attentive. To study nature was to satisfy the individual’s appetites and

passions in degrees that were proportional to the extent and application
of their studies. Shells, fossils, plants, and the anatomy of bees, all held
the substance of the divine. The more intensive the interrogation and the
more precise and microscopic the detail, the further the naturalists had
ventured into God’s eternal design and thereby assimilated themselves to
God’s likeness. Curiosity, attentiveness, careful description, and patient
recording were a means used to refine and cultivate one’s mind and
attention. “Good sense, penetration and sincerity joined to a commend-
able curiosity” were the traits one gained through sustained observation
of nature.64
If in the eighteenth century there was the development of a
“meticulous examination of [natural] things” (the attentiveness to
detail), these practices were, in part at least, rooted in a subjectiv-
ity formed through the observation of nature. The history of detail
unfolded in the eighteenth century as a project of self-formation. While
I will outline the limits that grew up with this formation of observation,
I first want to examine the external conditions that gave this internal
mode of conduct its expression.
The first nine editions of the Systema of Naturae (1735), for example,
included a “methodus” on how to make “accurate observations of
nature”. The “methodus” was divided into seven sections and included
38 steps for properly classifying flora and fauna. The section entitled
“Attributes” is of particular relevance to the formation of the naturalist’s
observation. During the documentation and classification of a specimen,
the naturalist was instructed to include the following: the season of birth,
growth, and maturity; old age and death; the geographic region where
the specimen lives; the climate and soil; the diet, habits, and tempera-
ment; and the anatomy of the body.65 The “methodus”, therefore, was a
procedure of registration that placed any the specimen in a general order
of nature with accuracy.
Of course systems of classification seldom retain their initial form
when they are put into practice. Did the Linnaean system provide an
outline through which the ethos of observation could be shaped and
64 Bartram, Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals
and Other Matters Worthy of Notice, i.

65 Reproduced in Karl Schmidt, “The Methodus of Linnaeus,” Journal of the Society for
the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 2 (1954): 370–374.

deployed? What forms of registration did it engender? How did this

means of observing flora and fauna translate into the observation of
human life? An examination of four eighteenth-century texts offers
some insight into these questions. Three come from HBC officials, John
Isham’s Observations on the Hudson’s Bay Company (1749), Andrew
Graham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay (1767–1791), and Edward
Umfreville’s The Present State of the Hudson Bay (1790), and the other
is Joseph Banks’ Endeavour Journal (1762?). Taken together, these jour-
nals suggest that at the end of the eighteenth century, categories from
the Linnaean system were used to create a system of representation for
human life. I argue this mode of registration placed definite limits on
how human life was represented and thus contoured a very specific set of
relations of rule.
Linnaean Classification and the Documentation

of Human Life
John Isham was originally employed as a clerk for the HBC. Whether he
was formally trained in the Linnaean method is unknown. HBC officials
were educated within the company, and so it is possible that he received
some cursory instruction. Observational Notes (1743–1749) was writ-
ten with the intention of producing a document for the HBC London
Council.66 The text is traversed by the structure and categories of the
Linnaean system of classification. Isham structured his account with the
Linnaean categories of constitution, physical anatomy, longevity, and
diet. In discussing the inhabitants, he described their anatomy:
The men are for the most part tall and thin straight and clean limbd larged
boned and full breasted, there is very few crooked or deformed persons
amongst them but well shap’d neither are they of any large bulk or corpo-
ration. The women are for the most part short and thick…both men and
women are for the most part round faced with their noses flat between the
eyes not unlike a negro but tolerable in other ways, small feet and very
small hands and fingers, their eyes large and grey.67
66 The document was never made public and kept in the company’s private library.
67 James
Isham, Observations on Hudson’s Bay (London: Hudson’s Bay Record Society,
1949 [1743]), 68.
22 A. J. HENRY
Following this racial comparison, the discussion progressed to a reflec-

tion on the constitution of the sexes: “The natives…are of incredible
strong constitution both men and women”. He also remarked on their
longevity, “they live to a very great age” and, then, a cursory account of
diet and child-rearing.68 These categories of observation also structured
the journals produced by Edward Umfreville.
Umfreville, who worked for both the HBC and the North West
Company, produced his own journal of observations on North America.
Umfreville opened with “a brief account of the climate and soil of the
country” and then remarked on “the people who inhabit it”.69 He
described the physical features of “the natives of the Hudson Bay” as
of “middle size, of a copper complexion, their features regular and
agreeable”. Umfreville then discussed their diet, constitution, and their
temperament.70
Andrew Graham’s observations run over more than two thousand
pages of notes collected over twenty-five years.71 Graham recorded his
observations in nine sections: the description of Hudson’s Bay, mam-
mals, birds, reptiles, flora, minerals, Indians, Eskimos, and life and trade
in the bay. Each section was carefully guided by the Linnaean system. In
his observations on birds, Graham opened his “observations” by divid-
ing the species of birds into those that were migratory and those that
were not. From there, he painstakingly listed each species. For instance,
the Ethinesu Mickesew, a species of eagle, was described according to
its physical features, “the bill and talons are dusky, strong, large and
much curved. The cere, irides, legs and toes are yellow; the latter naked
and scaled”.72 He detailed the eagles’ diet, “they feed on young hares,
or fowl of any kind”,73 and their mode of breeding, they “lay one egg
68 Isham, Observations, 104.

69 Edward Umfreville, Present State of Hudson’s Bay (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1954
[1790]), 29.
70 For instance, “they are great walkers, able to patiently endure cold, hunger
and fatigue”. Remarking on temperament “their dispositions are mild, affable and
good-natured, when sober,” Umfreville, Present State of Hudson’s Bay, 36.
71 Two of his papers, “Account of Some Quadrupeds from Hudson’s Bay” and “An
Account of the Birds Sent from Hudson’s Bay”, reached Joseph Banks through a mutual
friend, John Reinhold Forster, and were published by the Royal Society.
72 Andrew Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay, 1767–1791, ed.
Glyndwr Williams (London: Hudson’s Bay Company Record Society, 1969 [1791]), 39.
73 Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 39.
and the male assists to rear the young one”.74 Graham even provided an
account on the time of year they appeared and what type of terrain they
inhabited. Every chapter proceeded with this same structure of meticu-
lous examination.
While he divided “Indians” and “Eskimos” into two races, he used
the same system of classification to describe them. Graham provided a
general description of the physical stature of the people he encountered:
“Indians in general exceed the middling stature of Europeans; [were]
straight well made people, large boned but not corpulent, their features
regular and agreeable”.75 In general, “their constitution is strong and
healthy, their disorders few, the chief of which are the flux, consump-
tion and pain in the breast”.76 Of their age, he noted, “they seldom live
to a great age but are of good mental faculties to the last”.77 Graham
went on to document their habits and temperaments. “They are not
very lively, much less jovial and extravagant”.78 According to Graham
they also were “accustomed to the indulgence of every inclination” and
lacked frugality and prudence. However, with an education, he pro-
posed, they could perhaps “appear in their morals equal to the most
accomplished Europeans”.79 Graham, like Isham and Umfreville, then
went on to discuss the mode of breeding and reproduction.80
On diet, “their food consists of the flesh of buffalo, deer, or any other
animal they can procure, together with seals, whales and other inhabit-
ants of the sea and rivers”.81 The entry system for Graham’s section on
the “Esquimaux” similarly drew on Linnaean categories.
The men are short in stature, few exceeding five feet five inches, but
exceedingly well proportioned; their faces broad and flat, occasioned by
the prominency of the cheekbones and the rotundity and largeness of


