Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702–1771) was an English botanist, polymath, and author.

Life

Benjamin Stillingfleet was born in 1702 in Wood Norton, Norfolk to Mary Ann and

Edward Stillingfleet Edward Stillingfleet (17 April 1635 – 27 March 1699) was a British Christian theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as "the beauty of holin ...

. He was one of four children, and the only son.I. D. Hughes, 'Stillingfleet, Benjamin (1702–1771)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 200
accessed 26 Feb 2010
/ref> His grandfather,

, had died in 1699, but left no money to Benjamin's father as he disapproved of his father's opinions and his marriage. Stillingfleet was educated at

Norwich School Norwich School (formally King Edward VI Grammar School, Norwich) is a selective English independent day school in the close of Norwich Cathedral, Norwich. Among the oldest schools in the United Kingdom, it has a traceable history to 1096 as a ...

and excelled at classical languages. He was invited to

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

in 1720 at the request of the Master of the college

Richard Bentley Richard Bentley FRS (; 27 January 1662 – 14 July 1742) was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. Considered the "founder of historical philology", Bentley is widely credited with establishing the English school of Hellen ...

. Stillingfleet obtained a B.A. in 1723, but his application to become a Fellow at the college was rejected. This was in part due to the influence of Bentley, who is reported to have said that "Stillingfleet was too fine a gentleman to be buried within the walls of a college." He went on to serve as a tutor to his relative

William Windham William Windham (4 June 1810) of Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk, was a British Whig statesman. Elected to Parliament in 1784, Windham was attached to the remnants of the Rockinghamite faction of Whigs, whose members included his friends Charles J ...

Felbrigg Hall Felbrigg Hall is a 17th-century English country house near the village of that name in Norfolk. Part of a National Trust property, the unaltered 17th-century house is noted for its Jacobean architecture and fine Georgian interior. Outside i ...

for 13 years, in part to alleviate his financial struggles. He also accompanied Windham on the

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tut ...

. Whilst in Switzerland, the duo organised a series of

pantomimes Pantomime (; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) in other English-speakin ...

using other tourists as cast helpers and audience. Stillingfleet was in charge of the music and the scenery. This group was known as the "Common Room." During the summers the same group would set out on scientific explorations to find the undocumented glaciers of the Alps. After their return to England in 1742, Stillingfleet, now out of work, was awarded a pension of 100 pounds per year for the next seven years by the Windham family. Windham went on to become a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemati ...

in 1744 based on the explorations that he and Stillingfleet had made of glaciers in Switzerland, as well as for his mathematical abilities which Stillingfleet had tutored. In his later years, Stillingfleet devoted himself to the studies of botany and music. In 1759, he published ''Miscellaneous Tracts'', a botanical text which helped popularise the Linnaean system of classification. In 1761 Stillingfleet was lauded for his contribution to William Hudson's ''Flora Anglica'', another botanical text. Stillingfleet also published a ''Calendar of Flora'' in 1755, based on the observations of

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routle ...

, an early formalization of the study of plant phenology and based on Linnaeus' promotion of the idea of natural calendars. In the study of music, he published a translated edition of Giuseppe Tartini's work on

music theory Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the " rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (k ...

, and wrote the libretto for the opera Paradise Lost: An Oratorio. He planned to publish an edition of

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 16 ...

, but Stillingfleet gave up the project after Thomas Newton's 1749 edition was published. In the early 1750s, an intellectual society was formed by

Elizabeth Montagu Elizabeth Montagu (née Robinson; 2 October 1718 – 25 August 1800) was a British social reformer, patron of the arts, salonnière, literary critic and writer, who helped to organize and lead the Blue Stockings Society. Her parents were both ...

as part of the Blue Stocking Society movement. The society was noted for encouraging conversation over card playing. They invited various people to attend including

Anna Laetitia Barbauld Anna Laetitia Barbauld (, by herself possibly , as in French, Aikin; 20 June 1743 – 9 March 1825) was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature. A " woman of letters" who published in mu ...

Catharine Macaulay Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge, later Graham; 23 March 1731 – 22 June 1791), was an English Whig republican historian. Early life Catharine Macaulay was a daughter of John Sawbridge (1699–1762) and his wife Elizabeth Wanley (died 1733 ...

