{{Short description|English botanist, polymath and author (1702–1771)}} {{Redirect|Still.||Still (disambiguation)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2014}} {{Use British English|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox person | name = Benjamin Stillingfleet | image = Benjamin Stillingfleet by Johann Zoffany, RA.jpg | image_size = 240px | caption = Stillingfleet by Johann Zoffany, RA | birth_name = | birth_date = 1702 | birth_place = Wood Norton, Norfolk, England | death_date = 15 December 1771<ref>Town and Country Magazine. volume 3, supplement. page 717.</ref> | death_place = Piccadilly, England | death_cause = | resting_place = St James's Church, Piccadilly | resting_place_coordinates = | other_names = | known_for = the source of the phrase Blue Stocking | education = | employer = | occupation = Author | title = | height = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | signature = | website = | footnotes = }}
'''Benjamin Stillingfleet''' (1702–1771) was an English botanist, polymath, and writer.
==Life== Benjamin Stillingfleet was born in 1702 in Wood Norton, Norfolk to Mary Ann and Edward Stillingfleet. He was one of four children, and the only son.<ref name=odnb>I. D. Hughes, 'Stillingfleet, Benjamin (1702–1771)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26525, accessed 26 Feb 2010]</ref> His grandfather, Edward Stillingfleet, had died in 1699, but left no money to Benjamin's father as he disapproved of his father's opinions and his marriage.<ref>{{DNB Cite|wstitle=Stillingfleet, Benjamin}}</ref>
Stillingfleet was educated at Norwich School and excelled at classical languages. He was invited to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1720 at the request of the Master of the college Richard Bentley.<ref>{{acad|id=STLT720B|name=Stillingfleet, Benjamin}}</ref> Stillingfleet obtained a B.A. in 1723, but his application to become a Fellow at the college was rejected. This was in part due to the influence of Bentley, who is reported to have said that "Stillingfleet was too fine a gentleman to be buried within the walls of a college."<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Adlington |first=Hugh |date=2015 |title="Formed on y<sup>e</sup> Gr. Language": Benjamin Stillingfleet Reads Paradise Lost, 1745-46 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26603216 |journal=Milton Quarterly |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=217–242 |doi=10.1111/milt.12148 |jstor=26603216 |issn=0026-4326}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Stillingfleet,_Benjamin_(DNB00)|title = Stillingfleet, Benjamin|volume = 54}}</ref> He went on to serve as a tutor to his relative William Windham at Felbrigg Hall for 13 years, in part to alleviate his financial struggles. He also accompanied Windham on the Grand Tour.<ref>{{cite journal|date=29 May 1948|title=Benjamin Stillingfleet|journal=Notes and Queries|pages=224|url=http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/193/11/224-b|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120711214953/http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/193/11/224-b|url-status=dead|archive-date=11 July 2012}}</ref> Whilst in Switzerland, the duo organised a series of pantomimes using other tourists as cast helpers and audience. Stillingfleet was in charge of the music and the scenery. This group was known as the "Common Room." During the summers the same group would set out on scientific explorations to find the undocumented glaciers of the Alps.
After their return to England in 1742, Stillingfleet, now out of work, was awarded a pension of 100 pounds per year for the next seven years by the Windham family. Windham went on to become a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1744 based on the explorations that he and Stillingfleet had made of glaciers in Switzerland, as well as for his mathematical abilities which Stillingfleet had tutored.
