ON THIS DAY William, Prince of Orange, landed at Torbay with an army. He has been formally invited to England by a small group. They are:
The Earl of Danby
The Earl of Shrewsbury
The Earl of Devonshire
The Viscount Lumley
The Bishop of London
The Earl of Orford
The Earl of Romney
. . .
Here in London the rabble has demolished Popish chapels and the houses of several Popish lords, including Wild House, the residence of the Spanish ambassador. They pillaged and burnt his library. I am afraid the unrest will spread to Oxford and Mr Wood’s papers, many of my own among them, will be searched and destroyed, as the whole University believes him to be a Papist.
. . .
On this day William, Prince of Orange, reached London.
. . .
I went to see1 Mr Ashmole last Tuesday; he is very ill. He told me Mr Wood is still refusing to send my box of papers to the museum for safe keeping, but if he does not do so without further delay he will no longer look on him as a friend and will not give another farthing to the University. Mr Wood is suspected of being a Roman Catholic and my papers will not be safe with him if (or when) his own are searched and burnt. Mr Ashmole says much more care is taken now at the museum and books are safer there than they are even in the Bodleian Library. He suggests that the papers I desire kept secret should be sealed up in a locked box in the museum and not opened until after my death. I think his advice very solid and sedate: there are some things in my Lives that make me open to scandal, and I have written a letter or two which I wish were turned to ashes!
My shirt, cap and cravat are with my laundress Mrs Seacole in Oxford: I hope she keeps them safe. I was meant to pick them up from her within a fortnight, but the times prevent me going back to Oxford at the moment. I wish I could go next month, or in February, but I fear I will need to be in hiding then from my brother and other creditors.
. . .
I have been collecting my thoughts on education and compiling a manuscript of recommendations for an ideal school for gentlemen. I foresee that my design is likely to be opposed by the clergies of both parties. But I hope it will find some champions and supporters, especially among the Fellows of the Royal Society.
I would have my school be in a fair house with a little park, high-walled, of about a mile about.
The only time of learning is from age nine to sixteen; afterwards, Cupid begins to tyrannise, jealousies, marriage and worldly cares intertwine with studies. It is a mistake to keep boys at their books at an age more proper for matrimony, when their minds chiefly run on propagating their race. Nature will be nature at 18+. At this age their information is like writing on greasy parchment: it will not stick or leave an imprint. Trying to educate boys over eighteen is like painting anew on an old picture: the colours will not be imbibed.
My school would need2:
– A grammarian (one for every class)
– A mathematics teacher (elected by the President of the Royal Society and the teacher of the King’s Mathematical Boys at Christchurch Hospital School)
– A rhetorician (who may be a Scot)
– A logician (who should also read to the boys the rudiments of the civil law and ethics)
– Ten or twelve Swiss, Dutch or Scottish boys of about fifteen years old that speak Latin well, to play with and instruct the young gentlemen
– An excellent pen-man or writing master
– A dancing master (French)
– A cook (French or Swiss)
– A butler (Swiss)
– A governess (unmarried and with no daughters)
– A porter (not an old fellow or a scabby old servant in a tattered gown like a scarecrow, but a lofty young Swiss with a decent livery and long sword)
– A chaplain (who might also be library-keeper and/or logic reader)
I would like to see3 the boys carrying Euclid’s Elements in their coat pockets as religiously as a monk carries his breverie. I believe Euclid’s is the best book ever written. But I would have the boys go no further than Euclid’s ninth or tenth book, not only for lightness of carriage, but also to avoid them being too perplexed.
I think the best4 way of improving boys’ memories is to have one of them read aloud to the class a page at a time of Appianus (which Mr Thomas Cooper in his dictionary commends as a most excellent work on the Roman civil war) and after a time of recollection the boys should give an account of what they have heard. The boys will vie with one another to see who will remember most.
It is certain5 that too much reading of the poets spoils a good prose style, wherefore I would have the boys meddle as little with the poets as is possible. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Homer they should be very perfect in, for the delight and delicacy of the fancy and the lively descriptions which they should imitate in English blank verse like Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost. Yet I would not have them ignorant of how to make a Latin or Greek verse.
Mr Hobbes told me6 that he thought boys should read Catullus before Martial, since the former are passions and the latter jests in verse. He also recommended Caesar’s Commentaries because he thought them the best Latin style and most courtlike.
I would have nothing7 of terror in my school. There would be no turning up of bare buttocks for pedants to exercise their cruel lust. Instead there would be mild punishments: to stand in the middle of the school; to be prisoners in their chambers; to be kept at their books when their fellows are at play; not to drink wine or eat tarts and fruit. In the statutes of my school I would include this command: ‘The scholars are not to be beaten about the head.’
I would let the children sleep out their full sleep, otherwise rheumes and catarrhs, dullness, etc. follow. Some of my friends impute their unhealthiness to their too early rising at Westminster School.
I believe the disposition8 of a boy is the same when he is a man, only he covers it with a cloak of cunning and dissembling, so school fellows know one another’s blind-sides or foibles, and some come to be their servants who were their play-fellows at school.
I envisage9 my ideal institution to be both school and university; the boys who attend it will not need to go on to any other house of scholarship, except to some particular college of law or physic where they mean to be practitioners.
I would furnish10 my school with microscopes, telescopes and a camera obscura for taking pictures of one’s self or of the landscape. It will set the boys agog.
I would have those11 inclined to drawing practise it for their recreation. I would have these lovers of drawing make perspectives of walls, of Cyprus trees and of pillars, in level, uphill and downhill, which is easy to do and extremely pleasant to the eye. This will train them to draw figures in perspective, which few painters understand. It will prepare and fit them for starting in landscapes, and indeed for the drawing of everything that is drawn from life. Then let them practise drawing horses as big as life on sheets of paper pasted together. This will make them understand horses better than other men. Let them draw a greyhound standing: it is reducible to a square and oblong.
In the chapel of my ideal school, at the east end, I would have a picture of Gratitude taken from The Golden Age: Aurea, by the Flemish artist Gérard de Lairesse: namely, a modest and beautiful virgin pouring frankincense into an aurum with live coals. Underneath is written Gratitude and these words of Cicero’s: Religio est Justitia Nostra Adversus Deum.
I would have the boys12 read the prayers of Sir Francis Bacon. The first called by his lordship The Student’s Prayer; the second The Writer’s Prayer.
