John Aubrey: My Own Life (12 page)

. . .

William Browne has another suggestion for my future: that I move to London, if my father will not let me go to Oxford to take my degree. He will not. Mr Browne asks whether my mother and grandfather will intervene on my behalf and not let my father ‘stop all good notions’. But my father’s anxiety has blocked my path my whole life. London would be as cheap as Oxford. One way or another, I am plotting my escape from sequestered rural life.

. . .

Anno 1646

January

My father had to go to Falstone House near Wilton to hand over more money to the Parliamentarian committee that sits there, raising funds by force for its bad but prospering cause. He has already paid 7 li. in North Wiltshire, and now for our Broad Chalke farm and other property in Herefordshire must pay 33 li. in sixty fat sheep and 60 li. in money. I have been to Herefordshire myself recently, to review our holdings. There I glimpsed the father of the famous courtesan Bess Broughton, who is one of the 5th Earl of Dorset’s mistresses and among the greatest beauties of her age. Bess’s father, old Mr Broughton
¹⁵
, an octogenarian, seemed to me the most handsome, well-limbed, straight old man that I have ever seen. He has a good wit and a graceful elocution. Small wonder that his daughter is so beautiful. There is a ballad sung about her:

From the watch at twelve a clock

And from Bess Broughton’s button’d smock,

Libera nos, Domine.

Old Mr Broughton brought in the husbandry of soap ashes. When he was living at Bristol, where much soap is made, and the haven there seemed likely to be choked up with it, he undertook an experiment to see if soap ash, like compost, improves the soil. He duly improved his land near the city in this way. My grandmother remembers Bess’s mother (who was her neighbour) and I have heard her say she was as great as her husband.

. . .

They have started watering the meadows about Marlborough and Hungerford, and Mr John Bayly, of Bishop’s Down, near Salisbury, is making great improvements by watering near St Thomas’s Bridge. This practice is as old as the Romans. Virgil alludes to it in his
Bucolica
: ‘
Claudite jam rivos, pueri, sat prata biberunt
’ (‘Stop the currents now, young men, the meadows have drunk enough’). The improvement of watering meadows began at Wylye, in about 1635, and it was around that time – when I was about nine years old – that I remember the same practice introduced at Broad Chalke.

There are otters
¹⁶
in the River Wylye, and perhaps in other rivers too. The otter is our English beaver.

. . .

April

To my great pride and joy, I have been admitted to Middle Temple, where I hope I will be able to make new friends and study the law. I intend to divide my time from this day forth between London and Oxford. No more secluded rural life for me!

The Middle Temple gardens
¹⁷
run alongside the River Thames. There are fewer buildings on the bankside opposite.

. . .

But alas! Despite my good intentions, my father’s sickness and business do not permit me to settle to my studies.

. . .

The war goes badly. There is little food and no cheer in Oxford. Mr Dobson is running out of painterly materials that cannot be sent for or fetched from London. The war has reduced the thick impasto of his earlier canvases to thin skim paint. Even so, he works with what he has. There is a new portrait of the King in his studio, nearly finished. It is done almost entirely in black and brown. The King wears military dress: his proud head and shoulders fill the canvas, ready to do battle, yet there is anxiety, sadness about his dark eyes. He seems much older than when he first came triumphantly into the city like Apollo; his face narrower, his hair thinner, his lips pressed tight together; a stubborn and a frightened man.

. . .

24 June

On this day Oxford surrendered.

. . .

Sir Thomas Fairfax
¹⁸
, Lord General of the Parliament’s army, has set a good guard of soldiers to preserve and protect the Bodleian Library. It is said that during their garrison of the town, the King’s army did much damage to the library, embezzling the books and cutting off the chains that hold them in place. Lord Fairfax is a lover of learning, who will take care that our noble library is not further destroyed.

. . .

