HKB
spent in the pleasures and amusements common to the court of France and to the throng of exiles from Britain who formed the Court of the uncrowned monarch, Charles II.
Evelyn longed for settlement in England, because he saw that the Royalist cause was hopelessly lost for the time being. His father-in-law’s estate of Sayes Court had been seized and sold by the rebels, but ‘by the advice and endeavour of my friends I was advis’d to reside in it, and compound with the soldiers. This I was besides authoriz’d by his Majesty to do, and encourag’d with promise that what was in lease from the Crowne, if ever it pleased God to restore him, he would secure to us in fee-ferme.{xxxi:1} I had also addresses and cyfers to correspond with his Majesty and Ministers abroad: upon all which inducements I was persuaded to settle henceforth in England, having now run about the world, most part out of my owne country, neere ten yeares. I therefore now likewise meditated sending over for my Wife, whom as yet I had left at Paris.’ She arrived on 11th. June with her Mother; and as small-pox was then raging in and about London they sojourned for some time at Tunbridge Wells, drinking the waters. About the end of that month Evelyn went to Sayes Court to prepare for their reception, but was waylaid by footpads near Bromley and came near meeting his death from them. Fortunately, however, ‘did God deliver me from these villains, and not onely so, but restor’d what they tooke, as twice before he had graciously don, both at sea and land;... for which, and many signal preservations, I am extreamly oblig’d to give thanks to God my Saviour.’
On 24th July, 1652, Mrs. Evelyn presented her husband with their first child, their son, John, who predeceased his father in 1698. He now busied himself in acquiring full possession of his father-in-law’s and the rebels’ interests in Sayes Court, which he effected at a cost of £3,500 early in 1653.
Then he began gardening and planting on a large scale, transforming the almost bare fields around the house into fine specimens of the art of horticulture, as then practised. Sayes Court was afterwards the temporary residence of Peter the Great, who committed great havoc in the gardens and hedges during his rough orgies. Here Evelyn lived quietly till the time of the Restoration, spending his days in gardening and in cultivating the acquaintance of men of cultured tastes like his own, with occasional journeys to different parts of England. Thus he visited Windsor, Marlborough, Bath, Oxford, Salisbury, Devizes, Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Doncaster, York, Cambridge, and many other places, so that he probably saw a great deal more of England than the majority of men in his position. Thus, too, he learned much about the country and about all branches of rural economy. He had not yet seriously given himself to literature, although his third work was published in 1656, An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Cerus de Rerum Natura. Interpreted and made English Verse.