The Diary of John Evelyn (Volume 1 of 2)

28th December, 1656. A stranger preached on Luke xviii. 7, 8, on which he made a confused discourse, with a great deal of Greek and ostentation of learning, to but little purpose.

30th December, 1656. Dined with me Sir William Paston's son, Mr. Henshaw, and Mr. Clayton.

31st December, 1656. I begged God's blessing and mercies for his goodness to me the past year, and set my domestic affairs in order.

1st January, 1656-57. Having prayed with my family, and celebrated the anniversary, I spent some time in imploring God's blessing the year I was entered into.

7th January, 1657. Came Mr. Matthew Wren (since secretary to the Duke), slain in the Dutch war, eldest son to the Bishop of Ely, now a prisoner in the Tower; a most worthy and honored gentleman.

10th January, 1657. Came Dr. Joyliffe, that famous physician and anatomist, first detector of the lymphatic veins; also the old Marquis of Argyle, and another Scotch Earl.

5th February, 1657. Dined at the Holland Ambassador's; he told me the East India Company of Holland had constantly a stock of £400,000 in India, and forty-eight men-of-war there: he spoke of their exact and just keeping their books and correspondence, so as no adventurer's stock could possibly be lost, or defeated; that it was a vulgar error that the Hollanders furnished their enemies with powder and ammunition for their money, though engaged in a cruel war, but that they used to merchandise indifferently, and were permitted to sell to the friends of their enemies. He laughed at our Committee of Trade, as composed of men wholly ignorant of it, and how they were the ruin of commerce, by gratifying some for private ends.

10th February, 1657. I went to visit the governor of Havannah, a brave, sober, valiant Spanish gentleman, taken by Captain Young, of Deptford, when, after twenty years being in the Indies, and amassing great wealth, his lady and whole family, except two sons, were burned, destroyed, and taken within sight of Spain, his eldest son, daughter, and wife, perishing with immense treasure. One son, of about seventeen years old, with his brother of one year old, were the only ones saved. The young gentleman, about seventeen, was a well-complexioned youth, not olive-colored; he spoke Latin handsomely, was extremely well-bred, and born in the Caraccas, 1,000 miles south of the equinoctial, near the mountains of Potosi; he had never been in Europe before. The Governor was an ancient gentleman of great courage, of the order of St. Jago, sorely wounded in his arm, and his ribs broken; he lost for his own share £100,000 sterling, which he seemed to bear with exceeding indifference, and nothing dejected. After some discourse, I went with them to Arundel House, where they dined. They were now going back into Spain, having obtained their liberty from Cromwell. An example of human vicissitude!

LONDON

14th February, 1657. To London, where I found Mrs. Cary; next day came Mr. Mordaunt (since Viscount Mordaunt), younger son to the Countess of Peterborough, to see his mistress, bringing with him two of my Lord of Dover's daughters: so, after dinner, they all departed.

5th March, 1657. Dr. Rand, a learned physician, dedicated to me his version of Gassendi's "Vita Peiriskii."

25th March, 1657. Dr. Taylor showed me his MS. of "Cases of Conscience," or "Ductor Dubitantium," now fitted for the press.

The Protector Oliver, now affecting kingship, is petitioned to take the title on him by all his newly-made sycophant lords, etc.; but dares not, for fear of the fanatics, not thoroughly purged out of his rebel army.

21st April, 1657. Came Sir Thomas Hanmer, of Hanmer, in Wales, to see me. I then waited on my Lord Hatton, with whom I dined: at my return, I stepped into Bedlam, where I saw several poor, miserable creatures in chains; one of them was mad with making verses. I also visited the Charter House, formerly belonging to the Carthusians, now an old, neat, fresh, solitary college for decayed gentlemen. It has a grove, bowling green, garden, chapel, and a hall where they eat in common. I likewise saw Christ Church and Hospital, a very good Gothic building; the hall, school, and lodgings in great order for bringing up many hundreds of poor children of both sexes; it is an exemplary charity. There is a large picture at one end of the hall, representing the governors, founders, and the institution.

25th April, 1657. I had a dangerous fall out of the coach in Covent Garden, going to my brother's, but without harm; the Lord be praised!

