John Aubrey: My Own Life (9 page)

. . .

May Day
⁶

I went with friends to join the celebrations in the nearby village of Woodstock, where I was saddened to see many hawthorn trees dug out of the park and set down in the street. There was dancing, feasting and merriment, but it seemed to me a pity so many fair white hawthorns were spoiled for one day’s disport.

. . .

Today I heard
⁷
the story of the death of Dr George Webb, one of the King’s Protestant chaplains in Ireland, from his nephew, who was his archdeacon and with him in Limerick. Dr Webb died just days before the city, which had been under siege from the Irish army since the rebellion last year, fell earlier this month. After the Irish soldiers took possession of the town, they dug up Dr Webb’s body. I must confess, I do not like the zeal in the Canon Law that does not let the bodies of heretics rest in peace. It is inhumane.

. . .

Whitsun

This morning, I saw
⁸
the master cook of Exeter College and his assistants ride out on horseback in silk doublets to ‘fetch in the Fly’ (the spirit of cookery) from Bartholemews, or Bullington-green. They drank well before they left. They will ride out again at Michaelmas to carry the Fly away.

. . .

At St John’s College
⁹
there is a servitor named Shakston, a tall, thin, pale fellow, who eats spiders with as much greediness as nuts, saying they comfort his stomach.

. . .

August

There has been a brush
¹⁰
between the Earl of Northampton and Lord Brooke (his rebel neighbour), near Banbury. Last month, Parliament granted Lord Brooke six guns to strengthen Warwick Castle, but when he rode out to collect them from Banbury, the Earl of Northampton leading forces loyal to the King prevented him and captured the rebel guns.

. . .

My friends rode out with me today to Woodstock Manor, where I was excited to visit Rosamund’s Bower, built, it is said, in the twelfth century. My nurse Kath used to sing me the story of how Henry II had the bower built for his lover Rosamund de Clifford, so they could be safely together, without fear of his wife, Elinor of Aquitaine, finding them. But Elinor, suspecting her husband, rode furiously across the land, and came upon his spurs at Woodstock Manor. There was a tiny ball of silken thread caught on one of them, which the enraged queen followed until she came upon the lovers at the heart of the labyrinthine bower.

Yea, Rosamund, fair Rosamund,

her name was called so,

To whom dame Elinor our Queen

was known a deadly foe,

The King therefore for her defence

against the furious Queen

At Woodstock builded such a Bower

the like was never seen.

Most curiously that Bower was built,

of Stone and Timber strong,

A hundred and fifty dores,

did to this Bower belong,

And they so cunningly contriv’d

with turnings round about

That none but with a clew of thread,

could enter in, or out.

Now the place is full
¹¹
of ruined walls, five or six feet high, which must once have formed the intricate bower. One freestone vault is still in place, leading underground to Combe church, which is almost a mile distant. I think there must originally have been more vaults. Meadows surround what is left, and beyond them clouds above the woods, that give a very lovely melancholy prospect. In the high park there are stag-headed oak trees that have not borne leaf for over a hundred years. They are of great antiquity, which, for me, makes them worthy of veneration. Looking at the crumbling walls of the bower, I began to think that it might once have been like the labyrinth Daedelus built to contain the Minotaur on Crete. I thought of Rosamund running through the vaults trying in vain to escape the angry Queen. I have seen a picture of Rosamund in Sir Laurence Washington’s house near Malmesbury. I am not sure when the picture was painted, maybe around the time of Henry VI. Rosamund is depicted with deep red hair, inclining towards chestnut brown. Her eyes like those of a viper, but somewhat small; her skin fair, clear, delicate, warm. An oval face with arched eyebrows, but imbued with too much pride for my liking. I prefer sweeter looks.

I intended to sketch the remains of the bower today, but my friends were rowdy and impatient, urging me to come away. When I can, I will return to sketch more carefully. I would like to find the gatehouse window too, where it is said Princess Elizabeth, imprisoned by her sister in Woodstock Manor, scratched into the glass: ‘Much suspected, of me; Little proved can be, Quoth Elizabeth, Prisoner.’ I noticed the stately gilded statue in the courtyard, and the great hall, with pillars like a church. It seems a place of ill omen for monarchs.

. . .

