Beaufort on his lately purchased house at Chelsea, which I once had the
selling of for the Countess of Bristol, he had made great alterations,
but might have built a better house with the materials and the cost he
had been at.
Saw the Countess of Monte Feltre, whose husband I had formerly known,
he was a subject of the Pope's, but becoming a Protestant he resided in
England, and married into the family of the Savilles, of Yorkshire. The
Count, her late husband, was a very learned gentleman, a great
politician, and a goodly man. She was accompanied by her sister,
exceedingly skilled in painting, nor did they spare for color on their
own faces. They had a great deal of wit.
9th September, 1683. It being the day of public thanksgiving for his
Majesty's late preservation, the former Declaration was again read, and
there was an office used, composed for the occasion. A loyal sermon was
preached on the divine right of Kings, from Psalm cxliv. 10. "Thou hast
preserved David from the peril of the sword."
15th September, 1683. Came to visit me the learned anatomist, Dr.
Tyson,[52] with some other Fellows of our Society.
[Footnote 52: Doctor Edward Tyson, a learned physician, born at
Clevedon, Somersetshire, in 1649, who became reader of the
anatomical lecture in Surgeons' Hall, and physician to the hospitals
of Bethlehem and Bridewell, which offices he held at his death, Aug.
1, 1708. He was an ingenious writer, and has left various Essays in
the Philosophical Transactions and Hook's Collections. He published
also "The Anatomy of a Porpoise Dissected at Gresham College," and
"The Anatomy of a Pigmy Compared with a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man,"
4to., 1698-99.]
16th September, 1683. At the elegant villa and garden of Mr. Bohun, at
Lee. He showed me the zinnar tree, or platanus, and told me that since
they had planted this kind of tree about the city of Ispahan, in Persia,
the plague, which formerly much infested the place, had exceedingly
abated of its mortal effects, and rendered it very healthy.
[Sidenote: LONDON]
18th September, 1683. I went to London to visit the Duchess of Grafton,
now great with child, a most virtuous and beautiful lady. Dining with
her at my Lord Chamberlain's, met my Lord of St. Alban's, now grown so
blind, that he could not see to take his meat. He has lived a most easy
life, in plenty even abroad, while his Majesty was a sufferer; he has
lost immense sums at play, which yet, at about eighty years old, he
continues, having one that sits by him to name the spots on the cards.
He ate and drank with extraordinary appetite. He is a prudent old
courtier, and much enriched since his Majesty's return.
After dinner, I walked to survey the sad demolition of Clarendon House,
that costly and only sumptuous palace of the late Lord Chancellor Hyde,
where I have often been so cheerful with him, and sometimes so sad:
happening to make him a visit but the day before he fled from the angry
Parliament, accusing him of maladministration, and being envious at his
grandeur, who from a private lawyer came to be father-in-law to the Duke
of York, and as some would suggest, designing his Majesty's marriage
with the Infanta of Portugal, not apt to breed. To this they imputed
much of our unhappiness; and that he, being sole minister and favorite
at his Majesty's restoration, neglected to gratify the King's suffering
party, preferring those who were the cause of our troubles. But perhaps
as many of these things were injuriously laid to his charge, so he kept
the government far steadier than it has proved since. I could name some
who I think contributed greatly to his ruin,--the buffoons and the
MISSIS, to whom he was an eye-sore. It is true he was of a jolly temper,
after the old English fashion; but France had now the ascendant, and we
were become quite another nation. The Chancellor gone, and dying in
exile, the Earl his successor sold that which cost £50,000 building, to
the young Duke of Albemarle for £25,000, to pay debts which how
contracted remains yet a mystery, his son being no way a prodigal. Some
imagine the Duchess his daughter had been chargeable to him. However it
were, this stately palace is decreed to ruin, to support the prodigious
waste the Duke of Albemarle had made of his estate, since the old man
died. He sold it to the highest bidder, and it fell to certain rich
bankers and mechanics, who gave for it and the ground about it, £35,000;
they design a new town, as it were, and a most magnificent piazza
[square]. It is said they have already materials toward it with what
they sold of the house alone, more worth than what they paid for it. See
the vicissitudes of earthly things! I was astonished at this demolition,
nor less at the little army of laborers and artificers leveling the
ground, laying foundations, and contriving great buildings at an expense
of £200,000, if they perfect their design.
