Robert Morison (1620-83)
Robert Morison (1620-83) was born and educated in Aberdeen. In 1644, he was seriously injured fighting for the Royalist cause in Scotland. He escaped to France, where he studied zoology and botany and finally took a medical degree from Angers in 1648.
Morison came to the attention of Louis XIV’s (1638-1715) botanist (Vespasian Robin, 1579-1662), who recommended him to the household of Gaston, duke of d'Orléans (1608-1660). He worked in the duke's garden at Blois, where he developed his ideas about plant classification and travelled extensively searching for new species to adorn the ducal garden. It was in Gaston’s service, that Morison met the future Charles II (1630-1685).
Once restored to the throne, Charles II made Morison a royal physician and professor of botany. In 1669, Morison was elected Regius Professor of Botany at Oxford, the first such position in a British university. The first inklings of Morison’s dissatisfaction with prevailing plant classification systems came with the publication of Praeludia Botanica (1669), which was followed by Plantarum umbelliferarum distributio nova (1672), a prospectus for a grand illustrated work, Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis (1680, 1699). Morison only lived to see the publication of the second part of this work in 1680.
Morison gave the first formal botanical lecture in the University from behind a table at the centre of the Physic Garden on Monday 5th September 1670. Morison’s course was to occur thrice weekly for two sessions, each of five weeks duration. The first session starting in September, the second session the following May. By May 1671, Morison’s attention had been diverted to his Historia.
We know nothing of how Morison’s audience reacted to his lectures. What little we know of his manner reveals Morison was an engaging teacher, although his strong Scottish accent marred his eloquence for the Oxford antiquarian Anthony Wood (1632-1695); ‘though a master in speaking and writing the Latin tongue, yet [he] hath no command of the English, as being much spoyled by his Scottish tone’ (Clark, 1894: 49). Moreover, Wood reported that, when James Stuart (1633-1701; later James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland) visited the Garden in 1683, Morison’s mangled English provoked laughter. The Reverend John Ward (1629-1681) recorded that Jacob Bobart the Elder spoke of Morison as ‘ye whole world yields not ye like man, hee never heard a man talk att yt. gallant rate in his life’ (Power, 1919: 119).
Morison was killed in a road accident in London. He was not replaced as professor for over fifty years. The Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) commemorated Morison in the generic name Morisonia, a group of Caribbean members of the caper family.
Sonmans’ portrait (Image 1) shows Morison facing left in academic dress with a scroll in his right hand. Morison appears to be in his mid- to late-50s, but it is unknown when the portrait was made, and whether it was drawn from life. This portrait is probably the model for the copper-plate engraving of Morison, made by Robert White, used as a frontispiece for Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis of 1699 (Image 2). In the engraving, the portrait is reversed; Morison faces right and holds the scroll in his left hand.
References
Clark A 1894. The life and times of Anthony Wood, antiquary, of Oxford, 1632-1695. Vol. III: 1682-1695. Printed for the Oxford Historical Society, at the Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Power D 1919. The Oxford Physic Garden. Annals of Medical History 2: 109-125.