The Student’s Prayer
To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour forth most humble and hearty supplications; that he, remembering the calamities of Mankind and the pilgrimage of this our Life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open to us new Refreshments out of the Fountains of His Goodness, for the alleviating of our miseries . . .
The Writer’s Prayer
Thou, O Father, who gavest the Visible Light as the First-born of thy Creatures, and didst put into Man the Intellectual Light, as the top and consummation of thy Workmanship; be pleased to protect and govern this Work, which coming from thy Goodness, returneth to thy Glory . . .
We are taught13 our religion by our nurses and pedants, but when we become men every one makes a religion to himself.
In my school14 I would have the solstices and equinoxes observed as holidays, but I would have the boys mix with their jollity arithmetical observations of the sun. Also, being Christians, we should remember with Holy Church 16 December, the day on which the first antiphon to Wisdom is sung in the last days of Advent.
Gloucester Hall15 in Oxford would be a good place for one of these schools, but the other colleges would envy it.
I think seven of these ideal schools in England would be enough, with up to sixty scholars in each. I envisage one near London at Kensington, at Merton in Wiltshire, at Cranborne in Dorset, at Oxford, in north Wales, in Glamorgan and in Lancashire. While the expense of the education would be great, perhaps greater than that of the Inns of Court, there would be great advantages to possessing such fine learning.
It gives me much pleasure to consider and foresee how many young gentlemen’s minds would be cultivated and improved and their understandings opened by good information of the sciences. But now I think I see a black squadron marching from Oxford, set up by Dean Fell under the crozier staff he carries as Bishop of Oxford, to discomfort this pretty little flock I have imagined. And so this pleasing dream of mine is at an end.
. . .
I do not know what to do with my manuscript on the Idea of Education. If I die and leave it here, it will be lost, or seized upon by my old landlord Mr Kent’s sons. If I send it to the Ashmolean Museum, the Oxford tutors will burn it because it is very much against their interests; if I send it to Mr Wood, when he dies, his nephew will use the pages to stop up his guns. I had thought to send it to the Earl of Abingdon, but he has other fish to fry now. Perhaps the Earl of Pembroke would do best? If I had the money for an amanuensis, I would leave a copy in the hands of each of these earls.
. . .
On this day King James fled to France, two days after the Queen. London has been consumed by rioting against the Roman Catholics.
. . .
On this day the Convention, which was summoned to resolve the constitutional crisis created by the flight of King James, presented its Declaration of Rights to William and Mary, who are now proclaimed King and Queen of England, following the abdication, or at least vacant throne, of King James.
. . .
The residentiary canon, Isaac Vossius, has died at his lodgings in Windsor Castle and left what is said to be the best private library in the world. It is rumoured that King William will buy it and send it to Holland. Vossius was once city librarian of Amsterdam and librarian to Queen Christina of Sweden. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society. I hope either Oxford or Cambridge University will buy his library and keep it in England.
. . .
My friend Mr John Ray the naturalist writes to me from his home in Black Notley. He tells me that Mr Evelyn countenances my observation that elms grow no further north than Stamford. My observation supports Mr Evelyn’s view that elms were originally strangers, not native trees of England; I think the Romans brought them here. Mr Ray has sent me two plant samples pasted on to a paper, and he says that the plant I found on the downs, which resembled wild thyme, was Dwarf Holy Rose.
Mr Ray approves my design for a work interpreting the names of places in England; he says it is sure to be acceptable. He thinks that ancient records and monuments will be useful and says there exists a good Saxon dictionary. The Welsh, as I have told him, is very imperfect.
I will soon make16 a journey into Wales, and Mr Ray has asked me to send him notice of anything extraordinary relating to natural history or experiment that I encounter on my travels.
. . .
Around 1650, in Verneditch Walk, which is a part of Cranborne Chase, there were a thousand or twelve hundred fallow deer; but now there are not above five hundred left.
A glover at Tisbury says he will give sixpence more for a buckskin of Cranborne Chase than a buckskin of Groveley.
At Groveley17 there are badgers. The grease of the badger is an admirable recipe for sciatica and old aches, but the hedgehog’s grease is even better. Some women in Bedfordshire perform wonderful cures with it.
. . .
I grow old18 and my candle burns low. From now on I must transcribe my manuscripts an hour a day at least. My notes are so confused and so interlined that if I do not do it in my lifetime, they will signify nothing. I hope that by Michaelmas I will have gone through the most difficult and perplexing parts. I will write only on one side of the paper, so that the notes can be cut and transposed or pasted into a new order later on.
My brother William is insistent that we should meet to discuss our financial difficulties. He says he is sorry for anything he said amiss in passion to hurt me. I will not meet him yet. I fear he will bring me to debtors’ prison. This business grieves and vexes me.
. . .
My friend Edward Lhwyd19 has provided me with a Welsh glossary to help with my collection of words.
. . .
Today was the Coronation of William III and Mary II, who are co-regnant over England, Scotland and Ireland. May they bring us peace!
. . .
My brother William desires to meet me to discuss the sale of Broad Chalke farm. I will not see him. He is suspected of being a Roman Catholic and has lost his job as a groom-keeper.
. . .
My candle burns low20, heartbreaking cares shorten my days and I fear my Lives are not fit to be published. I sent them to Mr Wood in their natural state – puris naturalibus – more pleasing to an antiquary than to have them fricasseed. Dr Plot must not see my Surrey papers. I fear he will wrong me by putting my work under his own name – a thing too common in this world.
. . .
I have asked Mr Wood21 to help find a college lease for Jane Smyth, just as he did for Edward Shirbourne. I feel more obliged to her than to anybody. If only I could get Mr Wood to help her in this way. I have also asked him to find out the price of a rare medicine that she needs for the stone from Mr Kit White, the chemist in Holywell.
. . .
Since Seth Ward22, Bishop of Sarum, died, I have searched all the papers that were at his house in Knightsbridge. I have asked his nephew and heir to look over the papers in his study at Sarum too, but when the Bishop of Sarum dies, the custom is that the Dean and Chapter lock up his study and put a seal on it. When Seth Ward’s study is reopened I hope his nephew will send me an account of his papers so I can pass it on to Mr Wood. I have rescued some of Seth Ward’s scattered papers from being used by the cook to put under pies. One that I have rescued concerns his study of Common Law. It will be useful to include it in my Idea of Education.
. . .
