12 July 1683 – 18 July 1683

As I was visiting Sir Thomas Yarborough and his Lady, in Covent Garden, the astonishing news was brought to us of the Earl of Essex having cut his throat, having been but three days a prisoner in the Tower, and this happened on the very day and instant that Lord Russell was on his trial, and had sentence of death. This accident exceedingly amazed me, my Lord Essex being so well known by me to be a person of such sober and religious deportment, so well at his ease, and so much obliged to the King. It is certain the King and Duke were at the Tower, and passed by his window about the same time this morning, when my Lord asking for a razor, shut himself into a closet, and perpetrated the horrid act. Yet it was wondered by some how it was possible he should do it in the manner he was found, for the wound was so deep and wide, that being cut through the gullet, windpipe, and both the jugulars, it reached to the very vertebræ of the neck, so that the head held to it by a very little skin as it were; the gapping too of the razor, and cutting his own fingers, was a little strange; but more, that having passed the jugulars he should have strength to proceed so far, that an executioner could hardly have done more with an ax. There were odd reflections upon it. The fatal news coming to Hicks's Hall upon the article of my Lord Russell's trial, was said to have had no little influence on the Jury and all the Bench to his prejudice. Others said that he had himself on some occasions hinted that in case he should be in danger of having his life taken from him by any public misfortune, those who thirsted for his estate should miss of their aim; and that he should speak favorably of that Earl of Northumberland, and some others, who made away with themselves; but these are discourses so unlike his sober and prudent conversation that I have no inclination to credit them. What might instigate him to this devilish act, I am not able to conjecture. My Lord Clarendon, his brother-in-law, who was with him but the day before, assured me he was then very cheerful, and declared it to be the effect of his innocence and loyalty; and most believe that his Majesty had no severe intentions against him, though he was altogether inexorable as to Lord Russell and some of the rest. For my part, I believe the crafty and ambitious Earl of Shaftesbury had brought them into some dislike of the present carriage of matters at Court, not with any design of destroying the monarchy (which Shaftesbury had in confidence and for unanswerable reasons told me he would support to his last breath, as having seen and felt the misery of being under mechanic tyranny), but perhaps of setting up some other whom he might govern, and frame to his own platonic fancy, without much regard to the religion established under the hierarchy, for which he had no esteem; but when he perceived those whom he had engaged to rise, fail of his expectations, and the day past, reproaching his accomplices that a second day for an exploit of this nature was never successful, he gave them the slip, and got into Holland, where the fox died, three months before these unhappy Lords and others were discovered or suspected. Every one deplored Essex and Russell, especially the last, as being thought to have been drawn in on pretense only of endeavoring to rescue the King from his present councilors, and secure religion from Popery, and the nation from arbitrary government, now so much apprehended; while the rest of those who were fled, especially Ferguson and his gang, had doubtless some bloody design to get up a Commonwealth, and turn all things topsy-turvy. Of the same tragical principles is Sydney. I had this day much discourse with Monsieur Pontaq, son to the famous and wise prime President of Bordeaux. This gentleman was owner of that excellent vignoble of Pontaq and O'Brien, from whence come the choicest of our Bordeaux wines; and I think I may truly say of him, what was not so truly said of St. Paul, that much learning had made him mad. He had studied well in philosophy, but chiefly the Rabbins, and was exceedingly addicted to cabalistical fancies, an eternal hablador , and half distracted by reading abundance of the extravagant Eastern Jews. He spoke all languages, was very rich, had a handsome person, and was well bred, about forty-five years of age.

I visited Mr. Fraser, a learned Scotch gentleman, whom I had formerly recommended to Lord Berkeley for the instruction and government of his son, since dead at sea. He had now been in Holland at the sale of the learned Heinsius's library, and showed me some very rare and curious books, and some MSS., which he had purchased to good value. There were three or four Herbals in miniature, accurately done, divers Roman antiquities of Verona, and very many books of Aldus's impression.

A stranger, an old man, preached on Jerem. vi. 8, the not hearkening to instruction, portentous of desolation to a people; much after Bishop Andrew's method, full of logical divisions, in short and broken periods, and Latin sentences, now quite out of fashion in the pulpit, which is grown into a far more profitable way, of plain and practical discourses, of which sort this nation, or any other, never had greater plenty or more profitable (I am confident); so much has it to answer for thriving no better on it. The public was now in great consternation on the late plot and conspiracy; his Majesty very melancholy, and not stirring without double guards; all the avenues and private doors about Whitehall and the Park shut up, few admitted to walk in it. The Papists, in the meantime, very jocund; and indeed with reason, seeing their own plot brought to nothing, and turned to ridicule, and now a conspiracy of Protestants, as they called them. The Turks were likewise in hostility against the German Emperor, almost masters of the Upper Hungary, and drawing toward Vienna. On the other side, the French King (who it is believed brought in the infidels) disturbing his Spanish and Dutch neighbors, having swallowed up almost all Flanders, pursuing his ambition of a fifth universal monarchy; and all this blood and disorder in Christendom had evidently its rise from our defections at home, in a wanton peace, minding nothing but luxury, ambition, and to procure money for our vices. To this add our irreligion and atheism, great ingratitude, and self-interest; the apostacy of some, and the suffering the French to grow so great, and the Hollanders so weak. In a word, we were wanton, mad, and surfeiting with prosperity; every moment unsettling the old foundations, and never constant to anything. The Lord in mercy avert the sad omen, and that we do not provoke him till he bear it no longer! This summer did we suffer twenty French men-of-war to pass our Channel toward the Sound, to help the Danes against the Swedes, who had abandoned the French interest, we not having ready sufficient to guard our coasts, or take cognizance of what they did; though the nation never had more, or a better navy, yet the sea had never so slender a fleet.