of them now speaking the English language. At least I conceive that you might not do amiss to peruse their works, and upon comparing of them with this piece of yours, to observe what there is more accurate and instructive; lest you otherwise seem actum agere, as the word is: but this, Sir, 1 remit to your better judgment, who am,

Sir, your, &c.

From John Evelyn to Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Croone, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College.1

Sayes Court, 11 July, 1663.

SIR, It has neither proceeded from the unmindfulness of your desires, or your deserts, that I had not long before this gratified your inclinations, in finding you out a condition, which it might become you to embrace, if you still continue your laudable curiosity, by wishing for some opportunity to travel, and see the world. There have passed occasions, (and some which did nearly concern my relations) when I might happily have engaged you; but having long had a great ambition to serve you, since I had this in prospect, I rather chose to dispense with my own advantages that I might comply with yours. My worthy and most noble master, Mr. Henry Howard, has by my Cousin Tuke signified to me his desires of some fit person to instruct and travel with his two incomparable children; and I immediately suggested Mr. Croone to them, with such recommendations and civilities as were due to his merits and as became me. This being cheerfully embraced on their part, it will now be yours to second it. All I shall say for your present encouragement is but this: England shall never present you with an equal opportunity; nor were it the least diminution that Mr. Croone, or indeed one of the best gentlemen of the nation, should have the tuition of an heir to the Duke of Norfolk, after the Royal Family the greatest Prince in it. But the title is not the thing I would invite you to, in an age so universally depraved

He founded a course of Algebraic Lectures in seven colleges at Cambridge, and also a yearly anatomical Lecture in the Royal Society.

amongst our wretched nobility. You will here come into a most opulent worthy family, and in which I prognosticate (and I have it assured me) you shall make your fortune, without any further dependances: For the persons who govern there have both the means to be very grateful, and as generous a propensity to it as any family in England: Sir, if you think fit to lay hold on this occasion, I shall take a time to discourse to you of some other particulars which the limits of an hasty letter will not permit me to insert. I have been told to leave this for you at the College; because I was uncertain of seeing you, and that I have promised to give my friends an account of its reception. If your affairs could so far dispense with you as to afford me an afternoon's visit at my poor villa, I should with more liberty confer with you about it, and in hope of that favour I remain, Sir, your, &c.

John Evelyn to Dr. Pierce, "President of Magdalen College in Orford; and one of his Majesty's Chaplains in Ordinary."

REVEREND SIR,

Sayes-Court, 20 Aug. 1663.

3

Being not long since at Somerset-house, to do my duty to her Majesty the Queen Mother, I fortuned to encounter Dr. Goffe. One of the first things he asked me was, whether I had seen Mr. Cressy's Reply to Dr. Pierce's so much celebrated Sermon ? I told him, I had heard much of it, but not as yet seen it: upon which he made me an offer to present me with one of the books, but being in haste, and with a friend, I easily excused his civility, that I could not well stay 'till he should come back from his lodging in the mean time he gave no ordinary encomiums of that rare piece, which he exceedingly magnified, as beyond all answer; and to reinforce the triumph, he told me that you had written a letter to some friend of yours (a copy whereof he believed he should shortly produce) wherein

See vol i., p. 21.

Seo Diary, vol. i. p. 334 and 398. Roman Catholic Doctrines no Novelties; or an Answer to Dr. Pierce's Court Sermon, miscalled, The Primitive Rule of Reformation. 8vo. 1663.

upon

(after you had express'd your great resentment that some of the Bishops had made you their property, in putting you that ungrateful argument) you totally declined to engage any farther in that controversy: intimating that you would leave it at the Bishops' doors, and trouble yourself no more with it. This (or words to this effect) being spoken to myself, and to some others who stood by, would have weighed more with me, had I not been as well acquainted with these kind of artifices to gain proselytes by, as of your greater discretion never to have written such a Letter, and abilities to vindicate what you have published, when you should see your time. Nor had I likely thought more of it, had not my Lord of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, together with my Lord Chancellor (to whom upon some occasion of private discourse, I recounted the passage) expressly enjoined me to give you notice of it; because they thought it did highly concern you; and that you would take it civilly from me. And, Sir, I have done it faithfully; but with this humble request, that (unless there be very great cause for it) you will be tender of mentioning by what hand your intelligence comes; because it may do me some injury.