Today Dr Kettell
¹²
greatly embarrassed my friend Anthony Ettrick. The President had heard how Ettrick and others frightened a poor young freshman of Magdalen Hall by conjuring. So he announced: ‘Mr Ettrick will conjure up a jackanapes to be his great-grandfather.’ Anthony was born at Berford in the parish of Wimburne Minster, Dorset, on 15 November 1622. His mother always says he is a Sunday’s bird.

. . .

Dr Kettell upbraided
¹³
the Fellows today: ‘Oh! You are gallant gentlemen and learned men, who snort and fart at your poor president. I am old and blind but who was it brought you in to be Fellows from poor rascal-jacks and servitors? Was it not your president? And yet none of your friends were ever so grateful as to present me with so much as a wrought nightcap . . . Ah! But I cry you mercy! I remember indeed that one of your mothers once sent me a gammon of bacon!’

. . .

By order of the Parliament, the Lord Viscount Saye and Sele is visiting all the college chapels to search out new signs of Popery. In Trinity we have two painted altars on the far side of the screen that are in danger: one dedicated to St Katherine, on the right as you enter the chapel; and one dedicated to the Saviour coming down from the Cross, on the left. My friends and I are fond of them both. To save them Dr Kettell told the Lord Viscount Saye and Sele, ‘Truly, my lord, we regard them no more than a dirty dish-clout.’ His lordship seemed convinced, so for now, at least, these fresh and lively paintings will not be coloured over. There is good Gothic painting in the windows of the chapel, a figure in every column: St Cuthbert, St Leonard, St Oswald, etc. I have taken careful note of all the escutcheons in the college glass. Above the door of the screen in the chapel there is an ancient little organ, whose pipes are in the bursary. We sing the psalms on Sundays, holy days and the eves of holy days, and one of the scholars sings the gospel for the day in the hall at the end of dinner, ending:
tu autem Domine miserere nostri
. The President sings in a shrill high treble and one young Fellow, John Hoskyns, who has an even higher voice, plays the wag and makes him strain even further up.

. . .

Oxford is now held by the Parliament’s soldiers.

. . .

Today I visited Abingdon
¹⁴
and much admired its market cross from the time of Henry VI. I think it must be one of the finest in England. It is admirable Gothic architecture, with fine figures in the niches, after the fashion of the cross in Bristol High Street, but more curiously worked.

. . .

How now Bellona thunders
¹⁵
! And as a clear sky is sometimes suddenly overstretched with dismal cloud and thunder, so England’s serene peace is shattered by the factions of these times. I think of Homer’s
Odyssey
.

. . .

13 September

On this day there was a considerable fight at Babell Hill (between Sherborne and Yeovil). Sherborne Castle is besieged by the Parliament’s soldiers.

. . .

I have regretfully obeyed
¹⁶
my father and am back at Broad Chalke. He is afraid of the trouble that has come to Oxford: the war without an enemy, the gathering storm over England, threatening to rend the country apart, like a great oak struck by lightning. I lie, listless, in my chamber, reading. I am sad and alone again as I was in childhood. I miss my friends and all the books in Oxford. The books I have with me here are getting damp and rotten in the heavy Wiltshire air. My books in my closet at Easton Pierse were never touched by mouldiness, but here at Broad Chalke they get so covered in hoary mould that I cannot tell what colour the leather used to be. The downs of Wiltshire can be covered with mists even when the vales are clear and the sky serene.

. . .

I visit Salisbury often. Outside the Close, as you come into the town from Harnham Bridge, opposite the hospital, there is a hop yard, with a fair high stone wall round it, and the ruins of an old pigeon house. This was once the Collegium de Valle Scholarum, College de Vaux. It took its name from the Vaux family. It was a
magister scholarum
, in the manner of a university, but never an endowed college; now it is in ruins.

. . .

The eldest son
¹⁷
of Mr William Stumpe, rector of Yatton Keynell, the parish in which my mother was born and where I first went to school, has received a commission as a foot captain in the army of King Charles. This man, named Thomas, has already led a strange life of wondrous adventure. He was a boy of daring spirit; he would climb towers and trees most dangerously; would even walk on the battlements of the tower at Malmesbury. He could never have been a scholar, so aged about sixteen he went on a voyage with his uncle, Thomas Ivy, to Guyana, in 1632 or 1633. When the ship put in, four or five of them straggled too far into the country, and in the interim the wind served, and the sails were hoist, and the stragglers were left behind. It was not long before the wild people seized on them and stripped them, and knocked the brains out of those that had beards and ate them; but the queen of the wild people saved Thomas Stumpe and one other boy. Thomas threw himself into the river to drown, but could not sink (he is very full-chested). The other youth shortly died. Thomas lived with the tribe until 1636 or 1637.

