Mr. Selden's Map of China by Timothy Brook

Author:Timothy Brook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Archbishop Laud was a controversial figure to his contemporaries and a complicated person to himself. A celibate vicar of modest upbringing, Laud rose to the powerful post of Bishop of London under James I and was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I. The further he rose in the service of the increasingly unpopular Stuart kings, the more staunchly he supported them, even to the point of upholding James’s claim to divine right. Laud was a shrewd man, instinctual in his ability to manipulate others, but he was also vain about his own judgements and thus easily gulled by his own certainties. He had risen from very modest circumstances, which may explain in part his political ambition but not the actual political course he ended up taking. Someone more devoted to his own personal advantage would have figured out how to pull out of the downward political tailspin that led in 1641 to his incarceration in the Tower. He was alert enough to see what was coming two years earlier, when he donated the bulk of his Oriental manuscripts to the Bodleian rather than let them fall into the hands of his enemies. But he was not so ambitious as to abandon the principles by which he powered that ambition, which included the sanctity of the king and the preservation of the Church he headed. Three and a half years later he would be beheaded by the Puritan extremists he disdained.

Laud’s disconcerting combination of theological subtlety and political appetite made him revered by some, loathed by many and avoided by most when they didn’t owe him anything. John Selden was among the latter. Not being a churchman or interested in religious matters, he had nothing to do with Laud until his second imprisonment, when the archbishop chose to position himself as Selden’s patron. It was rumoured that Laud worked out the deal with Charles to release Selden in exchange for the publication of The Closed Sea, although that rumour may have originated with Laud himself. Some kind of deal was struck, to judge from Laud’s diary entry for 2 February 1636: ‘My nearer care of J.S. was professed, and his promise to be guided by me; and absolutely settled on Friday after.’

Selden may have misled himself into thinking he could exploit Laud to find a middle way between the king and bishops clamouring for their prerogatives on the one side and the republicans in Parliament who wanted to tear down those privileges and erect their own on the other. A token of how close they may have become can be seen today in the History of Science Museum in Oxford. John Selden somehow came to own two Persian astrolabes for measuring the angles of the sun and stars to determine location, both of them beautifully worked in metal. Their exact provenance is unknown, although they were probably acquired in North Africa. One of these he presented to Laud as a gift. Both bequeathed them to the Bodleian Library, albeit separately.

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