ON THIS DAY1 General Monck entered London, around 1 p.m., with none opposing him.
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General Monck’s forces, on the Rump Parliament’s orders, pulled down the city gates and burnt them. This action will make him odious to the people of London.
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General Monck has apologised for the destruction of the city gates.
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The Rump Parliament invited General Monck to the House, where a chair was set for him, but he would not sit down, out of modesty. They invited him to a great dinner, at which Members of Parliament stayed until the early hours of the morning, but suspecting treachery, General Monck did not attend.
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Someone anonymous2 has written these words on the door of the House of Commons:
What is under Monck’s hood
The citizens putt in their hornes.
Untill the ten days are out
The Speaker haz the gowt,
And the Rump, they sitt upon thornes.
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Threadneedle Street was crammed all day long with multitudes crying: ‘A free Parliament! A free Parliament!’ The air was ringing with the crowds’ clamours. Around seven or eight in the evening, General Monck, after being nearly knocked from his horse, addressed them thus: ‘Pray be quiet, yee shall have a free Parliament!’ Then a loud holler went up and all the bells in the city were rung, and bonfires were lit in celebration. I saw little gibbets set up and roasted rumps of mutton and very good rumps of beef. In the streets the people drank to Prince Charles’s health, even on their knees.
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The news has spread3 to Salisbury, and on to Broad Chalke, where they made a great bonfire on the top of the hill. From there the news travelled to Shaftesbury and Blandford, and so to Land’s End: perhaps this is what it has been like all over England.
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My bedfellow Tom Mariett insists that General Monck did not intend the restoration of the monarchy when he first came from Scotland to England, or to London, any more than his horse did! But shortly after finding himself at a loss, and made odious to the city by the Parliament’s ordering him to pull down the gates and burn them, he made up his mind in favour of Prince Charles becoming King.
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The members of the Long Parliament who were purged in 1648 on account of their hostility to putting King Charles on trial have been readmitted under General Monck’s protection. So the Rump Parliament is no more and the Long Parliament is restored.
Mr Harrington’s Rota Club4 has met for what I think will turn out to be the last time. Ever since General Monck’s coming in, debate on republican government and the Commonwealth has ceased abruptly. Whereas before those airy models of government were so hotly debated at the Turk’s Head, now those debates have fallen silent. Soon it will be treason to hold such meetings. At the breaking up of his club, Mr Harrington says, ‘Well, the King will come in. Let him come in and call a Parliament of the greatest Cavaliers in England, so they be men of estates, and let them sit but seven years, and they will all turn Commonwealth men.’
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On this day the Long Parliament called for free elections and its own dissolution.
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Mr Milton’s impassioned work The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth has been printed but the people have turned strongly against republicanism. Mr Milton is a spare man, of middling stature, scarcely as tall as I am.
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Samuel Pordage5, whom I know well since he is head steward of the lands of the Earl of Pembroke, has given me his translation into English of Seneca’s Troades (The Trojan Women).
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I borrowed money from Captain Stumpe of Malmesbury. I will repay the bond.
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Earlier this month6 I bought – by fortunate accident – a curious Turkey, or turquoise, stone ring. It is not of fine blue rock, but greenish. Today I noticed that it has become nubilated, or cloudy, at north and south. It is a much more curious ring than I knew it to be when I bought it.
The aurora7 of our soon to be gracious sovereign has arrived. In exile, the King in waiting has issued the Declaration of Breda, in which he makes certain promises with regard to reclaiming the crown of England:
– A full pardon to all who appeal to him within forty days, excepting only those who signed his father’s death warrant.
– Liberty to tender consciences in religious affairs, unless national peace is threatened.
– Settlement of army pay arrears; and all disputes arising from property deals since 1649 to be resolved by the new Parliament.
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On this day the Convention, which General Monck summoned to solve the constitutional crisis, assembled for the first time. The first thing put to question was ‘Whether Charles Stuart should be sent for or no?’ No one voted against, and the cries of ‘Yea, yea’ resounded, so England will have a king again. This is the dawn of the coming of our soon to be gracious sovereign.
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The Convention has proclaimed Charles II the rightful king since the execution of his father on 30 January 1649.
