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.

  • John Aubrey
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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    He afterwards taught children herea. He entred me into my accedence. Before Mr. Latimer, one Mr. Taverner was rector here, who was the parson that maried my grand-father and grandmother Lyte.’ 10 In a marginal note (MS. Aubr. 7, fol. 3), Aubrey excuses his father’s neglect of his education on the plea that he himself grew up illiterate. The note is:— ‘My grandfather A(ubrey) dyed, leaving my father, who was not educated to learning, but to hawking.’ See in the life of Alderman John Whitson. 11 In the margin Aubrey notes :— ‘ Ty strong impulse to J^.’ This means I suppose that the position of Saturn at his nativity gave him a bias to the study of antiquities. 12 This means, I suppose, that the copies he made sufficiently resembled the pictures on the parlour wall. A note in MS. Aubr. 8, fol. 6V, perhaps refers to his own skill in drawing, ‘As Mr. Walter Waller’s picture drawne after his death ; e contra, I have done severall by the life.’ Walter Waller was vicar of Chalk, where Aubrey lived : see in the life of Edmund Waller. 13 Possibly ‘ The mysteries of nature and art, viz. . . . drawing, colour- ing . . . ,” by J[ohn] B[ate], Lond. 1634, 4to- 14 Here (fol. 3V) in the margin is written :—‘ Vide Pond,’ referring perhaps to a pocket almanac, in which Aubrey had marked the date of his going up to Oxford. See Clark’s Wood’s Life and Times, i. 11, 12. In a letter from Aubrey to Anthony Wood, of date Feb. 21, i6|$, in MS. Ballard 14, fol. 127, is this interesting note:—‘ At Trinity College we writt our names in the Buttery-booke, when we were entred.’ Aubrey cites in the margin (MS. Aubr. 7, fol. 3V):—‘ Horat. Epist. 2d.’ (i.e. Epist. ii. 2. 45) :— 15 In MS. Wood F. 39, fol. 183, Aubrey, writing on Oct. 19, 1672, tells Anthony Wood, ‘ you must not forgett that I have 3 other faces or prospects of Osney abbey, as good as that now in the Monasticon. They are in my trunke yet at Easton Piers.’ Ibid., fol. I90v, on Oct. 22, 1672, he says, ‘ I will bring you about March my two other draughts of Osney mines, one by Mr. Dobson bimselfe, the other by his man, one Mr. Hesketh, but was a priest.’ Note that in MS. Wood F. 39, fol. 200, is a drawing (from memory) by Aubrey of the stone-work which crowned the great earth-mound of Oxford Castle. 16 In a slip at the end of MS. Aubr. 26 (Aubrey’s Faber Fortunae, in which he entered schemes by which he hoped to ‘make his fortune’), is this note:— ‘ I have the deed of entaile of the lands in South Wales, Brecon, and Mon- mouthshire, by my grandfather, William Aubrey LL. D., which lands now of right belong to me. Memorandum :—Mr. David Powell, who liveth at . . . (neer Llanverarbrin neer Llandvery, as I remember), can helpe me to the counterpart of this deed of entaile in Wales—quod N. B.’ ‘ Atque inter sylvas Academi quaerere verum. Dura sed emovere loco me tempora grato.’ i. e. at Leigh-de-la-mere. E %