John Aubrey: My Own Life (11 page)

. . .

July

Dr Ralph Kettell has died
²
. He was a good man and a good president of Trinity College. He was over eighty years old, but I believe would have lived well for longer without these wars. He might even have made a century. The wars grieved him deeply. He was used to being in charge of Trinity absolutely. It was hard for him to bear the affronts and disrespect of the soldiers garrisoned at the college.

. . .

I have met a soldier garrisoned near Broad Chalke who is the brother of John Birkenhead, who set up the newsbook
Mercurius Aulicus
in Oxford after the Battle of Edgehill.

. . .

August

My grandfather Isaac Lyte has a precious document in his keeping. It is a copy of the entertainments for the visit of Queen Henrietta Maria in August 1636 to Thomas Bushell’s hermitage and grotto at Enston in Oxfordshire entitled:
The Severall Speeches and Songs, at the presentment of Mr Bushell’s Rock to the Queenes Most Excellent Majesty
. It was given to my grandfather by Old Jack Sydenham, the servant who worked for our neighbours in Easton Pierse, who fed my youthful fancy with stories of the olden days. He once also worked for Mr Bushell. From Old Jack, I have heard many stories of Mr Bushell, who, as a young man, waited on the Lord Chancellor Bacon. Like Mr Hobbes, Mr Bushell was one of Lord Bacon’s amanuenses. After Lord Bacon died in 1626, Mr Bushell married and went to live at Enston, where he built a marvellous grotto.

. . .

3 August

I went to visit Mr Bushell
³
today and he showed me his famous grotto, dug into the hillside, where rocks hang down like pendants, as they do at Wookey Hole in Somerset (which is not far from Lytes Carey, where my grandfather grew up). Before the wars, Queen Henrietta Maria gave her name to Mr Bushell’s pleasure palace. It is surrounded by beautiful walks. A decade ago, when Mr Bushell was designing his gardens, he decided that he was advanced enough in years to mean he could not plant his hedges in the usual way and wait for them to grow, or he would hardly live to enjoy them. He sent his workmen all over the country, searching for white-thorn, plum trees and so on that had already reached fifteen or twenty feet. He transplanted them in the month of October, before All Saints Day, and they did very well. I have never seen better hedges. This story fits with the Somerset proverb:

For Apples, Peares, Hawthornes Quickset, Oakes

Set them at All-hollowtyde and command them to grow

Set them after Candlemas and entreat them to grow.

Mr Bushell demonstrated his device for simulating rain and causing a rainbow at the grotto’s entrance. I made a drawing of the little pond opposite the grotto: there stood Neptune on a scallop shell, with his trident in his hand, aiming at a duck that swam perpetually round, chased by a spaniel. The statue is of wood and about three quarters of a yard high. It looks very pretty.

. . .

September

Since before these wars began, Mr Bushell has been minting money for the King. He had huge medals of twenty shillings and ten shillings struck in silver and handed them out to the King’s soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Edgehill. When the King came to Oxford he moved his mint there from Shrewsbury, and Mr Bushell became joint warden of it with Sir William Pankhurst, warden of the Tower mint. Since July, when Bristol was taken for the King, Mr Bushell has been erecting another mint in the castle there.

In this time of civil war
⁴
, he has swathed his grotto at Enstone in soft black woollen cloth. His bed has black curtains, and hangs from four ropes wrapped around with more of the black cloth, instead of bedposts. When Queen Henrietta Maria came to Oxford this month to join the King, I hear that she brought with her (I think, unless someone gave it to her in Oxford) an Egyptian mummy that she presented to Mr Bushell. He has placed it in the grotto that bears the Queen’s name, but I fear that is too damp a place and the mummy will grow mouldy. Something so old and rare should not be ruined.

. . .

My friend and tutor
⁵
William Browne writes with news from Oxford. Like me he was educated at Blandford School and was a great help when I arrived at Trinity College. He tells me that since the Battle of Newbury, all goes well in the north. Legates from the pontiffs of Ireland are said to be approaching the King and seeking conditions of peace. The garrison of Abingdon will create trouble for that of Oxford. The soldiers in Reading, Henley and St Albans are said to be converging, and it is reported that envoys from London are coming to Oxford to seek terms from the King. How I wish I were back in Oxford.

. . .

Dr Hannibal Potter (brother of the monkish Francis) will be the next President of Trinity. It is rumoured that he has not been lawfully elected, but forced upon the Fellows by the Bishop of Winton. Dr William Chillingworth was a competitor for the presidency, but he has been inconsolable since the death of his friend Dr Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, at the Battle of Newbury.

According to William Browne
⁶
, when William Chillingworth was a student at Trinity College, he did not study much, but when he did, he did much in a little time. He delighted in Sextus Empiricus and would walk often in the College Grove contemplating, and there he would meet some cod’s-head or other, and dispute with him and baffle him. I think disputing was something of an epidemic then, but now it has fallen out of fashion and is considered unmannerly and boyish.

. . .

William Browne says
⁷
that whilst they are safe in Oxford, anxiety rises by the day. Sir William Waller and his Parliamentarian forces still elude the King’s army, and the Parliamentarian garrison of Poole remains strong. But at least well-munitioned Bristol Castle has been captured, along with Nantwich, and Oliver Cromwell, one of the leaders of the Parliament’s forces, has suffered a defeat in Lincolnshire. The King is summoning the Great Council to meet in Oxford, and it is said Prince Rupert has been made commander-in-chief.