Elizabeth Griffith Elizabeth Griffith (1727 – 5 January 1793) was an 18th-century Welsh-born dramatist, fiction writer, essayist and actress, who lived and worked in Ireland. Biography Elizabeth Griffith was born in Glamorgan, Wales, to Dublin theater manager ...

Hannah More Hannah More (2 February 1745 – 7 September 1833) was an English religious writer, philanthropist, poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, who wrote on moral and religious subjects. Born in Bristol, she taught at a ...

Elizabeth Ann Linley Elizabeth Ann Sheridan ( Linley; September 1754 – 28 June 1792) was an 18th-century English singer who was known to have possessed great beauty. She was the subject of several paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, who was a family friend, Joshua ...

Charlotte Lennox Charlotte Lennox, ''née'' Ramsay (c. 1729 – 4 January 1804), was a Scottish novelist, playwright, poet, translator, essayist, and magazine editor, who has primarily been remembered as the author of '' The Female Quixote'', and for her assoc ...

and Stillingfleet. One story tells that Stillingfleet was not rich enough to have the proper formal dress, which included black silk stockings, and so he attended the society's meetings in everyday blue

worsted Worsted ( or ) is a high-quality type of wool yarn, the fabric made from this yarn, and a yarn weight category. The name derives from Worstead, a village in the English county of Norfolk. That village, together with North Walsham and Aylsham ...

stockings.

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer ...

records that during a period of poor conversation when Stillingfleet was absent, it was remarked that they were "nowhere without blue stockings." The term ''bluestocking'' came to refer to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation over fashion. Later, it came to refer to a member of a bluestocking society.Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg,
Montagu, Elizabeth (1718–1800)
" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 22 April 2007. In his ''Letter from Mr. Stillingfleet to Mr. Windham on his coming on age'', Stillingfleet appears apologetic towards Christianity. Stillingfleet died at his lodgings in

Piccadilly Piccadilly () is a road in the City of Westminster, London, to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road that connects central London to Hammersmith, Earl's Cour ...

and his papers were burnt following his own instructions. He left his estate to his one remaining sister. A monument was erected only after some years to his memory at the nearby

St James's Church, Piccadilly St James's Church, Piccadilly, also known as St James's Church, Westminster, and St James-in-the-Fields, is an Anglican church on Piccadilly in the centre of London, United Kingdom. The church was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren. Th ...

by his nephew.

Legacy

Stillingfleet was a populariser of the influential

Linnaean taxonomy Linnaean taxonomy can mean either of two related concepts: # The particular form of biological classification (taxonomy) set up by Carl Linnaeus, as set forth in his ''Systema Naturae'' (1735) and subsequent works. In the taxonomy of Linnaeus t ...

. The first surviving use of the epithet ''bluestocking'' is in reference to Stillingfleet.

theorized that his habit of wearing blue stockings to intellectual meetings gave rise to the name

Blue Stockings Society The Blue Stockings Society, an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century, emphasised education and mutual cooperation. Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey and others founded it in the early 1750s as a ...

. This phrase is the origin of the word ''bluestocking'', a pejorative epithet for a learned or intellectual woman. The word by loan translation is also used in German as ''Blaustrumpf'', in Dutch as ''blauwkous'' and in French as ''bas-bleu''.Bluestocking
derivation and etymology at Dictionary.com, accessed February 2010

Works

*
Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Natural History, Husbandry and Physick
' (1759) *''Paradise Lost: An Oratorio'' (1760) words by Stillingfleet, music by

John Christopher Smith John Christopher Smith (born Johann Christoph Schmidt; 1712, Ansbach3 October 1795, Bath) was an English composer who, following in his father's footsteps, became George Frideric Handel's secretary and amanuensis. Life John Christopher Smith wa ...

*
Principles and Power of Harmony
', (1771) – translation *
Literary life and select works of Benjamin Stillingfleet
', (1811)

References

External links

Benjamin Stillingfleet
at th
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stillingfleet, Benjamin 1702 births 1771 deaths People from North Norfolk (district) People educated at Norwich School Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge 18th-century British botanists Burials at St James's Church, Piccadilly