John Aubrey: My Own Life (21 page)

. . .

August

I am newly returned into Wiltshire and have deferred my journey into Derbyshire until I have word that Mr Hobbes is there. I will talk to him about Ireland and how it might be settled.

Mr Tyndale writes
³⁰
with advice about the journey I might make next to Portugal. And he tells me he has seen my mistress again recently – just in passing in the street – looking prettier than she did when we all met together at Samuel Cooper’s and in the garden last spring.

. . .

I am delighted
³¹
with the picture of Mr Hobbes that I commissioned from Mr Samuel Cooper: it is one of the best pieces Mr Cooper has ever done. Mr Cooper is an ingenious man of great humanity. A week on Monday, I shall see Mr Hobbes’s brother and we shall drink his health together.

. . .

When I ask myself what I have accomplished in my life thus far, my efforts add up to truly nothing; only umbrages! I am proud of the fact I had drawings done of the ruins of Osney Abbey when I was a student, and I have saved and collected some antiquities, things that were neglected or forgotten and would have sunk without trace if I had not cared for them. But I have been a whetstone to other people’s achievements. Nothing more.

My friend Mr Wencelaus Hollar
³²
has engraved one of the drawings I commissioned of Osney Abbey for inclusion in the second volume of Mr Dugdale’s
Monasticon Anglicanum
, printed this year. The first volume was printed in 1655. In these books, Mr Dugdale is compiling the history of the ancient abbeys, monasteries, hospitals and collegiate churches in England and Wales. He also includes some French, Irish and Scottish monasteries formerly relating to England. Alongside the drawing of Osney Abbey I am proud to see my coat of arms together with an explanation of how I commissioned the drawing when I was a student in Oxford.

. . .

My friend William Petty has been knighted.

. . .

December

Mr Harrington has been interrogated and imprisoned in the Tower for conspiracy. He is a gentleman of high spirit and hot head. I fear for his reason.

. . .

My friend Mr Edmund Wylde has a dangerous fever.

. . .

Mr Samuel Cooper
³³
has been commissioned to draw the King’s profile for the new milled coinage: Mr Cooper prefers sketching at night and by candlelight.

. . .

Anno 1662

March

Mr Hartlib has died. After the Restoration of the King, he lost his pension, and his petition to Parliament concerning his penury went unanswered.

. . .

May

Sir John Hoskyns writes
³⁴
to me of Mr Hobbes. He tells me Mr Hobbes has written another book,
Problemata Physica
, and dedicated it to the King. He hopes that Mr Hobbes will not provoke the mathematician Lord Brouncker, who has found favour with the King and been made the Queen’s chancellor.

The King has granted Mr Hobbes a pension of 100 li., and he is often at court, where his irascible nature has earned him the name ‘the Bear’: ‘Here comes my Bear to be baited,’ the King is wont to say.

. . .

Mr Hobbes has silenced
³⁵
his detractors, Dr Wallis especially, and put a stop to malicious doubts about his loyalty to the King by printing a new pamphlet,
Mr Hobbes Considered in His Loyalty, Religion, Reputation and Manners
. Here he explains that he wrote and published his
Leviathan
on behalf of the faithful subjects of His Majesty, who took his part in the war, or otherwise did their utmost to defend His Majesty’s right and person against the rebels. After His Majesty’s defeat, these subjects, having no other means of protection, nor (for the most part) of subsistence, were forced to compound with the new masters and promise obedience to save their lives and fortunes.
Leviathan
affirms that they did this lawfully: they had done all they could be obliged to do in defence of His Majesty and were consequently at liberty to seek the safety of their lives and livelihoods without treachery. I am myself one of these people.

Mr Hobbes says
³⁶
that were it not for the laws, many men would have no more scruples about killing a man than he or I do about killing a little bird. In his
Leviathan
he says that men will never be obedient and good subjects until his doctrine is taught in schools, and he attacks the ecclesiastics and universities.

. . .

Mr Tyndale complains
³⁷
that he misses me greatly in London and declares that my absence makes him feel low and fretful. The Queen has been very ill. He tells me that our friend Sir John Hoskyns has a severe fever. For all these reasons I must return to the city as soon as I can.

. . .

June

Parliament has passed
³⁸
a new Licensing Act, which requires books on most subjects to be licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London.

. . .

July

The Royal Society has received its charter from the King. It will now be permitted to print books. The professors at Gresham College in Bishopsgate have generously offered rooms for the new society’s meetings. There is a great hall for elections and a separate room for the ordinary meetings every Wednesday.

. . .

November

On Mr Boyle’s recommendation, Mr Hooke has been elected the Royal Society’s Curator of Experiments.

Mr Hooke is of but middling stature
³⁹
, something crooked, pale-faced, but his head is large and his eye full, popping and grey. He has a delicate head of brown hair and an excellent moist curl. He seems a very temperate man.

. . .

Sir William Petty presented
⁴⁰
a treatise on shipbuilding to the Royal Society, but the President, Lord Brouncker, confiscated it, claiming it is too great an Arcanum of State to be commonly perused!

. . .