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As the morning8 grows lighter and lighter and more glorious until it is perfect day, so now does the joy of the people. Maypoles, which were banned in hypocritical times, have been set up again at crossroads. At the Strand, near Drury Lane, the tallest maypole ever seen was erected with help from seamen.
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On this day9 the King landed at Dover. He was met by General Monck and cheering crowds. To the thunder of a five-round salute from the ship’s guns, answered by the cannon of Dover Castle, Charles climbed down from his ship and into a barge. When he stepped ashore, around three o’clock, he knelt and thanked God. General Monck was the first to greet him, then they processed up the beach with a canopy of state held above their heads.
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Last month, I wrote10 to Mr Hobbes (who has been in Derbyshire this spring) and advised him to return to London in readiness for the King’s arrival in the city. He has heeded my advice. In 1647, Mr Hobbes taught His Majesty mathematics in Paris. This would be a fine time for the King to renew his grace and favour to his former tutor! I have an idea as to how a meeting might occur. If Mr Hobbes were to agree to have his portrait painted by Mr Samuel Cooper, the prince of limners, of whom the King has heard much abroad, they might meet most conveniently in the artist’s studio. Mr Cooper lives between Covent Garden and the Strand on Henrietta Street, which is very broad and pleasant.
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Today is King Charles’s thirtieth birthday, and he has celebrated by making his entry into London.
This fine song (composed by William Yokeney back in 1646 or 1647) was sung to a lively brisk tune:
What if the King should come to the city,
Would he be then received I trow?
Would the Parliament treat him with rigor or pity?
Some doe think yea, but most doe think no, &c.
Most were wrong! The King has been received with rapture in the city.
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At Rye11, at Stansteds-bury, in the marsh ground, oak trees have been found standing upright underground.
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Mr Hobbes tells me12 the King noticed him at the gate of Little Salisbury House today. Passing in his carriage through the Strand, the King recognised Mr Hobbes, raised his hat very kindly to him and asked how he did.
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The King and Mr Hobbes13 met again today at Mr Samuel Cooper’s studio, as I hoped they might. The King is a great lover of painting. Mr Cooper will paint portraits of both the King and Mr Hobbes, and the King has ordered that Mr Hobbes be freely admitted to his presence from now on.
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I have heard14 that in Malmesbury, on the day of the return of the King and his birthday, there was such rejoicing, so many volleys of shot and cannon fired in celebration by the inhabitants of the hundred, that the noise thoroughly shook the abbey church. One of the pillars of the tower and two parts above it fell down that night.
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My turquoise ring has changed15 again. Now the cloudy spot in the north of the ring has entirely vanished and the one in the south has lessened.
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On this day the Parliament passed An Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion, asking the King to pardon everyone involved in the death of his father, except those who officiated at his execution. The Interregnum will be legally forgot. Blind Mr Milton will be released from prison. He was arrested recently and there have been burnings of his books.
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My turquoise ring has become cloudy again in the north and a little speck has appeared in the middle.
I am one of the signatories16 to proposals for a Royal Society for experimental philosophy, scientific experiment and discussion in London. The proposals will formalise an association of ingenious minds that has existed for a good number of years already.
My most honoured17 and obliging friend Sir Robert Moray will try and obtain a Royal Charter for the new society. He has the King’s ear as much as anyone and is indefatigable in his undertakings.
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On this day, the twelfth anniversary of the execution of the late King, the exhumed bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw were hanged on the gallows at Tyburn Hill. Henry Ireton was Cromwell’s son-in-law; he died of fever in 1651. John Bradshaw was president of the court that condemned Charles I to death and it was he who read the sentence against the King. He died in 1659.
My servant saw18 the decomposed bodies taken down and buried under the gallows. Only Cromwell’s body was wrapped in serecloth. Ireton’s hands were rotted off but his body was not putrefied. Worms ran up and down the holes in Bradshaw’s body too.
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The astrologer19 Mr William Lilly has claimed that George Joyce was the masked executioner who condemned Charles I to death, so there is a warrant out for his arrest.
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My mysterious turquoise ring has changed again. Now there is a cloudy spot on the west side that seems to be approaching the cloudy spot on the east side.
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My honoured grandmother, Israel Lyte of Easton Pierse, has died. I am planning to place a memorial plaque to her in the church at Kington St Michael where my grandfather is buried.
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I have been to visit20 Old Sarum, which went to rack after the building close by of Salisbury Cathedral in the thirteenth century. In the time of Edward VI, the great house of the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton was built from the ruins of Old Sarum. I found the remains of some of the walls of the great gate on the south side, and on the north side there were some remains of the bottom of a tower, but the incrustation of freestone was almost all gone. I saw a fellow picking at what little was left.
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The cloudy spot21 in the north of my turquoise ring is now encircled with a halo. The ring is a rarity. I will show it to Mr Robert Boyle, who is interested in movement within stones and the hardening and softening of them by time. His book, The History of Fluidity and Firmness, will be printed this year.
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Since the return22 of the King, my cousin Sir John Aubrey of Llantrithyd has been created baronet.
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Mr Hobbes has had printed Dialogus Physicus, sive de Natura Aeris, in which he attacks the ideas of Mr Boyle and others in the Royal Society for experimental researches. Mr Hobbes complains that the new society is not beginning from the principles and method he set down in his book De Corpore.
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Sir John Hoskyns23 writes to tell me of his visits to see the great collections of pictures and statues in Paris which, though he had read about them, greatly exceed his expectations. What would I not give to go to France to see those collections for myself? Sir John hopes to be in Venice for the ceremony of the Doge wedding the sea: the best sight in Venice all year.
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I discussed the lace24 the King wore for his coronation, which took place on the 23rd of this month, with William Dobson’s sweet-faced widow Judith. His Majesty was crowned at the very conjunction of the sun and Mercury, Mercury being then in corde solis. As he was at dinner in Westminster Hall afterwards, it thundered and lightned extremely. The cannons and the thunder played together.
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My friend, the prodigiously talented Mr Wenceslaus Hollar, has moved from Holburn to new lodgings without St Clements Inn. He tells me that when I call on him I should ask for ‘the Frenchman Limner’, for his neighbours know not his name perfectly. Mr Hollar was born in Prague, not France. He lived in England before our wars in the household of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. During our wars he moved to Antwerp, but came back to London about ten years ago.
Before the wars, Mr Hollar married Margaret Tracy, a servant of the Countess of Arundel. She died in 1653, leaving their two small children: a daughter who is one of the greatest beauties I have ever seen, and a son who is an ingenious youth that draws delicately, like his father.
Mr Hollar is very short-sighted25. When he sketches his landscapes, he uses a glass to help his sight. His work is so closely drawn that the curiosity of it cannot be judged without using a magnifying glass.
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Sir John Hoskyns writes26 to tell me he has spent two days in Venice, where he saw the ceremony of the Doge’s wedding of the sea and in the evening the Corso, which he says is like Hyde Park on water. He says the fine folk of Venice have fat faces and low noses, but are still handsome and well complexioned, either naturally or by art. But he is still convinced that Rome is the beauty of the world. He plans to visit Padua too. How much I wish I could go with him. I have asked him to try and find a book by Scarnolii for me while he is in Italy, but he claims it is exceeding scarce. He asks me in return to obtain copies of Mr Hobbes’s books for him before the hangman burns them. Mr Hobbes is suspected of atheism and heresy.
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My cousin James Whitney27, once a Fellow of Brasenose College, and afterwards vicar of the Wiltshire parish of Donhead St Andrews, tells me that during the Visitation of Oxford under Edward VI, mathematical books were burnt for conjuring books, and if the Greek professor had not happened to come along in time, the Greek Testament would have been thrown into the fire for a conjuring book too. Mr Whitney gave me his copy of Sebastian Münster’s Rudimenta Mathematica.
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From north Wales, my friend and fellow antiquary Anthony Ettrick and I have crossed into Ireland, where we are travelling on horseback, observing this unhappy island. I find I am a quick draughtsman and can sketch the landscape in symbols as we pass through it.
This kingdom is in a very great distemper and has need of Mr Hobbes’s advice to settle it. The animosities between the English and the Irish are very great and before long, I am confident, will break into war.
The natives seem28 to scorn industry and luxury, contenting themselves only with necessities. On holidays we have seen whole parishes of the wild Irish running from hedge to hedge wren-hunting.
My friend William Petty conducted a survey of Ireland and in payment was granted great estates here by the Commonwealth government, but since the Restoration of the King he has had to return them to their former owners.
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In Dublin we met29 Mr Stoughton, who has climbed Mount Pico in the Azores. He told us that they carried with them to the summit claret wine, strong waters and canary wine. The claret and strong waters turned, or curdled, at the top of the Pico like whey. But the canary wine did not. He said that the Pico can be seen from a distance of forty leagues at sea.
Today we saw a manuscript in Saxon characters in which the Magi are described as Druids.
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On our way back from Ireland, through the waters of St George’s Channel, Anthony Ettrick and I seemed likely to be shipwrecked at Holy-head, but in the end we came to no harm. Deo Gratias!
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I am newly returned into Wiltshire and have deferred my journey into Derbyshire until I have word that Mr Hobbes is there. I will talk to him about Ireland and how it might be settled.
Mr Tyndale writes30 with advice about the journey I might make next to Portugal. And he tells me he has seen my mistress again recently – just in passing in the street – looking prettier than she did when we all met together at Samuel Cooper’s and in the garden last spring.
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I am delighted31 with the picture of Mr Hobbes that I commissioned from Mr Samuel Cooper: it is one of the best pieces Mr Cooper has ever done. Mr Cooper is an ingenious man of great humanity. A week on Monday, I shall see Mr Hobbes’s brother and we shall drink his health together.
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When I ask myself what I have accomplished in my life thus far, my efforts add up to truly nothing; only umbrages! I am proud of the fact I had drawings done of the ruins of Osney Abbey when I was a student, and I have saved and collected some antiquities, things that were neglected or forgotten and would have sunk without trace if I had not cared for them. But I have been a whetstone to other people’s achievements. Nothing more.
My friend Mr Wencelaus Hollar32 has engraved one of the drawings I commissioned of Osney Abbey for inclusion in the second volume of Mr Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, printed this year. The first volume was printed in 1655. In these books, Mr Dugdale is compiling the history of the ancient abbeys, monasteries, hospitals and collegiate churches in England and Wales. He also includes some French, Irish and Scottish monasteries formerly relating to England. Alongside the drawing of Osney Abbey I am proud to see my coat of arms together with an explanation of how I commissioned the drawing when I was a student in Oxford.
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My friend William Petty has been knighted.
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Mr Harrington has been interrogated and imprisoned in the Tower for conspiracy. He is a gentleman of high spirit and hot head. I fear for his reason.
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My friend Mr Edmund Wylde has a dangerous fever.
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Mr Samuel Cooper33 has been commissioned to draw the King’s profile for the new milled coinage: Mr Cooper prefers sketching at night and by candlelight.
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Mr Hartlib has died. After the Restoration of the King, he lost his pension, and his petition to Parliament concerning his penury went unanswered.
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Sir John Hoskyns writes34 to me of Mr Hobbes. He tells me Mr Hobbes has written another book, Problemata Physica, and dedicated it to the King. He hopes that Mr Hobbes will not provoke the mathematician Lord Brouncker, who has found favour with the King and been made the Queen’s chancellor.
The King has granted Mr Hobbes a pension of 100 li., and he is often at court, where his irascible nature has earned him the name ‘the Bear’: ‘Here comes my Bear to be baited,’ the King is wont to say.
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Mr Hobbes has silenced35 his detractors, Dr Wallis especially, and put a stop to malicious doubts about his loyalty to the King by printing a new pamphlet, Mr Hobbes Considered in His Loyalty, Religion, Reputation and Manners. Here he explains that he wrote and published his Leviathan on behalf of the faithful subjects of His Majesty, who took his part in the war, or otherwise did their utmost to defend His Majesty’s right and person against the rebels. After His Majesty’s defeat, these subjects, having no other means of protection, nor (for the most part) of subsistence, were forced to compound with the new masters and promise obedience to save their lives and fortunes. Leviathan affirms that they did this lawfully: they had done all they could be obliged to do in defence of His Majesty and were consequently at liberty to seek the safety of their lives and livelihoods without treachery. I am myself one of these people.
Mr Hobbes says36 that were it not for the laws, many men would have no more scruples about killing a man than he or I do about killing a little bird. In his Leviathan he says that men will never be obedient and good subjects until his doctrine is taught in schools, and he attacks the ecclesiastics and universities.
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Mr Tyndale complains37 that he misses me greatly in London and declares that my absence makes him feel low and fretful. The Queen has been very ill. He tells me that our friend Sir John Hoskyns has a severe fever. For all these reasons I must return to the city as soon as I can.
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Parliament has passed38 a new Licensing Act, which requires books on most subjects to be licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London.
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The Royal Society has received its charter from the King. It will now be permitted to print books. The professors at Gresham College in Bishopsgate have generously offered rooms for the new society’s meetings. There is a great hall for elections and a separate room for the ordinary meetings every Wednesday.
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On Mr Boyle’s recommendation, Mr Hooke has been elected the Royal Society’s Curator of Experiments.
Mr Hooke is of but middling stature39, something crooked, pale-faced, but his head is large and his eye full, popping and grey. He has a delicate head of brown hair and an excellent moist curl. He seems a very temperate man.
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Sir William Petty presented40 a treatise on shipbuilding to the Royal Society, but the President, Lord Brouncker, confiscated it, claiming it is too great an Arcanum of State to be commonly perused!
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Dr Walter Charleton41 has proposed me as a candidate for election to the Royal Society. He is a learned, melancholy man and Physician in Ordinary to the King.
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On this day42 I have been elected to the Royal Society.
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To my great joy43, I have been admitted, formally, to the Royal Society. Our meetings include experiments. Today I proposed to the learned company Mr Potter’s idea of moving blood between chickens. But it was considered absurd and impossible: a blemish on the Society’s reputation to experiment with such an idea. This embarrassed me very much and brought a hot blush to my cheeks. My stammer started up and was the worst it has been in years.
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The minister of Avebury44 claims that the huge stones may be broken wherever you please without any great trouble. This is how: they make a fire on that line of the stone where they would have it crack; and, after the stone is well heated, draw over a line with cold water and immediately give a smart knock with a smith’s sledgehammer, and the stone will break like collets at the glasshouse. I hope this breaking of the ancient stones can be stopped.
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Today I attended my second Royal Society meeting. My stammer was less bad this time. Mr Hooke presented his proposals for experiments on the resistance of air to bodies moved through it. He was appointed curator of these experiments, which will begin with a pendulum sealed up in a glass.
I presented the Society45 with my friend Francis Potter’s scheme for a cart with legs instead of wheels. The Society asked Mr Hooke to consider it and report back at the next meeting.
I have proposed Mr Potter as a member of the Royal Society.
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Mr Hooke’s report46 on Mr Potter’s cart with legs was read before the Society today. A copy of the report, with a few alterations and corrections suggested at the meeting, will be sent to Mr Potter. Mr Hooke will also draw up a full description of the cart and a scheme for building it. Mr Potter has been elected a member of the Royal Society, to my immense delight.
I mentioned before47 that learned company today that I have been told that the Duke of Orleans had a way of producing animals from the putrefaction of vegetables. This gave rise to a return to the discussion on equivocal generation that took place back in October 1662, before I was a member of the Royal Society. A number of the Fellows have been charged with experiments in this regard. Mr John Evelyn will put several pieces of flesh and some blood in a closed vessel that cannot be fly-blown and see what is produced.
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Mr Potter48 will come in person to the Royal Society after Easter, and in the meantime send me forty shillings so I can pay his admittance for him.
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Today I described to the Royal Society my observation that holly berries, after lying five or six hours in the bottom of a vessel of water, will rise and swim up to the middle, which is thought to be due to a kind of fermentation and swelling that means the berries increase in size. The Royal Society decided this experiment should be tried again in the winter.
I also described49 my observation that grains of wheat will sink in water with an air bubble attached to them. When the bubble breaks, the grains rise again, then sink a second time to the bottom and do not rise again.
Quaere50: if a bladder filled with smoke will be carried up into the air, and if so, perhaps several such bladders might draw a man up into the air to a certain height?
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The new charter51 of the Royal Society was read before its council, which met for the first time today. It has been decided that discussion of who should be received and admitted into the Royal Society will be kept secret.
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When I was about52 two thirds of the way down Dundery Hill, on my way from Bristol to Wells, I saw a thin mist rise out of the ditch on the right-hand side of the highway. When I came nearer to the place, I could not discern the mist, so I retraced my steps and saw it again from a distance. Then I noticed that there was some flower or weed growing in the ditch from which the vapour came. My nose was affected with a smell that I knew, but it did not come immediately to mind. My groom, who is dull of understanding, but whose senses are very quick, caught up with me and I asked him what he could smell. He answered that he smelt the smell of the canals that come from the baths at Bath.
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At Crudwell53, near the manor house, is a fine spring in the street called Bery-well. Labourers say it quenches their thirst better than other waters. To my taste it seems to have aliquantulum aciditatis, and is perhaps vitriolate. The town is called after this well; perhaps it is called Crudwell because of the water turning milk into cruds.
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Mr Walter Charleton has presented the Royal Society with a plan of the stone antiquities at Avebury, near Marlborough, suggesting that it would be worth digging there under a certain triangular stone, where a monument to some Danish king might be found. I have been asked, together with my friend Sir James Long, to make further enquiries into this.
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Sir Kenelm Digby54 says that Dr Dee (whom my great-grandfather knew well) diligently observed the weather for seven years, and as a result developed such skill in predicting the weather that he was accounted a witch.
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I have found55, I think, a place for the free school at Malmesbury that Mr Hobbes intends to establish. The land is in Bradon Forest, worth about 25 li. per annum, and in His Majesty’s gift.
I have also found56 Mr Hobbes a house in London, but he hesitates to take it lest his pension should cease in this time of austerity when the court is reducing its expenses. He is at Chatsworth for the time being and will make no decisions until he comes to London himself.
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The rivulet that runs57 through Chalke rises at a place called Naule, belonging to Broad Chalke farm, where a great many springs issue out of the chalky ground. It makes a kind of lake covering about three acres, where there are two-foot-long trout, the best in England. The water is good for washing and brewing. I tried putting crawfish in it, but they did not live, the water is too cold for them. When horses from north Wiltshire, or other horses from further afield, come to drink in the Chalke River, it is so cold and tort that they sniff and snort, I suppose because it is very heavily impregnated with nitre.
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In the presence of the King, Walter Charleton and the President of the Royal Society, William Brouncker discussed my view that Avebury excels Stonehenge as much as a cathedral does a parish church. His Majesty expressed surprise than none of our chorographers have yet taken any notice of Avebury, and he has issued a Royal Command that Stonehenge and Avebury be investigated. Mr Charleton will arrange to take me into His Majesty’s presence to discuss this.
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In his book58 Chorea Gigantum, published this year, Mr Charleton argues that Stonehenge was the work of the Danes. The stones are so exceeding old that books do not reach them. They savour of an antique rudeness.
I think Mr Charleton59 is wrong. His book shows a great deal of learning in a very good style, but as to his hypothesis that the Danes built Stonehenge, that cannot be right: it is a gross mistake. In the thirteenth century, the historian Matthew Paris expressly affirmed that Stonehenge was the place where the Saxons’ treachery massacred the Britons, which was four or five hundred years before the conquest of the Danes. I think Simeon of Durham and Henry of Huntingdon said the same thing in the twelfth century.
Mr Charleton writes in his book, ‘Many things are well worthy our knowledge, that cannot yet deserve our belief; and even fictions sometimes have accidentally given light to long obscured writers.’
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Today I met60 His Majesty. Into the King’s presence I took with me a draft of Avebury done only from memory, but well enough resembling it, I think. He was very pleased with it. He gave me his hand to kiss and commanded me to wait on him at Marlborough when he travels to Bath with the Queen in about a fortnight’s time.
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On their progress to Bath, His Majesty and the Duke of York left the Queen and diverted to Avebury where I showed them that stupendous antiquity. I thought my stammer would start up through nervousness, but it disappeared when I saw how delighted by the monument the royal visitors were. The stones there are pitched on end, bigger than those at Stonehenge, but rude and unhewn, just as they were when they were drawn out of the earth.
Afterwards, as we were leaving61, the King cast his eye on Silbury Hill, about a mile away, and said he desired to see it. I climbed to the top with him; Mr Charleton and the Duke of York came too. At the top, the King saw his kingdom from a new prospect. After we descended he proceeded to the entertainment and dinner at Lacock; then on that evening to Bath. The gentry and common people of those parts received the royal party with great acclamations of joy.
His Majesty has commanded me to write a description of Avebury and present it to him, and the Duke of York has commanded me to provide an account of the Old Camps and Barrows on the Plains. I will attempt to do both.
His Majesty also62 commanded me to dig at the bottom of the stones, to see if I could find any human bones, but I will not do it.
. . .
I have returned to Stonehenge and discovered some new holes.
I noticed too, but not for the first time, that the high stones are so deeply honeycombed that the starlings use them as nests. Whether these holes in the high-up stones are natural or artificial I cannot tell. In Wales, starlings are called Adar y Drudwy (meaning Birds of the Druids). Perhaps the Druids made these holes on purpose for their loquacious birds to nest in. This calls to my mind Pliny’s description of the starling in his time that could speak Greek.
While I think it63 very probable that Stonehenge already existed long before the Romans became masters of Britain, they would have been delighted with the stateliness and grandeur of it, and (considering the dryness of its situation) would have found it suitable for urn-burial. There are about forty-five barrows near Stonehenge. It must have taken a great deal of time to collect so many thousand loads of earth, and soldiers have better things to do, so I do not think these barrows were for burying the dead slain in battles. When Christianity became the settled religion, the temples that had been dedicated to the heathen gods were converted to Christian use and worship.
The monument is still64 being damaged. Ever since I can remember, the locals have been picking at it. One large stone was carried away to make a bridge; and it is generally believed, by those living close by, that powder from these stones tipped down wells will drive away the toads that infest them. The source of this belief seems to be that no magpie, toad or snake has ever been seen at Stonehenge. But this is no surprise. Birds of weak flight will not fly beyond their power of reaching cover, for fear of their enemies, the hawks and ravens, and there is no cover within a mile and a half of Stonehenge. Snakes and adders love cover too, so avoid Stonehenge for the same reason as the magpies. As for the toads, they will not go beyond a certain distance from water.
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Mr Francis Potter65 was admitted to the Royal Society today.
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St Andrew’s Day66: the day of the General Meeting of the Royal Society. Today at our meeting I remarked to Sir William Petty that it seems not well to me that we have pitched upon the feast day of the patron saint of Scotland. I would have thought it better to choose the feast of St George, or that of St Isidore, the canonised philosopher. ‘No,’ said Sir William, ‘I would rather have had it on St Thomas’s Day, for he would not believe in the resurrection until he had seen and put his fingers into the nail holes in Christ’s body.’ This according to the motto Nullius in verba (take nobody’s word for it).
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Sir George Ent has shown the Royal Society a table top made of fossilised wood that was sent to him from Rome by the renowned collector of rarities Cassiano dal Pozzo. Sir George Ent met Cassiano dal Pozzo when he was in Rome with Dr William Harvey in 1636. Mr Evelyn visited him too, when he was on his Grand Tour in 1644. Cassiano dal Pozzo stayed in touch with Sir George Ent; he sent him examples of petrified wood and they carried on a lively correspondence and exchange of books, until Cassiano dal Pozzo’s death six years ago. I wish I could have visited Cassiano dal Pozzo’s paper museum myself and seen the two sets of drawings – things human and things divine – into which I have heard it was divided. There would have been many things in those collections of stupendous interest to a scurvy antiquary such as I am.
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I am lovesick67. I left Sir John Hoskyns’s house abruptly, and claimed to be beset by melancholy, but I do not think he believed me. He urges me to divert my mind – to return to the city to meet him next Wednesday and enjoy ingenious company. He says I should let her go, and will do well enough without her. But I am lovesick and can think of nothing else besides my beloved.
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I have been elected68 to the Royal Society’s new Georgical Committee. The committee has thirty-two members and will collect information on the history of gardening and agriculture in England, Scotland and Ireland. We will draft a set of questions and send them out to knowledgeable people in different regions. I will seek to obtain reports from Wiltshire and Dorset.
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At the Royal Society I mentioned my desire to talk to Mr Jonas Moore about the astronomical tables of Mr Jeremiah Horrox. Mr Horrox died suddenly in 1641 as our wars were beginning, aged just twenty-two. He was the first to demonstrate that the moon moves round the earth in an elliptical orbit. His achievements must not be lost from the records of the advancement of science.
I have described69 to the learned Fellows a new way of brewing good and lasting beer with ginger but without hops. I have promised to bring some bottles of this beer to a future meeting for them to taste.
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My friend Lord Nicholas Tufton, who was twice imprisoned in the Tower during the Commonwealth, has succeeded to the peerage and become the 3rd Earl of Thanet. He is a kind patron to me.
