John Aubrey: My Own Life (43 page)

Besides the great learning and wisdom that this gentleman was plentifully endowed withal, Nature had also framed him so courteous of disposition and affable of speech, so sweet of conversation and amiable behaviour, that there was never any in his place better beloved all his life, nor he himself more especially favoured of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, and the greatest personages in the realm in any part of his life than he was when he drew nearest his death.

He was of stature not tall, nor yet over-low; not gross in body, and yet of good habit; somewhat inclining to fatness of visage in his youth; round, well favoured, well coloured and lovely; and albeit in his latter years sickness had much impaired his strength and the freshness of his hew, yet there remained there still to the last in his countenance such comely and decent gravity as that the change rather added unto them than ought diminished his former dignity. He left behind him when he died, by a virtuous gentlewoman Wilgiford his wife (the first daughter of Mr John Williams of Tainton in the county of Oxford, whom he married very young a maiden, and enjoyed to his death, that both having lived together in great love and kindness by the space of 40 years), three sons and six daughters.

Memorandum: – he was one of the delegates (together with Dr Dale, etc.) for the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, and was a great stickler for the saving of her life, which kindness was remembered by King James at his coming-in to England, who asked after him, and probably would have made him Lord Keeper, but he died, as appears, a little before that good opportunity happened. His Majesty sent for his sons and knighted the two eldest, and invited them to court, which they modestly and perhaps prudently declined. They preferred a country life.

You may find him mentioned in the History of Mary, Queen of Scots, 8vo, written, I think, by (John) Hayward; as also in Thuanus’s Annales (insert his words here in honour to the Doctor’s Manes).

He was a good statesman; and Queen Elizabeth loved him and was wont to call him ‘her little Doctor’. Sir Joseph Williamson, Principal Secretary of Estate (first Under-Secretary), has told me that in the Letter-office are a great many letters of his to the Queen and council.

The learned John Dee was his great friend and kinsman, as I find by letters between them in the custody of Elias Ashmole, viz., John Dee wrote a book
The Soveraignty of the Sea
, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, which was printed, in folio. Mr Ashmole has it, and also the original copy of John Dee’s handwriting, and annexed to it is a letter of his cousin Dr William Aubrey, whose advice he desired in his writing on that subject.

Old Judge Sir (Edward) Atkins remembered Dr Aubrey when he was a boy; he lay at his father’s house in Gloucestershire: he kept his coach, which was rare in those days. The Judge told me they then (vulgarly) called it a Quitch. I have his original picture. He had a delicate, quick, lively and piercing black eye, fresh complexion, and a severe eyebrow. The figure in his monument at St Paul’s is not like him, it is too big.

Sir Lleuellin Jenkins, knight
³¹

Sir Lleuellin Jenkins, knight, was born at Llantrithid in the county of Glamorgan, Anno Domini . . . His father (whom I knew) was a good plain countryman, a copyholder of Sir John Aubrey, knight and baronet (eldest son of Sir Thomas), whose manor it is. He went to school at Cowbridge, not far off. David Jenkins, that was prisoner in the Tower (married a sister of Sir John Aubrey), was some remote kin to him; and, looking on him as a boy towardly, diligent, and good, he contributed something towards his education. Anno Domini 164(1), he was matriculated of Jesus College in Oxford, where he stayed till (I think) he took his degree of Bac. Artium. About that time Sir John Aubrey sent for him home to inform his eldest son Lewis Aubrey (since deceased, 1659) in grammar; and that he might take his learning the better, he was taught in the church-house where several boys came to school, and there were 6 or 7 gentlemen’s sons boarded in the town. The young gentlemen were all near of an age, and ripe for the University together; and to Oxford they all went under Mr Jenkins’s care about Anno 1649 or 50, but by reason of the disturbances of those times, Sir John would not have his son of any college. But they all studied at Mr (now Sir) Sampson White’s house, a grocer, opposite to University College. Here he stayed with my cousin about 3 years or better, and then, in Anno 165 . . . (vide: Mr Hobbes’s
De Corpore
, ’twas that year), he travelled with my cousin and two or 3 of the other gentlemen into France, where they stayed about 3 years and made themselves masters of that language.

