John Aubrey: My Own Life (40 page)

. . .

The Exclusion Bill has been introduced into the House of Commons, with the intention of excluding the Duke of York, a Roman Catholic, from succeeding to the throne. There is a faction that hopes to see the Duke of Monmouth – the King’s bastard but Protestant son – succeed.

. . .

Sixteen days after
⁶⁹
the funeral of John Tradescant’s widow Hestor, who was found drowned in her pond after losing her dispute with Mr Ashmole over her late husband’s collection of rarities, Mr Ashmole has taken the lease on the Tradescant house and garden in South Lambeth. He had been leasing a neighbouring house since 1674. Some of the Tradescant collection had already been transferred to Mr Ashmole’s house. Now that he is in full possession of the Tradescant inheritance, he hopes to move the collection to Oxford.

. . .

Mr Wylde Clerke
⁷⁰
, who is my friend Edmund Wylde’s godson, has sent me a letter from Santa Cruz in Africa, dated November last year, reporting on the crops, berries, grapes, and horses of the country. He writes of the diet: camels’ milk, ostrich meat; bread not commonly eaten; and the people’s bare subsistence. He promises to explore for the herbs, etc. that I have enquired about.

. . .

Mr Thomas Pigott asks
⁷¹
if I can help a learned friend of his, Mr Fairfax, a mathematician, who is reduced to great poverty. I fear I cannot.

. . .

20 June

On this day at Tyburn, the Jesuit William Barrow (known as Father Harcourt) and four others accused of the Popish Plot have been executed for conspiring to kill the King and subvert the Protestant religion.

There is a rumour
⁷²
that when Father Harcourt’s entrails were tossed into the brazier by the hangman, a butcher’s boy resolved to have a piece of his kidney, which was broiling in the fire, so burnt his fingers snatching it from the flames. I will see this piece of petrified kidney if I can. Mr Roydon, a brewer in Southwark, has it now.

I met Father Harcourt in 1650 and he told me that he was of the Stanton Harcourt family.

Since the discovery
⁷³
of the Popish Plot, the Penal Laws have been put into effect against Roman Catholics, who will be severely proceeded against if they do not receive the Sacrament according to the Church of England in their parish churches.

. . .

27 June

I met Mr Sheldon
⁷⁴
in London today (he was released from gaol in April, and treated very well there, so my friend Thomas Mariett tells me). My stammer was terrible. I still feel guilty for what I said about Mr Sheldon in a drunken letter I wrote to Thomas Mariett, which was full of gossip gleaned from the Parliament men and the courtiers who attend the Royal Society. As soon as I sent that letter to the post-house, I regretted it, even though it was to my old acquaintance and intimate friend from boyhood. Mr Sheldon is so worthy and honest a gent: I would more easily incur anyone’s displeasure than his.

The Queen has been accused of plotting to poison the King and convert the country to Roman Catholicism. I think there is shrewd evidence against her.

. . .

I have asked Mr Ent to try and recover for me the text of Mr Hobbes’s Latin prose autobiography, which I lent to Anthony Wood and which he has refused to return.

. . .

Mr Hobbes tells me
⁷⁵
his treatise concerning law (The Dialogue of the Common Law) is imperfect at the end and he will not consent to it being printed, not by Mr Horne, nor by Mr Crooke. He tells me too that his book on the civil war (Behemoth: the history of the causes of the civil wars of England, and of the counsels and artifices by which they were carried on from the year 1640 to the year 1660) is in circulation, but he regrets this, as he could not get His Majesty to license it. The King has read and likes the book extremely, but is afraid of displeasing the bishops.

In his book
⁷⁶
, Mr Hobbes argues that our civil war was caused by Presbyterian clergy struggling to gain control over the people against the prerogative of the King. Speech was the main means by which the clergy sought to dominate the people. Mr Hobbes is suspicious of the power of eloquence, which he believes is a form of passion that distorts the meaning of words. Behemoth is written as a dialogue between ‘A’, an eyewitness of the civil war, and ‘B’, a younger student, concerning the years 1640 to 1660. It ends with a paean to General George Monck. Mr Hobbes offers a rational account of how the war and the regicide happened. He insists that there can be ‘nothing more instructive towards loyalty and justice’ than the memory, while it lasts, of that war.

. . .

23 July

I went to Bloomsbury
⁷⁷
coffee house with Mr Hooke.

. . .

September

My friend Robert Henley
⁷⁸
has invited me to go and take a little air at his country home, and when he comes back up to Parliament, he will carry me in his coach and set me down at the Middle Temple or near thereabout, from whence I shall know my way home.

. . .

October

My friend George Ent
⁷⁹
has died. He told me a few days before that he had seen a ghost (or
deceptio visus
, as he called it) that gave three knocks and called him away from this world. His father Sir George Ent is grief stricken.

. . .

14 November

I was at Jonathan’s
⁸⁰
coffee house with Sir John Hoskyns and Mr Hooke.

. . .

I have suggested to Mr Edmund Halley – the prodigious young astronomer – that he study astrology. He tells me it seems an ill time for it, given that the arch conjuror Mr Gadbury is in danger of being hanged for it. But he will follow my recommendation and read around the subject. He went to the library and found the books I recommended, which were published in 1557.

I sent my letter
⁸¹
to Mr Halley by way of my friend Thomas Pigott, so that these two would become acquainted.

. . .