He says there is incomparable fruit in Guyana, and that it may be termed the paradise of the world. He says that the spondyles of the backbones of the huge serpents there are used to sit on, as our women sit upon butts. He says he taught them to build hovels, and to thatch and wattle. I never heard of any man that lived so long among those savages. Then one day, a Portuguese ship came sailing by; he swam to it and they took him up and made use of him as a sea-boy. As they sailed near Cornwall he stole out of a porthole and swam to shore and begged his way back to his father in Wiltshire. When he came home, nobody knew him, except Jo Harris the carpenter, until at last he recounted so many accurate memories and circumstances that his family welcomed him back.

. . .

Francis Potter, a reclusive
¹⁸
, monkish man whom I have never met, even though he used to live in Trinity College and his brother Hannibal whom I know well still does, has a book with the booksellers called
An Interpretation of the Number 666
. It is said the idea for it came to him seventeen years ago as he climbed and counted the stairs to his college room. He has extracted 25 as the nearest square root to the Number of the Beast and contrasted it with 12: the square root of 144, the number of the Church. Potter, whom I would love to meet, argues that 25 is a fatal and unfortunate number. In the Book of Revelation he has found many instances of the number 12; in the Roman Church he has found many instances of 25. There were 12 Apostles, but 25 cardinals in the Church of Rome. There were 12 Commandments in the Apostles’ Creed, but 25 Articles of the Roman faith, published by Pius IV after the Council of Trent. The High Altar in St Peter’s Church in Rome is surmounted by a gilded cross, 25 hands high, and the High Altar itself is an exact cube 25 x 25 feet. Christ began to do his father’s work when he was 12 years old; but priests, deacons and subdeacons of the Roman Church reach vocational maturity at 25. The Church’s main holidays, including Christmas, are held on the 25th of the month. As I lie awake at night in Broad Chalke, reading, missing Oxford, wishing I could return there, I imagine Potter waking in a cold sweat, terrified of being brought before the Pope in Rome and condemned to death for his ideas. Thoughts of the Antichrist fill my mind as the rising sun throws a lattice of intersecting lines across the bedroom floor. Those who talk of politics say a universal darkness is gathering. The King and his Parliament are irreconcilably at odds. Chaos will break over England.

. . .

I have met
¹⁹
and become friends with the divine and mathematician Edward Davenant, vicar of Gillingham in Dorset. He is of great diligence in study and well versed in all kinds of learning. He tells me he has no esteem for astrology at all. He is helping me learn algebra; his daughters are already algebrists.

. . .

23 October

On this day the Battle of Edgehill was fought in southern Warwickshire: the war is begun. Neither the King’s nor the Parliament’s army triumphed. The result is inconclusive and the King has resumed his march on London, but is thwarted in arriving there.

. . .

Anno 1643

February

I have revolted against my father. With much ado, I have overridden his fearful anxiety and am once again in Oxford, where King Charles has entered the city like Apollo and taken it back from the Parliament’s soldiers. As I rode back here I saw perhaps a dozen soldiers, belonging to the King’s garrison in Abingdon, keeping watch near the barrow on Cutchinlow Hill. They stood guard in a great pit so that if the enemy comes, only their heads will be shot at. Oxford is crowded with soldiers. The King resides in Christ Church and his Queen in Merton College. A special path has been laid through the grounds of Corpus Christi for them to visit each other. Sometimes the visits are secret, sometimes ceremonial. The court has been shrunken in scale and mapped on to Oxford and the King’s army is billeted here: he is gathering his forces. There are already several thousand foot soldiers and three troops of horses, but more keep coming. The city is too small to cope. It is overfull, disease-ridden, people in the street are hungry and dying. All the colleges have become barracks; Magdalen Hall is an arsenal; where once was the corn market men make bullets, so grain is stored now in the Academic Schools and those that labour there produce military uniforms not arguments or scholarship; Oxford Castle is a prison; Osney Abbey a powder mill.