People have always viewed comets with suspicion and worry. They always seem to bring trouble with them. This one was no exception:
A comet
trails the sky
In this concluding part, J. Sarath Edirisinghe
looks at how the world saw the comet of 1664, and the conclusions
that were made
The novice’s study
The following account gives the details of the
famous personalities that recorded the sighting of the comet of
1664 in England, and the calamities that followed. While Knox was
embroiled in the travails and tribulations of an internal conflict
in the 17th century Kandyan kingdom, Isaac Newton was toiling at
Trinity College, Cambridge, as a 22-year-old sub-sizar. This meant
that he had to supplement his income by acting as a servant to Fellows
of Cambridge or to other wealthy students. As a sub–sizar
he was allowed to attend lectures at a lower fee.
The observations and comments on comets were important
for natural philosophers, since their motions raised questions about
the orderly structure of the universe, and the relationship between
celestial and terrestrial matter. In his famous notebook he noted
the observation of the comet on December 23, 24, 27, 29 and 30,
1664. His observation of the comet in the winter of 1664 was a turning
point in the young scientist’s life. Prompted by his observations
and recording of the position of the 1664 comet, Newton embarked
on a self study of astronomy at Trinity College. The entry for December
10, 1664 shows that he was unable to locate the comet correctly
in the crowded night sky. His status as a novice to astronomy is
evident by the specification of the comet’s mistaken position
in relation to the moon’s centre. It appears that Newton realised
the error as shown by a decisive cancellation of the entry at a
later date. By the time of his second report on December 17, he
had correctly located the comet.
Just one glimpse
The appearance of the fiery, blazing star over
England, heralded a period of frantic prophesies among the ordinary
folks, while the intellectuals and the scientists considered the
apparition as a stimulus to further research and philosophical discussions.
Samuel Pepys was one of the most disappointed notables in England,
who was not fortunate enough to observe the comet of 1664. Pepys
wrote about his frustrated endeavours to see the 1664 comet as follows:
‘Mighty talke there of this Comet that is seen a ’night;
and the King and the Queene did sit up last night to see it, and
did, it seems. And to-night I thought to have done so too, but it
is cloudy and so no stars appear. But I will endeavor it (December
17), My lord Sandwich this day writes me word That he hath seen
(at Portsmouth) the Comet, And says it is the most extraordinary
thing that Ever he saw. (December 21)
Pepys at last caught one disappointing glimpse
of the comet, larger and duller, than any other star on December
24, the day after young Isaac Newton recorded the first clear observation
of it in his ‘notebook’.
Errors and additions
Christopher Wren and John Wallis saw the comet
of 1664 and were advancing theories about the movements of comets,
based on assumptions of straight lines and constant speeds. The
men of the Royal Society made use of the comet of 1664 to test their
theories. Sir Christopher Wren, who designed the St. Paul’s
Cathedral after the ‘Great Fire’ destroyed the original
building in 1666, was one of the founder members of the Royal Society.
Dr. Robert Hooke, Secretary of the Royal Society, observed and studied
the comet of 1664, and erred by identifying it as the one that appeared
in 1618. Allen Chapman, delivering the Sir Henry Tizard Memorial
Lecture, attributed Hooke’s error to the lack of precision
instruments to measure the angular dimensions of the comet nucleus.
Hooke was a great scientist and an inventor, and has since been
called the ‘Leonardo’ of England. It is noteworthy to
highlight the close association of Robert Hooke with the author
of the ‘An Historical Relations Of Ceylon’ Robert Knox.
Hooke read Knox’s manuscript, encouraged him to publish the
book, and wrote the lengthy preface to the first edition of the
book. Later Hooke inserted the verse now seen at the bottom of the
Portrait of Robert Knox, designed by Winter, at the Bodleian. Knox
mentions Hooke in his autobiography as ‘my esteemed friend’.
Of the 21 papers Hooke submitted to Philosophical transactions,
over a dozen deal with astronomy. Knox remained a close associate
until Hooke’s death in 1703.
The domestic Annals of Scotland, Reign of Charles
II: 1660-1673, Part 3 says that in December 1664, “…There
appeared mighty, frae four hours in the morning till day light one
fiery comet, tending in our sight frae the southeast to the northwest
and seen our horizon betwixt Arthur’s seat and Pichtland Hill
with one tail terrible to the beholders. It began to appear at about
three am in the morning and very terrible in its first apparition.
After that it appeared in the evening”.
In ‘De Cometis’ John Gadbury (London
1665) lists the omens that comets bring “...Threatening the
world with famine, plague and war. To Princes, death! To Kingdoms,
many crosses. To all estates, inevitable losses. To Herdsmen, rot.
To ploughmen, hapless seasons. To sailors, storms. To Cities, civil
treasons. That is how the majority of English saw the omens associated
with comets.
