Joseph Priestley

Chapter Xi 167

Priestley as a man of science--His characteristics as a philosopher--Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air--His discovery of the influence of vegetation on vitiated air--Atmospheric air not elementary--His researches on nitric oxide--Eudiometry--Nitrous oxide--Discovers hydrogen chloride--Prepares oxygen from nitre (1771)--Isolates ammonia gas--Discovers sulphur dioxide--Dephlogisticated air (oxygen)--Discovers silicon fluoride--Intra-diffusion of gases--Respiration--Priestley's opinions of the value of experimental science in education--Discovers nitrosulphuric acid--Notes the constancy of composition of the atmosphere--Prepares chlorine--Sound in "air"--Experiments relating to phlogiston--The seeming conversion of water into air--Watt and the compound nature of water--Discovers sulphuretted hydrogen--Priestley's confession of faith in phlogiston.

Index 225

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Joseph Priestley, from the portrait in Dr Williams' Library by Artaud (Photogravure) Frontispiece Birthplace of Priestley, from a drawing by J. A. Symington after a photograph page 5 The Pillaging of Priestley's House during the Birmingham Riots facing page 120

Joseph Priestley

CHAPTER I. Birth--Parentage--Home Life--Early Education

Birth--Parentage--Home Life--Early Education

"If," says Mr Frederic Harrison, "we choose one man as a type of the intellectual energy of the eighteenth century we could hardly find a better than Joseph Priestley, though his was not the greatest mind of the century. His versatility, eagerness, activity and humanity; the immense range of his curiosity in all things, physical, moral or social; his place in science, in theology, in philosophy and in politics; his peculiar relation to the Revolution, and the pathetic story of his unmerited sufferings, may make him the hero of the eighteenth century."

In these few lines Mr Harrison has indicated, in terms sufficiently precise, the leading features in the character and life-history of one of the most remarkable men of the eighteenth century. To what extent he may be regarded as a hero and as a type of the intellectual energy of that century it is the purpose of the following pages to make clear.

Joseph Priestley was born at Fieldhead, in the parish of Birstall, near Leeds, on March 13 (Old Style), 1733. He was named after his paternal grandfather, "an eminent tradesman, as much famed for his heavenly conduct as his grandson (Joseph) has since been for natural abilities."

"The Priestleys," writes Madame Belloc, the great-granddaughter of the subject of this memoir, in her charming essay, "Joseph Priestley in Domestic Life" (Contemporary Review, October 1894), "were of an old Presbyterian stock; one branch of the family acquired wealth and lived at Whiteways, but his (Joseph's) own immediate ancestors were farmers and clothiers, people of substance in the yeoman class. We can trace them accurately as far as the middle of the seventeenth century, when one Phoebe Priestley, after wrestling with fever in her household, was herself stricken, and 'lay like a lamb before the Lord' on her deathbed. Her husband wrote a long and touching account of all she said and did, that her children might know what manner of mother they had lost. These people were presumably of the same stock as the Priestleys of Soylands, who ran back into the Middle Ages.

"The children of the Priestley families were all named after scriptural characters. They were Josephs, Timothys and Sarahs from one generation to another. The Bible was stamped into them, and from it they drew all the inspiration of their lives."

Joseph Priestley the elder was born in 1660, and died on August 2, 1745. He married Sarah Healey and had by her eight children, five sons and three daughters, of whom Jonas, the father of Joseph Priestley the younger, born about 1700, was the seventh child and fourth son. Jonas Priestley married Mary, a daughter of Joseph Swift, a farmer and maltster of Shafton, near Wakefield, and had by her six children, four sons and two daughters, of whom Joseph was the eldest and Timothy the second; Martha, the elder girl, who died in 1812, married John Crouch, and was left a widow in poor circumstances in 1786. Another member of the Priestley family who requires mention for the purpose of this narrative is Sarah, the sister of Jonas and second daughter of Joseph Priestley the elder. She was born in 1692 and married John Keighley--"a man who had distinguished himself for his zeal for religion and for his public spirit." She was left a widow in 1745. Three years before this she took her nephew Joseph, the subject of this memoir, to live with her, and "was fond of him in the extreme." She died in 1764. Her brother John, Joseph Priestley the younger's uncle, died on February 28, 1786, aged ninety-two. "He was a remarkable man and of a singularly happy constitution, both of body and mind."

