It is hardly a fortuitous circumstance that the leading figures of this nuclear group of the Royal Society were divines or eminently religious men, though it is not quite accurate to maintain, as did Dr. Richardson that the beginnings of the Society occurred in a small group of learned men among whom Puritan divines predominated.  But it is quite clearly true that the originative spirits of the Society were markedly influenced by Puritan conceptions (1968, p. 638).