Quicksilver Reading CompanionJohn Comstock’s estate at Epsom serves as a rural refuge for natural philosophers fleeing the Great Plague of 1665, a bubonic epidemic that killed roughly a quarter of London’s population.
“at epsom” — Stephenson’s annotation: “Wilkins did spend much of the Plague Year at a nobleman’s Epsom estate, working with Hooke and others. The real name of the estate was Durdans and the real name of the nobleman was the Earl of Berkeley. To create the fictional character of John Comstock, I have freely adapted elements from the lives of several English noblemen of the time, including Berkeley, John Evelyn, and Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon.”
“vis inertiae” — A Latin term meaning “force of inactivity,” Inertia was used by 17th-century thinkers to describe the inherent resistance of physical objects to any change in their state of motion.
“A new edition of the Cryptonomicon?” — This refers to Wilkins’s 1641 work Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger, a foundational text on cryptography and linguistics; the title is also a nod to Stephenson’s earlier novel Cryptonomicon.
“that French Papist wife of his” — Henrietta Maria, the Catholic queen consort of Charles I, was deeply distrusted by the English public for her religion and her attempts to secure military aid from Catholic powers in Europe.
“Hugh Peters had come back from Salem” — Hugh Peter was a radical Puritan preacher who spent years in the Massachusetts Bay Colony before returning to England to become a prominent chaplain in Cromwell’s New Model Army.
“seized all of the merchants’ gold in the Tower” — In the Seizure of the Mint (1640), Charles I confiscated £130,000 of bullion to fund his military campaigns, a move that permanently shattered the trust of the London merchant class.
“Scottish Covenanters down as far as Newcastle” — The Covenanters were Scottish Presbyterians who rebelled against Charles I’s religious impositions, successfully invading Northern England during the Bishops’ Wars.
“Catholics rebelling in Ulster” — The Irish Rebellion of 1641 involved an uprising by Irish Catholics against Protestant settlers, sparking rumors of a “Popish Plot” that terrified London.
“Europe twenty-five years into the Thirty Years’ War” — The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) was a catastrophic series of conflicts that devastated Central Europe and reshaped the continent’s religious and political boundaries.
“Spain and Portugal dividing into two separate kingdoms” — The Portuguese Restoration War began in 1640, ending the sixty-year Iberian Union and restoring Portugal’s independence from the Spanish Habsburgs.
“the Dutch taking advantage of it to steal Malacca” — During the Siege of Malacca (1641), the Dutch East India Company (VOC) captured a vital Portuguese stronghold, securing Dutch dominance over the spice trade routes.
“the Universal Character is the Alpha” — Philosophers sought a Universal Characteristic, a theoretical formal language that would use logical symbols to express scientific and metaphysical truths with mathematical precision.
“Is this anything like Comenius’s project?” — John Amos Comenius was a Czech educator who proposed “Pansophism,” a system aimed at organizing all human knowledge into a single, universal framework.
“conceived the Invisible College” — The Invisible College was a precursor to the Royal Society, consisting of a loose network of “natural philosophers” who exchanged ideas through letters during the chaos of the Civil War.
“invitation to be Master of Harvard College” — There is a historical legend that Comenius and Harvard were linked by an offer for him to serve as the college’s president in 1641, though modern historians debate its validity.
“word arrived that fermat had died” — From the original wiki (T Whalen): “…leaving behind a theorem or two that needed proving.
This is a probably an oblique allusion to Fermat’s Last Theorem, which went unproven until the late 20th century, or perhaps to Fermat’s “Little” Theorem, which Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz claimed to have proven before 1683.
Fermat’s last theorem reads as follows:
xn + yn = zn has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y and z when n > 2
Fermat wrote this theorem in the margins of one of his copy of a then new translation of Diophantes’ Arithmetica.”
“punishments” — Stephenson’s annotation: “This is a straight quote from Wilkins’s Essay.”
“He has taken to calling them ‘cells’” — During his Discovery of Cells, Hooke coined the term because the microscopic structures he observed in cork reminded him of the small rooms, or cella, inhabited by monks.
“all things in Earth and Heaven can be classified into forty different genera” — In An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language, Wilkins attempted to categorize the entire universe into a hierarchical system where the structure of a word revealed the nature of the thing it named.
“letters… from Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spinoza” — The Royal Society was the center of the Republic of Letters, a global intellectual network that included the greatest minds of the age, from Dutch physicists to lens-grinding philosophers.
“remnants of everything that had passed beneath the microscope” — Hooke’s 1665 book Micrographia was a massive success, featuring stunning copperplate illustrations of insects and objects that revealed a hidden world to the public for the first time.
