Evelyn's Diary. 23 Sep 1680. Came to my house some German strangers and Signor Pietro, a famous musician, who had been long in Sweden in Queen Christina's (age 53) Court; he sung admirably to a guitar, and had a perfect good tenor and bass, and had set to Italian composure many of Abraham Cowley's pieces which showed extremely well. He told me that in Sweden the heat in some part of summer was as excessive as the cold in winter; so cold, he affirmed, that the streets of all the towns are desolate, no creatures stirring in them for many months, all the inhabitants retiring to their stoves. He spoke high things of that romantic Queen's learning and skill in languages, the Majesty (age 50) of her behavior, her exceeding wit, and that the histories she had read of other countries, especially of Italy and Rome, had made her despise her own. That the real occasion of her resigning her crown was the nobleman's importuning her to marry, and the promise which the Pope had made her of procuring her to be Queen of Naples, which also caused her to change her religion; but she was cheated by his crafty Holiness,43 working on her ambition; that the reason of her killing her secretary at Fontainebleau, was, his revealing that intrigue with the Pope. But, after all this, I rather believe it was her mad prodigality and extreme vanity, which had consumed those vast treasures the great Adolphus, her father, had brought out of Germany during his [campaigns] there and wonderful successes; and that, if she had not voluntarily resigned, as foreseeing the event, the Estates of her kingdom would have compelled her to do so.

Evelyn's Diary. 26 Apr 1689. I heard the lawyers plead before the Lords the writ of error in the judgment of Oates (age 39), as to the charge against him of perjury, which after debate they referred to the answer of Holloway, etc., who were his judges. I then went with the Bishop of St. Asaph (age 61) to the Archbishop (age 72) at Lambeth [Map], where they entered into discourse concerning the final destruction of Antichrist, both concluding that the third trumpet and vial were now pouring out. My Lord St. Asaph (age 61) considered the killing of the two witnesses, to be the utter destruction of the Cevennes Protestants by the French and Duke of Savoy, and the other the Waldenses and Pyrenean Christians, who by all appearance from good history had kept the primitive faith from the very Apostles' time till now. The doubt his Grace suggested was, whether it could be made evident that the present persecution had made so great a havoc of those faithful people as of the other, and whether there were not yet some among them in being who met together, it being stated from the text, Apoc. xi., that they should both be slain together. They both much approved of Mr. Mede's way of interpretation, and that he only failed in resolving too hastily on the King of Sweden's (Gustavus Adolphus) success in Germany. They agreed that it would be good to employ some intelligent French minister to travel as far as the Pyrenees to understand the present state of the Church there, it being a country where hardly anyone travels.