John Aubrey Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Ruth Scurr

  List of Illustrations

  Dramatis Personae

  Dedication

  Title Page

  England’s Collector

  Part I

  Wiltshire

  Part II

  Oxford

  Part III

  War

  Part IV

  Learning

  Part V

  Restoration

  Part VI

  Stone, Water, Fire

  Part VII

  Work

  Part VIII

  Surrey

  Part IX

  Penury

  Part X

  The Popish Plot

  Part XI

  Brief Lives

  Part XII

  More Lives and Deaths

  Part XIII

  Manuscripts

  Part XIV

  Transcriptions

  Part XV

  Crepusculum

  Aubrey’s Afterlife

  Endnotes

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Book

  John Aubrey loved England. From an early age, he saw his England slipping away and, against extraordinary odds, committed himself to preserving for posterity what remained of it – in books, monuments and life stories. His Brief Lives would redefine the art of biography yet he published only one rushed, botched book in his lifetime and died fearing his name and achievements would be forgotten.

  Ruth Scurr’s biography is an act of scholarly imagination: a diary drawn from John Aubrey’s own words, displaying his unique voice, dry wit, the irreverence and drama of a literary innovator. Aubrey saw himself modestly as a collector of a vanishing past, a ‘scurvy antiquary’. But he was also one of the pioneers of modern writing, a journalist before the age of journalism, who witnessed the Civil War and the Great Fire of London in the company of some of the influential men and women, high and low, whose lives he would make his legacy.

  John Aubrey’s own life was a poignant personal and financial struggle to record the doings of great men and the relics of antiquity, the habits of Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and Thomas Hobbes, the stones of Stonehenge and the stained glass of forgotten churches. In this genre-defying account, rich with the London taverns and elegiac landscapes of an England he helped to preserve, Ruth Scurr has resurrected John Aubrey as a potent spirit for our own time.

  About the Author

  Ruth Scurr is a historian, biographer and literary critic. She teaches history and politics at Cambridge University, where she is a Lecturer and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College. Her first book, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and was listed among the 100 Best Books of the Decade in The Times. She reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, the Daily Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal.

  ALSO BY RUTH SCURR

  Fatal Purity

  List of Illustrations

  Unless Stated, all illustrations are drawn by John Aubrey, and reproduced from his papers, held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

  Jacket Sir James Long of Draycot and J. Aubrey, hawking (MS Aubrey 3, —186v–187v)

  Endpapers Map of Wiltshire, from John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, I. Sudbury and G. Humble, 1611–12 (author’s collection)

  1. Portrait of John Aubrey, engraved by Charles Eden Wagstaff from the drawing by William Faithorne in the Ashmolean Museum (Bridgeman Images)

  2. The house in Easton Pierse where Aubrey was born in his grandfather’s chamber, marked with a cross (MS Aubrey 17, fol. 3r)

  3. Lyte and Browne family escutcheons (MS Aubrey 3, fol. 59v)

  4. Statue of Neptune, at Thomas Bushell’s estate, Enston, in Oxfordshire (MS Aubrey 17, fol. 18r)

  5. Church tower, Kington St Michael, showing extensive cracks (MS Aubrey 3, fol. 61r)

  6. Aubrey’s bookplate (MS Aubrey 17, fol. 2v)

  7. Lord Bacon’s Verulam House, drawn from memory (MS Aubrey 6, fol. 72r)

  8. Hobbes’s House (MS Aubrey 9, fol. 31v)

  9. Hobbes’s nativity (MS Aubrey 9, fol. 1(b)v)

  10. Osney Abbey, engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar for Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. 2, published 1661 (from Olivia Horsfall-Turner’s private collection, reproduced by Warwick Leadlay Gallery)

  11. Silbury Hill (MS Top. Gen. C.24, fol. 41v, fol. 42r)

  12. Stonehenge (MS Top. Gen. C.24, fol. 60v, 61r)

  13. Stone monuments Pierre Couverte and Pierre Levée, near Doué-la-Fontaine and Loudon, France (MS Top. Gen. C.25, fol. 56r)

