20th August, 1663. I dined at the Comptroller's [of the Household] with the Earl of Oxford and Mr. Ashburnham; it was said it should be the last of the public diets, or tables, at Court, it being determined to put down the old hospitality, at which was great murmuring, considering his Majesty's vast revenue and the plenty of the nation. Hence, I went to sit in a Committee, to consider about the regulation of the Mint at the Tower; in which some small progress was made.
27th August, 1663. Dined at Sir Philip Warwick's, Secretary to my Lord Treasurer, who showed me the accounts and other private matters relating to the revenue. Thence, to the Commissioners of the Mint, particularly about coinage, and bringing his Majesty's rate from fifteen to ten shillings for every pound weight of gold.
31st August, 1663. I was invited to the translation of Dr. Sheldon, Bishop of London, from that see to Canterbury, the ceremony performed at Lambeth. First, went his Grace's mace bearer, steward, treasurer, comptroller, all in their gowns, and with white staves; next, the bishops in their habits, eight in number; Dr. Sweate, Dean of the Arches, Dr. Exton, Judge of the Admiralty, Sir William Merick, Judge of the Prerogative Court, with divers advocates in scarlet. After divine service in the chapel, performed with music extraordinary, Dr. French and Dr. Stradling (his Grace's chaplains) said prayers. The Archbishop in a private room looking into the chapel, the bishops, who were commissioners, went up to a table placed before the altar, and sat round it in chairs. Then Dr. Chaworth presented the commission under the broad seal to the Bishop of Winchester, and it was read by Dr. Sweate. After which, the Vicar-General went to the vestry, and brought his Grace into the chapel, his other officers marching before. He being presented to the Commissioners, was seated in a great armchair at one end of the table, when the definitive sentence was read by the Bishop of Winchester, and subscribed by all the bishops, and proclamation was three times made at the chapel door, which was then set open for any to enter, and give their exceptions; if any they had. This done, we all went to dinner in the great hall to a mighty feast. There were present all the nobility in town, the Lord Mayor of London, Sheriffs, Duke of Albemarle, etc. My Lord Archbishop did in particular most civilly welcome me. So going to visit my Lady Needham, who lived at Lambeth, I went over to London.
10th September, 1663. I dined with Mr. Treasurer of the Navy, where, sitting by Mr. Secretary Morice, we had much discourse about books and authors, he being a learned man, and had a good collection.
24th October, 1663. Mr. Edward Phillips came to be my son's preceptor: this gentleman was nephew to Milton, who wrote against Salmasius's "Defensio"; but was not at all infected with his principles, though brought up by him.
5th November, 1663. Dr. South, my Lord Chancellor's chaplain, preached at Westminster Abbey an excellent discourse concerning obedience to magistrates, against the pontificians and sectaries. I afterward dined at Sir Philip Warwick's, where was much company.
6th November, 1663. To Court, to get Sir John Evelyn, of Godstone, off from being Sheriff of Surrey.
30th November, 1663. Was the first anniversary of our Society for the choice of new officers, according to the tenor of our patent and institution. It being St. Andrew's day, who was our patron, each fellow wore a St. Andrew's cross of ribbon on the crown of his hat. After the election we dined together, his Majesty sending us venison.
16th December, 1663. To our Society, where Mr. P. Balle, our treasurer at the late election, presented the Society with an iron chest, having three locks, and in it £100 as a gift.
18th December, 1663. Dined with the gentlemen of his Majesty's bedchamber at Whitehall.
LONDON
2d January, 1663-64. To Barn Elms, to see Abraham Cowley after his sickness; and returned that evening to London.
4th February, 1664. Dined at Sir Philip Warwick's; thence, to Court, where I had discourse with the King about an invention of glass-grenades, and several other subjects.
5th February, 1664. I saw "The Indian Queen" acted, a tragedy well written,78 so beautiful with rich scenes as the like had never been seen here, or haply (except rarely) elsewhere on a mercenary theater.
16th February, 1664. I presented my "Sylva" to the Society; and next day to his Majesty, to whom it was dedicated; also to the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor.
