John Aubrey: My Own Life (14 page)

. . .

April

Mr Lydall and I
⁷
have been corresponding about the adventurers into new plantations. He tells me that his brother, who is at Corpus College, will travel to Barbados on the next ship. He wishes our friend Mr Etterick would travel with him.

. . .

19 May

On this day Parliament passed an Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth and free state. The House of Commons is now the supreme authority in the land.

. . .

July

Parliament will govern the sales of the lands of the late King and of Queen Henrietta Maria and Prince Charles. The lands have been vested with trustees and the profits from them are to be used to pay off army arrears.

. . .

September

Mr Lydall has written
⁸
from Oxford to say he will gladly exchange information with me on the discoveries or experiments we make in our respective studies. He has given me an account of the motions of the moon to explain the cause of the hunter’s moon at this time of year. Earlier this year I recommended to him a book called
Sciographia, or the Art of Shadows
, by Mr John Wells, published in 1635, and he says it has helped him to make a reflecting sundial in his room.

. . .

Anno 1650

April

On the last day of this month, my mother has fallen from her horse and broken her arm. I have been paying suit to Miss Jane Codrington, but now I must cease advancing my marriage prospects and visit my mother.

. . .

I have been hunting
⁹
with William, Lord Herbert of Cardiff, who is the grandson of Philip, 4th Earl of Pembroke: the greatest hunter in living memory. I have become interested in the history of hunting in this nation. The Roman governors had not, I think, the leisure for it. The Saxons were never at rest, and the barons’ wars, and those of York and Lancaster, took up the time since the Conquest. But under King James and King Charles, during times of serene calm and peace, hunting reached the greatest height it ever has in England. Good cheer was then much in use, but to be wiser than one’s neighbours was considered scandalous and to be envied at. The nobility and gentry were, in that soft peace, damnable proud and insolent. Old Serjeant Latham lived then and wrote his books on falconry, which were printed in 1614 and 1618.

In the stables at Wilton, before the civil wars, there were horses fit for all seasons of the Earl’s stag hunting, foxhunting, brook hawking and land hawking, plus horses for at least half a dozen coaches. In total, there were probably no less than a hundred horses. His lordship had all sorts of hounds for several disports: great hounds to harbour the stags and small bulldogs to break the backs of the stags; fox-hounds, finders, harriers and others; the choicest tumblers in England. When they returned from their sport, the ladies would come out to see the hawks flying at their highest.

Since the civil war many of the forests and parks have been sold and converted into ploughed fields and the glory of English hunting has breathed its last.

My friend Mr Christopher Wase
¹⁰
comes hunting with us sometimes. He is at Wilton House teaching William Herbert Latin. He is translating Gratius the Faliscian’s heroic poem
Cynegeticon
, and will dedicate it to the memory of Philip, 4th Earl of Pembroke, who died this year: a lasting monument for that great hunter.

. . .

Sir Charles Snell, of Kington St Michael, who is my honoured friend and neighbour, has as good a pack of hounds for the hare as any in England: handsome, deep-mouthed, good and suited to each other admirably well.

. . .

The Wiltshire greyhounds are the best in England; my father and I have had as good as any in our time. They are generally of a fallow colour, or black; but Mr Button’s, of Sherborne in Gloucestershire, are some white and some black. Gratius, in his
Cynegeticon
, advises:

And chuse the grayhound py’d with black and white,

He runs more swift than thought, or winged flight;

But courseth yet in view, not hunts in traile,

In which the quick Petronians never faile.

. . .

Michaelmas

I have been to Verulam
¹¹
(St Albans) to see the Roman remains.

There you can see, in a few places, the remains of the old city wall. Magnanimous Lord Bacon – Lord Chancellor and Baron of Verulam – was minded to have it made a city again, and planned for it to be rebuilt with great uniformity, but Fortune denied him this. Within the bounds of the walls of the old city is Verulam House, about half a mile from St Albans, which his lordship built: the most ingeniously contrived little pile that ever I have seen.

