The Diary of John Evelyn (Volume 2 of 2)

18th June, 1696. The famous trial between my Lord Bath and Lord Montague for an estate of £11,000 a year, left by the Duke of Albemarle, wherein on several trials had been spent,£20,000 between them. The Earl of Bath was cast on evident forgery.

20th June, 1696. I made my Lord Cheney a visit at Chelsea, and saw those ingenious waterworks invented by Mr. Winstanley, wherein were some things very surprising and extraordinary.

21st June, 1696. An exceedingly rainy, cold, unseasonable summer, yet the city was very healthy.

25th June, 1696. A trial in the Common Pleas between the Lady Purbeck Temple and Mr. Temple, a nephew of Sir Purbeck, concerning a deed set up to take place of several wills. This deed was proved to be forged. The cause went on my lady's side. This concerning my son-in-law, Draper, I stayed almost all day at Court. A great supper was given to the jury, being persons of the best condition in Buckinghamshire.

30th June, 1696. I went with a select committee of the Commissioners for Greenwich Hospital, and with Sir Christopher Wren, where with him I laid the first stone of the intended foundation, precisely at five o'clock in the evening, after we had dined together. Mr. Flamstead, the King's Astronomical Professor, observing the punctual time by instruments.

4th July, 1696. Note that my Lord Godolphin was the first of the subscribers who paid any money to this noble fabric.

7th July, 1696. A northern wind altering the weather with a continual and impetuous rain of three days and nights changed it into perfect winter.

12th July, 1696. Very unseasonable and uncertain weather.

26th July, 1696. So little money in the nation that Exchequer Tallies, of which I had for £2,000 on the best fund in England, the Post Office, nobody would take at 30 per cent discount.

3d August, 1696. The Bank lending the £200,000 to pay the array in Flanders, that had done nothing against the enemy, had so exhausted the treasure of the nation, that one could not have borrowed money under 14 or 15 per cent on bills, or on Exchequer Tallies under 30 per cent. Reasonable good harvest weather. I went to Lambeth and dined with the Archbishop, who had been at Court on the complaint against Dr. Thomas Watson, Bishop of St. David's, who was suspended for simony. The Archbishop told me how unsatisfied he was with the Canon law, and how exceedingly unreasonable all their pleadings appeared to him.

September, 1696. Fine seasonable weather, and a great harvest after a cold, wet summer. Scarcity in Scotland.

6th September, 1696. I went to congratulate the marriage of a daughter of Mr. Boscawen to the son of Sir Philip Meadows; she is niece to my Lord Godolphin, married at Lambeth by the Archbishop, 30th of August. After above six months' stay in London about Greenwich Hospital, I returned to Wotton.

24th October, 1696. Unseasonable stormy weather, and an ill seedtime.

November, 1696. Lord Godolphin retired from the Treasury, who was the first Commissioner and most skillful manager of all.

8th November, 1696. The first frost began fiercely, but lasted not long. More plots talked of. Search for Jacobites so called.

15th-23d November, 1696. Very stormy weather, rain, and inundations.

13th December, 1696. Continuance of extreme frost and snow.

17th January, 1696-7. The severe frost and weather relented, but again froze with snow. Conspiracies continue against King William. Sir John Fenwick was beheaded.

7th February, 1697. Severe frost continued with snow. Soldiers in the armies and garrison towns frozen to death on their posts.

(Here a leaf of the MS. is lost.)

17th August, 1697. I came to Wotton after three months' absence.

September, 1697. Very bright weather, but with sharp east wind. My son came from London in his melancholy indisposition.

12th September, 1697. Mr. Duncombe, the rector, came and preached after an absence of two years, though only living seven or eight miles off [at Ashted]. Welcome tidings of the Peace.

3d October, 1697. So great were the storms all this week, that near a thousand people were lost going into the Texel.

LONDON

16th November, 1697. The King's entry very pompous; but is nothing approaching that of King Charles II.

2d December, 1697. Thanksgiving Day for the Peace, the King and a great Court at Whitehall. The Bishop of Salisbury preached, or rather made a florid panegyric, on 2 Chron. ix. 7, 8. The evening concluded with fireworks and illuminations of great expense.

5th December, 1697. Was the first Sunday that St. Paul's had had service performed in it since it was burned in 1666.

