“To London,” says Evelyn, “to wait on the Dutchess of Newcastle (who was a mighty pretender to learning, poetrie and philosophie, and had in both publish’d divers bookes) to the Royal Society, whither she came in greate pomp, and being receiv’d by our Lord President at the Dore of our meeting roome, the mace, etc., carried before him, had several experiments shewed to her. I conducted her Grace to her coach, and return’d home.”
Pepys gives a better account: The Duchess had invited herself; and there had been “much debate, pro and con, it seems many being against it, and we do believe the town will be full of ballads of it.” In the end, gallantry prevailed among the Philosophers; and when Pepys arrived at Arundel House on foot, after his noonday dinner—it was a very hot and dusty day—he found “very much company” in decorous expectation of her Grace. She came, with her attendant women—among them the “Ferabosco,” of whose beauty there had been so much talk among the gallants. The Duchess herself, in her “antick” dress, disappointed Pepys: “nor did I hear her say anything that was worth hearing, but that she was full of admiration, all admiration.”
The Philosophers showed her all their best experiments—“of colours, loadstones, microscopes, and of liquors.” The chef d’œuvre seems to have been the turning of a piece of roasted mutton into pure blood, “which was very rare,” says Pepys; and then the Duchess and her suite were escorted to her coach again, her Grace still crying that she was “full of admiration.”
That was in May. Before the end of June poor Henry Oldenburg was suddenly clapped into the Tower. The news must have fallen like a thunderbolt at the next Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Society. Their Secretary was in jail.
“I was told yesterday,” wrote Pepys, on June 25th, “that Mr. Oldenburg, our Secretary at Gresham College, is put into the Tower, for writing news to a virtuoso in France, with whom he constantly corresponds on philosophical matters: which makes it very unsafe at this time to write, or almost to do anything.”[317]
Oldenburg was still in custody on August 8 when Evelyn called at the Tower.
“Visited Mr. Oldenburg, now close prisoner in the Tower, being suspected of writing intelligence. I had an order from Lord Arlington, Secretary of State, which caus’d me to be admitted. This Gentleman was Secretary to our Society, and I am confident will prove an innocent person.”
And indeed Oldenburg was soon to be set free. On September 3 he was once more in his own home and writing to Robert Boyle at Oxford—
“I was so stifled by the prison air,” says Oldenburg, “that as soon as I had my enlargement from the Tower I widened it, and took it from London into the Country, to fan myself for some days in the good air of Craford in Kent. Being now returned, and having recovered my stomach, which I had in a manner quite lost, I intend, if God will, to fall to my old trade,[318] if I have any support to follow it.”