Remarkably, within two generations, the hypothetical Solomon’s House
would come to fruition in the assemblage of the Royal Society (not by
coincidence in the City of London); but it would take a civil war, the
beheading of the king, a fortuitous conglomeration of virtuosi, and the
restoration of the sovereign to spark the world’s first genius society.
After centuries of increasing power and broadening influence, the
monarchs of England had authenticated their greatest dominion under the
rule of King Henry VIII and later, Queen Elizabeth and her son, King
James I. Church and state were united, land and assets had been seized,
and the Divine Right of Kings was proclaimed to an unprecedented degree.
King James’s son King Charles I assumed the throne in 1625, ratcheting up
the tension between king and parliament, with its eventual dissolution.
Parliament and the king went to war, with Charles I beheaded in 1649.
England was ruled by Oliver Cromwell and his cabinet for over a decade,
but by 1660, Parliament restored the monarchy and installed Charles II as
king. The Houses of Commons and Lords had never been so powerful, and
to this day enjoy authority of rule throughout Britain.
In the half century before the ascension of Charles II, the Roman
Catholic Church on the continent was still persecuting Christians for
heretical scientific thinking (while Catholics in England faced similar life-
threatening persecution). With the restoration of the monarchy and the
English antipathy toward Catholicism, combined with the new king’s
interest in intellectual topics, those intrepid philosophers of the new
Scientia (Latin: knowledge) had found their man.
For a few brief years, there was peace and quiet in London. A political
and rational homeostasis had been secured in England following the
interregnum, and as happens so regularly, the philosophical advancements
that occurred during and after the revolution were massively
consequential.
Francis Bacon had thrown down the gauntlet for science. “Bacon’s main
and permanent significance, therefore, is as a thinker about science: the
conditions favorable to its growth; the changes and procedures required to
ensure its progress; its contribution to the inauguration of a new regime of
knowledge; and its technological and moral realization in works to
improve the human condition.”^20 Solomon’s House, slowly at first,
became a reality. On November 28, 1660, three dozen men met at Gresham
College in London to hear twenty-eight-year-old Christopher Wren speak