6th December, 1697. I went to Kensington with the Sheriff, Knights, and chief gentlemen of Surrey, to present their address to the King. The Duke of Norfolk promised to introduce it, but came so late, that it was presented before be came. This insignificant ceremony was brought in in Cromwell's time, and has ever since continued with offers of life and fortune to whoever happened to have the power. I dined at Sir Richard Onslow's, who treated almost all the gentlemen of Surrey. When we had half dined, the Duke of Norfolk came in to make his excuse.

12th December, 1697. At the Temple Church; it was very long before the service began, staying for the Comptroller of the Inner Temple, where was to be kept a riotous and reveling Christmas, according to custom.

18th December, 1697. At Lambeth, to Dr. Bentley, about the Library at St. James's.

23d December, 1697. I returned to Wotton.

1697-98. A great Christmas kept at Wotton, open house, much company. I presented my book of Medals, etc., to divers noblemen, before I exposed it to sale.

2d January, 1698. Dr. Fulham, who lately married my niece, preached against atheism, a very eloquent discourse, somewhat improper for most of the audience at [Wotton], but fitted for some other place, and very apposite to the profane temper of the age.

LONDON

5th January, 1698. Whitehall burned, nothing but walls and ruins left.

30th January, 1698. The imprisonment of the great banker, Duncombe: censured by Parliament; acquitted by the Lords; sent again to the Tower by the Commons.

The Czar of Muscovy being come to England, and having a mind to see the building of ships, hired my house at Sayes Court, and made it his court and palace, newly furnished for him by the King.84

21st April, 1698. The Czar went from my house to return home. An exceedingly sharp and cold season.

8th May, 1698. An extraordinary great snow and frost, nipping the corn and other fruits. Corn at nine shillings a bushel [£18 a load].

30th May, 1698. I dined at Mr. Pepys's, where I heard the rare voice of Mr. Pule, who was lately come from Italy, reputed the most excellent singer we had ever had. He sung several compositions of the late Dr. Purcell.

5th June, 1698. Dr. White, late Bishop of Norwich, who had been ejected for not complying with Government, was buried in St. Gregory's churchyard, or vault, at St. Paul's. His hearse was accompanied by two non-juror bishops, Dr. Turner of Ely, and Dr. Lloyd, with forty other non-juror clergymen, who would not stay the Office of the burial, because the Dean of St. Paul's had appointed a conforming minister to read the Office; at which all much wondered, there being nothing in that Office which mentioned the present King.

8th June, 1698. I went to congratulate the marriage of Mr. Godolphin with the Earl of Marlborough's daughter.

9th June, 1698. To Deptford, to see how miserably the Czar had left my house, after three months making it his Court. I got Sir Christopher Wren, the King's surveyor, and Mr. London, his gardener, to go and estimate the repairs, for which they allowed £150 in their report to the Lords of the Treasury. I then went to see the foundation of the Hall and Chapel at Greenwich Hospital.

6th August, 1698. I dined with Pepys, where was Captain Dampier,85 who had been a famous buccaneer, had brought hither the painted Prince Job, and printed a relation of his very strange adventure, and his observations. He was now going abroad again by the King's encouragement, who furnished a ship of 290 tons. He seemed a more modest man than one would imagine by the relation of the crew he had assorted with. He brought a map of his observations of the course of the winds in the South Sea, and assured us that the maps hitherto extant were all false as to the Pacific Sea, which he makes on the south of the line, that on the north end running by the coast of Peru being extremely tempestuous.

25th September, 1698. Dr. Foy came to me to use my interest with Lord Sunderland for his being made Professor of Physic at Oxford, in the King's gift. I went also to the Archbishop in his behalf.

7th December, 1698. Being one of the Council of the Royal Society, I was named to be of the committee to wait on our new President, the Lord Chancellor, our Secretary, Dr. Sloane, and Sir R. Southwell, last Vice-President, carrying our book of statutes; the office of the President being read, his Lordship subscribed his name, and took the oaths according to our statutes as a Corporation for the improvement of natural knowledge. Then his Lordship made a short compliment concerning the honor the Society had done him, and how ready he would be to promote so noble a design, and come himself among us, as often as the attendance on the public would permit; and so we took our leave.

