'Nullius in verba' was chosen to accompany the arms given to the Society by Charles II in the second charter of 1663. John Evelyn had sketched a variety of possible 'Armes and mottoes proposed for ye Royal Society, 1660', which included the motto eventually chosen and still used today.
Designs which failed to make the final cut included a vessel under sail with the motto 'Et augebitur scientia', a hand issuing from clouds holding a plumb-line with the motto 'Omnia probate' (1 Thess. 5.21), two telescopes extended in saltire with earth and planets, motto 'Quantum nescimus!', and a shield bearing the sun in its splendour inscribed 'Ad majorem lumen', plus on one side of the shield 'Quis dicere falsum audeat?'.
A final design, a shield charged with terrestrial globe and human eye, is headed 'Rerum cognoscere causas' from Virgil's Georgics, alongside which is the word 'Experiendo' and a repetition of 'Nullius in verba'. All were rejected, with the exception of the latter, and the arms were entered into the official volume, 'Royal Concessions in the College of Arms', approved by the King on 22 April 1663 and entered into the record by Elias Ashmole on 30 June 1663.
Ac ne forte roges, quo me duce, quo lare tuter,
Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri.
(Horace, Epistles I.i, 1.13-14)
You shall not ask for whom I fight
Nor in what school my peace I find;
I say no master has the right
To swear me to obedience blind.
(trans. C.T. Carr)
The image shown is of the arms and motto as displayed in the tercentenary window in the Royal Society's premises on Carlton House Terrace.
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