I WAS ATTACKED and wounded by thieves. They set upon me around 11 p.m., robbed me and left me with fifteen wounds to my head. I have been ill since and had to stay a whole week in my chamber trying to recover. I am weary from taking medicine.
. . .
A severe bout of gout has nearly carried me away. It struck just after I recovered from the wounds inflicted by the thieves. I had intended to visit my cousin Elizabeth Freeman (the daughter of Sir John Aubrey who married Ralph Freeman of Aspeden Hall) and my friend Dr William Holder in Hertfordshire, but ill health prevents me.
Mr Dryden will try1 to help me get my Monumenta Britannica published by his bookseller, who normally only prints plays and romances. I am exceedingly obliged to him, but I think I will have to print it by collecting subscriptions instead. I have begun gathering them already and been lucky so far. And I have sent a copy of my prospectus for publishing my book to Mr Wood. I hope he can find me some more subscribers.
I intend to be in Cambridge towards the end of next week, where I shall be glad to serve Mr Wood. People are shy of speaking to me about his book; the Peers (I can tell) are offended by his liberties. Mr Evelyn is very cross because he asked Mr Wood to send him what he intended to write about him in his book before it was published, but Mr Wood did not do so. Now Mr Evelyn complains that Mr Wood has called him a virtuoso: he hates the title so much he says he would rather have been called a coxcomb.
Frances Sheldon2 and her niece were at dinner and they were angry with Mr Wood for disparaging their gentility. I told them that it was only drollery, not disrespect.
. . .
I have now been3 indoors for three weeks with this bad attack of the gout.
. . .
I have designed4 my own epitaph:
JOHANNES AUBREY
de EASTON PIERS in Agro Wilton
Arm: Regalis Societatis Socius
Infra situs est
Obÿt
Anno . . .
. . .
I desire this inscription to be a stone of white marble about the bigness of a royal sheet of paper, i.e. two foot square. Mr Reynolds of Lambeth (Foxhall), a stone-cutter who married Mr Elias Ashmole’s widow, will sell me a marble as square as an imperial sheet of paper for eight shillings.
. . .
Mr Thomas Tanner urges5 me, before I pass away, to lose no time in communicating the best part of my laborious collections to the world, and offers me every help. He will be delighted to receive my Natural History of Wiltshire and see to its printing with Mr Lhwyd’s assistance. He is much interested in my Remaines of Gentilisme, and asks me to send him too my Wiltshire Antiquities, which will be of great use to the collections which he intends to set about himself.
At the Saracen’s Head6 I delivered to Mr More, the carrier, a locked box of manuscripts addressed to Mr Tanner, and an envelope for him containing the key. This must be a secret from Mr Wood whom it might exasperate: he could do me great mischief if he decided to betray me. There are secrets in my book of Lives that I would not have exposed to common view before I am dead.
. . .
Mr John Ray says7 he has read at once and with great satisfaction my Perambulation of Surrey in manuscript, and judges it well worth printing, as he does all my other manuscripts, which he has read. He thinks that the only reason for the booksellers’ shyness is that I am not yet known to the learned world by any published work. He says let them only have a taste of my writings. Dr Gale has told Mr Ray that he thinks well of my Monumenta Britannica.
. . .
Dr William Holder8 has asked to be inserted as a subscriber to my book. He invites me to go and stay with him, suggesting I take the Buntingford coach which leaves from the Dolphin, Bishopsgate, three days a week (every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday). If I give him notice of my arrival, he will send his chariot to meet me and take me on four miles to his home.
. . .
I will go to Lavington, then Cambridge. So far I have only 112 subscriptions for my Monumenta Britannica, which is not enough, so I must ask if the University will subsidise the printing of it; I hope my friend Mr Thomas Tanner at Oxford will help me by talking about this with Dr Charlett and Dr Bathurst. Perhaps between them they can persuade the University to help.
My brother went9 to Kington St Michael yesterday, which has a great collection of heraldry.
. . .
I set out, at last, for Hertfordshire this morning. I will visit my cousin Elizabeth Freeman first, then go on to Therfield to stay with Mr William Holder. We will set off for Cambridge together.
. . .
Dr Ralph Bathurst10 tells me he is pleased I have resumed thoughts of publishing my Monumenta Britannica, improved by Dr Gale’s annotations, with many cuts or illustrations. He claims that Mr Charlett will be very ready to advise and assist in the work of printing it. He has asked to be put down as a subscriber to my book. But I need to find more subscribers or my manuscript will never be printed.