He has a strong body for study, indefatigable, temperate and virtuous. God bless him.

Wenceslaus Hollar
³²

Wenceslaus Hollar, Bohemus, was born at Prague. His father was a Knight of the Empire: which is by letters patent under the imperial seal (as our baronets). I have seen it: the seal is bigger then the broad seal of England: in the middle is the imperial coat; and round about it are the coats of the Princes Electors. His father was a Protestant, and either for keeping a conventicle, or being taken at one, forfeited his estate, and was ruined by the Roman Catholics.

He told me that when he was a schoolboy he took a delight in drawing of maps; which draughts he kept, and they were pretty. He was designed by his father to have been a lawyer, and was put to that profession, but then his father’s troubles, together with the wars, forced him to leave his country. So it turned out that what he did for his delight and recreation only when a boy proved to be his livelihood when a man. I think he stayed sometime in Low Germany, then he came into England, where he was very kindly entertained by that great patron of painters and draughts-men (Thomas Howard) Lord High Marshall, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, where he spent his time in drawing and copying rarities, which he did etch (i.e. with
aqua fortis
in copper plates).

When the Lord Marshall went ambassador to the Emperor of Germany to Vienna, he travelled with much grandeur; and among others, Mr Hollar went with him (very well clad) to take views, landscapes, buildings, etc. remarkable in their journey, which we see now at the print shops. He hath done the most in that way that ever any one did, insomuch that I have heard Mr John Evelyn, RSS, say that at sixpence a print his labour would come to . . . li. (quaere: John Evelyn).

I remember he told me that when he first came into England (which was a serene time of peace) that the people both poor and rich did look cheerfully, but at his return, he found the countenances of the people all changed, melancholy, spiteful, as if bewitched.

I have said before that his father was ruined upon the account of the Protestant religion. Wenceslaus died a Roman Catholic, of which religion, I suppose, he might have been ever since he came to Arundel-house.

He was a very friendly good-natured man as could be, but shiftless as to the world, and died not rich.

Monsieur Renatus Descartes
³³

Nobilis Gallus, Perroni dominus, summus mathematicus et philosophus; natus Hagae Turonum pridie Calendas Apriles, 1596; denatus Holmiae Calendis Februarii, 1650.

This inscription I find under his picture graved by C. V. Dalen.

How he spent his time in his youth, and by what method he became so knowing, he tells the world in his treatise entitled
Of Method
. The Society of Jesus glory in that their order had the educating of him. He lived several years at Egmont (near the Hague), from whence he dated several of his books.

He was too wise a man to encumber himself with a wife; but as he was a man, he had the desires and appetites of a man; he therefore kept a good conditioned handsome woman that he liked, and by whom he had some children (I think 2 or 3). ’Tis pity but coming from the brain of such a father, they should be well cultivated.

He was so eminently learned that all learned men made visits to him, and many of them would desire him to show them his . . . of instruments (in those days mathematical learning lay much in the knowledge of instruments, and, as Sir Henry Savile said, in doing of tricks), he would draw out a little drawer under his table, and show them a pair of compasses with one of the legs broken; and then, for his ruler, he used a sheet of paper folded double. This from Alexander Cooper (brother of Samuel), limner to Christina, Queen of Sweden, who was familiarly acquainted there with Descartes.

Mr Hobbes was wont to say that had Descartes kept himself wholly to geometry that he had been the best geometer in the world. He did very much admire him, but said that he could not pardon him for writing in defence of Transubstantiation, which he knew to be absolutely against his judgement.

