John Aubrey: My Own Life (31 page)

I have succeeded
⁶³
in putting Mr Hobbes in correspondence with the Vice-President of Magdalen Hall and now he has got his works printed and bound for sending to his old college. He says he would have gladly done this before now, if he could have been sure his books would be welcomed. But they have been so decried by Dr Wallis and others of influence in the University that he has hesitated to donate copies of his books until now. The old gent is strangely vigorous in mind still and walks every morning to meditate. He has finished the treatise on law that I urged him to write eight or nine years ago. I am like a whetstone that can make things sharp, even if it cannot cut itself.

. . .

5 February

I read my paper on winds to a meeting of the Royal Society.

. . .

Mr Ashmole has shown
⁶⁴
me a learned letter that my great-grandfather Dr William Aubrey wrote to his cousin Dr John Dee, which was found in one of Dr Dee’s manuscripts.

. . .

March

I would like to return
⁶⁵
to see Rosamund’s bower again at Woodstock near Oxford. I have my drawings of it from when I went there as a student, before the war. My friend Edmund Wylde of the Royal Society tells me that there was once a nunnery near Cremer church, and a vault leading from Rosamund’s bower. I have heard that two or three years ago, scholars dug up Rosamund’s bones.

I have also heard that there is a spring near Woodstock in Oxford that turns earth crumblings into cockleshells. I have asked Mr Wood to investigate for me. I am making a collection of the natural miracles of England.

. . .

April

My books
⁶⁶
are in my trunk at Kington St Michael, but I dare not trust my brother William with the key, for then they would fly all about the country like butterflies. There are three views of Osney Abbey in that trunk (a fourth I gave to Mr William Dugdale for the second volume of his
Monasticon
, which was printed in 1661).

Mr Dugdale avows that at the time of his birth, on 12 September 1605, a swarm of bees came and settled under the window of the room in which he was born: an omen, as it were, of his laborious collections of antiquities. The third volume of his
Monasticon
will be printed this year.

. . .

I dined recently
⁶⁷
at Rumney Marsh with one Mr Goresuch who told me that at the old Gothic house near the park gate at Woodstock, which was the house of Sir Geoffrey Chaucer, there is a picture of him that has been passed down with the house from one owner to another. I must go and see it.

. . .

Easter

James, Duke of York – heir to the throne, the present King having no children born within wedlock – refused to receive the Eucharist in the Anglican Church this Eastertide. Nor will he swear the oath prescribed by the Parliament’s new Test Act for addressing the dangers that may arise from Popish recusants. This is an open declaration of his allegiance to the Church of Rome. The King opposes his brother’s conversion and has ensured that James’s children, Mary and Anne, are raised as Protestants. Fear of Roman Catholic influence at court grows by the day. God preserve our country from a return to religious strife.

PART VIII

Surrey

Anno 1673

May

SIR LLEUELLIN JENKINS
¹
and Sir Joseph Williamson have been sent as plenipotentiaries to Nemeghen. They set off under the opposition of Saturn and Mars, so if their ambassadoring comes to any good I will never trust to astrology again! They are to attend a congress in Cologne to try and end our war with the Dutch. The Swedes will act as mediators.

. . .

My spirit is dejected
²
, but after this quartile aspect of Saturn and Mars, it will be better about Whitsuntide, for we are all governed by the planets just as the wheels and weights move the index of a clock. As soon as these ill aspects are over, and not before, I will treat with Mr Ogilby, who is a cunning Scot and must be held fast.

. . .

At last, Mr Ogilby
³
has officially commissioned me to perform a survey of the County of Surrey. The licence, which he has signed, sealed and dated the 2nd of this month, requires, in His Majesty’s name, all Justices of the Peace, mayors, bailiffs, parsons, vicars, churchwardens, high constables, constables and headborows – in other words all His Majesty’s officers, ministers and subjects whatsoever – to aid and assist me in the conduct of my survey. I shall have free access to all public registers and other books, whereby the geographical and historical description of Surrey may be promoted or ascertained. I am delighted and will begin my perambulation of Surrey in about a fortnight. I will take notice of the county’s hundreds, parishes, villages and hamlets; the cities, corporate towns, market towns and fair towns; the houses of the nobility and gentry; castles, churches, chapels, monasteries, hospitals, schools, colleges; forests, woods, groves; waters, springs, baths; Roman ways, stations, coins and monuments, etc. And I will be sure to note any obsolete or peculiar words and any old customs I come across. In the meantime, I have some queries towards a description of Britannia to send Mr Wood.

. . .

June

Alas, I must wait
⁴
another week or so to set off for Surrey, because my brother has lamed my good and handsome horse just as I need it. So now I shall have to ride my brother’s little nag. I have found a new servant: a pretty youth to wait on me who can read and write and loves ingenious things. I think he will do me good service on my perambulation.

