23d June, 1653. Mr. Lombart, a famous graver, came to see my collections.
27th June, 1653. Monsieur Roupel sent me a small phial of his aurum potabile, with a letter, showing the way of administering it, and the stupendous cures it had done at Paris; but, ere it came to me, by what accident I know not, it was all run out.
17th August, 1653. I went to visit Mr. Hyldiard, at his house at Horsley (formerly the great Sir Walter Raleigh's[47]), where met me Mr. Oughtred, the famous mathematician; he showed me a box, or golden case, of divers rich and aromatic balsams, which a chemist, a scholar of his, had sent him out of Germany.
21st August, 1653. I heard that good old man, Mr. Higham, the parson of the parish of Wotton where I was born, and who had baptized me, preach after his very plain way on Luke, comparing this troublesome world to the sea, the ministers to the fishermen, and the saints to the fish.
22d August, 1653. We all went to Guildford, to rejoice at the famous inn, the Red Lion, and to see the hospital, and the monument of Archbishop Abbot, the founder, who lies buried in the chapel of his endowment.
28th September, 1653. At Greenwich preached that holy martyr, Dr. Hewer, on Psalm xc. 11, magnifying the grace of God to penitents, and threatening the extinction of his Gospel light for the prodigious impiety of the age.
11th October, 1653. My son, John Stansfield, was born, being my second child, and christened by the name of my mother's father, that name now quite extinct, being of Cheshire. Christened by Mr. Owen, in my library, at Sayes Court, where he afterward churched my wife, I always making use of him on these occasions, because the parish minister dared not have officiated according to the form and usage of the Church of England, to which I always adhered.
25th October, 1653. Mr. Owen preached in my library at Sayes Court on Luke xviii. 7, 8, an excellent discourse on the unjust judge, showing why Almighty God would sometimes be compared by such similitudes. He afterward administered to us all the Holy Sacrament.
LONDON
28th October, 1653. Went to London, to visit my Lady Gerrard, where I saw that cursed woman called the Lady Norton, of whom it was reported that she spit in our King's face as he went to the scaffold. Indeed, her talk and discourse was like an impudent woman.