John Aubrey: My Own Life (30 page)

Mr Cooper gave me
³⁶
the second picture he made of Mr Hobbes (the King has the other), but like a fool, I did not take it away with me. I left it in his studio because part of the garment was unfinished in the picture. Now it is with Mr Cooper’s widow, Christiana; when I am next in London, I must remember to collect it.

. . .

Last night I was nearly killed by a drunkard in the street opposite Grays Inn Gate – a gentleman I’d never seen before – but thank God one of his companions hindered his thrust. Deo Gratias!

. . .

June

Mr Paschall tells me
³⁷
he is using Skinner’s lexicon (1669), and would gladly seek to obtain a collection of words peculiar to Devon and Cornwall.

. . .

Sir John Hoskyns
³⁸
has been extremely ill with noise and giddiness in his head – sometimes shooting pain – and has written to me for advice about cures and drugs. He tells me that Monmouth Castle is under guard and being rebuilt. Henry Ludlow is using Monmouth as his base for governing Wales, and has stationed his agent for military affairs, Richard Jeffries, there.

. . .

August

I have discovered
³⁹
that without my knowledge, to help my failing finances, my dear friend Sir Christopher Wren has suggested to Mr John Ogilby (the King’s Cosmographer) that I might help him improve the maps he is compiling for his
History of England
. I was intending to go to Kent, but shall wait now until Michaelmas to see what comes of this possibility of employment. Mr Ogilby is writing the history of all England and surveying the roads to this purpose. It is true that such work suits my talents, but Mr Ogilby is a cunning Scot, so I must deal warily with him, taking advice from my friends.

In his youth
⁴⁰
, Mr Ogilby was apprenticed to Mr Draper, who kept a dancing school in Grays Inn Lane. In a short time he so excelled at that profession that he set up on his own. He was chosen to perform an extraordinary part in one of the Duke of Buckingham’s masques, but by the misfortune of a false step came to the ground, sprained a vein in his leg and was afterwards lame. Then he went to Ireland in the Lord Lieutenant’s troop to teach dancing. There he wrote excellent verse and when he came back to England, in about 1648, he printed a translation of Virgil. After the Restoration he printed and published His Majesty’s entertainment at his coronation. In 1665, his
Odysses
came out, then his history of China and his history of Japan. But he lost all he had in the Great Conflagration and had to begin in the world again worth 5 li. at best. Such is his invention and wit that when he was undone he could shift handsomely and in a short time he has gained a good estate again.

If anything comes of Sir Christopher Wren’s suggestion, it will probably be February before I begin work for Mr Ogilby, then I will curry, or comb, over all England and Wales for about ten months. The King will give me protection and letters of introduction to assist my enquiries, etc.

Mr Ogilby’s list
⁴¹
of questions towards a description of Britannia has been discussed at several meetings of the Royal Society. I was present and so were Christopher Wren, John Hoskyns, Gregory King and Mr Ogilby himself. The list of queries has been extended to include a request to the nobility, gentry and all ingenious persons to communicate information on sea coasts, ports, harbours, havens, creeks, watchtowers, lighthouses, islands, shoals, etc.

. . .

The books I sent by carrier to Sir John Hoskyns have not arrived, nor has my letter.

Mr Hooke is ill
⁴²
. The Royal Society droops. My cousin Sir John Aubrey has been following a milk and buttermilk diet and recommends balsam pills. I wonder if Mr Hooke can be persuaded to try either of these cures. The buttermilk cure was recommended to Sir John by a beggar woman who cured the wasting disease of an old man who lives near him.

Mr Wood continues to demand much of me.

. . .

I have found out
⁴³
for Mr Wood that George Sandys, the foremost poet of his time, died in 1643, aged sixty-three, and is buried at Boxley Abbey. How much I loved his translations of Ovid when I was a boy.

. . .

Mr Thomas Browne
⁴⁴
tells me that there was once a Roman camp at Caster, near Yarmouth, where many Roman coins have been found, and one at Bennen near Burnham.

. . .

September

About a hundred
⁴⁵
brass inscriptions have been stolen from Norwich Cathedral.

. . .

I am staying
⁴⁶
with my lord the Earl of Thanet and his lady at Hothfield in Kent. My lord is a hypochondriac. I have recommended he drink white wine infused with ashen rinds, which has done my relations much good. But first he asks me to ask Mr Boyle, who recommended it, when, how much, and for how long he should take this medicine.

. . .

Sir John Hoskyns insists
⁴⁷
that there is vast room for researches into the anatomy of animals and plants: he has written to me about a boy who was bewitched into a bird and passed from branch to branch of several trees too remote for human locomotion. He has passed on other stories of magic in various parts of the world – haunted houses, charms and prophecies.

. . .

My lord the Earl
⁴⁸
of Thanet is sending a groom with a horse and my portmanteau to me. The groom will return by foot as a punishment for stopping all day recently at an alehouse and neglecting the horse in his charge.

. . .

October

I am at Hothfield still with my lord the Earl of Thanet. The ways are so bad, and the air so ill, that I stir not out of doors, but divert myself very pleasantly with algebra.

My thoughts keep returning
⁴⁹
to Sir Thomas Browne’s book
Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial, or a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk
, which was first published in 1658. Sir Thomas is now augmenting his book, and I discussed it with him when I was last in London.

Sir Thomas Browne writes:

What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these Ossuaries entered the famous Nations of the dead, and slept with Princes and Counsellours, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above Antiquarianism.

. . .

I am still trying to help Mr Wood with his questions. I wish he had more impertinent scobberlotching agents (as Dr Kettell would have said) to help him as I do in advancing his antiquarian work.

