Volume 1

'Brief Lives', chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 & 1696. / Edited from the author's mss. by Andrew Clark.

  • Aubrey, John, 1626-1697.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: 'Brief Lives', chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 & 1696. / Edited from the author's mss. by Andrew Clark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    incurable by reason of his great age and naturall decay. About the 20th of November, my Lord being to remove from Chatsworth to Hardwick, Mr. Hobbes would not be left behind ; and therefore with a fether bed laid into the coach, upon which he lay warme clad, he was conveyed safely, and was in appearance as well after that little journey as before it. But seven or eight days after, his whole right side was taken with the dead palsy, and at the same time he was made speechlesse. He lived after this seven days, taking very little nourishment, slept well, and by intervalls endeavoured to speake, but could not. In the whole time of his sicknesse he was free from fever. He seemed there- fore to dye rather for want of the fuell of life (which was spent in him) and meer weaknesse and decay, then by the power of his disease, which was thought to be onely an effect of his age and weaknesse. He was born the 5th of Aprill, in the year 1588, and died the 4th of December, 1679. He was put into a woollen shroud and coffin, which was covered with a white sheet, and upon that a black herse cloth, and so carryed upon men’s shoulders, a little mile to a church. The company, consisting of the family and neighbours that came to his funerall, and attended him to his grave, were very handsomely entertained with wine, burned and raw, cake, biscuit, etc. He was buried in the parish church of Hault Hucknall, close adjoining to the raile of the monument of the grandmother of the present earle of Devonshire, with the service of the Church of England by the minister of the parish. It is intended to cover his grave with a stone of black marble as soon as it can be got ready, with a plain inscription of his name, the place of his birth, and the time of that and of his death. As to his will, it is sent up to London to be proved there, and by the copy of it, which I here send you, I beleeve you will judge it fitt to make no mention of it in * what you designe to get written by way of Commentary on his life. As for the palsey in his hands, it began in ffrance, before the year 1650, and has grown upon him by degrees ever a Subst. for ‘to the parish church.’ * MS. Aubr. 9, fol. i8v.