Talk:Jeremiah Horrocks

Plagiarism

Large amounts of material copied from another web site recently have been added to this Jeremiah Horrocks article. It is, of course, inappropriate to take material from others and then add it to Wikipedia without proper citations, as was done here twice. Large, multi-sentence sections of recent additions were copied straight from Chapman's article on Horrocks. That constitutes plagiarism. Also, please note that Wikipedia has pages covering verification of material. The burden for verification is on the editor who adds new content. Thanks in advance for your cooperation. - Astrochemist (talk) 12:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. I believe you are talking about http://www.longtononline.co.uk/his_horrocks.html from which Allen234 has been copying. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 05:19, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Over the past week or so, similar incorrect or plagiarized materials have been added to the Horrocks article by the following:

1. Allen234
2. Anonymous user, IP number 59.184.187.7
3. Anonymous user, IP number 59.184.172.45
4. Anonymous user, IP number 59.184.187.53
5. Anonymous user, IP number 59.184.145.81

I think that there is a pattern there. - Astrochemist (talk) 00:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Puritan "rationalism"; motive for leaving without a degree

"his Puritan upbringing gave him an inbuilt suspicion of witchcraft, magic and astrology" Wishful pseudohistory: the Puritans were at least as credulous about witches as anyone, as the Salem witch trials attest.

"In 1635 he left without formally graduating, presumably due to the cost of continuing his studies" A modern imagining: In the 1630s didn't Dissenters leave without taking formal degrees because of the onus of subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles?.--Wetman (talk)

A number of writers have suggested he left because of the cost of his studies. I've changed it for now as Aughton didn't believe it was likely either, and I've added his speculations, however I'll put it back in as a possibility when I have time to find the references for it. Someone else wrote that he may have intended to graduate later, as many did then. If I can find that again I'll put that in as a possibility also. As for the first point, it's referenced to Aughton. I would be grateful if you wouldn't add your own unreferenced speculations though - I've not seen anything in what I've read that suggests it was due to the onus of subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles. If you want to add something please find the citation for it first. Richerman (talk) 19:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The reference to an Anglican curacy seems to be wrong. Puritans would not want such a task or be accepted by the Anglican authorities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.11.202 (talk) 16:08, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Whatton calls Horrocks "Rev." but I am not sure that this is correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.11.202 (talk) 16:36, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Publication date of posthumous edition

The article shows an image of the title page of the posthumous edition. The original clearly shows an imprint of " M D C LXXIII " i.e. 1673, but the caption says "published ... in 1672". A number of published statements (all unsupported by evidence) do repeat that the publication occurred in 1672, but none of the original title pages say that. 31.125.153.172 (talk) 11:52, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Such dates in printed works are not always 100% accurate, for various reasons. The Calendarium Naturale Magicum Perpetuum gave a date of 1582, though the surviving edition was printed around 1619, and it's not too clear that there ever was a 1582 printing... AnonMoos (talk) 02:14, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

According to Plummer, H. C. K. (1940). "Jeremiah Horrocks and his Opera posthuma". Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, 3(1), 39-52:

"The first impression was finished in 1672 and copies reached Newton before the end of that year and Gregory early in the next. A copy in the library of the Royal Society is dated 1673. These were hard times for publishers (bookseller undertakers) of this class of book. Collins,who had a large share in transactions with the trade, reports that Hickman, the undertaker of Horrocks s work, 'broke', and a few years later that the booksellers had lost so much by the books of Wallis, Horrocks and Barrow ('the best things extant') that it was hard to persuade them to undertake more. In fact Moses Pitt bought a 'remain' of over two hundred copies of Horrocks, 'a very good book . . . very damageable to the undertaker'. But this must have been a profitable transaction, for shortly afterwards Hearne mentions that the book was 'now very scarce' and in 1678 a new edition, a reprint of that of 1673, was produced. All this is evidence that the book after a slow beginning had established itself in favour. Not that its merits had failed to find recognition from the first. [...]"

