Note 11 — Chapter II · LIFE AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.
Reading edition
A writer in the Quarterly Journal of Science for 1868, p. 50, says: “We have reason to know that Davy was slightly annoyed that the certificate proposing Faraday for election should have originated with Richard Phillips, and that he should not have been consulted before that gentleman was allowed to take the matter in hand.” This is absurd, because the President was by long-standing etiquette debarred from signing the certificates of any but foreign members, as the certificate book of the Royal Society attests.