Charles Morton (educator)

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Charles Morton (15 February 1627 – 11 April 1698) was a British

dissenting academy, later in life associated in New England with Harvard College
. Morton was raised with strong
Oxford (1649-1652). As a result of the English Revolution, he was arrested and excommunicated for promoting progressive education (he was the teacher of Daniel Defoe), forcing his immigration to relative safety in Massachusetts Bay Colony (1685-1686), although he was soon arrested for sedition (and then acquitted) in Boston.[1]

His system of

Principia was also published in 1687).[6]

Life

He was born at

M.A. 24 June 1652, being also incorporated at Cambridge in 1653.[7] At Oxford he was known as a mathematician and highly thought of by John Wilkins
.

In 1655 Morton was appointed to the rectory of

1662 Act of Uniformity, whereupon he retired to a small tenement, his own property, in St Ive. He lost property through the Great Fire of London, and went to London to support himself. Morton was probably the ‘Charles Morton, presbyterian,’ who in 1672 was licensed for a room in his dwelling-house in Kennington
.

A few years later he ran at

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography judges Morton's "probably the most impressive of the dissenting academies [prior to 1685], enrolling as many as fifty pupils at a time". The ODNB goes on to describe its advanced and varied curriculum (religion, classics, history, geography, mathematics, natural science, politics, and modern languages) and a well-equipped laboratory, and even "a bowling green for recreation". Lectures were given in English, not Latin, and Daniel Defoe, one of Morton's students, praised its attention to the mother tongue. Many dissenting ministers, including John Shower, Samuel Lawrence, Thomas Reynolds, and William Hocker, were educated by Morton. Another of his pupils was Samuel Shute.[10]

Such schools were both controversial and outside the letter of the law.

Samuel Wesley the elder, a contemporary of Defoe's, described his teacher "as universal in his learning",[11] but in 1703 attacked the dissenting academies, including Morton's, in his ‘Letter from a Country Divine'. A pamphlet
war ensued, with the academies defended by the Rev. Samuel Palmer in ‘A Defence of the Dissenters' Education in their Private Academies,’ to which Wesley replied in ‘A Defence of a Letter on the Education of Dissenters,’ 1704, and Palmer retorted with ‘A Vindication of the Learning, Loyalty, Morals of the Dissenters. In answer to Mr. Wesley,’ 1705.

Legal actions from the bishop's court made Morton decide to emigrate. He arrived in New England in July 1686 with his wife, his pupil,

Charlestown, New England, on 5 November 1686, and was the first clergyman of the town who solemnised marriages. He was prosecuted for alleged seditious expressions in a sermon preached on 2 September 1687, but was acquitted. His name is the second of the petitioners to the council on 2 October 1693 for some encouragement to a system of propagating Christianity among the Native Americans, and his was the senior signature to an association for mutual assistance among the ministers of New England. He acted with those who urged the prosecutions for witchcraft at Salem, Massachusetts
.

About 1694 Morton's health began to fail. He died at Charlestown on 11 April 1698, and was buried on 14 April, his funeral being attended by the officers of Harvard College and its students. By his will, dated November 1697, he left money to Harvard; his houses and lands at Charlestown and in Cornwall with the rest of his property passed to his two nephews, Charles and John Morton, and his niece in equal shares. An epitaph was written for him by the Rev. Simon Bradstreet, his successor in the ministry.

Works

He was the author of the English language Compendium Physicae (1687), an early American textbook on astronomy and physics.[12] The textbook was also known as [A] System of Physicks, and was among the most important texts in natural philosophy in early America, used to teach science and the scientific method to students at both Harvard and Yale from the late 1680s through the late 1720s.[13] Morton's later treatise, which posited that birds migrated to the moon, was the earliest treatise on bird migration in England.[14]

Compendium Physicae was probably completed prior to his immigration to America (around 1680), and all extant original copies (roughly 20) are traced to Harvard or Yale. Samuel Eliot Morison's transcription of 'Compendium Physicae' is published in "Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts" vol. 33 (Boston: 1940).

A Logick System is transcribed by Rick Kennedy in "Aristotelian and Cartesian Logic at Harvard," "Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts" vol. 67 (Boston: 1995).

Philosophical Transactions
, x. 293–6, and his ‘Enquiry into the Physical and Literal Sense of Jeremiah viii. 7—the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times,’ is reprinted in the ‘Harleian Miscellany,’ 1744 ii. 558–567, 1809 ii. 578–88.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Natural Philosophy and Early Physics in the American Philosophical Society Library". Archived from the original on 4 October 2012. Retrieved 8 October 2012.
  2. ^ Godbeer, R. The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  3. ^ Stavish, M. The History of Alchemy in America. Alchemy Journal, Vol 3, No 3, May/June 2002.
  4. ^ Bostridge, I. Witchcraft and Its Transformations c.1650 - c.1750. Oxford University Press, 1997.
  5. ^ Elliott, C.A. & M.W. Rossiter. Science at Harvard University: Historical Perspectives. Associated University Press, 1992.
  6. ^ Robbins, A.B. History of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers. Gateway Press, 2001.
  7. ^ "Morton, Charles (MRTN646C)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  8. ISBN 978-0-521-74864-3
    .
  9. ^ The Village that Changed the World: A History of Newington Green London N16 by Alex Allardyce. Newington Green Action Group: 2008. p7.
  10. ^ Dictionary of National Biography, article on Shute.
  11. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
    article on Morton.
  12. ^ Compendium Physicae. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol XXXIII, 237pp, 1940.
  13. ^ "A System of Physicks (Compedium Physicae): A System of Physicks (Compedium Physicae)".
  14. S2CID 143714927
    .

References
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