Folkes and His Social Networks in 1720s London

Folkes’s social networks are the subject of chapter four, which analyses his participation in the Grand Masonic Lodge, and the revived Order of the Bath, as part of what Antti Matikkala has termed ‘The Chivalric Enlightenment’ a movement ‘essentially rhetorical, learned, antiquarian and eclectic’. Although the term ‘Enlightenment’ itself is contested, with so-called ‘Enlightened historians’ often scorning antiquarian pursuits, others, such as Folkes, had enlightened interest in the past which he and the Royal Society promoted. This chapter will also analyse the ties between the Masons and the Royal Society, and to what extent Folkes’s religious beliefs and participation in these organizations shaped the teaching of Newton’s work at Cambridge, as well as his editing of Newton’s Chronology and Ancient Kingdoms Revised with Thomas Pellett. We also will delineate how and why his participation in these social networks did not guarantee him the Royal Society Presidency when Newton died in 1727.