Mission Impossible: Reverend Francis LeJau in South Carolina

"There is one thing wherein I find the people here generally like those in the West Indies, they are so well persuaded that what they do is well, as to be very angry when their mistakes are shown to them and they will find cunning arguments to oppose truth itself." Francis Le Jau, 1709

Francis Le Jau was a French Huguenot who fled to England c. 1685 to escape religious persecution under Louis XIV. After his arrival, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, earning a doctorate. He then became an Anglican minister. 

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), founded in 1701, sent him to St. Christopher in the West Indies and then to South Carolina as a missionary. (Image: portrait of Le Jau, by Henrietta Johnston)

Le Jau arrived in Charleston (then Charles Town) in 1706. He was 41 years old and in good health. The colony, slightly younger, was not. The colonists had just driven off a combined French and Spanish attack, and were expecting another soon. Anglicans and Protestant Dissenters were feuding with one another over an act making the Church of England the established religion in the Carolina colony, which then included what is now North Carolina. [Image: A View of Charleston in 1773]. 

In addition, Charleston was suffering from a deadly epidemic of yellow fever. Samuel Thomas, the first and thus far only SPG missionary to have come to the colony, was among the hundreds of dead. Local officials whisked Le Jau away to his rural parish, St. James, Goose Creek, to escape the pestilence. 

Despite this grim beginning, Le Jau was optimistic. People had told them new arrivals commonly experienced a bout of sickness during the warm season of their first year of residence. They called it the "seasoning," as if one was being preserved like a piece of meat. 

"When I am seasoned to the country, I hope I'll do well," he wrote his SPG superiors in London. In the winter months, he proclaimed, the climate was the finest he had ever experienced, pleasant and productive. The people were prosperous and generous.

With the advance of summer, the tone of his reports to London began to alter. He suffered his first bout of fever, probably malaria. His family arrived that summer and all became sick. 

At first, he blamed the seasoning, and anticipated a speedy recovery of health. Instead, he remained seriously ill for more than a year with fevers and fluxes (dysentery or severe diarrhea). For months he was unable to perform his clerical duties.

Notes of disillusionment crept into his letters. His disappointment extended to his neighbors. They were not the good Christian folk he had at first thought, but consumed by greed. They would "do any thing for money." They treated their  enslaved Africans and "Indians" (many of whom they had also enslaved) barbarously. The colonists fomented conflicts among the various tribes and then bought war captives as slaves. 

The mistreatment of the Native Americans led to the Yamasee War in 1715, during which an alliance of several tribes nearly destroyed the young colony. They attacked Le Jau's Goose Creek parish, and he and many of his neighbors fled to safety in Charleston.

Le Jau's animosity towards his neighbors deepened when his white neighbors failed to help him in his time of need. Few had honored pledges to supplement his meager income, or to finish building him a house and a church. After six years it was still unfinished. [Image: St. James, Goose Creek]

"They deceived me more than I can dare say," he wrote to the SPG, and he urged them to inform other missionaries coming to Carolina to be warned that they "must be prepared to suffer great hardships and crosses."

For ten years, Le Jau was plagued by fevers, fluxes, and other diseases. In August 1716, he was attacked with a fever and digestive disorder that confined him to bed for months. In March 1717, he reported that he expected to die soon. His body was "worn out with labour in this sickly and desolate country." He died a few months later in the Carolina Lowcountry's cruelest month, September. 

Le Jau did not understand all of the connections between South Carolina's economic system and its deadly disease environment, particularly that between disease, enslavement of Africans, and rice production. 

Yet he sensed the root of the problem: "This would be a pleasant place if men were but willing to make themselves easy and improve the fruitful soil where anything grows without much trouble ... but they all aim at riches which are hard to be got and they neglect the peace of their conscience and life."

Sources: 

Frank J. Klingberg, ed., The Carolina Chronicle of Francis Le Jau (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956)

Papers of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London (Microfilm copies available in many academic libraries; a treasure for historians of colonial America)

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pbk, 2014)

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks! 

