This carriage was censured by many.' After the Restoration Evelyn's life as a courtier was practically at an end, as he never quite approved the enforced abdication of King James.
So henceforth he spent his time, without further attendance at Court or seeking after office or appointment, in study, literary work, and retirement.

He did not like the new regime, with its 'Court offices distributed amongst Parliament men....

Things far from settled as was expected, by reason of the slothfull, sickly temper of the new King, and the Parliament's unmindfullness of Ireland, which is likely to prove a sad omission.' He even seems to have regretted that his son was in March 1692 made 'one of the Commissioners of the Revenue and Treasury of Ireland, to which employment he had a mind far from my wishes.' This son contracted serious illness in Ireland, and died 'after a tedious languishing sickness' early in 1699, aged 44 years, leaving one son, then a student at Oxford.
Some time before this his elder brother, George, having lost his last son and heir, had settled the Wotton estate upon John Evelyn.

In May 1694, yielding to the request to make Wotton his home, he went to Wotton, leaving Sayes Court in charge of his daughter Susanna and her husband William Draper, whose marriage had been celebrated about a year previously.

In 1696 it was let for three years to Admiral Benbow, who sublet it in 1698 to Peter the Great, then visiting the Deptford Dockyards for three months as his Majesty's guest.