24 A. J. HENRY
their cheeks; the eyes black and diminutive; the mouth small; teeth white;
and the lips black; countenance brown; the beard eradicated.82
As the acting naturalist aboard the Endeavour, Joseph Banks also uti-
lized Linnaean categories.83 Each collection of entries was gathered to
create “Accounts” of various locations, ranging from New Holland,
the Islands of Savu, and Island near Savu, Batavia, Princes Island, and
St. Helena. Each of these entries reviewed the coastline, its natural har-
bours, the quality of the soil, the flora and fauna, the chief products,
whether the region was populated or unpopulated, and, if populated,
which areas were inhabited. Following this, the bodies of the inhabitants
were described with detailed accounts of their physical features, strength,
lifespan, diet, dress, housing, religious beliefs, and language.
For instance, of the inhabitants of New Holland Banks wrote, “the
men are of the size of larger Europeans, Stout, Clean Limned and active,
not as fat and lazy as the inhabitants of the South Sea Isles, and far more
vigorous, nimble and clever in their exercises”.84 In remarking on their
diet, Banks observed that the inhabitants ate “fish and birds, [broiled or
toasted] and a glutinous pulp mixt with many fibres, which they gener-
ally spit out after having sucked each mouthful a long time”, concluding
that, “so simple a diet accompanied with moderation must be productive
of sound health”.85 Banks concluded that, on the whole, the inhabitants
were “a race infinitely below us in the order of Nature”.86
There are several points we can draw from these four journals. These
observational accounts reveal how Linnaean categories gave rise to
a particular way of representing human life. In the course of develop-
ing knowledge of constitution, longevity, diet, reproduction, and tem-
perament, the entry system lent itself neither to individualization nor
to the specification of geographical locations. The Linnaean categories
marked a departure from earlier texts of natural history where the body

83 The intention was to forward the document to the British Admiralty and the Royal
Society, see Mackay, Agents of Empire: The Banksian Collectors and Evaluation of New
Lands, 49.
84 The Endeavor Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, Journal from 25 August 1768 to 12 July
1771 (published online by Project Gutenberg, Issued November 2005), paragraph 9.

