The Many Caprices of the World: The Dispute Between Nicholas Hawksmoor and Lord Burlington Reconsidered

Abstract

This article is about a letter, written by the elderly Nicholas Hawksmoor (c. 1661–1736), concerning his design for the mausoleum at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. In it, he contrasts his architectural-theoretical position, which was one dictated by ‘reason’, with that adopted by the younger Lord Burlington (1694–1753), which was apparently governed by ‘caprice’. The letter reveals a great deal about Hawksmoor’s late intellectual formation, but also about attitudes to the role that Burlington and his circle were playing in contemporary architectural discourse. Thus the article is really about the intellectual backdrop to English Palladianism and how it was understood by an architect outside its embrace. It stands as a corrective to a recent trend in British architectural history which has claimed that a close synergy existed between architects of the so-called English baroque and Palladianism. Using Hawksmoor’s own words, this article shows that he, at least, saw a deep methodological and theoretical divide between his architectural project and Burlington’s.