19th September, 1683. In my walks I stepped into a goldbeater's
workhouse, where he showed me the wonderful ductility of that spreading
and oily metal. He said it must be finer than the standard, such as was
old angel-gold, and that of such he had once to the value of £100
stamped with the _agnus dei_, and coined at the time of the holy war;
which had been found in a ruined wall somewhere in the North, near to
Scotland, some of which he beat into leaves, and the rest sold to the
curiosi in antiquities and medals.
23d September, 1683. We had now the welcome tidings of the King of
Poland raising the siege of Vienna, which had given terror to all
Europe, and utmost reproach to the French, who it is believed brought in
the Turks for diversion, that the French King might the more easily
swallow Flanders, and pursue his unjust conquest on the empire, while we
sat unconcerned and under a deadly charm from somebody.
There was this day a collection for rebuilding Newmarket, consumed by an
accidental fire, which removing his Majesty thence sooner than was
intended, put by the assassins, who were disappointed of their
rendezvous and expectation by a wonderful providence. This made the King
more earnest to render Winchester the seat of his autumnal field
diversions for the future, designing a palace there, where the ancient
castle stood; infinitely indeed preferable to Newmarket for prospects,
air, pleasure, and provisions. The surveyor has already begun the
foundation for a palace, estimated to cost £35,000, and his Majesty is
purchasing ground about it to make a park, etc.
[Sidenote: LONDON]
4th October, 1683. I went to London, on receiving a note from the
Countess of Arlington, of some considerable charge or advantage I might
obtain by applying myself to his Majesty on this signal conjuncture of
his Majesty entering up judgment against the city charter; the proposal
made me I wholly declined, not being well satisfied with these violent
transactions, and not a little sorry that his Majesty was so often put
upon things of this nature against so great a city, the consequence
whereof may be so much to his prejudice; so I returned home. At this
time, the Lord Chief-Justice Pemberton was displaced. He was held to be
the most learned of the judges, and an honest man. Sir George Jeffreys
was advanced, reputed to be most ignorant, but most daring. Sir George
Treby, Recorder of London, was also put by, and one Genner, an obscure
lawyer, set in his place. Eight of the richest and chief aldermen were
removed and all the rest made only justices of the peace, and no more
wearing of gowns, or chains of gold; the Lord Mayor and two sheriffs
holding their places by new grants as _custodes_, at the King's
pleasure. The pomp and grandeur of the most august city in the world
thus changed face in a moment; which gave great occasion of discourse
and thoughts of hearts, what all this would end in. Prudent men were for
the old foundations.
Following his Majesty this morning through the gallery, I went with the
few who attended him, into the Duchess of Portmouth's DRESSING ROOM
within her bedchamber, where she was in her morning loose garment, her
maids combing her, newly out of her bed, his Majesty and the gallants
standing about her; but that which engaged my curiosity, was the rich
and splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice or thrice
pulled down and rebuilt to satisfy her prodigal and expensive pleasures,
while her Majesty's does not exceed some gentlemen's ladies in furniture
and accommodation. Here I saw the new fabric of French tapestry, for
design, tenderness of work, and incomparable imitation of the best
paintings, beyond anything I had ever beheld. Some pieces had
Versailles, St. Germains, and other palaces of the French King, with
huntings, figures, and landscapes, exotic fowls, and all to the life
rarely done. Then for Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great
vases of wrought plate, tables, stands, chimney-furniture, sconces,
branches, braseras, etc., all of massy silver and out of number, besides
some of her Majesty's best paintings.
Surfeiting of this, I dined at Sir Stephen Fox's and went contented home
to my poor, but quiet villa. What contentment can there be in the riches
and splendor of this world, purchased with vice and dishonor?