. . .
I am in Cambridge11, where the news has reached me that my dear friend Mr Wood was fined 40 li. and expelled from the University of Oxford last month on 29 July. I read of it in the Gazette as I sat in the coffee house. The Heads of Houses in Oxford were offended by Mr Wood’s book. So at about ten o’clock, on the morning of 31 July, the Parator made a fire of two faggots in the Sheldonian Theatre yard and burnt Mr Wood’s offending pages.
Dr Holder has introduced me to some of the Heads of Houses in Cambridge, very few of whom have read Mr Wood’s book; I told them I thought it would be good if someone wrote a similar book about Cambridge, but they slighted the proposal as useless learning. There are excellent philologists in Cambridge, but the worst antiquaries I ever conversed with.
I hope my brother William, despite our quarrels and differences, and Mr Thomas Tanner will live to finish my Wiltshire Antiquities for me. I have been dragged into the legal proceedings between William and my old landlord Mr Kent. Even though my brother has not been kind to me, I must do right by him in court, even to my own detriment.
I will visit Rycot12 and thence to Sir John Aubrey’s house at Borstall, near Brill in Buckinghamshire, then to Oxford. Dr Bathurst has kindly offered me assistance in printing my book but says that Dr Charlett and the Principal of Jesus can be of more help.
I called on Mr Coley13, who is still very cross with Mr Wood for calling astrologers conjurors.
. . .
I have sent a boxful14 of antiquities to Mr Lhwyd for the Ashmolean Museum (they are deposits, for now, not donations, because there are some things among them reflecting on Dr Wallis that are not fit to be seen by everybody yet). I hope Mr Wylde will give Mr Lhwyd the Armenian dictionary for the museum too.
. . .
Mr Thomas Tanner15 has spent the last three months in Wiltshire, on the business of promoting our common design of illustrating a new translation and edition of Mr Camden’s Britannia. He admits that one who had spent all his life in Wiltshire – as I have – might have done more than he could, but he has left room for insertions. He has made several finds: the track of the Fosse Way; nearly a hundred villages not mentioned in the former map; several places mentioned in the Saxon histories; and around twenty stations and encampments of the Romans, Danes and Saxons.
. . .
Mr Lhwyd16 – who has been in Wales collecting information to add to the new translation and edition of Mr Camden’s Britannia – has asked me to send him my memoirs of Caerphilly Castle, which I visited in 1656.
He promises he will do me right and not rob me of honour and thanks due to me from the curious and ingenious. He asks too if he may open my box of papers in Oxford for his own private use.
I am fearful that all the credit for my unprinted work will be stolen from me.
. . .
I have asked Mr Thomas Tanner17 to peruse my manuscript, but not to let Mr Lhwyd excerpt from it, lest he put an extract into the new Britannia and spoil the sale of my book. I will send all my manuscripts to Oxford; I hope my brother and Mr Tanner will finish my Antiquities of Wiltshire. And if I die, I hope Mr Gibson will print my other antiquities manuscripts, and that Mr Lhwyd will print my Natural History of Wiltshire.
. . .
Mr Thomas Tanner has read18 my Templa Druidum (the first part of my Monumenta Britannica) with great satisfaction, together with Dr Garden’s letter about it, which he believes will be an ornament to the book.
. . .
I am back19 from a short visit to Oxford, during which I scarcely spoke to Mr Wood, and now I am staying with James, Earl of Abingdon, at Lavington, where I have leisure enough. The fine garden here is a monument to the ingenuity of Sir John Danvers. It came into the Earl of Abingdon’s possession through his first wife, who was Sir John’s granddaughter. Through the length of the garden there runs a fine clear trout stream, walled with brick on each side. The garden is full of irregularities both natural and artificial. It is almost impossible to describe this garden, it is so full of variety and unevenness; it would even be difficult for a good artist to make a draft of it.
I am reading over20 Dr Locke’s book On Education printed this year. But my leisure to read and think will soon disappear when I return to London, where I shall sink under trouble. Mr Kent and my brother are up to their ears in Chancery and I shall be dragged further into it.
. . .