Tourists Visit Washington, 1814 and 2021

In 1814, thousands of jolly British tourists descended upon the new American capitol in Washington, DC. Having just dispatched Napoleon Bonaparte to Elba after two decades of war, the British decided to celebrate and reward their soldiers and sailors by sending them on holiday to see the White House and the Capitol building. They were well armed but well intentioned, eager to do the new nation a well-deserved service. 

They ransacked, looted, and burned the White House, and other buildings. "It was a great tour," one said. "I haven't had so much fun in years!" The sentiment was echoed by numerous others on the trip. Needless to say, they took away many souvenirs of their visit. [Image: British tourists enjoying their trip.]

On January 6, 2021, American Trumpistas sought to repeat the British feat. The idea came from the fertile head of Donald J. (Jenius) Trump, who had recently been unelected as POTUS. He was thoroughly bummed to learn that the British had toured the capital with so much gusto, but not Americans. 

The Trumpistas took the cue. And how! They beat up police. They broke windows. They smashed down doors. They chased the legislators and staff who fled in terror. In other words, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. All in the name of patriotism.

Democrat sourpusses poured piss on the Trumpista celebration, as they do, by fussing about the damage to lives and property. When will the US capital learn to welcome tourists with proper charm and dignity? 

[Image: Trumpista Tourists finding new ways to enter the Capitol building.]

 

The Brexiteer's Guide to English Ancestry

Hey, Brexiteers! Mes amis! You don't have to have a DNA test to prove what a True Born Englishman you are! All you need to do is read a poem by Daniel Defoe, an Englishman of oops, Flemish descent.

"A Brexit victory's a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction." (Apologies and thanks to Daniel Defoe,1660-1731)

Brexit is real now, sort of. Devout Brexiteers proclaim, in near holy terms, that the UK has finally achieved "independence." By the "UK", however, they really mean England. 

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland must reconcile themselves to being dragged about by the whims of English nationalists. British companies are in the same boat. The immense costs of Brexit for those trading to Europe are becoming distressingly clear. 

Narrow English nationalists are the big winners for now. It remains to be seen what they have actually won. In fact, Brexit is a triumph of extreme nationalism, aided by ignorance and lies, over economic rationality. 

Much of the pro-Brexit vote in 2016 stemmed from xenophobia, a hatred of foreigners. In this case, "tyrannical" foreigners in Brussels. Of course, not all who voted for Brexit were motivated by by xenophobia. Yet the rhetoric of hard Brexiteers is often based on the assumption that people who are "Not English" are somehow "lesser breeds," not to be trusted and certainly not listened to.

England found itself in a similar situation more than 300 years ago. The thrones of Britain were occupied by a foreigner, the Dutch prince William of Orange. He and his wife Mary had become joint sovereigns in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution, in which he and the Dutch military had played the pivotal role. (Image: William III, of Orange)

 

Despite being hailed as the savior of English Protestantism, William III (II in Scotland) was never much liked in England or in Scotland. In Northern Ireland, of course, he is still idolized by people who remain imprisoned in a time warp, the eponymous "Orangemen." 

William became thoroughly unpopular in England after Mary died of smallpox in 1694. People not only disliked him but the Dutch soldiers, politicians, and merchants who followed him to London in particular. They were the target of numerous vitriolic pamphlets and poems. 

In 1701, Daniel Defoe took up his pen to defend the Dutch king and his countrymen. He did so in a long satirical poem that was highly successful in its time. "The True-Born Englishman" is not read much today. Perhaps it should be, at least some of it. 

Defoe was a prolific writer, mostly of political pamphlets at this time. Later he made his name as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and other novels. (Image: Defoe)

The target of Defoe's satire was not Englishness per se, but anti-Dutch xenophobia. To clear up any misunderstanding about that he added an explanatory preface two years later. In it he declared "that an Englishman, of all men, ought not to despise Foreigners as such ... since what they are today, we were yesterday, and tomorrow they will be like us." 

The English were themselves foreigners, invaders who eventually assimilated into one nation. The Dutch newcomers would assimilate as well, given the chance, Defoe implied. 

The English, far from being racially pure, were in reality a mongrel race. The "English" were a people forged from the union of Celtic Britons, Romans, Scots, Picts, "Anglo-Saxons," and Danes. Somewhat oddly, Defoe left out the Normans, here wearing the latest in 12th century fashion.

