18 March 1652 – 24 March 1652

That worthy divine, Mr. Owen, of Eltham, a sequestered person, came to visit me.

Invited by Lady Gerrard, I went to London, where we had a great supper; all the vessels, which were innumerable, were of porcelain, she having the most ample and richest collection of that curiosity in England.

I went with my brother Evelyn to Wotton, to give him what directions I was able about his garden, which he was now desirous to put into some form; but for which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with huge trees and thicket, with a moat within ten yards of the house. This my brother immediately attempted, and that without great cost, for more than a hundred yards south, by digging down the mountain, and flinging it into a rapid stream; it not only carried away the sand, etc., but filled up the moat, and leveled that noble area, where now the garden and fountain is. The first occasion of my brother making this alteration was my building the little retiring place between the great wood eastward next the meadow, where, some time after my father's death, I made a triangular pond, or little stew, with an artificial rock after my coming out of Flanders.