1st May, 1657. Divers soldiers were quartered at my house; but I thank God went away the next day toward Flanders.

5th May, 1657. I went with my cousin, George Tuke, to see Baynard, in Surrey, a house of my brother Richard's, which he would have hired. This is a very fair, noble residence, built in a park, and having one of the goodliest avenues of oaks up to it that ever I saw: there is a pond of 60 acres near it; the windows of the chief rooms are of very fine painted glass. The situation is excessively dirty and melancholy.

15th May, 1657. Lawrence, President of Oliver's Council, and some other of his Court-Lords, came in the afternoon to see my garden and plantations.

7th June, 1657. My fourth son was born, christened George (after my grandfather); Dr. Jeremy Taylor officiated in the drawing-room.

18th June, 1657. At Greenwich I saw a sort of cat56 brought from the East Indies, shaped and snouted much like the Egyptian racoon, in the body like a monkey, and so footed; the ears and tail like a cat, only the tail much longer, and the skin variously ringed with black and white; with the tail it wound up its body like a serpent, and so got up into trees, and with it would wrap its whole body round. Its hair was woolly like a lamb; it was exceedingly nimble, gentle, and purred as does the cat.

16th July, 1657. On Dr. Jeremy Taylor's recommendation, I went to Eltham, to help one Moody, a young man, to that living, by my interest with the patron.

6th August, 1657. I went to see Colonel Blount, who showed me the application of the waywiser57 to a coach, exactly measuring the miles, and showing them by an index as we went on. It had three circles, one pointing to the number of rods, another to the miles, by 10 to 1,000, with all the subdivisions of quarters; very pretty and useful.

10th August, 1657. Our vicar, from John xviii. 36, declaimed against the folly of a sort of enthusiasts and desperate zealots, called the Fifth-Monarchy-Men, pretending to set up the kingdom of Christ with the sword. To this pass was this age arrived when we had no King in Israel.

21st August, 1657. Fell a most prodigious rain in London, and the year was very sickly in the country.

1st September, 1657. I visited Sir Edmund Bowyer, at his melancholy seat at Camberwell. He has a very pretty grove of oaks, and hedges of yew in his garden, and a handsome row of tall elms before his court.

LONDON

15th September, 1657. Going to London with some company, we stepped in to see a famous rope-dancer, called THE TURK. I saw even to astonishment the agility with which he performed. He walked barefooted, taking hold by his toes only of a rope almost perpendicular, and without so much as touching it with his hands; he danced blind-fold on the high rope, and with a boy of twelve years old tied to one of his feet about twenty feet beneath him, dangling as he danced, yet he moved as nimbly as if it had been but a feather. Lastly, he stood on his head, on the top of a very high mast, danced on a small rope that was very slack, and finally flew down the perpendicular, on his breast, his head foremost, his legs and arms extended, with divers other activities. – I saw the hairy woman, twenty years old, whom I had before seen when a child. She was born at Augsburg, in Germany. Her very eyebrows were combed upward, and all her forehead as thick and even as grows on any woman's head, neatly dressed; a very long lock of hair out of each ear; she had also a most prolix beard, and moustachios, with long locks growing on the middle of her nose, like an Iceland dog exactly, the color of a bright brown, fine as well-dressed flax. She was now married, and told me she had one child that was not hairy, nor were any of her parents, or relations. She was very well shaped, and played well on the harpsichord.

17th September, 1657. To see Sir Robert Needham, at Lambeth, a relation of mine; and thence to John Tradescant's museum, in which the chiefest rarities were, in my opinion, the ancient Roman, Indian, and other nations' armor, shields, and weapons; some habits of curiously-colored and wrought feathers, one from the phœnix wing, as tradition goes. Other innumerable things there were printed in his catalogue by Mr. Ashmole, to whom after the death of the widow they are bequeathed, and by him designed as a gift to Oxford.