24th February, 1664. My Lord George Berkeley, of Durdans, and Sir Samuel Tuke came to visit me. We went on board Sir William Petty's double-bottomed vessel, and so to London.
26th February, 1664. Dined with my Lord Chancellor; and thence to Court, where I had great thanks for my "Sylva," and long discourse with the King of divers particulars.
2d March, 1664. Went to London to distribute some of my books among friends.
4th March, 1664. Came to dine with me the Earl of Lauderdale, his Majesty's great favorite, and Secretary of Scotland; the Earl of Teviot; my Lord Viscount Brouncker, President of the Royal Society; Dr. Wilkins, Dean of Ripon; Sir Robert Murray, and Mr. Hooke, Curator to the Society.
This spring I planted the Home field and West field about Sayes Court with elms, being the same year that the elms were planted by his Majesty in Greenwich Park.
9th March, 1664. I went to the Tower, to sit in commission about regulating the Mint; and now it was that the fine new-milled coin, both of white money and guineas, was established.
26th March, 1664. It pleased God to take away my son, Richard, now a month old, yet without any sickness of danger perceivably, being to all appearance a most likely child; we suspected much the nurse had overlain him; to our extreme sorrow, being now again reduced to one: but God's will be done.
29th March, 1664. After evening prayers, was my child buried near the rest of his brothers – my very dear children.
27th April, 1664. Saw a facetious comedy, called "Love in a Tub"; and supped at Mr. Secretary Bennett's.
3d May, 1664. Came the Earl of Kent, my kinsman, and his Lady, to visit us.
5th May, 1664. Went with some company a journey of pleasure on the water, in a barge, with music, and at Mortlake had a great banquet, returning late. The occasion was, Sir Robert Carr now courting Mrs. Bennett, sister to the Secretary of State.
6th May, 1664. Went to see Mr. Wright the painter's collection of rare shells, etc.
8th June, 1664. To our Society, to which his Majesty had sent that wonderful horn of the fish which struck a dangerous hole in the keel of a ship in the India sea, which, being broken off with the violence of the fish, and left in the timber, preserved it from foundering.
9th June, 1664. Sir Samuel Tuke79 being this morning married to a lady, kinswoman to my Lord Arundel of Wardour, by the Queen's Lord Almoner, L. Aubigny in St. James's chapel, solemnized his wedding night at my house with much company.
22d June, 1664. One Tomson, a Jesuit, showed me such a collection of rarities, sent from the Jesuits of Japan and China to their Order at Paris, as a present to be reserved in their repository, but brought to London by the East India ships for them, as in my life I had not seen. The chief things were, rhinoceros's horns; glorious vests, wrought and embroidered on cloth of gold, but with such lively colors, that for splendor and vividness we have nothing in Europe that approaches it; a girdle studded with agates and rubies of great value and size; knives, of so keen an edge as one could not touch them, nor was the metal of our color, but more pale and livid; fans, like those our ladies use, but much larger, and with long handles curiously carved and filled with Chinese characters; a sort of paper very broad, thin, and fine, like abortive parchment, and exquisitely polished, of an amber yellow, exceedingly glorious and pretty to look on, and seeming to be like that which my Lord Verulam describes in his "Nova Atlantis"; several other sorts of paper, some written, others printed; prints of landscapes, their idols, saints, pagods, of most ugly serpentine monstrous and hideous shapes, to which they paid devotion; pictures of men and countries, rarely painted on a sort of gummed calico, transparent as glass; flowers, trees, beasts, birds, etc., excellently wrought in a kind of sleeve silk, very natural; divers drugs that our druggists and physicians could make nothing of, especially one which the Jesuit called Lac Tigridis: it looked like a fungus, but was weighty like metal, yet was a concretion, or coagulation, of some other matter; several book MSS.; a grammar of the language written in Spanish; with innumerable other rarities.
1st July, 1664. Went to see Mr. Povey's elegant house in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, where the perspective in his court, painted by Streeter, is indeed excellent, with the vases in imitation of porphyry, and fountains; the inlaying of his closet; above all, his pretty cellar and ranging of his wine bottles.
