JOHN EVELYN. 129 arbor thuyris I had ever seen. There was at Weybridge the Duchess of Norfolk, Lord Thomas Howard, (a worthy and virtuous gentleman, with whom my son was sometime bred in Arundel House) who was newly come from Rome, where he had been some time; also one of the Duke's daughters, by his first lady. My Lord leading me about the house made no scruple of showing me all the hiding-places for the Popish priests, and where they said mass, for he was no bigoted Papist. told me he never trusted them with any secret, and used He Protestants only in all businesses of importance. I went this evening with my Lord Duke to Windsor, where was a magnificent Court, it being the first time of his Majesty removing thither since it was repaired. 27th August. I took leave of the Duke, and dined at Mr. Henry Bruncker's, at the Abbey of Sheene, formerly a Monastery of Carthusians, there yet remaining one of their solitary cells with a cross. are several pretty villas and fine gardens of the most excelWithin this ample enclosure lent fruits, especially Sir William Temple's (lately Ambassador into Holland), and the Lord Lisle's, son to the Earl of Leicester, who has divers rare pictures, above all, that of Sir Brian Tuke's, by Holbein. After dinner, I walked to Ham, to see the house and garden of the Duke of Lauderdale, which is indeed inferior to few of the best villas in Italy itself; the house furnished like a great Prince's; the parterres, flower-gardens, orangeries, groves, avenues, courts, statues, perspectives, fountains, aviaries, and all this at the banks of the sweetest river in the world, must needs be admirable. Hence, I went to my worthy friend, Sir Henry Capel, [at Kew] brother to the Earl of Essex; it is an old timber-house; but his garden has the choicest fruit of any plantation in England, as he is the most industrious and understanding in it. 29th. I was called to London to wait upon the Duke of Norfolk, who having at my sole request bestowed the Arundelian Library on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the books, and remove them, only stipu VOL. II. lating that I would suffer the Herald's chief officer, Sir William Dugdale, to have such of them as concerned Heraldry and the Marshal's office, books of Armory and Genealogies, the Duke being Earl Marshal of England. I procured for our Society, besides printed books, near one hundred MSS., some in Greek of great concernment. The printed books being of the oldest impressions, are not the less valuable; I esteem them almost equal to MSS. Amongst them, are most of the Fathers, printed at Basil, before the Jesuits abused them with their expurgatory Indexes; there is a noble MS. of Vitruvius. Many of these books had been presented by Popes, Cardinals, and great persons, to the Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk; and the late magnificent Earl of Arundel bought a noble library in Germany, which is in this collection. I should not, for the honour I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with these, had I not seen how negligent he was of them, suffering the priests and everybody to carry away and dispose of what they pleased; so that abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone. Having taken order here, I went to the Royal Society to give them an account of what I had procured, that they might call a Council and appoint a day to wait on the Duke to thank him for this munificent gift. 3rd September. I went to London, to dine with Mrs. Godolphin, and found her in labour; she was brought to bed of a son, who was baptised in the chamber, by the name of Francis, the susceptors being Sir William Godolphin (head of the family), Mr. John Hervey, Treasurer to the Queen, and Mrs. Boscawen, sister to Sir William and the father. 8th. Whilst I was at church came a letter from Mr. Godolphin, that my dear friend his lady was exceedingly ill, and desiring my prayers and assistance. My wife and I took boat immediately, and went to Whitehall, where, to my inexpressible sorrow, I found she had been attacked with a new fever, then reigning this excessive hot autumn, and which was so violent, that it was not thought she could last many hours. 9th. She died in the 26th year of her age, to the inexpressible affliction of her dear husband, and all her relations, She but of none in the world more than of myself, who lost the most excellent and inestimable friend that ever lived. Never was a more virtuous and inviolable friendship; never a more religious, discreet, and admirable creature, beloved of all, admired of all, for all possible perfections of her sex. is gone to receive the reward of her signal charity, and all other her Christian graces, too blessed a creature to converse with mortals, fitted as she was, by a most holy life, to be received into the mansions above. She was for wit, beauty, goodnature, fidelity, discretion, and all accomplishments, the most incomparable person. How shall I ever repay the obligations to her for the infinite good offices she did my soul by so often engaging me to make religion the terms and tie of the friendship there was between us! She was the best wife, the best mistress, the best friend, that ever husband had. But it is not here that I pretend to give her character, having designed to consecrate her worthy life to posterity. Her husband, struck with unspeakable affliction, fell down as dead. The King himself, and all the Court, expressed their sorrow. To the poor and miserable, her loss was irreparable; for there was no degree but had some obligation to her memory. So careful and provident was she to be prepared for all possible accidents, that (as if she foresaw her end) she received the heavenly viaticum but the Sunday before, after a most solemn recollection. She put all her domestic concerns into the exactest order, and left a letter directed to her husband, to be opened in case she died in child-bed, in which with the most pathetic and