Yesterday I went23 to see Mr John Rushworth, author of the Historical Collections, which gather together records of the debates and passages in the House of Commons during the years of our civil war. He was licenser of the press between 11 April 1644 and 9 March 1647. Mr Rushworth claims to have invented a new method of writing history: i.e. writing and declaring only matter of fact in chronological order, without observation or reflection. He boldly set down what was said at the trial of Charles I, and after the execution of the King became personal secretary to Oliver Cromwell.
My visit to him24 yesterday was mortifying. He has quite lost his memory with drinking brandy to keep his spirits up. He lodges with the widow Mrs Bayley in the Rules-court Alley, Southwark; she takes good care of him and wipes his nose like a child. He has forgotten his own children and entered a second childhood of his own. He does not recognise any of his four daughters. He tells me he is superannuated.
. . .
I dined with Mr Ashmole25. We discussed Sir Richard Napier, the nephew of the astrologer. There is a story that before he died he lay at an inn where he saw a premonition of himself dead on the bed.
I have been setting26 aside legal business and my time is wholly taken up with transcribing my manuscripts. I hope I can be finished in six weeks. Then I shall go and see Mr Wood in Oxford and make myself happy in good company.
Thank God27 I have almost finished the tedious task of transcribing my manuscripts. Life is so uncertain. This morning I was in such anguish at the thought I might die before sending these transcriptions to Mr Wood, in which case they will all be lost. There is no trust, or hardly any, in anybody. It is so common for people to publish another person’s labour under their own name, but I know Mr Wood is too much of a gentleman to wrong me in this way.
. . .
I have collected28 together my samples of handwriting that reach from the Conquest to this present time. By a collection of several hands or fashions of characters one may know prima facie the king’s reign in which a manuscript was writ. It may also be useful for the detection of forgeries. It is now over twenty years since I had this wish, to get some graver to set forth the hands of several reigns or centuries, but only now am I preparing my work to be printed. I was led on to it by my Chronologia Architectonica.
Just as the Roman29 architecture degenerated into Gothic in like manner did the Roman character. I have heard that in the Vatican library at Rome are conserved still some copies of books written in the time of the Roman government. I shall not adventure to retrieve any so high as that here in England. The highest in antiquity that I know of in our nation is the charter granted by King Athelstan to the corporation of Malmesbury of which I hope to exhibit a copy in my book.
. . .
Anyone would think that there is an evil genius haunting me. I moved into pleasant lodgings at the end of last January here in London, and a week later a schoolmaster moved into the room above me. He came in around midnight or one o’clock in the morning and woke me, and rose very early hammering around for about a quarter of an hour every morning before he left for his work. The following week a man, wife and child breeding teeth moved in too. The child cried day and night and the mother’s shrill tongue and singing to the cradle were intolerable. Even so, I kept on with my transcribing. But just as I had about a week’s more work to do to finish, read over and correct, the child in the next room fell sick of the smallpox, and then the mother got it too. My friend Mistress Smyth is afraid of catching smallpox, since she has never had it, so I had to leave my lodgings and lie at inns to avoid being in contact with the disease and passing it to her. I brought my manuscript with me but am without my Pliny, Homer, etc. for quotations.
Last week I had the good luck to move to an empty house, where I am writing this, but just today I have heard there will be a new tenant moving in. I could have gone to stay with Mr Kent, but he has two children also sick with smallpox.
It is said30 that the party who is first infected in a family with smallpox has the disease most mildly. Those that are infected by that person have it more malignly by degrees, and so the more who are infected, the more pestilent the disease becomes, until at last it is a plague.
I hope I can go31 to Oxford next month. I have written to Mr Wood to ask him to consider where I should lie. Perhaps I could board at Mr Kit White’s, the chemist in Holywell, or some other private place. Wherever it is, I wish the windows would be south-or east-facing. I need to retrieve my laundry: I hope Mrs Seacole hasn’t lost it. There should be a shirt, cap and cravat waiting for me in Oxford. I would much prefer not to stuff up my breeches by wearing two shirts and sweltering on the coach.
. . .
I spent the day with Mr Hooke and he told me of his controversy with Mr Newton, whom he has known ever since the latter was elected to the Royal Society in January 1672. Together we wrote a letter to Mr Wood about Mr Hooke’s ‘An Attempt to prove the motion of the Earth’, which he first read to the Royal Society in 1670, long before Mr Newton published his Principia in 1687.
It is clear to me that it was Mr Hooke, not Mr Newton, who made the greatest discovery in nature that ever was since the world’s creation. In 1679, Mr Hooke proposed an inverse square law to explain planetary motions. Mr Hooke is certain that he first discovered the properties of gravity and showed them to the Royal Society years before Mr Newton printed and published them as his own inventions.
I hope Mr Wood32 can read what Mr Hooke wrote today and do him credit for his genius. I must get from Mr Hooke a catalogue of what he has written and as many of his inventions as I can. He believes there are around a thousand of them. It is so hard to get people to do right by themselves.
. . .
I am kept busy and am likely to be involved in a Chancery suit regarding the sale of Broad Chalke and my brother’s rights. I have entrusted what remains of my estate at Broad Chalke to my brother (about 250 li. per annum) and instructed him to pay a debt of 20 li. I owe to Captain Stumpe of Malmesbury. This debt is on a bond I borrowed in 1660. There is a further debt of 80 li. also.
. . .
I have decided to sell my last interest in Broad Chalke to Mr Kent, my landlord. My brother William must not hear of this since he believes I have entrusted my interest in the farm to him. I find that the only way I can put off my grief is to concentrate on putting my papers in order before I die. There are still some good old books of mine left in Broad Chalke farm, which I am hoping to be able to send to Oxford (the Venerable Bede’s works in two volumes, etc.).
. . .
Mr Kent and all his family have gone to Broad Chalke to take possession of it. My books are still there and I must find a way to retrieve them. My brother will not be spoken to and has absented himself. Perhaps I can go to Broad Chalke with Mr Kent at Christmas and settle matters then.
. . .
Mr Paschall has33 a manuscript on Stonehenge by an antiquary to show me that argues that it is British; and he tells me that a Roman pavement has been discovered at Bawdrip: it is a shame I did not see it when I was at Chedzoy.
. . .
Mr Hooke affirms34 that the whole of the City of London has been raised since the time of the Romans by nearly twenty feet. Since the Great Conflagration in 1666 it has been raised another two feet more or less. When the city was first built, the ground was only a little above the high-water mark, as at Southwark.
