LONDON
January, 1692-93. Contest in Parliament about a self-denying Act, that no Parliament man should have any office; it wanted only two or three voices to have been carried. The Duke of Norfolk's bill for a divorce thrown out, he having managed it very indiscreetly. The quarrel between Admiral Russell and Lord Nottingham yet undetermined.
4th February, 1693. After five days' trial and extraordinary contest, the Lord Mohun was acquitted by the Lords of the murder of Montford, the player, notwithstanding the judges, from the pregnant witnesses of the fact, had declared him guilty; but whether in commiseration of his youth, being not eighteen years old, though exceedingly dissolute, or upon whatever other reason, the King himself present some part of the trial, and satisfied, as they report, that he was culpable. 69 acquitted him, only 14 condemned him.
Unheard of stories of the universal increase of witches in New England; men, women, and children, devoting themselves to the devil, so as to threaten the subversion of the government.[79] At the same time there was a conspiracy among the negroes in Barbadoes to murder all their masters, discovered by overhearing a discourse of two of the slaves, and so preventing the execution of the design. Hitherto an exceedingly mild winter. France in the utmost misery and poverty for want of corn and subsistence, while the ambitious King is intent to pursue his conquests on the rest of his neighbors both by sea and land. Our Admiral, Russell, laid aside for not pursuing the advantage he had obtained over the French in the past summer; three others chosen in his place. Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury's book burned by the hangman for an expression of the King's title by conquest, on a complaint of Joseph How, a member of Parliament, little better than a madman.
19th February, 1693. The Bishop of Lincoln preached in the afternoon at the Tabernacle near Golden Square, set up by him. Proposals of a marriage between Mr. Draper and my daughter Susanna. Hitherto an exceedingly warm winter, such as has seldom been known, and portending an unprosperous spring as to the fruits of the earth; our climate requires more cold and winterly weather. The dreadful and astonishing earthquake swallowing up Catania, and other famous and ancient cities, with more than 100,000 persons in Sicily, on 11th January last, came now to be reported among us.
26th February, 1693. An extraordinary deep snow, after almost no winter, and a sudden gentle thaw. A deplorable earthquake at Malta, since that of Sicily, nearly as great.
19th March, 1693. A new Secretary of State, Sir John Trenchard; the Attorney-General, Somers, made Lord-Keeper, a young lawyer of extraordinary merit. King William goes toward Flanders; but returns, the wind being contrary.
31st March, 1693. I met the King going to Gravesend to embark in his yacht for Holland.
23d April, 1693. An extraordinary wet spring.
27th April, 1693. My daughter Susanna was married to William Draper, Esq., in the chapel of Ely House, by Dr. Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln (since Archbishop). I gave her in portion £4,000, her jointure is £500 per annum. I pray Almighty God to give his blessing to this marriage! She is a good child, religious, discreet, ingenious, and qualified with all the ornaments of her sex. She has a peculiar talent in design, as painting in oil and miniature, and an extraordinary genius for whatever hands can do with a needle. She has the French tongue, has read most of the Greek and Roman authors and poets, using her talents with great modesty; exquisitely shaped, and of an agreeable countenance. This character is due to her, though coming from her father. Much of this week spent in ceremonies, receiving visits and entertaining relations, and a great part of the next in returning visits.