In his later years, Stillingfleet devoted himself to the studies of botany and music.<ref name=":0" /> In 1759, he published ''Miscellaneous Tracts'', a botanical text which helped popularise the Linnaean system of classification. In 1761 Stillingfleet was lauded for his contribution to William Hudson's ''Flora Anglica'',<ref>{{DNB Cite|wstitle=Hudson, William (1730?–1793)}}</ref> another botanical text.<ref name=odnb/> Stillingfleet also published a ''Calendar of Flora'' in 1755, based on the observations of Theophrastus, an early formalization of the study of plant phenology and based on Linnaeus' promotion of the idea of natural calendars.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1177/007327530003800104 |title=The Place of Nature and the Nature of Place: The Chorographic Challenge to the History of British Provincial Science |journal=History of Science |volume=38 |pages=79–113 |year=2000 |last1=Jankovic |first1=Vladimir |bibcode=2000HisSc..38...79J |s2cid=161800325 }}</ref>
In the study of music, he published a translated edition of Giuseppe Tartini's work on music theory, and wrote the libretto for the opera Paradise Lost: An Oratorio.<ref name=":0" /> He planned to publish an edition of Paradise Lost, but Stillingfleet gave up the project after Thomas Newton's 1749 edition was published. {{Muses in the Temple of Apollo|align=left|size=200px}} In the early 1750s, an intellectual society was formed by Elizabeth Montagu as part of the Blue Stocking Society movement. The society was noted for encouraging conversation over card playing. They invited various people to attend including Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Catharine Macaulay, Elizabeth Griffith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Ann Linley, Charlotte Lennox<ref name=npg/> and Stillingfleet. One story{{Which|date=April 2022}} tells that Stillingfleet was not rich enough to have the proper formal dress, which included black silk stockings, and so he attended the society's meetings in everyday blue worsted stockings. James Boswell records that during a period of poor conversation when Stillingfleet was absent, it was remarked that they were "nowhere without blue stockings."<ref name=odnb/> The term ''bluestocking'' came to refer to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation over fashion. Later, it came to refer to a member of a bluestocking society.<ref name=Schnorrenberg>Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg, "[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19014 Montagu, Elizabeth (1718–1800)]," ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 22 April 2007.</ref>
In his ''Letter from Mr. Stillingfleet to Mr. Windham on his coming on age'', Stillingfleet appears apologetic towards Christianity.<ref>''[https://books.google.com/books?id=EQEwAAAAYAAJ The British Critic, Volume 49]''. (1812). F. and C. Rivington, p. 60</ref> Stillingfleet died at his lodgings in Piccadilly and his papers were burnt following his own instructions.<ref name=odnb/> He left his estate to his one remaining sister. A monument was erected only after some years to his memory at the nearby St James's Church, Piccadilly by his nephew.
==Legacy== Stillingfleet was a populariser of the influential Linnaean taxonomy.
The first surviving use of the epithet ''bluestocking'' is in reference to Stillingfleet.<ref>{{Citation |title=bluestocking, adj. and n. |url=https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/20617#eid254466483 |work=OED Online |publisher=Oxford University Press |language=en-GB |access-date=2022-04-11}}</ref> James Boswell theorized that his habit of wearing blue stockings to intellectual meetings gave rise to the name Blue Stockings Society. This phrase is the origin of the word ''bluestocking'', a pejorative epithet for a learned or intellectual woman. The word by loan translation is also used in German as ''Blaustrumpf'', in Dutch as ''blauwkous'' and in French as ''bas-bleu''.<ref name="dyk">[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bluestocking Bluestocking], derivation and etymology at Dictionary.com, accessed February 2010</ref> The term was also borrowed in Japanese as '' seito''.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=The bluestockings of Japan : new woman essays and fiction from Seitō, 1911-16|last=Bardsley, Jan|isbn=978-1-929280-44-5|location=Ann Arbor|oclc=172521673}}</ref>
==Works== *''[https://archive.org/details/miscellaneoustra00stil Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Natural History, Husbandry and Physick]'' (1759) *''Paradise Lost: An Oratorio'' (1760) words by Stillingfleet, music by John Christopher Smith *''[https://archive.org/details/principlespowero00stil Principles and Power of Harmony]'', (1771) – translation *''[https://archive.org/details/literarylifeand00stilgoog Literary life and select works of Benjamin Stillingfleet]'', (1811)<ref name="bio">{{cite book|last=Stillingfleet|first=Benjamin|title=Literary life and select works of Benjamin Stillingfleet|year=1811|volume=2|pages=651|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2MU7AAAAYAAJ}}</ref> {{botanist|Still.}}
==References== {{Commons category|Benjamin Stillingfleet}} {{reflist|30em}}
==External links== * [http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00130.shtml Benjamin Stillingfleet] at the [http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/ Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stillingfleet, Benjamin}} Category:1702 births Category:1771 deaths Category:People from Norfolk Category:People educated at Norwich School Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:18th-century English botanists Category:Burials at St James's Church, Piccadilly