85 Banks, The Endeavor Journal, paragraph 12.
86 Banks, The Endeavor Journal, paragraph 26.

Other documents randomly have
different content
Answer, that I had a letter from Lord Lewis Gordon for your
Lordship, which I forwarded by Express, was very peremptor,
Lord Lewis had given no orders for making the least demand
upon your Lordships Estate before its Return, so I expected
that none concerned in him, would offer to do it before that
Time, yet notwithstanding thereof, I had the inclosed this day
from William Taylor, to which I answered that as I sent Lord
Lewis Letter to your Lordship per Express, I could neither give
answer nor advice to his Letter, but that I expected that none
concerned in Lord Lewis would have made any demand of
your Lop. Estate before I had your Answer. As likeways that
they would have defered compounding the matter untill that
Time. David Tulloch[662] is just now at Banff with about 60 or
80 men and as I am told demands no fewer Levies from that
Town as 200 men. Birkenbush was here last night, and told me
that as it is not in his power to get your Lordships Estate saved
in such a way as he would have desired has utterly refused
having any Concern in uplifting the Levies from that Bounds,
for which I have been very angry at him; but it cannot now
help. To appearance Mr. Tulloch or Abbachy will be soon here,
and unless your Lordship fall upon some shift for relief to us,
we shall suffer extremely.
[544] App. 28. C. of G., ii. 192. (From Castle Grant.)
[545] App. 29. Earl of Findlater to Mr. Grant, dated 13th
Dec.—After despatching the short letter I wrote you this
morning, which is inclosed, I received the Inclosed from the
President. All that I shall say is, that all their Proceedings will
not secure our Safety unless a Sufficient right and Trusty Party
is left in Banffshire for Lord Lewis’s small partys will stir as
soon as they are past, if there is not force enough to suppress
them. You know the State of my health makes it impossible for
me to attend Lord Loudoun and make things agreeable to him
as I would wish. I have writ to Tochineil[663] and John and
William Ogilvies Sheriffs deputes to do their duty the best they
can in all respects; but I am not without my own Fears that
Fear and trembling for after Consequences may make some if
not all of them extremely unwilling to act. Perhaps even they
may decline it. You know you have full Power in everything
that concerns me, to do what you think proper and I have full
confidence you will do whatever you think right; but least some
thing more formal should be requisite, with regard to the office
of Sheriff I hereby give you full Power to act as Sheriff Depute
of Banffshire and to employ such substitutes under you as you
shall think fitt, for which this shall be to you and them a
sufficient warrant and Commission, I always am most
affectionately and entirely yours.
P.—My son intends to go down by Forress to wait of Lord
Loudoun tomorrow; but as he continues extremely ill off the
Cold I am uncertain if he will be really able to go. I begg you
will send the Inclosed to Tochineil by some sturdy clever Man
because the bearer is feckless and too well known, and may
be searched for Letters. It contains orders for Tochineil, John
and William Ogilvies to attend my Lord Loudoun. Keep the
Presidents letter. Your wife opened the inclosed from Robert
Grant.
[546] App. 30. C. of G., ii. 189. (From Culloden.) This letter
contains a postscript saying that Lord Loudoun ‘had prevailed
with Lord Lovat to come in with him to town [Inverness] to
reside at liberty there till the present confusions are over, to
deliver up what arms he has, and to sign all proper orders to
his clan to remain quiet. Loudoun brings him on with him to-
day 11th [Dec.] 9 a clock in the morning.’
[547] Boat o’ Bridge, the ferry on the Spey near the mouth
of the Mulben burn, now superseded by a road and a railway
bridge.
[548] Sir Harry Innes of Innes (Morayshire), 5th bart. Suc.
1721; d. 1762. He was a brother-in-law of Ludovick Grant,
married to his sister Anne. Innes’s son James suc. as Duke of
Roxburghe on the death of the 4th duke in 1805.
[549] App. 31. C. of G., ii. 193. (From Elgin.) Macleod will
most cheerfully act in conjunction with Grant in everything
thought proper.
[550] Bog, the local name for the site of Gordon Castle,
built on the Bog o’ Gight (windy bog). The ferry there was
known as the Boat o’ Bog; it is now superseded by Fochabers
Bridge.
[551] App. 32. Mr. Grant to M‘Leod, dated 15th Dec.—I
have just now the Pleasure of yours by our Friend Sir Harry
Innes. I shall as soon as I get my Men conveened march to
Fochabers and endeavour to get Possession of the Boats, and
shall do all in my Power to secure the passage for the Men
under your Command. I am hopefull the Rebells wont be able
to give much disturbance.
[552] App. 33. Lord Lewis Gordon to Mr. Grant, dated
Fyvie, 16th Dec.—I was a little surprised this morning to hear
that you had marched a body of your Men to the low Country
so far as Mulben. Your Reason for such Proceedings I cant
find out, as you have not got the least disturbance from the
Prince, or any of his Friends, since his Royal Highness arrival
in Scotland. And for my part I have not given you the least
disturbance, since my coming to the North. So far from it, that I
have given positive orders to the Gentlemen employed by me
to raise the Levies, not to meddle with any of your Estate no
not so much as to raise a man from a little Place called
Delnaboe, which holds of the Duke of Gordon, to the men of
which last place, I had a natural Title. I now desire to know, if
you are to take any Concern in protecting the Estates of any
but your own. If that is the case, I must take my Measures
accordingly, and as the Consequence must be fatal you have
none to blame but yourself. I am this minute writing to Lord
John Drummond that he may march his Troops directly to this
Country to join the men I have already raised; but if you
withdraw your men, and give no further disturbance, it may
move me to alter my Resolutions with respect to you. I wrote
you a Letter from Strathdoune but was not favoured with any
Return, but must insist on an answer to this in writing or by
some Gentleman of Character. Offer my Complements to Lady
Margaret and your young Family.—I am with much Respect,
etc.
Copy Printed Declaration of Lord John Drummond,
Commander-in-Chief of his Most Christian Majesty’s Forces in
Scotland.—We, Lord John Drummond, Commander-in-Chief of
his most Christian Majesty’s Forces in Scotland, do hereby
declare, that we are come to this kingdom with written orders
to make war against the King of England, Elector of Hannover,
and all his adherents, and that the positive orders we have
from his most Christian Majesty are to attack all his ennemys
in this Kingdom, whom he has declared to be those, who will
not immediately join or assist as far as will ly in their power, the
Prince of Wales, Regent of Scotland his Ally, and whom he is
resolved with the concurrence of the King of Spain to support
in the taking possession of Scotland, England and Ireland, if
necessary at the expence of all the men and money he is
master of, to which three Kingdoms the Family of Stewart have
so just and indisputable a title. And his most Christian
Majesty’s positive orders are, that his ennemys should be
used in this Kingdom in proportion to the harm they do, or
intend to his Royal Highness’s cause. Given at Montrose, the
2nd day of December 1745 years.
J. Drummond.
Copy Printed Letter from Earl Marshall to Lord John
Drummond, dated Paris, 1st Nov.—My Lord,—As I am now
obliged to attend the Duke of York to England, with a body of
French Troops, I desire that you will be so good as to see if
possible, or send word to the people that depend on me or
have any regard for me in Aberdeenshire, or the Mearns, that
are not with the Prince, that I expect they will immediately rise
in arms, and make the best figure they can in this affair, which
cannot now fail to succeed, and that they will take from you,
my Cousin German directions, as to the manner they are to
behave on this occasion.
I am sorry that just now it is not in my power to head them
myself; but as soon as this affair will be over, I intend to go
down to my native country and they may depend of my being
always ready to do them what service will ly in my power.
Marshal.[664]
Directed to Lord John Drummond, Brigadier of the
King’s Army and Colonel of the Royal Scots at
Dunkirk.
Copy Printed Letter from Lord John Drummond to William
Moir of Loanmay, Esquire, Aberdeen 11th Dec.—Sir,—You
will be pleased to communicate the contents of this letter to
such gentlemen of your country as are well affected to the
Prince Regent, and who retain regard for the Earl Marshall,
and assure them that what may be necessary for effectuating
the ends proposed shall be heartily supplied by me, and I am,
Sir, your most humble servant,
J. Drummond.
Addressed to Willm. Moir of Loanmay, Esq.,
Deputy Governor of Aberdeen.
[553] App. 34. C. of G., ii. 199. (From Cullen.) Grant’s letter
gives him vast joy; Culcairn will be with Grant to-morrow, while
Macleod will go to Banff and thence to Turriff and Old
Meldrum.
Culcairn to Mr. Grant, dated 17th Dec.—I came here this
day with Captain William Macintoshes Company and mine,
and have written to the Laird of M‘Leod telling my coming here
and Resolution of going tomorrow to Cullen etc. and therefore
pray acquaint me how affaires are with you. I wrote also to the
Laird of M‘Leod to acquaint me how affaires are with him.—I
am, Dr Sir, yours etc.
The following note was inclosed—
All the Information that is known here about the Rebells,
who fled Out of Fochabers, is that they all marched to Huntly,
and about 6 men as computed abode in Newmilns Sunday
night and on Monday followed to Huntly. There is no word yet
from Lord Loudon.
[554] App. 35. Declaration published at Strathbogie by Mr.
Grant, dated 18th Dec.—Whereas many of his Majesty
Subjects have been compelled by Force and Threats to enlist
in the Service of the Pretender, whilst there was no Force
sufficient to protect them. If any such shall resort to me, and
deliver up their arms, I shall signify their dutiful Behaviour in
this point, to the end that it may be a motive to obtain their
pardon from his Majestys Grace and will endeavour to free all
of illegal and treasonable Levies of men and money; but such
as presumes to persist in their treasonable Practices and to
resist will be treated as Traitors.
[555] App. 36. C. of G., ii. 194. (From Inverness.)
Loudoun’s letter after applauding Grant’s zeal is very much the
same as Lord Deskford’s letter which follows.
[556] App. 37. Lord Deskfoord to Mr. Grant, dated 14th
Dec.—I am now with Lord Loudon and in a conversation with
him, I find that he is Sorry he has not Sufficient authority as yet
from the Government either to give Pay to any Clan, except
when an immediate necessity which cannot be answered by
the Troops upon the establishment requires it, nor has he any
arms to dispose of to the Friends of the Government, scarcely
having sufficient arms here for the independent companies
and his own Regiment. This being the Case and the Service in
the Countrys of Banff and Aberdeenshire being sufficiently
provided for by the 700 men already sent to that Country, it is
impossible for him to take your men into Pay, and as your
arms are certainly not extremely good, and he cannot give you
others, I believe he would be as well pleased, that your People
should go back to Strathspey; but he does not care to take it
upon him to order them back, as the thing was undertaken
without his Commands. If you carry your People home, he
wishes you gave M‘Leod Information of it because he must
regulate his motions accordingly with the independent
Companys. He says he wont fail to represent your Zeal and
that of your People, and wishes for the future nothing may be
undertaken but in concert with those who have the Direction of
the Kings affaires in this Country. Pray let us hear what you do.
Loudon who is much your Friend assures me of another Thing
which is that the first opportunity that offers of employing any
People in a way to make them make a figure he will most
certainly throw it into your hands. I hear there are more Troops
to march eastward tomorrow. When Lord Loudon sets out
himself is not certain.—I am, Dear Sir, etc.
As the Governor commands here in Lord Loudons absence
My Lord says he will chuse to leave the Grants here with him,
that he may have one Company that he may entirely depend
upon.
[557] App. 38. C. of G., ii. 201. (From Huntly.) Grant writes
he has a letter from Loudoun intimating he should not have
marched further than Keith, and he will return there next day.
Culcairn and Mackintosh want to join Macleod at Inverurie to-
morrow night.
An enclosure contains the following lines, which naturally
were not sent up to Government, and are not in the Record
Office. They are taken from The Chiefs of Grant:—
‘Lord Loudoun will not act as Cope,