18th December, 1698. Very warm, but exceedingly stormy.

January, 1698-99. My cousin Pierrepoint died. She was daughter to Sir John Evelyn, of Wilts, my father's nephew; she was widow to William Pierrepoint, brother to the Marquis of Dorchester, and mother to Evelyn Pierrepoint, Earl of Kingston; a most excellent and prudent lady.

LONDON

The House of Commons persist in refusing more than 7,000 men to be a standing army, and no strangers to be in the number. This displeased the Court party. Our county member, Sir R. Onslow, opposed it also; which might reconcile him to the people, who began to suspect him.

17th February, 1699. My grandson went to Oxford with Dr. Mander, the Master of Baliol College, where he was entered a fellow-commoner.

19th February, 1699. A most furious wind, such as has not happened for many years, doing great damage to houses and trees, by the fall of which several persons were killed.

5th March, 1699. The old East India Company lost their business against the new Company, by ten votes in Parliament, so many of their friends being absent, going to see a tiger baited by dogs.

The persecuted Vaudois, who were banished out of Savoy, were received by the German Protestant Princes.

24th March, 1699. My only remaining son died after a tedious languishing sickness, contracted in Ireland, and increased here, to my exceeding grief and affliction; leaving me one grandson, now at Oxford, whom I pray God to prosper and be the support of the Wotton family. He was aged forty-four years and about three months. He had been six years one of the Commissioners of the Revenue in Ireland, with great ability and reputation.

26th March, 1699. After an extraordinary storm, there came up the Thames a whale which was fifty-six feet long. Such, and a larger of the spout kind, was killed there forty years ago (June 1658). That year died Cromwell.

30th March, 1699. My deceased son was buried in the vault at Wotton, according to his desire.

The Duke of Devon lost £1,900 at a horse race at Newmarket.

The King preferring his young favorite Earl of Albemarle to be first Commander of his Guard, the Duke of Ormond laid down his commission. This of the Dutch Lord passing over his head, was exceedingly resented by everybody.

April, 1699. Lord Spencer purchased an incomparable library86 of … wherein, among other rare books, were several that were printed at the first invention of that wonderful art, as particularly "Tully's Offices, etc." There was a Homer and a Suidas in a very good Greek character and good paper, almost as ancient. This gentleman is a very fine scholar, whom from a child I have known. His tutor was one Florival of Geneva.

29th April, 1699. I dined with the Archbishop; but my business was to get him to persuade the King to purchase the late Bishop of Worcester's library, and build a place for his own library at St. James's, in the Park, the present one being too small.

3d May, 1699. At a meeting of the Royal Society I was nominated to be of the committee to wait on the Lord Chancellor to move the King to purchase the Bishop of Worcester's library (Dr. Edward Stillingfleet).

4th May, 1699. The Court party have little influence in this Session.

7th May, 1699. The Duke of Ormond restored to his commission. All Lotteries, till now cheating the people, to be no longer permitted than to Christmas, except that for the benefit of Greenwich Hospital. Mr. Bridgman, chairman of the committee for that charitable work, died; a great loss to it. He was Clerk of the Council, a very industrious, useful man. I saw the library of Dr. John Moore,87 Bishop of Norwich, one of the best and most ample collection of all sorts of good books in England, and he, one of the most learned men.

11th June, 1699. After a long drought, we had a refreshing shower. The day before, there was a dreadful fire at Rotherhithe, near the Thames side, which burned divers ships, and consumed nearly three hundred houses. Now died the famous Duchess of Mazarin; she had been the richest lady in Europe. She was niece of Cardinal Mazarin, and was married to the richest subject in Europe, as is said. She was born at Rome, educated in France, and was an extraordinary beauty and wit but dissolute and impatient of matrimonial restraint, so as to be abandoned by her husband, and banished, when she came into England for shelter, lived on a pension given her here, and is reported to have hastened her death by intemperate drinking strong spirits. She has written her own story and adventures, and so has her other extravagant sister, wife to the noble family of Colonna.

LONDON

15th June, 1699. This week died Conyers Seymour, son of Sir Edward Seymour, killed in a duel caused by a slight affront in St. James's Park, given him by one who was envious of his gallantries; for he was a vain, foppish young man, who made a great éclât about town by his splendid equipage and boundless expense. He was about twenty-three years old; his brother, now at Oxford, inherited an estate of £7,000 a year, which had fallen to him not two years before.