. . .

There has been an explosion at Osney Abbey, where they are making gunpowder for the King. I thank heaven that I had the remains of the abbey drawn before this happened. I was fearful the ruins would collapse from neglect, but war has helped them on their way.

. . .

Some time before Bristol Castle was captured, Mr Bushell got away. He is now on Lundy Island, in the mouth of the Bristol Channel, which is still loyal to the King.

. . .

Anno 1644

January

The King has set up a new Parliament in Oxford for the conduct of the war. He has summoned the members from London to assemble in Christ Church Hall. Most of the House of Lords and about a third of the House of Commons have heeded his summons.

. . .

Anthony Hungerford, Member of Parliament for Malmesbury, obeyed the King’s summons to attend the Oxford Parliament in December. As a consequence, the London Parliament has fined him, disabled him and appointed a new member for Malmesbury: Sir John Danvers, my honoured kinsman on my mother’s side.

. . .

March

Sir Francis Dodington has blown up part of Wardour Castle in Dorset, the seat of Lord Henry Arundel, whose father died in Oxford of battle wounds last year. Edmund Ludlow’s garrison of Parliamentarian forces held Wardour Castle this past year, but soldiers loyal to the King, led by Dodington and Arundel, laid siege last December. Now it is surrendered, damaged irreparably, to its rightful owner. It will never be used as a fortress again.

I rode over
⁸
to see the ruins of Wardour Castle the day after the explosion. The mortar it was built with is so good that one of the little towers reclining on one side still hangs together and has not fallen to pieces.

. . .

Anno 1645

January

Parliament directed the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which oversees the conduct of the war, to review its forces. The result is the establishment of a new-modelled army, under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax.

. . .

The King’s forces have garrisoned Faringdon House. All the small towns on the main roads through Berkshire – Wallingford, Abingdon, Faringdon, Wantage, Newbury, Hungerford, etc. – have seen either the King’s soldiers or the Parliament’s riding in with their troops.

. . .

The Parliament’s soldiers
⁹
are destroying the ancient monuments, which they consider idolatrous.

. . .

2 May

On this day
¹⁰
Dr George Bathurst, brother of my friend Dr Ralph Bathurst, was killed in the Battle of Faringdon fighting for the King. He was one of thirteen sons and like a step-grandson to Ralph Kettell.

. . .

Mr William Browne writes
¹¹
to me from Oxford. He believes it a mistake to suppose that the University can preserve its privileges if the State perishes.

The King’s soldiers have been defeated at Abingdon this month, despite the King’s instructions that it be held at all costs. Oxford is threatened now. My friends there are afraid.

. . .

14 June

On this day, in a battle at Naseby, the King’s army was all but destroyed by the Parliament’s new-modelled army.

. . .

The fine high steeple at Calne, which stood upon four pillars in the middle of the church, has collapsed. One of the pillars was faulty, and the churchwardens were dilatory, as is usual in such cases. Mr Chivers of that parish foresaw this but he could not prevent it, and brought down Mr Inigo Jones to survey the steeple. This was in about 1639 or 1640: he gave him 30 li. out of his own purse for his pains. Mr Jones would have underbuilt the steeple for 100 li. But it fell down on Saturday, and brought the chancel with it too; the parish will be charged 1,000 li. to make a new heavy tower. I fear the same fate will befall our steeple at Kington St Michael. It is impossible to persuade the parishioners to go out of their own way to invest in such repairs before it is too late.

When I was a boy
¹²
I was told that the figures in the south aisle window of Kington St Michael church were King Ethelred and his Queen. Since then I have looked in the Legier Book of Glastonbury and found that they gave the manor of Kington and Langley to the abbey, so I think what I was told must be true since it was a common fashion in those days to place in the windows the effigies of pious benefactors to inspire others.

. . .

There is a church
¹³
in Salisbury – St Edmund’s – that had curious painted glass windows, especially in the chancel. One of the windows (I think the east window) was of such exquisite work that Gondamar, the Spanish ambassador, offered to buy it for some hundreds of pounds. In another of the windows there was a picture of God the Father, like an old man, which gave offence to Mr Henry Shervill when he was recorder of the city in 1631. Out of zeal he clambered on one of the pews to be able to reach high enough to break the window, but fell down and broke his own leg. For this he was brought into the Star Chamber and heavily fined, which, I think, ruined him. But what Mr Shervill left undone, the soldier vandals have seen through: there is not a piece of glass painting left now.

. . .

I am once more a brother! My mother – who is now aged thirty-five – has given birth to another baby boy, this one named Thomas.

. . .

September

My friend William Browne
¹⁴
writes from Oxford and tells me my gown has been mouldering in a box, so he will convert it into a divine’s gown for himself. I am glad this friend of mine has need of my gown. But I regret that beloved item was ever abandoned by me, who could have been a scholar, who still wishes to be. I left that gown behind because I thought I would return to my studies. Circumstance conspires against me. Yet I persevere. Mr Browne has promised to replace the gown if I go to Oxford to take my degree. But he says the soldier spoils the scholar in that town, and I would do better by going to the University of Leyden, which is cheaper and safer. He has sent me two of the books that I asked for, but not my Tacitus, which he cannot find. He thinks I must have locked it in my trunk, which I left in Oxford.