10th October, 1683. Visited the Duchess of Grafton, not yet brought to
bed, and dining with my Lord Chamberlain (her father), went with them to
see Montague House, a palace lately built by Lord Montague, who had
married the most beautiful Countess of Northumberland. It is a stately
and ample palace. Signor Verrio's fresco paintings, especially the
funeral pile of Dido, on the staircase, the labors of Hercules, fight
with the Centaurs, his effeminacy with Dejanira, and Apotheosis or
reception among the gods, on the walls and roof of the great room
above,--I think exceeds anything he has yet done, both for design,
coloring, and exuberance of invention, comparable to the greatest of the
old masters, or what they so celebrate at Rome. In the rest of the
chamber are some excellent paintings of Holbein, and other masters. The
garden is large, and in good air, but the fronts of the house not
answerable to the inside. The court at entry, and wings for offices seem
too near the street, and that so very narrow and meanly built, that the
corridor is not in proportion to the rest, to hide the court from being
overlooked by neighbors; all which might have been prevented, had they
placed the house further into the ground, of which there was enough to
spare. But on the whole it is a fine palace, built after the French
pavilion-way, by Mr. Hooke, the Curator of the Royal Society. There were
with us my Lady Scroope, the great wit, and Monsieur Chardine, the
celebrated traveler.
13th October, 1683. Came to visit me my old and worthy friend, Mr.
Packer, bringing with him his nephew Berkeley, grandson to the honest
judge. A most ingenious, virtuous, and religious gentleman, seated near
Worcester, and very curious in gardening.
17th October, 1683. I was at the court-leet of this manor, my Lord
Arlington his Majesty's High Steward.
26th October, 1683. Came to visit and dine with me, Mr. Brisbane,
Secretary to the Admiralty, a learned and agreeable man.
30th October, 1683. I went to Kew to visit Sir Henry Capell, brother to
the late Earl of Essex; but he being gone to Cashiobury, after I had
seen his garden and the alterations therein, I returned home. He had
repaired his house, roofed his hall with a kind of cupola, and in a
niche was an artificial fountain; but the room seems to me
over-melancholy, yet might be much improved by having the walls well
painted _á fresco_. The two green houses for oranges and myrtles,
communicating with the rooms below, are very well contrived. There is a
cupola made with pole-work between two elms at the end of a walk, which
being covered by plashing the trees to them, is very pretty; for the
rest there are too many fir trees in the garden.
[Sidenote: LONDON]
17th November, 1683. I took a house in Villiers Street, York Buildings,
for the winter, having many important concerns to dispatch, and for the
education of my daughters.
23d November, 1683. The Duke of Monmouth, till now proclaimed traitor on
the pretended plot for which Lord Russell was lately beheaded, came this
evening to Whitehall and rendered himself, on which were various
discourses.
26th November, 1683. I went to compliment the Duchess of Grafton, now
lying-in of her first child, a son, which she called for, that I might
see it. She was become more beautiful, if it were possible, than before,
and full of virtue and sweetness. She discoursed with me of many
particulars, with great prudence and gravity beyond her years.
29th November, 1683. Mr. Forbes showed me the plot of the garden making
at Burleigh, at my Lord Exeter's, which I looked on as one of the most
noble that I had seen.
The whole court and town in solemn mourning for the death of the King of
Portugal, her Majesty's brother.
30th November, 1683. At the anniversary dinner of the Royal Society the
King sent us two does. Sir Cyril Wych was elected President.
5th December, 1683. I was this day invited to a wedding of one Mrs.
Castle, to whom I had some obligation, and it was to her fifth husband,
a lieutenant-colonel of the city. She was the daughter of one Burton, a
broom-man, by his wife, who sold kitchen stuff in Kent Street, whom God
so blessed that the father became a very rich, and was a very honest
man; he was sheriff of Surrey, where I have sat on the bench with him.
Another of his daughters was married to Sir John Bowles; and this
daughter was a jolly friendly woman. There was at the wedding the Lord
Mayor, the Sheriff, several Aldermen and persons of quality; above all,
Sir George Jeffreys, newly made Lord Chief Justice of England, with Mr.
Justice Withings, danced with the bride, and were exceedingly merry.
These great men spent the rest of the afternoon, till eleven at night,
in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the
gravity of judges, who had but a day or two before condemned Mr.
