Footnotes

• '4 PENNY WORTH OF THE BEST ADVICE & DIRECTION' – AN UNRIVALLED SERIES BY WILLIAM PALEY, PRE-EMINENT EXPONENT OF 'NATURAL THEOLOGY' AND THE PRE-DARWINIAN WORLD VIEW: this is by some margin the single most important series of letters by Paley in existence, or indeed most probably ever written.
  
  It is both a significant source for the intellectual history of the century leading up to the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, and an outstanding biographical source for a man who was greatly admired by Darwin himself: 'In the last twenty years of his life Paley became an intellectual colossus at Cambridge, and he long remained a significant influence through the use of his works by generations of university students. Keynes, who thought the Principles "an immortal book" (Keynes, 108), placed Paley high among the intellectual influences shaping Malthus's political economy and pointed out that his influence at Cambridge for a generation or more was second only to Newton's. From 1787 into the early nineteenth century the Principles was mandatory for Cambridge examinations, and from 1822 to 1920 the Evidences of Christianity was on the required list for the Previous, or Little-go, examination for all second-year undergraduates. By 1814 twenty English editions of the Principles had appeared and by 1821 ten editions were published in the United States, where it is said to have been the most popular text on moral philosophy from the 1790s to the civil war... Darwin, who entered Christ's College in 1828, wrote of the Evidences of Christianity and Natural Theology: 'The careful study of these works ... was the only part of the Academical Course which ... was of the least use to me in the education of my mind' (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. N. Barlow, 1958, 59). In the second half of the century Paley's influence waned, falling victim to Darwin's evolutionary theory, which served to destroy the idea of nature as the product of design and with it the essential theological basis of his whole system... Twentieth-century commentators pointed to Paley as marking a philosophical era. Norman Sykes believed that Paley's importance "lay in the exactitude with which he represented the zeitgeist" of the utilitarianism of the eighteenth-century English establishment... Gerald Cragg held that Paley "represented the Indian summer of eighteenth-century assumptions"... In LeMahieu's account, the coherence of Paley's philosophy reflects "an ideological consensus among British intellectuals in the eighteenth century"; he "distilled and crystallized the strategic ideas of his predecessors into a philosophy whose very comprehensiveness justified its modest claims to originality"' (James E. Crimmins, ODNB). (Darwin as an undergraduate was, famously, to occupy Paley's rooms at Christ's, and some have seen, in Darwin's agonizing and near endless prevarication over publication of his evolutionary theory what, in Freudian terms, might be described as an Oedipal struggle with the revered mentor whose world he was to shatter; as if it were not just God that Darwin was displacing, but Paley also).
  
  This lively, sympathetic and often amusing series of letters is of incomparable biographical importance for any study of Paley. They were written to Paley's closest friends, patrons, and intellectual sparring-partners. A summary of their friendship is furnished by Paley's son and biographer, Edmund: 'Law and Paley had been acquainted while undergraduates, but their acquaintance did not approach intimacy till after Paley had taken his degree; and so much did it grow upon both of them by a habit of occasional intercourse during their joint tuition, that its closeness was only to be equalled by its duration. There existed between them a singular union of steady and rooted principle, perfect singleness and integrity of heart, congenial powers of mind, and great warmth of feeling... so true and steadfast was their friendship, that though thrown into different parts of the world, there was a constant interchange of letters and personal intercourse between them for thirty years, and their movements and enjoyments whilst at the university, as well as in late life, seem to have been regulated with reference to each other...This intimacy led to an introduction to Mr. Law's father, who was, according to Mr Paley's own words, "his first and best patron"' (Edmund Paley, The Works of William Paley, DD: And an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author, 1838, i, pp. lvi-lviii).
  
  John Law (1745-1810), the principal correspondent, after leaving Christ's, was successively Archdeacon of Carlisle and Bishop of Clonfert, Killala and Elphin; while his brother Edward (1750-1818), recipient of sixteen letters, was afterwards Lord Chief Justice and first Baron Ellenborough. Their father, Edward Law (1703-1787) was Bishop of Carlisle. In his notice on Paley for the ODNB, James E. Crimmins fleshes out the son's account: 'Paley's connection with the Law family greatly advanced his clerical career... Paley's "long and faithful friendship" with Law was acknowledged in the dedication to Horae Paulinae (1790). In 1777 Paley was invited to preach the visitation sermon in Carlisle Cathedral for Edmund Law, and in 1782 he preached the sermon at John Law's consecration as bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh. Both John and Edmund Law encouraged Paley to revise his lectures on ethics for publication, and the Principles was dedicated to the bishop of Carlisle. When the bishop died at Rose Castle in Carlisle in 1787 Paley wrote a short memoir of his life, which afterward appeared in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Law connection extended to the prelate's third son, Edward, later Lord Ellenborough and lord chief justice of the king's bench, whom Paley is said to have aided in his study of the law' (ODNB).
  
  Furthermore – execrable handwriting apart – these letters make very good reading being full of lively and irreverent anecdote which impart – as all good letters do – an often vivid sense of the person who is wielding the quill. As far as we are aware, this series is unpublished. While, by implication, Paley's son and biographer acknowledges their primacy as a source for the life of his father, with tact characteristic of his day he refrains from quotation; indeed, he makes no mention of having consulted our letters at all. He contents himself instead with quotation from one sole letter, and this being by Law to his father. As he explains: 'Some letters which remain among Dr. Paley's papers and manuscript works mark very clearly the depth of affection and interest; and it is under a conviction that familiarity between friends ought to be sacred, that the present writer restrains himself from giving more extracts in this place. Let one suffice, which speaks not only to the point now meant to be recorded, but to the general character and cast of mind of the Bishop of Elphin' (op. cit., p. lxii). A note with the letters states that two were published in an archaeological periodical. A transcript was also made for the family and is to be found among the Ellenborough Papers at the National Archives (PRO 30/12). Like most such series, depletions have occurred, probably during the 'autograph mania' of the early nineteenth century when some material (especially from the folder for 1785) appears to have been given away to collectors, as for example letters from the correspondence now at King's College, Cambridge (J.M. Keynes MSS) and a letter in the Enys Collection (sale in these rooms, 28 September 2004, lot 275).