Defoe pulled no punches. The "union" he meant was sexual. Englishness originated "in eager rapes, and furious lust." The "rank daughters" of the land "Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust." The "nauseous brood" that resulted contained the "well extracted blood of Englishmen." 

In reality, the "True-Born Englishman" did not exist: "A true-born Englishman's a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction."

Defoe understood the biological and cultural reality of Englishness 300 years ago. Why do so many people today continue to champion a view so much at variance with history and biology? They should check the ancestry of their leader, True-Born Boris.

Further Reading: Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman (London, 1701 and later editions)

  

"A Vile Country": Dr Johnson on Scotland and Scots

The writer Samuel Johnson, AKA Dr. Johnson (1709-1785), is best known today for his celebrated Dictionary of the English Language. First published in London in 1755, it is often called "Johnson's Dictionary." The dictionary was warmly received and proved highly influential in shaping the modern English language. (Image: Johnson in 1775, by Sir Joshua Reynolds)

Some of Johnson's definitions were witty. His definition of lexicographer poked fun at himself: "a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the significance of words."

Other definitions conveyed his prejudices. An example is monsieur: "a term of reproach for a Frenchman." Johnson, in common with many English folk at the time, had no love for the French, with whom they were often at war. 

The English were almost as contemptuous of the people of Scotland, with whom they had been united in 1707 into a new country, Great Britain. The Union was an uneasy one for many years. 

Several rebellions arose in Scotland seeking to restore the exiled Catholic Stuarts to the throne of both kingdoms, occupied since 1714 by the German Hanoverians, Georges I and II.

The last and most dangerous of these "Jacobite" Risings began in 1745. An army made up mainly of Highlanders led by Prince Charles Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") defeated a Hanoverian army at Prestonpans. 

The Jacobites quickly seized Edinburgh, and marched into England. They came within striking distance of London at Derby before turning back and facing final bloody defeat at Culloden Moor in April 1746. It was the last battle fought on British soil. (Image: Battle of Culloden, by David Morier, 1746)

The Highland army's incursion into central England had terrified and outraged many English people, including Johnson, himself a sentimental Jacobite. 

The English viewed the Highland Scots with their plaids and Gaelic language as uncouth, dirty, and savage. The romantic Highlander of the novels of Sir Walter Scott would not appear until decades later. The cartoon below, "Sawney in the Boghouse," gives an indication of how contemporary Englishmen viewed the barbaric Highlander. 

Johnson shared these views. Perhaps it is not surprising that he used his dictionary to convey them. His definition of oats is classic: "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland is used to support the people."

Here, Johnson was parroting the conventional English view of the Scots as an impoverished and oppressed people, who might, if given their way, reduce the English to the same level. That view had some merit: Scotland was poorer than England, and its political system was more authoritarian at that time. 

Yet the idea that Scots could impose an authoritarian system on England was far fetched. Incidentally, many American colonists shared that view, which contributed to the drive for independence. 

The American cartoon below, from 1775, shows Scots Lord Bute and Lord Mansfield tyrannizing Americans. backed up by the Catholic Church (the monk) and the British army. 

It was a conspiracy theory worthy of QAnon. Bute had been out of politics for ten years by this point. Chief Justice Mansfield had no say over colonial policy, but he had declared slavery in England illegal in 1773, which made him a tyrant for American slaveholders. 

Johnson eventually softened his views on Scotland and its people, though he always enjoyed a dig at them. His circle of friends came to include some Scots he admired, including poet James Beattie. His best friend in his later years was Scots lawyer James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck. (Image: James Boswell, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1785)

In 1763, Boswell went to London, hoping to get a commission in a Guards regiment and enjoy the capital's culture (and women). He was quickly exposed to anti-Scottish sentiment. 

In his journal he recorded how he went to Covent Garden Theater one evening to see a comic opera. Just before the overture began, two Highland officers entered, the crowd began to chant, "No Scots! No Scots! Out with them!" 

Boswell was outraged. The officers had just returned from the successful siege of Havana. At that moment, he wrote, "I hated the English. I wished from my soul that the Union was broke and that we might give them another Battle of Bannockburn.... The rudeness of the English vulgar is terrible."