  14 Survey of Avebury (MS Top. Gen. C.24 fol. 39v, 40r)

  15. Map of the remains of Roman Camps in Britain (MS Top. Gen. C.24, fol. 250v, 251r)

  16. Re-imagined house at Easton Pierse (MS Aubrey 3, fol. 60r)

  17. Imagined bridge with Aubrey’s initials (MS Aubrey 17, fol. 8r)

  18. Prospect from Easton Pierse to the southeast (MS Aubrey 17, fol. 18r)

  19. Aubrey’s nativity (MS Aubrey 7, fol. 3r)

  20. South and north windows of the south and north aisles of Westminster Abbey (MS Top. Gen. C.25. fol. 172v)

  21. Geoffrey Chaucer (MS Top. Gen. C.25 fol. 202r)

  22. Roman urn, found at Kingston-upon-Thames (MS Top. Gen. C.25 fol. 49(a) r)

  23. Prospect of Waverley Abbey (MS Aubrey 4, fol. 140b(v)-140c(v))

  24. A Surrey cheese press (MS Aubrey 4, fol. 207c(v))

  25. Bust of Venetia Stanley (MS Aubrey 6, fol. 101r)

  26. Coat of Arms for Sir William Petty (MS Aubrey 6, fol. 12v)

  27. Coat of Arms for Robert Boyle (MS Aubrey 6, fol. 16v)

  28. The world as a pomegranate (MS Aubrey 1, fol. 89r)

  29. South and north windows of Westminster Hall (on the left) and the west window of the nave of Westminster Abbey (MS Top. Gen. C.25. fol. 171v-172r)

  30. Roof of Westminster Hall (MS Top. Gen. C.25. fol. 173r)

  31. Prospect of the Devil’s Arrows (MS Top. Gen. C.24, fol. 70r)

  32. Aubrey’s epitaph designed by himself (MS Aubrey 5, fol. 122r)

  33. Frontispiece for Aubrey’s Miscellanies, the only work he published in his lifetime, in 1696 (MS Ashmole E.11)

  Dramatis Personae

  Kings, Queens and Lord Protectors in Aubrey’s lifetime

  Charles I (1600–49), King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution on 30 January 1649.

  Henrietta Maria of France (1609–69), Queen Consort of England, Scotland and Ireland as the wife of Charles I, and mother of the future kings Charles II and James II.

  Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland from 16 December 1653 until his death on 3 September 1658.

  Richard Cromwell (1626–1712), son of Oliver; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland from 3 September 1658 until he resigned on 25 May 1659.

  Charles II (1630–85), son of Charles I, restored as King of England, Scotland and Ireland on 29 May 1660 until his death on 6 February 1685.

  James II (1633–1701), King of England and Ireland, and James VII of Scotland, from 6 February 1685 until his deposition in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

  William III (1650–1702) of Orange and Mary II (1662–94), co-regents over England, Scotland and Ireland after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. William was James II’s nephew and Mary was his Protestant daughter.

  Aubrey’s relations

  Richard Aubrey (1603–52), father.

  Deborah Aubrey (1610–86), née Lyte, mother.

  Isaac Lyte (1576–1660), maternal grandfather.

  Israel Browne (1578–1662), of Winterbourne Bassett, maternal grandmother.

  Thomas Lyte (1531–1627), of Easton Pierse, Kington St Michael, maternal great-grandfather.

  Rachel Danvers (d.1656), paternal grandmother; her first husband was Aubrey’s paternal grandfather, John Aubrey of Burleton, Hereford (1578–1616); her second was Aubrey’s godfather, John Whitson, Alderman of Bristol (1557–1629).

  William Aubrey (c.1529–95), Regius professor, paternal great-grandfather.

  William Aubrey (1643–1707), brother.

  Thomas Aubrey (1645–81), brother.

  Sir John Danvers of Chelsea (1588–1655), ‘The Regicide’, Aubrey’s kinsman (third cousin once removed), MP for Oxford University and Malmesbury, Colonel for Parliament, member of Cromwell’s Council of State and signatory of Charles I’s death warrant. His first wife was a widow, Magdalen Herbert, mother of the poet George Herbert.

  Sir John Aubrey (c.1606–79), 1st Baronet, uncle.

  Sir John Aubrey (c.1650–1700), 2nd Baronet, Aubrey’s cousin and patron; invited Aubrey to stay in his homes at Borstall (near Brill in Buckinghamshire) and Llanthrithyd (in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales).

  Elizabeth Freeman (1642–1720), Aubrey’s cousin, married to Ralph Freeman, Esq. of Abspenden, Hertfordshire, daughter of Sir John Aubrey, 1st Baronet, sister of Sir John Aubrey, 2nd Baronet.