Mr Lhwyd is trying21 to reassure me that he only meant to ask for my thoughts on Caerphilly Castle and anything else I might communicate about Wales. He says he had no intention of stealing from my Monumenta Britannica manuscript. He thought just one or two pages of my three volumes might be made use of (under my own name). He was asking to see only a transcript of those few pages, not the whole manuscript. He says he would welcome Mr Wylde’s Armenian dictionary for the museum. It was Mr Wylde who first encouraged Mr Lhwyd to the study of British antiquities, which he now relishes and will never forsake.
Mr Thomas Tanner now advises22 me to abridge the first part of my Monumenta Britannica for printing to about forty sheets, partly to make a cheaper book. He points out that the cheaper a book is, the more buyers it will have. He suspects that the reason why I have not sent him the other parts of my Monumenta or my Natural History of Wiltshire is that I have changed my mind about doing so on hearing that he is now engaged in preparing a new edition of Mr Camden’s Britannia. He insists emphatically that I need not fear he will play the plagiarist with my manuscripts or treat me ungently as Mr Wood has done: he bids me trust his good will. He assures me that his reason for asking to see my Wiltshire Antiquities was chiefly that he might make many pertinent additions to my book. He asks me to trust my papers in his hands as soon as possible.
. . .
I came back to London23 with Lord Abingdon ten days ago. I intend to go to Oxford this coming March for a month, and I hope Mr Wood will have returned to me before then the ten pages he cut from my collection of Lives. If, and only if, he has done so, I shall let him peruse the rest of the Lives when I go to Oxford. I am deeply hurt by Mr Wood’s rough dealing with me. I have returned his letters, as he asked me to, but he will not give back my pages, even though I have asked him often.
. . .
At a party yesterday24, I ate a couple of good fowl, as good as any I have ever eaten, and drank some very good wine. My friends and I were ingeniously merry!
. . .
I had an apoplectic fit25 today around 4 p.m.
Mr Lhwyd says26 the University’s instrument maker is willing to make a quadrant for me – I desire a copy of the one my old friend Mr Potter gave me many years ago. The instrument maker says he will do it for 10s. even though he cannot see what use the quadrant will be. Mr Lhwyd asks if he can copy one of the Roman inscriptions that Mr Tanner showed him in my Antiquities of Wiltshire.
. . .
I hope to see27 Mr Wood in Oxford early in April. I hope he has delivered Mr Hobbes’s Leviathan to Dr Bayley (which I promised to their library). I must take care that Mr Wood deposits the draft of Osney Abbey and the verses on Mr Bushell’s works in the Ashmolean Museum.
. . .
I have told Mr Thomas Tanner that while I welcome his encouragement to print my book about Druid temples, further consideration is needed. Soon the wagonner will be delivering my Natural History of Wiltshire to Oxford and I would be content for some excerpts to be printed in the Britannia, but not the cream, leaving only the skimmed milk to be published as my own.
Among other papers I have put in the box some for Mr Tanner’s private use. I have several letters to add to my volume, but they are not fit for the young critics of Oxford to peruse and scoff at.
I am busy28 compiling my collection of Hermetick Philosophy from manuscript notes I have been keeping for years in a box named ‘Dreams’. There are millions of dreams that too little notice is taken of, but those who have the truest dreams have the IXth House well dignified in their star charts, which I do not.
For the past fifty years, Natural Philosophy has been exceedingly advanced, but Hermetick Philosophy has lain long untouched. I think this strange. Hermetick Philosophy holds that the three parts of wisdom are alchemy, astrology and theurgy (or supernatural intervention in human affairs). It is a subject worthy of consideration.
I do not think29 I will ever have the leisure to put my papers in order. They will all need to be copied anew. I hope Mr Lhwyd will oblige me in this.
On behalf of my friend30 the Earl of Pembroke, I hope to buy a picture from one Mrs Hall: she is asking 14 li. for it. I will not give more than 12 li. and have asked Mr Lhwyd to offer her this sum. The painting is The Executioner with John the Baptist’s Head, by William Dobson. The Earl of Pembroke asks that his identity not be disclosed (for fear Mrs Hall will raise the price). If I can arrange this purchase for him, the painting will be safe at Wilton House.
The Earl of Pembroke has read31 over my Idea of Education and approves of it, but he is not active in helping me print it. I am concerned that if I die before my manuscript is printed, it will be coffined up together with the books I have collected that relate to it. Nobody will have the generosity to set my design afoot after my death.
