18th March, 1649. Mr. Owen, a sequestered and learned minister, preached in my parlor, and gave us the blessed Sacrament, now wholly out of use in the parish churches, on which the Presbyterians and fanatics had usurped.
21st March, 1649. I received letters from Paris from my wife, and from Sir Richard [Browne], with whom I kept up a political correspondence, with no small danger of being discovered.
25th March, 1649. I heard the Common Prayer (a rare thing in these days) in St. Peter's, at Paul's Wharf, London; and, in the morning, the Archbishop of Armagh, that pious person and learned man, Usher, in Lincoln's-Inn Chapel.
LONDON
2d April, 1649. To London, and inventoried my movables that had hitherto been dispersed for fear of plundering: wrote into France, touching my sudden resolutions of coming over to them. On the 8th, again heard an excellent discourse from Archbishop Usher, on Ephes. 4, v. 26-27.
My Italian collection being now arrived, came Moulins, the great chirurgeon, to see and admire the Tables of Veins and Arteries, which I purchased and caused to be drawn out of several human bodies at Padua.
11th April, 1649. Received news out of France that peace was concluded; dined with Sir Joseph Evelyn, at Westminster; and on the 13th I saw a private dissection at Moulins's house.
17th April, 1649. I fell dangerously ill of my head; was blistered and let bleed behind the ears and forehead: on the 23d, began to have ease by using the fumes of camomile on embers applied to my ears, after all the physicians had done their best.
29th April, 1649. I saw in London a huge ox bred in Kent, 17 feet in length, and much higher than I could reach.
12th May, 1649. I purchased the manor of Warley Magna, in Essex: in the afternoon went to see Gildron's collections of paintings, where I found Mr. Endymion Porter, of his late Majesty's bedchamber.