. . .
Mr Ralph Bathurst35 has been long replying to my last letter because I omitted to tell him how to reach me in London. He declines my suggestion that he write an epitaph for Sir William Petty. At the age of seventy he thinks that it would be more proper to write his own epitaph. He tells me that he has seen many good wits miscarry before reaching his present age, and he has much less reason to hope for better success.
. . .
Mr Paschall tells me36 of a manuscript by Philantiquarius (Peter of Langtoft), dating from the early fourteenth century, concerning the treasures of Claudius and other Roman emperors found in Somerset and tracing the advance of the invader. He also sends an account of Stonehenge as an old British triumphal temple erected to the idol Anaraih to which captives and spoils were sacrificed; and an explanation of the layout of the circles and stones.
. . .
This month37 the child in the next chamber to mine is much quieter so I am making progress transcribing a fair copy of my Monumenta Britannica and writing the Preface.
. . .
Mr Wood claims38 that everyone seems to complain these past few months that money is dead and there is no trading (because of the taxes and wars, especially the lingering war in Ireland between the abdicated King James and King William). In Oxford the University is very thin of scholars: only eighty or so matriculated last Michaelmas, and half have gone home for Christmas.
It is said39 that when King James entered Ireland from France earlier this year, one of the gentlemen who went before him bearing the mace stumbled without any rub in his way. The mace fell out of his hands and the little cross upon its crown fell off and stuck fast between two stones in the street. This is well known all over Ireland and it much troubled the King and his attendants. It was an ill omen.
. . .
I have made a collection40 of all my learned and philosophical letters from 1643 to the current year. It took me three days. I will send them to Mr Wood and hope they will be safe: not put under pies as the Bishop of Sarum’s were!
. . .
I have begun41 to draw up an apparatus for the lives of our English mathematicians. Dr Richard Blackbourne has suggested that I do this. I have made a list of all the mathematicians I intend to include. Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Allen, John Collins, William Lilly, etc. I have written about before now, so I have simply marked them as ‘done’. I will not meddle with the Lives of our own writers in mathematics before the reign of Henry VIII, but will prefix those excellent verses of Mr John Selden’s printed in Arthur Hopton’s Concordance of Years in 1616.
. . .
The other day42 I was at Thomas Mariett’s house and heard Dr Henry Birket tell a story about Dr Ralph Kettell at Trinity College in 1638 or 1640. Dr Birket heard Dr Kettell preaching, as he was wont to do on Trinity Sunday. He told them they should keep their bodies chaste and holy, ‘But,’ he said, ‘you fellows of the college here eat good commons and drink good double beer and breed seed, and that will get out!’ It is rumoured that next year Trinity’s chapel will be demolished and rebuilt. How the good old Doctor would have ranted and beat up his kettledrum if he had lived to see such luxury in the college as there is now. Tempora mutantur!
. . .
I am afraid I will die with so much work still on the loom. I have been ill for two of the past three months with my gallstone and gout. But not seriously ill, except for two days from the stone.
Between Mr Kent and my brother all my best things – my papers and my books – are embezzled.
I will go to Oxford43 to see Mr Wood, but I shall stay only a little while: I have little money to spare: and a great deal of business to do.
. . .
Mr Fabian Philips has died. I will visit his family to see if I can gather up his literary remains and find a safe place for them. His daughter is his executrice. I hope she will set up a tablet with her father’s name and date of death in the church where he has been buried in his wife’s grave.
. . .
How I wish44 my papers were in Mr Wood’s hands, for death seems to threaten. I shall send a wagon to him with a box full of manuscripts and printed books, which the noble Earl of Pembroke gave me not long ago, and pray they arrive safely. God bless us in this in-and-out world.
. . .
I have been speaking45 to Captain Edmund Hamden about his poet cousin Edmund Waller, who was born in the parish of Agmundesham in Buckinghamshire at a place called Winchmore Hill. The house was sold by Edmund Waller’s father, but not long before his death in 1687, Edmund had a very great desire to buy it back again: part of the house had been rebuilt, but the room in which he was born is still standing. He told his cousin: ‘A stag, when he is hunted, and near spent, always returns home.’ This makes me think of my family home at Easton Pierse, where I was born, and where I shall not be able to go to die.
From Bath, the physician Thomas Guidott46 has written to me with news of Mr and Mrs Ashmole, who are taking the baths with enjoyment and effect: ‘He is stronger in his limbs and she much better in her bowels.’ He hopes to increase the number of baths that they take. Elizabeth Ashmole is Mr Ashmole’s third wife and the daughter of our mutual friend and antiquary Mr William Dugdale.
Thomas Guidott tells me too that he has recently been given some Roman coins. He says the only important find among them is a fine silver Triumvir piece depicting a trireme, which is inscribed:
ANT IIIVIRRP ANTONIUS TRIUMVIR REPUBLICA
. . .
The Royal Society have done me the honour of taking charge of a transcription of my manuscript on the Natural History of Wiltshire, which I have entrusted to Mr Hooke’s hands.
How I long to see Oxford once more and to put my writings in order before I die. But I fear I will be arrested and must hide for a while yet. I am so grateful to Mr Kent, even if he has embezzled my books, for letting me stay with him, and even if his giddy wench of a maid interferes with my letters and piles them in a box, so looking for anything is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. She even lost one letter out of her breast!
My brother’s rough humour has put my business so out of order that I have had to deal with some odd people. Heu, heu, quid faciant homines, cuive habeant fidem? (Alas, alas! What are men to do or in whom should they put their trust? Catullus 30, 6.)
If the bailiffs catch me, my brother having been so unkind, I will go and end my days with that good woman Mrs Bayley: the widow who looked after the historian Mr John Rushworth of Lincoln’s Inn before he died, in the debtors’ prison in Rules-court Alley in Southwark.
. . .
Mr Wood sends me so many queries. I trouble myself to find the answers for him, despite the troubles that press upon me. I desire to give Mr Wood my watch, which was a gift from the Earl of Pembroke, to remember me by. I will be my own executor and send it to him as soon as the watchmaker has finished mending it.
. . .
I am fearful of sending valuable things to Oxford by the wagon for I hear there is exceeding robbing.
. . .
In the box I will send Mr Wood I will include two excellent volumes of the Venerable Bede’s works, to be deposited in the museum until further notice, but they should not remain there, nor in the Bodleian Library. Perhaps there will be a library at New Inn Hall, in which case I will give them to it, or else to Jesus College Library.
