The Diary Of John Evelyn Vol-2

1692-93 JOHN EVELYN

admitting the Bishop of Bath and Wells to "be lecturer
for the next year, instead of Mr. Bentley, who had so
worthily acquitted himself. We intended to take him in
again the next year.

January, 1692-93. Contest in Parliament about a self-
denying Act, that no Parliament man should have any
office; it wanted only two or three voices to have been
carried. The Duke of Norfolk's bill for a divorce thrown
out, he having managed it very indiscreetly. The quar-
rel between Admiral Russell and Lord Nottingham yet
undetermined.

4th February, 1693. After five days* trial and extraor-
dinary contest, the Lord Mohun was acquitted by the
Lords of the murder of Montford, the player, notwith-
standing the judges, from the pregnant witnesses of the
fact, had declared him guilty; but whether in commiser-
ation of his youth, being not eighteen years old, though
exceedingly dissolute, or upon whatever other reason, the
King himself present some part of the trial, and satisfied,
as they report, that he was culpable. 69 acquitted him,
only 14 condemned him.

Unheard of stories of the universal increase of witches
in New England; men, women, and children, devoting
themselves to the devil, so as to threaten the subversion
of the government.* At the same time there was a con-
spiracy among the negroes in Barbadoes to murder all
their masters, discovered by overhearing a discourse of
two of the slaves, and so preventing the execution of
the design. Hitherto an exceedingly mild winter. France
in the utmost misery and poverty for want of corn and
subsistence, while the ambitious King is intent to pursue
his conquests on the rest of his neighbors both by sea
and land. Our Admiral, Russell, laid aside for not pur-
suing the advantage he had obtained over the French in
the past summer; three others chosen in his place. Dr.
Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury's book burned by the hangman
for an expression of the King's title by conquest, on a

*Some account of these poor people is given in Bray and Manning's
« History of Surrey, Mi. 714, from tie papers of the Rev. Mr. Miller,
Vicar of Effingham, in that county, who was chaplain to the King's
forces in the colony from 1692 to 1695. Some of the accused were
convicted and executed; but Sir William PMpps, the Governor, had
the good sense to reprieve, and afterward pardon, several; and the
Queen approved his conduct.ed a public library [in St. Martin's]; and setens to in-