I doubt I will live32 to see my school established at Cranborne, or anywhere else. If the nobles have a mind to have their children in the clergy’s pockets, much good may it do them.
. . .
The Earl of Pembroke has agreed to pay the sum Mrs Hall is asking for the picture. He desires it be sent to him without delay (but is not interested in the frame it is currently in). If Mrs Hall will appoint someone to receive the money, I will meet them in Dirty Lane in Bloomsbury and conduct them to his lordship, so this business can be settled. I hope this can be done soon because I intend to leave London for Hertford, where Dr Holder invites me. But I must finish the Earl of Pembroke’s business first.
I never go out33 of my lodgings until noon these days.
. . .
Mr Thomas Tanner called34 on me.
. . .
I am receiving35 my letters via my friend Dr Gale, Master of St Paul’s. I have received one from Mr Lhwyd asking if I have given the books I sent to the Ashmolean Museum, or only temporarily deposited them there for custody. He says Mr Thomas Tanner gave him the key to my box and that Mr Tanner now has my Monumenta Britannica, and will send for my History of Wiltshire.
. . .
Mr Thomas Tanner has asked36 me to do him the favour of visiting his brother, who lives at an address in Clement Lane, near Lombard Street. He urges me to visit Oxford too, where I am promised good company.
. . .
The Earl of Pembroke37 is very impatient for his picture. I have asked Mr Lhwyd to send it on as soon as possible. I have decided to make a gift to the museum of the books I sent with Mr Kent. Mr Tanner has obtained a history of Wiltshire in which there is a pedigree of the Aubrey family. I would like a copy for my cousin Sir John Aubrey.
. . .
I have been ill with a fever.
. . .
I need to send Mr Lhwyd the information he needs.
. . .
Several Roman coins38 have been found lately at Caerphilly Castle. Sir John Aubrey tells me he welcomes my help in making Caerphilly better known in the new edition of Camden.
. . .
I have written to Mr Lhwyd asking if he has my manuscript of Remaines of Gentilisme. I fear it is too light for the University. I have asked him to insert my manuscript of the Antiquities of Wiltshire in the museum catalogue, but not my letters.
Major Beach of Bradford says he would be glad to have Mr Lhwyd visit him. There is a woman living near him who is celebrated for botany and who supplies all the Bath doctors with samples.
Lord Pembroke has received39 his picture and is very pleased with it. He has put it in a noble gilt frame and sent it this week to Wilton. Sir John Aubrey will get Mr Webb to draw and paint a copy of the Aubrey pedigree.
. . .
Mr Lhwyd has written40 to thank me for my observations on the Remaines of Gentilisme, which he hopes may encourage study of that subject at Oxford. There are only a few at present in the University who pursue the study of antiquities. But Mr Lhwyd’s view is that even if some young man or other might undervalue my work, that should not prevent it being presented to the library. He says that Mr Gibson, noting my family’s pedigree in Wiltshire, may be able to trace it into Brecknock. He thinks that my letters are a valuable treasure, but recognises that it would be improper to prevail on me to donate them to the museum.
. . .
At last, Mr Thomas Tanner41 has consigned to the carrier, called Matthew’s Wagon, my Monumenta Britannica, my dreams manuscript, and a sheet of Dr Pell’s notes about the taking of Rome. His delay this past three weeks made me angry. Now he has apologised for keeping them so long and explained that he has marked the passages that he has borrowed, that he has borrowed very sparingly, and has taken care not to plagiarise. He is very pleased that I have donated my Antiquities of Wiltshire to the museum, but agreed to leave the manuscripts in his hands until he has completed them with the illustrations he is engaged on.
. . .
It seems more and more unlikely that my Monumenta Britannica will be printed. I despair of the manuscript ever becoming a book in four volumes. I begin to wonder if I should print another of my manuscripts, one that is less lengthy perhaps? My collection of Hermetick Philosophy? Before I die, I hope to dedicate at least one printed book to my patron, Lord Abingdon.
. . .
I have got to know Sir Henry Chancey, Serjeant at Law, who is writing the Antiquities of Hertfordshire, with more diligent extraction of the records than anyone else has done. He requires the names of the last abbots of St Albans and I said I would ask Mr Wood.
Sir John Aubrey42 has invited me to Borstall for the last week of April.
. . .
