by John Aubrey
Mr. J. Oxenbridge, her uncle, is now Prisoner in the Fleet on her account for a Dept of her husband, bound for him 28 yeares since.
SIR WILLIAM PLATER
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[Born 1590. Knighted 1623. Succeeded to his father’s Baronetcy 1638. The loyal and gallant achievements of this gentleman and his son are recorded on his wife’s tomb at Dickleburgh in Norfolk—Here under lyeth buried the body of Dame Frances Platers, the daughter and heir of Charles le Grys, of Billingford, in Norff., Esq. She married Sir William Playters, of Sotterley, in Suffolk, Knt. and Bart.; sometimes one of the deputie Lieuetenants and Vice-Admiral of the said countie, and Justice of the Peace and Coram; and Collonel of a regiment of foot, till turn’d out of all by the then rebellious Parliament; and in fine out of that Hous of Parliament, whereof he had the misfortune to be a member. She had issue by him only Thomas, who married with Rebecka, the daughter and co-heir of Tho. Chapman, of Woormly, in the county of Hartford, Esq., which said Sir Tho. was a great traveller before and after marriage, his ladie sometimes beyond the seas with him: a learned schollar; an exact linguist, expert in all arts and knowledge; of rare temper and courage; and of great esteem in most courts in Christendom; High Sheriff for the countie of Suffolk, by commission from His Majestie of blessed memory, 1646, till forc’d by that fatal Parliament to flee to the King at Oxford, where, by commission from his Majesty, he raised a regiment of Hors, wherewith he performed remarkable service, till his Majesties forces were totally ruin’d; and then he departed the Kingdome, arriving in Cicilia, where, by commission from that Viceroy, he had command of a squadron of six shipps against all enemies to the crown of Spain, which being prepared, he put to sea, and performed many gallant services, much to the honour of the Spanish flagg. In July, 1651, he put into the port of Messina with a very rich prize and posted to the court at Palermo, where he met with an honourable reception for the several good services he had performed; but at 4 days end he there fell ill of a violent fever, whereof within 8 days he died, aged about 35 years; and by the Princes ordir had an honourable interment, and much lamented there, but much greater cause at home, leaving no issue, but a sorrowful widow and sad childless parents. Sir William died in 1668.]
SIR WILLIAM PLATER, Knight, was a Cambridgeshire Gentleman. He had a good Estate, about 3000 pounds per annum. He was a very well bred Gentleman, as most was of those times; had travelled France, Italie, etc., and understood well those languages. He was one of the Long Parliament in the time of the late Warres.
He was a merry man in the raigne of the Saints.
He was a great admirer and lover of handsome woemen, and kept severall. Henry Martyn and he were great Cronies, but one time (about 1644) there was some difference between them: H. M. invited him to a Treat, where Sir William fell in love with one of his Misses and slockst her away, and Sir John Berkinhead inserted in his Mercurius Aulicus how the Saintes fell out. He was temperate and thriftie as to all other things.
He had onely one Sonne, who was handsome and ingeniose, and whome he cultivated with all imaginable care and Education, and, knowing that he was flesh and bloud, tooke care himselfe to provide sound and agreeable females for him. He allowed his son liberally, but enjoyned him still temperance, and to sett downe his expences.
His Sonne made a very good returne of his Education. He was a Colonel in the King’s Army, and was killed in his service, which his father tooke so to heart that he enjoyed not himselfe afterwards.
SIR JOHN POPHAM
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[Born 1531. Lawyer. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford. M.P. for Bristol 1571–83. Privy Councillor 1571. He drafted a Bill for preventing idleness by setting the poor to work (1572) and later drafted the Act for transporting vagabonds. Solicitor-General 1579. Speaker of the House of Commons 1580: on being asked by Queen Elizabeth, shortly after the prorogation of Parliament, what had passed in the House, he replied, If it please your Majesty, seven weeks. Attorney-General 1581. Lord Chief Justice and knighted 1592. He presided at the trials of Essex, Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plotters. He died in 1607.]