After this encounter, it may come as some surprise that Boswell sought out the acquaintance of two Englishmen men famed for their anti-Scottish prejudices: John Wilkes and Johnson. 

Except for their antipathy to Scots, the two can hardly have been more different. Wilkes was a libertine radical and a demagogue. Johnson was straight-laced, pious, and socially conservative.  

Wilkes was "very civil" to Boswell when they met. He even invited Boswell to call on him. Boswell's first meeting with Johnson was less auspicious: 

Johnson: I understand, Sir, that you are from Scotland.

Boswell: I am indeed, but I cannot help it.

Johnson: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help. 

This was how one of the most famous friendships in British history began. Johnson and Boswell became boon companions, eating, drinking, and conversing together. 

"Bozzy" would later write a biography of his friend, The Life of  Samuel Johnson (1791). Many critics consider it the greatest biography ever written in English.

The pair spent many an evening in animated conversation with other members of Johnson's circle. The "Club" as it is sometimes known, was the idea of Johnson's friend, painter Joshua Reynolds. (Image: A Meeting of the The Club. Johnson is second from left, Reynolds is third, with ear trumpet.)

 

Its members included some the greatest minds of the day including actor David Garrick, orator Edmund Burke, and writers Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Sheridan. Scientist Joseph Bank and historian Edward Gibbon also attended meetings from time to time. Another Scot, Adam Smith, was a later member. Johnson never liked him because he contributed little to the conversation. 

Boswell recorded many of the exchanges at these meetings. On occasion, Johnson's prejudices against Scotland rose to the surface. A famous such occasion was when the group was discussing "noble prospects" or beautiful views. Johnson quipped, "the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England."

Here, Johnson, joking or not, was reflecting a very real concern in England at the time. Many people complained that a plague of greedy, half-starved Scots was invading their country, snapping up plum jobs and rich heiresses. People often compared the Scots immigrants to a plague of locusts, as reflected in this cartoon of 1796, "A Flight of Scotchmen":

The poet Charles Churchill, a collaborator with Wilkes, wrote a pastoral in which he characterized Scotland as a land where half-starved spiders preyed on half-starved flies. 

The comparative poverty of Scotland was a subject Johnson often returned to in conversation. During a discussion on the danger of invasion in Scotland, he asked: "What enemy would invade Scotland, when there is nothing to be got?"

Warning an Irish friend against uniting in a union with England: "Do not make a union with us, Sir. We should unite with you only to rob you; we should have robbed the Scots if they had anything of which we could rob them."

Scotland, unlike England at the time, provided a basic primary education to most children in a system of parish schools. Johnson was not impressed: "Knowledge is divided up among Scots like bread in a besieged town, to every man a mouthful, to no man a bellyful." Learning in Scotland, he concluded, was widely diffused, "but thinly spread." 

Boswell, irked by Johnson's refusal to concede the existence of highly educated Scots, mentioned Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. Johnson denied that Scotland derived "any credit from Mansfield, for he was educated in England. Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young."

Asked by a Scot what he thought of Scotland, Johnson replied, "it is a very vile country, to be sure, Sir." Taken aback, the Scot retorted that God had made it. "Certainly, he did," Johnson agreed; "but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. S-------; and God made hell."

Arthur Lee of Virginia once remarked that he could not understand why some Scots had settled in a barren part of America. Johnson thought the answer obvious: "Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it be barren."

Having Boswell as a close friend gradually softened Johnson's views on Scots if not Scotland. In 1773, Bozzy convinced Johnson to make a trip to Scotland, including a tour of the Hebrides, or Western Isles. 

Johnson complained about some things, notably the weather, roads, and some of the inns and food. But he praised much as well, especially Scottish hospitality: 

"At the tables where a stranger is received, neither plenty nor delicacy is wanting.... he that shall complain of his fare in the Hebrides, has improved his delicacy more than his manhood.... If an epicure could remove by a wish, in quest of sensual gratifications, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland."

The Hebrides in particular impressed Johnson.. The pair visited Skye, Iona, Mull, and other islands. Johnson recorded feelings of awe on his visit to Iona, where Irish missionaries established the first Christian foothold in Scotland in the 6th century.