7th July, 1664. To Court, where I subscribed to Sir Arthur Slingsby's lottery, a desperate debt owing me long since in Paris.
14th July, 1664. I went to take leave of the two Mr. Howards, now going to Paris, and brought them as far as Bromley; thence to Eltham, to see Sir John Shaw's new house, now building; the place is pleasant, if not too wet, but the house not well contrived; especially the roof and rooms too low pitched, and the kitchen where the cellars should be; the orangery and aviary handsome, and a very large plantation about it.
LONDON
19th July, 1664. To London, to see the event of the lottery which his Majesty had permitted Sir Arthur Slingsby to set up for one day in the Banqueting House, at Whitehall; I gaining only a trifle, as well as did the King, Queen-Consort, and Queen-Mother, for near thirty lots; which was thought to be contrived very unhandsomely by the master of it, who was, in truth, a mere shark.
21st July, 1664. I dined with my Lord Treasurer at Southampton House, where his Lordship used me with singular humanity. I went in the afternoon to Chelsea, to wait on the Duke of Ormond, and returned to London.
28th July, 1664. Came to see me Monsieur Zuylichen, Secretary to the Prince of Orange, an excellent Latin poet, a rare lutinist, with Monsieur Oudart.
3d August, 1664. To London; a concert of excellent musicians, especially one Mr. Berkenshaw, that rare artist, who invented a mathematical way of composure very extraordinary, true as to the exact rules of art, but without much harmony.
8th August, 1664. Came the sad and unexpected news of the death of Lady Cotton, wife to my brother George, a most excellent lady.
9th August, 1664. Went with my brother Richard to Wotton, to visit and comfort my disconsolate brother; and on the 13th saw my friend, Mr. Charles Howard, at Dipden, near Dorking.
16th August, 1664. I went to see Sir William Ducie's house at Charlton; which he purchased of my excellent friend, Sir Henry Newton, now nobly furnished.
22d August, 1664. I went from London to Wotton, to assist at the funeral of my sister-in-law, the Lady Cotton, buried in our dormitory there, she being put up in lead. Dr. Owen made a profitable and pathetic discourse, concluding with an eulogy of that virtuous, pious, and deserving lady. It was a very solemn funeral, with about fifty mourners. I came back next day with my wife to London.
2d September, 1664. Came Constantine Huygens, Signor de Zuylichen, Sir Robert Morris, Mr. Oudart, Mr. Carew, and other friends, to spend the day with us.
5th October, 1664. To our Society. There was brought a newly-invented instrument of music, being a harpsichord with gut-strings, sounding like a concert of viols with an organ, made vocal by a wheel, and a zone of parchment that rubbed horizontally against the strings.
6th October, 1664. I heard the anniversary oration in praise of Dr. Harvey, in the Anatomy Theatre in the College of Physicians; after which I was invited by Dr. Alston, the President, to a magnificent feast.
7th October, 1664. I dined at Sir Nicholas Strood's, one of the Masters of Chancery, in Great St. Bartholomew's; passing the evening at Whitehall, with the Queen, etc.
8th October, 1664. Sir William Curtius, his Majesty's Resident in Germany, came to visit me; he was a wise and learned gentleman, and, as he told me, scholar to Henry Alstedius, the Encyclopedist.
15th October, 1664. Dined at the Lord Chancellor's, where was the Duke of Ormond, Earl of Cork, and Bishop of Winchester. After dinner, my Lord Chancellor and his lady carried me in their coach to see their palace (for he now lived at Worcester-House in the Strand), building at the upper end of St. James's street, and to project the garden. In the evening, I presented him with my book on Architecture,80 as before I had done to his Majesty and the Queen-Mother. His lordship caused me to stay with him in his bedchamber, discoursing of several matters very late, even till he was going into his bed.
17th October, 1664. I went with my Lord Viscount Cornbury, to Cornbury, in Oxfordshire, to assist him in the planting of the park, and bear him company, with Mr. Belin and Mr. May, in a coach with six horses; dined at Uxbridge, lay at Wycombe.