I approached the house from the entrance gate on to the highway: viewed from there, the sides of the house mirror one another. On the east side there were five, or maybe seven, windows, bay windows, I think, of the kind his lordship describes in his essay
Of Building
. This house cost nine or ten thousand pounds to build. There are good chimneypieces, the rooms very lofty and all very well wainscoted. There are two bathing rooms, where his lordship used to retire in the afternoon. All the chimney tunnels run into the middle of the house and there are seats round about them. The kitchen, larder, cellars, etc. are underground. In the middle of the house is a delicate wooden staircase, curiously carved, a pretty figure on the posts of every interstice: a grave divine with his book and spectacles, a mendicant friar, etc. – never the same thing twice. The doors of the upper storey are painted dark umber, and decorated with the figures of the Gods of the Gentiles: Apollo, Jupiter with his thunderbolt, bigger than life-size and done by an excellent hand. The heightening is of hatchings of gold, which make a glorious show when the sun shines on them. The top of the house is well leaded, and looking out from the leads there is a lovely prospect to the ponds, opposite the east side of the house, and the stately walk of trees that leads to Gorhambery House. The view over that long walk of trees, whose tops afford a most pleasant variegated verdure, reminded me of tapestry works in Irish-stitch.

I felt myself a marvelling stranger in this house. When I had at last finished looking at the entertaining view from the top balcony, I turned to return into the room, and was mighty surprised to see another prospect of ponds, walks and countryside through the house. The servant who was showing me around had quietly closed a mirrored door behind me, so thus was I gratefully deceived by a looking glass. This was his lordship’s summer-house – he says in his essay
Of Building
that one should have seats, like clothes, for summer and winter: ‘Lucullus answered Pompey well, who, when he saw his stately galleries and rooms so large and lightsome in one of his houses, said, “Surely an excellent place for summer, but how do you in winter?” Lucullus answered, “Why, do you not think me as wise as some fowl are, that ever change their abode towards the winter?”’

The ponds are now overgrown with flagges and rushes, but in his lordship’s time they were filled with clear water, through which coloured pebbles arranged in the shapes of fishes, etc. could be seen. If a poor person brought his lordship half a dozen pebbles of curious colour, he would give them a shilling, so interested was he in perfecting his four acres of fish-ponds. In the middle of the middlemost pond, on the island, is a curious banqueting house of Roman architecture, paved with black and white marble, covered with Cornish slate, and neatly wainscoted.

Then I went a further mile to Gorhambery to see Lord Bacon’s winter-house and park. The way ascends easily, inclining no more than a desk. Three parallel walks run between the two houses: through the middle one, three coaches may pass abreast, two through each of the wing-walks. Stately trees of similar growth and height line the walks: elms, chestnuts, beeches, hornbeams, Spanish ash, cervice-trees, etc. Their leaves form the variegated verdure pattern I saw from the balcony. At this time of year, the colour of their leaves is most varied.

Gorhambery House is large
¹²
, well built, and Gothic; I think his lordship’s father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, built it. His lordship added a grand portico, which fronts the garden to the south. Inside every arch of this portico are emblematical pictures. One of the most striking is a ship tossed in a storm, with the motto:
Alter erit tum Tiphys
(there will be another Tiphys). Above the portico is a stately gallery, all its windows are painted: each pane of glass with several figures of beast, bird or flower. The gallery is hung with pictures of King James, his lordship, and other illustrious figures of their time. These figures, like the Gods on the doors at Verulam House, are done larger than life-size in umber and gold. The roof is semi-cylindrical and painted, by the same hand and in the same manner, with heads and busts of Greek and Roman emperors and heroes.

The garden is large and was no doubt rarely planted and kept in his lordship’s time. There is a handsome door that opens out into an oak wood, where the trees are very great and shady. Beneath them his lordship planted fine specimens of flower, such as peonies and tulips: some are still there. Beyond the oak wood is a coppice-wood where there are walks cut straight as lines, and it was here that his lordship meditated, attended by Mr Bushell or Mr Hobbes or another of his secretaries, to whom he would dictate his thoughts.