Whose ribbon now is call’d a rope;
If Grant is armed to join M‘Leod
The enemy is soon subdued.’
[558] App. 39. C. of G., ii. 200. (From Banff.) Macleod very
sorry that Grant is not to join him at Inverurie, but he knows
best what Loudoun has directed.
[559] App. 40. C. of G., ii. 202. (From Castle Grant.)
[560] App. 41. C. of G., ii. 205. (From Elgin.)
[561] For a detailed account of the action at Inverurie on
23rd December, see ante, p. 140 et seq.
[562] App. 42. Mr. Grant to the Magistrates of Elgin, dated
29th Dec., in answer to their Letter following.—I received your
Letter of yesterdays date signed by you and the Magistrates of
Elgin, informing me that Macleod and his men were then
marching from your Town towards Inverness and that you are
now exposed to the same oppression with the other Burghs to
the East. As you had Intelligence that there are 500 men ready
at Strathbogie to come over, who have sworn heavy
vengeance against you. How far it may be in my Power to give
them a check, and to prevent the oppression they threaten you
with, I dare not positively say; but I assure you, I have all the
Inclinations in the world to be of as much Service to my
Friends and neighbours during these troublesome Times as I
possibly can. Upon the 10th of this month I was informed that
the Party under Abbachys Command was levying the Cess
and raising men in a most oppressive manner in Banffshire,
and that they were to detach a large Party to your Town, and
were threatning to use the same acts of violence against you.
As at that Time I knew nothing of the Relief that was acoming
to you from Inverness. I conveened upon the 12th the most of
the Gentlemen of the Country and about 500 of the men, and
marched directly to Mulben with an Intention to cover your
Town and Country, and to assist my Friends and neighbours in
the County of Banff. All this I did without any advice or Concert
with those entrusted at Inverness, only the very day I marched
from this, I wrote and acquainted them of my Intention; but as
they imagined they had sent Force sufficient to clear all betwixt
them and Aberdeen, I found it was not expected that I should
proceed further than Keith or my own Estate of Mulben;
however as I was resolved to chase the Rebells out of
Banffshire, if in my Power I proceeded to Strathbogg where I
remained two nights, and then finding that I was not desired or
encouraged to go further, I returned home, leaving a party of
60 men, with officers in Mulben to prevent any small partys of
the Rebells either from visiting you or oppressing that
neighbourhood. My Party continued there till all the M‘Leods
had passed in their way to Elgin; but then the officers there
thought it was not proper for so small a body to remain longer,
when Such numbers of the Rebells were so near them. My
present opinion is that you may all be easy, unless you hear
that a much greater body come from Aberdeen to join that at
Strathbogie for these at Strathbogie will never venture to cross
Spey, when I am above them and Lord Loudon is so near
them. Altho the MacLeods have marched to Inverness, I am
persuaded Lord Loudon will send another body sufficient to
give a check to those at Strathbogie. In the situation I am at
present in I am uncertain whether I am to be attacked from
Perth or by those at Aberdeen and Strathbogie for my late
March. I dare not promise to march with any body of Men but
in Concert and with Lord Loudons Directions. And at the same
Time I have demanded to be assisted with arms, and
encouraged to keep my Men in the proper way. There is no
body can wish the Peace and happiness of my Friends in the
Town of Elgin than I do. And I shall always be ready to use my
best Endeavours towards preserving the Tranquility you at
present enjoy.—I am, etc.
The Magistrates of Elgins Letter to Mr. Grant, dated
December 28th, 1745.—The Laird of M‘Leod and his Men are
this moment marching from this Place towards Inverness, so
that we are left exposed to the like Ravage and oppression
which other Burghs and Counties to the East of us labour
under. And unless we be immediately favoured with your
Protection, we and many others of the principal Inhabitants
must remove with our best effects to some Place of Safety
without loss of Time. By Intelligence we have from the other
side of Spey there are 500 at Strathbogie ready to come over
and who have threatned a heavy vengeance upon us, so that
we have all the Reason in the World to guard against the Blow
in some shape or other. We therefore begg you may give us a
positive and Speedy Answer. And we are respectfully, Honble
Sir, Your most humble Servants.
[563] App. 43. Sir Harry Innes to Mr. Grant, dated 28th Dec.
—The desertion among all the Companys has been so great
that M‘Leod is resolved to march to Forress, and for ought I
know to Inverness. This will lay this Town and Country open to
the Insults of the Rebells. Therefore the Magistrates have writ
you and have desired me to do the same, desiring you may
march Such a body of your Men here as will secure the Peace
of the Country and Town; but as you are best Judge of this.—I
am, Dr Sir, etc.
P.S.—We had yesterday the accounts of the Highland
Armys being totally routed and dispersed betwixt Manchester
and Preston betwixt the 13th and 14th. The Prince as he is
called flying in great haste with about 100 horse. The Duke of
Perth amongst the Prisoners. If M‘Leod marches I must with
him or go to you, but I think I shall go to Inverness for I am not
liked at present by many.
Sir Harry Innes to Mr. Grant, dated 28th Dec., probably
from Innes House.—I wrote you this forenoon from Elgin,
which I suppose would or will be delivered to you by one of the
Council of Elgin. As M‘Leod was then resolved upon Marching
here, they were determined to apply to you for some Relief
and Support for their Town and Country in General. I have and
must do M‘Leod Justice. He is far from loading you with any
share of their late unlucky disaster, and would willingly act in
Concert with you for the Common well, but to his great
Surprise when he came here, he found that his men who had
deserted in place of going to Inverness had mostly past from
Findorn to the Ross side. So he does not know when or where
they may meet. This has hindered him from writing to you to
desire you to bring your men to Elgin in order to act with his.
Altho he had desired this from no other authority, or any
Reasons, but your doing the best for the common Cause, but
this unlucky passing of his men at Findorn has prevented his
writing as he told the Provost of Elgin he was to do. For these
Reasons I run you this Express that you may think how to act.
I go to Lord Loudon and the President tomorrow, and will
return to M‘Leod Monday forenoon.—My Complements, etc.
P.—The President writ me that Lord Deskfoord is gone for
London in the Hound and that they sailed the 25th.
[564] App. 44. C. of G., ii. 208. (From Inverness.)
[565] App. 45. Mr. Grant to Lord Loudon, dated the 9th
Jany 1745-6.—Inclosed your Lordship has a letter I received
this day from John Grant Chamberlain of Urquhart. The
subject contained in it gives me the greatest uneasiness. I
thought I had taken such measures as to prevent any of the
Gentlemen or Tenants of that country from so much as
thinking to favour the Rebells far less to join them. I have sent
the Bearer James Grant my Chamberlain of Strathspey, who
has several Relations in that Country to concur with John
Grant my Chamberlain of Urquhart in every Measure that can
prevent these unhappy People from pursuing their Intentions
of joining the Rebells. And I have ordered him to obey any
further Orders or Instructions your Lordship shall give him for
that purpose, and I am hopefull I’ll get the better of that mad
villain Currymony who is misleading that poor unhappy
People.
That I may not weary your Lordship, I’ll leave to him to tell
you all that he knows relating to that country. I have just now
