There is a library full of excellent books; bathing rooms, elaboratory, dispensary, a decoy, and places to keep and fat fowl in. He had now in his new church (near the garden) built a dormitory, or vault, with several repositories, in which to bury his family.

In the expense of this pious structure, the church is most laudable, most of the houses of God in this country resembling rather stables and thatched cottages than temples in which to serve the Most High. He has built a lodge in the park for the keeper, which is a neat dwelling, and might become any gentleman. The same has he done for the parson, little deserving it for murmuring that my Lord put him some time out of his wretched hovel, while it was building. He has also erected a fair inn at some distance from his palace, with a bridge of stone over a river near it, and repaired all the tenants' houses, so as there is nothing but neatness and accommodations about his estate, which I yet think is not above £1,500 a year. I believe he had now in his family one hundred domestic servants.

His lady (being one of the Brederode's daughters, grandchild to a natural son of Henry Frederick, Prince of Orange) is a good-natured and obliging woman. They love fine things, and to live easily, pompously, and hospitably; but, with so vast expense, as plunges my Lord into debts exceedingly. My Lord himself is given into no expensive vice but building, and to have all things rich, polite, and princely. He never plays, but reads much, having the Latin, French, and Spanish tongues in perfection. He has traveled much, and is the best bred and courtly person his Majesty has about him, so as the public Ministers more frequent him than any of the rest of the nobility. While he was Secretary of State and Prime Minister, he had gotten vastly, but spent it as hastily, even before he had established a fund to maintain his greatness; and now beginning to decline in favor (the Duke being no great friend of his), he knows not how to retrench. He was son of a Doctor of Laws, whom I have seen, and, being sent from Westminster School to Oxford, with intention to be a divine, and parson of Arlington, a village near Brentford, when Master of Arts the Rebellion falling out, he followed the King's Army, and receiving an HONORABLE WOUND IN THE FACE, grew into favor, and was advanced from a mean fortune, at his Majesty's Restoration, to be an Earl and Knight of the Garter, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and first favorite for a long time, during which the King married his natural son, the Duke of Grafton, to his only daughter and heiress, as before mentioned, worthy for her beauty and virtue of the greatest prince in Christendom. My Lord is, besides this, a prudent and understanding person in business, and speaks well; unfortunate yet in those he has advanced, most of them proving ungrateful. The many obligations and civilities I have received from this noble gentleman, extracts from me this character, and I am sorry he is in no better circumstances.

Having now passed near three weeks at Euston, to my great satisfaction, with much difficulty he suffered me to look homeward, being very earnest with me to stay longer; and, to engage me, would himself have carried me to Lynn-Regis, a town of important traffic, about twenty miles beyond, which I had never seen; as also the Traveling Sands, about ten miles wide of Euston, that have so damaged the country, rolling from place to place, and, like the Sands in the Deserts of Lybia, quite overwhelmed some gentlemen's whole estates, as the relation extant in print, and brought to our Society, describes at

large.

13th September, 1677. My Lord's coach conveyed me to Bury, and thence baiting at Newmarket, stepping in at Audley-End to see that house again, I slept at Bishop-Stortford, and, the next day, home. I was accompanied in my journey by Major Fairfax, of a younger house of the Lord Fairfax, a soldier, a traveler, an excellent musician, a good-natured, well-bred gentleman.

18th September, 1677. I preferred Mr. Phillips (nephew of Milton) to the service of my Lord Chamberlain, who wanted a scholar to read to and entertain him sometimes.

12th October, 1677. With Sir Robert Clayton to Marden, an estate he had bought lately of my kinsman, Sir John Evelyn, of Godstone, in Surrey, which from a despicable farmhouse Sir Robert had erected into a seat with extraordinary expense. It is in such a solitude among hills, as, being not above sixteen miles from London, seems almost incredible, the ways up to it are so winding and intricate. The gardens are large, and well-walled, and the husbandry part made very convenient and perfectly understood. The barns, the stacks of corn, the stalls for cattle, pigeon house, etc., of most laudable example. Innumerable are the plantations of trees, especially walnuts. The orangery and gardens are very curious. In the house are large and noble rooms. He and his lady (who is very curious in distillery) entertained me three or four days very freely. I earnestly suggested to him the repairing of an old desolate dilapidated church, standing on the hill above the house, which I left him in good disposition to do, and endow it better; there not being above four or five houses in the parish, besides that of this prodigious rich Scrivener. This place is exceedingly sharp in the winter, by reason of the serpentining of the hills: and it wants running water; but the solitude much pleased me. All the ground is so full of wild thyme, marjoram, and other sweet plants, that it cannot be overstocked with bees; I think he had near forty hives of that industrious insect.

14th October, 1677. I went to church at Godstone, and to see old Sir John Evelyn's DORMITORY, joining to the church, paved with marble, where he and his Lady lie on a very stately monument at length; he in armor of white marble. The inscription is only an account of his particular branch of the family, on black marble.

LONDON