possessed the pulpits, was that I might not be suspected for a Papist, and that, though the minister was Presbyterianly affected, he yet was as I understood duly ordained, and preached sound doctrine after their way, and besides was an humble, harmless, and peaceable man.

25th December. I went to London, to receive the Blessed Communion this holy festival at Dr. Wild's lodgings, where I rejoiced to find so full an assembly of devout and sober Christians.

26th. I invited some of my neighbours and tenants, according to custom, and to preserve hospitality and charity. 28th. A stranger preached on Luke xviii. 7, 8, on which he made a confused discourse, with a great deal of Greek and ostentation of learning, to but little purpose.

30th. Dined with me Sir William Paston's son, Mr. Henshaw, and Mr. Clayton.

31st. I begged God's blessing and mercies for his goodness to me the past year, and set my domestic affairs in order. 1656-7, 1st January. Having prayed with my family, and celebrated the anniversary, I spent some time in imploring God's blessing the year I was entered into.

7th. Came Mr. Matthew Wren (since secretary to the Duke), slain in the Dutch war, eldest son to the Bishop of Ely, now a prisoner in the Tower; a most worthy and honoured gentleman.

10th. Came Dr. Joyliffe, that famous physician and anatomist, first detector of the lymphatic veins; also the old Marquis of Argyle, and another Scotch Earl.

5th February. Dined at the Holland Ambassador's; he told me the East India Company of Holland had constantly a stock of 400,000l. in India, and forty-eight men-of-war there he spoke of their exact and just keeping their books and correspondence, so as no adventurer's stock could possibly be lost, or defeated; that it was a vulgar error that the Hollanders furnished their enemies with powder and ammunition for their money, though engaged in a cruel war, but that they used to merchandise indifferently, and were permitted to sell to the friends of their enemies. laughed at our Committee of Trade, as composed of men wholly ignorant of it, and how they were the ruin of commerce, by gratifying some for private ends.

He

10th January. I went to visit the governor of Havannah, a brave, sober, valiant Spanish gentleman, taken by Captain Young of Deptford, when, after twenty years being in the Indies, and amassing great wealth, his lady and whole family, except two sons, were burnt, destroyed, and taken within sight of Spain, his eldest son, daughter, and wife, perishing with immense treasure. One son, of about seventeen years old, with his brother of one year old, were the only ones saved. The young gentleman, about seventeen, was a wellcomplexioned youth, not olive-coloured; he spake Latin handsomely, was extremely well-bred, and born in the Caraccas, 1000 miles south of the equinoctial, near the mountains of Potosi; he had never been in Europe before. The Governor was an ancient gentleman of great courage, of the order of St. Jago, sore wounded in his arm, and his ribs broken; he lost for his own share 100,000l. sterling, which he seemed to bear with exceeding_indifference, and nothing dejected. After some discourse, I went with them to Arundel-House, where they dined. They were now going back into Spain, having obtained their liberty from Cromwell. An example of human vicissitude!

14th February. To London, where I found Mrs. Cary; next day came Mr. Mordaunt (since Viscount Mordaunt), younger son to the Countess of Peterborough, to see his mistress, bringing with him two of my Lord of Dover's daughters:3 so, after dinner, they all departed.

1 Particularly noticed in Waller's poem on a War with Spain.

2 John, second son of John, fifth Baron Mordaunt, and first Earl of Peterborough. He was a zealous Royalist; an offence for which he was tried, and, as Evelyn relates in a subsequent page, acquitted by one vote under the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, he still exerted himself to bring back Charles II., who, on the 10th of July, 1659, created him Baron Mordaunt of Reigate, and Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon, and appointed him Constable of Windsor Castle, and Custos Rotulorum of the County of Surrey. Many foul charges were afterwards brought against him in connection with his command at Windsor. See vol. ii. p. 21. With his mother and his wife, Evelyn was extremely intimate, frequently mentioning both with enthusiasm; and taking an active part, as many passages of the Diary will show, in the business affairs of the family.

3 Henry Carey, fourth Baron Hunsdon, created Viscount Rochford and Earl of Dover, and who died in 1668, had three daughters-Mary, married to Sir Thomas Wharton; Judith; and Philadelphia.

5th March. Dr. Rand, a learned physician, dedicated to me his version of Gassendi's Vita Peiriskii.

25th. Dr. Taylor showed me his MS. of Cases of Conscience, or Ductor Dubitantium, now fitted for the Press.

The Protector Oliver, now affecting kingship, is petitioned to take the title on him by all his new-made sycophant lords, &c.; but dares not, for fear of the fanatics, not thoroughly purged out of his rebel army.

21st April. Came Sir Thomas Hanmer, of Hanmer, in Wales, to see me. I then waited on my Lord Hatton, with whom I dined: at my return, I stepped into Bedlam, where I saw several poor miserable creatures in chains; one of them was mad with making verses. I also visited the Charter-house, formerly belonging to the Carthusians, now an old neat fresh solitary college for decayed gentlemen. It has a grove, bowling-green, garden, chapel, and a ball where they eat in common. I likewise saw Christ-church and Hospital, a very goodly Gothic building; the hall, school, and lodgings in great order for bringing up many hundreds of poor children of both sexes; it is an exemplary charity. There is a large picture at one end of the hall, representing the governors, founders, and the institution.

