Ebook: The Life of Henry More: Parts 1 and 2

This edition of the Life of Henry More by Richard Ward is the outcome of twin initiatives: from Rupert Hall and from delegates at the conference on the Cambridge Platonists held at Nantes in 1993. The project took shape at a meeting of the editorial team at Christ's College in 1994. The editors wish to express their thanks to the Master and Fellows of Christ's College for permission to print the unpublished manuscript section of Ward's Life and for their generosity in supporting the project. We also thank the British Academy for the Major Research Award towards the cost of producing the printed copy. We thank John L. Dawson, Manager of the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre of the University of Cambridge and his staff, Beatrix Bown and Rosemary Rodd, for their technical assistance with the physical preparation of the text. Thanks also to Douglas de Lacey for his help with Greek and Latin orthography, and to James Binns for his help in identifying some quotations. We are particularly grateful to Beatrix Bown for her unfailingly patient work in transcribing and correcting the printed and manuscript texts. S. H. 06j/t . J;pt:. l. ~0i37. J£ti7tU 7. 2 /mz,·rtlln J Ll1t'tz,//Utn LO, ~ "IEl-I"/(/ll 2 O. Engraved portrait of Henry More, by D. Loggan: Frontispiece to The Life of Henry More, by Richard Ward, London, 1710. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface V List of Illustrations: VIll Introduction: I. Richard Ward IX II.

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The Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614-1687), was a dominant figure on the seventeenth-century intellectual scene. His life spanned both the political revolutions of the English Civil War and its aftermath and the intellectual revolution in seventeenth-century science and philosophy. More was highly regarded in his own day as a metaphysician, although the combination of receptivity to the new (such as his admiration of Galileo, Descartes and Boyle) and defence of traditional thinking (notably his belief in witchcraft) makes him a difficult figure to assess today. The heterodoxy of his theological views notwithstanding, More was an important spokesman for moderation within the Anglican Church after the Restoration, and a key figure in the Latitudinarian movement.
Richard Ward's Life of Henry More is the only biographical account of him by one of his contemporaries. Ward's almost hagiographical tone is ample testimony to the high regard in which More was held by his admirers. Ward's Life is an important document of intellectual and cultural history which testifies to the continuing impact of More's ideas in the Enlightenment. Among other topics, Ward's biography registers the impact of Quakerism in the late seventeenth century and includes important details about More's `heroine pupil', Anne Conway. The present edition prints both the only modern edition of the printed part of Ward's Account first published in 1710, together with the manuscript Account of More's writings which is published here for the first time.