13 July 1654 – 19 July 1654

We all dined at that most obliging and universally-curious Dr. Wilkins's, at Wadham College. He was the first who showed me the transparent apiaries, which he had built like castles and palaces, and so ordered them one upon another, as to take the honey without destroying the bees. These were adorned with a variety of dials, little statues, vanes, etc.; and, he was so abundantly civil, finding me pleased with them, to present me with one of the hives which he had empty, and which I afterward had in my garden at Sayes Court, where it continued many years, and which his Majesty came on purpose to see and contemplate with much satisfaction. He had also contrived a hollow statue, which gave a voice and uttered words by a long, concealed pipe that went to its mouth, while one speaks through it at a good distance. He had, above in his lodgings and gallery, variety of shadows, dials, perspectives, and many other artificial, mathematical, and magical curiosities, a waywiser, a thermometer, a monstrous magnet, conic, and other sections, a balance on a demi-circle; most of them of his own, and that prodigious young scholar Mr. Christopher Wren, who presented me with a piece of white marble, which he had stained with a lively red, very deep, as beautiful as if it had been natural. Thus satisfied with the civilities of Oxford, we left it, dining at Farringdon, a town which had been newly fired during the wars; and, passing near the seat of Sir Walter Pye, we came to Cadenham.

We went to another uncle and relative of my wife's, Sir John Glanville, a famous lawyer, formerly Speaker of the House of Commons; his seat is at Broad Hinton, where he now lived but in the gate-house, his very fair dwelling house having been burnt by his own hands, to prevent the rebels making a garrison of it. Here, my cousin William Glanville's eldest son showed me such a lock for a door, that for its filing, and rare contrivances was a masterpiece, yet made by a country blacksmith. But, we have seen watches made by another with as much curiosity as the best of that profession can brag of; and, not many years after, there was nothing more frequent than all sorts of ironwork more exquisitely wrought and polished than in any part of Europe, so as a door lock of a tolerable price was esteemed a curiosity even among foreign princes. Went back to Cadenham, and, on the 19th, to Sir Edward Baynton's at Spie Park, a place capable of being made a noble seat; but the humorous old knight has built a long single house of two low stories on the precipice of an incomparable prospect, and landing on a bowling-green in the park. The house is like a long barn, and has not a window on the prospect side. After dinner, they went to bowls, and, in the meantime, our coachmen were made so exceedingly drunk, that in returning home we escaped great dangers. This, it seems, was by order of the knight, that all gentlemen's servants be so treated; but the custom is barbarous, and much unbecoming a knight still less a Christian.