I am so continually troubled in mind I cannot write. I intend to finish the second part of my Natural History of Wiltshire, but must go down to Wiltshire before the end of this month, and that will disorder my plans.
I asked my brother to pay Captain Stumpe of Malmesbury a debt of 20 li. upon bond, which I borrowed in 1660. But my brother never did it. I threw myself on the mercy of my friend Mr Kent, who will appease my creditors, but I shall be in danger of imprisonment. If my brother learns that I have an annuity from Mr Kent for Broad Chalke, he will seize upon it.
My brother’s ill humour47 has landed me in bankruptcy!
. . .
I wish Mr Wood48 would do right by Mr Hooke. When I sent him my box, I included Mr Hooke’s account of the discovery Mr Newton runs away with all the credit for. But I do not think he has taken notice of it in his biographical book, which will be called Athenae Oxonienses, since only Athens could rival Oxford in its array of distinguished writers.
. . .
I have decided to place49 my Natural History of Wiltshire, my Antiquities of Wiltshire and my other manuscripts in the museum.
. . .
I hoped to go50 to Oxford last Friday, but when I went to the coach I found five women, two of them old and very sick, and no room for my dog: a pretty little bitch that I have lately grown extremely fond of. So I will hope to go on Monday. On Monday night, God willing, I shall be in Oxford, and will stay for just a week. I hope I can lodge somewhere near to Mr Wood.
. . .
Mr Lhwyd, who was Dr Plot’s assistant at the Ashmolean, has taken over as Keeper of the Museum.
. . .
From New Inn Hall51, Oxford, Thomas Bayley writes to thank me for the gift of St Jerome’s bible and Bede’s works: they are the first benefactions to be presented to their library. I shall be inscribed in the book of benefactors. My coat of arms is already pasted in the binding of the St Jerome bible and Thomas Bayley has asked me to send some more to put upon the other books I have given them.
. . .
Next week I think52 I will finish Part 2 of my Natural History of Wiltshire. In the chapter on architecture, I would like to insert Dr Wren’s animadversions on Salisbury Cathedral. I remember that he was invited by Seth Ward, Bishop of Sarum, to survey the cathedral. He spent at least a week on it and produced a curious discourse, no more than about two sheets. I am told it has been lent to someone, but no one seems to know whom. I will attempt to trace it.
. . .
I think there is53 about ten times as much gardening around London now as there was in Anno 1660. In the time of King Charles II gardening was much improved and has become more common. Over the last twenty years we have many more foreign plants and since 1683 many exotic plants have been brought into England, no less than seven thousand. I have heard this from Mr Watts, the gardener of the apothecary’s garden at Chelsea, and other botanists. As for Longleat Garden, it was lately made; I have not seen it, but they say it is noble.
. . .
Mr Hooke has been54 very ill, and we were afraid we would lose him. I assured him that Mr Wood would do right by him and give him the credit for the idea Mr Newton takes the credit for. This comforted his spirits.
I have written55 to Mr Lhwyd to tell him that among the other things I have given to Mr Wood for the Ashmolean Museum, there is my unfinished Villare Anglicanum, or collection of English place names. I can think of no one more suited to finishing the task than Mr Lhwyd, and I only hope he will do right by me and make mention of me if he does so.
. . .
Mr Wood has complained that the watch I gave him does not work well, but it kept time indifferently when I had it. The days of the month were always faulty but that isn’t worth a chip. I have told him that if he has it mended he should do so in London rather than Oxford. I believe it cost at least 10 li. when the Earl of Pembroke bought it for me.
. . .
I have heard56 that my old friend Tom Mariett died about ten days ago. His third wife broke his heart.
. . .
I hope to get57 to Oxford – our English Athens – in July.
. . .
I have been to the Tower58 to see the Earl of Clarendon, who received my visit very kindly. He has been imprisoned since the beginning of the year for corresponding with King James in exile. I was surprised to learn how few people go to visit such a great person in prison. I explained to the Earl how to write to Mr Wood, but he says he cannot write his father’s life, as Mr Wood would like, until he is at liberty to return to his papers.
. . .
Mr Hanson of Magdalen59 College, Oxford, tells me that he has observed that almost all the well waters about the north part of Wiltshire are very brackish. At Highworth the apothecary, Mr Allmon, told him he had often seen milk coagulated with the water, and yet the common people brew with it, which gives their beer an ungrateful taste. At Cricklade their water is so very salty that the whole town is obliged to have recourse to a nearby river for their necessary uses. At Wotton Bassett they have a medicinal spring, some small distance from the town, which a neighbouring divine says Dr Willis gave this judgement on: it is the same as that at Astrop. They have also a petrifying spring. At Devizes, almost a quarter of a mile from the town, there is another petrifying spring, which a local physician, Dr Merriweather, showed me. At Bagshot, near Hungerford, is a chalybeate spring: some gentlemen drank of it with good success.
. . .
Mr Wood has published the first volume of his Athenae et Fasti Oxonienses: An exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the most Antient and Famous University of Oxford from the fifteenth year of King Henry the Seventh, 1500 to 1690, to which are added the Fasti or Annales of the said University.
The costs of publication have almost ruined him!
. . .
Since there has been60 such a long friendship between me and Mr Wood, I shall present one of his books to a public library (e.g. New Inn Hall, or wherever he thinks fit) as a memorial of the friendship between us. When he comes to London, I hope he will bring with him Sir Christopher Wren’s observations of Salisbury church.
The Earl of Abingdon kindly invites me to stay with him at his house in Lavington. I shall do so in about a month after my visit to Oxford. His wife died suddenly in May and I must comfort him in his sadness if I can.
. . .
Today I sent to Oxford61 a great bundle of books via the Saracen’s Head carrier. I intended to add into the box four volumes of my manuscripts in folio, plus a thick folio of letters written to me, but the Royal Society got to hear of this yesterday, and insisted on delaying the manuscripts and letters so transcriptions can be made before they are sent to Oxford. They will not charge me for the transcriptions: I did not expect so great an honour. I would willingly print my Templa Druidum in my lifetime, since it is finished and only wants an Aristarchus to polish the style.
. . .
I have been chosen62 again to serve on the committee that audits the Royal Society’s accounts.
. . .