  Aubrey’s women

  Miss Jane Codrington, whom Aubrey hoped to marry. Codrington was a common family name in the vicinity of the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire border. She married another.

  Miss Mary Wiseman, whom Aubrey loved at first sight in April 1651.

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; Miss Katherine Ryves (d.1657), whom Aubrey sought to marry; she died, depriving him of the opportunity. Daughter of George Ryves of Blandford. In her will she left Aubrey £350 and a mourning ring to his mother.

  At least one whore from whom Aubrey caught venereal disease in 1657.

  Miss Joan Sumner (1636–71), an unusually litigious lady, whom Aubrey sought to marry, before she took him to court.

  An unidentified rumoured mistress.

  Mrs Jane Smyth (b.1649), the young and ailing mistress and partner of Aubrey’s good friend Edmund Wylde. Aubrey was deeply fond of them both.

  Lady Dorothy Long, née Leech, the wife, then widow, of Sir James Long, a loyal friend of Aubrey’s in his old age.

  Aubrey’s contemporaries, many of them friends, some also patrons

  Mr Elias Ashmole (1617–92), antiquary interested in astrology and alchemy; acquired the Tradescant Collection of rarities and donated them, together with his own, to Oxford University on the condition the Ashmolean Museum was built to house them. His third wife was Mr William Dugdale’s daughter.

  Dr George Bathurst (d.1645), son of George Bathurst (1579–1656) and Elizabeth Villiers (Dr Ralph Kettell’s step-daughter). Brother of Ralph Bathurst. Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford (1631).

  Mr Ralph Bathurst (1620–1704), Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford (1640), and President from 1664 until his death. Medically trained, ordained (1644); pursued chemical researches after 1648 with Thomas Willis and John Lydall. Fellow of the Royal Society (1663).

  Mr John Birkenhead (1617–79), journalist, poet, satirist. In Oxford during the Civil War he established the Mercurius Aulicus, the weekly ‘intelligencer’ of the King’s party, England’s first official newsbook (1643–5). Under the Restoration he became Licenser of the Press (1660–3). MP for Wilton (1661), knighted (1662). Fellow of the Royal Society (1663).

  Hon. Robert Boyle (1627–92), scientist, son of 1st Earl of Cork, Fellow of the Royal Society (1660); best remembered for Boyle’s Law, stating that the pressure and volume of a gas have an inverse relationship when temperature is constant.

  Viscount William Brouncker (1620–84), 2nd Viscount Brouncker of Lyons, mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society (1660) and 1st President (1663).

  Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), writer and scientist, author of Religio Medici (1643) and Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial, or, A Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk (1658).

  Mr William Browne (d.1669), Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, Aubrey’s tutor, afterwards vicar of Farnham.

  Mr Thomas Bushell (c.1594–1674), mining engineer, mint master, speculator. Creator of the grotto at Enstone that captured Aubrey’s imagination. Held Lundy Island for Charles I during the Civil War.

  Dr Walter Charleton (1620–1707), physician and natural philosopher, Physician in Ordinary to Charles I (1643), antiquary, author of Chorea gigantum, or, The Most Famous Antiquity of Great Britain, Vulgarly Called Stone-heng . . . Restored to the Danes (1663). Fellow of the Royal Society (1663).

  Dr William Chillingworth (1602–44), theologian, studied at Trinity College, Oxford, friend of Thomas Hobbes. Converted to Roman Catholicism (1629), soon returned to the Anglican Church. Royalist.

  Mr Henry Coley (1633–1704), astrologer and mathematician, Mr William Lilly’s adopted son and amanuensis.

  Mr Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670), Czech philosopher and educationist, visited England in 1641, where Samuel Hartlib, his host, did much to spread his educational ideas.

  Mr Samuel Cooper (c.1607–72), painter, miniaturist. Lived in King Street, Covent Garden (1642), and Henrietta Street, Covent Garden (1650), painted Oliver Cromwell and Charles II; appointed the King’s Limner (or portraitist) in 1663.

  Mr Edward Davenant (1596–1679), vicar of Gillingham, Dorset, then of Poulshot Parsonage, near Devizes, until the Civil War, mathematician, taught Aubrey algebra.

  Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–65), courtier, diplomat, natural philosopher, alchemist, author, Roman Catholic. Married Venetia Stanley.

