Creative History

A Watchmaker, a drifter, an injured man or a person with a cognitive disability--it didn’t matter.  No matter what Robert Hubert was--or may have been--in September of 1666 in the days just after the Great Fire of London had left most of England’s largest city a smoldering ruin, Robert Hubert was an immigrant; maybe a Catholic, a foreigner and what everyone at the time called a stranger.  Robert Hubert was a Frenchman who resided in England and for that reason he was considered a threat in September of 1666; a person who instantly became one of interest on account of his immigration status--a person who may have been responsible for the flaming holocaust that had just incinerated England’s seat of royal power--and who for that reason, was taken into custody by the King’s authorities in the days after the Great Fire of London. Robert Hubert arrived in London at the age of twenty six in the spring of 1666 only weeks prior to the outbreak of the Great Fire.  History does t...

  As the horse-drawn carriage rumbles over the rutted road in the London suburb of Highgate, renowned Enlightenment scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon is insistent. “It is most definitely possible,” Bacon turns and asserts to his carriage companion. Dr. Winterbourne, Royal Physician to King James I, is nonplussed.  He shakes his head and mutters, “Anything is possible.” Bacon, who is considered one of the most intelligent and learned men on the planet at the time, isn’t used to having any of his ideas questioned and he is rarely ever proven wrong. “Definitely possible,” Bacon repeats as he motions for the coachman to stop the carriage at the side of the road.  He then hastily jumps out of the coach and tells Winterbourne, “And now I’m going to prove it to you!” It is early April 1626 and a surprise springtime snow is falling.  It is bitterly, unexpectedly, cold for that time of year.  What Francis Bacon and Dr. Winterbourne are arguing over is t...