received the Inclosed from Lord Strechin by Mr. Sime Minister
of Longmay: My Lord Strichen did all in his Power to save my
Friend Lieutenant Grant from being taken Prisoner, even to the
hazard of his own Life. I would gladly march to relieve him as
my Lord Strichen suggests in his Letter, but I take it for granted
that that Thing is impossible, for I could not march to that
Country with any Body of men but the Rebells must have
notice of it, and would send my Friend to Aberdeen and so
forward to Glames, where the rest of the Prisoners are. I am
hopeful the Kinghorn Boat on board of which my Friend came
to Fraserburgh is by this time arrived at Inverness, but least it
should not, I send your Lordship with the Bearer the two last
Newspapers from Edinr, which came by Lieutenant Grant who
luckily delivered them with my Letters to Lord Strichen, before
he was made Prisoner. And I must refer it to the Bearer to
inform your Lorp. of the manner of Mr. Grant’s landing and
being taken Prisoner. Mr. Syme who brought me Lord
Strichens letter informs that Mr. Grant told that part of the
Duke of Cumberland’s horse arrived at Edinburgh Wednesday
last. That the Duke of Cumberland arrived at Edinburgh on
Thursday last with a great body of horse, and the foot were
following. I think it my duty to take notice to your Lop. that the
Rebells are exerting themselves in every corner of the North to
increase their army. I therefore think it absolutely necessary
that all the Friends of the Government should use their
outmost efforts to disconcert and disperse them. I had a
meeting yesterday with all the Gentlemen of this Country, and I
can assure your Lop. we wait only your orders and Directions,
and there is nothing in our Power, but we will do upon this
important occasion for the Service of our King and Country. I
wish it was possible to assist us with some arms, and money
to be sure also would be necessary; but give me Leave to
assure your Lordship that the last farthing I or any of my
Friends have, or what our Credite can procure us, shall be
employed in supporting of our men upon any Expedition your
Lordship shall direct us to undertake for this glorious Cause
we are engaged in. I wish to God your Lordship and the Lord
President would think of some measure of conveening the
whole body of the Kings Friends in the north together, and I
would gladly hope we would form such a body, as would in a
great measure disconcert and strike a damp upon the army of
the Rebells in the South, and effectually put a stop to any
further Junctions they may expect benorth Stirling and at the
same Time surely we might prevent their being masters of so
much of the North Coast, and also hinder many of the Kings
Subjects from being oppressed by the exorbitant sums of
money the Rebells are presently levying from them.
Complements etc.
[566] App. 46. Lord Loudon to Mr. Grant, dated 16 Jany.
1745-6.—I have had the Honour of two Letters from you since
I had an opportunity of writing to you. I think your scheme of
relieving the low Country is a very good one; but in the present
situation until I have a Return of the Letters I have sent for
Instructions, and a little more certainty of the motions of the
Rebells, I dare not give them any opportunity of Slipping by the
short road over the hills into this Country and of course into
possession of the Fort. Whilst I am in the low Country, as soon
as Instructions arrive, I shall be sure to acquaint you, and
consult with you the most effectual way of doing real Service
to our Master and our Country. I begg my Complements etc.
[567] The Prince arrived at Blair Castle 6th February, and
left on the 9th.
[568] App. 47. C. of G., ii. 222. (From Inverness.) Giving
news of the abandonment of the siege of Stirling Castle by the
Jacobites and their retreat to the north. The desertion among
them has been very great, and it will take time to re-collect
their people before they can hurt us.
[569] App. 48. Intelligence sent to Lord Loudon by Mr.
Grant, 9th February 1746.—Last Thursday Mr. Grant sent by a
Ministers son not having had time to write, being busied in his
own Preparations, Intelligence of the Rebells motions, and
what was said by some of their leaders to be their Intention.
Saturday morning he wrote M‘Leod the substance of it with
the orders then brought to Badenoch, which as M‘Leod would
forward was unnecessary for Mr. Grant to do. Since the above
many confirmations of it have arrived but nothing new all this
day.
The inclosed is a copy of their Resolutions taken at their
Meeting in Badenoch, where Cluny was present and approved
of them.
Many of the M‘phersons came home before Cluny and
many of them expressed Resolutions not to be further
concerned; but how far they will be steady is uncertain.
It is said by pretty good authority, that the Glengerry men
after the Interment of Angus MacDonald openly and in a body
left the army, and many of the Camerons followed their
example. It is certain most of Keppoch’s men were at home
some time ago, but people are sent to use their outmost
Endeavours to bring all the above back, and influence what
more they can, for which purpose it is said they will remain at
least two days at Badenoch.
Their Prince was said to be at Cluny last night, but the men
remaining with him, and coming through the hills to be only in
the Country this night.
A deserter from those coming by the Coast, and who only
left them in Angus, says Duke Cumberland was entering
Stirling, as last of their army was going out, Confirms the great
desertion since the battle, and asserts it continues dayly, also
that there is no division coming by Braemar.
The above Deserters and others and Letters say that
Clanhatton, Farquharsons, French, Pitsligo, Angus, Mearns
and Aberdeenshire People came by the Coast for whom Billets
were ordered last Wednesday at Aberdeen, and that some
M‘Donalds, M‘Kenzies, Frasers, M‘Leods, Camerons,
Stewarts, M‘Phersons, Athole and Drummond men are coming
by the Hills.
Some Clatters say they wont disturb Strathspey, and others
that it is their formed Plan to march through and disarm it, and
join the rest in Murray. The Truth is not yet known. There are
some Rumours from the South that part of the Duke’s Army
are following briskly by the Coast, and that upon the Rebells
leaving Stirling, two Regiments were ordered to embark for
Inverness. Mr. Grant and all his Friends have been alert as
desired. Many spyes are employed and what is material shall
be communicated.
The Bearer will explain Mr. Grants numbers and present
distribution of them, with the various Instructions given for the
different occurences that may happen. In the general it may be
depended upon, that Mr. Grant will act zealously with his
whole Power in every shape that shall be judged best, suitable
to the hearty Professions he hath all along made, and upon a
closer scrutiny finds he could bring furth 5 or 600 more good
and trusty men if he had arms, than he can in the present
condition. If there are arms to be given the Bearer will concert
their Conveyance.
Sunday 8 at night. This moment fresh Intelligence arrived
from Rothemurkus as follows. It confirms most of what is
above.
They are ignorant in Badenoch of the present root of the
army, and conceal their Losses as much as possible, but
acknowledge they lost considerably before Stirling, and
obliged to leave behind them seven heavy cannon of their
own, and part of their Ammunition and Baggage, with all the
Cannon and Ammunition taken from the King’s army.
That they have brought north all their Prisoners. The Duke
was advanced as far as Perth. Their Prince is to be at Ruthven
tomorrow where his Fieldpieces and five, and some say 9
battering Cannon is arrived. Tho they conceal their designs
with great secrecy the Prisoner officers conjecture their design
is against Inverness. All the men of Strathern are gone home
and to meet the Army in its way to Inverness, which is to go
