John Evelyn
John Evelyn , an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, has become best known as a diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society.
John Evelyn's diary spanned the period of his adult life from 1640, when he was a student, to 1706, the year he died. He did not write daily at all times. The many volumes provide insight into life and events at a time before regular magazines or newspapers were published, making diaries of greater interest to modern historians than such works might have been at later periods. Evelyn's work covers art, culture and politics, including the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell's rise and eventual natural death, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London in 1666.
John Evelyn's Diary was first published posthumously in 1818, but over the years became overshadowed by that of Samuel Pepys. Pepys wrote a different kind of diary, in the same era but covering a much shorter period, 1660–1669, and in much greater depth.
Evelyn wrote on many subjects, but increasingly focussed on gardening, and he left a huge manuscript on the subject that was not printed until 2001. He published several translations of French gardening books, and his Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees was highly influential in its plea to landowners to plant trees, of which he believed the country to be dangerously short. Sections from his main manuscript were added to editions of this, and also published separately.
Biography
Born into a family whose wealth was largely founded on gunpowder production, John Evelyn was born in Wotton, Surrey, and grew up living with his grandparents in Lewes, Sussex. While living in Lewes, in Southover Grange, he was educated at Lewes Old Grammar School, refusing to be sent to Eton College. After this he was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and at the Middle Temple. In London, he witnessed important events such as the trials and executions of William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.In 1640 his father died, and in July 1641 he crossed to Holland. He was enrolled as a volunteer, and then encamped before Genep, on the Waal river, but his military experience was limited to six days of camp life, during which, however, he took his turn at "trailing a pike". He returned in the autumn to find England on the verge of civil war. Having briefly joined the Royalist army and arrived too late for the Royalist victory at the Battle of Brentford in 1642, he spent some time improving his brother's property at Wotton, but then went abroad to avoid further involvement in the English Civil War.
In October 1644 Evelyn visited the Roman ruins in Fréjus, Provence, before travelling on to Italy. He attended anatomy lectures in Padua in 1646 and sent the Evelyn Tables back to London. These are thought to be the oldest surviving anatomical preparations in Europe; Evelyn later gave them to the Royal Society, and they are now displayed at the Hunterian Museum in London. In 1644, Evelyn visited the English College at Rome, where Catholic priests were trained for service in England. In the Veneto he renewed his acquaintance with the famous art collector Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, and toured the art collections of Venice with Arundel's grandson and heir, later Duke of Norfolk. He acquired an ancient Egyptian stela and sent a sketch back to Rome, which was published by Father Kircher, SJ, in Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus, albeit without acknowledgement to Evelyn.
In Florence, he commissioned the John Evelyn Cabinet, an elaborate ebony cabinet with pietra dura and gilt-bronze panels, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was in his London house at his death, then returned to Wotton, and is very likely the "ebony cabinet" in which his diaries were later found.
In 1647 Evelyn married Mary Browne, daughter of Sir Richard Browne, the English ambassador in Paris. During the next few years he travelled back and forth between France and England, corresponding with Browne in the royalist interest, including a meeting with Charles I in 1647.
During the Commonwealth of England period, Evelyn desired to maintain using the Church of England's Anglican practices. Among these was worship according to the Book of Common Prayer. Though prayer book had been outlawed and replaced by the Directory for Public Worship, Evelyn was able to find and worship at prayer book services, including in London. At one such service–held on Christmas Day, 1657–Evelyn reported that Parliamentarians "held their muskets against us as we came up to receive the Sacred Elements". Evelyn would also recount regular usage of the prayer book's offices and its calendar with his family inside their home.
In 1651 he became convinced that the royalist cause was hopeless, and decided to return to England. The following year, the couple settled in Deptford. Their house, Sayes Court, was purchased by Evelyn from his father-in-law in 1653; Evelyn soon began to transform the gardens. In 1671, he encountered master wood-worker Grinling Gibbons and introduced him to Sir Christopher Wren. There is now an electoral ward called Evelyn in Deptford, London Borough of Lewisham. He remained a royalist, had refused employment from the government of the Commonwealth, and had maintained a cipher correspondence with Charles II; in 1659 he published an Apology for the Royal Party.
