“Another, Jerome Allen, a century and a half later, an intimate of the Portuguese nobility and himself half Portuguese, became pen-maker to the court and a favourite of the king and queen, brilliantly conducted theological disputations before the court, and designed a balloon which (unlike some Portuguese balloons) really went up: it had for passenger an immense baboon in a sailor suit. The baboon, not liking the trip, jumped into the Tagus and was drowned, but, as he was a baboon of malevolent disposition, no one minded, and the episode added prestige to the college.”

(Rose Macaulay, They Went to Portugal Too, pp. 85–86.)