By Mores’ Wagon I have sent my English copy of Pliny’s Natural History and my Reden and Holyoks Dictionary to Oxford for the museum. My Pliny is in three volumes and has annotations by me throughout. I have carefully distinguished the cures Pliny lists that depend on magic from those that depend on herbal remedies. The dictionary is not worth much, but I am sending it to show how I found out the proportion of the several different languages of which present English consists.
I hope to be43 in Oxford with my friends in a fortnight.
. . .
I remember that44 on Shotover Hill in Oxfordshire, not long before the civil wars, and within living memory, there was an effigy of a giant cut in the earth, like the white horse by Ashbury Park.
. . .
I hope Mr Lhwyd45 received the books I sent by Mores’ Wagon ten days ago: I made sure to pay the carriage. I think I will get to Oxford by about the middle of June. Mr Gibson tells me that the University will not print my manuscripts: they let them lie amongst the rubbish.
. . .
Mr Lhwyd says46 the books I have given to the museum have arrived and he has entered my English Pliny in the catalogue. He will make a list of all my pamphlets and donations, but he can say nothing about the printing of my manuscript of Monumenta Britannica till the Press has perused it. At the present time, Dr Lister and I are the library’s only benefactors of note for books and other curiosities, aside from Mr Ashmole.
. . .
Today is Midsummer’s Day47. I was walking in the pasture behind Montagu House, Bloomsbury, around ten o’clock, when I saw twenty-two or three young women, most of them well dressed, busy on their knees, as though weeding. I could not understand what they were doing, until a young man explained that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads tonight, so they will dream of their future husbands. It is said that the coal can only be found on this day at that hour.
There are other magical secrets women have handed down for this purpose. On St Agnes Night, 21 January, take a row of pins and pull out every one, one after another, saying an Our Father and sticking the pins in your sleeve, and then you will dream of him or her you shall marry. This makes me think of Ben Jonson’s verse:
And on sweet Agnes Night
Please you with the promis’d sight,
Some of Husbands, some of Lovers,
Which an empty Dream discovers.
I never married.
. . .
I am at Borstall48. I find it more troublesome to write to my friends from here than from London, because Sir John Aubrey’s servants are full of business and have no time to carry my letters to the post.
. . .
Mr Wood makes such demands49 of me! His most recent list of queries includes:
– Where does Mr Bagford live?
– Can I find out from Mr Hooke the Christian name of . . . Oliver, the glass painter?
– Can I send him Mr John Gadbury’s almanac for the year 1693?
– Can I ask Mr Thomas Jekyll for an account of himself and find out from him the date and place of burial of Sir William Waller?
– Whom did Dr Walter Charleton succeed: John Davies of Kidwelly or Sir Edward Sherburne?
– Can I ask Mr Birkhead about Sir Henry Janson?
– Where did Mr Robert Boyle live and die?
– What is Mr Ashmole’s obit?
. . .
I have had an unsuccessful visit to Oxford.
. . .
I have been ill since returning from Oxford of a surfeit of peaches. I wondered if I should send to the chemist Mr Kit White for a good lusty purge, but I have not eaten a piece of flesh for six days and abstinence has pretty well settled me again. Mr Wood’s unkindness and choleric humour added to my illness.
He treats me badly. I do not know how to deal with him and must seek the advice of Mr Lhwyd and Mr Tanner. His unkindness almost breaks my heart. I have asked him to return my prospects of Osney Abbey, which I paid to have drawn by Mr Hesketh when I was a student at Trinity College, and the pamphlet for the entertainment of the King and Queen at Bushell’s Rock. I know that if Mr Wood should die, his nephews and nieces will not value them, and they will be lost. Worse, he has cut out the index and around forty pages from one of my volumes of Lives – was ever any lady so unkind? I thought he was a dear friend, in whose hands I could have trusted my life. His unkindness breaks my heart.
Lord Abingdon has told me that the Earl of Clarendon never maligned me or blamed me for the libel in Mr Wood’s book. He only told me he had in banter and to frighten me (which he certainly did succeed in doing!).
Sir John Aubrey and his lady50, who treat me with all kindness and respect, urge me to accompany them to Glamorganshire in a fortnight’s time. I have not been very fit for riding of late.
. . .