OXFORD
18th October, 1664. At Oxford. Went through Woodstock, where we beheld the destruction of that royal seat and park by the late rebels, and arrived that evening at Cornbury, a house lately built by the Earl of Denbigh, in the middle of a sweet park, walled with a dry wall. The house is of excellent freestone, abounding in that part, (a stone that is fine, but never sweats, or casts any damp); it is of ample dimensions, has goodly cellars, the paving of the hall admirable for its close laying. We designed a handsome chapel that was yet wanting: as Mr. May had the stables, which indeed are very fair, having set out the walks in the parks and gardens. The lodge is a pretty solitude, and the ponds very convenient; the park well stored.
20th October, 1664. Hence, to see the famous wells, natural and artificial grots and fountains, called Bushell's Wells, at Enstone. This Bushell had been Secretary to my Lord Verulam. It is an extraordinary solitude. There he had two mummies; a grot where he lay in a hammock, like an Indian. Hence, we went to Dichley, an ancient seat of the Lees, now Sir Henry Lee's; it is a low ancient timber-house, with a pretty bowling-green. My Lady gave us an extraordinary dinner. This gentleman's mother was Countess of Rochester, who was also there, and Sir Walter St. John. There were some pictures of their ancestors, not ill painted; the great-grandfather had been Knight of the Garter; there was a picture of a Pope, and our Savior's head. So we returned to Cornbury.
24th October, 1664. We dined at Sir Timothy Tyrill's at Shotover. This gentleman married the daughter and heir of Dr. James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, that learned prelate. There is here in the grove a fountain of the coldest water I ever felt, and very clear. His plantation of oaks and other timber is very commendable. We went in the evening to Oxford, lay at Dr. Hyde's, principal of Magdalen-Hall (related to the Lord Chancellor), brother to the Lord Chief Justice and that Sir Henry Hyde, who lost his head for his loyalty. We were handsomely entertained two days. The Vice-Chancellor, who with Dr. Fell, Dean of Christ Church, the learned Dr. Barlow, Warden of Queen's, and several heads of houses, came to visit Lord Cornbury (his father being now Chancellor of the University), and next day invited us all to dinner. I went to visit Mr. Boyle (now here), whom I found with Dr. Wallis and Dr. Christopher Wren, in the tower of the schools, with an inverted tube, or telescope, observing the discus of the sun for the passing of Mercury that day before it; but the latitude was so great that nothing appeared; so we went to see the rarities in the library, where the keepers showed me my name among the benefactors. They have a cabinet of some medals, and pictures of the muscular parts of man's body. Thence, to the new theater, now building at an exceeding and royal expense by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury [Sheldon], to keep the Acts in for the future, till now being in St. Mary's Church. The foundation had been newly laid, and the whole designed by that incomparable genius my worthy friend, Dr. Christopher Wren, who showed me the model, not disdaining my advice in some particulars. Thence, to see the picture on the wall over the altar of All Souls, being the largest piece of fresco painting (or rather in imitation of it, for it is in oil of turpentine) in England, not ill designed by the hand of one Fuller; yet I fear it will not hold long. It seems too full of nakeds for a chapel.
Thence, to New College, and the painting of Magdalen chapel, which is on blue cloth in chiar oscuro, by one Greenborow, being a Cœna Domini, and a "Last Judgment" on the wall by Fuller, as in the other, but somewhat varied.
Next to Wadham, and the Physic Garden, where were two large locust trees, and as many platani (plane trees), and some rare plants under the culture of old Bobart.
LONDON
26th October, 1664. We came back to Beaconsfield; next day to London, where we dined at the Lord Chancellor's, with my Lord Bellasis.
27th October, 1664. Being casually in the privy gallery at Whitehall, his Majesty gave me thanks before divers lords and noblemen for my book of "Architecture," and again for my "Sylva" saying they were the best designed and useful for the matter and subject, the best printed and designed (meaning the taille-douces of the Parallel of Architecture) that he had seen. He then caused me to follow him alone to one of the windows, and asked me if I had any paper about me unwritten, and a crayon; I presented him with both, and then laying it on the window-stool, he with his own hands designed to me the plot for the future building of Whitehall, together with the rooms of state, and other particulars. After this, he talked with me of several matters, asking my advice, in which I find his Majesty had an extraordinary talent becoming a magnificent prince.
