The Diary of John Evelyn (Volume 1 of 2). Evelyn John
November, 1633. This year my father was appointed Sheriff, the last, as I think, who served in that honorable office for Surrey and Sussex, before they were disjoined. He had 116 servants in liveries, every one liveried in green satin doublets; divers gentlemen and persons of quality waited on him in the same garb and habit, which at that time (when thirty or forty was the usual retinue of the High Sheriff) was esteemed a great matter. Nor was this out of the least vanity that my father exceeded (who was one of the greatest decliners of it); but because he could not refuse the civility of his friends and relations, who voluntarily came themselves, or sent in their servants. But my father was afterward most unjustly and spitefully molested by that jeering judge, Richardson, for reprieving the execution of a woman, to gratify my Lord of Lindsey, then Admiral: but out of this he emerged with as much honor as trouble. The king made this year his progress into Scotland, and Duke James was born.
15th December, 1634: My dear sister, Darcy, departed this life, being arrived to her 20th year of age; in virtue advanced beyond her years, or the merit of her husband, the worst of men. She had been brought to bed the 2d of June before, but the infant died soon after her, the 24th of December. I was therefore sent for home the second time, to celebrate the obsequies of my sister; who was interred in a very honorable manner in our dormitory joining to the parish church, where now her monument stands.
1635. But my dear mother being now dangerously sick, I was, on the 3d of September following, sent for to Wotton. Whom I found so far spent, that, all human assistance failing, she in a most heavenly manner departed this life upon the 29th of the same month, about eight in the evening of Michaelmas-day. It was a malignant fever which took her away, about the 37th of her age, and 22d of her marriage, to our irreparable loss and the regret of all that knew her. Certain it is, that the visible cause of her indisposition proceeded from grief upon the loss of her daughter, and the infant that followed it; and it is as certain, that when she perceived the peril whereto its excess had engaged her, she strove to compose herself and allay it; but it was too late, and she was forced to succumb. Therefore summoning all her children then living (I shall never forget it), she expressed herself in a manner so heavenly, with instructions so pious and Christian, as made us strangely sensible of the extraordinary loss then imminent; after which, embracing every one of us she gave to each a ring with her blessing and dismissed us. Then, taking my father by the hand, she recommended us to his care; and, because she was extremely zealous for the education of my younger brother, she requested my father that he might be sent with me to Lewes; and so having importuned him that what he designed to bestow on her funeral, he would rather dispose among the poor, she labored to compose herself for the blessed change which she now expected. There was not a servant in the house whom she did not expressly send for, advise, and infinitely affect with her counsel. Thus she continued to employ her intervals, either instructing her relations, or preparing of herself.
Though her physicians, Dr. Meverell, Dr. Clement, and Dr. Rand, had given over all hopes of her recovery, and Sir Sanders Duncombe had tried his celebrated and famous powder, yet she was many days impairing, and endured the sharpest conflicts of her sickness with admirable patience and most Christian resignation, retaining both her intellectuals and ardent affections for her dissolution, to the very article of her departure. When near her dissolution, she laid her hand on every one of her children; and taking solemn leave of my father, with elevated heart and eyes, she quietly expired, and resigned her soul to God. Thus ended that prudent and pious woman, in the flower of her age, to the inconsolable affliction of her husband, irreparable loss of her children, and universal regret of all that knew her. She was interred, as near as might be, to her daughter Darcy, the 3d of October, at night, but with no mean ceremony.
It was the 3d of the ensuing November, after my brother George was gone back to Oxford, ere I returned to Lewes, when I made way, according to instructions received of my father, for my brother Richard, who was sent the 12th after.
1636. This year being extremely dry, the pestilence much increased in London, and divers parts of England.
13th February, 1637: I was especially admitted (and, as I remember, my other brother) into the Middle Temple, London, though absent, and as yet at school. There were now large contributions to the distressed Palatinates.
The 10th of December my father sent a servant to bring us necessaries, and the plague beginning now to cease, on the 3d of April, 1637, I left school, where, till about the last year, I have been extremely remiss in my studies; so as I went to the University rather out of shame of abiding longer at school, than for any fitness, as by sad experience I found: which put me to re-learn all that I had neglected, or but perfunctorily gained.
OXFORD
10th May, 1637. I was admitted a Fellow-commoner of Baliol College, Oxford; and, on the 29th, I was matriculated in the vestry of St. Mary's, where I subscribed the Articles, and took the oaths: Dr. Baily, head of St. John's, being vice-chancellor, afterward bishop. It appears by a letter of my father's, that he was upon treaty with one Mr. Bathurst (afterward Doctor and President), of Trinity College, who should have been my tutor; but, lest my brother's tutor, Dr. Hobbs, more zealous in his life than industrious to his pupils, should receive it as an affront, and especially for that Fellow-commoners in Baliol were no more exempt from exercise than the meanest scholars there, my father sent me thither to one Mr. George Bradshaw (nomen invisum! yet the son of an excellent father, beneficed in Surrey). I ever thought my tutor had parts enough; but as his ambition made him much suspected of the College, so his grudge to Dr. Lawrence, the governor of it (whom he afterward supplanted), took up so much of his time, that he seldom or never had the opportunity to discharge his duty to his scholars. This I perceiving, associated myself with one Mr. James Thicknesse (then a young man of the foundation, afterward a Fellow of the house), by whose learned and friendly conversation I received great advantage. At my first arrival, Dr. Parkhurst was master: and after his decease, Dr. Lawrence, a chaplain of his Majesty's and Margaret Professor, succeeded, an acute and learned person; nor do I much reproach his severity, considering that the extraordinary remissness of discipline had (till his coming) much detracted from the reputation of that College.
There came in my time to the College one Nathaniel Conopios, out of Greece, from Cyrill, the patriarch of Constantinople, who, returning many years after, was made (as I understand) Bishop of Smyrna. He was the first I ever saw drink coffee; which custom came not into England till thirty years after.7
After I was somewhat settled there in my formalities (for then was the University exceedingly regular, under the exact discipline of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, then Chancellor), I added, as benefactor to the library of the College, these books – "ex dono Johannis Evelyni, hujus Coll. Socio-Commensalis, filii Richardi Evelyni, è com. Surriæ, armigr." —
"Zanchii Opera," vols. 1, 2, 3.
"Granado in Thomam Aquinatem," vols. 1, 2, 3.
"Novarini Electa Sacra" and "Cresolii Anthologia Sacra"; authors, it seems, much desired by the students of divinity there.
Upon the 2d of July, being the first Sunday of the month, I first received the blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the college chapel, one Mr. Cooper, a Fellow of the house, preaching; and at this time was the Church of England in her greatest splendor, all things decent, and becoming the Peace, and the persons that governed. The most of the following week I spent in visiting the Colleges, and several rarities of the University, which do very much affect young comers.
18th July, 1637. I accompanied my eldest brother, who then quitted Oxford, into the country; and, on the 9th of August, went to visit my friends at Lewes, whence I returned the 12th to Wotton. On the 17th of September, I received the blessed Sacrament at Wotton church, and 23d of October went back to Oxford.
5th November, 1637. I received again the Holy Communion in our college chapel, one Prouse, a Fellow (but a mad one), preaching.
9th December, 1637. I offered at my first exercise in the Hall, and answered my opponent; and, upon the 11th following, declaimed in the chapel before the Master, Fellows, and Scholars, according to the custom. The 15th after, I first of all opposed in the Hall.
The Christmas ensuing, being at a Comedy which the gentlemen of Exeter College presented
Evelyn should have said "till twenty years after," not thirty. Coffee was introduced into England, and coffee-houses set up, in 1658.