were hurrying him. A dangerous treacherous time,' says Evelyn. 'I went to visit my Lady Peterborough, whose son, Lord Mordant, prisoner in the Tower, was now on his trial, and acquitted but by one voice: but that holy martyr Dr. Hewet was condemned to die, without law, jury, or justice, by a mock Council of State as they call it !" Great intercession was made for Hewet's life; Cromwell's favourite daughter, Mrs. Claypole, was earnest in intreating him that his blood might not be shed; but Cromwell was inexorable. Her anxiety while it was yet possible to prevent the execution, her grief for Hewet's widow, who was left in a state of pregnancy, and her horror at this last crime of a father of whose crimes, dearly as she loved him, she was deeply sensible, brought on fever and madness, and she expired, crying out against him in her last ravings for Hewet's blood. It is believed that this circumstance hurried Cromwell to the grave, as it certainly embittered his last miserable days. He survived her little more than three weeks, and died within three months after Hewet's execution. Evelyn saw his superb funeral: his waxen effigy, lying in royal robes upon a velvet bed of state, with a crown, sceptre and globe, like a king, was placed upon a hearse, and a pall of velvet and fine linen borne over it by his own lords. The pendants and guidons were carried by the officers of the army; the imperial banners, achiefments, &c. by the heralds in their coats; a rich caparisoned horse, embroidered all over with gold; a knight of honour armed cap-a-pie; and after all, his guards, soldiers, and innumerable mourners.' In the Mercurius Politicus of the day it is said, at the west gate of the abbey church, the hearse with the effigies thereon was taken off the carriage, and with the canopy borne over it, in this magnificent manner they carried it up to the east end of the abbey, and placed it in that noble structure which was raised thus on purpose to receive it, where it is to remain for some time, exposed to public view. This is the last ceremony of honour; and less could not be performed to the memory of him, to whom posterity will pay (when envy is laid asleep by time) more honour than we are able to express.' In less than two years this very effigy with a rope round its neck was hung from the bars of a window at Whitehall!

There were indeed indications enough of change in the state, and in the feelings of the people. Evelyn observes that the funeral was the joyfullest he ever saw, for there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went.' Soon afterwards he writes, 25 April. A wonderful and sudden change in the face of the public; the new Protector Richard slighted; several pretenders and parties strive for the government; all anarchy and confusion; Lord have mercy upon us!' 29 May. The nation was

now

now in extreme confusion and unsettled, between the armies and the sectaries, the poor Church of England breathing as it were her last; so sad a face of things had overspread us.' '11 Oct. The army now turned out the parliament. We had now no government in the nation; all in confusion; no magistrates either owned or pretended but the soldiers, and they not agreed. God Almighty have mercy on and settle us! 21. A private fast was kept by the Church of England Protestants in town, to beg of God the removal of his judgements with devout prayers for his mercy to our calamitous church.' The observance of this fast is afterwards frequently recorded. Hitherto Mr. Evelyn had taken no apparent concern in political events; perhaps he was the more desirous of attracting attention towards his improvements, that the secret correspondence which he carried on with his father-in-law might be the less suspected, and in this he seems to have succeeded, for his garden and plantations were so much talked of that Laurence, the president of Oliver's council, and some other of his court lords, went to see them. The books which he published served also in the same manner to avert suspicion: they were a translation of the first book* of Lucretius, St. Chrysostom's Golden Book for the Education of Children, (which he dedicated to both his brothers, to comfort them on the loss of their children, touching at the same time on his own severest loss,) and the French Gardener and English Vineyard, 'the first and best of that kind,' he says, ' that introduced the use of the olitory garden to any purpose.' 'But now, when all men began to look to a restoration of the royal family as the only means for putting an end to their miserable state of anarchy, Evelyn came forward, and in November 1659 published an apology for the royal party, and for the king, in that time of danger, when it was capital to speak or write in favour of him. It was twice printed, so universally it took.' He soon engaged in a far more serious transaction. Colonel Morley was the governor of the Tower. They had been school-fellows, and divided as they were by political opinions, knew and esteemed each other. Evelyn, as we have seen, had received personal civilities from him when hist wife came from France, and had sold an estate to him since that time; he now proposed to him to deliver up the Tower to Charles; Monk was in Scotland, and the game was in Morley's hands;-he was a better man than Monk, but wanted that courage which has

6

*Prefixed to the copy in the library at Wotton, is this note in his own hand-writing: Never was book so abominably misused by the printer; never copy so negligently surveyed by one who undertook to look over the proof sheets with all exactness and care, namely, Dr. Triplet, well known for his ability, and who pretended to oblige me in my absence, and so readily offered himself. This good I received by it, that publishing it vainly its ill success at the printer's discouraged me with troubling the world with the

rest.'

been

been said to have been Monk's only virtue; he hesitated till it was too late, and then he who might have deserved and claimed a dukedom for his reward, was reduced to sue for pardon through Evelyn's means. Oh,' says Evelyn, the sottish omission of this gentleman! What did I not undergo of danger in this negociation to have brought him over to his Majesty's interest when it was entirely in his hands!'

29 May, 1660. This day his Majy Charles the Second came to London after a sad and long exile and calamitous suffering both of the King and Church, being 17 yeares. This was also his birth-day, and with a triumph of 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the wayes strew'd with flowers, the bells ringing, the streetes hung with tapistry, fountaines running with wine; the Maior, Aldermen, and all the Companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners; Lords and Nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windowes and balconies all set with ladies; trumpets, music, myriads of people flocking, even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven houres in passing the Citty, even from 2 in ye afternoone till 9 at night.

I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and bless'd God. All this was don without one drop of bloud shed, and by that very army which rebell'd against him; but it was ye Lord's doing, for such a Restauration was never mention'd in any history ancient or modern, since the returne of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity; nor so joyfull a day and so bright ever seene in this Nation, this hapning when to expect or effect it was past all human policy.'-vol. i. p. 109, 110.

