Oblivion; so that though Mr. Sidney was known to be a person obstinately averse to government by a monarch (the subject of the paper was in answer to one by Sir E. Filmer), yet it was thought he had very hard measure. There is this yet observable, that he had been an inveterate enemy to the last king, and in actual rebellion against him; a man of great courage, great sense, great parts, which he showed both at his trial and death; for, when he came on the scaffold, instead of a speech, he told them only that he had made his peace with God, that he came not thither to talk, but to die; put a paper into the sheriff's hand, and another into a friend's; said one prayer as short as a grace, laid down his neck, and bid the executioner do his office.

The Duke of Monmouth, now having his pardon, refuses to acknowledge there was any treasonable plot; for which he is banished Whitehall. This was a great disappointment to some who had prosecuted Trenchard, Hampden, etc., that for want of a second witness were come out of the Tower upon their habeas corpus.

The King had now augmented his guards with a new sort of dragoons, who carried also grenadoes, and were habited after the Polish manner, with long peaked caps, very fierce and fantastical.

2

7th December. I went to the Tower, and visited the Earl of Danby, the late Lord High Treasurer, who had been imprisoned four years: he received me with great kindness. I dined with him, and stayed till night. We had discourse of many things, his Lady railing sufficiently at the keeping her husband so long in prison. Here I saluted the Lord Dunblane's wife, who before had been

3

1 [See ante, p. 14.] 2 [See ante, vol. ii. p. 31.] 3 Peregrine Osborne, Viscount Dunblane, 1658-1729, youngest son of the Earl of Danby, so created in his father's lifetime, and afterwards inheritor of his title and estate.

married to Emerton, and about whom there was that scandalous business before the delegates.

23rd December. The small-pox very prevalent and mortal; the Thames frozen.

26th. I dined at Lord Clarendon's, where I was to meet that ingenious and learned gentleman, Sir George Wheler,' who has published the excellent description of Africa and Greece, and who, being a knight of a very fair estate and young, had now newly entered into Holy Orders.

2

27th. I went to visit Sir John Chardin, a French gentleman, who had travelled three times by land into Persia, and had made many curious researches in his travels, of which he was now setting forth a relation. It being in England this year one of the severest frosts that has happened of many years, he told me the cold in Persia was much greater, the ice of an incredible thickness; that they had little use of iron in all that country, it being so moist (though the air admirably clear and healthy) that oil would not preserve it from rusting, so that they had neither clocks nor watches; some padlocks they had for doors and boxes.

8

30th. Dr. Sprat, now made Dean of Westminster, preached to the King at Whitehall, on Matt. vi. 24. Recollecting the passages of the past year, I gave God thanks for his mercies, praying his blessing for the future.

1683-4: 1st January. The weather continuing intolerably severe, streets of booths were set upon the Thames; the air was so very cold and thick, as of many years there had not been the like. The small-pox was very mortal.

1 [Sir George Wheler, 1650-1723. His travels took place 1673-76, and he was knighted in 1682, in which year he published his Journey into Greece. He became Rector of Houghton-le Spring, Durham, in 1709 (see post, under 24th October, 1686).] 2 [See ante, p. 115.] [See ante, vol. ii. p. 300.]

3

2nd January. I dined at Sir Stephen Fox's:' after dinner came a fellow who eat live charcoal, glowingly ignited, quenching them in his mouth, and then champing and swallowing them down. There was a dog also which seemed to do many rational actions. 6th. The river quite frozen.2

9th. I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted meat, and had divers shops of wares, quite across as in a town, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over. So I went from Westminster-stairs to Lambeth, and dined with the Archbishop: where I met my Lord Bruce, Sir George Wheler, Colonel Cooke, and several divines. After dinner and discourse with his Grace till evening prayers, Sir George Wheler and I walked over the ice from Lambeth-stairs to the Horse-ferry.

5

10th. I visited Sir Robert Reading, where after supper we had music, but not comparable to that which Mrs. Bridgeman made us on the guitar with such extraordinary skill and dexterity.

16th. The Thames was filled with people and tents, selling all sorts of wares as in the City.

24th. The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with booths in formal streets, all sorts of trades and shops furnished, and full of commodities, even to a printing-press, where the people and ladies took a fancy to have their names printed, and the day and year set down when printed on the Thames:"

1 [Cf. Richardson, ante, vol. ii. p. 352.]

2 [There are several representations of this " prodigious Frost," one of which is here reproduced.] 3 [Dr. Sancroft.] 5 See ante, p. 16.]

[See ante, vol. i. p. 297.]

Bray thus describes one of these cards of Frost Fair. "Within a treble border, 'Mons' et Mad Justel. Printed on the River of Thames being frozen. In the 36th year of King Charles the II., February the 5th, 1683.'"