I am still not free of the malicious aspects of Saturn, which will do me no good for two more years. I hope the delicate air and diversion of Surrey will cure my lassitude of spirit.

. . .

Dr Fell
⁵
, Dean of Christ Church, is making trouble for Mr Wood in Oxford and keeps trying to alter his book, for which I too have worked so hard.
The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford
(
Historia et antiquitates universitatis oxoniensis
) will be published later this year in two volumes by the University Press, where Dr Fell is very influential. An undergraduate at Christ Church, Richard Peers, whom Mr Wood calls ‘a sullen, dogged, clownish and perverse fellow’, is translating the book into Latin and making vexatious changes that very much peeve Mr Wood.

I have sent
⁶
Mr Wood some notes towards a description of Britannia.

. . .

St John’s Night

Two days ago
⁷
, terrible flooding began. All the hay and grass on the low ground is spoiled, and enormous damage has been done.

Tonight I was in danger of being run through with a sword at Mr Burges’s chamber in Middle Temple.

. . .

4 July

I was with my friend Sir Robert Moray for three hours this morning; he seemed well enough, but he has died suddenly this evening around 8 p.m. This morning he drank at least half a pint of water, as was his custom. He died in his lodging in the leaded pavilion in the garden at Whitehall. He had just one shilling in his pocket, but the King will bury him.

Robert Moray’s death
⁸
is a great loss, as I know he would have got some employment for me if I had needed it, if only he had lived. He was a good chemist and often assisted His Majesty in his chemical operations. He had the King’s ear as much as anyone and was indefatigable in his undertakings. He had promised to send me an account of some of the stone temples in Scotland and what the common people called them, but now death has prevented him. He was a courtier who would do courtesies for friendship’s sake. Mr Wood says he was an abhorrer of women, but this might be a gross mistake.

. . .

I leave for Surrey on Monday (the wet weather has hindered me so far).

I have decided
⁹
not to include Southwark in my survey, since the great antiquary Mr Stowe carefully did it in folio (nine leaves) already. I will refer my readers to his work rather than repeat it.

I have decided to begin my own perambulation of the county in South Lambeth.

. . .

The celebrated River Thames
¹⁰
washes its banks through the county of Surrey and divides it from Middlesex. The part of the Thames which lies between London Bridge
¹¹
and the Tower, as far as Blackwall, is generally called the Poole by the trading people; e.g. the orange-women, oyster-women, etc. say they bought things at the Poole, meaning this part of the Thames.

. . .

London Bridge was first built of wood and then, with thirty-three years of labour, finished with stone. There is a commonly received tradition that when this bridge was to be made, the River Thames was turned into Surrey by a channel drawn from somewhere towards Cuckold’s Point (I think Venerable Bede’s
Chronicle
mentions this). But making such a channel would have been a Herculean labour. It sounds more like old romance than true history.

. . .

It is generally agreed
¹²
that the Tower of London was built by some of the Roman emperors. The great square tower (wherein is the magazine for gunpowder) is called Caesar’s Tower. At the posterior gate of the Tower, before the Great Conflagration, I saw many Roman bricks. Since the fire there is only a piece or part of it remaining, but it is still possible to see some Roman bricks.

. . .

At South Lambeth the farthest house is the house where the botanist and collector John Tradescant the Younger lived and showed his collection of rarities and curiosities, which he inherited from his father, John Tradescant the Elder, who was royal gardener to the late King. After his father’s death, John Tradescant the Younger was appointed Keeper of His Majesty’s gardens in his place.

The Tradescants’ garden at Lambeth was once stocked with choice plants, among them the rare Balm of Gilead tree. My friend Edmund Wylde had some layers of this tree, and grew it very well in Bedfordshire, until one hard winter the mice killed it. I have not heard of any other examples of it growing in England.

Very few rare plants remain here; there is only a very fair horse chestnut tree, some pine trees, sumach trees, Phylereas, etc. And at the entrance to the gate, over the bridge of the moat, are two vast ribs of a whale. Before John Tradescant the Younger died in 1662, people came to view his collection here and it was known as ‘The Ark’.

The Tradescant collection
¹³
was given to my friend Mr Ashmole by Deed of Gift in 1659.

. . .

In the ditches
¹⁴
about South Lambeth, Our Lady’s Thistle grows frequently. But on the journey between South Lambeth and Kingston towards the Thames side is the greatest abundance of Upright Blite, or All Feed, that ever I have seen.

. . .

East of Kingston
¹⁵
on the rising of the hill stands the gallows, in dry gravelly ground, where they often find Roman urns.