After returning to London, both men wrote accounts of their journey. Still in print and quite readable today, the books inspired many others to make similar trips. One could argue that they (and Walter Scott) helped lay the foundations of later Scottish tourism. 

Johnson later told Boswell that the trip "was the pleasantest part of his life..." High praise indeed for a man who wrote that "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." Perhaps Bozzy made a difference after all.

Further Reading:

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London, 1791)

____________, Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763 (New Haven, 1950)

____________, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson(1785)

Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755)

_____________, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (London, 1775)

 

 

    

"The Atheist is Dying!"

In August 1776 a noted Scots philosopher lay dying of abdominal cancer in his home in Edinburgh. As news spread of his imminent demise, crowds gathered in the street outside his house, crying "The Atheist is dying! The Atheist is dying!" 

David Hume, for that was his name, was a genial, kindly man whose written works had made him many admirers and more enemies. One of the great philosophical skeptics, Hume had undermined many conventional beliefs, including the then popular "argument from design" used to prove God's existence. 

In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, he argued that it was just as likely that the world had been designed by many gods or none at all, by an incompetent god, an infant god, even an animal or vegetable god, as by the omnipotent deity of the Bible. There was no irrefutable evidence for any of these possibilities. (Image: David Hume, 1754, by Allan Ramsay)

In suggesting the possibility that the world and its lifeforms could have been the result of accident rather than intelligent design, Hume anticipated Darwin's principle of natural selection. 

Hume had aroused the ire of the Presbyterian clergy with his arguments against miracles, the afterlife, and the impossibility of proving the existence or nature of God. They had even considered bringing charges of infidelity against him. 

Many modern critics claim that Hume was an agnostic but contemporaries considered him an atheist, or at least anti-Christian. He argued all religion arose from fear, "from a dread of the unknown." He declared that polytheism had some advantages over monotheism from a societal point of view.

He was fond of relating that "the best theologian he had ever met was an old Edinburgh fishwife who, having recognized him as Hume the atheist, refused to pull him out of the bog into which he had fallen until he declared he was a Christian and repeated the Lord's Prayer." 

James Boswell, who later wrote the acclaimed Life of Dr. Johnson, visited Hume a few weeks before his death. The much younger Boswell recorded an account of their exchange. (Image: James Boswell, 1765, by George Willison)

"I found him alone, in a reclining posture in his drawing room. He was lean, ghastly, and of an earthy appearance. He was quite different from the plump figure which he used to present. He seemed to be placid, even cheerful. He said he was just approaching to his end." (Image: David Hume, 1766, by Allan Ramsay)

Boswell, a conventional Christian with a robust libido, hoped to get Hume to confess his faith. Hume replied that he had long ago rejected belief in any religion, and that "the morality of every religion was bad." He went on to say that "when he heard that a man was religious, he concluded that he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men who were religious."

Boswell asked Hume if he persisted in rejecting belief in an afterlife, with death staring him in the face. Hume answered, "it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist forever." Boswell left him "with impressions that disturbed me for some time." 

Hume died in his home on St Andrews Square, New Town, on August 25, 1776. He was buried at his request in a tomb on nearby Calton Hill. He wished it to be inscribed with only his name and dates. 

The tomb, designed by his friend the architect Robert Adam, sits next to a statue of Abraham Lincoln, memorializing the sacrifices of Scottish soldiers who fought for the Union in the American Civil War.

 

Atheist or not, Hume is today a celebrated figure in Scotland and globally. Since 1995, a statue of Hume in classical garb has resided on the Royal Mile, across from St. Giles Cathedral. I suspect he would have appreciated the irony of that. 

It has become a custom for visitors to rub his big toe on the right foot for good luck, which is why the original bronze shows through. That is also ironical, because Hume of course rejected belief in luck as ignorant superstition. I touched the toe myself, however, just in case.

Image: Edinburgh High Street, with the Hume Statue and St. Giles.