“fly stuck to quill” — Stephenson’s annotation: “In answer to a question posed by Mr. Edward Rothstein in the 20 Sept. 2003 edition of the New York Times: Hooke did indeed conduct this experiment. It is described on pp. 172-173 of Micrographia, in a chapter entitled Observ. XXXVIII. Of the Structure and motion of the Wings of Flies.”
“Wilkins has the stone.” — Bladder Stones were a common and agonizing affliction in this era; the “cutting for the stone” was a dangerous surgical procedure often discussed with dread by members of the Royal Society.
“Oil of vitriol works” — This was the archaic name for Sulfuric Acid, a potent mineral acid essential to early chemical and alchemical experiments.
“leaving behind a theorem or two that still needed proving.” — This refers to Fermat’s Last Theorem, which Pierre de Fermat claimed to have proven in a book margin; it remained one of mathematics’ greatest mysteries for over 300 years.
“the new King Carlos II was sickly” — Charles II of Spain was the last of the Spanish Habsburgs; his severe physical and mental infirmities, caused by generations of inbreeding, triggered a European crisis over who would inherit his empire.
“Someone named Lubomirski was staging a rebellion” — Lubomirski’s Rokosz was a 1665–1666 uprising by Polish nobility against their king, illustrating the widespread political instability across Europe.
“the body lifted up into the Air: STRAPPADO” — The Strappado was a brutal form of torture where a victim’s hands were tied behind their back and they were hoisted by a rope, often causing permanent joint dislocation.
“Molten earth surrounded by the Cœlestial Æther” — Scientists once believed space was filled with Luminiferous Aether, a weightless medium that allowed light and gravity to travel through the vacuum.
“reckon the speed of light” — During this period, astronomers were beginning to calculate the Speed of Light; Ole Rømer would eventually prove in 1676 that light does not travel instantaneously.
“generation of flies and worms out of decomposing meat” — The theory of Spontaneous Generation—that life could arise from non-living matter—was being debunked by experiments showing that maggots only appeared if flies could reach the meat.
“That is his money-scrivener.” — Money-scriveners were early financial middlemen who evolved from legal clerks into brokers who managed investments and loans for the wealthy.
“handling notes that serve as money” — This era saw the rise of Goldsmith Banking, where London goldsmiths issued receipts for gold deposits that began to circulate as the first English banknotes.
“Lord Chancellor of England” — The Lord Chancellor was the highest-ranking officer in the kingdom, acting as the King’s chief legal advisor and the head of the judiciary.
“Gunpowder Plots” — The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a failed Catholic attempt to blow up King James I and Parliament, an event that fueled anti-Catholic paranoia for a century.
“Elizabeth, the Winter Queen” — Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I, was Queen of Bohemia for a single winter; her exile and her many children made her a central figure in European Protestant politics.
“The Dutch and the English were at war.” — The Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) was a global naval conflict fought over trade dominance, occurring even as the Plague ravaged London.
“Anne Hyde—a close relation of John Comstock.” — Anne Hyde was the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon and the wife of the Duke of York; her marriage to the heir to the throne was a major scandal because she was a commoner.
“The two Princesses, Mary and Anne” — These children of James II would both eventually become monarchs: Mary II and Queen Anne, the latter being the final ruler of the House of Stuart.
“bought them from Spinoza in Amsterdam” — The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was famous among the scientific community for his skill in grinding high-precision optical lenses for telescopes and microscopes.
“MILTON, PREFACE TO Eikonoklastes” — Eikonoklastes was a political tract by John Milton written to defend the execution of Charles I against those who viewed the dead king as a saintly martyr.
“the Banqueting House… goddesses that Rubens had daubed” — The Banqueting House at Whitehall is famous for its ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens; ironically, Charles I walked under these paintings of divine monarchy on his way to his execution scaffold outside.
“Sir Robert Moray came to visit” — Sir Robert Moray was a key founder of the Royal Society and a high-ranking Freemason who served as a vital link between the scientists and the court of Charles II.
“the western horizon” — From the original wiki (Armaced): “Daniel found that he was walking directly towards a blazing planet, a few degrees above the western horizon, which could only be Venus. The dawn was making the fields shimmer pink and green.
This is most likely a typo, for if it was dawn Venus would appear in the eastern sky, near the sun.”
“Hooke opened up the thorax of a live dog” — The early Royal Society frequently practiced Vivisection, performing public experiments on live animals to study the mechanics of breathing and the circulation of blood.
“the son of a Phanatique?” — Phanatiques was a derogatory term used by Royalists to describe religious non-conformists and Puritans, implying they were dangerously obsessed and politically subversive.
Original annotations by: stephenson, whalen, jonnay, bornstein, armaced