Mr Wood is furious51 with me. He says I have treated him badly by not letting him know sooner that Lord Abingdon was only bantering when he said the Earl of Clarendon suspected me to be the source of the libel printed in his book. He says I left it a long time to pass this comforting news on to him and then only mentioned it by accident. He berates me further for running away with ‘my books in my codpiece’ and abandoning him when the Earl of Clarendon commenced his libel suit. Nevertheless he proposes a meeting. He says he will come to Beckley next Monday afternoon, which is two or three miles away from Borstall, and he asks me to meet him around 2 p.m. at an alehouse called the Earl’s Arms. He has more work for me to do.
. . .
I am with my lord Abingdon in Lavington again. I wish I could go to Oxford for ten days, or even two weeks, but my lord desires me to travel through Wiltshire with him en route to London, where I will be until round about the time the sitting of Parliament begins in November.
I miss my friend52 Mr Wood and will answer more of his queries when I get back from London. I regret now that I wrote a page about his ungrateful dealings with me to be bound up with my Lives after he cut ten pages from them and removed the index. I have asked my friend Mr Lhwyd to remove that page of my complaints against Mr Wood from the stitched volume.
. . .
When I last wrote53 to Mr Lhwyd, I forgot to ask him to insist that Mr Wood give back my original drafts of Osney Abbey and the sheets he has cut out of my Book of Lives.
. . .
I have been ill54 with a great cold since 25 January, St Paul’s Day, and have only been up and about for a week. While I was ill, I received an angry letter from Mr Wood that very much discomposed me and made my illness worse. I have always been ready to serve him, but have received no thanks or credit. I wish him well, even so, and will answer his queries.
It has been a most unnatural55 start to the year: no signs of spring yet, while the cold weather continues.
. . .
Coming through Bagley Wood56, on my journey to Oxford from Abingdon today, I discovered what I think are two chalybeate springs in the highway. At the gate of Wotton Common, near Cumnor in Berkshire, is a spring which I have great reason to believe is such another. And also, at the foot of Shotover-hill, near the upping-stock, I am confident by the clay, is such another spring. Deo Gratias.
. . .
I was in Fleet Street57 at the Fleur-de-luce today with Mr Wood, Mr Martin, Mr Kennett and Mr Tanner.
. . .
Today I tested58 the Bagley Wood springs. When I mix the waters with powder of galles they give as black a tincture as ever I saw. Afterwards, one may write as legibly with the waters as with black lead. Bagley Wood belongs to St John’s College, so I have presented a phial of the water to the President, Dr Levins. He tells me there are a number of water-drinking Fellows of the college who go every summer to Astrope in Hertfordshire. Tomorrow morning a group of us will set out to try the Bagley Wood water together to see how it compares.
. . .
The water-drinking Fellows of the college found the Bagley Wood water much more diuretic than the Astrop water. Word will soon spread through Oxford. Tomorrow I plan to show the Principal of Gloucester Hall the little spring called Woodroffs Well near Wotton Gate that I discovered in 1692.
. . .
Mr Wood has been pardoned and allowed to return to the University.
. . .
My friend William Holder59 has suggested a cure for the trouble in my eye. He recommends medicine sold by the apothecary who lives at the Pestle & Mortar in St Martin’s Lane.
. . .
I cannot now read60 because of a mist that has come over my eyes ever since I left Oxford. I had to cut my visit short owing to business in London. I think my visit to the barber’s on the Saturday morning before I left caused the mist. I was hot and sweaty so I went to the barber’s to have my head shaved. He had no hot water, so since I was in a hurry, I let him do it in cold water. On the following Monday I was in the coach by five o’clock in the morning and it was very cold. My fellow passengers were women and out of respect for them I sat on the coldest side of the coach. I was vexed at being torn away from Oxford on business and ever since then there has been this mist in my eyes.
I can hardly read61 a letter and write by guess. Lady Russell’s French doctor believes the mist will wear off, but meanwhile I am advised to drink only Stretham waters. I will go to Oxford again on my way to Wales with Sir John Aubrey, but God knows when I will get back to my beloved city after that.
. . .
I write now by guess and cannot properly see the page. My eyes are not mending. Dr Goodall is hoping Mr Wood will undertake to write the Antiquities of Cambridge University. About half the Heads of Houses have expressed an interest in this.
. . .
I am in London62, but my mind wanders in Bagley Wood, which is so lovely and pleasant in the summertime. It is a most romantic place, with such a great variety of plants: no garden is more delightful. I think there should be a fair there every summer, for finery, etc. It would draw together all the young people of both sexes for twenty miles around.
. . .