  Mr William Dobson (1611–46), portrait painter, patronised by Anthony Van Dyck. Moved to Oxford with Charles I’s court in 1643, became Serjeant Painter to the king.

  Mr William Dugdale (1605–86), antiquary, herald, the first English medieval historian, author of Monasticon Anglicanum (1655–73) and Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656).

  Sir George Ent (1603–89), friend and colleague of William Harvey, Fellow of the Royal Society (1663), demonstrated anatomy. Knighted by Charles II in 1665.

  Mr George Ent (d.1679), son of Sir George Ent. Fellow of the Royal Society (1677). Aubrey’s travelling companion in France.

  Mr Anthony Ettrick (1622–1703), friend of Aubrey from Trinity College, Oxford and Middle Temple. They travelled together to Ireland in 1660. Lawyer and Recorder of Poole (1662–82).

  Mr John Evelyn (1620–1706), diarist, Fellow of the Royal Society (1663), naturalist, annotated Aubrey’s natural history of Wiltshire and Surrey manuscripts.

  Lord Thomas Fairfax of Cameron (1612–71), Parliamentarian army officer, made commander-in-chief of the New Model Army, which he led to victory at the Battle of Naseby (1645).

  Mr William Faithorne (c.1616–91), engraver and portraitist who drew Aubrey.

  Dr John Fell (1625–86), Dean of Christ Church (1660), Vice Chancellor of Oxford University (1666–9), Thomas Willis’s brother-in-law, disciplinarian. Persuaded Edward Sheldon to permit the Sheldonian Theatre to be used as a printing house (1669). Bishop of Oxford (1676) and uniquely allowed to hold this role while continuing as Dean of Christ Church.

  Dr Thomas Gale (1635–1702), antiquary and classical scholar, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge (1666), High Master of St Paul’s School, London (1672), Fellow of the Royal Society (1677).

  Mr Thomas Gore (1632–84), lord of the manor at Alderton, antiquary who wrote on heraldry. Aubrey calls him ‘The Cuckold of Alderton’.

  Mr Edmund Halley (1656–1742), astronomer, educated at St Paul’s School under Thomas Gale; best remembered for discovering a comet.

  Father Harcourt, William Barrow (c.1609–79), Jesuit priest, ordained 1641, served as missioner in London for 35 years. A victim of the Popish Plot; evaded arrest until 7 May 1679, then imprisoned, tried and condemned to death.

  Mr James Harrington (1611–77), political theorist, moderate republican, Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles I during his imprisonments at Holmby and Carisbrooke, founder of the Rota Club, author of Oceana (1656), imprisoned after the Restoration.

  Mr Samuel Hartlib (c.1596–c.1662), Polish merchant, intelligencier.

  Dr William Harvey (1578–1657), discovered the circulation of the blood.

  Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke (1584–1650), patron of Anthony Van Dyck, entertained Charles I at Wilton House every summer, renowned huntsman.

  Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke (1621–69), son of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke and Susan de Vere.

  Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke, (1653–83), unruly huntsman who kept a menagerie of animals at Wilton House.

  Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke, (1656–1733), Fellow of the Royal Society (1685) and President (1689), dedicatee of Aubrey’s natural history of Wiltshire.

  Mr Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), philosopher and political theorist, born in Malmesbury, subject of Aubrey’s longest biography.

  Dr William Holder (1616–98), clergyman and music theorist. Fellow of the Royal Society (1663).

  Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–77), etcher, born in Prague, patronised by Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, worked as an illustrator for the printer John Ogilby and the antiquary and herald Sir William Dugdale. Converted to Roman Catholicism. Made a map of London before the Great Fire (1666).

  Mr Robert Hooke (1635–1703), natural philosopher, assistant in Oxford to the chemist Thomas Willis, then to Robert Boyle. Fellow of the Royal Society (1663), Curator of Experiments (1662). Moved into Gresham College to lecture on the history of nature and art (1664) and became Professor of Geometry. Author of Micrographia, or, Some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses, with observations and inquiries thereupon (1665). Made an Official Surveyor for rebuilding London after the Great Fire.

  Sir John Hoskyns (1634–1705), MP for Hereford (1685), Fellow of the Royal Society (1663); President (1682–3) and Secretary (1685–7).

  Sir Charles Howard (1630–1713), landowner and natural philosopher, inherited the estate at Deepdene, near Dorking, Surrey, where he created an elaborate Italianate garden. Fellow of the Royal Society (1663).