19th June, 1699. My cousin, George Evelyn, of Nutfield, died suddenly.

25th June, 1699. The heat has been so great, almost all this month, that I do not remember to have felt much greater in Italy, and this after a winter the wettest, though not the coldest, that I remember for fifty years last past.

28th June, 1699. Finding my occasions called me so often to London, I took the remainder of the lease my son had in a house in Dover Street, to which I now removed, not taking my goods from Wotton.

23d July, 1699. Seasonable showers, after a continuance of excessive drought and heat.

August, 1699. I drank the Shooters' Hill waters. At Deptford, they had been building a pretty new church. The Bishop of St. David's [Watson] deprived for simony.88 The city of Moscow burnt by the throwing of squibs.

3d September, 1699. There was in this week an eclipse of the sun, at which many were frightened by the predictions of the astrologers. I remember fifty years ago that many were so terrified by Lilly, that they dared not go out of their houses. A strange earthquake at New Batavia, in the East Indies.

4th October, 1699. My worthy brother died at Wotton, in the 83d year of his age, of perfect memory and understanding. He was religious, sober, and temperate, and of so hospitable a nature, that no family in the county maintained that ancient custom of keeping, as it were, open house the whole year in the same manner, or gave more noble or free entertainment to the county on all occasions, so that his house was never free. There were sometimes twenty persons more than his family, and some that stayed there all the summer, to his no small expense; by this he gained the universal love of the county. He was born at Wotton, went from the free school at Guildford to Trinity College, Oxford, thence to the Middle Temple, as gentlemen of the best quality did, but without intention to study the law as a profession. He married the daughter of Colwall, of a worthy and ancient family in Leicestershire, by whom he had one son; she dying in 1643, left George her son an infant, who being educated liberally, after traveling abroad, returned and married one Mrs. Gore, by whom he had several children, but only three daughters survived. He was a young man of good understanding, but, over-indulging his ease and pleasure, grew so very corpulent, contrary to the constitution of the rest of his father's relations, that he died. My brother afterward married a noble and honorable lady, relict of Sir John Cotton, she being an Offley, a worthy and ancient Staffordshire family, by whom he had several children of both sexes. This lady died, leaving only two daughters and a son. The younger daughter died before marriage; the other afterward married Sir Cyril Wych, a noble and learned gentleman (son of Sir – Wych), who had been Ambassador at Constantinople, and was afterward made one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. Before this marriage, her only brother married the daughter of – Eversfield, of Sussex, of an honorable family, but left a widow without any child living; he died about 1691, and his wife not many years after, and my brother resettled the whole estate on me. His sister, Wych, had a portion of £6,000, to which was added £300 more; the three other daughters, with what I added, had about £5,000 each. My brother died on the 5th of October, in a good old age and great reputation, making his beloved daughter, Lady Wych, sole executrix, leaving me only his library and some pictures of my father, mother, etc. She buried him with extraordinary solemnity, rather as a nobleman than as a private gentleman. There were, as I computed, above 2,000 persons at the funeral, all the gentlemen of the county doing him the last honors. I returned to London, till my lady should dispose of herself and family.

21st October, 1699. After an unusual warm and pleasant season, we were surprised with a very sharp frost. I presented my "Acetaria," dedicated to my Lord Chancellor, who returned me thanks in an extraordinarily civil letter.

15th November, 1699. There happened this week so thick a mist and fog, that people lost their way in the streets, it being so intense that no light of candles, or torches, yielded any (or but very little) direction. I was in it, and in danger. Robberies were committed between the very lights which were fixed between London and Kensington on both sides, and while coaches and travelers were passing. It began about four in the afternoon, and was quite gone by eight, without any wind to disperse it. At the Thames, they beat drums to direct the watermen to make the shore.

19th November, 1699. At our chapel in the evening there was a sermon preached by young Mr. Horneck, chaplain to Lord Guilford, whose lady's funeral had been celebrated magnificently the Thursday before. A panegyric was now pronounced, describing the extraordinary piety and excellently employed life of this amiable young lady. She died in childbed a few days before, to the excessive sorrow of her husband, who ordered the preacher to declare that it was on her exemplary life, exhortations and persuasion, that he totally changed the course of his life, which was before in great danger of being perverted; following the mode of this dissolute age. Her devotion, early piety, charity, fastings, economy, disposition of her time in reading, praying, recollections in her own handwriting of what she heard and read, and her conversation were most exemplary.

