ungrateful, foolish, and fatal Parliment, the beginning of all our sorrows for twenty years after, and the period of the most happy monarch in the world: Quis talia fando!

But my father being by this time entered into a dropsy, an indisposition the most unsuspected, being a person so exemplarily temperate, and of admirable regimen, hastened me back to Wotton, December the 12th; where, the 24th following, between twelve and one o'clock at noon, departed this life that excellent man and indulgent parent, retaining his senses and piety to the last, which he most tenderly expressed in blessing us, whom he now left to the world and the worst of times, whilst he was taken from the evil to come.

1641. It was a sad and lugubrious beginning of the year, when, on the 2nd of January, 1640-1, we at night followed the mourning hearse to the church at Wotton; when, after a sermon and funeral oration by the minister, my father was interred near his formerly erected monument, and mingled with the ashes of our mother, his dear wife. Thus we were bereft of both our parents in a period when we most of all stood in need of their counsel and assistance, especially myself, of a raw, vain, uncertain, and very unwary inclination: but so it pleased God to make trial of my conduct in a conjuncture of the greatest and most prodigious hazard that ever the youth of England saw; and, if I did not amidst all this impeach my liberty nor my virtue with the rest who made shipwreck of both, it was more the infinite goodness and mercy of God than the least providence or discretion of mine own, who now thought of nothing but the pursuit of vanity, and the confused imaginations of young men.

15th April. I repaired to London to hear and see the famous trial of the Earl of Strafford, Lord-Deputy of Ireland, who, on the 22nd of March, had been summoned before both Houses of Parliament, and now appeared in Westminster-hall,' which was prepared with scaffolds for

1 On the 15th April Strafford made his eloquent defence, which it seems to have been Evelyn's good fortune to be present at. And here the reader may remark the fact, not without significance, that between the entries on this page of the Diary which relate to Lord Strafford, the young Prince of Orange came over to make love to the Princess

the Lords and Commons, who, together with the King, Queen, Prince, and flower of the noblesse, were spectators and auditors of the greatest malice and the greatest innocency that ever met before so illustrous an assembly. It was Thomas Earl of Arundal and Surrey, Earl Marshal of England, who was made High Steward upon this occasion ; and the sequel is too well known to need any notice of the event.

On the 27th April, came over out of Holland the young Prince of Orange, with a splendid equipage, to make love to his Majesty's eldest daughter, the now Princess Royal.

That evening, was celebrated the pompous funeral of the Duke of Richmond, who was carried in effigy, with all the ensigns of that illustrious family, in an open chariot, in great solemnity, through London to Westminster Abbey.

On the 12th of May, I beheld on Tower-hill the fatal stroke which severed the wisest head in England from the shoulders of the Earl of Strafford, whose crime coming under the cognizance of no human law or statute, a new one was made, not to be a precedent, but his destruction. With what reluctancy the King signed the execution, he has sufficiently expressed; to which he imputes his own unjust suffering-to such exorbitancy were things arrived.

On the 24th May, I returned to Wotton; and, on the 28th of June, I went to London with my sister Jane, and the day after sat to one Vanderborcht for my picture in oil, at Arundel-house, whose servant that excellent painter was, brought out of Germany when the Earl returned from Vienna (whither he was sent Ambassador-extraordinary, with great pomp and charge, though without any effect, through the artifice of the Jesuited Spaniard, who governed all in that conjuncture). With Vanderborcht, the painter, he brought over Winceslaus Hollar, the sculptor,' who engraved Royal, then twelve years old; and that the marriage was subsequently celebrated amid extraordinary Court rejoicings and festivities, in which the King took a prominent part, during the short interval which elapsed between the sentence and execution of the King's great and unfortunate minister.

1 Henry Vanderborcht, a painter, of Brussels, lived at Frankendale. Lord Arundel, finding Vanderborcht's son Henry at Frankfort, sent him to Mr. Petty, then collecting for him in Italy, and afterwards kept hir in his service as long as he lived. Vanderborcht, the younger, was

not only the unhappy Deputy's trial in Westminster-hall, but his decapitation; as he did several other historical things, then relating to the accidents happening during the Rebellion in England, with great skill; besides many cities, towns, and landscapes, not only of this nation, but of foreign parts, and divers portraits of famous persons then in being; and things designed from the best pieces of the rare paintings and masters of which the Earl of Arundel was possessor, purchased and collected in his travels with incredible expense so as, though Hollar's were but etched in aquafortis, I account the collection to be the most authentic and useful extant. Hollar was the son of a gentleman near Prague, in Bohemia, and my very good friend, perverted at last by the Jesuits at Antwerp to change his religion; a very honest, simple, well-meaning man, who at last came over again into England, where he died. We have the whole history of the king's reign, from his trial in Westminsterhall and before, to the restoration of King Charles II., represented in several sculptures, with that also of Archbishop Laud, by this indefatigable artist; besides innumerable sculptures in the works of Dugdale, Ashmole, and other historical and useful works. I am the more particular upon this for the fruit of that collection, which I wish I had entire.