The same day at Council, there being Commissioners to be made to take care of such sick and wounded and prisoners of war, as might be expected upon occasion of a succeeding war and action at sea, war being already declared against the Hollanders, his Majesty was pleased to nominate me to be one, with three other gentlemen, Parliament men, viz, Sir William Doily, Knt. and Bart., Sir Thomas Clifford, and Bullein Rheymes, Esq.; with a salary of £1,200 a year among us, besides extraordinaries for our care and attention in time of station, each of us being appointed to a particular district, mine falling out to be Kent and Sussex, with power to constitute officers, physicians, chirurgeons, provost-marshals, and to dispose of half of the hospitals through England. After the Council, we kissed his Majesty's hand. At this Council I heard Mr. Solicitor Finch plead most elegantly for the merchants trading to the Canaries, praying for a new Charter.
29th October, 1664. Was the most magnificent triumph by water and land of the Lord Mayor. I dined at Guildhall at the upper table, placed next to Sir H. Bennett, Secretary of State, opposite to my Lord Chancellor and the Duke of Buckingham, who sat between Monsieur Comminges, the French Ambassador, Lord Treasurer, the Dukes of Ormond and Albemarle, Earl of Manchester, Lord Chamberlain, and the rest of the great officers of state. My Lord Mayor came twice up to us, first drinking in the golden goblet his Majesty's health, then the French King's as a compliment to the Ambassador; we returned my Lord Mayor's health, the trumpets and drums sounding. The cheer was not to be imagined for the plenty and rarity, with an infinite number of persons at the tables in that ample hall. The feast was said to cost £1,000. I slipped away in the crowd, and came home late.
31st October, 1664. I was this day 44 years of age; for which I returned thanks to Almighty God, begging his merciful protection for the year to come.
2d November, 1664. Her Majesty, the Queen-Mother, came across the gallery in Whitehall to give me thanks for my book of "Architecture," which I had presented to her, with a compliment that I did by no means deserve.
16th November, 1664. We chose our treasurer, clerks, and messengers, and appointed our seal, which I ordered should be the good Samaritan, with this motto, "Fac similiter." Painters' Hall was lent us to meet in. In the great room were divers pictures, some reasonably good, that had been given to the Company by several of the wardens and masters of the Company.
23d November, 1664. Our statutes now finished, were read before a full assembly of the Royal Society.
24th November, 1664. His Majesty was pleased to tell me what the conference was with the Holland Ambassador, which, as after I found, was the heads of the speech he made at the reconvention of the Parliament, which now began.
2d December, 1664. We delivered the Privy Council's letters to the Governors of St. Thomas's Hospital, in Southwark, that a moiety of the house should be reserved for such sick and wounded as should from time to time be sent from the fleet during the war. This being delivered at their Court, the President and several Aldermen, Governors of that Hospital, invited us to a great feast in Fishmongers' Hall.
LONDON
20th December, 1664. To London, our last sitting, taking order for our personal visiting our several districts. I dined at Captain Cocke's (our treasurer), with that most ingenious gentleman, Matthew Wren, son to the Bishop of Ely, and Mr. Joseph Williamson, since Secretary of State.
22d December, 1664. I went to the launching of a new ship of two bottoms, invented by Sir William Petty, on which were various opinions; his Majesty being present, gave her the name of the "Experiment": so I returned home, where I found Sir Humphry Winch, who spent the day with me.
This year I planted the lower grove next the pond at Sayes Court. It was now exceedingly cold, and a hard, long, frosty season, and the comet was very visible.
28th December, 1664. Some of my poor neighbors dined with me, and others of my tenants, according to my annual custom.
31st December, 1664. Set my affairs in order, gave God praise for His mercies the past year, and prepared for the reception of the Holy Sacrament, which I partook of the next day, after hearing our minister on the 4th of Galatians, verses 4, 5, of the mystery of our Blessed Savior's Incarnation.