–jacobolus (t) 03:20, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

P.S. If you want to answer this type of question in the future, I found this by doing a google scholar search for Wallis Horrocks "Opera posthuma" 1673. –jacobolus (t) 06:06, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Transit of Venus

this is a non-bio cat. In general we do not categorize people by every feature they studied. I do not think this should be an exception.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:39, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

Who is "we", and what do you mean "every feature they studied"? The transit of venus is the primary thing Horrocks (who died young) is famous for, and he is one of the main people associated with the topic of the transit of venus. You haven't given any kind of convincing rationale here. –jacobolus (t) 21:05, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

We are discussing this edit which removed Category:Transit of Venus. I don't know if there is a rule about that but someone interested in the transit of Venus might use the category (that's what it is for). In that case, this article should definitely be listed. Johnuniq (talk) 04:04, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

There's also a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization § Should biographies go in non-biographical categories. –jacobolus (t) 04:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Curacy (section Astronomical observations)

I am hesitant to go along with the dismissive comment about the veracity of his having been a curate as stated below:

Tradition has it that after he left home he supported himself by holding a curacy in Much Hoole, near Preston in Lancashire, but there is little evidence for this.

There is a citation at end of this sentence but has the writer taken account of the sketch on Horrocks by Agnes Mary Clerke in the original Dictionary of National Biography? Clerke states:

Ordained in 1639 to the curacy of Hoole, a poor hamlet eight miles south-west of Preston, he was obliged to eke out his annual stipend of 40l [pound sterling]. by tuition or some similar drudgery....Horrocks resigned his curacy, probably owing to ill-health, and returned to Toxteth in July 1640.

Cloptonson (talk) 20:04, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

I have no expertise here, but some other sources have: https://www.atramsey.com/transitofvenus/phys_ed_JH.pdf

Although the Westminster Abbey memorial claims that Horrocks was a Curate in Hoole (now known as Much Hoole), there is no real evidence to prove this. It is true that he was a very pious youth: his religious conviction is clear in every part of Venus in Sole Visa, laced as it is with references to the Almighty. On the day of the transit, which was a Sunday, according to Horrocks: 'I watched carefully... from sunrise to nine o'clock, and from a little before ten until noon, and at one in the afternoon, being called away in the intervals by business of the highest importance which, for these ornamental pursuits, I could not with propriety neglect.' This statement alone is what has led many people to think that Horrocks was a clergyman with a service to conduct. In the seventeenth century, however, not only clergymen would feel an unavoidable obligation to go to church on the Christian Sabbath. Moreover, the young astronomer was not old enough to be ordained. No record of his ordination exists and the post of curate at St Michael’s Church in Much Hoole was at that time occupied by someone else.

JSTOR 3608866

We must now return to Horrocks. Was he really the curate at Hoole? The memorial tablet placed in the church in 1859 claims him as curate. The church is half a mile north of Carr House, close to the "Rose and Crown" on the main road. But no record exists of his ordination and if, as is believed, he was born in 1618 he must, when at Hoole in 1639, habe been below the canonical age of 23. Most unfortunately the baptismal registers of St. Nicholas' church at the Liverpool Pierhead are missing for 1618. Of course his baptism may not have taken place there. Indeed if he was really born at Bolton, and his father moved to Toxteth, it is obvious that he would have been baptized at the former place. But all this is uncertain. However, we do know he was well under 23 at the time of the Transit in 1639, and it can hardly be supposed that a special faculty had been given to Horrocks for his ordination.

There is the further difficulty that we know that a certain Rev. Robert Fogg was curate of Hoole in 1632. He was also curate in 1639, the year of the transit, and further became Rector in 1641. Hence, if Horrocks was ordained, he could presumably have only been assistant curate or a locum tenens. To meet these difficulties it has been suggested he was the village schoolmaster, an office sometimes held conjointly with that of reader in a chapelry. In short he was what we call to-day a lay reader. But for that a licence from the Bishop was necessary, and no record of it has been found.

Bibcode:1976JBAA...86..370R

Horrocks is probably best remembered today for his observations of the 1639 transit of Venus. At this time he was curate at the chapel-of-ease at Hoole, some 24 km north of Liverpool: at least, that is the post he is often spoken of as holding, although there is some doubt since there are no records of his ever being ordained. It has been said that the Puritan-orientated Horrocks was no more than a lay-reader at Hoole while the real curate was away, and that his main duties were to act as schoolmaster there. However, it has been pointed out to me that we simply cannot be certain one way or the other, for in the 1630s bishops exercised far more independence than they do now over ordinations, and that church records were not so rigorously preserved during the tempestuous period that was to erupt, a very few years later, into the Civil War. At all events Horrocks certainly had religious duties that interfered with his observations of the transit, since this took place on a Sunday.

These were the first few sources about this that popped up in a quick search; feel free to do a more thorough literature survey. –jacobolus (t) 04:22, 12 December 2025 (UTC)