19th October, 1657. I went to see divers gardens about London: returning, I saw at Dr. Joyliffe's two Virginian rattlesnakes alive, exceeding a yard in length, small heads, slender tails, but in the middle nearly the size of my leg; when vexed, swiftly vibrating and shaking their tails, as loud as a child's rattle; this, by the collision of certain gristly skins curiously jointed, yet loose, and transparent as parchment, by which they give warning; a providential caution for other creatures to avoid them. The Doctor tried their biting on rats and mice, which they immediately killed: but their vigor must needs be much exhausted here, in another climate, and kept only in a barrel of bran.

22d October, 1657. To town, to visit the Holland Ambassador, with whom I had now contracted much friendly correspondence, useful to the intelligence I constantly gave his Majesty abroad.

26th November, 1657. I went to London, to a court of the East India Company on its new union, in Merchant-Taylors' Hall, where was much disorder by reason of the Anabaptists, who would have the adventurers obliged only by an engagement, without swearing, that they still might pursue their private trade; but it was carried against them. Wednesday was fixed on for a general court for election of officers, after a sermon and prayers for good success. The Stock resolved on was £800,000.

27th November, 1657. I took the oath at the East India House, subscribing £500.

2d December, 1657. Dr. Raynolds (since Bishop of Norwich) preached before the company at St. Andrew Under-shaft, on Nehemiah xiii. 31, showing, by the example of Nehemiah, all the perfections of a trusty person in public affairs, with many good precepts apposite to the occasion, ending with a prayer for God's blessing on the company and the undertaking.

3d December, 1657. Mr. Gunning preached on John iii. 3, against the Anabaptists, showing the effect and necessity of the sacrament of baptism. This sect was now wonderfully spread.

LONDON

25th December, 1657. I went to London with my wife, to celebrate Christmas-day, Mr. Gunning preaching in Exeter chapel, on Micah vii. 2. Sermon ended, as he was giving us the Holy Sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away. It fell to my share to be confined to a room in the house, where yet I was permitted to dine with the master of it, the Countess of Dorset, Lady Hatton, and some others of quality who invited me. In the afternoon, came Colonel Whalley, Goffe, and others, from Whitehall, to examine us one by one; some they committed to the marshal, some to prison. When I came before them, they took my name and abode, examined me why, contrary to the ordinance made, that none should any longer observe the superstitious time of the nativity (so esteemed by them), I durst offend, and particularly be at common prayers, which they told me was but the mass in English, and particularly pray for Charles Stuart; for which we had no Scripture. I told them we did not pray for Charles Stuart, but for all Christian kings, princes, and governors. They replied, in so doing we prayed for the king of Spain, too, who was their enemy and a Papist, with other frivolous and ensnaring questions, and much threatening; and, finding no color to detain me, they dismissed me with much pity of my ignorance. These were men of high flight and above ordinances, and spoke spiteful things of our Lord's nativity. As we went up to receive the Sacrament, the miscreants held their muskets against us, as if they would have shot us at the altar; but yet suffering us to finish the office of Communion, as perhaps not having instructions what to do, in case they found us in that action. So I got home late the next day; blessed be God!

27th January, 1657-58. After six fits of a quartan ague, with which it pleased God to visit him, died my dear son, Richard, to our inexpressible grief and affliction, five years and three days old only, but at that tender age a prodigy for wit and understanding; for beauty of body, a very angel; for endowment of mind, of incredible and rare hopes. To give only a little taste of them, and thereby glory to God, who "out of the mouths of babes and infants does sometimes perfect his praises," he had learned all his catechism; at two years and a half old, he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the first three languages exactly. He had, before the fifth year, or in that year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; learned out "Puerilis," got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versâ, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius's "Janua"; began himself to write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious, and what he remembered of the parts of plays, which he would also act; and, when seeing a Plautus in one's hand, he asked what book it was, and, being told it was comedy, and too difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and morals; for he had read Æsop; he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion, and his sense of God; he had learned all his catechism early, and understood the historical part of the Bible and New Testament to a wonder, how Christ came to redeem mankind, and how, comprehending these necessaries himself, his godfathers were discharged of their promise.