24 November

My honoured lord the Earl of Thanet has died at the age of forty-nine. He was my refuge and patron.

. . .

I have heard
⁸²
that my old acquaintance John Birkenhead, who wrote the news in Oxford during the late wars, died on 4 December. He was chosen as a Member of Parliament for Wilton in the King’s Long Parliament of 1661, but when he stood for election to Parliament this year, he was scorned and mocked and called ‘pensioner’. As a result, he did not stand, but returned to London and insensibly declined, pining away in his lodgings in Whitehall.

. . .

My honoured friend
⁸³
Mr Hobbes died on 4 December at Hardwick. He was speechless for his last six days, and was buried on 6 December. I have sent for a full account of his funeral and will. Mr Wood will return Mr Hobbes’s life in prose (which only goes up to 1651), so that I can continue it by six lines or so. They say that when a learned man dies, a great deal of learning dies with him. Mr Hobbes was a
flumen ingenii
, a stream of genius, never dry. The
recrementa
(or remains) of so learned a person are valuable. I must now fulfil my promise to my dear departed revered friend and write up the minutes of his Life, which I promised to do as long ago as 1667. ’Tis religion to perform the will of the dead. I am minded to begin it with a pleasant description of Malmesbury. I think first drafts or sketches ought to be rude as those of painters, for he that in his first essay will be curious of refining will certainly be unhappy in inventing. I do not know if I should print my memoirs of the Life of Hobbes in Latin, or English, or both. If in Latin, who will do the translation for me? And is my English style well enough?

. . .

Now that the sun
⁸⁴
has entered Capricorn, it will begin to mount a little higher and I shall become more vigorous and less lethargic again.

Mr Wood asks much
⁸⁵
of me. He has sent another list of questions:

– What is Francis Potter’s epitaph; and which was the day and year of his burial?

– What were the titles of Dr William Petty’s two published books, and where was he born?

– When did John Wagstaff die and where is he buried?

– When and where did Dr John Godolphin die, where is he buried, and who sold his books?

– Can I consult the register of St Pancras Church?

. . .

St John the Evangelist’s Day

I am as good as promised Sir George Ent’s assistance in continuing Mr Hobbes’s life in Latin, even though he is still grieving for his son. I will get Mr Hobbes’s life licensed by the Royal Society, or else print it in Holland or Scotland. Should I mention that it was at my request (about fifteen years ago) that Mr Hobbes wrote an account of his life and entrusted it to me as his countryman and acquaintance since I was eight years old? I will be zealously industrious to this purpose, and Mr Wood and I will be revenged on Dr Fell:
rumpatur quisquis rumpitur invidia
(may every man who bursts with malice burst himself).

Could one have thought
⁸⁶
that Dr Fell, that ghostlike ghostly father, so continual and assiduous in the prayers of the Church of England, that good exemplar of piety, a walking Common Prayer Book, could have made such a breach and outrage on morals and justice? Who would have thought Dr Fell to have such an itch for the tyranny of the press: scratching out an author’s phrases, expunging and interponing? He has made the universities worse thought of than ever they were before. Who can pardon such a dry bone, a stalking consecrated engine of hypocrisy?

. . .

Anno 1680

January

Mr Henry Vaughan
⁸⁷
promises to search for me into distant and obscure nativities with all possible speed. If he finds anything in nature that may deserve the notice of the Royal Society he will present me with it. He finds the Ancients less unkind to astrology than most modern physicians.

. . .

At Burbage
⁸⁸
in Wiltshire the soil is an ash-coloured grey sand, and very natural for the production of good turnips. They are the best I have ever eaten, and are sent for from far and near. They are not tough and stringy, like other turnips, but cut like marmalade. Quaere: how old the trade in turnips is? Certainly all the turnips that were brought to Bristol eighty years ago came from Wales. But now none come from there, for it has been found that the red sand about Bristol breeds a better and bigger turnip. Burbage is also remarkable for excellent peas.

. . .

I have often wished
⁸⁹
for a map of England painted according to the colours of the earth and marks of the minerals.

. . .

My mother has written to tell me that she was seventy years old last Thursday (29 January).

. . .

Spectacles have been worn
⁹⁰
for about 200 years, and were sold, when first invented, for 3 or 5 li. a pair. The Germans call them Brill, from the beril-stone (or crystal) from which they were first made. I remember discussing the difference between spectacles and a vidette with Mr Hobbes.

PART XI

Brief Lives

Anno 1680

February

MY FRIEND THE
bookseller Mr William Crooke informs me that other authors are preparing lives of Mr Hobbes: he urges me to make haste with mine. I would not have believed that I could be so copious! I have written a draft, but still have more to add from letters and memoranda books. I would also like to write other lives: Sir William Petty’s, Sir Christopher Wren’s, Mr Robert Hooke’s.

. . .

8 February

I was at Jonathan’s
¹
coffee house with Mr Haak, Mr Hodby, Mr Tison and Mr Hooke.

. . .

I hope Mr Wood
²
will help me by searching for the month and day of Mr Hobbes’s matriculation. At Trinity College we wrote our names in the buttery book the day we were admitted to the University. It was probably the same at Magdalen Hall.

Mr Wood chides me
³
for calling my Life of Mr Hobbes a supplement. Originally I intended it only to complement Mr Hobbes’s own autobiography. But now Mr Wood advises me my work is worthy of the title: The Life of Thomas Hobbes.