‘A man of intrigue’: Giles Rawlins, 1631?–1662

Abstract

No person proposed to the early Royal Society has a less certain biography than Giles Rawlins. A ‘Mr. Rawlins’ was proposed as a candidate for election on 26 December 1660 in a group of seven. The other members of this group were Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, John Denham, Elias Ashmole, John Evelyn and Nathaniel Henshaw. But whereas these six other men are greater or lesser luminaries of the Society, Rawlins is a blank. R. E. W. Maddison in 1960 could only ‘suggest’ his likely identity; and Michael Hunter in The Royal Society and its Fellows (1982 and 1994) went no further than Maddison.1 Following my discovery in the National Library of Ireland of Rawlins's only autograph letter, it is possible for the first time to confirm his identity. Further, this discovery allows the reconstruction of the rest of Rawlins's life: his upbringing as the son of a minor diplomat; his work in the Interregnum as a cross-Channel royalist messenger; his consequent rise and reward in the Duke of York's household; and his death in one of the most notorious duels of the Restoration.