These and the like illuminations, far exceeding his age and experience, considering the prettiness of his address and behavior, cannot but leave impressions in me at the memory of him. When one told him how many days a Quaker had fasted, he replied that was no wonder; for Christ had said that man should not live by bread alone, but by the Word of God. He would of himself select the most pathetic psalms, and chapters out of Job, to read to his maid during his sickness, telling her, when she pitied him, that all God's children must suffer affliction. He declaimed against the vanities of the world, before he had seen any. Often he would desire those who came to see him to pray by him, and a year before he fell sick, to kneel and pray with him alone in some corner. How thankfully would he receive admonition! how soon be reconciled! how indifferent, yet continually cheerful! He would give grave advice to his brother, John, bear with his impertinences, and say he was but a child. If he heard of or saw any new thing, he was unquiet till he was told how it was made; he brought to us all such difficulties as he found in books, to be expounded. He had learned by heart divers sentences in Latin and Greek, which, on occasion, he would produce even to wonder. He was all life, all prettiness, far from morose, sullen, or childish in anything he said or did. The last time he had been at church (which was at Greenwich), I asked him, according to custom, what he remembered of the sermon; two good things, Father, said he, bonum gratiæ and bonum gloriæ, with a just account of what the preacher said.

The day before he died, he called to me: and in a more serious manner than usual, told me that for all I loved him so dearly I should give my house, land, and all my fine things to his brother Jack, he should have none of them; and, the next morning, when he found himself ill, and that I persuaded him to keep his hands in bed, he demanded whether he might pray to God with his hands unjoined; and a little after, while in great agony, whether he should not offend God by using his holy name so often calling for ease. What shall I say of his frequent pathetical ejaculations uttered of himself: "Sweet Jesus, save me, deliver me, pardon my sins, let thine angels receive me!" So early knowledge, so much piety and perfection! But thus God, having dressed up a saint fit for himself, would not longer permit him with us, unworthy of the future fruits of this incomparable hopeful blossom. Such a Child I never saw: for such a child I bless God, in whose bosom he is! May I and mine become as this little child, who now follows the child Jesus that Lamb of God in a white robe, whithersoever he goes; even so, Lord Jesus, fiat voluntas tua! Thou gavest him to us, thou hast taken him from us, blessed be the name of the Lord! That I had anything acceptable to thee was from thy grace alone, seeing from me he had nothing but sin, but that thou hast pardoned! blessed be my God for ever, Amen.

In my opinion, he was suffocated by the women and maids that attended him, and covered him too hot with blankets as he lay in a cradle, near an excessive hot fire in a close room. I suffered him to be opened, when they found that he was what is vulgarly called liver-grown. I caused his body to be coffined in lead, and deposited on the 30th at eight o'clock that night in the church at Deptford, accompanied with divers of my relations and neighbors, among whom I distributed rings with this motto: "Dominus abstulit;" intending, God willing, to have him transported with my own body to be interred in our dormitory in Wotton Church, in my dear native county of Surrey, and to lay my bones and mingle my dust with my fathers, if God be gracious to me, and make me as fit for him as this blessed child was. The Lord Jesus sanctify this and all other my afflictions, Amen.

Here ends the joy of my life, and for which I go even mourning to the grave.

15th February, 1658. The afflicting hand of God being still upon us, it pleased him also to take away from us this morning my youngest son, George, now seven weeks languishing at nurse, breeding teeth, and ending in a dropsy. God's holy will be done! He was buried in Deptford Church, the 17th following.

25th February, 1658. Came Dr. Jeremy Taylor, and my brothers, with other friends, to visit and condole with us.

LONDON

7th March, 1658. To London, to hear Dr. Taylor in a private house on Luke xiii. 23, 24. After the sermon, followed the blessed Communion, of which I participated. In the afternoon, Dr. Gunning, at Exeter House, expounding part of the Creed.

This had been the severest winter that any man alive had known in England. The crows' feet were frozen to their prey. Islands of ice inclosed both fish and fowl frozen, and some persons in their boats.

15th May, 1658, was a public fast, to avert an epidemical sickness, very mortal this spring.

20th May, 1658. I went to see a coach race in Hyde Park, and collationed in Spring Garden.

23d May, 1658. Dr. Manton, the famous Presbyterian, preached at Covent Garden, on Matthew vi. 10, showing what the kingdom of God was, how pray for it, etc.