I have in my possession
⁵⁰
the prospect of Woodstock House and Park; a description of Bushell’s Grotto at Enstone and the songs he printed when the late King and Queen were so ‘romancely’ entertained there; and two other drafts of the ruins of Osney Abbey (one done by Mr Dobson himself, the other by his man Mr Hesketh, who was a priest). All these I will take to Oxford and give to him, as soon as I can.

. . .

Mr Hobbes has given
⁵¹
the Royal Society a copy of his book
Lux Mathematica
, printed this year in London.

. . .

November

I have a great desire
⁵²
to see my honest brother Tom, who is now twenty-seven years old, well settled, married to a good discreet wife with about 800 or 1,000 li.

. . .

December

Sir John Hoskyns has written
⁵³
to me again of witchcraft, and of the Royal Society’s experiments, and algebra. He recommends to me Lord Maidstone’s collection of antiquities from Constantinople; and suggests that my proposed survey should begin with the west of England.

. . .

I hope to retrieve
⁵⁴
Dr Dee’s papers in Kent. Sir Thomas Browne told me where they are lodged. I remember the stories my grandmother told me about seeing her grandfather with Dr Dee at his house in Mortlake. Sir William Aubrey and Dr Dee were great friends. When Dr Dee wrote his book
The Soveraignty of the Sea
, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, he asked my ancestor to read it and give advice on it.

. . .

Today I went on a five-mile pilgrimage on foot in the frost to search the register at Mortlake, but even here I found no trace of Dr Dee. I asked and was told to enquire of old Goody Faldo, aged eighty but still a lusty woman. She knew Dr Dee – her mother tended him in his sickness and did his laundry – and she told me exactly where he lies buried in the church of Mortlake. His body is in the middle of the chancel, a little towards the south side, between two of Queen Elizabeth’s servants. A marble stone was laid above him, but afterwards removed. Previously, when the children played in the church, they would use Dr Dee’s gravestone as their base and run to it in their games. But while he was alive the children dreaded him because they thought he was a conjuror.

According to Goody Faldo
⁵⁵
, Dr Dee was tall and slender; he wore a long black gown, like an artist’s gown, with hanging sleeves and slits without buttons or loops and tufts. She told me he kept a great many stilles for his experiments in alchemy, and that he could calm storms and use magic to recover hampers of stolen linen. It was from Dr Dee’s practice of distilling eggshells that Ben Jonson had the hint for his play
The Alchemist
.

My friend and fellow antiquary
⁵⁶
Mr Elias Ashmole has a very good painting of Dr Dee, from his son Arthur Dee. It shows that Dr Dee had a very fair, clear complexion and a long beard as white as milk. Mr Ashmole has thought of writing Dr Dee’s life. His deep interest in magic and astrology make him well suited to the task.

During our civil wars, Mr Ashmole held the post of Gentleman of the Ordnance in the garrison at Oxford, but spent most of his time studying at Brasenose College. He is a great friend of Mr William Lilly’s: they are both devoted to astrological pursuits.

. . .

My friend Henry Coley
⁵⁷
, another astrologer, has written to tell me I am much missed in London and daily expected. He hopes I will not be away much longer.

. . .

I am back
⁵⁸
from Kent. I saw Mr Hooke today, who has been ill. On Christmas Eve he passed the worst night he has ever had: melancholy and giddy, with shooting pain in the left side of his head above the ear. Since then he has cut his hair very close to his head, and though still giddy, is starting to get better. His vision in one eye is distorted and he has strange dreams of riding and eating cream.

My friends at the Royal Society have found me a small employment. I am to maintain a correspondence with numerous ingenious virtuosi in several counties, and the Society will pay the expenses of the letters and something of an honorarium. The point is to gather intelligence of things natural or artificial or anything remarkable in philosophy or mathematics.

It has been decided
⁵⁹
that from now on the Royal Society will keep only mathematical and philosophical books in its library. I had donated to the Society’s library a manuscript from around the time of Henry IV (namely
Historia Roffensia), and have now agreed that it can be exchanged with Mr Wood in Oxford for some mathematical or philosophical books.

I think my former servant
⁶⁰
Robert could win favour with the Royal Society if he were to go twice a year to Paris to obtain books direct from the sellers there. It is so difficult to buy books and maps from Paris at a distance: either they are not to be got, or are five times as expensive when sent for.

. . .

Anno 1673

22 January

I dined yesterday
⁶¹
(21st of this month) with my honoured friend Sir Christopher Wren, and tomorrow night my Lord Thanet will send a horse to carry me back to Kent. This evening I am dining with Mr Elias Ashmole.

Christopher Wren’s sister
⁶²
, Susan, is married to William Holder, the composer and theorist of speech and music. She is a rare she-surgeon. Recently she has cured His Majesty’s hand after he hurt it and it became swollen from the treatment of other surgeons. Before Susan Holder made a poultice to cure the wound, it pained him right up to his shoulder so extremely that he could not sleep and began to be feverish.

. . .

February

My account of Avebury commissioned by the King, Templa Druidum, and my Chorographia Antiquaria are with the philosopher Dr John Locke. He is six years younger than I am and grew up a mile or so from Stanton Drew, where he liked to play amongst the ancient stones, as I did too when I visited my grandmother who lived nearby. We meet sometimes at the Royal Society. I have encouraged Dr Locke to go and visit Mr Hobbes.

Dr Locke has become so interested in my work that he has offered to help meet the cost of printing it by interceding for me with his patron the Earl of Shaftesbury, but I must wait until the end of March to know what will happen between me and Mr Ogilby, whether he will employ me or not. I find him very inconstant. I had thought to begin my work for him by now. But whatever happens, I am determined to have my some of my own work printed by next mid-summer at the latest, so that Mr Wood can enroll my name in his book alongside the great authors of Trinity College.