12th July. Monday. Was held the Divinity Act in the Theatre again, when proceeded seventeen Doctors, in all Faculties some.

13th. I dined at the Vice-Chancellor's, and spent the afternoon in seeing the rarities of the public libraries, and visiting the noble marbles and inscriptions, now inserted in the walls that compass the area of the Theatre, which were 150 of the most ancient and worthy treasures of that kind in the learned world. Now, observing that people approach them too near, some idle persons began to scratch and injure them, I advised that a hedge of holly should be planted at the foot of the wall, to be kept breast-high only to protect them; which the Vice-Chancellor promised to do the next season.

14th. Dr. Fell,' Dean of Christ-church and Vice-Chancellor, with Dr. Allestree, Professor, with beadles and maces before them, came to visit me at my lodging.-I went to visit Lord Howard's sons at Magdalen College.

15th. Having two days before had notice that the University intended me the honour of Doctorship, I was this morning attended by the beadles belonging to the Law, who conducted me to the Theatre, where I found the Duke of Ormond (now Chancellor of the University) with the Earl of Chesterfield and Mr. Spencer (brother to the late Earl of Sunderland). Thence, we marched to the ConvocationHouse, a convocation having been called on purpose; here, being all of us robed in the porch, in scarlet with caps and hoods, we were led in by the Professor of Laws, and presented respectively by name, with a short eulogy, to the Vice-Chancellor, who sate in the chair, with all the Doctors and Heads of Houses and masters about the room, which was exceeding full. Then, began the Public Orator his speech, directed chiefly to the Duke of Ormond, the Chancellor; but in which I had my compliment, in course. This ended, we were called up, and created Doctors according to the form, and seated by the Vice-Chancellor amongst the Doctors, on his right hand; then, the Vice-Chancellor made a short speech, and so, saluting our brother Doctors, the pageantry concluded, and the convocation was dissolved. So

Afterwards Bishop of Oxford.

formal a creation of honorary Doctors had seldom been seen, that a convocation should be called on purpose, and speeches made by the Orator; but they could do no less, their Chancellor being to receive, or rather do them, this honour. I should have been made Doctor with the rest at the public Act, but their expectation of their Chancellor made them defer it. I was then led with my brother Doctors to an extraordinary entertainment at Doctor Mewes', head of St. John's College, and, after abundance of feasting and compliments, having visited the Vice-Chancellor and other Doctors, and given them thanks for the honour done me, I went towards home the 16th, and got as far as Windsor, and so to my house the next day.

4th August. I was invited by Sir Henry Peckham to his reading-feast in the Middle Temple, a pompous entertainment, where were the Archbishop of Canterbury, all the great Earls and Lords, &c. I had much discourse with my Lord Winchelsea, a prodigious talker; and the Venetian Ambassador.

17th. To London, spending almost the entire day in surveying what progress was made in re-building the ruinous City, which now began a little to revive after its sad calamity.

20th. I saw the splendid audience of the Danish Ambassador in the Banqueting-Honse at Whitehall.

23rd. I went to visit my most excellent and worthy neighbour, the Lord Bishop of Rochester, at Bromley, which he was now repairing, after the dilapidations of the late Rebellion.

2nd September. I was this day very ill of a pain in my limbs, which continued most of this week, and was increased by a visit I made to my old acquaintance, the Earl of Norwich, at his house in Epping Forest, where are many good pictures put into the wainscot of the rooms, which Mr. Baker, his Lordship's predecessor there, brought out of Spain; especially the History of Joseph, a picture of the pious and learned Picus Mirandula, and an incomparable one of old Breugel. The gardens were well understood, I mean the potager. I returned late in the evening, ferrying over the water at Greenwich.

26th. To church. to give God thanks for my recovery.

3rd October. I received the Blessed Eucharist, to my unspeakable joy.

21st. To the Royal Society, meeting for the first time. after a long recess, during vacation, according to custom; where was read a description of the prodigious eruption of Mount Etna; and our English itinerant presented an account of his autumnal peregrination about England, for which we hired him, bringing dried fowls, fish, plants, animals, &c.

26th. My dear brother continued extremely full of pain, the Lord be gracious to him!

3rd November. This being the day of meeting for the poor, we dined neighbourly together.

25th. I heard an excellent discourse by Dr. Patrick, on the Resurrection; and afterwards, visited the Countess of Kent, my kinswoman.

8th December. To London, upon the second edition of my Sylva, which I presented to the Royal Society.

