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successful, he gave them the slip, and got into Holland, where the fox died, three months before these unhappy Lords and others were discovered or suspected. Every one deplored Essex and Russell, especially the last, as being thought to have been drawn in on pretence only of endeavouring to rescue the King from his present councillors, and secure religion from Popery, and the nation from arbitrary government, now so much apprehended; whilst the rest of those who were fled, especially Ferguson and his gang, had doubtless some bloody design to get up a Commonwealth, and turn all things topsy-turvy. Of the same tragical principles is Sydney.

I had this day much discourse with Monsieur Pontaq, son to the famous and wise prime President of Bordeaux. This gentleman was owner of that excellent vignoble of Pontaq and O'Brien, from whence come the choicest of our Bourdeaux wines; and I think I may truly say of him, what was not so truly said of St. Paul, that much learning had made him mad. He had studied well in philosophy, but chiefly the Rabbins, and was exceedingly addicted to cabalistical fancies, an eternal hablador [romancer], and half distracted by reading abundance of the extravagant Eastern Jews. He spake all languages, was very rich, had a handsome person, and was well-bred, about forty-five years of age.1

14th July. I visited Mr. Fraser, a learned Scots gentleman, whom I had formerly recommended to Lord Berkeley for the instruction and government of his son, since dead at He had now been in Holland at the sale of the learned Heinsius's library, and showed me some very rare and curious books, and some MSS., which he had purchased to good value. There were three or four Herbals in miniature,

sea.

In a later page of the Diary (post, p. 339) Evelyn describes himself and certain members of the Royal Society all dining "at Pontac's as usual." Pontac's was a famous French eating-house, now existing only in the verse of Dryden, the prose of Swift and Defoe, and other such imperishable records. Defoe describes its name as derived from the owner of the most celebrated claret vintage of France; the president of the parliament of Bourdeaux; the "M. Pontaq" above referred to, established it; and Swift, who dined at it seventeen years after the dinner mentioned by Evelyn, tells Stella that the wine was charged sevca shillings a flask. "Are not there pretty rates ?"

accurately done, divers Roman antiquities of Verona, and very many books of Aldus's impression.

15th July. A stranger, and old man, preached on Jerem. vi. S, the not hearkening to instruction, portentous of desolation to a people; much after Bishop Andrews's method, full of logical divisions, in short and broken periods, and Latin sentences, now quite out of fashion in the pulpit, which is grown into a far more profitable way, of plain and practical discourses, of which sort this nation, or any other, never had greater plenty or more profitable (I am confident); so much has it to answer for thriving no better on it.

The public was now in great consternation on the late plot and conspiracy; his Majesty very melancholy, and not stirring without double guards; all the avenues and private doors about Whitehall and the Park shut up, few admitted to walk in it. The Papists, in the mean time, very jocund; and indeed with reason, seeing their own plot brought to nothing, and turned to ridicule, and now a conspiracy of Protestants, as they called them.

The Turks were likewise in hostility against the German Emperor, almost masters of the Upper Hungary, and drawing towards Vienna. On the other side, the French King (who it is believed brought in the infidels) disturbing his Spanish and Dutch neighbours, having swallowed up almost all Flanders, pursuing his ambition of a fifth universal monarchy; and all this blood and disorder in Christendom had evidently its rise from our defections at home, in a wanton peace, minding nothing but luxury, ambition, and to procure money for our vices. To this add our irreligion and atheism, great ingratitude, and self-interest; the apostacy of some, and the suffering the French to grow so great, and the Hollanders so weak. In a word, we were wanton, mad, and surfeiting with prosperity; every moment unsettling the old foundations, and never constant to any thing. The Lord in mercy avert the sad omen, and that we do not provoke him till he bear it no longer!

This summer did we suffer twenty French men-of-war to pass our Channel towards the Sound, to help the Danes against the Swedes, who had abandoned the French interest; we not having ready sufficient to guard our coasts, or take coguizance of what they did; though the nation never had

more, or a better navy, yet the sea had never so slender a fleet.

19th July. George, Prince of Denmark, who had landed this day, came to marry the Lady Anne, daughter to the Duke; so I returned home, having seen the young gallant at dinner at Whitehall.

20th. Several of the conspirators of the lower form were executed at Tyburn; and the next day,

21st. Lord Russell was beheaded in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, the executioner giving him three butcherly strokes. The speech he made, and the paper which he gave the Sheriff declaring his innocence, the nobleness of the family, the piety and worthiness of the unhappy gentleman, wrought much pity, and occasioned various discourses on the plot.

25th. I again saw Prince George of Denmark: he had the Danish countenance, blonde, of few words, spake French but ill, seemed somewhat heavy, but reported to be valiant, and indeed he had bravely rescued and brought off his brother, the King of Denmark, in a battle against the Swedes, when both these Kings were engaged very smartly.

28th. He was married to the Lady Anne at Whitehall. Her court and household to be modelled as the Duke's, her father, had been; and they to continue in England.

