Aubrey's Brief Lives

by John Aubrey

  But to return to 1675. Aubrey, it seems, was once more hopeful of getting a place in England, for in that year Lord Thanet wrote to him: “I am glad you have soe good an opportunity to make your addresses to that excellent Lady, the Younger Countess Dowager of Pembroke, who if yore Starrs be favourable, may, through the interest of the Dutches of Portsmouth, procure you some good imployment, if not neglected by a wonted trapishness incident in You. The freedom I take in menconing that you will, I hope, easily forgive, since I doe it not by way of check, but by a friendly advertisement to beware of it.” Aubrey’s efficiency is well attested by the offers of emigration which he had received, for life was still so hard in the Plantations that no one but a fool, and the first colonists were far from that, would have suggested taking with them anyone who could not more than pull his own weight; and so it must have been his “wonted trapishness” that caused this job, like all the others, to fall through.

  The result was that Aubrey was immediately overwhelmed, yet again, by his financial difficulties (upon a threatning of my brother to threw me in Gaole) and in this predicament a strange letter arrived from the Earl of Thanet. “J. Aubrey,” it began curtly, “With this you will receive a Protection according to your desire, which when useless returne. I send it you under this provisoe, that yow are my Sollicitor to looke after my business in London; and for your Sallary that is agreed on. My mother hath lent me Thanet house garden, where I intend to fit up two or three chambers for my use when I come to London privately, and intend to stay not long there, one of which as my meniall Servant you may make use of when fitted up, and when it is you shall have notice. I would have you in future to take more time in writing your letters, for your last was soe ill writ that I had a great deale of trouble to read some part of it. Thanet.” Poor Aubrey must have been appalled to receive such a letter from a man whom he had always looked upon as one of his greatest friends, but the next post set his mind at rest. “Sir,” wrote Lord Thanet then, “I am not soe ignorant as not to knowe the Stile of myne of the third Instant is much unbefitting to writ unto a Gentleman of youre Birth. The reason why I make my selfe such a proud ill bread Fellowe in it, is the better to disguise the business You lately enjoyned me to doe for You. And on the same Score my Letters in the future shall be, by your permission, as little civill, then in case any thing should be questioned in the account you knowe of, in producing such, writ in soe imperious a manner, will induce all to believe that the business, although very unbefitting, of your belonging to me is noe otherwise then reall. Although this small service can hardly be inrolled under the notion of a Courtesy, yet I assure You ’tis the first Protection I ever gave: although I have been in this nature solicited by many. Weare there anything of moment that I could serve you in,” he concludes, “you might freely command him who is in great reallity Your most affectionate and humble Servant: Thanet.”

  Even armed with this powerful protection, however, Aubrey still felt unsafe (if my brother should know of it, he wrote, he would fall upon me like a Tygre) and to avoid any possibility of imprisonment for debt, he constantly changed his dwelling. “Yor lodging,” Lord Thanet said, “like an inchanted Castle, being never to be found out, I shall in the future direct my Letters to Mr. Hookes chamber in Gressam Colledge as you desire.”

  Matters had, in fact, become so serious that Aubrey was even toying with the idea of entering the Church. Fough! The Cassock stinkes; it would be ridiculous, he had said when the idea first came up two years before, but a letter to Anthony Wood shows that his objections were now taking a more practical turn. I am stormed by my chiefest freinds afresh, viz. Baron Bertie, Sir William Petty, Sir John Hoskyns, Bishop of Sarum, etc. to turne Ecclesiastique; but the King of France growes stronger and stronger, and what if the Roman Religion should come-in againe? Why then, say they, cannot you turne too? You, I say, know well that I am no puritan, nor an enimy to the old Gentleman on the other side of the Alpes. Truly, if I had a good Parsonage of 2 or 300 pounds per annum (as you told me) it would be a shrewd temptation. That Aubrey was unlearned in theology and had a stutter caused not the slightest difficulty, for the standard was not high and Aubrey himself said of one of the most learned divines, Robert Sanderson, Lord Bishop of Lincoln: He had no great memorie: I am certain not a sure one: when I was a Fresh-man and heard him read his first Lecture, he was out in the Lord’s Prayer.

  The question of his taking any services did not really arise. “If the heasitation in your speech doth hinder,” one of his friends suggested, “gett a Parsonage of 4 or 500 pounds per annum, and give a Curat 100 pounds per annum to officiate for you.”

  This allotment of one-fifth of the revenue to the incumbent was very generous, for during his perambulation of Surrey, Aubrey had been so greatly shocked to find curates who received only sixteen or twenty pounds a year for doing the whole work of a parish that he was for once moved to anger. I cannot here pass by without animadvertising on this poor mean Pittance, set aside for the Vicar, while the Lay Impropriator sacrilegiously fattens on the Revenue of the Church, and enjoys what neither in right Reason or Conscience was never design’d for, or belongs to the Laity, he said. Could Impropriators be once persuaded to set aside for the Service of the Altar a just Proportion (for the Age is too degenerate to expect a Surrender of the whole to the pious Uses first designed by the Donors) it might, in some measure, atone for the Rapine of their Ancestors. But so frail is the human conscience that when Aubrey himself had the chance to fatten on the Revenues of the Church, he proposed to keep a mere four-fifths of the income for his own use.