through Strathspey, and the Division coming by the Coast to
march through Murray. They call these in Badenoch seven
Regiments, made up of the people above mentioned.
That many the writer conversed with declared they were
sick of the present Business, and wish for a sufficient Force to
protect them at home.
One man says he heard their Prince declare he would
quarter next Tuesday in the house of Rothemurkus.
Some means are employed to endeavour to increase the
desertion and to create some dissention. If they prove
effectual the Conclusion will be quicker and easier.
[570] App. 49. C. of G., ii. 225. (From Castle Grant.) A long
letter of various items of intelligence.
[571] App. 50. C. of G., ii. 224. (From Inverness.) Though a
supply of arms has come it is impossible to send them and
men must come for them. He will be glad to consult and co-
operate with Grant. He has brought back troops from Forres
and needs money: will Grant send him the cess he has
collected.
App. 51. C. of G., ii. 223. (From Culloden.) The Aberdeen
rebels much discouraged, for the most part separated, and will
not easily be brought together again. The Jacobites’ intention
is to capture Inverness and force all the neighbourhood into
their service. Glengarry’s and Keppoch’s people and the
Camerons are almost all gone home, but leaders are sent to
fetch them out. All this will give time to the friends of
government.
[572] App. 52. C. of G., ii. 232. (From Castle Grant.) A long
letter of details of intelligence of the movements of the
Jacobite army.
[573] App. 53. Further Intelligence, dated 15th Feb. 1746,
Saturday 7 o’clock at night.—Two persons confirm that Letters
from Lord Loudon, etc., were stopt at Ruthven. One of them
says the Bearer was hanged this morning. Both agree the
Bridges on the road to Athole are broke doun, That the Castle
of Ruthven was burnt last night, and stables this morning. The
Prince to be at Inverlaidnan this night, some of his People in
Strathern,[665] the last at Avemore. The Macphersons to
march to-morrow all for Inverness. Best Judges call them
about 5000. The Campbells were at Blair. The Duke certainly
at Perth the 12th. The Hessians certainly landed at Leith.
Several Expresses for this are stopt. You know better than we
do what is doing in Murray.
[574] Near Carrbridge.
[575] App. 54. Lord Loudon to Mr. Grant, dated Inverness,
15th Feb.—I have been honoured with a Letter from you last
night, and another this morning, and I have seen yours to the
Governor, all with the Intelligence which you have got for
which I am very much obliged to you, and as we have had
notice some time I hope if they do come, we shall be able to
give them such a Reception as they will not like. I expect to be
reinforced with 900 or 1000 men in two days, and every day to
grow stronger. I have thought seriously on every method of
sending you arms; but do not see as we are threatned with an
attack, that I can answer sending such a detachment from
hence. A march that must take up 4 days, as well bring the
arms safe to you. Consider the Clan hattonn[666] are all come
home. The Frasers and the Gentlemen of Badenoch are
appointed to intercept them, and if we have any Business it
must be over before they return. As to the number you
mention, you know how small the number is, I have to give,
and how many demands are made on me, and by people who
are none of them near so well provided as you are. If you can
send down 300 men, I shall endeavour to provide them as well
as I can that is the outmost I can do. You are very good as you
be advanced to send us constantly what accounts you get, but
by all I can learn your accounts magnify their numbers greatly.
I beg you will make my Compliment to all ffriends.—I am with
real Esteem and Sincerity, Dr. Sir, yours etc.
[576] This date not quite right. The ‘Rout of Moy’ took place
on the 17th. Loudoun evacuated Inverness on the 18th, and
the Jacobite army reached the town the same day. The castle
(Fort George), garrisoned partly by Grant’s company and
commanded by his uncle, surrendered to the Prince on
February 20th. (Scots Mag., viii. p. 92.)
[577] Sir Everard Fawkener, secretary to the Duke of
Cumberland; b. 1684; originally a London mercer and silk
merchant; the friend and host of Voltaire in England 1726-29;
abandoned commerce for diplomacy; knighted and sent as
ambassador to Constantinople 1735; became secretary to the
Duke of Cumberland, and served with him in the Flanders
campaign; for his services was made joint postmaster-general
1745; accompanied the Duke throughout his campaign in
Scotland 1746; d. 1758.
[578] The Duke of Cumberland arrived at Aberdeen on
February 27th or 28th.
[579] Not the modern Castle Forbes on the Don, in Keig
parish, but the old Castle Forbes at Druminnor, in the parish of
Auchindoir and Kearn.
[580] Cumberland crossed the Spey on April 12th.
[581] Fort Augustus surrendered to the Jacobites, March
5th.
[582] Alexander, the father, had died, a prisoner, before
29th July. He died a natural death, but in Glenurquhart it was
believed that he was burned to death in a barrel of tar. (Wm.
Mackay, Urquhart and Glenmoriston, p. 288.)
[583] Not dated, but must have been written before 29th
July, i.e. prior to Sheugly’s death.
[584] Sir Dudley Ryder (1691-1756) was Attorney-General
1737-54; prosecuted the Jacobite prisoners of 1746; appointed
Lord Chief-Justice, 1754; cr. Baron Ryder of Harrowby 1756,
and died the same year.
[585] Hon. William Murray (1705-92), fourth son of David,
5th Viscount Stormont. He was Solicitor-General 1742-54, and
the active prosecutor of Lord Lovat; Attorney-General 1754-56;
Lord Chief-Justice 1756-88; created Baron Mansfield 1756,
and Earl of Mansfield 1776. His father and eldest brother were
denounced as rebels, fined and imprisoned for their conduct in
1715. His brother James (c. 1690-1770) attached himself to
the court of the Chevalier de St. George; in 1718 he was
plenipotentiary for negotiating the marriage of James. In 1721
he was created (Jacobite) Earl of Dunbar, and he was
Secretary of State at the court in Rome, 1727 to 1747; he was
dismissed in the latter year at the desire of Prince Charles,
who deemed him responsible for the Duke of York’s entering
the Church; he retired to Avignon, where he died s.p. in 1770.
Murray’s sisters entertained Prince Charles in the house of
their brother, Lord Stormont, at Perth from the 4th to the 10th
April 1745.
[586] Solicitor to the Treasury.
[587] This report is printed, post, p. 400.
[588] Alexander Grossett, a captain in Price’s Regiment
(14th, now P. of W. O. West Yorkshire). An engraving, dated
14th Jan. 1747, entitled ‘Rebel Gratitude,’ depicts the death of
Lord Robert Ker and Captain Grossett at Culloden. About the
latter the following legend is engraved on the print: ‘Captain
Grosett, Engineer and Aid de Camp to the General.’ The rebel
‘shot Captain Grosett dead with his own pistol which happened
accidentally to fall from him as he was on Horseback, under
pretence of restoring the same to the Captain.’ Grossett had
been aide-de-camp to General Handasyde; he was serving on
General Bland’s staff at Culloden, according to family tradition.
[589] Sir John Shaw of Greenock, 3rd bart.; he was a
cousin of Grossett’s. I have failed to find his name in any
record of officers connected with the customs or excise at this
time. His father, whom he succeeded in 1702, had been ‘one
of H.M. principal tacksmen for the Customs and Excise,’ a pre-
Union appointment, and it is possible that the son succeeded
to his father’s office or to some of its perquisites. Sir John was
M.P. for Renfrewshire 1708-10; for Clackmannanshire 1722-
27; and again for Renfrewshire 1727-34. He married Margaret,
d. of Sir Hew Dalrymple of North Berwick 1700, and died 1752.
[590] Letter i. p. 379.
[591] Brigadier-General Thomas Fowke was the officer left
by Cope in command of the cavalry stationed at Stirling and
