7th June, 1657. My fourth son was born, christened George (after my grandfather); Dr. Jeremy Taylor officiated in the drawing-room.
18th June, 1657. At Greenwich I saw a sort of cat[57] brought from the East Indies, shaped and snouted much like the Egyptian racoon, in the body like a monkey, and so footed; the ears and tail like a cat, only the tail much longer, and the skin variously ringed with black and white; with the tail it wound up its body like a serpent, and so got up into trees, and with it would wrap its whole body round. Its hair was woolly like a lamb; it was exceedingly nimble, gentle, and purred as does the cat.
16th July, 1657. On Dr. Jeremy Taylor's recommendation, I went to Eltham, to help one Moody, a young man, to that living, by my interest with the patron.
6th August, 1657. I went to see Colonel Blount, who showed me the application of the waywiser[58] to a coach, exactly measuring the miles, and showing them by an index as we went on. It had three circles, one pointing to the number of rods, another to the miles, by 10 to 1,000, with all the subdivisions of quarters; very pretty and useful.
10th August, 1657. Our vicar, from John xviii. 36, declaimed against the folly of a sort of enthusiasts and
desperate zealots, called the Fifth-Monarchy-Men, pretending to set up the kingdom of Christ with the sword. To this pass was this age arrived when we had no King in Israel.
1657. Fell a most prodigious rain in London, and the year was very sickly in the
country.
1st September, 1657. I visited Sir Edmund Bowyer, at his melancholy seat at Camberwell. He has a very pretty grove of oaks, and hedges of yew in his garden, and a handsome row of tall elms before his court.