endearing expressions of the most loyal and virtuous wife, she begs his kindness to her memory might be continued by his care and esteem of those she left behind, even to her domestic servants, to the meanest of which she left considerable legacies, as well as to the poor. It was now seven years since she was Maid of Honour to the Queen, that she regarded me as a father, a brother, and what is more, a friend. We often prayed, visited the sick and miserable, received, read, discoursed, and communicated in all holy offices together. She was most dear to my wife, and affectionate to my children. But she is gone! This only is my comfort, that she is happy in Christ, and I shall shortly behold K 2 her again! She desired to be buried in the dormitory of his family, near three hundred miles from all her other friends. So afflicted was her husband at this severe loss, that the entire care of her funeral was committed to me. Having closed the eyes, and dropped a tear upon the cheek of my dear departed friend, lovely even in death, I caused her corpse to be embalmed and wrapped in lead, a plate of brass soldered thereon, with an inscription, and other circumstances due to her worth, with as much diligence and care as my grieved heart would permit me; I then retired home for two days, which were spent in solitude and sad reflection. 17th September. She was, accordingly, carried to Godolphin, in Cornwall, in a hearse with six horses, attended by two coaches of as many, with about thirty of her relations and servants. There accompanied the hearse her husband's brother, Sir William, two more of his brothers, and three sisters: her husband was so overcome with grief, that he was wholly unfit to travel so long a journey, till he was more composed. I went as far as Hounslow with a sad heart; but was obliged to return upon some indispensable affairs. The corpse was ordered to be taken out of the hearse every night, and decently placed in the house, with tapers about it, and her servants attending, to Cornwall; and then was honourably interred in the parish church of Godolphin. This funeral cost not much less than £1000. With Mr. Godolphin, I looked over and sorted his lady's papers, most of which consisted of Prayers, Meditations, Sermon-notes, Discourses, and Collections on several religious subjects, and many of her own happy composing, and so pertinently digested, as if she had been all her life a student in divinity. We found a diary of her solemn resolutions, tending to practical virtue, with letters from select friends, all put into exact method. It astonished us to see what she had read and written, her youth considered. 1st October. The Parliament and the whole Nation were The Mr. Godolphin (afterwards Lord Godolphin) continued the steady friend of Mr. Evelyn, whose grandson married into his family. infant now mentioned as born, carried on through a long life the friendly family intercourse thus earnestly begun; and Evelyn, in redemption of the promise in the text, wrote Mrs. Godolphin's Life, which has lately been published under the auspices of the Lishop of Oxford. alarmed about a conspiracy of some eminent Papists for the destruction of the King and introduction of Popery, discovered by one Oates and Dr. Tongue,' which last I knew, being the translator of the "Jesuits' Morals;" I went to see and converse with him at Whitehall, with Mr. Oates, one that was lately an apostate to the church of Rome, and now returned again with this discovery. He seemed to be a bold man, and, in my thoughts, furiously indiscreet; but everybody believed what he said; and it quite changed the genius and motions of the Parliament, growing now corrupt and interested with long sitting and court practices; but, with all this, Popery would not go down. This discovery turned them all as one man against it, and nothing was done but to find out the depth of this. Oates was encouraged, and everything he affirmed taken for gospel ;-the truth is, the Roman Catholics were exceeding bold and busy everywhere, since the Duke forbore to go any longer to the chapel. 1 Ezrael Tonge was bred in University College, Oxford, and being puritanically inclined, quitted the University; but in 1648 returned, and was made a Fellow. He had the living of Pluckley, in Kent, which he resigned in consequence of quarrels with his parishioners and Quakers. In 1657, he was made fellow of the newly-erected College at Durham, and that being dissolved in 1660, he taught school at Islington. He then went with Colonel Edward Harley to Dunkirk, and subsequently took a small living in Herefordshire (Lentwardine): but quitted it for St. Mary Stayning, in London, which, after the fire in 1666, was united to St. Michael, Wood Street. These he held till his death, in 1680. He was a great opponent of the Roman Catholics. Wood mentions several publications of his, among which are, The Jesuits unmasked, 1678; Jesuitical Aphorisms, 1678; and The Jesuits' Morals, 1680 (1670); the two latter translated from the French. (Wood's Athen, Oxon. vol. ii. p. 502.) Evelyn speaks of the last of these translations as having been executed by his desire: and it figures in a notable passage of Oates's testimony. Oates said, for example, “that Thomas Whitbread, a priest, on 13th June, 16.. did tell the rector of St. Omer's that a Minister of the Church of England had scandalously put out the Jesuits' Morals in English, and had endeavoured to render them odious, and had asked the Rector whether he thought Oates might know him? and the Rector called the deponent, who heard these words as he stood at the chamber. door, and when he went into the chamber of the Provincial, he asked him 'If he knew the author of the Jesuits' Morals?' deponent answered, His person, but not his name.' Whitbread then demanded, whether he would undertake to poison, or assassinate the author; which deponen: undertook, having £50 reward promised him, and appointed to return to England." |