HE FOR SEVERALL yeares addicted himselfe but little to the Studie of the Lawes, but profligate company, and was wont to tak a purse with them. His wife considered her and his condition, and at last prevailed with him to lead another life, and to stick to the Studie of the Lawe; which upon her importunity he did, being then about thirtie yeares old. He spake to his wife to provide a very good Entertainment for his Camerades, to take his Leave of them, and after that day fell extremely hard to his Studie, and profited exceedingly. He was a strong, stout man, and could endure to sit at it day and night, became eminent in his calling, had good practise; called to be a serjeant, and a Judge.
Sir John Dayrell of Littlecote in Com. Wilts having gott his Ladie’s waiting woman with child, when her travell came sent a servant with a horse for a midwife, whom he was to bring hood-winked. She was brought and layd the woman, but as soon as the child was borne, she saw the Knight take the Child and murther it, and burn it in the fire in the chamber. She having donne her businesse was extraordinarily rewarded for her paines, and sent blinfold away. This horrid Action did much run in her mind, and she had a desire to discover it, but knew not where ’twas. She considerd with her selfe the time that she was riding, and how many miles might be rode at that rate in that time, and that it must be some great person’s house, for the roome was twelve foot high; and she could knowe the chamber if she sawe it. She went to a Justice of peace, and search was made. The very chamber found. The Knight was brought to his Tryall, and, to be short, this Judge had this noble Howse, parke and mannor, and (I thinke) more for a Bribe to save his life: Sir John Popham gave Sentence according to Lawe; but being a Great person, and a Favourite, he procured a Noli prosequi.
I have seen his picture; he was a huge, heavie, ugly man. He left a vast estate to his son, Sir Francis (I thinke ten thousand pounds per annum) he lived like a hog, but his sonne John was a great waster, and dyed in his father’s time. He was the greatest Howse-keeper in England; would have at Littlecote four or five or more Lords at a time. His wife (Harvey) was worth to him I thinke 60,000 pounds, and she was as vaine as he, and she sayd that she had brought such an estate, and she scorned but she would live as high as he did, and in her husband’s abscence would have all the woemen of the countrey thither, and feast them and make them drunke; as she would be herselfe. They both dyed by excesse; and, by Luxury, and cosonage by their servants, when he dyed there was, I thinke, a hundred thousand pound debt.
Old Sir Francis he lived like a hog at Hownstret in Somerset all this while with a moderate pittance.
Mr. John would say that his wive’s estate was ill gott, and that was the reason they prospered no better. She would say that the old Judge gott the estate unjustly, and thus they would twitt one another, and that with matter of trueth.
I remember this Epitaph was made on Mr. John Popham:
Here lies he who not long since
Kept a Table like a Prince,
Till Death came, and tooke away.
Then ask’t the old man, what’s to pay?
Lord Chief Justice Popham first brought in (i.e. revived) Brick building in London (scil. after Lincolne’s Inne and St. James’s) and first sett-afoote the Plantations, e.g. Virginia, which he stockt or planted out of all the Gaoles of England.
At the Hall in Wellington, in the Countie of Somerset (the ancient seate of the Popham’s) and which was this Sir John’s, Lord Chiefe Justice, hang Iron Shackells: of which the Tradicion of the Countrey is, that long agoe, one of the Pophams (Lord of this place) was taken and kept a slave by the Turkes, for a good while, and that by his Ladie’s great pietie and continuall prayers he was brought to this place by an invisible power with these Shackells on his legges, which were hung-up as a memoriall, and continued till the Howse (being a Garrison) was burn’t. All the Countrey people steadfastly beleeve the trueth thereof.
FRANCIS POTTER
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[Born 1594. Divine and Mechanician. Master of Arts at Trinity College, Oxford, 1616. Bachelor of Divinity 1625. Rector of Kilmington 1628–78. Fellow of the Royal Society 1663. His book The Number of the Beast was commended by Joseph Mead as a wonderful discovery, the happiest that ever yet came into the world, and as calculated to make some of your German speculatives half wild. Died 1678.]
ANNO AETATIS 15 he went to Trinity Colledge in Oxon, where his brother Hannibal was his Tutor. Here he was a Commoner twenty-seaven yeares, and was senior to all the house, but Dr. Kettle and his brother.
His Genius lay most of all to the Mechanicks; he had an admirable mechanicall Invention, but in that darke time wanted encouragement, and when his father dyed, he succeeded him in the Parsonage of Kilmanton, worth, per annum, about 140 pounds.