Algernon Sidney, who was executed the 7th on Tower Hill, on the single
witness of that monster of a man, Lord Howard of Escrick, and some
sheets of paper taken in Mr. Sidney's study, pretended to be written by
him, but not fully proved, nor the time when, but appearing to have been
written before his Majesty's Restoration, and then pardoned by the Act
of Oblivion; so that though Mr. Sidney was known to be a person
obstinately averse to government by a monarch (the subject of the paper
was in answer to one by Sir E. Filmer), yet it was thought he had very
hard measure. There is this yet observable, that he had been an
inveterate enemy to the last king, and in actual rebellion against him;
a man of great courage, great sense, great parts, which he showed both
at his trial and death; for, when he came on the scaffold, instead of a
speech, he told them only that he had made his peace with God, that he
came not thither to talk, but to die; put a paper into the sheriff's
hand, and another into a friend's; said one prayer as short as a grace,
laid down his neck, and bid the executioner do his office.
The Duke of Monmouth, now having his pardon, refuses to acknowledge
there was any treasonable plot; for which he is banished Whitehall. This
is a great disappointment to some who had prosecuted Trenchard, Hampden,
etc., that for want of a second witness were come out of the Tower upon
their _habeas corpus_.
The King had now augmented his guards with a new sort of dragoons, who
carried also grenades, and were habited after the Polish manner, with
long peaked caps, very fierce and fantastical.
[Sidenote: LONDON]
7th December, 1683. I went to the Tower, and visited the Earl of Danby,
the late Lord High Treasurer, who had been imprisoned four years: he
received me with great kindness. I dined with him, and stayed till
night. We had discourse of many things, his Lady railing sufficiently at
the keeping her husband so long in prison. Here I saluted the Lord
Dumblaine's wife, who before had been married to Emerton, and about whom
there was that scandalous business before the delegates.
23d December, 1683. The smallpox very prevalent and mortal; the Thames
frozen.
26th December, 1683. I dined at Lord Clarendon's, where I was to meet
that ingenious and learned gentleman, Sir George Wheeler, who has
published the excellent description of Africa and Greece, and who, being
a knight of a very fair estate and young, had now newly entered into
holy orders.
27th December, 1683. I went to visit Sir John Chardin, a French
gentleman, who traveled three times by land into Persia, and had made
many curious researches in his travels, of which he was now setting
forth a relation. It being in England this year one of the severest
frosts that has happened of many years, he told me the cold in Persia
was much greater, the ice of an incredible thickness; that they had
little use of iron in all that country, it being so moist (though the
air admirably clear and healthy) that oil would not preserve it from
rusting, so that they had neither clocks nor watches; some padlocks they
had for doors and boxes.
30th December, 1683. Dr. Sprat, now made Dean of Westminster, preached
to the King at Whitehall, on Matt. vi. 24. Recollecting the passages of
the past year, I gave God thanks for his mercies, praying his blessing
for the future.
1st January, 1683-84. The weather continuing intolerably severe, streets
of booths were set up on the Thames; the air was so very cold and thick,
as of many years there had not been the like. The smallpox was very
mortal.
2d January, 1684. I dined at Sir Stephen Fox's: after dinner came a
fellow who ate live charcoal, glowingly ignited, quenching them in his
mouth, and then champing and swallowing them down. There was a dog also
which seemed to do many rational actions.
6th January, 1684. The river quite frozen.
9th January, 1684. I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so
thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted meat,
and had divers shops of wares, quite across as in a town, but coaches,
carts, and horses passed over. So I went from Westminster stairs to
Lambeth, and dined with the Archbishop: where I met my Lord Bruce, Sir
George Wheeler, Colonel Cooke, and several divines. After dinner and
discourse with his Grace till evening prayers, Sir George Wheeler and I
walked over the ice from Lambeth stairs to the Horse-ferry.
10th January, 1684. I visited Sir Robert Reading, where after supper we
had music, but not comparable to that which Mrs. Bridgeman made us on
the guitar with such extraordinary skill and dexterity.
16th January, 1684. The Thames was filled with people and tents selling
all sorts of wares as in the city.
