Chapter Four- the moral landscape

A schematic portrayal of the intellectual shift occurring in the late seventeenth-century, which is still given in most historiography concerning history, natural history, chorography and antiquarianism in England, would suggest that before 1660 the emblematic and metaphorical meaning of objects took precedence, while soon afterwards ‘the disinterested study of nature, science and antiquities’ took pride of place. However, as many historians inspired by anthropological methodologies, have argued over the past two decades, this picture of the disenchantment of the world is highly problematic. There was a significant change in the meanings encoded in the study of the natural world; but this was not a removal of meaning, it was rather a redefinition of the meanings encoded in the landscape. The value of this approach has been amply demonstrated by McRae’s study of the meanings of space and mobility to domestic travellers. I argue that the landscape within which McRae’s subjects situate themselves can itself be studied as a semantic object. That is to say, I am not just referring to a physical landscape that provides a near-immobile constraint to societal action and historical change, or a landscape to which people must shape themselves. Instead I will be discussing the landscape as a cultural construct which is constantly changing and interacting with society, as Walsham has done in relation to religious culture: ‘a porous surface upon which each generation inscribes its own values and preoccupations without ever being able to erase entirely those of the preceding one.’

This chapter will, therefore, discuss the meanings embedded within the landscape, in the context of a wider narrative from c. 1580 to 1730. It uses Camden and Defoe as book-ends for the discussion, arguing that their national accounts demonstrate the semantic shift to which I am referring. Camden’s Britannia is structured by historic counties (and indeed tribes) and rivers; Defoe’s Tour thro’ Great Britain is structured by circuits emanating from London; one is forged around the symbolic arteries and literal past of the nation, the other around equally ideological trade networks and the expected, or hoped for, progressive future. In the intervening period the county natural historians did not emplace their tours within a national narrative; their focus was local, but we can still see the influence of their wider preconceptions. The chapter will, after a lengthy introduction, discuss the embedded religious and medical meanings which particular natural objects held. The county natural historians, whether physico-theologists or not, all believed that through the natural curiosity of humanity the study of the natural world would enable us ‘to take a clearer view of the infinite wisdom of the great creator’, who provided people with everything they needed in the natural world. When county natural historians did share potentially useful information, as in the case of the health properties of the landscape and in particular natural springs, I will demonstrate that they did so in such a way as to embed the properties within the landscape itself, rather than the people who inhabited it. By associating both God and health with the landscape they were observing our authors demonstrate the particular power of natural history to “naturalise” the economic, moral and social ideas of the times.

I also have particular interests in the following topics:

The relationships between financial credit, legal, and scientific testimony

The philosophy of history, especially regarding "locality", the role of narrative, and social causation.

Early Modern practices of collecting

Contemporary financial and political culture