Where once there was a paradise, there is now a large ploughed field. The little resting houses of Roman architecture that his lordship had built at good viewing places along the well-designed woodland walks still stand, but are defaced, as though barbarians made a conquest here.

If I close my eyes, I can think myself back to a time when this place was a sanctuary for pheasants, partridges and birds of various kinds and countries. I can hear his lordship drive his open coach through the rain to receive the benefits of irrigation, the nitre in the air and the universal spirit of the world. ‘I do not look about me, I look above me,’ he was wont to say.

Mr Hobbes told me that the cause of his lordship’s death was conducting an experiment on Highgate Hill. He was taking the air in a coach with Dr Witherborne (a Scotsman and physician to the King) when snow lay on the ground. It occurred to his lordship that flesh might be preserved in snow as well as in salt. These two went into a poor woman’s house at the bottom of Highgate Hill, bought a hen and had her kill it, then stuffed the body with snow. The snow so chilled his lordship that immediately he fell extremely ill, and could not return to his lodgings, but was taken instead to the Earl of Arundel’s house at Highgate. There he was put in a good bed warmed with a pan, but the bed was damp as no one had been in it for about a year, this gave his lordship such a cold that he died within two or three days.

. . .

My friend John Lydall
¹³
writes to tell me what Mr Hawes has told him about the ghosts that plagued the parliamentary committee for selling the King’s lands, when it sat at Woodstock Manor recently. The committee members who stayed over night to try and finish measuring the parklands were pelted out of their chambers in the manor by stones thrown through the windows. Their candles were continuously put out, as fast as they could light them; and one man who drew his sword to defend his candle was cudgelled with his own scabbard. He fell sick and the others were forced to move out of the manor.

. . .

December

There has been a remarkable occurrence
¹⁴
at Oxford. Earlier this month, Nan Green, a servant maid, was hanged in the castle for murdering her bastard child. After suffering the law, she was cut down and carried away for some of the young physicians to practise anatomy on. But while she was lying on the dissecting table, Dr William Petty, assisted by Mr Ralph Bathurst, among others, found life in her, so revived her. Now the young poets of the University are versifying about this great wonder.

. . .

I have helped my friend Mr Potter with his attempt to move blood between chickens in Kilmington.

. . .

I have acquired
¹⁵
a copy of Lord Bacon’s
Historia Naturalis Et Experimentalis De Ventis
.

. . .

Dr William Petty has been elected Professor of Music at Gresham College.

. . .

There has been smallpox in Sherborne for a year now, since last Michaelmas.

. . .

Anno 1651

February

Mr Lydall is leaving
¹⁶
Oxford and has made arrangements for those possessions of mine that are still there in boxes to be looked after by other friends. He has recommended some books in answer to my Quaere: how is it possible to find the latitude of a place by a quadrant in the dark without sun or stars?

. . .

I have acquired
¹⁷
a copy of Lord Bacon’s
Remaines
, first printed in 1648.

. . .

March

My friend Mr Francis Potter
¹⁸
is coming to stay with me in Broad Chalke and while he is here I will take him to Wilton House to visit the Earl of Pembroke and show off his design for a clock operated by bellows rather than cogs, which he invented when he was still a student at Trinity College. I have tried to find out from my kinsman Sir John Danvers how Mr Potter might obtain a patent for his invention.

. . .

Sir John Danvers’s house
¹⁹
at Chelsea is very elegant and ingenious. As you sit at dinner in the hall you are entertained by two delightful vistas: one southward over the Thames and towards Surrey; the other northward into a curious garden. Over the hall is a stately room of the same dimensions, which has the same prospect, where there is an excellent organ, which I have heard the organist and composer Christopher Gibbons play. The house is vaulted, which meliorates the sound. I have never heard better harmony than in that room.