Afriend of mine, a rich bee-keeper, has a problem that many of us would not mind sharing — namely, how to keep his bees out of his swimming pool. The answer, he tells me, is to put a little vinegar (in his case, made from his own apples) around the edge of the pool. Bees hate vinegar and therefore keep away. On the other hand wasps and hornets love it, so he also puts out extra jars of the stuff to act as invitations for them to come and get drowned.

I cannot help thinking that such a solution to a stinging problem, faced by a leisured and thoughtful person, would have appealed to that rich 17th-century diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706, pictured below), a friend of Charles II and a frequent visitor to Oxford and Oxfordshire.

He gave the warden of Wadham College, John Wilkins (1614-72), a transparent beehive, ornamented with statues, in order to enable him to observe the insects going about their daily business.

Wilkins was a founder of the Royal Society in 1660 — 350 years ago this year — under the patronage of Charles II. He was also a great peace maker in difficult political times, who gathered around him a group of scientists and free thinkers which included Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and Henry Oldenburg, fellow founder of the Society.

He became warden of the college in 1648 at the early age of 34 after Parliamentary Visitors had unceremoniously ejected the previous incumbent (for being a Royalist) along with 13 other fellows — and the college, founded in 1610, immediately prospered as a result, attracting students from Royalist and Parliamentarian families alike.

His lodgings became the regular meeting place for scientists who later formed the nucleus of the Royal Society; he even encouraged independent, free-thinking individuals who were not members of the university at all — such as Robert Boyle — to join the group.

In 1656 he married Oliver Cromwell’s younger sister, Robina, the widow of Peter French, a Canon of Christ Church, who had died the year before. He thereby gained access to the Government and was given rooms in Whitehall. He also became one of the few people in history to become successively head of a college at Oxford and then at Cambridge. In 1659, shortly before his death, Oliver Cromwell arranged for him to become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

But what must have appeared at the time to be astonishingly good fortune turned out to be less rosy a year later when Charles II was restored. Wilkins was then thrown out of Trinity for being a Parliamentarian! Such was the Snakes and Ladders game of life in those days.

As for John Evelyn, some say that he may have been partly responsible for Charles II’s espousing the cause of science at Oxford. He accompanied the king on his visit to Oxford in 1681 when Charles inspected the Sheldonian Theatre with a view to calling a Parliament there.

During his visit he watched workmen building the Science Museum next door. To this day the museum is decorated with the monogram of two intertwined Cs and the Roman numeral II — for Charles and his wife, Queen Catherine of Braganza.

Incidentally, Evelyn obtained his family fortune through the possession of a monopoly on gunpowder production during he reign of Elizabeth I. And the first English recipe for gunpowder, brought to these shores from China by Arab traders, was published by the 13th-century Oxford friar and scientist Roger Bacon.