The Royal Society’s transcription63 of my Natural History of Wiltshire has cost 7 li. (including the paper). It is a folio as thick as the Common Book of Prayer. I did not think it would prove so bulky.
. . .
Mr William Fanshawe64 asks me where he may get Samuel von Pufendorf’s book of natural religion, and at what price. He applauds my Treatise on Education and encourages me to perfect it, send it abroad, and so cause posterity to celebrate my name with more respect than any of the great men who first civilised and cultivated rude and untaught mankind.
. . .
Mr John Ray has agreed65 to read over my memoirs of the Natural History of Wiltshire, and asks me to send them to him by the Braintree carrier, who innes at the Pewter Pot in Leaden Hall Street and goes out of town on a Friday morning every week. He says he has never had anything miscarry this way, either coming or going. He believes there is great variety of plants in Wiltshire and if it were well searched perhaps some new discoveries might be made. Also, he identifies the two kinds of tree (hornbeam is one) about which I enquired.
I have sent Mr Ray a list of the titles of my works in manuscript, and by this he can see that I have not been idle. He hopes that in time I will gratify the learned and ingenious by publication. He imagines there would be many as desirous of reading them as he is himself.
. . .
I have now been66 seven times to try and see Mr Heyrick, the stationer, on Mr Wood’s behalf. When at last I found him, he seemed to me to be the most morose and unmoral man I ever met with. He cares not for Mr Wood and said he would not take pains to answer his queries.
. . .
Mr John Ray has read67 my History of Wiltshire in manuscript and offered some gentle criticisms.
. . .
I went to Bayworth68 – about three miles south of Oxford – with Mr Wood and Mr Dyar.
. . .
Mr John Ray is delighted with my History of Wiltshire, where he says I mingle utile dulci. He believes all kinds of readers would appreciate it and urges me not to be deterred from publishing it by fear of giving offence.
He says there is only69 one thing in the manuscript that might justly give offence and that is my hypothesis of the Terraqueous Globe, which is in fact Mr Hooke’s theory. I think it the best thing in the whole work, even though it interferes with Chapter One of the Book of Genesis. Mr Ray says he cannot accept it. Mr Hooke first brought his theory before the Royal Society in 1663 or 1664.
There are lots of lacunae in my manuscript that must be filled in before it can be published, and Mr Ray criticises some of my new coined words, which he says do not sound well. Mr Boyle has also been criticised for using new coined words. Here are some examples: to apricate, to reficate, ‘continently’ put as opposite to incontinently, etc.
. . .
The Ashmolean Museum70 has been robbed. Three years ago, I gave several things to it, including my picture in miniature by Mr Samuel Cooper (which would be worth 20 guineas at auction) and Nicolas Hilliard’s miniature of Archbishop Bancroft, the famous illuminer of Queen Elizabeth’s time. I do not know if the thieves have taken them or not.
. . .
My friend Mr Lhwyd, who became Keeper of the Museum this year upon Dr Plot’s retirement, has confirmed that the two miniatures I donated were among the stolen items.
. . .
My brother has been unkind71 to me and (God forgive me) I have undone him and myself. The truth is, I was never made to manage an estate: I was predestined to be cozened and cheated.
. . .
I am plagued72 by worries because I have not yet received back my manuscript from Mr John Ray. He tells me that this has never happened before. He was confident of its safe arrival for he had laid strict charge on his man to see it carefully lodged in the wagon. But it has not arrived.
. . .
I have prepared73 my notes on Surrey for printing. My papers are chaotic, like sybillina folia! I wish I had transcribed them into a fair copy soon after my perambulation of the county in 1673. I cannot take the pains to digest them in better order now (which would require the drudgery of another transcribing); instead I have set them down tumultuarily, as if tumbled out of a sack, as they come to hand, mixing antiquities with natural history. In this state I shall expose them to the view of the candid reader, wishing him as much pleasure in the perusal of them as I had in the collecting of them.
. . .
I think someone74 should run over a good English–Latin dictionary and make a collection of the primitives for English, French and endenizened Latin words, together with the few British and Danish words that are yet retained in our language, and then number them, and reduce them to their least forms to see what proportion they are in relation to one another. I guess the greatest proportion would be Latin, or that there would be as many Latin as true English words.
The Earl of Pembroke75 has given me a fine picture in wax that I will send to Mr Lhwyd for the museum even though Mr Ashmole and I are both concerned about the way the pictures in the museum are being looked after. They need to hang so they are reclining from the walls, otherwise the salt and saltpetre in the walls will rot the canvases. Sadly, this has already happened to the picture of the Queen in the room by the museum’s laboratory.
. . .
My friend Edmund Gibson, who is editing the new edition of Mr Camden’s Britannia, bemoans the corruption of the nation’s genius, which gives no encouragement to books of learning and antiquity, not even my Monumenta Britannica, which is ignored by the booksellers, despite its august title!
I have asked him76 whether to print my new book (which I hope will have more success) in Oxford or London, and he feels obliged to recommend London because Oxford’s press has few men, only a small stock of letters, and many obstructions. He says the Oxford press is so slow that it would take four or five years to print my Monumenta Britannica.
. . .
The Earl of Clarendon77 is prosecuting Mr Wood for libelling his father. In his Life of Judge Jenkins, Mr Wood included information about the old Earl of Clarendon, which I passed to him, never thinking he would print it. I obtained it from Judge Jenkins himself.
. . .
Mr Wood always warned me not to lend my manuscripts. How right he was. After I had lent my Natural History of Wiltshire to Mr John Ray, he wrote me a very kind letter advising me not to include in it the digression on Mr Hooke’s theory of the Terraqueous Globe. Now he has published a book of his own, The Wisdom of God manifest in the Works of Creation, in which Mr Hooke’s theory is published without mention of either Mr Hooke or my book, where Mr Ray learnt of it. Mr Hooke is much troubled by this.
. . .
Mr Hooke is very anxious78 to have a copy of what Mr Wood proposes to print about him and will willingly pay for a transcript.
. . .
My brother William79 came to town yesterday and has gone on to Sussex today, after serving me and Mr Kent with a subpoena. So I have got a new law suit that I never expect to wear out: God help the oppressed. About two years ago, when I entrusted my brother with the remnants of my estate at Broad Chalke (about 250 li. per annum), I asked him to pay a debt to Captain Stumpe of Malmesbury for 20 li., on a bond borrowed in 1660, but he never did it. Nor did he take up a further debt of 80 li. on my behalf. In the circumstances, I had to throw myself on Mr Kent’s favour to appease my creditors. In return for an annuity I gave Mr Kent my Broad Chalke estate without telling my brother. Now he is pursuing me for it through the courts.
