The Diary of John Evelyn Volume II Part 42

1697-98. A great Christmas kept at Wotton, open house, much company. I presented my book of Medals, etc., to divers n.o.blemen, 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Footnote 84: While the Czar was in his house. Evelyn's servant writes to him: "There is a house full of people, and right nasty.

The Czar lies next your library, and dines in the parlor next your study. He dines at ten o'clock and at six at night; is very seldom at home a whole day; very often in the King's yard, or by water, dressed in several dresses. The King is expected here this day; the best parlor is pretty clean for him to be entertained in. The King pays for all he has."]

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 hea.r.s.e 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. G.o.dolphin 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 a.s.sorted with. He brought a map of his observations of the course of the winds in the South Sea, and a.s.sured us that the maps. .h.i.therto 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.

[Footnote 85: The celebrated navigator, born in 1652, the time of whose death is uncertain. His "Voyage Round the World" has gone through many editions, and the substance of it has been transferred to many collections of voyages.]

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 n.o.ble 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.

[Sidenote: 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing over his head, was exceedingly resented by everybody.

April, 1699. Lord Spencer purchased an incomparable library[86] 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.

[Footnote 86: The foundation of the n.o.ble library now at Blenheim.]

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.

[Footnote 87: Afterward Bishop of Ely. He died 31st of July, 1714.

King George I. purchased this library after the Bishop's death, for 6,000, and presented it to the University of Cambridge, where it now is.]

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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 n.o.ble family of Colonna.

[Sidenote: 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 _eclat_ 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.

[Footnote 88: _Ante_, p. 330.]