Anniversary Address 2000

Extract

In 1750 our President, the Duke of Somerset, who had been elected in 1724 when the Marquis of Hertford died. We elected in his place the Duke of Richmond whose portrait, given by our Fellow Richard Hatchwell in 1995, hangs on our stairs: Richmond attended the St George's Day dinner in 1750 but did little more for the Society until his death in November of the same year. Our Vice-President Martin Folkes, who had been President of the Royal Society since 1741 in succession to Sir Hans Sloane, was elected in Richmond's place. Folkes successfully steered the Society towards the Royal Charter granted by King George II, our ‘Founder and Patron’, on 2 November 1751, whose 250th anniversary we shall be celebrating next year, although by that time Folkes, who had suffered a paralytic stroke on 26 September, was incapable. A Fellow since 1720, Folkes's main interests were Roman antiquities and English coins. He was not universally beloved: Stukeley called him ‘an arrant infidel and loud scoffer’ who ‘believes nothing of a future state, of the Scriptures of revelation.’ On 2 June 1858 what was said to be Folkes's cocked hat was presented to the Cocked Hat Club. Late last year the Society was able to purchase at Christie's a more reliable relic in the form of Folkes's portrait painted by Jonathan Richardson in 1718, which now hangs behind the President's Chair, 250 years after Folkes's election to that office. Richardson, the painter, although not a Fellow, is worthy of respect in antiquarian circles: An Account of the Statues and Bas-reliefs, Drawings and Pictures in Italy, France etc, with Remarks, edited from his son's Grand Tour notes, and first published in London in 1722, was valued by our Honorary Fellow, the Abbé Winckelmann, and a French edition was issued at Amsterdam in 1728. Our Library has the first edition, left to the Society by our Fellow Arthur Ashpitel in 1869. The 1754 second London edition and the 1728 Amsterdam edition are surely desiderata.