I hope to get to Oxford by the end of April.
. . .
At the request80 of Sir Charles Howard and Mr John Evelyn I am endeavouring to complete my History of Surrey in manuscript. I need to write about the River Thames and have asked Mr Lhwyd’s opinion as to the derivation of the word Tam or Tame. The Romans, in their conquests, gave Latin endings to the names of places or rivers, so the name was perhaps Thamys originally, to which they added the termination ‘is’, making it Thamesis (or perhaps Thamysis). As to what Tham or Tam signifies, I cannot find either of these words in the Welsh dictionary. Perhaps the word is lost among the Welsh, but it could possibly be retrieved from a manuscript Welsh dictionary, now in the possession of Sir William Williams, in which there are 1,500 more words than there are in Mr Meredith Lloyd’s printed dictionary. I will write to him to ask his opinion about this.
. . .
Currently I am collecting my post from The Tobacco Roll & Sugar Loaf, at the upper end of Maidenhead Lane, parish of St Giles in the Fields, Bloomsbury.
I have started preparing81 an account of Southwark, which is a troublesome task. I hope Mr Wood can help me by telling me something of Bermondsey Abbey. I have taken enough pains to help him in the past.
When I undertook my perambulation of Surrey, I left out Southwark because it had already been surveyed by Mr Stow. But now I am set to transcribe and print my minutes, all these years later, I do not think I can leave the principal town of the county untouched.
. . .
Mr Lhwyd says he cannot answer my question about the etymology of Thamesis. He says the hypothesis of the Terraqueous Globe could be very useful to him, since he intends to write a treatise on formed stones.
He says he is very glad82 to hear that I am taking care to leave my papers in order. He will take it as an honour to pay for my letters, and asks for a catalogue of the tracts I have written.
. . .
The account of Southwark83, which is now upon my hands, is a hard task.
. . .
Dr Hooke is concerned84 about what Mr Wood has written about him: he says that if Mr Wood makes any mention of him, he must see a copy before the book goes to press.
I have left85 the manuscript of my Idea of Education with my honoured friend Mr Evelyn and told him that if I should happen to die before I call to collect it, he should send it to Mr Hooke at Gresham College to be put into my chest marked ‘Idea’, which is full of books for this design.
Lately I have added some notes to my manuscript, concerning especially the books the boys in my ideal school should read or keep with them.
I would have them carry in their coat pockets Mr John Ray’s Synopsis of English Plants, or Mr Andrew Paschall’s Botanic Tables from Mr Ray’s book done in the Real Character in three sheets. It is proper for a gentleman to know soils. As they follow their botanics, let them make notes on the earth and minerals. Let them travel several times over all England and Wales making observations. To see the sea and harbours and rocks or cliffs will be a strange sight to them.
Sir Roger L’Etrange’s86 Aesop’s Fables would be a delightful book for the young to read: it would open their understanding and teach them to write in a clear gentle style.
As for history87, it is a large field and too long a work for my Idea of Education, and too sour to be relished sweetly by the young. But if the boys have leisure and inclination, so that they are not without guidance, I think they should be given Mr Degore Whear’s Praelectiones. Mr William Prynne’s advice to me for the seeking of our English history was to read the authors that wrote of their own time.
I imagine the boys88 in my ideal school to be like pretty bees always excerpting information of some kind or other. This habit will be a considerable advantage to them later in life. One may take a hint from an old woman or a simple person. I would have them treat nobody with contempt, but aim always at truth.
. . .
My honoured friend Mr Ashmole died on this day at his house in Lambeth. He will be buried in St Mary’s Church, South Lambeth.
. . .
My pretty little bitch89 is with puppy and I will not leave her behind when I go to Oxford next. Maybe I could take her with me?
. . .
I am staying90 with my friend Mr Baskervill of Bagworth. I have been here nearly a week and have been exploring in Bagley Wood. Noticing the presence of ironstone, I sent for powder of galles and tried several springs, which turned violet, or else black as ink. I will carry some samples to Oxford.
. . .
Here in Oxford I cannot get anyone to take any notice of my water samples from Bagley Wood. No one will drink them.
. . .
As a mourner, I have visited St Mary’s Church, South Lambeth, to perform my last office at the grave of my worthy friend Mr Ashmole, whose body lies in the south aisle, at the east end on the north side under a black marble inscription, which I have transcribed for my survey of Surrey.
His greatest memorial is his museum in Oxford. Over the entrance to the door, fronting Broad Street, is the inscription:
Musaeum Ashmoleanum, Schola Naturalis Historiae,
Officina Chymica
. . .
The second volume of Mr Wood’s book has been published.
. . .
Mr Wood’s book came before the Royal Society today, but no one had read it yet; there will be plenty of censors by the next meeting. As the University will not allow the Appendix to be printed, I think Mr Wood should have it printed in Holland.
I have sent two of my own volumes to Mr Wood for his perusal and castigation.
My survey of Surrey is now in Dr Gale’s hands, and from him it will go to Mr John Evelyn.
I go tomorrow91 to stay with Mr Ray in Essex for a week. Our quarrel is mended and the manuscripts of mine he sent back arrived safely, thank goodness. Then, about the middle of August, I will visit Broad Chalke and Wilton, and from thence to Oxford around the beginning of September.
. . .
I have seen Mr Wood’s books92 at Dr Gale’s and found that he has not inserted some of the epitaphs I sent him. The Royal Society is adjourned until 18 October, so we will not know what it makes of these volumes until then.
Mr Gadbury is incensed because Mr Wood refers disparagingly to his achievements in astrology as fortune-telling, and has printed an old scandal about his provenance (namely that his father, a farmer of Wheatley, Oxfordshire, made a stolen marriage with a daughter of Sir John Curson of Waterperry). Scholars have generally supposed that Mr Gadbury was bred an academician, since he was born in Oxford, but actually his father was a tailor who married a lady who came to him for a fitting. Mr Wood believes this confirms even more glory on Mr Gadbury’s intellectual achievements, but Mr Gadbury is furious.
It is a great relief to hear that my two volumes have reached Mr Wood safely.
In September I go to Broad Chalke, then to Wiltshire, then to Oxford, where I hope to lodge by Turle Gate. I intend to see Sir Christopher Wren on Monday.