Edinburgh when he went on his march to the Highlands.
Fowke fled with the cavalry on the approach of the Jacobite
army, and joined Cope at Dunbar. He was present, second in
command, at Prestonpans. His conduct, along with that of
Cope and Colonel Peregrine Lascelles, was investigated by a
military court of inquiry, presided over by Field-Marshal Wade
in 1746. All were acquitted.
[592] I have failed to find this narrative, but it matters little,
as all that Grossett had to say was probably given in his
evidence at the trial of Lord Provost Stewart, an account of
which was printed in Edinburgh, 1747. It is accessible in public
libraries.
[593] See ante, p. 127.
[594] This refers to the capture of Charles Spalding of
Whitefield, Strathardle in Atholl, a captain in the Atholl brigade.
He was sent from Moffat on 7th November by William,
(Jacobite) Duke of Atholl, to Perthshire with despatches, and
carried a large number of private letters, which are preserved
in the Record Office. He was made prisoner near Kilsyth.
There is no mention of Grossett’s presence in the journals of
the day, the credit of the capture being given to Brown, the
factor of Campbell of Shawfield. (Chron. Atholl and
Tullibardine, iii. 86; Scots Mag., vii. 540.) Spalding was tried for
his life at Carlisle the following October and acquitted.
[595] The Lord Justice-Clerk had retired to Berwick when
the Jacobite army occupied Edinburgh. That army left
Edinburgh for good on 1st November, but the Justice-Clerk
and the officers of State did not return until the 13th.
[596] Lieut.-Gen. Roger Handasyde superseded Lieut.-
Gen. Guest as Commander-in-Chief in Scotland on his arrival
in Edinburgh on 14th November, and held that office until
December 5th, when he returned to England. Guest again
acted as Commander-in-Chief until relieved by Lieut.-General
Hawley, who arrived in Edinburgh on 6th January 1746.
The two infantry regiments that accompanied Handasyde
were Price’s (14th) and Ligonier’s (48th). They remained at
Edinburgh until December, but after the landing at Montrose of
Lord John Drummond with the French Auxiliaries (22nd
November), it was felt necessary to guard the passage of the
Forth with a stronger force, and the Edinburgh garrison was
sent to Stirling, Price’s on 6th December and Ligonier’s on the
9th, where they were joined by the Glasgow and the Paisley
militia. The cavalry were also sent to the neighbourhood of
Stirling, and Edinburgh was left with no defence but some
volunteers and afterwards by an Edinburgh regiment enlisted
for three months’ service, of which Lord Home was
commandant.
[597] Letters ii.-iv. pp. 379-382.
[598] Letter v. p. 383.
[599] Letter viii. p. 385.
[600] Letter ix. p. 386.
[601] Letter x. p. 387.
[602] The Glasgow regiment was then five hundred strong.
It was commanded by the Earl of Home, who was also colonel
of the Edinburgh regiment. There were about a hundred and
sixty men of the Paisley regiment, of which the Earl of
Glencairn was colonel. (Scots Mag., viii. 30.)
[603] Grossett’s account gives the erroneous impression
that the infantry was moved to Edinburgh on account of its
desertion by the cavalry. According to the Caledonian Mercury
and the Scots Mag., the cavalry and the main body of the
regular infantry came in together by forced marches from
Stirling on the morning of the 24th, ‘men and horses extremely
fatigued.’ The west country militia arrived later, by ship from
Bo’ness, the intention originally being to send them on to one
of the East Lothian or Berwickshire ports (see Lord Justice-
Clerk’s letter, xvii. p. 390 post). It was decided, however, not to
abandon Edinburgh, so the infantry was kept in the town, but
‘all the dragoons were marched eastward’; the text here
locates Haddington as their destination.
[604] Letters xii.-xviii. pp. 388, 391.
[605] Letter xiii. p. 388.
[606] The Milford, on 28th November, captured off
Montrose the Louis XV., one of Lord John Drummond’s
transports; eighteen officers and one hundred and sixty men
were made prisoners, and a large quantity of arms and military
stores were taken. The prisoners were confined in Edinburgh
Castle until 26th December, when they were sent to Berwick.
[607] Letter xix. p. 391.
[608] Henry C. Hawley; b. c. 1679, d. 1757. Served at
Almanza, where he was taken prisoner; Sheriffmuir, where he
was wounded; Dettingen and Fontenoy; C.-in-C. at Falkirk;
commanded the cavalry at Culloden. Execrated by the
Jacobites, and detested by his own soldiers, who dubbed him
for his cruelty the Lord Chief-Justice and hangman. He arrived
in Edinburgh on January 6th, 1746.
[609] In the ‘Narrative’ this sentence begins ‘Mr. Grossett
having received certain intelligence which he communicated to
Lord Justice Clarke that the rebells....’
[610] The ‘Narrative’ says ‘one hundred.’ This agrees with
Maxwell of Kirkconnell ‘not above a hundred,’ but the number
was continually increasing.
[611] Lieut.-colonel of Blakeney’s regiment (27th, now the
Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers).
[612] Letter xx. p. 392.
[613] Letters xxi., xxii. pp. 392, 393.
[614] William Blakeney, an Irishman, born in Co. Limerick
1672; brigadier-general 1741, major-general 1744, and
appointed lieut.-governor of Stirling Castle in that year. The
office was a sinecure in time of peace. When Cope left
Edinburgh for his highland march, Blakeney posted down to
Scotland and took command at Stirling Castle on 27th August.
When summoned to surrender the Castle to Prince Charles in
January, before and again after the battle of Falkirk, he replied
that he had always been looked upon as a man of honour and
the rebels should find he would die so. His successful defence
of Stirling was rewarded by promotion to lieut.-general and the
command of Minorca, which he held for ten years. His defence
of Minorca in 1756 against an overwhelming French force won
the admiration of Europe. For seventy days this old man of
eighty-four held out and never went to bed. On capitulation the
garrison was allowed to go free. Blakeney received an Irish
peerage for his defence of Minorca about the time that Admiral
Byng was executed for its abandonment.
[615] John Huske, 1692-1761, colonel of the 23rd (Royal
Welsh Fusiliers); was second in command at Falkirk, and
commanded the second line at Culloden. Major-general 1743;
general 1756. He was second in command to Blakeney at
Minorca in 1756.
Huske’s division on their march consisted of four regiments
of infantry of the line, and the Glasgow regiment, with
Ligonier’s (late Gardiner’s) and Hamilton’s dragoons (now 13th
and 14th Hussars).
[616] This is very misleading. Lord George Murray’s
scheme was to wait till the Government troops came up, and
tempt them over the bridge: when half had crossed he
intended to turn and cut them off. Lord Elcho had kept the
enemy in sight all the time, and records that the Jacobites
retired ‘in such order that the dragoons never offered to attack
them’; moreover, before the highlanders ‘had passed the
bridge the dragoons, who were in front of the regulars, drew
up close by the bridge and very abusive language passed
betwixt both sides.’
Even the picturesque touch of the substituted dinner must
go. Lord George particularly mentions both in a private letter to
his wife and in his historical letter to Hamilton of Bangour that
they had dined at Linlithgow, and the journals of the day state
that the affair occurred about 4 o’clock. Maxwell of Kirkconnell
considers that if the dragoons had been very enterprising they
might have cut off Lord George’s rear. (Elcho, Affairs of
Scotland, p. 370; Jac. Mem., p. 79; Chron. Ath. and Tullib., iii.
141; Kirkconnell’s Narrative, p. 98.)
[617] This is meant to be an account of the battle of Falkirk.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade
Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.
Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!
textbookfull.com

