As they were reading of inscribing and circumscribing figures, sayd he,'I will shew you how to inscribe a triangle in a quadrangle. Bring a pig into the quadrangle, and I will sett the colledge dog at him, and he will take the pig by the eare; then come I and take the dog by the tayle, and the hog by the tayle, and so there you have a triangle in a quadrangle; quod erat faciendum.'
He preach't every Sunday at his parsonage at Garsington (about 5 miles off). He rode on his bay gelding, with his boy Ralph before him, with a leg of mutton (commonly) and some colledge bread. He did not care for the countrey revells, because they tended to debauchery. Sayd he, at Garsington revell, 'Here is Hey for Garsington! and Hey for Cuddesdon! and Hey Hockly! but here's nobody cries, Hey for God Almighty!'
Upon Trinity Sunday (our festival day) he would commonly preach at the Colledge, whither a number of the scholars of other howses would come, to laugh at him. In his prayer (where he was of course to remember Sir Thomas Pope, our founder, and the lady Elizabeth his wife, deceasd), he would many times make a willfull mistake, and say, 'Sir Thomas Pope our Confounder[77],' but then presently recall himselfe.
He was a person of great charity. In his college, where he observed diligent boyes that he ghessed had but a slender exhibition from their friends, he would many times putt money in at their windowes; that his right hand did not know what his left did.[78]Servitors that wrote good hands he would sett on worke to transcribe for him and reward them generosely, and give them good advise. Mris. Howe, of Grendon, sent him a present of hippocris, and some fine cheese-cakes, by a plain countrey fellow, her servant. The Dr. tastes the wine:—'What,' sayd he, 'didst thou take this drinke[79] out of a ditch?' and when he saw the cheese-cakes:—'What have we here, crinkum, crankum?' The poor fellow stared on him, and wondered at such a rough reception of such a handsome present; but he shortly made him amends with a good dinner and halfe-a-crowne. The parsonage of Garsington (which belongs to the college) is worth ... per annum, and this good old Doctor, when one of his parish[80], that was an honest industrious man, happened by any accident to be in decay and lowe in the world, would let his parsonage to him for a yeare, two, or three, fourty pounds a yeare under value.
In his younger yeares he had been chaplain to <Thomas> Bilson, bishop of Winton.
In August, 1642, the lord viscount Say and Seale came (by order of the Parliament) to visit the colleges, to see what of new Popery they could discover in the chapells. In our chapell, on the backside of the skreen, had been two altars (of painting well enough for those times, and the colours were admirably fresh and lively). That on the right hand as you enter the chapell was dedicated to St. Katharine, that on the left was of the taking our Saviour off from the crosse. My lord Say sawe that this was donne of old time, and Dr. Kettle told his lordship 'Truly, my Lord, we regard them no more then a dirty dish-clout'; so they remained untoucht, till Harris's time[81], and then were coloured over with green. The windowes of the chapell were good Gothique painting, in every columne a figure;—e.g. St. Cuthbert, St. Leonard, St. Oswald. I have forgott the rest. 'Tis pitty they should be lost. I have a note of all the scutcheons in glasse about the house. 'Twas pitty Dr. Bathurst tooke the old painted glasse out of the library. Anciently, in the chapell, was a little organ over the dore of the skreen. The pipes were, in my time, in the bursery.
[82]Memorandum:—till Oxford was surrendred we sang the reading psalmes on Sundayes, holy-dayes, and holy-day eves; and one of the scholars of the house sang the ghospell for the day in the hall, at the latter end of dinner, and concluded, Sic desinit Evangelium secundum beatum Johannem (or etc.): tu autem, Domine, miserere nostri.
He <Kettle> sang a shrill high treble; but there was one (J. Hoskyns[K]) who had a higher, and would play the wag with the Dr. to make him straine his voice up to his.
[83]Memorandum:—there was in my time a rich pall[84] to lay on a coffin, of crimson velvet, with a large plaine crosse on it of white silke or sattin.
[85]'Tis probable this venerable Dr. might have lived some yeares longer, and finisht his century, had not those civill warres come on: which much grieved him, that was wont to be absolute in the colledge, to be affronted and disrespected by rude soldiers. I remember, being at the Rhetorique lecture in the hall, a foot-soldier came in and[86] brake his hower-glasse. The Dr. indeed was just stept out, but Jack Dowch[L] pointed at it. Our grove was the Daphne for the ladies and their gallants to walke in, and many times my lady Isabella Thynne[VIII.] would make her entrey with a theorbo or lute played before her. I have heard her play on it in the grove myselfe, which she did rarely; for which Mr. Edmund Waller hath in his Poems for ever made her famous. One may say of her as Tacitus sayd of Agrippina, Cuncta alia illi adfuere, praeter animum honestum. She was most beautifull, most humble, charitable, etc. but she could not subdue one thing. I remember one time this lady and fine Mris. Fenshawe[IX.] (her great and intimate friend, who lay at our college), would have a frolick to make a visitt to the President. The old Dr. quickly perceived that they came to abuse him; he addresses his discourse to Mris. Fenshawe, saying, 'Madam, your husband[M] and father I bred up here, and I knew your grandfather; I know you to be a gentlewoman, I will not say you are a whore; but gett you gonne for a very woman.' The dissolutenesse of the times, as I have sayd, grieving the good old Doctor, his dayes were shortned, and dyed <July> anno Domini 1643, and was buried at Garsington: quaere his epitaph.