There was now a collection for persecuted and sequestered Ministers of the Church of England, whereof divers are in prison. A sad day! The Church now in dens and caves of the earth.

31st May, 1658. I went to visit my Lady Peterborough, whose son, Mr. Mordaunt, prisoner in the Tower, was now on his trial, and acquitted but by one voice; but that holy martyr, Dr. Hewer, was condemned to die without law, jury, or justice, but by a mock Council of State, as they called it. A dangerous, treacherous time!

2d June, 1658. An extraordinary storm of hail and rain, the season as cold as winter, the wind northerly near six months.

3d June, 1658. A large whale was taken between my land abutting on the Thames and Greenwich, which drew an infinite concourse to see it, by water, horse, coach, and on foot, from London, and all parts. It appeared first below Greenwich at low water, for at high water it would have destroyed all the boats, but lying now in shallow water encompassed with boats, after a long conflict, it was killed with a harping iron, struck in the head, out of which spouted blood and water by two tunnels; and after a horrid groan, it ran quite on shore, and died. Its length was fifty-eight feet, height sixteen; black skinned, like coach leather; very small eyes, great tail, only two small fins, a peaked snout and a mouth so wide, that divers men might have stood upright in it; no teeth, but sucked the slime only as through a grate of that bone which we call whalebone; the throat yet so narrow, as would not have admitted the least of fishes. The extremes of the cetaceous bones hang downward from the upper jaw, and are hairy toward the ends and bottom within side: all of it prodigious; but in nothing more wonderful than that an animal of so great a bulk should be nourished only by slime through those grates.

8th June, 1658. That excellent preacher and holy man, Dr. Hewer, was martyred for having intelligence with his Majesty, through the Lord Marquis of Ormond.

9th June, 1658. I went to see the Earl of Northumberland's pictures, whereof that of the Venetian Senators was one of the best of Titian's and another of Andrea del Sarto, viz, a Madonna, Christ, St. John, and an Old Woman; a St. Catherine of Da Vinci, with divers portraits of Vandyck; a Nativity of Georgioni; the last of our blessed Kings (Charles I.), and the Duke of York, by Lely, a Rosary by the famous Jesuits of Brussels, and several more. This was in Suffolk House: the new front toward the gardens is tolerable, were it not drowned by a too massy and clumsy pair of stairs of stone, without any neat invention.

10th June, 1658. I went to see the Medical Garden at Westminster, well stored with plants, under Morgan, a very skillful botanist.

26th June, 1658. To Eltham, to visit honest Mr. Owen.

LONDON

3d July, 1658. To London, and dined with Mr. Henshaw, Mr. Dorell, and Mr. Ashmole, founder of the Oxford repository of rarities, with divers doctors of physic and virtuosos.

15th July, 1658. Came to see my Lord Kilmurry and Lady, Sir Robert Needham, Mr. Offley, and two daughters of my Lord Willoughby, of Parham.

3d August, 1658. Went to Sir John Evelyn at Godstone. The place is excellent, but might be improved by turning some offices of the house, and removing the garden. The house being a noble fabric, though not comparable to what was first built by my uncle, who was master of all the powder mills.

5th August, 1658. We went to Squirries to visit my Cousin Leech, daughter to Sir John; a pretty, finely wooded, well watered seat, the stables good, the house old, but convenient. 6th. Returned to Wotton.

10th August, 1658. I dined at Mr. Carew Raleigh's, at Horsley, son to the famous Sir Walter.

14th August, 1658. We went to Durdans [at Epsom] to a challenged match at bowls for £10, which we won.

18th August, 1658. To Sir Ambrose Browne, at Betchworth Castle, in that tempestuous wind which threw down my greatest trees at Sayes Court, and did so much mischief all over England. It continued the whole night; and, till three in the afternoon of the next day, in the southwest, and destroyed all our winter fruit.

3d September, 1658. Died that arch-rebel, Oliver Cromwell, called Protector.

16th September, 1658. Was published my translation of St. Chrysostom on "Education of Children," which I dedicated to both my brothers to comfort them on the loss of their children.

21st September, 1658. My Lord Berkeley, of Berkeley Castle, invited me to dinner.