Shelburne, Lord

Priestley left the employment of Lord Shelburne in 1780 having made his major scientific discoveries. Priestley s political... 

The "Secret Committee" of the East India Company — under the direction of Lord Shelburne and company chairman George Baring — coordinated British secret intelligence s campaign of subversion and economic warfare against the newly constituted American republic even before the ink had dried on the Treaty of Paris (1783). (3)... 

The results of his experiments set Priestley all aquiver. A few weeks later Lord Shelburne, who had shared his views regarding the American Colonists, took a trip to the Continent. This scholarly statesman had offered Priestley an annuity of two hundred and fifty pounds, a summer residence at Caine, and a winter home in London, to live with him as his librarian and literary companion. For eight years this beautiful relationship lasted, and it was during these years that Priestley performed his most productive experiments. On this trip to the Continent, Priestley accompanied his patron. While in Paris, Priestley was introduced by Magellan, a descendant of the circumnavigator of the globe, to most of the famous chemists of... 

The first day of August in the year 1774 is one of the most memorable dates in the history of science, and, indeed (although unknown to most historians), in the history of civilisation. On that sunny day, at Bowood near Caine in Wiltshire, where Priestley held the post of librarian and literary companion to Lord Shelburne, he focused his new glass upon some red calx of mercury, or mmurius calcinatus... 

During a visit with Lord Shelburne to Paris in October 1774, Priestley met Lavoisier and told him about his recent discovery of the astonishing new air, thus giving him a clue of great importance in the development of his views upon the nature of combustion. This visit led to a later controversy, concerning the discovery of oxygen. 

Because his new gas was better than common air for supporting respiration and combustion, he called it dephlogisticated air. In October Priestley went with Lord Shelburne to Europe to meet and discuss his results with a certain French chemist, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. (Lavoisier at this time was formulating his own ideas about air and combustion, and his meeting with Priestley had repercussions, as we shall soon see.) By March 1775 convinced of his priority in the discovery of the new gas, Priestley wrote Hitherto only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it. ... 

In October 1774 Priestley visited Paris with Lord Shelburne and told Lavoisier at dinner of his discovery of dephlogisticated air (see p. 256). Priestley, who was a person of the most scrupulous veracity, and wholly incapable of giving any false colouring to the facts which he related respecting his discoveries , says ... 

Priestley in 1773 went as literary companion to Lord Shelburne, afterwards first Marquis of Lansdowne, Prime Minister in 1782, the first English statesman to hold free trade principles. Shelburne in 1771 had met Baron d Holbach and Morellet in Paris and by them, as well as Adam Smith, he was much influenced. Priestley lived in a house near Lord Shelburne s seat Bowood in Caine, Wiltshire, and in winter in a house near to Lord Shelburne s London house. He had a salary of a year, the use of a splendid library, plenty of leisure for his own work, and the promise of an annual pension of ( 150 on retirement. He says Lord Shelburne treated him as a friend. In the autunm of 1774 Priestley travelled with Lord Shelburne on the Continent and met Lavoisier in Paris Priestley had then Just discovered oxygen in Caine. 

William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, offered Priestley a position as librarian and tutor to his sons. The years 1773 to 1780, when he cooperated with Lord Shelburne, were the most fruitfijl of Priestley s career as a chemist. In this time he published Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, which contained his major chemical achievements. 

New historical details on Priestley, Lord Shelburne, and Lavoisier... 

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