The Viner Dimension

Extract from a book

Introduction-chapter from the book 'An History of Vinery as a Province of the Women of our Realm' by Mrs Tabitha Huntleigh-Crawsthorne (Oxford University Press, 1885)

"There were seven women.

First there was Patience, the Child of the New Forest, who learned how to talk with trees.

There was Constance, the midwife who, with Patience, taught trees how to grow the muscles of a mother.

There was Pleasance, the farmer and pharmacopoeian, who found out how to feed their needs.

There was Maria, the miller, and Bryony, the brewer, who together made the manufactories that could meet the trees' needs.

There was Hephaestia, the blacksmith who made shoes so that trees could walk and run.

There was Clara, the botanist and lenssmith who surmised and shewed in our world the structures that others had seen only with the eye of mind and heart.

There were three men.

There was Heatherstone, the father of Patience, who brought together the Seven, and gave them protection under God.

There was Beverley, the husband of Patience, who brought them to the praise of the Crown.

There was Hooke, the champion of Patience, who brought them to the centre of Science, and made them famous to us all.

Between the Seven and the Three was created the viners' art."

For these past two hundred years and more, that is how it has been taught to each new generation of viners, and how it is portrayed in the Great Hall at the Royal Institute of Viners.

There is truth to it indeed: and at least in the latter location they have had the wit and honesty to place the Seven at the centre, and the Three at the periphery, for that is the true story of it all. There have been those in recent times who would aver that the realms of the sciences and practical philosophy would pertain primarily and properly to men alone, and that the role of women has been that of helpmeet at most. Yet in the viner's art, perhaps above all others, we find the history that would put the lie to that assertion.

This is not to say that the Three acclaimed above did not play their part.

Charles Heatherstone was an excellent administrator with a first-rate mind, and as a respected Parliamentarian kept the threats from that direction at bay. His authority as a Biblical scholar also provided a bulwark against the dangers inherent in the religious fervour of those times. Indeed, without his acumen, and his firm argument that the freedoms granted in the Agreement Of The People must apply as much to women as to men, the first three within the Seven would assuredly have been charged of witchcraft or worse. It is all too probable that, if the times had been any different, and without his championship and protection, their work, and maybe even they themselves, would not have survived long enough to create the crucial core from which we benefit so much to this day.

Of Edward Beverley it has often been said that his greatest attribute was that he had the wit to keep out of his wife's way. Yet from his experience as an officer of the erstwhile Royalist army, particularly in its Interregnum period beyond our shores, he was likewise an excellent organiser on behalf of the Seven; and as a key member of the Court, after the Restoration of the Crown, he was able to wield considerable influence with the Royalist party. As with his father-in-law, that influence and respect kept all manner of unseen threats at bay, and in part gave the Seven the credibility, the time and the resources that they needed in order to establish the real value of their common art.

It has sometimes been said in this regard that the greatest attribute of Robert Hooke was likewise in the negative: that unlike so many men of that time and since, he made no attempt to claim the credit for the outcomes of a woman's work. Yet there is little doubt that we should acknowledge this more in the positive, that he did actively champion the philosophical discoveries of Patience Heatherstone and of Clara Ratcliffe, against the disparagements and fulminations of those such as the brilliant yet openly misogynistic alchemist Isaac Newton. It was likewise through Hooke that Clara Ratcliffe was introduced to the Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and thence that the latter, at first opening his secrets of microscopy to her alone, made it possible so early for the viner's art to become also a true science in its own right.

The histories of the Three are well-known and well-documented by our scholars of those times: we know who they were, what they did, and much of what drove them to do so. Yet even to this date there has been little study of the Seven: for example, in Captain Marryat's overly-romanticised early-biography of the Beverley family, Patience Heatherstone and Clara Ratcliffe both appear as little more than mere bit-players, with no hint of how important they themselves would become in later life. Indeed, it is not the presence but the absence of the Beverleys that provides the crucial catalyst for both, in that so formative stage of their life and work.

This book therefore sets out to remedy that lack, and provide a proper history and biography for each of the Seven, drawn from the best and most reliable documents available to us in this day. With your indulgence, we shall also explore what it was that brought the Seven together, and welded them into the formidable force that they became.

First, then, to the first of the Seven: Patience Heatherstone, the true founder of the viner's art.