And diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn wrote of the spectacle they witnessed when King Charles II took part in a pageant in 1660, a year after the restoration of the monarchy.

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Either way, the catastrophe came in the middle of the writing of Vile Bodies, when the socially active She-Evelyn confessed that she had fallen in love with another man, John Heygate.

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Ms. EVELYN ZEBRO: I'd like him to, maybe if anything, without being an attack dog like John McCain, maybe be a little bit more aggressive.

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