Further Reading: Charles Weiss and Frederick Pottle, eds., Boswell in Extremes, 1776-1778 (London, 1970)

You are What You Eat

In 1747, the French physician and philosophe Julien Offray de la Mettrie published a book entitled Man: A Machine  (L'Homme Machine). It is little known today, but in it La Mettrie proposed an idea we are very familiar with nearly 300 years later: You are what you eat. He argued human beings (and all living things) were machines, fueled by the digestion of food: 

"The human body is a machine which winds its own springs. It is the living image of perpetual movement. Nourishment keeps up the movement which fever excites. Without food, the soul pines away, goes mad, and dies exhausted ... But nourish the body, pour into its veins life-giving juices and strong liquors, and then the soul grows strong ... What power there is in a meal! Joy revives in a sad heart, and infects the souls of comrades." (Image: La Mettrie)

La Mettrie was a philosophical materialist. He held that everything in the universe was made up of matter. Spirit was a figment of overheated imaginations. Spirit did not exist, which meant no angels, no demons, no ghosts. The soul was merely the animating principle arising from matter, and animals as well as people had souls. 

La Mettrie conceded that God "might" exist but it didn't matter because He did not interfere in the world. Today, most people would call La Mettrie an atheist, and he did used that term to describe his position. He was also a hedonist. He argued that happiness was the sole purpose of life. People should indulge in pleasurable activities as much as possible, including eating fine food, drinking, and sex.

Atheism was a rare stance in even in the Enlightenment, but it had a long history. The Roman poet Lucretius espoused materialism. Some of La Mettrie's fellow philosophes advanced atheistic arguments, notably Baron d'Holbach and David Hume. (pictured below). But most of the philosophes, atheist or not, denounced La Mettrie's claim that hedonism should be the main goal of human life.

Other philosophes, called deists, rejected La Mettries's materialism. They argued that God definitely existed and had created a good world, but then left it to operate according to His benevolent natural laws. 

Deists and atheists alike fell afoul of religious and secular authorities. Deists were often denounced as atheists for rejecting key Christian doctrines. 

Like other philosophes, La Mettrie had to move about for his safety. He fled France to the more tolerant Netherlands. After the publication of Man: A Machine, things got too hot for him there. He found refuge in Prussia at the Court of Frederick the Great. Voltaire, perhaps the best known of the philosophes, also fled there in 1750.  (Images: Frederick and Voltaire)

But let's get back to eating. La Mettrie argued that the food one ate determined one's personality, disposition, intelligence, and behavior. Diet explained why some people were more savage than others: 

"Red meat makes animals fierce, and it would have the same effect on man. This is so true that the English who eat meat red and bloody, and not as well done as ours, seem to share more or less in the savagery due to this kind of food...."

As another example of how food effects behavior, La Mettrie related the story of a Swiss judge who "when he fasted, was a most upright and even a most indulgent judge, but woe to the unfortunate man whom he found on the culprit's bench after he had had a large dinner! He was capable of sending the innocent like the guilty to the gallows." 

Interestingly, modern studies of sentencing indicate the opposite: that judges tend to give more lenient sentences after eating and harsher ones when hungry. But either way, there seems to be a corelation between eating and sentencing.

Diet could even affect the intelligence of whole nations, according to La Mettrie. "One nation is of heavy and stupid wit, and another quick, light, and penetrating. Whence comes this difference, if not in part from the difference in foods....? 

La Mettrie was well versed in the science of his day, but his argument about food was hardly scientific. His evidence was anecdotal and stereotypical. 

Yet no one today would deny that diet can have enormous effects on mental and physical health. Medical and dietary science has linked poor diet to all kinds of illnesses and dangerous conditions. 

La Mettrie's death was utterly ironic. He died in 1751 of a gastric disorder, followed by a fever and delerium. Some versions say he ate a huge amount of a pheasant and truffle pate pie at one meal to show off how much he could consume. Others claim that the food that had gone bad. 

As he was dying, priests allegedly gathered in his room, hoping to get him to confess his faith in God. At one point, he cried out "Christ!" in his agony. The reverend fathers advanced eagerly towards his bed. Alas, he disappointed them. "It was just a manner of speaking," he said, smiling. 

Frederick the Great gave the eulogy at La Mettrie's funeral. He called him "a good devil and medic but a very bad author." A decidedly mixed encomium. 

The holiday season is upon us. Be careful what you eat. 