Mr Wood has written63 to me with advice on how to cure my eyes. I can hardly read his letter. He suggests I make an incision in one of my shoulders, or between my shoulder and neck-bone on the left side, through which the issue in my head will drain in three months; or else take pills; or lay plasters of mastic to my temples and leave off sleeping on a bed after dinner. He tells me too that the chalybeate spring I found earlier this year in Bagley Wood on my way to Oxford has been dismissed because it is not running water.
Mr Wood asks me64 to bring Norden’s Surveyors’ Dialogues to Oxford with me when I go. He desires to see Dr Holder’s collection of old musical printed books, as he intends to publish the lives of English musicians and writers on musical theory and practice, just as there are accounts of English dramatic poets.
. . .
I have sent by Mr Rush, the bargeman, two trunks, one of sealskin and the other black leather, and two great boxes addressed to Mr Lhwyd at the Ashmolean Museum. I will go to Oxford myself in a week or so to divide the contents between the museum and the library of Gloucester Hall, then send the boxes on to Borstall, where I will be staying with my relative Sir John Aubrey.
My eyes are mending65 very slowly. My candle burns low. My dear friend Mr Edmund Wylde grows very weak and I fear cannot long continue.
. . .
My eyes mend66 but slowly. I will go to Llantrithyd with my cousin Sir John Aubrey on Monday. If I live long enough, I hope I will be able to go to Oxford to see Mr Wood again.
. . .
My cousin spoils me67 with all the varieties of sustenance that the sea and land afford. But, oh! How much I would rather eat a simple commons in a college with good ingenious company. I should love to converse with my friend Mr Llwyd, for example. My cousin and I pass the tankard and bottle between us all afternoon and drink his good health.
I have written68 to Mr Hooke to thank him for all his favours and kindnesses to me. How much I miss him and our Wednesday meetings at Gresham College!
My eyes are failing, but I am still working on my collection of Hermetick Philosophy, which I hope to see in print before I die.
I have given69 the Royal Society three more books: Chronicon Saxonicum (by my friend Edmund Gibson); Margarita Philosophica; and Wardi Astronomica Geometrica. The books will be delivered to the Society’s library keeper accordingly.
. . .
I shall never see70 my old friend, correspondent, collaborator and fellow antiquary Mr Wood again. He died on 28 November. I am extremely sorrowful. Even though his spleen used to cause him to chagrin and chide me, we could not be asunder. He would always come to see me at my lodgings with his dark lantern, which should now be a relic. Mr Tanner has his papers and will be faithful to him and finish what he left undone. Mr Wood has bequeathed his papers to the University to be placed next to Mr Dugdale’s.
. . .
It is so cold71! I do not think it has been this cold since the Great Freeze of 1684!
. . .
My dear friend Mr Wylde has died. When I was most in need, he took me in his arms and it was with him that I most commonly took my diet and sweet otiums. Nor was I, by any means, the only friend in need whom he helped. He will be laid to rest in Glazeley church.
. . .
I will stay72 with Lady Long in Wiltshire for a month. I wish to know if Mr White Kennett proposes to do anything with my Remaines of Gentilisme, and if not I hope Mr Lhwyd will get it out of his hands. I have also told him to get Mr Rowland to give back my Idea of Education so it can be placed in the museum again.
. . .
When Mr Lhwyd comes to visit me here at my cousin’s house in Wales, I hope he will bring with him a small piece of the alum stone he found in Whitby, for comparison with some local stone here.
I am told another73 chalybeate spring has been discovered near Oxford. Quaere: if it is at Wytham? I found one there but Lord Norris would not let me publicise it, as he thought it would bring him too many visitors.
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At long last74 a book of mine has been published. Today I have held a printed copy of my Miscellanies in my hand. The publisher is Edward Castle, in Whitehall next to Scotland Yard Gate. I have dedicated my book to the Earl of Abingdon, in whose gardens at Lavington last summer I found time to review some of my papers and put them in order to make this book. I had hoped to dedicate my Description of Wiltshire to his lordship, but it is still only half finished and I am too far spent in age for that undertaking now. Instead I make my honoured friend, who has taken me into his favour and protection for many years, this smaller offering of my Miscellanies.
The matter of this book of mine is beyond human reach, we being miserably in the dark as to the workings of the invisible world, which knows what we do, or incline to do, and works upon our passions. I have collected some remarks of visions and prophecies, etc. within my own remembrance or that of persons worthy of belief in the age before me.
