John Evelyn proposes an English Academy (20-6-1665)

Well actually, a number of members of the Royal Society had formed a committee to discuss "the improvement of the English tongue". The Académie Française already existed (1635), and was an obvious model to consider. Evelyn was part of the group, but couldn't attend their Tuesday afternoon meetings; so he wrote up his ideas in a letter to the chairman, bearing this date.
He thought that some body ought to lay down rules for grammar, improve the spelling system, give guidance on pronunciation, and oversee the development of the vocabulary. It all sounds a little like 20th-century "language planning" proposals. At any rate, it came to nothing in Evelyn's lifetime. We saw Swift making a similar proposal half a century later (see 22 February). But still no English Academy.
Evelyn is primarily remembered as a diarist. He was roughly a contemporary of Pepys (also lived through the Plague and the Fire), but kept at it for longer (1640-1706, though not every day).