Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
World, which his hand made, is aged; but of what age, who can justly
tell?' William Nisbit, a Scottish cleric, in 1655 remarked in A
Scripture Chronology, 'There is great disagreement among chronolo-
gues in counting the years from the Creation of the World to the death
of our Saviour.' However difficult these calculations were to reconcile,
Thomas Allen was sure that the answer lay in examining the biblical
texts: 'The Sacred Writ is the best Register: Therein its Age possibly
may be found; but so various and discrepant are the Calculations of
men, that it may be ranked amongst unsearchable', but was not con-
fident that even the highest intellectuals could derive from it a correct
date for the Creation.
In England one of the earliest attempts to estimate the time
since the Creation appeared in John Swan's Speculum mundi in
1635, which combined a description of his natural surroundings
with a timescale into which they were placed. Swan, who was rector
of a small parish near Cambridge, put a duration on the six segments of
biblical events first outlined by Robert Grosseteste in his Hexaemeron
of 1225. The first five ages of the six were derived from the Old
Testament and Swan calculated that these had a duration of around
3,997 years. Since the crucifixion of Christ 1,635 years had elapsed,
and since the Creation 5,632 years. Swan's placing of this chronology
within a framework of the nature of living organisms and the slow
decline through time sets it apart from the purely biblical chronolo-
gies that followed.
A COMMONWEALTH OF CHRONOLOGIES
England in the 1640s was in the grip of Civil War. With the defeat of
the Royalist army on the field at Naseby on 14 June 1645 the Civil War
was moving towards its end and Charles I surrendered to the Scottish
army. But by January of the following year he had been handed over to
the Parliamentary Commissioners at Newcastle, and it was only a
matter of time before he met his final fate. His trial, held in January
1649, was swift, lasting only seven days - a rather short time bymodern
standards for a celebrity trial - and he was executed on the 30th of