Anno Domini 1625, goeing into his chamber, the notion of 25, the roote of 666, for the roote of the number of the Beast in the Revelation, came into his head; so he opposed 25 to 12, the roote of 144.
He published nothing but his Interpretation of the number 666, in 4to, printed at Oxford, 1642, which haz been twice translated into Latin, into French, and other languages. Mr. Launcelot Moorhouse, a very learned man, and a solid and profound Mathematician, wrote against Mr. Francis Potter’s booke of 666, and falls upon him, for that 25 is not the true roote, but the propinque root; to which Mr. Potter replied with some sharpnes, and that it ought not to be the true roote, for this agrees better with his purpose.
When he tooke his Degree of Batchelaur in Divinity, his Question was, An Papa sit Anti-Christus? [Whether the Pope be Anti-Christ?] In his younger yeares he was very apt to fall into a Swoune, and so he did when he was disputing in the Divinity-schoole upon that Question. I remember he told me that one time reading Aristotle De Natura Animalium, where he describes how that the Lionesses, when great with young, and neer their time of parturition, doe goe between two trees that growe neer together, and squeeze out their young ones out of their bellies; he had such a strong Idea of this, and of the paine that the lionesse was in, that he fell into a Swoune.
He was of a very tender constitution, and sickly most of his younger yeares. His manner was, when he was beginning to be sick, to breath strongly a good while together, which he sayed did emitt the noxious vapours. As he was never a strong man, so in his later times he had his health best; only about four or five yeares before his death his eie-sight was bad, and before he dyed quite lost.
He look’t the most like a Monk, or one of the Pastours of the old time, that ever I saw one. He was pretty long visagd and pale cleare skin, gray eie. His discourse was admirable, and all new and unvulgar. His house was as undeckt as a Monke’s cell; yet he had there so many ingeniose inventions that it was very delightfull. I never have enjoyed so much pleasure, nor ever was so much pleased with such Philosophicall and heartie Entertainment as from him.
On the buttery-dore in his Parlour he drew his father’s picture at length, with his booke (fore-shortned) and on the spectacles in his hand is the reflection of the Gothique South windowe. I mention this picture the rather, because in processe of time it may be mistaken by tradition for his son Francis’s picture, author of the booke aforesayd. He was from a Boy given to draweing and painting. The Founder’s (Sir Thomas Pope’s) picture in Trinity colledge hall is of his copying.
He was alwayes much Contemplative, and had an excellent Philosophicall head. He was no great read man; he had a competent knowledge in the Latin, Greeke, and Hebrue tongues, but not a Critique. Greeke he learn’d by Montanus’s Interlineary Testament, after he was a man, without a Grammar, and then he read Homer. He understood only common Arithmetique, and never went farther in Geometrie then the first six bookes of Euclid; but he had such an inventive head, that with this foundation he was able to doe great matters in the Mechaniques, and to solve phaenomena in naturall philosophy. He had but few bookes, which when he dyed were sold for fifty-six shillings, and surely no great bargaine.
He invented and made with his owne handes a paire of beame Compasses, which will divide an inch into a hundred or a thousand parts. I have heard him say that he had never seen a water-house-engine, but that he could invent a better.
At the Epiphanie, 1649, when I was at his house, he then told me his notion of curing diseases, etc., by Transfusion of Bloud out of one man into another, and that the hint came into his head reflecting on Ovid’s story of Medea and Jason, and that this was a matter of ten yeares before that time. About a yeare after, he and I went to trye the experiment, but ’twas on a Hen, and the creature to little and our tooles not good: I then sent him a Surgeon’s Lancet. Anno 1652, I recieved a letter from him concerning this Subject, which many yeares since I shewed, and was read and entred in the bookes of the Royall Societie, for Dr. Lower would have arrogated the Invention to himselfe, and now one R. Griffith, Dr. of Physique, of Richmond, is publishing a booke of the transfusion of bloud. (Mr. Meredith Lloyd tells me that Libavius speakes of the Transfusion of Bloud, which I dare sweare Mr. F. Potter never sawe in his life.)