1st August. Came to see me Mr. Flamsted, the famous astronomer, from his Observatory at Greenwich, to draw the meridian from my pendule, &c.

2nd. The Countesses of Bristol and Sunderland, aunt and cousin-german of the late Lord Russell, came to visit me, and condole his sad fate. The next day, came Colonel Russell, uncle to the late Lord Russell, and brother to the Earl of Bedford, and with him Mrs. Middleton, that famous and indeed incomparable beauty, daughter to my relation, Sir Robert Needham.

19th. I went to Bromley to visit our Bishop,' and excellent neighbour, and to congratulate his now being made Archbishop of York. On the 28th, he came to take his leave of us, now preparing for his journey and residence in his province.

28th. My sweet little grandchild, Martha Maria, died, and on the 29th was buried in the parish church.

Dr. John Dolbein,

2nd September. This morning, was read in the church, after the office was done, the Declaration setting forth the late conspiracy against the King's person.

3rd. I went to see what had been done by the Duke of Beaufort on his late purchased house at Chelsea, which I once had the selling of for the Countess of Bristol; he had made great alterations, but might have built a better house with the materials and the cost he had been at.

Saw the Countess of Monte Feltre, whose husband I had formerly known; he was a subject of the Pope's, but becoming a Protestant he resided in England, and married into the family of the Savilles, of Yorkshire. The Count, her late husband, was a very learned gentleman, a great politician, and a goodly man. She was accompanied by her sister, exceedingly skilled in painting, nor did they spare for colour on their own faces. They had a great deal of wit.

9th. It being the day of public thanksgiving for his Majesty's late preservation, the former declaration was again read, and there was an office used, composed for the occasion. A loyal sermon was preached on the divine right of Kings, from Psalm cxliv. 10. "Thou hast preserved David from the peril of the sword."

15th. Came to visit me the learned anatomist, Dr. Tyson, .with some other Fellows of our Society.

16th. At the elegant villa and garden of Mr. Bohun, at Lee. He showed me the zinnar tree, or platanus, and told me that since they had planted this kind of tree about the city of Ispahan, in Persia, the plague, which formerly much infested the place, had exceedingly abated of its mortal effects, and rendered it very healthy.

18th. I went to London, to visit the Duchess of Grafton, now great with child, a most virtuous and beautiful lady. Dining with her at my Lord Chamberlain's, met my Lord of St. Alban's, now grown so blind, that he could not see to

'Doctor Edward Tyson, a learned physician, born at Clevedon, Somersetshire, in 1649, who became reader of the anatomical lecture in Surgeons' Hall, and physician to the hospitals of Bethlehem and Bridewell, which offices he held at his death, Aug. 1, 1708. He was an ingenious writer, and has left various Essays in the Philosophical Transactions and Hook's Collections. He published also The Anatomy of a Porpoise dissected at Gresham College," and the "Anatomy of a Pigmy compared with a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man," 4to., 1698-9.

VOL. II.

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take his meat. He has lived a most easy life, in plenty even abroad, whilst his Majesty was a sufferer; he has lost immense sums at play, which yet, at about eighty years old, he continues, having one that sits by him to name the spots on the cards. He eat and drank with extraordinary appetite. He is a prudent old courtier, and much enriched since his Majesty's return.

After dinner, I walked to survey the sad demolition of Clarendon-House, that costly and only sumptuous palace of the late Lord Chancellor Hyde, where I have often been so cheerful with him, and sometimes so sad :' happening to make him a visit but the day before he fled from the angry Parliament, accusing him of mal-administration, and being envious at his grandeur, who from a private lawyer came to be fatherin-law to the Duke of York, and as some would suggest, designing his Majesty's marriage with the Infanta of Portugal, not apt to breed. To this they imputed much of our unhappiness; and that he, being sole minister and favourite at his Majesty's restoration, neglected to gratify the King's suffering party, preferring those who were the cause of our troubles. But perhaps as many of these things were injuriously laid to his charge, so he kept the government far steadier than it has proved since. I could name some who I think contributed greatly to his ruin,-the buffoons and the misses, to whom he was an eye-sore. It is true he was

of a jolly temper, after the old English fashion; but France had now the ascendant, and we were become quite another nation. The Chancellor gone, and dying in exile, the Earl his successor sold that which cost £50,000 building, to the young Duke of Albemarle for £25,000, to pay debts which how contracted remains yet a mystery, his son being no way a prodigal. Some imagine the Duchess his daughter had been chargeable to him. However it were, this stately palace is decreed to ruin, to support the prodigious waste the Duke of Albemarle had made of his estate, since the old man died. He sold it to the highest bidder, and it fell to certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it and the ground about it, £35,000; they design a new town, as it

An engraving of the south or principal front of this noble mansion, copied from an extremely rare print, is given in Smith's Sixty-two Additional Plates to his Antiquities of Westminster, 4to., 1807.

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