Pepys gives a better account: The Duchess had invited herself; and there
had been “much debate, pro and con, it seems many being against it, and
we do believe the town will be full of ballads of it.” In the end,
gallantry prevailed among the Philosophers; and when Pepys arrived at
Arundel House on foot, after his noonday dinner—it was a very hot and
dusty day—he found “very much company” in decorous expectation of her
Grace. She came, with her attendant women—among them the “Ferabosco,” of
whose beauty there had been so much talk among the gallants. The Duchess
herself, in her “antick” dress, disappointed Pepys: “nor did I hear her
say anything that was worth hearing, but that she was full of admiration,
all admiration.”
The Philosophers showed her all their best experiments—“of colours,
loadstones, microscopes, and of liquors.” The _chef d’œuvre_ seems to
have been the turning of a piece of roasted mutton into pure blood,
“which was very rare,” says Pepys; and then the Duchess and her suite
were escorted to her coach again, her Grace still crying that she was
“full of admiration.”
That was in May. Before the end of June poor Henry Oldenburg was suddenly
clapped into the Tower. The news must have fallen like a thunderbolt at
the next Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Society. Their Secretary was
in jail.
“I was told yesterday,” wrote Pepys, on June 25th, “that Mr. Oldenburg,
our Secretary at Gresham College, is put into the Tower, for writing
news to a virtuoso in France, with whom he constantly corresponds on
philosophical matters: which makes it very unsafe at this time to write,
or almost to do anything.”[317]
Oldenburg was still in custody on August 8 when Evelyn called at the
Tower.
“Visited Mr. Oldenburg, now close prisoner in the Tower, being suspected
of writing intelligence. I had an order from Lord Arlington, Secretary of
State, which caus’d me to be admitted. This Gentleman was Secretary to
our Society, and I am confident will prove an innocent person.”
And indeed Oldenburg was soon to be set free. On September 3 he was once
more in his own home and writing to Robert Boyle at Oxford—
“I was so stifled by the prison air,” says Oldenburg, “that as soon as
I had my enlargement from the _Tower_ I widened it, and took it from
_London_ into the Country, to fan myself for some days in the good air of
_Craford_ in _Kent_. Being now returned, and having recovered my stomach,
which I had in a manner quite lost, I intend, if God will, to fall to my
old trade,[318] if I have any support to follow it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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