In the troublesome times ’twas his happinesse never to bee sequestred. He was once maliciously informed against to the Committee at Wells (a thing very common in those times). When he came before them, one of them (I have forgot his name) gave him a pint of wine, and gave him great prayse, and bade him goe home, and feare nothing.
He haz told me that he had oftentimes dream’t that he was at Rome, and being in fright that he should be seised on and brought before the Pope, did wake with the feare. (Pope Innocent IV, against whom Robert Grotest, Bishop of Lincolne, wrote, dreamt that the Bishop of Lincolne came to him, and gave him a great blowe over the face with his Staffe.)
’Twas pitty that such a delicate inventive Witt should be staked to a private preferment in an obscure corner where he wanted ingeniose conversation, from whence men rarely emerge to higher preferment, but contract a mosse on them like an old pale in an Orchard for want of ingeniose conversation, which is a great want even to the deepest thinking men (as Mr. Hobbes haz often sayd to me).
The last time I sawe this honoured friend of mine, Octob. 1674, I had not seen him in 3 yeares before, and his lippitude then was come even to blindnesse, which did much grieve me to behold. He had let his beard be uncutt, which was wont to be but little. I asked him why he did not get some kinswoman or kinsman of his to live with him, and looke to him now in his great age? He answer’d me that he had tryed that way, and found it not so well; for they did begrudge what he spent that ’twas too much and went from them, whereas his servants (strangers) were kind to him and tooke care of him.
WILLIAM PRYNNE
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[Born 1600. Controversial writer. Educated at Oxford, he studied law at Lincoln’s Inn until he became immersed in writing controversial pamphlets, the best known of which was his Histrio-Mastix, or a Scourge for Stage Players (1633), a bitter attack on most of the popular amusements of the day. For writing it, Prynne was brought before the Star Chamber, fined £5000, pilloried, and had both his ears cut off, besides being sentenced to imprisonment for life. Undeterred by this, he issued from his prison a fierce attack on Laud and the hierarchy, for which he was again fined, pilloried, and branded on both cheeks with the letters S.L. for Seditious Libeller. Removed to Carnavon Castle, he remained there until liberated in 1641 by the Long Parliament. He soon after became a Member of the House and joined with extreme rancour in the prosecution of Laud. He then turned his attacks onto the Independents, the Army and the Protectorate, and was among those expelled from the House of Commons by Cromwell, whom he had opposed in regard to the execution of the King with such asperity that he again suffered imprisonment, from which he was released in 1652. He supported the Restoration and was by Charles II appointed Keeper of the Records in the Tower, where he did good service by compiling the Calendar of Parliamentary Writs and Records. He published altogether about two hundred books and pamphlets, dying in 1669.]
ANNO 1637 HE was stigmatized in the Pillorie, and then Banishe
d to Cornet-castle in Guernsey, where he was very civilly treated by the Governour Carteret, a very ancient familie in that Island. His Eares were not quite cutt off, only the upper part, his tippes were visible. Bishop William Lawd, A. B. Cant., was much blamed for being a Spectator, when he was his Judge. Anno 1641 he was, with Burton and Bastwyck, called home by the Parliament, and hundreds mett him and them out of London some miles.
He was a learned man, of immense reading, but is much blamed for his unfaithfull quotations. He was of a strange Saturnine complexion. Sir C. W. sayd once, that he had the countenance of a Witch.
His manner of Studie was thus: he wore a long quilt cap, which came 2 or 3, at least, inches over his eies, which served him as an Umbrella to defend his Eies from the light. About every three houres his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of Ale to refocillate his wasted spirits: so he studied and dranke, and munched some bread; and this maintained him till night, and then, he made a good Supper: now he did well not to dine, which breakes of one’s fancy, which will not presently be regained: and ’tis with Invention as a flux, when once it is flowing, it runnes amaine: if it is checked, flowes but guttim: and the like for perspiration, check it, and ’tis spoyled.
He endured severall Imprisonments for the King’s cause, and was (really) very instrumentall in his restauracion.
Upon the opening of the Parliament, viz. letting in the Secluded Members, he girt on his old long rustie Sword (longer then ordinary.) Sir William Waller marching behind him (as he went to the Howse) W. Prynne’s long sword ranne between Sir William’s short legges, and threw him downe, which caused laughter.