John Aubrey: My Own Life (52 page)

. . .

From Bath, the physician Thomas Guidott
⁴⁶
has written to me with news of Mr and Mrs Ashmole, who are taking the baths with enjoyment and effect: ‘He is stronger in his limbs and she much better in her bowels.’ He hopes to increase the number of baths that they take. Elizabeth Ashmole is Mr Ashmole’s third wife and the daughter of our mutual friend and antiquary Mr William Dugdale.

Thomas Guidott tells me too that he has recently been given some Roman coins. He says the only important find among them is a fine silver Triumvir piece depicting a trireme, which is inscribed:

ANT IIIVIRRP ANTONIUS TRIUMVIR REPUBLICA

. . .

July

The Royal Society have done me the honour of taking charge of a transcription of my manuscript on the Natural History of Wiltshire, which I have entrusted to Mr Hooke’s hands.

How I long to see Oxford once more and to put my writings in order before I die. But I fear I will be arrested and must hide for a while yet. I am so grateful to Mr Kent, even if he has embezzled my books, for letting me stay with him, and even if his giddy wench of a maid interferes with my letters and piles them in a box, so looking for anything is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. She even lost one letter out of her breast!

My brother’s rough humour has put my business so out of order that I have had to deal with some odd people.
Heu, heu, quid faciant homines, cuive habeant fidem?
(Alas, alas! What are men to do or in whom should they put their trust? Catullus 30, 6.)

If the bailiffs catch me, my brother having been so unkind, I will go and end my days with that good woman Mrs Bayley: the widow who looked after the historian Mr John Rushworth of Lincoln’s Inn before he died, in the debtors’ prison in Rules-court Alley in Southwark.

. . .

Mr Wood sends me so many queries. I trouble myself to find the answers for him, despite the troubles that press upon me. I desire to give Mr Wood my watch, which was a gift from the Earl of Pembroke, to remember me by. I will be my own executor and send it to him as soon as the watchmaker has finished mending it.

. . .

I am fearful of sending valuable things to Oxford by the wagon for I hear there is exceeding robbing.

. . .

Anno 1691

January

In the box I will send Mr Wood I will include two excellent volumes of the Venerable Bede’s works, to be deposited in the museum until further notice, but they should not remain there, nor in the Bodleian Library. Perhaps there will be a library at New Inn Hall, in which case I will give them to it, or else to Jesus College Library.

I am so continually troubled in mind I cannot write. I intend to finish the second part of my Natural History of Wiltshire, but must go down to Wiltshire before the end of this month, and that will disorder my plans.

I asked my brother to pay Captain Stumpe of Malmesbury a debt of 20 li. upon bond, which I borrowed in 1660. But my brother never did it. I threw myself on the mercy of my friend Mr Kent, who will appease my creditors, but I shall be in danger of imprisonment. If my brother learns that I have an annuity from Mr Kent for Broad Chalke, he will seize upon it.

My brother’s ill humour
⁴⁷
has landed me in bankruptcy!

. . .

I wish Mr Wood
⁴⁸
would do right by Mr Hooke. When I sent him my box, I included Mr Hooke’s account of the discovery Mr Newton runs away with all the credit for. But I do not think he has taken notice of it in his biographical book, which will be called
Athenae Oxonienses
, since only Athens could rival Oxford in its array of distinguished writers.

. . .

February

I have decided to place
⁴⁹
my Natural History of Wiltshire, my Antiquities of Wiltshire and my other manuscripts in the museum.

. . .

I hoped to go
⁵⁰
to Oxford last Friday, but when I went to the coach I found five women, two of them old and very sick, and no room for my dog: a pretty little bitch that I have lately grown extremely fond of. So I will hope to go on Monday. On Monday night, God willing, I shall be in Oxford, and will stay for just a week. I hope I can lodge somewhere near to Mr Wood.

. . .

Mr Lhwyd, who was Dr Plot’s assistant at the Ashmolean, has taken over as Keeper of the Museum.

. . .

From New Inn Hall
⁵¹
, Oxford, Thomas Bayley writes to thank me for the gift of St Jerome’s bible and Bede’s works: they are the first benefactions to be presented to their library. I shall be inscribed in the book of benefactors. My coat of arms is already pasted in the binding of the St Jerome bible and Thomas Bayley has asked me to send some more to put upon the other books I have given them.

. . .

Next week I think
⁵²
I will finish Part 2 of my Natural History of Wiltshire. In the chapter on architecture, I would like to insert Dr Wren’s animadversions on Salisbury Cathedral. I remember that he was invited by Seth Ward, Bishop of Sarum, to survey the cathedral. He spent at least a week on it and produced a curious discourse, no more than about two sheets. I am told it has been lent to someone, but no one seems to know whom. I will attempt to trace it.

. . .

I think there is
⁵³
about ten times as much gardening around London now as there was in Anno 1660. In the time of King Charles II gardening was much improved and has become more common. Over the last twenty years we have many more foreign plants and since 1683 many exotic plants have been brought into England, no less than seven thousand. I have heard this from Mr Watts, the gardener of the apothecary’s garden at Chelsea, and other botanists. As for Longleat Garden, it was lately made; I have not seen it, but they say it is noble.

. . .

April

Mr Hooke has been
⁵⁴
very ill, and we were afraid we would lose him. I assured him that Mr Wood would do right by him and give him the credit for the idea Mr Newton takes the credit for. This comforted his spirits.

I have written
⁵⁵
to Mr Lhwyd to tell him that among the other things I have given to Mr Wood for the Ashmolean Museum, there is my unfinished Villare Anglicanum, or collection of English place names. I can think of no one more suited to finishing the task than Mr Lhwyd, and I only hope he will do right by me and make mention of me if he does so.

. . .