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November: The Guy, Trump, and the Gunpowder Plot

November 5th, 2024 was America's Date with Destiny. Ironically, it coincided with the annual commemoration of the uncovering of the Gunpowder Plot in England in 1603. Had the plot succeeded it could have led to the overthrow of the government of James VI and I, the first monarch to rule the whole of the British Isles, and the deaths of the king, members of Parliament, and many others. The plotters were either executed or killed in a firefight. 

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,

Gunpowder Treason and Plot. 

I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot. 

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent 

To blow up King and Parliament.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove Old England's overthrow;

By God's Providence he was catch'd

With a dark lantern and burning match.

And what should we do with him? Burn him!

[Image: The Discovery of the Gunpowder Plotters, as fancifully imagined by Henry Perronet Briggs, 1823]

The nursery rhyme above, or variants of it, has been part of British culture since the 17th century, as has the custom of Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night. On November 5, effigies of "The Guy" are burned in bonfires all over the UK. 

The Gunpowder Plot referred to was designed to blow up Parliament during its opening session on November 5, 1605, when the king and all the members were present. Fortunately for them, the barrels of gunpowder and Guy Fawkes were discovered in the cellars the evening before. Fawkes was an explosives expert and a Catholic who had been fighting for Spain and his faith against England and Protestantism.

The idea of burning "the Guy" in effigy is reflected in the rhyme's last line: "And what should we do with him? Burn him!" On the night the actual plot was foiled, the government ordered the lighting of bonfires to celebrate the King's (James I's) deliverance. It's not clear when or why burning the Guy first became a part of the celebration. At first, revelers burned effigies of the Pope. 

Burning "The Guy" eventually became a tradition in later years, though it's not clear why Fawkes was singled out. He was only one of fourteen conspirators led by Robert Catesby. Their goal was to destroy the Protestant ruling elite with one blow and restore Catholicism in Britain. 

[Below: A contemporary Dutch image of some of the Gunpowder Plotters. Fawkes is third from the right. He is named here as "Guido" Fawkes, the name he took when fighting for the Spanish.]

The real Guy Fawkes was not burned to death. He and several co-conspirators were hanged, then cut down and drawn (disembowelled) while still alive, and finally quartered. This was the traditional punishment for High Treason. Fawkes managed to avoid the worst part. He threw himself off the scaffold, breaking his neck. He was dead when they cut off his privates, removed his guts, and chopped his body in pieces. 

The reason for this horrific proceeding, other than sheer sadism, was to teach a political lesson. Various body parts were hung up about the kingdom to warn people with similar ideas of their possible fate. The other plotters were killed resisting arrest. 

In 1606, Parliament passed an act making November 5 a day of thanksgiving. The celebrations often led to attacks on Catholics. This was true in British North America as well into the 19th century. But with the influx of Catholic immigrants, Halloween gradually replaced Bonfire Night as an autumn celebration in the USA. 

In the UK the act establishing a day of thanksgiving was repealed in 1859 out of concern for Catholic sensibilities. But by then the lighting of bonfires on November 5 had become a firmly embedded tradition in most British communities. 

Bonfire Night gradually became more focused on general fun and a bit of mischief. During the late 19th century effigies of the Guy generally replaced ones of the Pope on the bonfires. Lewes in East Sussex continues to burn an effigy of Pope Paul V, who was pope in 1605. 

[Below: Guy Fawkes Night at Windsor Castle, 1776]

In many communities, children made The Guy, who was then processed to the place of "execution." The children would cry out "Penny for the Guy!" I recall doing it myself in Scotland as a child. I had no idea of the history of the tradition, and my mother was Catholic.  

[Below: Procession of a Guy, 1864].

[Below: Children with their Guys, Chirk, Wrexham, Wales, 1954]

Today Bonfire Night is a purely secular social event accompanied by fireworks and enjoyed by people of all religions and none. Few observers are likely to know the religious and political origins of the tradition.  

In a strange turn of events, many people now view Fawkes as a counter-culture hero for attacking the Establishment. Protestors often wear Guy Fawkes masks. "Guy Fawkes was the only man who ever entered Parliament with honest intentions" is a common saying nowadays.

Those who romanticize Fawkes should be aware that had the 36 barrels (2500 tons) of gunpowder under Parliament been detonated it would have destroyed everything up to 500 meters from the center of the explosion, killing hundreds of people. 

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks!