MY FRIEND THE bookseller Mr William Crooke informs me that other authors are preparing lives of Mr Hobbes: he urges me to make haste with mine. I would not have believed that I could be so copious! I have written a draft, but still have more to add from letters and memoranda books. I would also like to write other lives: Sir William Petty’s, Sir Christopher Wren’s, Mr Robert Hooke’s.
. . .
I was at Jonathan’s1 coffee house with Mr Haak, Mr Hodby, Mr Tison and Mr Hooke.
. . .
I hope Mr Wood2 will help me by searching for the month and day of Mr Hobbes’s matriculation. At Trinity College we wrote our names in the buttery book the day we were admitted to the University. It was probably the same at Magdalen Hall.
Mr Wood chides me3 for calling my Life of Mr Hobbes a supplement. Originally I intended it only to complement Mr Hobbes’s own autobiography. But now Mr Wood advises me my work is worthy of the title: The Life of Thomas Hobbes.
I have been reading over some of my notes and it seems to me I could have written four times as much as I have on Malmesbury.
While I was smoking4 a pipe of tobacco in my chamber last Sunday night, it suddenly came to me that it would be a fine thing if I were to write my honoured friend Sir William Petty’s life from his cradle; he can peruse it himself and then it shall be left for posterity hereafter. Now I have my hand in since writing the life of Mr Hobbes, I am minded to scribble a page or two on the lives of some eminent men. About five years ago I lodged with Mr Ashmole some sheets of minutes of the lives of Dr John Dee, Lord Bacon, Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Dr William Aubrey, John Pell and Robert Boyle, etc. I have asked for these to be left with my friend Mr Wood so he can preserve them among his papers.
. . .
The science of astrology5 is not yet perfect. The way to make it perfect is to get an apparatus – or supellex – of true genitures. For this reason, I am taking much care collecting the nativities of the lives I am writing. Astrologers will be able to rely on these, for I have not compiled any of them on random or doubtful information. Instead, whenever possible, I have taken them down from the subject’s own mouth.
. . .
This month6 the Penny Post has been set up. It was first invented by Mr Robert Murray, formerly clerk to the General Company for the Revenue of Ireland, and Mr Dockwra, who joined him in the enterprise. Previously, the post office collected and carried letters between postal towns, but there was no provision for delivering them, so many of them were lost, as I often found to my great chagrin. Now in London there will be a local delivery system charged at the rate of a penny per letter or packet weighing up to a pound. There will be several deliveries a day in London, and for the extra charge of another penny, letters can be delivered to addresses ten miles outside the city.
. . .
Today, at about 3 p.m.7, I was seized by a fainting fit. I fear that at the age of fifty-four, my death creeps up on me. I have written my last will and testament. I intend to leave my notes for the Lives I have begun to write to Mr Wood – they are like fragments from the shipwreck of the past.
Mr Wood warns me8 to be careful if I am to play any part in writing the life of Mr Hobbes: I should write fair things, or someone else will be on my back.
. . .
I have persuaded9 Sir William Petty to sit to have his picture painted by Mr Loggan the engraver. In 1659, Mr Samuel Cooper drew him in miniature and the result was one of the likest portraits that prince of limners ever drew.
. . .
Today is my birthday, which falls close to the Roman Quinquatria (19 March), the feast dedicated to Minerva.
. . .
My honoured friend Edward Davenant has died. I have heard Sir Christopher Wren say that he was the best mathematician in the world thirty or thirty-five years ago. But being a divine, he was unwilling to print his work, lest the world should know how he had spent the greatest part of his time.
I will write to his executor to ask if we may have the honour and favour of conserving his manuscripts in the library of the Royal Society, and of printing what is fit.
He was my singular10 good friend, to whom I have been more beholden than to anyone else besides. I once borrowed 500 li. from him for a year and a half and he would not let me pay him any interest on the loan.
. . .
Sir Jonas Moore11 was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society today.
. . .
Mr Dryden (Poet Laureate) has complimented Mr Blackbourne’s style in compiling the life of Hobbes. These two are agreed on leaving out all the minuteness: they will have the truth, but not the whole truth. For example, they will make no mention of Mr Hobbes having been a page. I am letting the grass grow under my feet, and Mr Blackbourne will have all the glory if I do not hurry up. I say that the offices of panegyrist historians are one thing: but a Life is a short history in which minute details about a famous person should be gratefully recorded. I never yet knew a wit write a proper epitaph (unless he was an antiquary) which did not leave the reader ignorant about the subject’s provenance, what countryman he was, etc.
I have made an index12 for my Book of Lives: it includes fifty-five persons (I have done ten of them already, including four pages on Sir Walter Raleigh). It will be a pretty thing when it is finished. I am so glad my researches for Mr Wood and my promise to write the life of Mr Hobbes have led me to collect these other lives. I do it playingly. This morning, I got up by 10 and wrote two lives. One of them was the life of Sir John Suckling, on whom I wrote a page and a half in folio. I will add to it the scoffing ballad that was made against him, his fine troop and his running away. Sir John replied with another ballad: ‘I . . . thee foole, who ere thou be/ That maketh this fine sing song of me.’ Perhaps Mr Wood will search Mr Sheldon’s ballad collection for me.
If I could get up13 by 7 a.m., I could finish my Book of Lives in a month.
Here is a list of the Lives I have done so far:
Sir William Petty (the first)
Edward Davenant
Sir John Suckling
Mr Edmund Waller
Thomas Randolph
Mr Camden (half a page)
Mr William Oughtred (full)
Viscount Falkland
Quaere14: who has Mr Camden’s papers? I must remember to ask Mr Dugdale. I think he has Mr Camden’s minutes of King James’s life, and also his own life, written by himself, but very brief, just two sheets of paper in his own handwriting. Mr Dugdale got these manuscripts from the Bishop of Coventry, who filched them from Mr Camden as he lay dying. It is said that Mr Camden had bad eyes, lippitude I guess, or else was short-sighted, which is a great inconvenience to an antiquary.
Mr Dryden tells me15 he will write his life for me himself. I can then add it to my collection.
I could afford16 to put in the life of Dr Ralph Kettell, who was President of Trinity College when I first went there. Though no writer, he was a good man and a good governor of the college. I have among my books Dr Kettell’s copy of Sir Thomas Overbury’s translation of Ovid’s De remedio amoris.
. . .
Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke, my patron, has at Wilton fifty-two mastiffs and thirty greyhounds, some bears, a lion, and a matter of sixty fellows all more bestial than they.
. . .
Today I was17 at Jonathan’s coffee house with Mr Hooke. He is a bachelor and I believe will never marry: a person of great suavity and goodness.
. . .
I have collected together my notes on Lives and I find I have written a book that is two quires of paper, which I will send to Mr Wood at the beginning of May.
. . .
I am sending18 Mr Wood a copy of Mr Hobbes’s considerations on his own reputation and loyalty (first published anonymously in 1662). Originally, there were about 300 copies, and I had two or three. Now the book has been printed anew from one of my copies (the original having sold out).
. . .
I have been very ill19 with a cold lately. But even so, I have now written sixty-six of my Lives. Having begun my own Book of Lives, I feel I cannot be quiet until I have finished it. I have such an impulse on my spirit.
Recently, after coming round from a fainting fit, I wrote my will and humble request on the first page of my manuscript that my Book of Lives be transmitted to Mr Wood if I should die. They are fine things, my Lives, but few of them are fit to be printed in my lifetime, or Mr Wood’s. If he dies, his papers will all fall into the possession of Dr Wallis (ex officio) as Keeper of the Archives, and there be stifled: for I am like Almansar in the play, who spares neither friend nor foe. I am religious John Tell-Troth.
I have decided20 to rename my Templa Druidum; now it will be called Monumenta Britannica.
. . .
Today at the Royal Society we discussed monstrous births. I read out Mr Paschall’s letter about the two children born at Hilrewers in Somerset, joined into one body about the navel, but separated into two distinct bodies both above and below the belly. They eat, suck, cry, sleep and void their excrements separately and freely. They seem likely to live.
I also described21 a creature born to a rabbit but fathered by a cat, which Sir Christopher Wren has heard of too. Others spoke of cross-breeding between partridges and pheasants and poultry; and between ducks and sea fowl. It was generally observed that all the progeny of this cross-breeding are barren, and will not go on to propagate.
. . .
I have written my minutes of Lives tumultuarily, or as they occurred in my thoughts, or, occasionally, as I had information of them from others. My friend Mr Wood, antiquary of Oxford, could easily reduce them to order by numbering them according to time and place. They are Lives chiefly of contemporaries, but not only.
When I first began to write my Lives, I did not think I could have drawn out so long a thread. I have laid down the truth, as near as I can, and as religiously as a penitent to his confessor, nothing but the truth, the plain and naked truth, which is exposed so bare that the very pudenda are not covered, and there are many passages that will raise a blush in a young virgin’s cheeks. I must ask Mr Wood to sew on some fig leaves, to make a castration, to be my index expurgatorius.
What uncertainty do we find in printed histories, which either tread too close on the heels of truth that they dare not speak plain, or else for want of intelligence (things being antiquated) become too obscure and dark. In my Book of Lives I do not repeat anything already published (to the best of my knowledge) and I imagine myself all along discoursing with Mr Wood. Thus he makes me renew my acquaintance with old or deceased friends: this is the pleasure of old men.
I have now lived over half a century of years in the world, and been much tumbled up and down in it, so I have a wide and general acquaintance. Also, I have the advantage of London’s new coffee houses. Before they opened, men only knew how to be acquainted with their own relations or societies. They were afraid and stared at all who were not of their own communities.
I wish someone22 had written a Book of Lives like mine a hundred years ago. How many worthy men’s names and notions are swallowed by oblivion because no such book exists for the last century! Perhaps this Book of Lives of mine is the most useful piece I have ever scribbled. Had Mr Wood not urged me to write it, many of these lives would have been swallowed up in oblivion too. General Lambert used to say: ‘the best of men are but men at the best’, and there are many examples in my rude and hasty collection of Lives, which is not fit to let fly abroad for another thirty years: the author and persons, like medlars, ought to be rotten first.
. . .
The Earl of Rochester23, aged only thirty-three, has died of venereal disease at Woodstock Park. In his last illness, he was exceedingly penitent. He sent for his servants, even the piggard boy, to hear his palinode. His immature death puts me in mind of these verses of Propertius:
Vere novo primoque in aetatis flore iuventae
seu rosa virgineo pollice carpta, iaces.
(In early spring and the first flower of youth,
like a rose plucked by a maiden’s hand, you lie dead.)
. . .
I have sent Mr Wood more answers to his questions, and in return asked him if, when he goes to Westminster, he will transcribe out of the ballad book the song on Lord Chancellor Egerton’s son. I have also asked him to send me the name of the inventor of the engine for weaving silk stockings. Mr Wood has sent me some gloves, for which I am most grateful.
A friend tells me24 that in the time of the Rump Parliament they talked of the dissolution of the universities and concluded that they were unnecessary.
. . .
My Book of Lives25 will be in all about six-score individual lives, and I believe never before in England were lives delivered so faithfully and with such good authority. I will include in my Life of King James the hostile ballad that was sung at the time of his coronation in 1603:
And at the erse of them marched the Scottish peers
With lowzie shirts, and mangie wrists, went pricking-up their ears . . .
Perhaps Mr Wood can search Ralph Sheldon’s ballad book for me to see if he can find it.
. . .
I have given26 my Book of Lives to Dr Pell, hoping he will make some additions and amendments. Before I gave it to him, I pleased myself reading over the Lives I have written so far and transcribing a few excerpts into this diary:
Sir William Petty, knight27
His horoscope: Monday, Maii 26th, 1623: n h 42' 56" p.m., natus Gulielmus Petty, miles, sub latitudine 51 10' (tempus verum), at Rumsey in Hants.
This horoscope was done, and a judgement made upon it, by Charles Snell, Esq., of Alderholt near Fording-bridge in Hampshire: Jupiter in Cancer makes him fat at heart. John Gadbury also says that vomits would be excellent good for him.
Sir William was the (eldest, or only) son of . . . Petty, of Rumsey in Hampshire, by . . . his wife. His father was born on the Ash Wednesday before Mr Hobbes, scilicet 1587. He died and was buried at Rumsey 1644, where Sir William intends to set up a monument for him. He was by profession a clothier, and also did dye his own clothes: he left little or no estate to Sir William.
Sir William was born at his father’s house aforesaid, on Trinity Sunday. Rumsey is a little haven town, but hath most kinds of artificers in it. When he was a boy his greatest delight was to be looking on the artificers, e.g. smiths, the watchmaker, carpenters, joiners, etc. and at twelve years old he could have worked at any of these trades. He went to school, and learnt by 12 years a competent smattering of Latin, and was entered into the Greek. He has had few sicknesses. [Aged] about 8, in April very sick and so continued till towards Michaelmas,
About 12 (or 13), i.e. before 15, he has told me, happened to him the most remarkable accident of his life (which he did not tell me), and which was the foundation of all the rest of his greatness and acquiring riches.
He informed me that, about 15, in March, he went over into Normandy, to Caen, in a vessel that went hence, with a little stock, and began to merchandise, and had so good success that he maintained himself, and also educated himself; this I guessed was the most remarkable accident that he meant. He learnt the French tongue, and perfected himself in the Latin, and had Greek enough to serve his turn. Here (at Caen) he studied the arts. Memorandum: he was sometime at La Flèche in the college of Jesuits. At 18, he was (I have heard him say) a better mathematician then he is now: but when occasion is, he knows how to recur to more mathematical knowledge. At Paris he studied anatomy, and read Vesalius with Mr Thomas Hobbes (vide: Mr Hobbes’s life), who loved his company. Mr Hobbes then wrote his Optiques; Sir William then had a fine hand in drawing and limning, and drew Mr Hobbes’s optical schemes for him, which he was pleased to like. At Paris, one time, it happened that he was driven to a great strait for money, and I have heard him say that he lived a week on two pennyworth (or 3, I have forgot which, but I think the former) of walnuts.
Quaere: whether he was not sometime a prisoner there?
I remember about 1660 there was a great difference between him and Sir . . ., one of Oliver [Cromwell]’s knights, about . . . They printed one against the other: this knight was wont to preach at Dublin. The knight had been a soldier, and challenged Sir William to fight with him. Sir William is extremely short-sighted, and being the challengee it belonged to him to nominate a place and weapon. He nominated, for the place, a dark cellar, and the weapon to be a great carpenter’s axe. This turned the knight’s challenge into ridicule, and so it came to nought.
He is a person of an admirable inventive head, and practical parts. He hath told me that he hath read but little, that is to say, not since aged 25, and is of Mr Hobbes’s mind, that had he read much, as some men have, he had not known so much as he does, nor should have made such discoveries and improvements.
His physique: his eyes are a kind of goose-grey, but very short-sighted, and, as to aspect, beautiful, and promise sweetness of nature, and they do not deceive, for he is a marvellous good-natured person. Eyebrows thick, dark, and straight (horizontal). His head is very large. He was in his youth very slender, but since these twenty years and more past he grew very plump, so that now (1680) he is abdomine tardus.
Robert Boyle28
The honourable Robert Boyle Esq., the (fifth) son of Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, was born at Lismor (anciently a great town with a university and 20 churches) in the county of Cork, the 25th day of January anno 1627.
He was nursed by an Irish nurse, after the Irish manner, where they put the child into a pendulous satchel (instead of a cradle), with a slit for the child’s head to peep out.
He learnt his Latin, went to the University of Leyden, travelled in France, Italy, and Switzerland. I have oftentimes heard him say that after he had seen the antiquities and architecture of Rome, he esteemed none ‘anywhere else’. He speaks Latin very well, and very readily, as most men I have met with. I have heard him say that when he was young, he read over Cooper’s dictionary: wherein I think he did very well, and I believe he is much beholding to Cooper for his mastership of that language.
His father in his will, when he comes to the settlement and provision for his son Robert, thus – Item to my son Robert, whom I beseech God to bless with a particular blessing, I bequeath, etc. – the greatest part is in Ireland. His father also left him the manor of Stalbridge in Dorset, where is a great freestone house; it was forfeited by the Earl of Castlehaven.
He is very tall (about six foot high) and straight, very temperate, and virtuous, and frugal: a bachelor; keeps a coach; sojourns with his sister, the lady Ranulagh. His greatest delight is chemistry. He has at his sister’s a noble laboratory, and several servants (apprentices to him) to look to it. He is charitable to ingenious men that are in want, and foreign chemists have had large proof of his bounty, for he will not spare for cost to get any rare secret. At his own costs and charges he got translated and printed the New Testament in Arabic, to send into the Mahometan countries. He has not only a high renown in England, but abroad; and when foreigners come to hither, ’tis one of their curiosities to make him a visit.
His works alone may make a library.
General Monck29
George Monck was born at . . . in Devon (vide: Devon in Heralds’ Office), a second son of . . ., an ancient family which had about Henry VIII’s time 10,000 li. per annum (as he himself said). He was a strong, lusty, well-set young fellow and in his youth happened to slay a man, which was the occasion of his flying into the Low-countries, where he learned to be a soldier.
At the beginning of the late civil wars, he came over to the King’s side, where he had command (quaere: in what part of England?). Anno . . . he was prisoner in the Tower, where his seamstress, Nan Clarges (a blacksmith’s daughter), was kind to him in a double capacity. (The blacksmith’s shop is still of that trade. It is the corner shop, first turning on the right hand as you come out of the Strand into Drury Lane.) It must be remembered that he was then in want and she assisted him. Here she was got with child. She was not at all handsome, nor cleanly. Her mother was one of the five women barbers. Anno . . . (as I remember, 1635) there was a married woman in Drury-lane that had clapt (i.e. given the pox to) a woman’s husband, a neighbour of hers. She complained of this to her neighbour gossips. So they concluded on this revenge, viz. to get her and whip her and shave all the hair off her pudenda; which severities were executed and put into a ballad. ’Twas the first ballad I ever cared for the reading of: the burden of it was thus:
Did yee ever hear the like
Or ever heard the same
Of five women-barbers
That lived in Drury-lane?
(Vide: the Ballad-book)
Anno . . . her brother, Thomas Clarges, came a shipboard to George Monck and told him his sister was brought to bed. ‘Of what?’ said he. ‘Of a son.’ ‘Why then,’ said he, ‘she is my wife.’ He had only this child.
Anno . . . (I have forgot by what means) he got his liberty, and an employment under Oliver Cromwell (I think) at sea, against the Dutch, where he did good service; he had courage enough. But I remember the seamen would laugh, that instead of crying ‘Tack about’, he would say, ‘Wheel to the right (or left)’.
Anno 16 . . . he had command in Scotland (vide: his life), where he was well beloved by his soldiers, and, I think, that country (for an enemy). Oliver [Cromwell], [Lord] Protector, had a great mind to have him home, and sent him a fine complimentary letter, that he desired him to come into England to advise with him. He sent His Highness word that if he pleased he would come to wait upon him at the head of 10,000 men. So that design was spoiled.
Anno 1660, February 10th (as I remember), being then sent for by the Parliament to disband Lambert’s army, he came into London with his army about one o’clock p.m. He then sent to the Parliament this letter, which printed, I annex here. Shortly after he was sent for to the Parliament house, where, in the house, a chair was set for him, but he would not (in modesty) sit down in it. The Parliament (Rump) made him odious to the city, purposely, by pulling down and burning their gates (which I myself saw). The Rump invited him to a great dinner, in February, shortly after, from whence it was never intended that he should have returned (of this I am assured by one of that Parliament). The members stayed till 1, 2, 3, 4 o’clock, but at last His Excellency sent them word he could not come. I believe he suspected some treachery.
Annex: ‘A Letter from his Excellencie the Lord General Monck and the officers under his command to the Parliament; in the name of themselves, and the soldiers under them’, printed by John Macock, 1660.
The honours conferred on George Monck everyone knows.
His sense might be good enough, but he was slow, and heavy. He died Anno . . . and had a magnificent funeral suitable to his greatness.
Dr William Aubrey
William Aubrey, Doctor of Laws30: – extracted from a manuscript of funerals, and other good notes, in the hands of Sir Henry St George – I guess it to be the handwriting of Sir Daniel Dun, knight, LL Dr, who married Joane, third daughter of Dr William Aubrey.
William Aubrey (the second son of Thomas Aubrey, the 4th son of Hopkin Aubrey, of Abercunvrig in the county of Brecon) in the 66th year of his age or thereabouts, and on the 25th of June, in the year of our Lord 1595, departed this life, and was buried in the cathedral-church of St Paul in London, on the north side of the chancel, over against the tomb of Sir John Mason, knight, at the base or foot of a great pillar standing upon the highest step of certain degrees or stairs rising into the quire eastward from the same pillar towards the tomb of the right honourable the lord William, Earl of Pembroke, and his funerals were performed the 23rd of July, 1595.
This gentleman in his tender years learned the first grounds of grammar in the College of Brecon, in Brecknock town, and from thence about his age of fourteen years he was sent by his parents to the University of Oxford, where, under the tuition and instruction of one Mr Morgan, a great learned man, in a few years he so much profited in humanity and other recommendable knowledge, especially in Rhetoric and Histories, as that he was found to be fit for the study of the Civil Law, and thereupon was also elected into the fellowship of All Souls College in Oxford (where the same Law hath always much flourished). In which college he earnestly studied and diligently applied himself to the lectures and exercise of the house, as that he there attained the degree of a Doctor of the Law Civil at his age of 35 years, and immediately after, he had bestowed on him the Queen’s Public Lecture of Law in the University, the which he read with so great a commendation as that his fame for learning and knowledge was spread far abroad and he was also esteemed worthy to be called to action in the commonwealth. Wherefore, shortly after, he was made Judge Marshall of the Queen’s armies at St Quentin in France. Which wars finished, he returned into England, and determining with himself, in more peaceable manner and according to his former education, to pass on the course of his life in the exercise of law, he became an advocate of the Arches, and so rested many years, but with such fame and credit as well for his rare skill and science in the law, as also for his sound judgement and good experience therein, as that, of men of best judgement, he was generally accounted peerless in that faculty.
Besides the great learning and wisdom that this gentleman was plentifully endowed withal, Nature had also framed him so courteous of disposition and affable of speech, so sweet of conversation and amiable behaviour, that there was never any in his place better beloved all his life, nor he himself more especially favoured of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, and the greatest personages in the realm in any part of his life than he was when he drew nearest his death.
He was of stature not tall, nor yet over-low; not gross in body, and yet of good habit; somewhat inclining to fatness of visage in his youth; round, well favoured, well coloured and lovely; and albeit in his latter years sickness had much impaired his strength and the freshness of his hew, yet there remained there still to the last in his countenance such comely and decent gravity as that the change rather added unto them than ought diminished his former dignity. He left behind him when he died, by a virtuous gentlewoman Wilgiford his wife (the first daughter of Mr John Williams of Tainton in the county of Oxford, whom he married very young a maiden, and enjoyed to his death, that both having lived together in great love and kindness by the space of 40 years), three sons and six daughters.
Memorandum: – he was one of the delegates (together with Dr Dale, etc.) for the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, and was a great stickler for the saving of her life, which kindness was remembered by King James at his coming-in to England, who asked after him, and probably would have made him Lord Keeper, but he died, as appears, a little before that good opportunity happened. His Majesty sent for his sons and knighted the two eldest, and invited them to court, which they modestly and perhaps prudently declined. They preferred a country life.
You may find him mentioned in the History of Mary, Queen of Scots, 8vo, written, I think, by (John) Hayward; as also in Thuanus’s Annales (insert his words here in honour to the Doctor’s Manes).
He was a good statesman; and Queen Elizabeth loved him and was wont to call him ‘her little Doctor’. Sir Joseph Williamson, Principal Secretary of Estate (first Under-Secretary), has told me that in the Letter-office are a great many letters of his to the Queen and council.
The learned John Dee was his great friend and kinsman, as I find by letters between them in the custody of Elias Ashmole, viz., John Dee wrote a book The Soveraignty of the Sea, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, which was printed, in folio. Mr Ashmole has it, and also the original copy of John Dee’s handwriting, and annexed to it is a letter of his cousin Dr William Aubrey, whose advice he desired in his writing on that subject.
Old Judge Sir (Edward) Atkins remembered Dr Aubrey when he was a boy; he lay at his father’s house in Gloucestershire: he kept his coach, which was rare in those days. The Judge told me they then (vulgarly) called it a Quitch. I have his original picture. He had a delicate, quick, lively and piercing black eye, fresh complexion, and a severe eyebrow. The figure in his monument at St Paul’s is not like him, it is too big.
Sir Lleuellin Jenkins, knight31
Sir Lleuellin Jenkins, knight, was born at Llantrithid in the county of Glamorgan, Anno Domini . . . His father (whom I knew) was a good plain countryman, a copyholder of Sir John Aubrey, knight and baronet (eldest son of Sir Thomas), whose manor it is. He went to school at Cowbridge, not far off. David Jenkins, that was prisoner in the Tower (married a sister of Sir John Aubrey), was some remote kin to him; and, looking on him as a boy towardly, diligent, and good, he contributed something towards his education. Anno Domini 164(1), he was matriculated of Jesus College in Oxford, where he stayed till (I think) he took his degree of Bac. Artium. About that time Sir John Aubrey sent for him home to inform his eldest son Lewis Aubrey (since deceased, 1659) in grammar; and that he might take his learning the better, he was taught in the church-house where several boys came to school, and there were 6 or 7 gentlemen’s sons boarded in the town. The young gentlemen were all near of an age, and ripe for the University together; and to Oxford they all went under Mr Jenkins’s care about Anno 1649 or 50, but by reason of the disturbances of those times, Sir John would not have his son of any college. But they all studied at Mr (now Sir) Sampson White’s house, a grocer, opposite to University College. Here he stayed with my cousin about 3 years or better, and then, in Anno 165 . . . (vide: Mr Hobbes’s De Corpore, ’twas that year), he travelled with my cousin and two or 3 of the other gentlemen into France, where they stayed about 3 years and made themselves masters of that language.
He has a strong body for study, indefatigable, temperate and virtuous. God bless him.
Wenceslaus Hollar32
Wenceslaus Hollar, Bohemus, was born at Prague. His father was a Knight of the Empire: which is by letters patent under the imperial seal (as our baronets). I have seen it: the seal is bigger then the broad seal of England: in the middle is the imperial coat; and round about it are the coats of the Princes Electors. His father was a Protestant, and either for keeping a conventicle, or being taken at one, forfeited his estate, and was ruined by the Roman Catholics.
He told me that when he was a schoolboy he took a delight in drawing of maps; which draughts he kept, and they were pretty. He was designed by his father to have been a lawyer, and was put to that profession, but then his father’s troubles, together with the wars, forced him to leave his country. So it turned out that what he did for his delight and recreation only when a boy proved to be his livelihood when a man. I think he stayed sometime in Low Germany, then he came into England, where he was very kindly entertained by that great patron of painters and draughts-men (Thomas Howard) Lord High Marshall, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, where he spent his time in drawing and copying rarities, which he did etch (i.e. with aqua fortis in copper plates).
When the Lord Marshall went ambassador to the Emperor of Germany to Vienna, he travelled with much grandeur; and among others, Mr Hollar went with him (very well clad) to take views, landscapes, buildings, etc. remarkable in their journey, which we see now at the print shops. He hath done the most in that way that ever any one did, insomuch that I have heard Mr John Evelyn, RSS, say that at sixpence a print his labour would come to . . . li. (quaere: John Evelyn).
I remember he told me that when he first came into England (which was a serene time of peace) that the people both poor and rich did look cheerfully, but at his return, he found the countenances of the people all changed, melancholy, spiteful, as if bewitched.
I have said before that his father was ruined upon the account of the Protestant religion. Wenceslaus died a Roman Catholic, of which religion, I suppose, he might have been ever since he came to Arundel-house.
He was a very friendly good-natured man as could be, but shiftless as to the world, and died not rich.
Monsieur Renatus Descartes33
Nobilis Gallus, Perroni dominus, summus mathematicus et philosophus; natus Hagae Turonum pridie Calendas Apriles, 1596; denatus Holmiae Calendis Februarii, 1650.
This inscription I find under his picture graved by C. V. Dalen.
How he spent his time in his youth, and by what method he became so knowing, he tells the world in his treatise entitled Of Method. The Society of Jesus glory in that their order had the educating of him. He lived several years at Egmont (near the Hague), from whence he dated several of his books.
He was too wise a man to encumber himself with a wife; but as he was a man, he had the desires and appetites of a man; he therefore kept a good conditioned handsome woman that he liked, and by whom he had some children (I think 2 or 3). ’Tis pity but coming from the brain of such a father, they should be well cultivated.