24th January, 1684. The frost continues more and more severe, the Thames
before London was still planted with booths in formal streets, all sorts
of trades and shops furnished, and full of commodities, even to a
printing press, where the people and ladies took a fancy to have their
names printed, and the day and year set down when printed on the Thames:
this humor took so universally, that it was estimated that the printer
gained £5 a day, for printing a line only, at sixpence a name, besides
what he got by ballads, etc. Coaches plied from Westminster to the
Temple, and from several other stairs to and fro, as in the streets,
sleds, sliding with skates, a bull-baiting, horse and coach-races,
puppet-plays and interludes, cooks, tippling, and other lewd places, so
that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water,
while it was a severe judgment on the land, the trees not only splitting
as if the lightning struck, but men and cattle perishing in divers
places, and the very seas so locked up with ice, that no vessels could
stir out or come in. The fowls, fish, and birds, and all our exotic
plants and greens, universally perishing. Many parks of deer were
destroyed, and all sorts of fuel so dear, that there were great
contributions to preserve the poor alive. Nor was this severe weather
much less intense in most parts of Europe, even as far as Spain and the
most southern tracts. London, by reason of the excessive coldness of the
air hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous
steam of the sea-coal, that hardly could one see across the street, and
this filling the lungs with its gross particles, exceedingly obstructed
the breast, so as one could scarcely breathe. Here was no water to be
had from the pipes and engines, nor could the brewers and divers other
tradesmen work, and every moment was full of disastrous accidents.
4th February, 1684. I went to Sayes Court to see how the frost had
dealt with my garden, where I found many of the greens and rare plants
utterly destroyed. The oranges and myrtles very sick, the rosemary and
laurels dead to all appearance, but the cypress likely to endure it.
5th February, 1684. It began to thaw, but froze again. My coach crossed
from Lambeth, to the Horse-ferry at Milbank, Westminster. The booths
were almost all taken down; but there was first a map or landscape cut
in copper representing all the manner of the camp, and the several
actions, sports, and pastimes thereon, in memory of so signal a frost.
7th February, 1684. I dined with my Lord Keeper, [North], and walking
alone with him some time in his gallery, we had discourse of music. He
told me he had been brought up to it from a child, so as to sing his
part at first sight. Then speaking of painting, of which he was also a
great lover, and other ingenious matters, he desired me to come oftener
to him.
8th February, 1684. I went this evening to visit that great and knowing
virtuoso, Monsieur Justell. The weather was set in to an absolute thaw
and rain; but the Thames still frozen.
10th February, 1684. After eight weeks missing the foreign posts, there
came abundance of intelligence from abroad.
[Sidenote: LONDON]
12th February, 1684. The Earl of Danby, late Lord-Treasurer, together
with the Roman Catholic Lords impeached of high treason in the Popish
Plot, had now their _habeas corpus_, and came out upon bail, after five
years' imprisonment in the Tower. Then were also tried and deeply fined
Mr. Hampden and others, for being supposed of the late plot, for which
Lord Russell and Colonel Sidney suffered; as also the person who went
about to prove that the Earl of Essex had his throat cut in the Tower by
others; likewise Mr. Johnson, the author of that famous piece called
Julian.
15th February, 1684. News of the Prince of Orange having accused the
Deputies of Amsterdam of _crimen læsæ Majestatis_, and being pensioners
to France.
Dr. Tenison communicated to me his intention of erecting a library in
St. Martin's parish, for the public use, and desired my assistance, with
Sir Christopher Wren, about the placing and structure thereof, a worthy
and laudable design. He told me there were thirty or forty young men in
Orders in his parish, either governors to young gentlemen or chaplains
to noblemen, who being reproved by him on occasion for frequenting
taverns or coffeehouses, told him they would study or employ their time
better, if they had books. This put the pious Doctor on this design; and
indeed a great reproach it is that so great a city as London should not
have a public library becoming it. There ought to be one at St. Paul's;
the west end of that church (if ever finished) would be a convenient
place.
23d February, 1684. I went to Sir John Chardin, who desired my
assistance for the engraving the plates, the translation, and printing
his History of that wonderful Persian Monument near Persepolis, and
other rare antiquities, which he had caused to be drawn from the
originals in his second journey into Persia, which we now concluded
upon. Afterward, I went with Sir Christopher Wren to Dr. Tenison, where
we made the drawing and estimate of the expense of the library, to be
begun this next spring near the Mews.
Great expectation of the Prince of Orange's attempts in Holland to bring
those of Amsterdam to consent to the new levies, to which we were no
friends, by a pseudo-politic adherence to the French interest.
26th February, 1684. Came to visit me Dr. Turner, our new Bishop of
Rochester.