While the King
¹⁹
had his court at Oxford, after the Battle of Edgehill, John Birkenhead, a Fellow of All Souls, wrote up the news wittily enough in his newsbook
Mercurius Aulicus
. Now that Oxford has surrendered, he will stop.

. . .

Many of the King’s party, some already known to me, have come to London. I love not their debauches. I have friends who are not debauched, but even so their conversation is not improving: I find it unfit for the muses.

. . .

I have heard that Dr William Harvey has come to London to live with his brother Eliab, who is a rich merchant with a country house at Roehampton. I hope I will make his acquaintance before long.

. . .

July

Lundy Island, where Mr Bushell has been commandant for the King, has finally surrendered.

. . .

October

The painter William Dobson has died, aged just thirty-five. Like other supporters of the King who have left Oxford now the Parliamentarians have it, he came to live in London recently. But he was soon imprisoned for debt and died in poverty. I must see Judith, his sweet-faced widow, soon.

. . .

My honoured neighbour
²⁰
, Sir Charles Snell, has told me of an interesting sepulchre called Hubbaslow (or Barrow Hill) on the road from Chippenham to Bristol, and has shown me a reference to it in the first edition of Stow’s
Chronicle
. I will see it.

. . .

November

To my great joy
²¹
, I am returned to Trinity College, Oxford. The Fellows make much of me, and I am again amidst their learned conversation, books and music: ingenious youths, as rosebuds, imbibe the morning dew.

. . .

The Parliamentarian Visitation
²²
– which has been sent to Oxford to reform and regulate the University – came to Trinity today. Hannibal Potter, Pro-Vice Chancellor at the moment, as well as President of Trinity, does his best to protect the antiquities and elude the Visitors. Last month, Dr Potter was summoned to appear before the Visitors but he declined to attend. Now he has been called before a parliamentary committee of Lords and Commons in London, but still refuses to go.

. . .

I went to visit the ruins of Eynsham Abbey – the Benedictine monastery that was dissolved in 1538 – and greatly admired the two high towers at the west end. The ruins set my thoughts working to make out their magnificence in former times.

. . .

Dr William Petty teaches anatomy at Brasenose College and keeps a partially pickled dead body for this purpose. He brought the body to Oxford from Reading by water. He is beloved by all the scholars, especially Ralph Bathurst of Trinity College (brother of Dr George Bathurst, who was killed in the Battle of Faringdon), John Wilkins (astronomer and natural philosopher), Seth Ward (mathematician), Thomas Willis (royal physician), etc. Together they pursue experimental philosophy.

. . .

Ralph Bathurst says
²³
the poet Ben Jonson was a Warwickshire man (though others dispute this). Jonson came to Trinity College with an Exhibition after a benefactor overheard him reciting Greek verse from Homer as he worked on the wall between Lincoln’s Inn and Chancery Lane alongside his stepfather, a bricklayer.

. . .

My Trinity friends
²⁴
, Thomas Mariett, William Radford and Ned Wood, have had a frolic on foot from Oxford to London. Never having been to Windsor before, they passed through it and visited Mr John Hales, Fellow of Eton College, general scholar and poet, who has a noble library of books. When the court was at Windsor, the learned courtiers much delighted in his company, but the Parliamentarian Visitation of 1642 ejected Mr Hales from his position as Canon of Windsor. My friends presented themselves to him as scholars, so he treated them well and gave them ten shillings.

. . .

I went to visit William Stumpe
²⁵
, out of curiosity to see his manuscripts (I remember seeing some of them in my childhood); but by now they are mostly lost. I have never forgotten how he used to abuse them, lining the corks of ale bottles with precious pages. His sons are gunners and soldiers who follow their father in their disrespect for manuscripts and scour their guns with them. But Mr Stumpe showed me several old deeds granted by the Lords Abbots, with their scales annexed, which I suppose his son Captain Thomas Stumpe of Malmesbury – he who had adventures as a boy in Guyana – will inherit.

. . .