He was so eminently learned that all learned men made visits to him, and many of them would desire him to show them his . . . of instruments (in those days mathematical learning lay much in the knowledge of instruments, and, as Sir Henry Savile said, in doing of tricks), he would draw out a little drawer under his table, and show them a pair of compasses with one of the legs broken; and then, for his ruler, he used a sheet of paper folded double. This from Alexander Cooper (brother of Samuel), limner to Christina, Queen of Sweden, who was familiarly acquainted there with Descartes.
Mr Hobbes was wont to say that had Descartes kept himself wholly to geometry that he had been the best geometer in the world. He did very much admire him, but said that he could not pardon him for writing in defence of Transubstantiation, which he knew to be absolutely against his judgement.
Venetia Stanley34
Venetia Stanley was daughter of Sir . . . Stanley. She was a most beautiful desirable creature; and being matura viro was left by her father to live with a tenant and servants at Enston Abbey in Oxfordshire: but as private as that place was, it seems her beauty could not lie hid. The young eagles had espied her, and she was sanguine and tractable and of much suavity (which to abuse was great pity).
In those days, Richard, Earl of Dorset (eldest son and heir to the Lord Treasurer), lived in the greatest splendour of any nobleman of England. Among other pleasures that he enjoyed, Venus was not the least. This pretty creature’s fame quickly came to his lordship’s ear, who made no delay to catch at such an opportunity.
I have now forgot who first brought her to town, but I have heard my uncle Danvers say (who was her contemporary) that she was so commonly courted, and by grandees, that ’twas written over her lodging one night in literis uncialibus:
PRAY COME NOT NEAR, FOR DAME
VENETIA STANLEY LODGETH HERE.
The Earl of Dorset, aforesaid, was her greatest gallant, he was extremely enamoured of her, and had one if not more children by her. He settled on her an annuity of 500 li. per annum.
Among other young sparks of that time, Sir Kenelme Digby grew acquainted with her, and fell so much in love with her that he married her, much against the good will of his mother; but he would say that ‘a wise man, and lusty, could make an honest woman out of a brothell-house’.
Sir Edmund Wylde had her picture (and you may imagine was very familiar with her), which picture is now (vide) at Droitwych, in Worcestershire, at an inn in an entertaining-room, where now the town keep their meetings. Also at Mr Rose’s, a jeweller in Henrietta Street in Convent garden, is an excellent piece of hers, drawn after she was newly dead.
She had a most lovely and sweet-turned face, delicate dark-brown hair. She had a perfect healthy constitution; strong; good skin; well proportioned; much inclining to a Bona Roba (near altogether). Her face, a short oval; dark-brown eyebrow, about which much sweetness, as also in the opening of her eyelids. The colour of her cheeks was just that of the damask rose, which is neither too hot nor too pale. She was of a just stature, not very tall.
Sir Kenelm had several pictures of her by Van Dyke, etc. He had her hands cast in plaster and her feet, and her face. See Ben Jonson’s 2nd volumn, where he hath made her live in poetry, in his drawing of her both body and mind:
Sitting, and ready to be drawne,
What makes these tiffany, silkes, and lawne,
Embroideries, feathers, fringes, lace,
When every limbe takes like a face!
When these verses were made she had three children by Sir Kenelme, who are there mentioned, viz. Kenelm, George, and John.
She died in her bed suddenly. Some suspected that she was poisoned. When her head was opened there was found but little brain, which her husband imputed to her drinking of viper-wine; but spiteful women would say ’twas a viper-husband who was jealous of her that she would steal a leap.
I have heard some say, e.g. my cousin Elizabeth Falkner, that after her marriage she redeemed her honour by her strict living. Once a year the Earl of Dorset invited her and Sir Kenelm to dinner, where the Earl would behold her with much passion, and only kiss her hand.
Sir Kenelm erected to her memory a sumptuous and stately monument at . . . Friars (near Newgate-street) in the east end of the south aisle, where her body lies in a vault of brick-work, over which are three steps of black marble, on which was a stately alter of black marble with 4 inscriptions in copper gilt affixed to it: upon this alter her bust of copper gilt, all which (unless the vault, which was only opened a little by the fall) is utterly destroyed by the Great Conflagration.
How these curiosities would be quite forgot, did not such idle fellows as I am put them down!
