Facts are something we take for granted, at least most of the time. As ordinary individuals we assume that there are knowable facts, for instance, that the dog chewed the drapes, that England exists, that it rained yesterday, or that babies cry. If, as scholars, that is as historians, social scientists, and natural scientists, we are more aware of the problematical nature of “facts” we nevertheless tend to establish and use facts rather unselfconsciously in our work. On this occasion I want to look at the evolution of the concept of “fact,” and in particular the way “fact” entered English natural philosophy. I will attempt to show that the concept of “fact” or “matter of fact,” so prominent in the English empirical tradition, is an adaptation or borrowing from another discipline—jurisprudence, and that many of the assumptions and much of the technology of fact-finding in law were carried over into the experimental science of the seventeenth century.

My paper has three parts. The first discusses the nature of legal facts and fact-finding in the early modern period, focusing on the distinction between “matters of fact” and “matters of law,” the emphasis on first hand testimony by credible witnesses, the preference for direct testimony over inference, and legal efforts to create and maintain impartial proceedings. The second portion attempts to show how legal methods and assumptions were adopted by early modern historiographers and other fact-oriented reporters. The third section attempts to show how the legally constructed concept of “fact” or “matter of fact” was transferred to natural history and natural philosophy and generalized in Locke's empirical philosophy.

Edmund of Langley, Earl of Cambridge, Duke of York. Just the mention of the name for most historians conjures the image of an historical figure with all the moral fortitude and intelligence of Rowan Atkinson's Black Adder. The fourth surviving son of Edward III, born too late to join in the glorious campaigns of his father, young Edmund became a pawn in the futile games of Plantagenet martial diplomacy. After his father's death, all of Edmund's incursions into the political arena resulted in total failure. Abroad, Earl Edmund's “monumental stupidity” in Portugal tore asunder John of Gaunt's grand strategy to acquire the throne of Castile. At home, Edmund of Langley's “lazy and indifferent” support of Richard II during the appeal of treason against the Duke of Ireland and a number of the young king's other favorites ensured the success of Thomas of Woodstock and the appellants. Though Edmund served as custodian of the realm during Richard's Irish campaign of 1394 and presided over Parliament the following year, such high office overmatched the Duke of York's abilities. Duke Edmund's “fatuous” vacillation in the face of Henry of Lancaster throughout the summer of 1399 cost Richard his throne. As the noted historian and natural philosopher David Hume observed, “The Duke of York was left as guardian of the realm; a place to which his birth entitled him, but which both his slender abilities, and his natural connections with the Duke of Lancaster, rendered him utterly incapable of filling in such a dangerous emergency.” Edmund of Langley's choice to “remain as neuter” in response to Henry of Bolingbroke, along with his treacherous submission to Duke Henry, allowed him and his family to survive the usurpation unscathed. But the new king could find no use for a man who possessed such titanic infidelity, and Henry quickly cast the loathsome York from council and government. Though York lived on until 1402 he remained on the periphery of the Lancastrian establishment. Even Duke Edmund's death attracted little notice, being, as-it-were, only a footnote to his colorless, uninspiring existence.

Just what were John Henry Newman, Hurrell Froude, and John Keble up to in those hectic months of the summer and autumn of 1833 when the Oxford Movement began? It might seem unnecessary to ask such a question. The standard account portrays the three friends, agreed on common principles, working with substantial continuity (with the addition of E. B. Pusey and the loss of Froude) from 1833 at least to 1841. But the conventional literature has lost sight of the confusion and indecision of the initial moment of 1833.

The basis of the standard account, and the reason why it should be distrusted, is that it is based on Newman's own account in the Apologia pro vita sua, the work of a man obsessed by his own major continuities and discontinuities, at once truthful and misleading.

After years of tinkering with the notion of police reform, Parliament in 1829 passed the Metropolis Police Improvement Act, which established the famous Metropolitan Police Force, England's first body of uniformed, fulltime “professional” police. Bodies of the “new police” were allowed to spread outside of London by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. These provincial forces answered to local authorities, a pattern disrupted in 1839 when Parliament passed three bills establishing centrally-controlled police forces for Birmingham, Bolton, and Manchester. These Acts were emergency measures, with a three-year duration, designed to hurriedly provide forces of new police in towns that seemed threatened by Chartist unrest. In the case of Birmingham a combination of aggressive Chartist activity—which produced two major riots in the summer of 1839—and fierce political in-fighting between the town's elite factions convinced Parliament that the new force, to be commanded by ex-army officer Francis Burgess, should answer to the Home Office in London rather than to Birmingham's radical/liberal (and therefore perhaps untrustworthy) Town Council.

All of the forces of new police that appeared from 1829 to 1839 faced common problems, ranging from recruitment and retention difficulties to disciplinary troubles, but perhaps the most serious challenge confronting these new forces was the hostility of many of the citizens the forces were intended to protect. Opponents of the new police forces voiced their concerns that the forces amounted to a second standing army, that the new police could be used for domestic spying, and that they were too expensive to justify any benefits they might possibly provide. While all of the new forces experienced this type of opposition, the environment in Birmingham was particularly hostile for the force created by Act of Parliament in 1839.