John Aubrey, page 15
. . .
When I ask myself what I have accomplished in my life thus far, my efforts add up to truly nothing; only umbrages! I am proud of the fact I had drawings done of the ruins of Osney Abbey when I was a student, and I have saved and collected some antiquities, things that were neglected or forgotten and would have sunk without trace if I had not cared for them. But I have been a whetstone to other people’s achievements. Nothing more.
My friend Mr Wencelaus Hollar32 has engraved one of the drawings I commissioned of Osney Abbey for inclusion in the second volume of Mr Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, printed this year. The first volume was printed in 1655. In these books, Mr Dugdale is compiling the history of the ancient abbeys, monasteries, hospitals and collegiate churches in England and Wales. He also includes some French, Irish and Scottish monasteries formerly relating to England. Alongside the drawing of Osney Abbey I am proud to see my coat of arms together with an explanation of how I commissioned the drawing when I was a student in Oxford.
. . .
My friend William Petty has been knighted.
. . .
December
Mr Harrington has been interrogated and imprisoned in the Tower for conspiracy. He is a gentleman of high spirit and hot head. I fear for his reason.
. . .
My friend Mr Edmund Wylde has a dangerous fever.
. . .
Mr Samuel Cooper33 has been commissioned to draw the King’s profile for the new milled coinage: Mr Cooper prefers sketching at night and by candlelight.
. . .
Anno 1662
March
Mr Hartlib has died. After the Restoration of the King, he lost his pension, and his petition to Parliament concerning his penury went unanswered.
. . .
May
Sir John Hoskyns writes34 to me of Mr Hobbes. He tells me Mr Hobbes has written another book, Problemata Physica, and dedicated it to the King. He hopes that Mr Hobbes will not provoke the mathematician Lord Brouncker, who has found favour with the King and been made the Queen’s chancellor.
The King has granted Mr Hobbes a pension of 100 li., and he is often at court, where his irascible nature has earned him the name ‘the Bear’: ‘Here comes my Bear to be baited,’ the King is wont to say.
. . .
Mr Hobbes has silenced35 his detractors, Dr Wallis especially, and put a stop to malicious doubts about his loyalty to the King by printing a new pamphlet, Mr Hobbes Considered in His Loyalty, Religion, Reputation and Manners. Here he explains that he wrote and published his Leviathan on behalf of the faithful subjects of His Majesty, who took his part in the war, or otherwise did their utmost to defend His Majesty’s right and person against the rebels. After His Majesty’s defeat, these subjects, having no other means of protection, nor (for the most part) of subsistence, were forced to compound with the new masters and promise obedience to save their lives and fortunes. Leviathan affirms that they did this lawfully: they had done all they could be obliged to do in defence of His Majesty and were consequently at liberty to seek the safety of their lives and livelihoods without treachery. I am myself one of these people.
Mr Hobbes says36 that were it not for the laws, many men would have no more scruples about killing a man than he or I do about killing a little bird. In his Leviathan he says that men will never be obedient and good subjects until his doctrine is taught in schools, and he attacks the ecclesiastics and universities.
. . .
Mr Tyndale complains37 that he misses me greatly in London and declares that my absence makes him feel low and fretful. The Queen has been very ill. He tells me that our friend Sir John Hoskyns has a severe fever. For all these reasons I must return to the city as soon as I can.
. . .
June
Parliament has passed38 a new Licensing Act, which requires books on most subjects to be licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London.
. . .
July
The Royal Society has received its charter from the King. It will now be permitted to print books. The professors at Gresham College in Bishopsgate have generously offered rooms for the new society’s meetings. There is a great hall for elections and a separate room for the ordinary meetings every Wednesday.
. . .
November
On Mr Boyle’s recommendation, Mr Hooke has been elected the Royal Society’s Curator of Experiments.
Mr Hooke is of but middling stature39, something crooked, pale-faced, but his head is large and his eye full, popping and grey. He has a delicate head of brown hair and an excellent moist curl. He seems a very temperate man.
. . .
Sir William Petty presented40 a treatise on shipbuilding to the Royal Society, but the President, Lord Brouncker, confiscated it, claiming it is too great an Arcanum of State to be commonly perused!
. . .
December
Dr Walter Charleton41 has proposed me as a candidate for election to the Royal Society. He is a learned, melancholy man and Physician in Ordinary to the King.
. . .
Anno 1663
7 January
On this day42 I have been elected to the Royal Society.
. . .
21 January
To my great joy43, I have been admitted, formally, to the Royal Society. Our meetings include experiments. Today I proposed to the learned company Mr Potter’s idea of moving blood between chickens. But it was considered absurd and impossible: a blemish on the Society’s reputation to experiment with such an idea. This embarrassed me very much and brought a hot blush to my cheeks. My stammer started up and was the worst it has been in years.
. . .
The minister of Avebury44 claims that the huge stones may be broken wherever you please without any great trouble. This is how: they make a fire on that line of the stone where they would have it crack; and, after the stone is well heated, draw over a line with cold water and immediately give a smart knock with a smith’s sledgehammer, and the stone will break like collets at the glasshouse. I hope this breaking of the ancient stones can be stopped.
