Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/34

22 at the time of the Papist conspiracy, accused of Catholicism and sent to the Tower. He succeeded in clearing himself and was re-appointed to the Navy Council. He remained Secretary to the Admiralty, and high in James' favour, until 1688. After the expulsion of the Stuarts he retired from the Government, but his activity was unabated until his death in 1703. He did not cease to interest himself in letters, the arts and the sciences. In 1684 he was appointed President of the Royal Society. He collaborated in various learned volumes. Magdalen College, Cambridge, possesses his collection of manuscripts: memoirs, engravings, documents relating to the Navy, and five volumes of old English ballads collected by himself; lastly, his Diary, in which he noted, in a shorthand of his own invention, all that he did, day by day, from January, 1659 (1660) to May, 1669. This Diary, with that of his friend, Evelyn, is the most lifelike collection existing of contemporary data relating to the England of his period. In these pages I shall consider the entries relating to music.

This Secretary to the Navy, this conscientious statesman, was a passionate lover of music; to music he devoted a part of his days. He played the lute, the viol, the theorbo, the flageolet and the recorder, and to some extent the spinet. It was the custom, among distinguished citizens, to have in their homes a collection of musical instruments,