Devotions upon emergent occasions

Society since its inauguration in 1660. There were several in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the present club probably began in 1731. However, during its lifetime other subsidiary clubs have been formed: Sir Joseph Banks', The Royal Society Club, 1775 to 1784; the 47 Club, from 1874 to 1901 when it amalgamated with the older club. Naturally there have been several accounts of these clubs produced, all published in the last century or in the first two decades of this. Since their appearance, however, a good deal of additional and vital information has come to light, including the diaries of Hooke, John Byrom and Thomas Birch, and the Minute Book of Banks' Club. A new history was, therefore, amply justified and the author has produced a well-researched study with which to supplement and complement the accounts already available. He has drawn liberally on primary sources and cites extensively from them, but unfortunately he gives no precise references to their origins. In fact there are no notes or references at all, and the text tends to be a recitation of events without much discussion or attempts at relating with comparable events elsewhere in the world. Welcome though this detailed history may be, yet another will be needed in which full documentation and wider scholarship are employed.