The first native English aeronaut was an Oxford confectioner named James Sadler and it is a pity that it was not he but the Tuscan Vincent Lunardi, who made the first aerial voyage in England. But Sadler was soon airborne: in 1784 he ascended at Oxford in a Montgolfiere and in the words of a contemporary, “received the approbation of the whole University, to whom he gave the utmost satisfaction”. He thereafter took to the more practical hydrogen balloon and made many ascents and experienced a number of adventures, including two ducklings – one in the Bristol Channel and one in the Irish Sea. However, he died peacefully in his bed in 1828, at the age of seventy-seven. The scene so charmingly portrayed here is an ascent at Oxford on 7th July 1810, on the occasion of the installation of Lord Grenville as Chancellor of the University. A huge crowd assembled to see Sadler ascend from Merton Fields and many other spectators climbed towers and lower vantage points in the city. The hydrogen balloon – “altogether the most magnificent ever exhibited in this country” – was made up of pink and white gores on the lower part and blue and white on the upper, the two parts separated by a decorative band commemoration Lord Grenville’s installation. Sadler set off with his son Windham just before 2pm and soon after the take-off send down a kitten in a basket attached to a parachute. The journey ended successfully, but somewhat to the alarm of the local inhabitants, in a field at North Crawley in Buckinghamshire.