On Thursday, August 25th, 1663,[Footnote: The 25th of August, 1663,
fell on a Tuesday.] we set sail for England. On the 4th of September,
our style, being Friday, we landed at Deal, all in good health, God be
praised!
Saturday 5th, we went to Canterbury, and there tarried Sunday, where
we went to church, and very many of the gentlemen of Kent came to
welcome us into England.
And here I cannot omit relating the ensuing story, confirmed by Sir
Thomas Barton, Sir Arnold Braeme, the Dean of Canterbury, with many
more gentlemen and persons of this town.
There lives not far from Canterbury a gentleman, called Colonel
Colepeper,[Footnote: Lady Barbara, daughter of Robert Sydney, Earl of
Leicester, and widow of Thomas, first Viscount Strangford, married
secondly Sir Thomas Colepeper, by whom she had Colonel Colepeper, and
a daughter, Roberta Anna, who married Major Thomas Porter, and died
issueless, June 16th, 1661, more than two years before Lady Fanshawe
was told this story, the circumstances of which she states to have
happened only three months previously. The Colonel was a most
extraordinary character, and though a man of genius and erudition, was
very nearly a madman. A voluminous collection of his MSS. is preserved
in the British Museum, whence it appears that he was in the habit of
committing his most private thoughts to paper; that there was scarcely
a subject to which his attention was not directed; and that the
Government and eminent persons were continually tormented with his
projects and discoveries, embracing among others the Longitude.
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