Leaving Geneva on the 5th July 1646, Evelyn’s party went by way of Lyons, La Charite, and Orleans to Paris, arriving ‘rejoic’d that after so many disasters and accidents in a tedious peregrination, I was gotten so neere home, and here I resolv’d to rest myselfe before I went further. It was now October, and the onely time that in my whole life I spent most idly, tempted from my more profitable recesses; but I soon recover’d my better resolutions and fell to my study, learning the High Dutch and Spanish tongues, and now and then refreshing my danceing, and such exercises as I had long omitted, and which are not in much reputation amongst the sober Italians.’

During the course of the following winter and spring he saw much of ‘Sir Richard Browne, his Majesty’s Resident at the Court of France, and with whose lady and family I had contracted a greate friendship (and particularly set my affections on a daughter).’ To this young girl, Mary, the only child of Sir Richard Browne by a daughter of Sir John Pretyman, he was married on 27th June, 1647, by Dr. Earle, chaplain to the young Charles, then Prince of Wales, who was holding his court at St. Germains. In October he returned by Rouen, Dieppe, and Calais, and ‘got safe to Dover, for which I heartily put up my thanks to God who had conducted me safe to my owne country, and been mercifull to me through so many aberrations’ during a period extending over four years. He returned alone, ‘leaving my wife, yet very young, under the care of an excellent lady and prudent mother.’ Indeed, she was a mere child, being then not more than twelve years of age, and her father was only Evelyn’s senior by fifteen years.

  IV
Evelyn’s Attitude during the Commonwealth 1647-1660.

Arrived at Wotton, he at once went to kiss his Majesty’s hand at Hampton Court and convey tidings from Paris, King Charles ‘being now in the power of those execrable villains who not long after murder’d him.’ Thence he betook himself to Sayes Court, near Deptford in Kent, the estate belonging to his father-in-law, where he ‘had a lodging and some bookes.’ It was here that he was living when his first literary work was published, Of Liberty and Servitude, a translation from the French of Le Vayer, in January, 1649, though the dedication of it to his brother George bears date 25th January, 1647. He was very near getting into trouble about the preface to this, because in his own copy he noted that ‘I was like to be call’d in question by the Rebells for this booke, being published a few days before his Majesty’s decollation.’ Although he took no prominent part in politics at this particular time, yet he could hardly help playing with the fire. Thus, on 11th December, ‘I got privately into the council of ye rebell army at Whitehall, where I heard horrid villanies.’ Having money in hand, either from savings during the four years’ sojourn abroad, where his expenses (including all purchases of objects of art and vertu) did not amount to more than £300 a year, or else from his child-wife’s dowry, he dabbled in land speculation with the fairly satisfactory result that on the whole he does not appear to have lost much by it.

On 17th January, 1649, he ‘heard the rebell Peters incite the rebell powers met in the Painted Chamber to destroy his Majesty, and saw that archtraytor Bradshaw, who not long after condemn’d him.’ But his loyalty kept him from being present at the death-scene. ‘The villanie of the rebells proceeding now so far as to trie, condemne and murder our excellent King on the 30th of this month, struck me with such horror that I kept the day of his martyrdom a fast, and would not be present at that execrable wickednesse, receiving the sad account of it from my Brother George and Mr. Owen,   who came to visite me this afternoone, and recounted all the circumstances.’

While he ‘went through a course of chymestrie at Sayes Court,’ and otherwise engaged in study and in the examination of works of art, he became disquieted about the condition of affairs in Paris. Communications with his wife appear to have been very few and far between, although with his father-in-law he ‘kept up a political correspondence’ in cipher ‘with no small danger of being discovered.’ In April he touched ‘suddaine resolutions’ of going to France, before he received the news that Condé’s siege of Paris had ended by peace being concluded. The immediate carrying out of this intention was hindered by a rush of blood to the brain. ‘I fell dangerously ill of my head: was blistered and let blood behind ye ears and forehead: on the 23rd. began to have ease by using the fumes of a cammomile on embers applied to my eares after all the physicians had don their best.’ On 17th June, however, he ‘got a passe from the rebell Bradshaw, then in greate power,’ and on 12th July went viâ Gravesend to Dover and Calais, arriving at Paris on 1st. August. Curiously enough his Diary makes no mention of the child-wife, from whom he had ‘been absent.... about a yeare and a halfe,’ save that on ‘Sept. 7th. Went with my Wife and dear cosin to St. Germains, and kissed the Queene-mother’s hand.’ He remained in Paris till the end of June, 1650, when he made a flying visit to England, and again obtained a pass from Bradshaw to proceed to France. On 30th August, he was back again in Paris, where he stayed till his final return to England in February 1652. His life in Paris at this time was that of a cultured dilletante. He studied, or at any rate dabbled in, chemistry, philosophy, theology, and music; and he found amusement in examining gardens and collections of all sorts of virtuosities and antiquities. He had ‘much discourse of chymical matters’ with Sir Kenelm Digby; ‘but the truth is, Sir Kenelm was an arrant mountebank.’ Here, too, he wrote his second literary composition, The State of France, as it stood in the IXth yeer of this present monarch Lewis XIIII, which was published in England in 1652. Apart from these occupations, his time was chiefly spent in the pleasures and   amusements common to the court of France and to the throng of exiles from Britain who formed the Court of the uncrowned monarch, Charles II.

Evelyn longed for settlement in England, because he saw that the Royalist cause was hopelessly lost for the time being. His father-in-law’s estate of Sayes Court had been seized and sold by the rebels, but ‘by the advice and endeavour of my friends I was advis’d to reside in it, and compound with the soldiers. This I was besides authoriz’d by his Majesty to do, and encourag’d with promise that what was in lease from the Crowne, if ever it pleased God to restore him, he would secure to us in fee-ferme.xxxi:1 I had also addresses and cyfers to correspond with his Majesty and Ministers abroad: upon all which inducements I was persuaded to settle henceforth in England, having now run about the world, most part out of my owne country, neere ten yeares. I therefore now likewise meditated sending over for my Wife, whom as yet I had left at Paris.’ She arrived on 11th. June with her Mother; and as small-pox was then raging in and about London they sojourned for some time at Tunbridge Wells, drinking the waters. About the end of that month Evelyn went to Sayes Court to prepare for their reception, but was waylaid by footpads near Bromley and came near meeting his death from them. Fortunately, however, ‘did God deliver me from these villains, and not onely so, but restor’d what they tooke, as twice before he had graciously don, both at sea and land;... for which, and many signal preservations, I am