Mr Wood has complained that the watch I gave him does not work well, but it kept time indifferently when I had it. The days of the month were always faulty but that isn’t worth a chip. I have told him that if he has it mended he should do so in London rather than Oxford. I believe it cost at least 10 li. when the Earl of Pembroke bought it for me.

. . .

I have heard
⁵⁶
that my old friend Tom Mariett died about ten days ago. His third wife broke his heart.

. . .

I hope to get
⁵⁷
to Oxford – our English Athens – in July.

. . .

May

I have been to the Tower
⁵⁸
to see the Earl of Clarendon, who received my visit very kindly. He has been imprisoned since the beginning of the year for corresponding with King James in exile. I was surprised to learn how few people go to visit such a great person in prison. I explained to the Earl how to write to Mr Wood, but he says he cannot write his father’s life, as Mr Wood would like, until he is at liberty to return to his papers.

. . .

Mr Hanson of Magdalen
⁵⁹
College, Oxford, tells me that he has observed that almost all the well waters about the north part of Wiltshire are very brackish. At Highworth the apothecary, Mr Allmon, told him he had often seen milk coagulated with the water, and yet the common people brew with it, which gives their beer an ungrateful taste. At Cricklade their water is so very salty that the whole town is obliged to have recourse to a nearby river for their necessary uses. At Wotton Bassett they have a medicinal spring, some small distance from the town, which a neighbouring divine says Dr Willis gave this judgement on: it is the same as that at Astrop. They have also a petrifying spring. At Devizes, almost a quarter of a mile from the town, there is another petrifying spring, which a local physician, Dr Merriweather, showed me. At Bagshot, near Hungerford, is a chalybeate spring: some gentlemen drank of it with good success.

. . .

June

Mr Wood has published the first volume of his
Athenae et Fasti Oxonienses
:
An exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the most Antient and Famous University of Oxford from the fifteenth year of King Henry the Seventh, 1500 to 1690, to which are added the Fasti or Annales of the said University
.

The costs of publication have almost ruined him!

. . .

Since there has been
⁶⁰
such a long friendship between me and Mr Wood, I shall present one of his books to a public library (e.g. New Inn Hall, or wherever he thinks fit) as a memorial of the friendship between us. When he comes to London, I hope he will bring with him Sir Christopher Wren’s observations of Salisbury church.

The Earl of Abingdon kindly invites me to stay with him at his house in Lavington. I shall do so in about a month after my visit to Oxford. His wife died suddenly in May and I must comfort him in his sadness if I can.

. . .

July

Today I sent to Oxford
⁶¹
a great bundle of books via the Saracen’s Head carrier. I intended to add into the box four volumes of my manuscripts in folio, plus a thick folio of letters written to me, but the Royal Society got to hear of this yesterday, and insisted on delaying the manuscripts and letters so transcriptions can be made before they are sent to Oxford. They will not charge me for the transcriptions: I did not expect so great an honour. I would willingly print my Templa Druidum in my lifetime, since it is finished and only wants an Aristarchus to polish the style.

. . .

I have been chosen
⁶²
again to serve on the committee that audits the Royal Society’s accounts.

. . .

St Thomas’s Day

The Royal Society’s transcription
⁶³
of my Natural History of Wiltshire has cost 7 li. (including the paper). It is a folio as thick as the Common Book of Prayer. I did not think it would prove so bulky.

. . .

August

Mr William Fanshawe
⁶⁴
asks me where he may get Samuel von Pufendorf’s book of natural religion, and at what price. He applauds my Treatise on Education and encourages me to perfect it, send it abroad, and so cause posterity to celebrate my name with more respect than any of the great men who first civilised and cultivated rude and untaught mankind.

. . .

Mr John Ray has agreed
⁶⁵
to read over my memoirs of the Natural History of Wiltshire, and asks me to send them to him by the Braintree carrier, who innes at the Pewter Pot in Leaden Hall Street and goes out of town on a Friday morning every week. He says he has never had anything miscarry this way, either coming or going. He believes there is great variety of plants in Wiltshire and if it were well searched perhaps some new discoveries might be made. Also, he identifies the two kinds of tree (hornbeam is one) about which I enquired.

I have sent Mr Ray a list of the titles of my works in manuscript, and by this he can see that I have not been idle. He hopes that in time I will gratify the learned and ingenious by publication. He imagines there would be many as desirous of reading them as he is himself.

. . .

September

I have now been
⁶⁶
seven times to try and see Mr Heyrick, the stationer, on Mr Wood’s behalf. When at last I found him, he seemed to me to be the most morose and unmoral man I ever met with. He cares not for Mr Wood and said he would not take pains to answer his queries.

. . .

Mr John Ray has read
⁶⁷
my History of Wiltshire in manuscript and offered some gentle criticisms.

. . .

October

I went to Bayworth
⁶⁸
– about three miles south of Oxford – with Mr Wood and Mr Dyar.

. . .

Mr John Ray is delighted with my History of Wiltshire, where he says I mingle
utile dulci
. He believes all kinds of readers would appreciate it and urges me not to be deterred from publishing it by fear of giving offence.

He says there is only
⁶⁹
one thing in the manuscript that might justly give offence and that is my hypothesis of the Terraqueous Globe, which is in fact Mr Hooke’s theory. I think it the best thing in the whole work, even though it interferes with Chapter One of the Book of Genesis. Mr Ray says he cannot accept it. Mr Hooke first brought his theory before the Royal Society in 1663 or 1664.

There are lots of lacunae in my manuscript that must be filled in before it can be published, and Mr Ray criticises some of my new coined words, which he says do not sound well. Mr Boyle has also been criticised for using new coined words. Here are some examples: to apricate, to reficate, ‘continently’ put as opposite to incontinently, etc.