Sir, I am perfectly assured, that you will do both yourself and the Church of England that right which becomes you upon this occasion. I will not say that the burthen ought to be cast upon your shoulders alone; but I will pronounce it a greater mark of your charity, and zeal, and such as entitles you to the universal obligation which all men have to you; upon confidence whereof I satisfy myself you will soon dismantle this doughty battery, and assert what you have gained so gloriously.

Thus I discharge my duty, in obedience to their commands. But it is upon another account that I was not displeased with having an opportunity by this occasion to express my thanks and great acknowledgments to you, for the present you made me of that your incomparable Sermon, and which in my opinion is sufficiently impregnable; but something must be done by these busy men, to support their credit, though at the irreparable expense of truth and ingenuity. The Epistle before Mr. Cressy's papers does not want confidence: and we are very tame whiles we

suffer our Church to be thus treated by such as being once her sons did so unworthily desert her. But pardon this indignation. I am,

Rev. Sir,

Your most, &c.

John Evelyn to Dr. Pierce.

Lond. 17th Sept. 1663.

SIR, I received your favour of the first of this month with very different passions, whiles in some periods you give me reasons so convincing why you should rather consult your health, and gratify your charge, and personal concernments, than reply to impertinent books; and in others again make such generous and noble offers, that the Church of England, and the cause which is now dishonoured, should not suffer through your silence; and I had (according to your commands) made my addresses to those honourable persons with something of what you had instructed me, had either my Lord of Winchester, or my Lord Chancellor been in town. Since I received your letter my Lord of Winchester is indeed gone to Farnham some few days past; but I was detained by special business in the country till this very moment, when coming to London on purpose to wait on him, I missed him unfortunately, and unexpectedly. In the meantime, I was not a little rejoiced at something my Lord of Salisbury did assure me, of some late kind intercourse between you and your Visitor, to the no small satisfaction of all those that love and honour you here.

In pursuance of your farther injunction, I was this very morning with Dr. Goffe: after a short ceremony we touched upon Cressy's pamphlet: He tells me there are eight sheets more printing (by a Reverend Father of the Society, as he named him), who has put Mr. Cressy's rhapsody into mode and figure, that so it might do the work ainongst scholars, as it was like to do it with his illiterate proselytes. Upon this I took occasion to remind him of the letter which he lately pretended you had written, intimating your resolution not to reply. After some pause he told me that was a mistake, and that he heard it was only a friend of yours which writ so. Whether he suspected I came a birding, or no, I

cannot be satisfied, but he now blenched what before (I do assure you) he affirmed to me concerning your own writing that letter. This is the infelicity (and I have observed it in more than one) that when men abandon their religion to God, they take their leave also of all ingenuity [ingenuousness] towards men. And what could I make of this shuffling, and caution, now turned to a mistake, and an hearsay? But so it seems was not that of your being offended with the Bishops for the ungrateful task they put upon you, which he often repeated; and the difference betwixt you ánd your Visitor:-so after a short velitation,' we parted. Sir, I have nothing more to add to your trouble, than that I still persist in my supplication, and that you would at last break through all these discouragements and objections for the public benefit. It is true, men deserve it not; but the Church, which is dearer to you than all their contradictions can be grievous, requires it. You can (in the interim) govern a disorderly College which calls for the assiduous care; but so does no less the needs of a despised Church; nor ought any in it concern themselves so much as to this particular, without being uncivil to you: though (I confess) after you have once chastised this insolence, no barking of the curs should provoke you for the future: Sir, I do not use a quarter of those arguments which your friends here suggest, why you ought to gratify the Church by standing in this gap; because I am confident you perfectly discern them; and that though some particular persons may have unjustly injured you, yet she has been kind and indulgent; and in a cause which concerns either her honour or veracity, it will be glorious (not to say grateful) you should vindicate her wrongs. You are not the only subject which that academic Jack-pudding has reproached more bitterly personally: The drunkards made a song of holy David, yet still he danced before the ark of God, and would be more vile. What are we Christians for? I do assure you, there is nothing I have a greater scorn and indignation against, than these wretched scoffers; and I look upon our neglect of severely punishing them as an high defect in our politics, and a forerunner of something very funest. I would to God virtue and sobriety were more in reputation: but we shall turn plainly barbarians, if all 1 1 Skirmishing. 2 Fatal.