  This corruption was all the more serious when one considers the overwhelming importance of the Church in those days. “Though it was an age of reading and writing in the conduct of the ordinary affairs of life,” says Professor Trevelyan, “very little printed matter came in the way of the less educated. This gave all the greater importance to the sermon, which dealt as freely with political as with religious doctrines.” And though Charles II capped his aphorism about Presbyterianism being no religion for a gentleman, by saying that Anglicanism was no religion for a Christian, there was no doubt about its entertainment value. For science had had as yet had so little effect on the character of religious belief that the Church felt sure enough of itself to tolerate the kind of jesting that now seems irreverent. “My Lord, my Lord,” cried one preacher to the dozing Landerdale, “you snore so loud, you will wake the King.” And it was with obvious satisfaction that Anthony Wood noted in his Journal: “August 26, Sunday: a baudy Sermon at S. Marie’s in the afternoon.” Though baudiness was a rare delight, jokes were common in church and preachers vied with each other in attracting the largest audiences for their performances. Some preached in their sleep, like that poor man who was so sadly discomfited by James I, and Meredith Lloyd told Aubrey that when Dr. Powell preacht, that a Smoake would issue out of his head; so great agitation of spirit he had, which led Aubrey to ask in true scientific fashion: Why might not such accidents heretofore be a Hint to the glories, which the Painters putt about the heads of canonized Saints. As a final proof of the importance of the sermon in everyday life, Aubrey remarks that Sir William Croftes, eldest brother to the now Bishop of Hereford, built a house in Leo-minster, to live there, to heare John Tombes preach. Nor were the pleasures of religion confined to the actual service. At Danby Wisk, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, Aubrey says, it is the custom for the parishioners, after receiving the Sacrament, to goe from church directly to the ale-house, and there drink together, as a testimony of charity and friendship.

  Aubrey still hesitated, though, very probably because he thought a parsonage was beneath him, for the clergy had not yet reached the pitch of gentility which they were to achieve in the next two centuries; and Clarendon, though he was a tireless supporter of the Anglican Church, noted with disgust that after the Civil War, “the daughters of noble and illustrious Families bestowed themselves upon divines or other low and unequal matches.”

  Aubrey’s misgivings a
bout the consequences of a change in religion were already growing out of date, as is shown by the tone in which he himself mentions the queasy consciences of the recent past. John Barclay was in England tempore regis Jacobi, he writes solemnly. He was then an old man, white beard; and wore a hatt and a feather, which gave some severe people offence. And there can be no doubt at all about the spirit in which he recorded that in Sir Charles Scarborough’s time (he was of Caius College) Dr. Batchcroft, the Head of that House, would visit the boyes’ Chambers, and see what they were studying; and Charles Scarborough’s Genius let him to the Mathematics, and he was wont to be reading of Clavius upon Euclid. The old Dr. had found in the title ’e Societate Jesu’, and was much scandalized at it. Sayd he, By all meanes leave-off this author, and read Protestant Mathematicall bookes. And when Aubrey mentioned the death, in 1671, of his friend, Edward Bagshawe, a Prisoner to Newgate 22 weekes for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance (he boggled at the word ‘willingly’ in the oath) he hastened to add that he was buried in the fanatique burying-place by the Artillery-ground in Moor-fields.

  The truth of the matter, as Aubrey realised perfectly well, was that the Wars of Religion had proved so disastrous that they had caused a definite reaction in favour of tolerance, and in the very next year after Aubrey had expressed his misgivings, the death penalty for heresy was finally abolished. “Since their belief of their contrary truths is confessedly a work of divine revelation, why a man should be hanged because it has not yet pleased God to give him his spirit, I confess I am yet to understand,” Robert Boyle had written when Parliament was trying to stamp out “the spreading impostures of the sectaries” during the Commonwealth, and he was driven to the conclusion that “it is strange that men should rather be quarrelling for a few trifling opinions, wherein they dissent, than to embrace one another for those many fundamental truths wherein they agree.” In this attitude Boyle was soon joined by most educated men, though not all of them would have agreed with Sir William Davenant, who confessed to Aubrey that his private opinion was that Religion, at last, e.g. a hundred yeares hence, would come to Settlement, and that in a kind of ingeniose Quakerisme. Aubrey himself was completely in sympathy with this civilised attitude: George Webb, Bishop of Limrick, he says, dyed and was buried in Limerick about two or three daies before the Towne was taken by the Irish, who digged up the body again; it was about 1642. I confess I doe not like that super-zeale in the Canon Lawe, not to let alone there the bodys of Heretiques. It is too inhuman.