This happy constitution of body and mind seems indeed to have been a characteristic of many members of the family, the several branches of which were remarkably healthy and long-lived.

Priestley says of his father Jonas that he had uniformly better spirits than any man he ever knew, and by this means was as happy towards the close of life, when reduced to poverty and dependent upon others, as in his best days. These facts are not without interest as serving to account for much that we shall have occasion to note in the character and temperament of the subject of this biography.

Fieldhead, the house in which he first saw the light, had been occupied by the family for several generations. It was a small two-storey building, built of stone and slated with flag, similar in character to many of the houses still standing in the district, the long, low windows in the upper storeys betokening that they were formerly occupied by weavers. It was last lived in by Martha Priestley (Mrs Crouch), but on the death of her husband in 1786 was abandoned by the family, and, falling into decay, was pulled down about fifty years ago.

The Priestleys were a simple, sober, honest, God-fearing folk, staunch Calvinists, and deeply religious. Jonas Priestley was a manufacturer of "home-spun"--a weaver and cloth dresser--two trades now distinct but then practised in common--who took his week's work on ass-back, on roads little better than bridle-paths, to the Sunday market in Leeds. He was of a class characteristic of the district.

These hand-loom weavers, who lived in the hill country lying to the west of Leeds, were generally men of small capitals; they often annexed a small farm to their business, or possessed a field or two on which to support a horse and cow, and were for the most part blessed with the comforts without the superfluities of life. During five or six days of the week they dwelt in their own little village, among trees and fields, taking no thought of the outside world and contenting themselves with the homely gossip of their farmstead or hamlet. On market day they came into the town in shoals, clad in their quaint corduroy breeches, broad-brimmed hats, and brass-buttoned coats of antique cut, bringing their produce on pack-horses, to await the visits of the merchants--the commercial aristocracy of Leeds, then a town of some 16,000 or 17,000 inhabitants--who were the agents through which the outer world received its supply of Yorkshire woollen goods. They were a shrewd, careful race, somewhat stolid and slow of speech and not given to great mental briskness or activity, keenly appreciative of the blessings of liberty and usually in sympathy with the political party to whom the cause of liberty was for the moment entrusted; sober, godly souls for the most part; regular in their attendance at public worship, and upon the whole preferring the plebeian zeal of the Chapel to the aristocratic repose of the Church.

And what a world it was in which they thus serenely dwelt apart.

"It was," writes Madame Belloc, "the time of Louis the Fifteenth in France and of George the Second in England, and the nephews and nieces of Charlotte Princess Palatine were still living, and her letters, whose name is legion, yet lay stored in the cabinets of her correspondents, full of inexpressible details discussed in most expressive language. It was the time when Jeanie Deans walked from Scotland to beg her sister's life of Queen Caroline, and met Madge Wildfire in the way. It was the time when the polite world was composed of 'men, women and Herveys'; when Squire Pendarves was found dead in his bed in Greek Street, Soho, leaving his young widow to be courted by John Wesley and wedded by Dr Delany; when statesmen bribed, and young blades drank, and Sir Harbottle carried off Harriet Byron, whose shrieks brought Sir Charles Grandison to the rescue, sword in hand. It was the period when the Jacobite Rebellion flamed up and expired; when the Young Pretender marched to Derby and the heads of the decapitated lords were exposed on Temple Bar; tragedies, agonies, highway robberies, Dick Turpin, Jack Sheppard, smugglers, the press-gang; Frederick Prince of Wales quarrelling in Leicester Square; Queen Caroline on her death-bed telling her weeping little George, 'que l'un n'empêche pas l'autre'; Horace Walpole making the grand tour; Dean Swift dying in agonised misery. Merciful Heavens! What an England, of which we possess the daily diary! We can see Hogarth at his easel, and Sir Joshua taking his first stiff portraits, and Garrick going on pilgrimage to Stratford, and the young king courting Hannah Lightfoot and marrying his little bride from Mecklenburg. Without too much verifying of dates it is certain that all this was happening before Dr Priestley was thirty years of age, and that of none of it is there the faintest mention in the account he has drawn up of his own childhood, youth and young manhood, though he was himself destined to be one of the principal illustrations of the Georgian era. For anything which appears to the contrary, he and his friends might have dwelt in some far-distant planet whose inhabitants were wholly given up to study and to prayer."

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