. . .
4 March
Today I attended my second Royal Society meeting. My stammer was less bad this time. Mr Hooke presented his proposals for experiments on the resistance of air to bodies moved through it. He was appointed curator of these experiments, which will begin with a pendulum sealed up in a glass.
I presented the Society45 with my friend Francis Potter’s scheme for a cart with legs instead of wheels. The Society asked Mr Hooke to consider it and report back at the next meeting.
I have proposed Mr Potter as a member of the Royal Society.
. . .
18 March
Mr Hooke’s report46 on Mr Potter’s cart with legs was read before the Society today. A copy of the report, with a few alterations and corrections suggested at the meeting, will be sent to Mr Potter. Mr Hooke will also draw up a full description of the cart and a scheme for building it. Mr Potter has been elected a member of the Royal Society, to my immense delight.
I mentioned before47 that learned company today that I have been told that the Duke of Orleans had a way of producing animals from the putrefaction of vegetables. This gave rise to a return to the discussion on equivocal generation that took place back in October 1662, before I was a member of the Royal Society. A number of the Fellows have been charged with experiments in this regard. Mr John Evelyn will put several pieces of flesh and some blood in a closed vessel that cannot be fly-blown and see what is produced.
. . .
Mr Potter48 will come in person to the Royal Society after Easter, and in the meantime send me forty shillings so I can pay his admittance for him.
. . .
6 May
Today I described to the Royal Society my observation that holly berries, after lying five or six hours in the bottom of a vessel of water, will rise and swim up to the middle, which is thought to be due to a kind of fermentation and swelling that means the berries increase in size. The Royal Society decided this experiment should be tried again in the winter.
I also described49 my observation that grains of wheat will sink in water with an air bubble attached to them. When the bubble breaks, the grains rise again, then sink a second time to the bottom and do not rise again.
Quaere50: if a bladder filled with smoke will be carried up into the air, and if so, perhaps several such bladders might draw a man up into the air to a certain height?
. . .
13 May
The new charter51 of the Royal Society was read before its council, which met for the first time today. It has been decided that discussion of who should be received and admitted into the Royal Society will be kept secret.
. . .
June
When I was about52 two thirds of the way down Dundery Hill, on my way from Bristol to Wells, I saw a thin mist rise out of the ditch on the right-hand side of the highway. When I came nearer to the place, I could not discern the mist, so I retraced my steps and saw it again from a distance. Then I noticed that there was some flower or weed growing in the ditch from which the vapour came. My nose was affected with a smell that I knew, but it did not come immediately to mind. My groom, who is dull of understanding, but whose senses are very quick, caught up with me and I asked him what he could smell. He answered that he smelt the smell of the canals that come from the baths at Bath.
. . .
At Crudwell53, near the manor house, is a fine spring in the street called Bery-well. Labourers say it quenches their thirst better than other waters. To my taste it seems to have aliquantulum aciditatis, and is perhaps vitriolate. The town is called after this well; perhaps it is called Crudwell because of the water turning milk into cruds.
. . .
July
Mr Walter Charleton has presented the Royal Society with a plan of the stone antiquities at Avebury, near Marlborough, suggesting that it would be worth digging there under a certain triangular stone, where a monument to some Danish king might be found. I have been asked, together with my friend Sir James Long, to make further enquiries into this.
. . .
September
Sir Kenelm Digby54 says that Dr Dee (whom my great-grandfather knew well) diligently observed the weather for seven years, and as a result developed such skill in predicting the weather that he was accounted a witch.
. . .
I have found55, I think, a place for the free school at Malmesbury that Mr Hobbes intends to establish. The land is in Bradon Forest, worth about 25 li. per annum, and in His Majesty’s gift.
I have also found56 Mr Hobbes a house in London, but he hesitates to take it lest his pension should cease in this time of austerity when the court is reducing its expenses. He is at Chatsworth for the time being and will make no decisions until he comes to London himself.
. . .
The rivulet that runs57 through Chalke rises at a place called Naule, belonging to Broad Chalke farm, where a great many springs issue out of the chalky ground. It makes a kind of lake covering about three acres, where there are two-foot-long trout, the best in England. The water is good for washing and brewing. I tried putting crawfish in it, but they did not live, the water is too cold for them. When horses from north Wiltshire, or other horses from further afield, come to drink in the Chalke River, it is so cold and tort that they sniff and snort, I suppose because it is very heavily impregnated with nitre.
. . .
In the presence of the King, Walter Charleton and the President of the Royal Society, William Brouncker discussed my view that Avebury excels Stonehenge as much as a cathedral does a parish church. His Majesty expressed surprise than none of our chorographers have yet taken any notice of Avebury, and he has issued a Royal Command that Stonehenge and Avebury be investigated. Mr Charleton will arrange to take me into His Majesty’s presence to discuss this.
. . .
In his book58 Chorea Gigantum, published this year, Mr Charleton argues that Stonehenge was the work of the Danes. The stones are so exceeding old that books do not reach them. They savour of an antique rudeness.
