Caroline Crampton

A late winged victory

To get as close to the largely unknown Francis Willughby as possible, Tim Birkhead sets to with a scalpel on a bittern

At first glance, the 17th-century natural historian Francis Willughby is an ideal subject for a biography. He lived in interesting times, as the adage goes. He was born in 1635, seven years before the start of the English civil war, and after a youth spent under Cromwell’s rule, came of age as the monarchy was restored. He was a landowner, and travelled extensively in Europe. Best of all, he mixed with many of the celebrated minds of his time. As an original member of what became the Royal Society, Willughby included in his circle Sir Christopher Wren, John Evelyn, Robert Hooke and John Wilkins.

Why, then, has his life never been written until now? Tim Birkhead offers two compelling reasons: Willughby died of a ‘pleurisie’ at the age of 36 in 1672; and most of his original notes and letters have since been lost. The fact that anything of his work remains is testament to the preservation efforts of his family and friends — in particular his long-time collaborator John Ray, who oversaw the publication of their groundbreaking research on birds, fish and insects in the decades after Willughby’s death.

As well as piecing together the chronology and events of his subject’s short life, Birkhead has tried hard to set Willughby and Ray’s work in the context of the field of natural history at the time, rather than viewing it through a modern lens. Science, or the ‘new philosophy’, was a novel pursuit in 17th-century England. Field research practices and the taxonomy of species that we now use barely existed. Willughby and Ray not only made discoveries, but also pioneered the means of categorisation by which to comprehend them. Ideas such as evolution and natural selection were far from obvious then.

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