Assembled under one regime, chartered by its successor, outlived both
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
Founded in November 1660 and granted its royal charter in 1662 by Charles II — the monarch restored after the collapse of the Cromwellian protectorate.
Its members were substantially the same men who had been meeting at Oxford under Wilkins's shelter throughout the Commonwealth. They sought royal patronage in part to insulate themselves from their own history.
Each entry below carries its own provenance — the source, and how it was processed. That is the condition on which this graph can be extended by anyone without degrading.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
It was incubated by a regime, purged by that regime's successor, and then chartered by the successor anyway — because by then the network had a value independent of whoever was sponsoring it.
Institutions that survive changes of sponsor are the ones whose value was never located in the sponsor. That is not a lesson about seventeenth-century England; it is the design requirement for anything meant to last past the people who start it.
There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.
The man in the middle — protected by one regime, purged by the next, founded the institution anyway
Open →its president, 1703–1727Unified the physical laws, then went and fixed the money
Open →whose patronage incubated its foundersTemporary authority, used to incubate something meant to outlive it
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.
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