The Restoration, in which Evelyn thus piously rejoiced as a political blessing, affected him also in the happiness of his private life. It brought home his father-in-law Sir Richard Browne, ' after a nineteen years exile, during all which time he kept up in his chapel the liturgy and offices of the Church of England, to his no small honour; and in a time when it was so low, and as many thought utterly lost, that in various controversies both with papists and sectaries, our divines used to argue for the visibility of the church, from his chapel and congregation.' Charles, during his exile, gave particular and repeated orders to have the church service regularly. performed in his ambassador's house: whether he had during any part of his life a true sense of religion, may justly be questioned; but he was perfectly well aware how closely his own interests were connected with those of the Church of England, and therefore he obtained from his mother a promise that she would not practise upon the Duke of Gloucester to make him a papist, which was the secret wish of her heart. Henrietta was a thorough bigot, and her counsels would have been as fatal to her children as they were to her husband. Notwithstanding this promise, she used every endeavour

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

for

for what she supposed was the only means of securing the boy's salvation! Upon this occasion, Charles wrote to his brother:

'If, he says, 'you do hearken to her or any body Body els in that matter you must never think to see England or mee againe, & w'soeuer mischiefe shall fall on mee or my affaires from this time I must lay all upon you as being ye onely cause of it. Therefore consider well what it is to bee not only ye cause of ruining a Brother that loves you so well, but also of yor King & Country. Do not lett them p'suade you either by force or faire p'mises; for the first they neither dare, nor will use, and for the second, as soone as they have perverted you they will haue their End, and then they will care no more for you. I am also informed yt there is a purpose to putt you into ye Jesuits' Colledge, wch I command you upon ye same grounds neuer to consent unto. And when soeuer any body shall goe to dispute wth you in Religion doo not answere them at all. For though you haue the reaso' on yore side, yett they being prepared will haue ye aduantage of any body yt is not upon ye same Security that they are. If you do not consider what I say unto you, Remember y last words of yore dead Father, wch were to bee constant to yo' Religion & neuer to bee shaken in it. Wch if you doe not obserue this shall bee y, last time you will heare from

(Deare Brother)

yo most affectione brother

CHARLES R.'-vol. ii. part ii. p. 142. Happy had it been for Charles if he had demeaned himself as well in his prosperous as in his adverse fortune! The facts which appear in these volumes are highly honourable to him and the companions of his exile, while Cromwell, as the Queen of Bohemia said, was like the Beast in the Revelations that all kings and nations worshipped. His horses, and some of them too were favourites, were sold at Brussels, because he could not pay for their keep, and during the two years that he resided at Cologne he never kept a coach. So straitened were the exiles for money, that even the postage of letters between Sir Richard Browne and Hyde was no easy burthen, and there was a mutiny in the ambassador's kitchen, because the maid 'might not be trusted with the government, and the buying the meat, in which she was thought too lavish.' Hyde writes that he had not been master of a crown for many months that he was cold for want of clothes and fire, and for all the meat which he had eaten for three months he was in debt to a poor woman who was no longer able to trust. Our necessities, he says, would be more insupportable, if we did not see the king reduced to greater distress than you can believe or imagine. And when Sir Richard Browne had promised him a supply, he says, 'for your new noble offer I am not in a condition so plentiful to refuse it, for I must tell you that I have not had a Lewes of my own these three months; therefore when you send the bill, let me know whether you

lend

lend me so much out of your own little stock, or whether it be the king's money, for in that case his Majesty shall be the disposer, since my office hath never yet, nor shall intitle me to take his money without his direction.'

6

Evelyn was received at court with that affability by which Charles was so happily gifted, that it was more difficult for him to lose the affections of his subjects, than it has been for other princes to gain them. The king called him his old acquaintance, and nominated him one of the council of the Royal Society, of which he had been just elected a fellow. He would have given him the Order of the Bath, but Evelyn declined it, and he promised to make his wife lady of the jewels to the future queen, a very honourable charge,' it is observed in the Diary, but which he never performed.' It was not long before he was chosen one of the commissioners for reforming the buildings, ways, streets and incumbrances, and regulating the hackney coaches in the city of London. And in 1664, when war was declared against the Dutch, he was appointed one of the commissioners for taking care of the sick and wounded, and the prisoners. There were four commissioners with a salary of £1200 a year among them, besides extraordinaries for their care and attention when upon duty; they had power to constitute officers, physicians, surgeons and provost-marshals, and to dispose of half of the hospitals through England. Mr. Evelyn's district comprized the counties of Kent and Sussex. The duty which fell upon him proved to be as perilous as it was painful. The Dutch, then at the height of their power, carried on the war with that spirit which became a great and brave people, who were unjustly attacked, and the prisoners and wounded men were brought in faster than the commissioners could provide for them;-miserable objects, says Evelyn, God knows! money and means of every kind were wanting, when a moderate expense would have saved thousands.' 'My wife,' he says in a letter to Lord Cornbery, 'is within a fortnight of bringing me my seventh son, and it is time, my lord, he were born, for they keep us so short of monies at court, that his majesty's commissioners had need of one to do wonders, and heal the sick and wounded by miracle, till we can maintain our chirurgeons.' In the midst of this distress the plague broke out, and soon raged with such violence that four and five thousand persons died weekly in London, where Evelyn had just obtained the Savoy for the sick and wounded. As the contagion was spreading around Deptford, he sent away his wife and family to Wotton, and staid himself to look after his charge, trusting in the Providence and goodness of God.' It was some time before this courageous woman, as he calls her, would be persuaded to take the alarm; my conscience,' he says, or something which I would

C 2

have