December

Dr Walter Charleton
⁴¹
has proposed me as a candidate for election to the Royal Society. He is a learned, melancholy man and Physician in Ordinary to the King.

. . .

Anno 1663

7 January

On this day
⁴²
I have been elected to the Royal Society.

. . .

21 January

To my great joy
⁴³
, I have been admitted, formally, to the Royal Society. Our meetings include experiments. Today I proposed to the learned company Mr Potter’s idea of moving blood between chickens. But it was considered absurd and impossible: a blemish on the Society’s reputation to experiment with such an idea. This embarrassed me very much and brought a hot blush to my cheeks. My stammer started up and was the worst it has been in years.

. . .

The minister of Avebury
⁴⁴
claims that the huge stones may be broken wherever you please without any great trouble. This is how: they make a fire on that line of the stone where they would have it crack; and, after the stone is well heated, draw over a line with cold water and immediately give a smart knock with a smith’s sledgehammer, and the stone will break like collets at the glasshouse. I hope this breaking of the ancient stones can be stopped.

. . .

4 March

Today I attended my second Royal Society meeting. My stammer was less bad this time. Mr Hooke presented his proposals for experiments on the resistance of air to bodies moved through it. He was appointed curator of these experiments, which will begin with a pendulum sealed up in a glass.

I presented the Society
⁴⁵
with my friend Francis Potter’s scheme for a cart with legs instead of wheels. The Society asked Mr Hooke to consider it and report back at the next meeting.

I have proposed Mr Potter as a member of the Royal Society.

. . .

18 March

Mr Hooke’s report
⁴⁶
on Mr Potter’s cart with legs was read before the Society today. A copy of the report, with a few alterations and corrections suggested at the meeting, will be sent to Mr Potter. Mr Hooke will also draw up a full description of the cart and a scheme for building it. Mr Potter has been elected a member of the Royal Society, to my immense delight.

I mentioned before
⁴⁷
that learned company today that I have been told that the Duke of Orleans had a way of producing animals from the putrefaction of vegetables. This gave rise to a return to the discussion on equivocal generation that took place back in October 1662, before I was a member of the Royal Society. A number of the Fellows have been charged with experiments in this regard. Mr John Evelyn will put several pieces of flesh and some blood in a closed vessel that cannot be fly-blown and see what is produced.

. . .

Mr Potter
⁴⁸
will come in person to the Royal Society after Easter, and in the meantime send me forty shillings so I can pay his admittance for him.

. . .

6 May

Today I described to the Royal Society my observation that holly berries, after lying five or six hours in the bottom of a vessel of water, will rise and swim up to the middle, which is thought to be due to a kind of fermentation and swelling that means the berries increase in size. The Royal Society decided this experiment should be tried again in the winter.

I also described
⁴⁹
my observation that grains of wheat will sink in water with an air bubble attached to them. When the bubble breaks, the grains rise again, then sink a second time to the bottom and do not rise again.

Quaere
⁵⁰
: if a bladder filled with smoke will be carried up into the air, and if so, perhaps several such bladders might draw a man up into the air to a certain height?

. . .

13 May

The new charter
⁵¹
of the Royal Society was read before its council, which met for the first time today. It has been decided that discussion of who should be received and admitted into the Royal Society will be kept secret.

. . .

June

When I was about
⁵²
two thirds of the way down Dundery Hill, on my way from Bristol to Wells, I saw a thin mist rise out of the ditch on the right-hand side of the highway. When I came nearer to the place, I could not discern the mist, so I retraced my steps and saw it again from a distance. Then I noticed that there was some flower or weed growing in the ditch from which the vapour came. My nose was affected with a smell that I knew, but it did not come immediately to mind. My groom, who is dull of understanding, but whose senses are very quick, caught up with me and I asked him what he could smell. He answered that he smelt the smell of the canals that come from the baths at Bath.

. . .

At Crudwell
⁵³
, near the manor house, is a fine spring in the street called Bery-well. Labourers say it quenches their thirst better than other waters. To my taste it seems to have
aliquantulum aciditatis
, and is perhaps vitriolate. The town is called after this well; perhaps it is called Crudwell because of the water turning milk into cruds.

. . .

July

Mr Walter Charleton has presented the Royal Society with a plan of the stone antiquities at Avebury, near Marlborough, suggesting that it would be worth digging there under a certain triangular stone, where a monument to some Danish king might be found. I have been asked, together with my friend Sir James Long, to make further enquiries into this.

. . .

September

Sir Kenelm Digby
⁵⁴
says that Dr Dee (whom my great-grandfather knew well) diligently observed the weather for seven years, and as a result developed such skill in predicting the weather that he was accounted a witch.

. . .

I have found
⁵⁵
, I think, a place for the free school at Malmesbury that Mr Hobbes intends to establish. The land is in Bradon Forest, worth about 25 li. per annum, and in His Majesty’s gift.

I have also found
⁵⁶
Mr Hobbes a house in London, but he hesitates to take it lest his pension should cease in this time of austerity when the court is reducing its expenses. He is at Chatsworth for the time being and will make no decisions until he comes to London himself.