I think Mr Charleton59 is wrong. His book shows a great deal of learning in a very good style, but as to his hypothesis that the Danes built Stonehenge, that cannot be right: it is a gross mistake. In the thirteenth century, the historian Matthew Paris expressly affirmed that Stonehenge was the place where the Saxons’ treachery massacred the Britons, which was four or five hundred years before the conquest of the Danes. I think Simeon of Durham and Henry of Huntingdon said the same thing in the twelfth century.
Mr Charleton writes in his book, ‘Many things are well worthy our knowledge, that cannot yet deserve our belief; and even fictions sometimes have accidentally given light to long obscured writers.’
. . .
Today I met60 His Majesty. Into the King’s presence I took with me a draft of Avebury done only from memory, but well enough resembling it, I think. He was very pleased with it. He gave me his hand to kiss and commanded me to wait on him at Marlborough when he travels to Bath with the Queen in about a fortnight’s time.
. . .
October
On their progress to Bath, His Majesty and the Duke of York left the Queen and diverted to Avebury where I showed them that stupendous antiquity. I thought my stammer would start up through nervousness, but it disappeared when I saw how delighted by the monument the royal visitors were. The stones there are pitched on end, bigger than those at Stonehenge, but rude and unhewn, just as they were when they were drawn out of the earth.
Afterwards, as we were leaving61, the King cast his eye on Silbury Hill, about a mile away, and said he desired to see it. I climbed to the top with him; Mr Charleton and the Duke of York came too. At the top, the King saw his kingdom from a new prospect. After we descended he proceeded to the entertainment and dinner at Lacock; then on that evening to Bath. The gentry and common people of those parts received the royal party with great acclamations of joy.
His Majesty has commanded me to write a description of Avebury and present it to him, and the Duke of York has commanded me to provide an account of the Old Camps and Barrows on the Plains. I will attempt to do both.
His Majesty also62 commanded me to dig at the bottom of the stones, to see if I could find any human bones, but I will not do it.
. . .
I have returned to Stonehenge and discovered some new holes.
I noticed too, but not for the first time, that the high stones are so deeply honeycombed that the starlings use them as nests. Whether these holes in the high-up stones are natural or artificial I cannot tell. In Wales, starlings are called Adar y Drudwy (meaning Birds of the Druids). Perhaps the Druids made these holes on purpose for their loquacious birds to nest in. This calls to my mind Pliny’s description of the starling in his time that could speak Greek.
While I think it63 very probable that Stonehenge already existed long before the Romans became masters of Britain, they would have been delighted with the stateliness and grandeur of it, and (considering the dryness of its situation) would have found it suitable for urn-burial. There are about forty-five barrows near Stonehenge. It must have taken a great deal of time to collect so many thousand loads of earth, and soldiers have better things to do, so I do not think these barrows were for burying the dead slain in battles. When Christianity became the settled religion, the temples that had been dedicated to the heathen gods were converted to Christian use and worship.
The monument is still64 being damaged. Ever since I can remember, the locals have been picking at it. One large stone was carried away to make a bridge; and it is generally believed, by those living close by, that powder from these stones tipped down wells will drive away the toads that infest them. The source of this belief seems to be that no magpie, toad or snake has ever been seen at Stonehenge. But this is no surprise. Birds of weak flight will not fly beyond their power of reaching cover, for fear of their enemies, the hawks and ravens, and there is no cover within a mile and a half of Stonehenge. Snakes and adders love cover too, so avoid Stonehenge for the same reason as the magpies. As for the toads, they will not go beyond a certain distance from water.
. . .
11 November
Mr Francis Potter65 was admitted to the Royal Society today.
. . .
30 November
St Andrew’s Day66: the day of the General Meeting of the Royal Society. Today at our meeting I remarked to Sir William Petty that it seems not well to me that we have pitched upon the feast day of the patron saint of Scotland. I would have thought it better to choose the feast of St George, or that of St Isidore, the canonised philosopher. ‘No,’ said Sir William, ‘I would rather have had it on St Thomas’s Day, for he would not believe in the resurrection until he had seen and put his fingers into the nail holes in Christ’s body.’ This according to the motto Nullius in verba (take nobody’s word for it).
. . .
December
Sir George Ent has shown the Royal Society a table top made of fossilised wood that was sent to him from Rome by the renowned collector of rarities Cassiano dal Pozzo. Sir George Ent met Cassiano dal Pozzo when he was in Rome with Dr William Harvey in 1636. Mr Evelyn visited him too, when he was on his Grand Tour in 1644. Cassiano dal Pozzo stayed in touch with Sir George Ent; he sent him examples of petrified wood and they carried on a lively correspondence and exchange of books, until Cassiano dal Pozzo’s death six years ago. I wish I could have visited Cassiano dal Pozzo’s paper museum myself and seen the two sets of drawings – things human and things divine – into which I have heard it was divided. There would have been many things in those collections of stupendous interest to a scurvy antiquary such as I am.
