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‘The Cabals of a Few Designing Members’: The Presidency of Martin Folkes, PRS and the Society's First Charter

This short paper examines the presidency of Martin Folkes (1690–1754) and the events surrounding the incorporation of the Society by a Royal Charter from George II in 1751. Folkes was also president of the Royal Society of London, and a small number of Antiquaries feared that incorporation was a plot hatched by ‘a few designing members’ either to line their own pockets or to subsume their society into its older, wealthier rival. Folkes in turn was a controversial figure, renowned f or his irreligious beliefs and satirized for his poor government of the Royal Society.