After the Restoration
It was after the Restoration that Evelyn's career really took off, and he enjoyed unbroken court favour until his death. He never held any important political office, although he filled many useful and minor posts. In 1660, he was a member of the group that founded the Royal Society. The following year, he wrote the Fumifugium, a pamphlet on the growing air pollution problem in London. He was commissioner for improving the streets and buildings of London, for examining into the affairs of charitable foundations, commissioner of the Royal Mint, and of foreign plantations. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, beginning 28 October 1664, Evelyn served as one of four commissioners on the Sick and Hurt Board, staying at his post during the Great Plague in 1665. He found it impossible to secure sufficient money for the proper discharge of his functions, and in 1688 he was still petitioning for payment of his accounts in this business. He briefly acted as one of the commissioners of the privy seal. In 1695 he was entrusted with the office of treasurer of Greenwich hospital for retired sailors, and laid the first stone of the new building on 30 June 1696.He was known for his knowledge of trees, and had a friend and correspondent, Philip Dumaresq, who "devoted most of his time to gardening, fruit, and tree culture." Evelyn's treatise, Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees, was written as an encouragement to landowners to plant trees to provide timber for England's burgeoning navy. Further editions appeared in his lifetime, with the fourth edition appearing just after his death and featuring the engraving of Evelyn shown on this page even though it had been made more than 50 years prior by Robert Nanteuil in 1651 in Paris. Various other editions appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries and feature an inaccurate portrait of Evelyn made by Francesco Bartolozzi.
Image:Evelynmotto.jpg|thumb|Evelyn's motto written in a book he bought in Paris in 1651. Keep what is better
Evelyn had some training as a draftsman and artist, and created several etchings. Most of his published work, produced in the form of drawings to be engraved by others, was to illustrate his own work.
Following the Great Fire in 1666, closely described in his diaries, Evelyn presented the first of several plans for the rebuilding of London, all of which were rejected by Charles II largely due to the complexities of land ownership in the city. He took an interest in the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral by Wren. Evelyn's interest in gardens even led him to design pleasure gardens, such as those at Euston Hall.
Evelyn was a prolific author and produced books on subjects as diverse as theology, numismatics, politics, horticulture, architecture and vegetarianism, and he cultivated links with contemporaries across the spectrum of Stuart political and cultural life. In September 1671 he travelled with the Royal court of Charles II to Norwich where he called upon Sir Thomas Browne. Like Browne and Pepys, Evelyn was a lifelong bibliophile, and by his death his library is known to have comprised 3,859 books and 822 pamphlets, his personal manuscripts, and correspondence with noble figures among England and France. It would be called the John Evelyn Archives and placed in the British Library. Included in this would be his diaries broken down into four volumes with over half a million words. Many were uniformly bound in a French taste and bear his motto Omnia explorate; meliora retinete from I Thessalonians 5, 21.
His daughter, Mary Evelyn, has been acknowledged as the pseudonymous author of the book Mundus Muliebris of 1690. Mundus Muliebris: or, The Ladies Dressing Room Unlock'd and Her Toilette Spread. In Burlesque. Together with the Fop-Dictionary, Compiled for the Use of the Fair Sex is a satirical guide in verse to Francophile fashion and terminology, and its authorship is often jointly credited to John Evelyn, who seems to have edited the work for press after his daughter's death.
In 1694 Evelyn moved back to Wotton, Surrey, as his elder brother, George, had no living sons available to inherit the estate. Evelyn inherited the estate and the family seat Wotton House on the death of his brother in 1699. Sayes Court was made available for rent. Its most notable tenant was Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who lived there for three months in 1698. The house no longer exists, but a public park of the same name can be found off Evelyn Street.
Evelyn died in 1706 at his house in Dover Street, London. Wotton House and estate were inherited by his grandson John later Sir John Evelyn, Bt.