  Even Roman Catholicism was coming to be tolerated as a religion, although it was still hated as a political weapon, and Aubrey numbered among his personal friends Capt. Pugh, a Rubroliterate gent, my acquaintance, a writer and a Poet. Bred up in Societate Jesu; but turn’d out because he was a Captaine in the late Warres. When his studie was searcht, his Orders were there found, and also a letter from the Queen-Mother (Whose Confessor he had sometimes been) to the King, that, if he should fall into any danger of the Lawe, upon sight of that lettre he should obtaine his Majesties pardon. And very necessary this letter was to prove, for Aubrey continues: All his bookes were seized on; amongst others his almanac, wherein he entred omnia Caroli II delirementa et vitia [all Charles II’s follies and vices] which was carried to the Council board.

  Despite outbursts of popular hysteria, like the one caused by Titus Oates, Catholicism had been looked on with sympathy by the upper classes ever since the Reformation. When he lay dyeing, Aubrey writes of his great grandfather, he desired them to send for a good man; they thought he meant Dr. Goodman, Deane of St. Paules, but he meant a Priest, as I have heard my cosen John Madock say. Capt. Pugh was wont to say that civilians (as most learned and Gent.) naturally incline to the Church of Rome; and the Common lawyers, as more ignorant and Clownish, to the church of Geneva. And Aubrey had heard even John Tombes, the Baptist, who seemed to be a very pious and Zealous Christian, say (though he was much opposite to the Romish Religion) that truly, for his part, should he see a poor Zealous Friar goeing to preach, he should pay him respect.

  This attitude is the more surprising, when one realises that Catholicism then appeared to the mass of Englishmen in very much the same light as Communism nowadays strikes the Americans. For by its immediate success, Luther’s revolution was even more startling than Marx’s; and it was no less violent. “Whoso can strike, smite, strangle, or stab secretly or publicly,” enjoined Luther, “such wonderful times are these that a prince can better merit Heaven with bloodshed than another with prayer,” and in his political thought he showed himself a true German, the first in the lamentable procession of that nation’s modern colossi. “No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood,” he thundered, “the civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.” Faced with this threat, it was no wonder that the Papacy reacted so violently: and with Christendon in danger, the Church adopted in self-defence a policy which had been outlined a century before by the Bishop of Verden. “When the Church is threatened,” he had said, “she is released from the commandments of morality; with unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, prison, death. For all order is for the sake of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed to the common good.” In pursuance of this totalitarian policy, the Papacy sided with every enemy of England for the next two hundred years, besides ceaselessly plotting revolution inside the country. Rebellion against a Protestant monarch was held to be the duty of every true Christian, and a procession of Jesuits passed between the Continent and the tightly organised and obedient Catholic families of England, to foster this end. It was largely for these political reasons that Catholicism was excluded from all measures of toleration, long after they had been extended to every other sect. And it was because of this political danger that Aubrey was so alarmed when his own sympathies became too widely known. When I was comeing one time out of All-souls, he wrote to Anthony Wood in 1688, the Gape-abouts, at the gate pointed at me, one sayd Romano-Catholicus: I pray God bless you and deliver you from effronts.

  But still Aubrey made no decision, even though he was reduced to such straits by 1677 that he had to sell the last of his possessions, his precious books. That he was still hopeful, however, is shown by a note: I expect preferment through Sir Leoline Jenkins, who was not only some remote kin to him, but also owed his rise entirely to the efforts of the Aubrey family. When this worthy was made Principall Secretary of Estate, therefore, Aubrey was quick to wayte on him to congratulate for the Honour his Majestie had been pleased to bestowe on him, but though he reported that he recieved me with his usual courtesie, and sayd that it had pleased God to rayse-up a poore worme to doe his Majestie humble service, he showed no sign of wishing to repeat the process and poor Aubrey went unsatisfied. And in 1683 the final blow fell: It pleased God at Whitsuntide last, he wrote, to bereave me of a deare, usefull, and faithfull friend (Mr. Johnson) who had the reversion of the place of Master of the Rolles; who generously, for friendship and neighbourhood sake (we were borne the same weeke and within 4 miles and educated together) gave me the Graunt to be one of his Secretaries. He was a strong lustie man and died of a malignant fever, infected by the Earl of Abingdons brother, making of his Will. It was such an Opportunity that I shall never have the like again, Aubrey bewailed. His death is an extraordinary losse to me, for that had he lived to have been Master of the Rolles I had been one of his Secretarys, worth 600 pounds or more.

  This disappointment seems to have brought Aubrey’s age home to him, for he was now in his fifty-eighth year, and we hear no more of prospective jobs. But the habit of a lifetime dies hard and in his Faber Fortunae he continued to jot down, as they occurred to him, ideas for recouping his fortunes. Put somebody upon marrying the Thames and Avon, and gett a share in it, he said hopefully, or Gett a Patent to digge for the Coale that I have discovered in Sly field-common in Surrey, near Gilford. In all, sixty-two projects were noted down by him, but it is the last entry that is of the greatest interest, for Aubre
y was far in advance of his time when he suggested a Register Generali of People, Plantations, and Trade of England. His idea was to gett an Office for such a Registrie for the collecting the Accounts for the severall particulars following, viz:

  (1) Of all the Births, Marriages, Burialls throughout all England: and to see them duly kept: that his Majestie may have a yearly account of the increase and decrease of his subjects.