Full download Districts Documentation and Population in Rupert s Land 1740 1840 Aaron James Henry pdf docx

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Full download Districts Documentation and Population in Rupert s Land 1740 1840 Aaron James Henry pdf docx

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Full download Districts Documentation and Population in Rupert s Land 1740 1840 Aaron James Henry pdf docx

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Download the Full Version of textbook for Fast Typing at textbookfull.

Districts Documentation and Population in Rupert s

Download More textbook Instantly Today - Get Yours Now at textbookfull.com

Revitalizing City Districts Transformation Partnership for

James A Michener s Writer s Handbook Explorations in

Population-Based Public Health Clinical Manual: The Henry

Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President James C.

Leadership Philosophy in the Fiction of C S Lewis Aaron

Population Development Challenges in China Family Planning

Kierkegaard s God and the Good Life J Aaron Simmons

Small Business, Big Society Rupert Hodder

Aaron James Henry

ISBN 978-3-030-32729-3 ISBN 978-3-030-32730-9 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

2 Observational Practices in Natural History: Conducts

3 Hudson’s Bay Company’s the Right of Seizure, the Fort,

4 The Codification of Natural History: From Observation

5 District Space and Productive Labour 91

6 District Space, Population, and Biopolitics 107

7 Conclusion: District Space 127

Abstract This introductory chapter situates the rise of district-

Keywords District · HBC · Social vision · Political geography

© The Author(s) 2020 1

rather uninspiring read, is an important artefact in Canada’s history of

Michael Quinn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 [1796]), 204.

Observational Practices in Natural History:

Abstract This chapter theorizes the formation of observation within

Keywords Physico-theology · Natural history · Observation ·

In this chapter, I interrogate the historical formation of the naturalist’s

© The Author(s) 2020 5

of information—structured the conditions of possibility for the emergence

Foucault’s History of Detail

In the conclusion of his chapter on “Panopticism”, Foucault dismisses

1995 [1975]), 203.

2 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 226.

5 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 139.

6 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 141.

7 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 140.

The “table” as a procedure of knowing draws heavily on Foucault’s

panopticon with too heavy a task. Foucault’s discussion of the panopti-

Physico-Theology and the Birth of a Moral Practice

Seventeenth Century England that Protestantism, and by association natural theology,

According to Mary Poovey, the subsequent disillusionment in the power

Wealth and Society (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), 145.

14 Poovey, The History of the Modern Fact, 147.

15 Bruno Latour, “Part 2: Constitution,” in We Have Never Been Modern, trans.

18 Boyle, A Free Enquiry, 178.

21 Boyle, A Free Enquiry, 181.

22 Boyle, A Free Enquiry, 181.

23 Boyle, A Free Enquiry, 181.

24 Boyle, A Free Enquiry, 181.

Press, 1973), 226.

The Moral Virtues of Observation

As Margaret Jacob notes, Clarke’s insistence on the existence of a con-

article of faith. Consequently, the world of mortal affairs, to which all of

Liberty Fund, 2005 [1740]), 469.

“be rendered or preserved or contrariwise, distorted and impaired”.37

Ye study of Nature affords infinite pleasure to them ye minde it; that it

37 Turnbull,The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy, vol. 1: 7.