My book begins with a copy of Mr John Gibbon’s Day Fatality, which was printed on two sheets in folio in 1678. But I have omitted Mr Gibbon’s concluding remarks on the 14 October, the birthday of King James II, who was Duke of York when Day Fatality first appeared. Mr Gibbon offered eulogies to James that should not be reprinted now he is disgraced. In this way I hope that what is useful in Mr Gibbon’s book for the advancement of Hermetick Philosophy can be separated from the politics of the time at which he wrote it. There have been such changes in politics and power in my lifetime.
After Mr Gibbon’s remarks, I present my own on fatalities of families and place, portents, omens, dreams, apparitions, voices, impulses, knockings, blows invisible, prophecies, marvels, magic, etc. There are twenty-one short chapters in my book, the last dedicated to second-sighted persons.
In my chapter on magic75 I have included some spells:
To Cure the Thrush
There is a certain piece in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child or party so affected to eat does certainly cure the thrush. An experienced midwife told me this.
Another to Cure Thrush
Take a living frog and hold it in a cloth, so it does not go down the child’s mouth. Put the head of the frog into the child’s mouth until it is dead, then take another frog and do the same.
To Cure the Tooth-ache
Take a new nail and make the gum bleed with it, then drive it into an oak. This cured William Neal, Sir William Neal’s son, a very stout gentleman, when he was almost mad with pain and minded to pistol himself.
To Cure the Tooth-ache
(Out of Mr Ashmole’s manuscript, written in his own hand)
Mars, hur, abursa, aburse.
Jesu Christ for Mary’s sake
Take away this Tooth-ach.
Write the words three times; and as you say the words, let the afflicted party burn one paper, then another, and then the last. Mr Ashmole told me he saw this experimented with and the party was cured.
The jaundice is cured by putting the urine after the first sleep to the ashes of the ash tree, bark of barberries.
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I am at Llantrithyd76. I hoped that Mr Lhwyd would be able to visit me here, but he cannot at the present time. I hope I will see him here in the autumn. In the meantime, I have sent him the dividing compasses invented and made by Mr Potter for the museum.
When I next go77 to Oxford I will take one of Sir John Aubrey’s guineas for Mr Thomas Tanner as a small token of the great respect I bear him.
. . .
Tonight I sail from Cardiff, on my way to Borstall, from whence Sir John and I will take the coach to London.
I am hoping78 that when I get to London, via Rycot, I will be able to borrow the original of Van Dyck’s painting of the Earl of Danby in St George’s robes, which is in possession of Lady Derham, of Derham Abbey, Norfolk. To do this, I will need assistance from my well-connected kinsman John, and help from the Earl of Abingdon.
I hope to be at Oxford or Borstall by the end of August at the latest and to meet my brother then. I feel surprised by age.
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The printer79 and Mr Churchill are shamefully long in producing my Monumenta Britannica. I fear I will never see it in print.
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In the country recently, I found my old copy of Mr Christopher Love’s unlicensed pamphlet, Scripture Rules, from 1647 – the other copies were burnt in the Great Conflagration – and I have had it reprinted. I am sending some of the reprints to Mr Lhwyd to distribute among his friends.
How clearly80 I still remember the summer day in 1651 on which I saw Christopher Love beheaded on Tower Hill for plotting against the Commonwealth. The sky went black.
. . .
I have presented81 the Royal Society with a copy of my Miscellanies: the only book of mine that has been printed so far. I have made corrections and additions throughout by hand. There are many things I would like to have included that are not in the printed text.
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I have written to ask Mr Lhwyd to give my Remaines of Gentilisme to Dr Charleton to revise. And I have asked him to have my manuscript on the Idea of Education ready for transcription when I visit Oxford.
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I will visit Oxford on my way to visit my long-honoured friend Lady Long.
Men think that because everybody remembers a memorable event soon after it is done, it will never be forgotten; and so it ends up not being registered and cast into oblivion.
I have always done my best82 to rescue and preserve antiquities, which would otherwise have been utterly lost and forgotten, even though it has been my strange fate never to enjoy one entire month, or six weeks, of leisure for contemplation.
I have rescued what I could of the past from the teeth of time.
Matters of antiquity83 are like the light after sunset – clear at first – but by and by crepusculum – the twilight – comes – then total darkness.