1669-70. 6th February. Dr. John Breton, Master of Emmanuel College, in Cambridge (uncle to our vicar), preached on John i. 27; "whose shoe-lachet I am not worthy to unloose," &c., describing the various fashions of shoes, or sandals, worn by the Jews, and other nations: of the ornaments of the feet: how great persons had servants that took them off when they came to their houses, and bare them after them by which pointing the dignity of our Saviour, when such a person as St. John Baptist acknowledged his unworthiness even of that mean office. The lawfulness, decentness, and recessity, of subordinate degrees and ranks of men and servants, as well in the Church as State : against the late levellers, and others of that dangerous rabble, who would have all alike.

:

3rd March. Finding my Brother [Richard] in such exceeding torture, and that he now began to fall into convulsion-fits, I solemnly set the next day apart to beg of God to mitigate his sufferings, and prosper the only means which yet remained for bis recovery, he being not only much wasted, but exceedingly and all along averse from being cut (for the stone); but, when he at last consented, and it came to the operation, and all things prepared, his spirit and resolution failed

6th March. Dr. Patrick' preached in Covent Garden church. I participated of the Blessed Sacrament, recommending to God the deplorable condition of my dear brother, who was almost in the last agonies of death. I watched late with him this night. It pleased God to deliver him out of this miserable life, towards five o'clock this Monday morning, to my unspeakable grief. He was a brother whom I most dearly loved, for his many virtues; but two years younger than myself, a sober, prudent, worthy gentleman. He had married a great fortune, and left one only daughter, and a noble seat at Woodcot, near Epsom. His body was opened, and a stone taken out of his bladder, not much bigger than a nutmeg. I returned home on the Sth, full of sadness, and to bemoan my loss.

20th. A stranger preached at the Savoy French church; the Liturgy of the Church of England being now used altogether, as translated into French by Dr. Durell.2

21st. We all accompanied the corpse of my dear brother to Epsom church, where he was decently interred in the chapel belonging to Woodcot House. A great number of friends and gentlemen of the country attended, about twenty coaches and six horses, and innumerable people.

22nd. I went to Westminster, where in the House of Lords I saw his Majesty sit on his throne, but without his robes, all the peers sitting with their hats on; the business. of the day being the divorce of my Lord Ross. Such an occasion and sight had not been seen in England since the time of Henry VIII.'

'Simon Patrick, Prebendary of Westminster, Dean of Peterborough, Bishop of Chichester, thence removed to the see of Ely, and author of several religious works, in which he put himself forward as the champion of the Protestant party in the reign of James II. Born in 1626, died in 1707.

John Durell, Dean of Windsor. He translated the Liturgy into the French and Latin languages, and was the author of a Vindication of the Church of England against schismatics. Born 1626, died 1663.

Evelyn subjoins in a note: "When there was a project, 1669, for getting a divorce for the King, to facilitate it there was brought into the House of Lords a bill for dissolving the marriage of Lord Ross, on account of adultery, and to give him leave to marry again. This Bill, after great debates, passed by the plurality of only two votes, and that by the great industry of the Lord's friends, as well as the Duke's I

VOL. II.

5th May. To London, concerning the office of Latin Secretary to his Majesty, a place of more honour and dignity than profit, the reversion of which he had promised

me.

21st. Came to visit me Mr. Henry Saville, and Sir Charles Scarborough.

26th. Receiving a letter from Mr. Philip Howard, Lord Almoner to the Queen,' that Monsieur Evelin, first physician to Madame (who was now come to Dover to visit the King her brother), was come to town, greatly desirous to see me; but his stay so short, that he could not come to me, I went with my brother to meet him at the Tower, where he was seeing the magazines and other curiosities, having never before been in England: we renewed our alliance and friendship, with much regret on both sides that, he being to return towards Dover that evening, we could not enjoy one another any longer. How this French family, Ivelin, of Evelin, Normandy, a very ancient and noble house is grafted into our pedigree, see in the collection brought from Paris, 1650.

16th June. I went with some friends to the Bear Garden, where was cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bear and bullbaiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls did exceeding well, but the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady's lap as she sate in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the arena. Two poor dogs were killed, and so all ended with the ape on horseback, and I most heartily weary of the rude and dirty pastime, which I had not seen, I think, in twenty years before.

18th. Dined at Goring House, whither my Lord Arlington carried me from Whitehall with the Marquis of Worenemies, who carried it on chiefly in hopes it might be a precedent and inducement for the King to enter the more easily into their late proposals: nor were they a little encouraged therein, when they saw the King countenance and drive on the Bill in Lord Ross's favour. Of eighteen Bishops that were in the House, only two voted for the bill, of which one voted through age, and one was reputed Socinian."-The two Bishops favourable to the bill were Dr. Cosin, Bishop of Durham, and Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester.

Afterwards created Cardinal.