25th. I had a dangerous fall out of the coach in Covent Garden, going to my brother's, but without harm; the Lord be praised!

1st May. Divers soldiers were quartered at my house; but I thank God went away the next day towards Flanders.

5th. I went with my cousin, George Tuke, to see Baynard, in Surrey, a house of my brother Richard's, which he would have hired. This is a very fair noble residence, built in a park, and having one of the goodliest avenues of oaks up to it that ever I saw there is a pond' of 60 acres near it; the windows of the chief rooms are of very fine painted glass. The situation is excessively dirty and melancholy.2

:

15th. Lawrence, President of Oliver's Council, and some

1 This pond belongs to Vachery in Cranley.

2 It is in the lower part of the parish of Ewhurst in Surrey, adjoining to Rudgwick in Sussex, in a deep clay soil. The residence belonged formerly to Sir Edward Bray, and afterwards to the Earl of Onslow, who carried the painted glass to his seat at Clandon.

other of his Court-Lords, came in the afternoon to see my garden and plantations.

7th June. My fourth son was born, christened George (after my grandfather); Dr. Jeremy Taylor officiated in the drawing-room.

18th. At Greenwich I saw a sort of cat' brought from the East Indies, shaped and snouted much like the Egyptian racoon, in the body like a monkey, and so footed; the ears and tail like a cat, only the tail much longer, and the skin variously ringed with black and white; with the tail it wound up its body like a serpent, and so got up into trees, and with it would wrap its whole body round. Its hair was woolly like a lamb; it was exceedingly nimble, gentle, and purred as does the cat.

16th July. On Dr. Jeremy Taylor's recommendation, I went to Eltham, to help one Moody, a young man, to that living, by my interest with the patron.

6th August. I went to see Colonel Blount, who showed me the application of the way-wiser to a coach, exactly measuring the miles, and showing them by an index as we went on. It had three circles, one pointing to the number of rods, another to the miles, by 10 to 1000, with all the subdivisions of quarters; very pretty and useful.

10th. Our vicar, from John xviii. 36, declaimed against the folly of a sort of enthusiasts and deperate zealots, called the Fifth-Monarchy-Men, pretending to set up the kingdom of Christ with the sword. To this pass was this age arrived when we had no King in Israel.

21st. Fell a most prodigious rain in London, and the year was very sickly in the country.

1st September. I visited Sir Edmund Bowyer, at his melancholy seat at Camberwell. He has a very pretty grove of oaks, and hedges of yew in his garden, and a handsome row of tall elms before his court.

1 This was probably the animal called a Mocock (maucauco), since well known.

2 Beckmann, in his "History of Inventions," has written an account of the different instruments applied to carriages to measure the distance they pass over. He places the first introduction of the adometer in England at about the end of the seventeenth century, instead of about the middle, and states it to have been the invention of an ingenious artist named Butterfield.

15th September. Going to London with some company, we stept in to see a famous rope-dancer, called the Turk.1 I saw even to astonishment the agility with which he performed. He walked barefooted, taking hold by his toes only of a rope almost perpendicular, and without so much as touching it with his hands; he danced blindfold on the high rope, and with a boy of twelve years old tied to one of his feet about twenty feet beneath him, dangling as he danced, yet he moved as nimbly as if it had been but a feather. Lastly, he stood on his head, on the top of a very high mast, danced on a small rope that was very slack, and finally flew down the perpendicular, on his breast, his head foremost, his legs and arms extended, with divers other activities.—I saw the hairy woman, twenty years old, whom I had before seen when a child. She was born at Augsburg, in Germany. Her very eye-brows were combed upwards, and all her forehead as thick and even as grows on any woman's head, neatly dressed; a very long lock of hair out of each ear; she had also a most prolix beard, and moustachios, with long locks growing on the middle of her nose, like an Iceland dog exactly, the colour of a bright brown, fine as well-dressed flax. She was now married, and told me she had one child that was not hairy, nor were any of her parents, or relations. She was very well shaped, and played well on the harpsichord.

17th. To see Sir Robert Needham, at Lambeth, a relation of mine; and thence to John Tradescant's museum, in

3

1 Evelyn again mentions this tumbler in his Numismata, under the name of the Funamble Turk.

2 Barbara Vanbeck. Two portraits of her, one a line engraving, the other in mezzotinto, are described in Grainger's Biographical Dictionary. 3 The tombstone of the family in Lambeth church-yard declares, that "Beneath this stone lie John Tradescant, grandsire, father, and son." They were all eminent gardeners, travellers, and collectors of curiosities. The first two came into this country in the reign of James I., and the second and third were employed in the Royal Gardens by Charles I. They had a house at Lambeth, which, being filled with rarities of every description, passed by the name of Tradescant's Ark, and was much resorted to by the lovers of the curious. It formed the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and a catalogue of its contents was printed by the youngest John Tradescant, in 1656, with the title of "Museum Tradescantianum." The elder died in 1652. See post, vol. ii. p. 127.