This picture I presented to my sister, being at her request, on my resolution to absent myself from this ill face of things at home, which gave umbrage to wiser than myself that the medal was reversing, and our calamities but yet in their infancy: so that, on the 15th of July,

both painter and engraver; he drew many of the Arundelian curiosities, and etched several things both in that and the Royal Collection. A book of his drawings from the former, containing 567 pieces, is preserved at Paris; and is described in the catalogue of L'Orangerie, p. 199. After the death of the Earl, the younger Henry entered into the service of the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II., and lived in esteem in London for a considerable time; but returned to Antwerp, and died there.

Winceslaus Hollar was born at Prague, in Bohemia, in the year 1607, and came to England in the suite of the Earl of Arundel, in the year 1636. In the troubles he distinguished himself as a Royalist, for which ne was imprisoned by the Parliament. He escaped to the continent, but returned at the Restoration, and died in great distress, March 28th, I His own portrait.

1677.

VOL. I.

having procured a pass at the Custom-house, where I repeated my oath of allegiance, I went from London to Gravesend, accompanied with one Mr. Caryll, a Surrey gentleman, and our servants, where we arrived by six o'clock that evening, with a purpose to take the first opportunity of a passage for Holland. But the wind as yet not favourable, we had time to view the Block-house of that town, which answered to another over against it at Tilbury, famous for the rendezvous of Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1588, which we found stored with twenty pieces of cannon, and other ammunition proportionable. On the 19th July, we made a short excursion to Rochester, and having seen the cathedral, went to Chatham to see the Royal Sovereign, a glorious vessel of burden lately built there, being for defence and ornament, the richest that ever spread cloth before the wind.1 She carried an hundred brass cannon, and was 1200 tons; a rare sailer, the work of the famous Phineas Pett, inventor of the frigate-fashion of building, to this day practised. But what is to be deplored as to this vessel is, that it cost his Majesty the affections of his subjects, perverted by the malcontent great ones, who took occasion to quarrel for his having raised a very slight tax for the building of this, and equipping the rest of the navy, without an act of Parliament; though, by the suffrages of the major part of the Judges the King might legally do in times of imminent danger, of which his Majesty was best apprised. But this not satisfying a jealous party, it was condemned as unprecedential, and not justifiable as to the Royal prerogative; and, accordingly, the Judges were removed out of their places, fined, and imprisoned.

We returned again this evening, and on the 21st July embarked in a Dutch frigate, bound for Flushing, convoyed and accompanied by five other stout vessels, whereof one was a man-of-war. The next day, at noon, we landed at Flushing.

1 Accidentally burnt at Chatham, in 1696.

3 In such manner Evelyn refers to the tax of Ship-money. But compare this remarkable passage, now first printed from the original, with the tone in which, eight years later, he spoke of the only chance by which monarchy in England might be saved; namely, that of " doing nothing as to Government but what shall be approved by the old way of a free parliament, and the known laws of the land."(See "Correspondence," vol. iii., p. 41.)

Being desirous to overtake the Leagure,' which was then before Genep, ere the summer should be too far spent, we went this evening from Flushing to Middleburg, another fine town in this island, to De Vere, whence the most ancient and illustrious Earls of Oxford derive their family, who have spent so much blood in assisting the state during their wars. From De Vere we passed over many towns, houses, and ruins of demolished suburbs, &c., which have formerly been swallowed up by the sea; at what time no less than eight of those islands had been irrecoverably lost.

The next day, we arrived at Dort, the first town of Holland, furnished with all German commodities, and especially Rhenish wines and timber. It hath almost at the extremity a very spacious and venerable church; a stately senate house, wherein was holden that famous synod against the Arminians in 1618; and in that hall hangeth a picture of "The Passion," an exceeding rare and muchesteemed piece.

From Dort, being desirous to hasten towards the army, I took waggon this afternoon to Rotterdam, whither we were hurried in less than an hour, though it be ten miles distant; so furiously do those Foremen drive. I went first to visit the great church, the Doole, the Bourse, and the public statue of the learned Erasmus, of brass. They showed us his house, or rather the mean cottage, wherein he was born, over which there are extant these lines, in capital letters:

ÆDIBUS HIS ORTUS, MUNDUM DECORAVIT ERASMUS ARTIBUS,

INGENIO, RELIGIONE, FIDE.

The 26th July, I passed by a straight and commodious river through Delft to the Hague; in which journey I observed divers leprous poor creatures dwelling in solitary

'The meaning of this expression is, that they should be in time to witness the siege.

"On the Waal,-a place which, having been greatly strengthened by the Cardinal Infante D. Fernando, in 1635, was at this time besieged by the French and Dutch. There is a full account of the siege in the great work of Aitzema, a man who with extraordinary patience com piled materials for the history of the United Provinces, during the greater part of the seventeenth century. One of his brothers was mortally wounded at this siege.