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Martin Folkes (1690–1754) was Newton's protégé, an English antiquary, mathematician, numismatist and astronomer who would in the latter part of his career become simultaneously president of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. Folkes took a Grand Tour from March 1733 to September 1735, recording the Italian leg of his journey from Padua to Rome in his journal. This paper examines Folkes's travel diary to analyse his Freemasonry, his intellectual development as a Newtonian and his scientific peregrination. It shows how, in this latter area, how he used metrology to understand not only the aesthetics but also the engineering principles of antique buildings and artefacts, as well as their context and place in the Italian landscape. Using Folkes's diary, his account book of his journey in the Norwich archives, and his correspondence with other natural philosophers such as Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764), Anders Celsius (1701–1744) and Abbé Antonio Schinella Conti (1667–1749), this paper will also demonstrate to what extent Folkes's journey established his reputation as an international broker of Newtonianism, as well as the overall primacy of English scientific instrumentation to Italian virtuosi.

The Scientific Revolution is probably the single most important unifying concept in the history of science. Usually referring to the period from Copernicus to Newton (roughly 1500 to 1700), it is considered to be the central episode in the history of science, the historical moment at which that unique way of looking at the world that we call “modern science” and its attendant institutions emerged. It has been taken as the terminus ad quern of classical and medieval science and the terminus a quo of all that followed. Not itself an explanatory concept, the Scientific Revolution has become the reference point for questions that guide historians of science, questions about what it was, what exactly happened, why it happened, and why it happened when and where it did. Traditional histories of the Scientific Revolution have customarily focused on a list of canonical individuals who explored a canonical set of subjects. The individuals usually include Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, Galileo, Vesalius, Harvey, Descartes, Boyle, and Newton. The subjects are astronomy, physics, mathematics, anatomy, physiology, and chemistry. This book reflects the problematization of the canon in recent scholarship. The traditional canonical figures often devoted themselves to noncanonical subjects and frequently resembled many of their contemporaries who have not found a place in the Scientific Revolution's hall of fame. Moreover, the subjects that engaged their attention do not readily map onto the canonical list of modern sciences. Questioning the canon leads us to inquire why and how it was formed. And this inquiry, in turn, causes us to interrogate our own presuppositions as historians and how those presuppositions affect what we see in the past.

With the inauguration of Newton's Presidency, much was to change within the Society and with the perception of it by outsiders. Most strikingly, it is for this period impossible to separate the office from the office-holder, the Royal Society from its President, and Newton the natural philosopher from Sir Isaac Newton P.R.S. The two rapidly became one in most eyes, so that the Society received the credit for Newton's fame and influence, while he in turn took on the attributes of the Royal Society. Relations between the Society and individuals at home and abroad were also coloured by the fact of Newton's Presidency. Sloane remained an active Secretary for ten years, corresponding as before with, particularly, natural historians, medical men, and his French friends (he joined Newton as an associe etranger of the Academie Royale des Sciences in 1709); after that as a Vice-President he presided at meetings when Newton was not present and of course continued much of his correspondence and influence, although less publicly. In 1713 Halley became Secretary so that now official correspondence took on a more astronomical bent. The publication of Opticks and the growing number of adherents to the Newtonian natural philosophy meant an enormous growth in knowledge and understanding of the Royal Society's empirical programme, now ineluctably merged with the dominating figure of its President, even though the cult of Newtonianism associated with the Enlightenment lay still in the future. Learned visitors were eager to view the Royal Society and its President, one of the essential ‘sights’ of London.