Venetia Stanley
³⁴

Venetia Stanley was daughter of Sir . . . Stanley. She was a most beautiful desirable creature; and being
matura viro
was left by her father to live with a tenant and servants at Enston Abbey in Oxfordshire: but as private as that place was, it seems her beauty could not lie hid. The young eagles had espied her, and she was sanguine and tractable and of much suavity (which to abuse was great pity).

In those days, Richard, Earl of Dorset (eldest son and heir to the Lord Treasurer), lived in the greatest splendour of any nobleman of England. Among other pleasures that he enjoyed, Venus was not the least. This pretty creature’s fame quickly came to his lordship’s ear, who made no delay to catch at such an opportunity.

I have now forgot who first brought her to town, but I have heard my uncle Danvers say (who was her contemporary) that she was so commonly courted, and by grandees, that ’twas written over her lodging one night
in literis uncialibus
:

PRAY COME NOT NEAR, FOR DAME

VENETIA STANLEY LODGETH HERE.

The Earl of Dorset, aforesaid, was her greatest gallant, he was extremely enamoured of her, and had one if not more children by her. He settled on her an annuity of 500 li. per annum.

Among other young sparks of that time, Sir Kenelme Digby grew acquainted with her, and fell so much in love with her that he married her, much against the good will of his mother; but he would say that ‘a wise man, and lusty, could make an honest woman out of a brothell-house’.

Sir Edmund Wylde had her picture (and you may imagine was very familiar with her), which picture is now (vide) at Droitwych, in Worcestershire, at an inn in an entertaining-room, where now the town keep their meetings. Also at Mr Rose’s, a jeweller in Henrietta Street in Convent garden, is an excellent piece of hers, drawn after she was newly dead.

She had a most lovely and sweet-turned face, delicate dark-brown hair. She had a perfect healthy constitution; strong; good skin; well proportioned; much inclining to a Bona Roba (near altogether). Her face, a short oval; dark-brown eyebrow, about which much sweetness, as also in the opening of her eyelids. The colour of her cheeks was just that of the damask rose, which is neither too hot nor too pale. She was of a just stature, not very tall.

Sir Kenelm had several pictures of her by Van Dyke, etc. He had her hands cast in plaster and her feet, and her face. See Ben Jonson’s 2nd volumn, where he hath made her live in poetry, in his drawing of her both body and mind:

Sitting, and ready to be drawne,

What makes these tiffany, silkes, and lawne,

Embroideries, feathers, fringes, lace,

When every limbe takes like a face!

When these verses were made she had three children by Sir Kenelme, who are there mentioned, viz. Kenelm, George, and John.

She died in her bed suddenly. Some suspected that she was poisoned. When her head was opened there was found but little brain, which her husband imputed to her drinking of viper-wine; but spiteful women would say ’twas a viper-husband who was jealous of her that she would steal a leap.

I have heard some say, e.g. my cousin Elizabeth Falkner, that after her marriage she redeemed her honour by her strict living. Once a year the Earl of Dorset invited her and Sir Kenelm to dinner, where the Earl would behold her with much passion, and only kiss her hand.

Sir Kenelm erected to her memory a sumptuous and stately monument at . . . Friars (near Newgate-street) in the east end of the south aisle, where her body lies in a vault of brick-work, over which are three steps of black marble, on which was a stately alter of black marble with 4 inscriptions in copper gilt affixed to it: upon this alter her bust of copper gilt, all which (unless the vault, which was only opened a little by the fall) is utterly destroyed by the Great Conflagration.

How these curiosities would be quite forgot, did not such idle fellows as I am put them down!

PART XII

More Lives and Deaths

Anno 1680

September

ABOUT TWENTY YEARS
ago
¹
, I gave a quantity of petrified shells to the Royal Society. They were something like cockles, but plain and with a long neck rather than striated or invecked. I found them in south Wiltshire. Mr Hooke says the species is now lost. The quarry at Portland in Dorset is full of oyster shells, and a great deal of stuff like sugar candy, that Mr Hooke says is petrified seawater.