24th November, 1699. I signed Dr. Blackwell's election to be the next year's Boyles Lecturer.

Such horrible robberies and murders were committed, as had not been known in this nation; atheism, profaneness, blasphemy, among all sorts, portended some judgment if not amended; on which a society was set on foot, who obliged themselves to endeavor the reforming of it, in London and other places, and began to punish offenders and put the laws in more strict execution; which God Almighty prosper! A gentle, calm, dry, temperate weather all this season of the year, but now came sharp, hard frost, and mist, but calm.

3d December, 1699. Calm, bright, and warm as in the middle of April. So continued on 21st of January. A great earthquake in Portugal.

LONDON

The Parliament reverses the prodigious donations of the Irish forfeitures, which were intended to be set apart for discharging the vast national debt. They called some great persons in the highest offices in question for setting the Great Seal to the pardon of an arch-pirate,89 who had turned pirate again, and brought prizes into the West Indies, suspected to be connived at on sharing the prey; but the prevailing part in the House called Courtiers, out-voted the complaints, not by being more in number, but by the country party being negligent in attendance.

14th January, 1699-1700. Dr. Lancaster, Vicar of St. Martin's, dismissed Mr. Stringfellow, who had been made the first preacher at our chapel by the Bishop of Lincoln [Dr. Tenison, now Archbishop], while he held St. Martin's by dispensation, and put in one Mr. Sandys, much against the inclination of those who frequented the chapel. The Scotch book about Darien was burned by the hangman by vote of Parliament.90

21st January, 1700. Died the Duke of Beaufort, a person of great honor, prudence, and estate.

25th January, 1700. I went to Wotton, the first time after my brother's funeral, to furnish the house with necessaries, Lady Wych and my nephew Glanville, the executors having sold and disposed of what goods were there of my brother's. The weather was now altering into sharp and hard frost.

LONDON

One Stephens, who preached before the House of Commons on King Charles's Martyrdom, told them that the observation of that day was not intended out of any detestation of his murder, but to be a lesson to other Kings and Rulers, how they ought to behave themselves toward their subjects, lest they should come to the same end. This was so resented that, though it was usual to desire these anniversary sermons to be printed, they refused thanks to him, and ordered that in future no one should preach before them, who was not either a Dean or a Doctor of Divinity.

4th February, 1700. The Parliament voted against the Scots settling in Darien as being prejudicial to our trade with Spain. They also voted that the exorbitant number of attorneys be lessened (now indeed swarming, and evidently causing lawsuits and disturbance, eating out the estates of the people, provoking them to go to law).

18th February, 1700. Mild and calm season, with gentle frost, and little mizzling rain. The Vicar of St. Martin's frequently preached at Trinity chapel in the afternoon.

8th March, 1700. The season was like April for warmth and mildness. – 11th. On Wednesday, was a sermon at our chapel, to be continued during Lent.

13th March, 1700. I was at the funeral of my Lady Temple, who was buried at Islington, brought from Addiscombe, near Croydon. She left my son-in-law Draper (her nephew) the mansion house of Addiscombe, very nobly and completely furnished, with the estate about it, with plate and jewels, to the value in all of about £20,000. She was a very prudent lady, gave many great legacies, with £500 to the poor of Islington, where her husband, Sir Purbeck Temple, was buried, both dying without issue.

24th March, 1700. The season warm, gentle, and exceedingly pleasant. Divers persons of quality entered into the Society for Reformation91 of Manners; and some lectures were set up, particularly in the city of London. The most eminent of the clergy preached at Bow Church, after reading a declaration set forth by the King to suppress the growing wickedness; this began already to take some effect as to common swearing, and oaths in the mouths of people of all ranks.

25th March, 1700. Dr. Burnet preached to-day before the Lord Mayor and a very great congregation, on Proverbs xxvii. 5, 6, "Open rebuke is better than secret love; the wounds of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy." He made a very pathetic discourse concerning the necessity and advantage of friendly correction.