Life

He was born in Partney

Partney

Partney is a small village, around 3 miles north of Spilsby in the Lincolnshire Wolds. This village was the birth place of Henry Stubbe, the noted seventeenth century thinker.-Transport links:...

, Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, and educated at Westminster School

Westminster School

The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...

. Given patronage as a child by the Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

, Henry Vane the Younger

Henry Vane the Younger

Sir Henry Vane , son of Henry Vane the Elder , was an English politician, statesman, and colonial governor...

, he obtained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...

, from which he graduated in 1653. This being the time of the English Civil War

English Civil War

The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

, he fought for Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

 from then until 1655.

He was appointed second keeper to the Bodleian Library

Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...

, but in 1659 his friendship with Henry Vane led to his being removed from this employment. His work A Light Shining Out Of Darkness did not help, being seen as an attack on the clergy.

He became a physician in Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...

, and after the Restoration

English Restoration

The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 was confirmed in the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

. In 1661 was appointed His Majesty's Physician for Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

. The Jamaican climate disagreeing with him, he returned to England in 1665. He developed medical practices in both Bath and Warwick

Warwick

Warwick is the county town of Warwickshire, England. The town lies upon the River Avon, south of Coventry and just west of Leamington Spa and Whitnash with which it is conjoined. As of the 2001 United Kingdom census, it had a population of 23,350...

.

In 1673 he wrote against the Duke of York

James II of England

James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...

 and Mary of Modena

Mary of Modena

Mary of Modena was Queen consort of England, Scotland and Ireland as the second wife of King James II and VII. A devout Catholic, Mary became, in 1673, the second wife of James, Duke of York, who later succeeded his older brother Charles II as King James II...

 in the Paris Gazette. He was arrested and threatened with hanging.

He drowned in an accident in Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 and was buried in Bath.

Writings

Stubbe was considered by Anthony Wood

Anthony Wood

Anthony Wood or Anthony à Wood was an English antiquary.-Early life:Anthony Wood was the fourth son of Thomas Wood , BCL of Oxford, where Anthony was born...

 to be the most noted Latin and Greek scholar of his age, as well as a great mathematician and historian.

Following the Restoration he wrote polemical pieces against the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

. They have been interpreted as showing a change in his political and religious views. Recent scholarship suggests, however, that the main theme in his life is continuity and his attacks on the Royal Society are a part of his veiled attack on the clerical and monarchical powers, of which the Royal Society was seen to be supportive. Connected with his assault on the Royal Society was criticism of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

: Stubbe taxed the early Royal Society with being "Bacon-faced".

In the 1671 he wrote An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism, and a Vindication of him and his Religion from the Calumnies of the Christians. He was unable to publish this book, considered the first work in English sympathetic to Islamic theology

Islamic theology

Islamic theology is a branch of Islamic studies regarding the beliefs associated with the Islamic faith. Any religious belief system, or creed, can be considered an example of aqidah. However, this term has taken a significant technical usage in Islamic history and theology, denoting those...

; it circulated privately. He tried to demonstrate the similarity between the beliefs of Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 and Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

. Stubbe can also be seen as part of a growing tradition at this time which expressed a dissatisfaction with intellectual inconsistencies of trinitarianism and sought to discover the original unitarian roots of the Christian tradition in the Middle East. Relative to Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, Stubbe in common with John Toland

John Toland

John Toland was a rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions of the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment...

 and Edward Stillingfleet

Edward Stillingfleet

Edward Stillingfleet was a British theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as "the beauty of holiness" for his good looks in the pulpit, and was called by John Hough "the ablest man of his...

 followed the lead of John Selden

John Selden

John Selden was an English jurist and a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law...

 and James Harrington, arguing for religious toleration

Religious toleration

Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...

.

His diverse interests and sense of genuine intellectual breadth are revealed in his authorship of a book celebrating chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

, which he refers to as the Indian nectar, and in which he criticised those who refused it on puritanical grounds.

Works

• Vindication of that Prudent and Honourable Knight Sir Henry Vane (1659)
• Essay in Defence of the Good Old Cause (1659)
• A Light Shining Out Of Darkness (1659)
• The Indian nectar, or, A discourse concerning chocolate (1662)
• The Plus Ultra Reduced to a Non Plus (1670)
• Legends No Histories (1670)
• Campanella Revived (1670)
• An Epistolary Discourse Concerning Phlebotomy and The Lord Bacons Relation of the Sweating-Sickness Examined (1671)
• A Justification of the Present War against the United Netherlands (1672)
• An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism,and a Vindication of him and his Religion from the Calumnies of the Christians (1674?)

External links

• List of some of his works from Early English Books Online