John Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth Scurr Page B

Thames 34 runs through Wiltshire on its journey to Oxford. The source of the river is in Gloucestershire, near Cubberley, where there are several springs. Through Wiltshire it visits Cricklade, a market town, and gives its name to Isey, a nearby village, where its overflowings make a most glorious verdure in the spring season.
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    Clay abounds in Wiltshire 35 and particularly about Malmesbury, Kington St Michael, Allington, Easton Pierse, Draycot Cerne, Yatton Keynell, Minty and Bradon Forest. At Minty, and at a place called Woburn, in the parish of Hankerton, there is the very good absorbent clay called fuller’s earth. Last week I took up a handful of the fuller’s earth at Minty Common, at the place called the Gogges: it was as black as black polished marble; but, having carried it in my pocket five or six days, I find it has become grey.
    I believe the name 36 Malmesbury comes from Malme, which signifies mud or clay. Some say it comes from the name of the first religious man who settled here – Maidulf – hence Maidulphi Urbs, that is Maidulph’s City, but such an etymology seems forced to me. This is a place of mud.
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    December
    Since Christmas Eve, my father has been dangerously ill. My mother is more anxious than ever. In these empty days it is a relief to get out of the house to hunt with friends who live close by: Lord Charles Seymour and Colonel John Penruddock, who was at Blandford School six or seven years before me. Two of John’s younger brothers have been killed fighting for the King, and his father, Sir John Penruddock, like mine, is ill.
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    We set off with the hounds 37 this morning from the Grey Wethers, which are stones as hard as or harder than marble that lie scattered across the Downs around Marlborough. In some places these stones are sown so thick that travellers in the twilight at a distance take them for flocks of sheep (wethers): hence their name. We headed north through countryside I do not know and it seemed to me we were passing through the place where the Giants fought with great stones against the Gods as described by Hesiod. Then, to my astonishment, we came upon megaliths in a village called Avebury to rival the ones I have known since childhood at Stonehenge. I had not previously heard of these Avebury stones, so when the sight of them burst upon me I reined back my horse and dismounted in wonder. The rest of the hunt passed on, but I stayed marvelling at the bank and ditch and strange stone circles. I tried to picture how they must have looked in olden times. I think Druids erected the circles, and they were complete long ago. I was lost to the present, until suddenly I heard the hounds again and hastened off to overtake them. We rode on to Kennett where there was a good dinner. I will return to draw those stones. It seems to me that Avebury excels Stonehenge as a cathedral does a parish church.
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    Anno 1649
    Epiphany
    On this day, at last 38 , I met Francis Potter. He is the brother of Hannibal, who was our president at Trinity until the Parliamentarian Visitors ejected him recently, and the author of An Interpretation of the Number 666 . Francis is like a monk, quite long-faced, with clear pale skin and grey eyes. He was at Trinity when I first went to Oxford, together with his brother, but we never met. Since then, he has succeeded his father as parson of Kilmington in Somerset. Like me, he was much given to drawing and painting when a boy, and of a very tender constitution in his younger years. He says that when he was beginning to be sick, he would breathe strongly to emit the noxious vapours.
    Mr Potter says that the idea of moving blood from one body to another came to him ten years ago from reading Ovid. He is haunted by the barbarous Medea, mixing her witch’s brew: roots, juices, flowers, seeds, stones, the screech owl’s flesh and its ill-boding wings. He sees her, hair all unbound and blown about as she dances round, throwing more ingredients into the