I have had a very93 civil letter from Dr Garden, Professor of Theology at Aberdeen, and an admirable account of my Templa Druidum; he has explained several monuments in Scotland I did not understand before, and thanks to him I now understand an antiquity in Wiltshire that was altogether dark to me.
. . .
Mr John Ray’s daughters94 are much pleased with the glass microscope I sent them as a present.
Mr John Ray has read95 my inch-thick commonplace book of scientific observations Adversaria Physica a second time and believes it very worthy of the public; he urges me to prepare it for the press for issue in my lifetime, both for my own honour and the instruction of others. He has ordered me a copy of his physico-theological discourses (2nd edition), printed this year. These are miscellaneous writings concerning the dissolution and changes of the natural world, including a discussion of fossils. Mr Ray insists that fossils were once alive.
. . .
Quaere: how the pebbles on the beach came to be of the ovallish figure; there was a time when they were soft.
. . .
Mr Wood now regrets96 having written rather unkindly of Mr Gadbury.
. . .
I have asked Mr Wood97 to send me my verses on Robin-red-breast as I would be sorry to lose them and I see one is sure of nothing that is not in one’s own custody, and when one is dead all is lost that is not deposited in some public repository.
. . .
In Oxford98, I am enjoying Mr Lhwyd’s civilities, and the company of all my other ingenious friends in this city.
. . .
Mr Wood has received a summons to appear in the Vice Chancellor’s court. He is accused of libel in his Athenae against the Earl of Clarendon’s father, Lord Chancellor under King Charles II.
. . .
Today Mr Lhwyd99 got me to make a list of my works (which I will leave in the museum):
. . .
Since coming back to London, I have distributed the copies of his preface that Mr Wood sent me for his friends, except that I was one copy short, so Mr Evelyn does not have it. Mr Gadbury remains incensed by Mr Wood’s book. I wish Mr Wood would return my papers to me and give Mr Hobbes’s Leviathan to New Inn Hall. I cannot move back into my old lodgings because someone else has taken them, so I am not yet settled in London, but am once again imposing on my friends. Dr Gale of St Paul’s School will receive mail for me until I have a settled address once more.
. . .
Mr Meredith Lloyd has written to me with further reflections on the origins of the name of the River Thames. But Dr Thomas Gale affirms that the Saxons called the Thames Eams, which signifies water. This is confirmed by the Chronicon Saxonicum, published this year by Mr Edmund Gibson, Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford.
. . .
I was ill100 all last week, but managed to go to my lord Abingdon on Sunday. He met me with a sad face and told me that terrible trouble is coming my way. I was mightily surprised. The Earl of Clarendon has told Lord Abingdon that Mr Wood told him that the libel, and other information he included in his book, came from ME! I cannot believe that Mr Wood would deal so unkindly with me, when I have been such a faithful friend to him. I have served him since 1665! The libel that has so offended the Earl of Clarendon was printed anyway, and not unknown. It is the claim that the old Earl, Lord Chancellor at the Restoration, sold offices for money. Surely Mr Wood could have said he found out this information by buying it, rather than pin the blame on me? Or else he could have said he heard it from George Ent, or someone else who is already dead? I must find out from Mr Wood what it is exactly that he has said against me, so I can try and defend myself from the wrath of the Earl of Clarendon, who is resolved to ruin me. Nothing grieves me more than the thought that I shall not now see any of my books in print. I fear I will never see Mr Wood or Oxford again. I will write to Mr Wood and ask him to respect the wishes of a dying man by sending my papers to Dr Gale, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society, headmaster of St Paul’s School and my faithful friend. My heart is ready to break at Mr Wood’s betrayal and unkindness.
. . .
Mr Wood has written101 to me this morning to assure me that – in the name of God – he did not betray me to the Earl of Clarendon. He urges me to tell Lord Abingdon and thanks me for distributing his preface. But still he does not return my papers.
I have written102 to Mr Thomas Hanson of Magdalen College to try and further Mr Hooke’s claims against Mr Newton’s. He feels obliged to communicate the contents of my letter to Mr Newton and receive his vindications.
. . .
I do not think a bookseller will print my Monumenta Britannica. I have shown my manuscript to several, and though they like it and think it will sell well, they will not take a risk on a book that costs above 5s., paper being so dear. My three, or rather four, volumes (for I will add my Miscellanies) will not be less than 15s. Mr Smyth, the bookseller of St Paul’s Churchyard, and others have advised me to get subscriptions to print it at Oxford. So next Monday I will advertise for subscriptions in the press; I will have a prospectus printed and will send 200 copies to Oxford and ask Mr Lhwyd to help distribute them.
As soon as I have time103, I will get my collection of correspondence bound and dedicate it to the Ashmolean Museum. My letters from many ingenious persons contain many rarities and I hope posterity will make use of them. It would be a great pity if they were lost.
. . .
My prospectus for Monumenta Britannica is ready for distribution. The four proposed volumes will be:
Volume I
Volume II
Volume III
Volume IV Miscellanea
I expect the whole work to be about 160 sheets printed in folio with an abundance of illustrations. Every subscriber will pay eighteen shillings (nine at the time of subscribing and nine upon receipt of the books). The price for non-subscribers will be a pound and four shillings. Very few copies will be printed so there will be no danger of unsold copies. The books will be printed by next Candlemas and delivered to the following booksellers’ shops:
Mr Clavel at the Peacock in St Paul’s Churchyard
Mr Smith at the Feathers in St Paul’s Churchyard
Mr Bennet at the Half-Moon in St Paul’s Churchyard
Mr Nott in Pall Mall
Mr Hensman in Westminster Hall
Mr Hindmarsh at the Black Bull in Cornhill
Mr Sam Crouch over against the Royal Exchange
Mr Horne at the entrance to the Royal Exchange
Mr Wilkinson at the Black Boy in Fleet Street
Mr Henry Clements, bookseller in Oxford
Mr Henry Dickenson, bookseller in Cambridge
In Templa Druidum, the first part of my Monumenta Britannica, I proceed gradually from the less imperfect remains of antiquity to the more imperfect and ruinated. The stones give evidence for themselves.
. . .
Mr Lhwyd longs104 to have my Monumenta Britannica in the press; he has all my pamphlets safe in the museum. He says that if I would like to dedicate my collection of letters to the museum, he will have them bound for me at once, which will save me the expense of doing it myself.