Despite all the disruptions
²⁶
and distractions of this troubled time, I am continuing my studies at Middle Temple. This evening we were finishing our common meal when Sir John Maynard came in from Westminster Hall, weary with the business of the day and hungry. He sat down by Mr Bennett Hoskyns, son of the poet Serjeant Hoskyns, and some others who were discussing the meaning of the text: ‘For a just man one would dare to die: but for a good man one would willingly die.’ They asked Sir John what the difference is between a just man and a good man. He said it was all very well for those who had eaten to begin on such a discourse, but he was hungry. Then, after a couple of mouthfuls, he said: ‘I’ll tell you the difference presently: Serjeant Rolle is a just man and Matthew Hale is a good man.’ That is all he said before returning to his food. There could not be a better elucidation of that text. Serjeant Rolle is just, but naturally penurious (and his wife makes him worse). Whereas Matthew Hale is not only just, but charitable, open-handed, and no sounder of his own trumpet, as hypocrites are.

. . .

James Harrington and Thomas Herbert have been appointed to His Majesty’s Bedchamber at Holmeby House, by order of the Parliament. I am told that Mr Harrington passionately loves the King, and they often dispute together about government, but the King will not hear talk of a Commonwealth. I hope to meet Mr Harrington: he was a gentleman commoner at Trinity College before my time.

. . .

Anno 1647

May

‘How it comes to pass
²⁷
, I know not; but by ancient and modern example it is evident, that no great accident befalls a city or prince but it is presaged by divination or prodigy, or astrology, or some way or other.’ This is from Book I, Chapter LVI of Machiavelli’s
Discourses
, and I believe it true. On the first day of this month of May, my mother saw a sign of dire things to come when she went outside to read the time on our horizontal dial at Broad Chalke. It was a very clear sunny day, but from just before eleven until twelve, two circles appeared in the sky: a rainbow and a reversed rainbow, its bow turned down and the two ends standing upwards. The sun was caught inside the intersecting circles. My mother was the first to see it. She ran back into the house and told all the servants, who went outside and saw it too. The vicar and his family also saw it, and others who were hunting on the Downs.

. . .

3 June

On this day a young officer in the Parliament’s new-modelled army, Cornet George Joyce, carried King Charles prisoner from Holmeby House. My mother saw a portent of this terrible news last month.

. . .

Anno 1648

6 January

On this day Dr Hannibal Potter was formally removed from the Presidency of Trinity College, but he refuses to leave his lodgings.

. . .

February

I am at Broad Chalke. My friend Mr John Lydall writes to me from Oxford. He hopes to be able to send me some
Aurum Fulminans
– or exploding gold – as soon as our chemist (Dr Thomas Willis) has prepared it. It is extremely susceptible to friction when heated and might have medicinal uses, as well as being helpful in our investigations into the nature of combustion.
Aurum Fulminans
is one of the few explosives not compounded with nitre.

Mr Lydall has not yet received
²⁸
my books, but expects them daily. His caution money is 3 li. Mr Ralph Bathurst and my other Trinity College friends send me their love via Mr Lydall: how much I miss their company.

. . .

March

Mr Lydall has done
²⁹
as I asked and delivered my two pairs of sheets and pillow-bed to the carrier: but my towel is still at the laundress’s in Oxford. Mr Bathurst has sent me a catalogue of the writers of the Saracen history. My friends assure me that they are as unhappy as I am that I am deprived of their company and the comforts of my study. They recognise me as one born for the honour and preservation of learning. How I miss them.

. . .

April

In regard of the recent contempt of Fellows, officers and members of the University of Oxford towards the authority of Parliament, all who will not submit to it shall be removed from their positions in colleges and halls, and the Parliamentarian Visitors will appoint others to their places.

It is difficult to evade the simple question: ‘Do you submit to the authority of Parliament in this Visitation?’

. . .

Hannibal Potter
³⁰
has escaped a violent ejection from his lodgings by fleeing in advance. He was found guilty of contempt of the Parliament and will be replaced by a Puritan.