Plagues and fires hit London
How true the predictions of John Gadbury’s
were. True to its form the comet wasted no time to usher in the
inevitable catastrophe that accompanies it. The comet was visible
almost throughout the month of December 1664, and London experienced
one of the coldest winters in history. The bright comet that traced
an arc in the sky led to much comment, portending ‘horrible
winds and tempests’. Then in the ‘remote, squalid precinct
of St. Giles-in-the field’ outside thee city wall Goodwoman
Phillips was pronounced dead of the plague. Her house was locked
up and ‘Lord have mercy on us’ painted on the door.
By the following Christmas, the plague had claimed more than 100,000
Londoners, about a third of those who did not flee the city.
With the epidemic of plague, Cambridge closed
and young Newton went home to Woolsthorpe. While the horrible plague
brought in misery to thousands, cloistered at home, Newton invented
Calculus. The plague was soon followed by the ‘Great Fire
of London’, which burnt out the plague as well as other contagion,
thereby cleansing the city.
The diary of Samuel Pepys records the events surrounding
the ‘Great Plague of London’, which began in the winter
of 1664, and was mercifully interrupted by the ‘Great Fire
of London’ that destroyed much of the city in 1666. Daniel
Defoe, as a young boy, was in London and saw both ‘the plague’
and the ‘great fire’. Defoe’s ‘A Journal
Of The Plague Years’ is considered one of the first examples
of journalistic fiction, where in this book, he himself becomes
a pseudo–witness writing the account of the plague in 1665.
The ‘Journal’ was written in 1722.
Some consider the devastating epidemic of the
plague in 1664 to be the third pandemic in historical times, while
others consider the third as the one in 1896. Defoe described in
great detail the shortness of the time between falling sick and
dying, showing the short incubation period of pneumonic plague.
He also described how many townspeople committed suicide due to
unbearable pain, or being pushed into depths of utter misery, poverty
and hopelessness.
The name ‘black death’ for plague
came into use during the second pandemic in 1340. There are several
reasons for this name – one being the belief that death was
heralded by a black hooded messenger, riding a black horse, and
the other based on the clinical manifestations of septicemic plague
where the fatally infected showed large purple or black patches
on the body, following bleeding in to the skin. The patches which
appeared shortly before death were known as ‘tokens’
or ‘God's marks’ and were used by ‘searchers’,
whose duty was to view the bodies in order to report the cause of
death. So in London, searchers inspected the dead for the presence
of tokens and many fell dead themselves a few days after.
At this point it is worth highlighting that Defoe
knew Robert Knox and used the information in the ‘historical
relations’ to mould the character of Captain Singleton. According
to James Ryan, Defoe's ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was published
a few months before Knox's death, and its introspective and religious
passages strongly resemble Knox's account of his own religious difficulties
in captivity.
People of the new states in America saw the comet
of 1664. In fact it was in 1664 that the English captured the town
of New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York. Astronomer
John Danforth of Massachusetts, who correctly deduced that the great
comet of 1664 passed well above the orbit of the moon said that
‘…most comets are observed to precede if not portend
great calamities’. He urged people to repent their sins and
pay heed to this sign from an angry god.
A ‘Tiger Tail’ in the sky
Millions in Spain, Italy and other European countries
saw the great comet or 1664. A 12-year-old Japanese boy, Matasaburou,
in his personal daily diary, had recorded an illuminating account
of the comet of 1664, including its position. He called it the ‘Tiger
Tailed Star’. He grew up in this early Edo period to be a
successful sake businessman and a great scholar. Later he was able
to buy ‘status’ and to take up his adult name, Katsurai
Soan. He rose up to the position of a Sensei.
There are no records of any calamity of note associated
with the comet of 1664 in Japan, although it is known that a comet
was observed during the siege of Osaka 13 years earlier and another
one during the farmers’ riots in 1637-1638, the Shimabara
conflicts.The great comet of 1664 was seen around the world. The
magnitude of its brightness was such that it was classed as one
of the brightest. It received the official name – C/1664 WI.
It was described and drawn by Johannes Havelius. Some call the comet
by this name.
In his paper, written in Latin, ‘Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis’,
published in the philosophical Transaction 1705, Edmond Halley reported
his findings after studying the orbits of 24 comets. He had calculated
the orbital elements of their orbits as approximated by parabola.
He found that three comets of 1531, 1607 and 1682 had similar orbits,
and concluded that they were probably different apparitions of the
same comet orbiting the sun on a highly eccentric elliptical orbit
with a period of about 76 years. He predicted its return –
1758/59. As predicted, the comet appeared in 1759, and people were
convinced that it was the laws of physics that determined its appearance
and not any impending calamity.
