John Evelyn

That was the desperate plea sent out in the spring of 1698 by a thoroughly horrified English steward, a sort of caretaker.

He is writing to his master, who was the famed Irish, John Evelyn.

And Evelyn had made really a terrible mistake.

He'd rented out his beloved Deptford estate, Say's Court, to a visiting foreign delegation.

I mean, it's been a very raucous kind of gathering.

And yes, it moves to Deptford.

They're housed at Say's Court, which belongs to John the writer, cultural figure, John Evelyn, who has apparently constructed the most beautiful garden in all of England, which Peter's crew promptly trashes.

You know, I think they're using sort of the portraits for target practice and breaking the furniture and apparently driving wheelbarrows through the hedges and do a great deal of damage, so much so that actually Evelyn has to be compensated by the treasury.

William advanced eastwards towards capital and it looked increasingly like a royal progress.

On the 2nd of December, John Evelyn wrote in his diary, All the eminent nobility and persons of quality throughout England declare for the Protestant religion and laws and go to meet the Prince.

It looks like a revolution! Still, William responded reasonably to James's proposals, no sign yet that he had any ambition to take the throne.

But James wasn't in ever-mounting panic.

Yet this obligation is laid, not only on every pedestrian visitor who calls on the dwellers in Venetian palaces, but on every modern traveller brought by railway to the city of the lagoons.

its visitors of old time were more fortunate they approached this citta nobilissima e singolare by ways which enabled them to taste its quality from afar they saw its distant campanile as they sailed across the adriatic from trieste or they came like john evelyn in sixteen forty five by brondolo and chioggia over against malamocco the chief port and anchorage where our english merchantmen lie that trade with venice and here entering the lagoon they slipped into the bacino di san marco the campanile beckoning them on till their progress was arrested by the custom-house which looks seaward from the sharp point of dorsoduro or like shakespeare's portia they might come from padua travelling by barge along the brenta through the level green water-meadows to and there embarking on the common ferry which trades to venice they approached the city by the broad giudecca channel or again if they had crossed the alps by the brenner pass they left their carriages and all the toils and fatigues of travel at mestre and there entered a gondola the reviving salt breeze and the masses of heaving seaweed proclaiming the vicinity of the adriatic then they rode across the lagoon slowly nearing the city which lay like a big lotus leaf on its bosom not surrounded like other mediaeval towns by defences of masonry but having these shining expanses of water alike for road and rampart and when the low shore of the mainland behind them had become a mere wavering neutral tinted line the boat swept into the canal of canareggio and then passed the church of s jeremia into the grand canal the broadest and most stately street in europe yet what the modern traveller loses in aesthetic satisfaction he gains in sensations of astonishment no previous preparation descriptive or photographic can seriously diminish the delightful thrill experienced by the newcomer to venice as he leaves the railway platform and emerges on the station quay overlooking the grand canal there by the broad flight of water-steps the cabs of venice the hired gondolas are waiting in a black mass for the arrival of the express trains as soon as the first luggage laden figure appears on the quay the mass becomes agitated the air is rent with cries the offering gondola gondola from the water from the shore the imperative pope pope boatman of blue-vested facchini anxious to secure a good boat for the signori who have tipped them well or the christian name of some private gondolier francesco luigi pietro or what not is shouted and a reassuring ecco mi signorina pronto signore comes from some stalwart standing form who presently with marvellous dexterity will manage to extricate his gondola from the crowd avoid the wash of a steamer making for the station pontoon to the left and draw up at some spot on the outskirts of confusion many of the best hotels now send a steam launch as station bus to meet expected guests this is an advantage to the traveller who is going for the bathing season straight out to the lido otherwise time seems dearly gained at the expense of the restful motion of the old-fashioned gondola one of the most characteristic and delicious features of life in the lagoons to arrive uncertain of one's destination and without the power to conceal the fact beneath a mask of assumed decision is to be the victim of the knot of hotel porters who command the station exit chanting the names of their houses prepared to pounce like spiders on any vacillating fly happy is the man who has come to stay in venice with some of its residents and is met on arrival by his host's private gondola manned by two gondoliers happier still is he if his friends refrain from coming to welcome him in person to feel oneself propelled with the easy speed of the double oar to observe without fully comprehending to yield oneself silently to wholly new sensations this is the way to enjoy to the full the luxury of arrival Travellers who have crossed the Alps often come by an express train from Milan which reaches Venice near midnight.

Those who have crossed the Apennines often enter with the dawn.

Both hours are favourable to striking first impressions.

Higher still, and this section is really a tower detached from and above the main building, is a field of starred azure on which is seen in half relief a lion and the figure of a kneeling doge.

When the clock strikes twelve on Ascension Day, figures of the Magi, nearly life-size, emerge from one of the little doors of the third storey, pass before the Madonna, doing reverence, and disappear through the other door.

If John Evelyn is to be believed, this little procession in his day took place daily at twelve o'clock and six, the hours of the Ave Maria, when all the town are on their knees.

The clock tower is surmounted by the two moors, huge bronze figures with a bell between them, on which they strike alternately with hammers.

Not at all.

So in the 1600s, a well-known diarist called John Evelyn, he writes about how British people can't even make a salad dressing or drink some wine without adding sugar to it.

So

we're addicted.

And in fact, the 1600s was a big century for cider in the UK.

So John Evelyn, who was a pretty prolific author and member of the Royal Society, a He is advocating for the planting of orchards specifically so that people can improve their agricultural practice on their estates and contribute to this project that he lays out of having cider be the national wine of England.

Maria says a bunch of rich noblemen at the time heeded his call.

They had orchards.

So they were really promoting this idea.

And the very first book in English dedicated to describing how to make cider and peri was published in 1664 by a chap called John Evelyn.

And it was the first publication published by the Royal Society.

So Evelyn was one of the founding members of the Royal Society.

This latter is depicted on a fine engraving given the following list of fireworks used on the occasion: 1,000 skyrockets from four to six pounds weight, 200 shell, 2,400 pumps with stars, Roman candles, 1,000 cones, 7,000 reports, 15,000 swarms, 400 light balls, 23 rocket chests, each containing 60 rockets from one to four pounders.

John Evelyn, in his diary, says, "The evening concluded with illuminations and fireworks of great expense." The display cost £12,000.

There seem to have been no fireworks in London at the coronation of either Anne or the first two Georges, although on the former occasion, rockets appear to have been fired from the fleet at Spithead.

The peace rejoicings of 1713 were the occasion of another display on the Thames off Whitehall, the erection being about 400 feet long on barges chained together in the stream.