Partridge Norwich Quotes

In 1680, the bishop of Norwich remarked that astrology ‘lies in the midway between magic and imposture’,132 suggesting that critics of astrology were now as likely to regard it as fraudulent as morally impermissible. Publication of learned speculations on the nature of astrology declined after 1688, although almanacs remained popular. The astrologer John Partridge, an ardent Whig who returned from exile after the revolution, maintained traditional astrological methods – to the point where he stubbornly rejected Copernican heliocentrism, by then virtually universally accepted. Partridge’s rival, the pro-Jacobite John Gadbury, embraced a heliocentric universe with equal fervour.133

For the last three years I had been a hospital radio DJ at St Luke’s in Norwich. It was a smashing little hospital and many of the people who went in there didn’t end up dead. I loved my job, though.

Before concluding the discussion on Partridge’s connection to the Stoic tradition, I present what is probably the greatest proof Partridge was a Stoic: he suffered the public doom of one. Ironically, Partridge may have missed a powerful warning about his own fate within one of the key texts he used in his academies. A footnote within William Duncan’s translation of Cicero’s orations recalls the ill fortune of Quintus Aelius Tubero in the eyes of the people of Rome caused by his Stoic behavior at the funeral of Scipio Africanus: "[It was the same from the study of Tubero] Cicero here ridicules the doctrine of the Stoics, shows the absurdities into which it may betray a man and paints the ill consequences that often arise from it. [Quintus Aelius] Tubero, of whom he speaks here had professed himself a Stoic and resolved to regulate his conduct by the tenets of that sect. Accordingly, in an entertainment he gave the Roman people on occasion of the death of the great Scipio Africanus he made use of plain wooden beds, goat skin covers, and earthen dishes. But this ill-timed parsimony was so displeasing to the Roman people that when he afterwards stood for the prætorship they refused him their suffrages though a man of illustrious birth and the most distinguished virtue." Is there a passage more fitting for the legacy of Partridge and his Stoic behavior? Even when Partridge had built an ideal model for educating a complete virtue-driven citizen worthy of the Republic, few would find the lifestyle required appealing. Being a virtuous man with a sufficient plan for American education was not enough to guarantee his acceptance among the masses.