EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
E velyn lived in the busy and important times of King Charles I., Oliver Cromwell, King Charles II., King James II., and King William, and early accustomed himself to note such things as occurred, which he thought worthy of remembrance. He was known to, and had much personal intercourse with, the Kings Charles II. and James II.; and he was in habits of great intimacy with many of the ministers of these two monarchs, and with many of the eminent men of those days, as well among the clergy as the laity. Foreigners distinguished for learning, or arts, who came to England, did not leave it without visiting him.
The following pages contribute extensive and important particulars of this eminent man. They show that he did not travel merely to count steeples, as he expresses himself in one of his Letters: they develop his private character as one of the most amiable kind. With a strong predilection for monarchy, with a personal attachment to Kings Charles II. and James II., formed when they resided at Paris, he was yet utterly averse to the arbitrary measures of these monarchs.
Strongly and steadily attached to the doctrine and practice of the Church of England, he yet felt the most liberal sentiments for those who differed from him in opinion. He lived in intimacy with men of all persuasions; nor did he think it necessary to break connection with anyone who had ever been induced to desert the Church of England, and embrace the doctrines of that of Rome. In writing to the brother of a gentleman thus circumstanced, in 1659, he expresses himself in this admirable manner: "For the rest, we must commit to Providence the success of times and mitigation of proselytical fervors; having for my own particular a very great charity for all who sincerely adore the Blessed Jesus, our common and dear Saviour, as being full of hope that God (however the present zeal of some, and the scandals taken by others at the instant [present] affliction of the Church of England may transport them) will at last compassionate our infirmities, clarify our judgments, and make abatement for our ignorances, superstructures, passions, and errors of corrupt times and interests, of which the Romish persuasion can no way acquit herself, whatever the present prosperity and secular polity may pretend. But God will make all things manifest in his own time, only let us possess ourselves in patience and charity. This will cover a multitude of imperfections."
He speaks with great moderation of the Roman Catholics in general, admitting that some of the laws enacted against them might be mitigated; but of the Jesuits he had the very worst opinion, considering them as a most dangerous Society, and the principal authors of the misfortunes which befell King James II., and of the horrible persecutions of the Protestants in France and Savoy.
He must have conducted himself with uncommon prudence and address, for he had personal friends in the Court of Cromwell, at the same time that he was corresponding with his father-in-law, Sir Richard Browne, the Ambassador of King Charles II. at Paris; and at the same period that he paid his court to the King, he maintained his intimacy with a disgraced minister.
In his travels, he made acquaintance not only with men eminent for learning, but with men ingenious in every art and profession.
His manners we may presume to have been most agreeable; for his company was sought by the greatest men, not merely by inviting him to their own tables, but by their repeated visits to him at his own house; and this was equally the case with regard to ladies, of many of whom he speaks in the highest style of admiration, affection, and respect. He was master of the French, Italian, and Spanish languages. That he had read a great deal is manifest; but at what time he found opportunities for study, it is not easy to say. He acknowledges himself to have been idle, while at Oxford; and, when on his travels, he had little time for reading, except when he stayed about nineteen weeks in France, and at Padua, where he was likewise stationary for several months. At Rome, he remained a considerable time, but, while there, he was so continually engaged in viewing the great variety of interesting objects to be seen in that city, that he could have found little leisure for reading. When resident in England, he was so much occupied in the business of his numerous offices, in paying visits, in receiving company at home, and in examining whatever was deemed worthy of curiosity, or of scientific observation, that it is astonishing how he found the opportunity to compose the numerous books which he published, and the much greater number of Papers, on almost every subject, which still remain in manuscript; to say nothing of the very extensive and voluminous correspondence which he appears to have carried on during his long life, with men of the greatest eminence in Church and State, and the most distinguished for learning, both Englishmen and foreigners. In this correspondence he does not seem to have made use of an amanuensis; and he has left transcripts in his own hand of great numbers of letters both received and sent. He observes, indeed, in one of these, that he seldom went to bed before twelve, or closed his eyes before one o'clock.
He was happy in a wife of congenial dispositions with his own, of an enlightened mind, who had read much, and was skilled in etching and painting, yet attentive to the domestic concerns of her household, and a most affectionate mother.
His grandfather, George, was not the first of the family who settled in Surrey. John, father of this George, was of Kingston, in 1520, and married a daughter of David Vincent, Esq., Lord of the Manor of Long Ditton, near Kingston, which afterward came in the hands of George, who there carried on the manufacture of gunpowder. He purchased very considerable estates in Surrey, and three of his sons became heads of three families, viz, Thomas, his eldest son, at Long Ditton; John, at Godstone, and Richard at Wotton. Each of these three families had the title of Baronet conferred on them at different times, viz, at Godstone, in 1660; Long Ditton, in 1683; and Wotton, in 1713.
The manufacture of gunpowder was carried on at Godstone as well as at Long Ditton; but it does not appear that there ever was any mill at Wotton, or that the purchase of that place was made with such a view.
It may be not altogether incurious to observe, that though Mr. Evelyn's father was a man of very considerable fortune, the first rudiments of this son's learning were acquired from the village schoolmaster over the porch of Wotton Church. Of his progress at another school, and at college, he himself speaks with great humility; nor did he add much to his stock of knowledge, while he resided in the Middle Temple, to which his father sent him, with the intention that he should apply to what he calls "an impolished study," which he says he never liked.
The "Biographia" does not notice his tour in France, Flanders, and Holland, in 1641, when he made a short campaign as a volunteer in an English regiment then in service in Flanders.1 Nor does it notice his having set out, with intent to join King Charles I. at Brentford; and subsequently desisting when the result of that battle became known, on the ground that his brother's as well as his own estates were so near London as to be fully in power of the Parliament, and that their continued adherence would have been certain ruin to themselves without any advantage to his Majesty. In this dangerous conjuncture he asked and obtained the King's