San Diego Sarah

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Third Reading

About Wednesday 8 May 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

There were no dentists as such in Pepys' day, but those who undertook the drawing of teeth were members of the Barber-Surgeons' Company.

As this is the first, but far from the last, incident of dental pain that he records, please post your valuable "in general" observations to
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

The "this day" observations still belong here of course.

About Saturday 11 February 1664/65

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... during King Philip's War (1675), the Indians were better armed than the Puritan/Pilgrim militias having a greater percentage of flintlocks over matchlocks (firelocks)"

A new book researched from family archives about King hilip's War:
"Colonist Benjamin Waite, a devoted husband, father, and skilled military scout in King Philip's War, reluctantly obeys orders to guide a brutal attack against a camp of Algonquian Natives.

"After the catastrophic event, Benjamin is burdened with guilt and longs for peace. But the Algonquians, led by the revered sachem Ashpelon, retaliate with vengeance upon Ben's Massachusetts town of Hatfield, capturing over a dozen colonists, including his pregnant wife Martha and their 3 young daughters.

"Hatfield 1677 is a tale of 3 interwoven yet diverging journeys of strength and survival. Benjamin is driven by love and remorse to rescue his family; Martha is forced into captivity and desperately striving to protect her children; and Ashpelon is willing to risk everything to ensure the safety and freedom of his people.

"Based on the lives of the author's ancestors, this riveting and unforgettable novel gives voice to three vastly different experiences in North America during a time before the creation of the Declaration of Independence.

"Then, the land was but a wilderness and a battleground; equality was not yet perceived as self-evident; and liberty and happiness were nothing more than dangerous pursuits.

"Product Details:
Price $17.99
Publisher Acorn Publishing
Publish Date May 21, 2024
Pages 394
Language English
Type Paperback
EAN/UPC 9798885280778"

About Robert Boyle

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Galileo also studied hell:

In Renaissance Italy, there was significant academic interest in the literal dimensions of hell as it was described in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.

When Galileo was 24, Dante scholars were fiercely divided between two calculations made by 2 different Renaissance thinkers. Galileo, already a prominent mathematician, was invited by the Accademia Fiorentina (Florence Academy) to make his own estimation.

He ultimately affirmed one of the previous results, but made a major error when calculating the thickness of hell’s domed roof. He multiplied the width and thickness by the same amount before realizing that buildings don’t scale that way.

Later, Galileo published the square-cube law, which states that as an object increases in size, its volume gets larger than its surface area, meaning that supports need to grow disproportionately thicker than the rest of a structure. According to the law, there wouldn’t be a lot of Dante’s hell left if the roof were as thick as it needed to be.

Extracted fron https://historyfacts.com/famous-f…

About William Lilly

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

It's hard for us 21st century beings to understand how the magical thinking of astrology was so accepted as fact in the 17th century. But the most educated did believe their fate was 'written in the stars':

Galileo Galilei made some major scientific strides in his time, particularly in the field of astronomy. He discovered 4 of Jupiter’s moons and the stars of the Milky Way, and determined that the surface of Earth’s moon isn’t smooth. Most famously, he vehemently believed, as Nicolaus Copernicus proposed before him, that the Earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around — even as the Catholic Church labeled him a heretic for it. Despite his reputation as a skeptic, his cosmic beliefs included a little of what is now considered pseudoscience, too.

He was one of Europe’s most sought-after astrologers in his time, and wrote horoscopes for Italy’s elite. Some of his astrological tools are on display at the Galileo Museum in Florence, Italy

Galileo, a Pisces, practiced judicial astrology, which concerns human circumstances rather than just natural phenomena; clients consulted him for guidance on illness, travel, love, and other major events. He also wrote birth charts, including for himself and his children. Before he was tried by the church for his belief in heliocentrism, he was investigated for telling his clients that the stars governed their fates — although the church didn’t pursue the matter far.

Galileo’s faith in the zodiac may sound surprising, but at the time, it wasn’t unusual for astronomers to practice this kind of cosmic divination. Some patrons would even judge whether a scientist was worthy of their support by their astrology skills.
Other astronomers held in high esteem today, including Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and Copernicus, also studied astrology.

Extracted from https://historyfacts.com/famous-f…

About Thursday 13 August 1663

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

C0ONCLUSION:

A more personal look from Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tho…

He was born at Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, the son and grandson of Anglican clergymen, both named John Tenison; his mother was Mercy Dowsing.
He was educated at Norwich School, went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as a scholar on Archbishop Matthew Parker's foundation. He graduated in 1657, and was chosen fellow in 1659.

For a short time he studied medicine, but in 1659 was privately ordained.

As curate of St. Andrew the Great, Cambridge from 1662, he set an example by his devoted attention to the sufferers from the plague.

In 1667 he was presented to the living of Holywell-cum-Needingworth, Huntingdonshire, by the Earl of Manchester, to whose son he had been tutor, and in 1670 to that of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich.

In 1680 he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and was presented by Charles II to the important London church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Tenison, according to Gilbert Burnet, "endowed schools including Archbishop Tenison's School, Lambeth, founded in 1685 and Archbishop Tenison's School, Croydon, founded in 1714, set up a public library, and kept many curates to assist him in his indefatigable labours".

Being a strenuous opponent of the Church of Rome, and "Whitehall lying within that parish, he stood as in the front of the battle all James II's reign".

He publicly supported the Glorious Revolution, with some private misgivings, especially concerning the ejection of Archbishop William Sancroft and the other "non-juring" bishops. Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon in his diary records some frank remarks made by Tenison on this subject at a dinner party in 1691:
"That there had been irregularities in our settlement; that it was wished that things had been otherwise, but that we were now to make the best of it, and support this government as it was, for fear of a worse."

He preached a funeral sermon for Nell Gwyn in 1687, in which he represented her as truly penitent – a charitable judgment that did not meet with universal approval. The general liberality of Tenison's religious views won him royal favor, and, after being made Bishop of Lincoln in 1691, he was promoted to Archbishop of Canterbury in December 1694.

He was disliked by Queen Anne who thought him too low church.

A strong supporter of the Hanoverian succession, who shocked many by referring to Queen Anne's death as a blessing, he was one of 3 officers of state to whom was entrusted the duty of appointing a regent until the arrival of George, whom he crowned on 20 Oct., 1714.

For the last time at the coronation of an English monarch, the Archbishop asked if the people accepted their new King. The witty Catherine Sedley, former mistress of James II, remarked: "Does the old fool think we will say no?".
More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tho…

About Thursday 13 August 1663

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

PART 2

Tenison’s challenge was to reconcile the Church of England to the post-revolutionary state. Edmund Gibson reckoned Tenison, the son of a royalist and a Williamite appointee in 1694, had mostly succeeded.
Gibson explained, ‘many others have more state politicks but he had the true Christian Policy; great goodness, and Integrity improved by long Experience and a natural Sedateness and Steadiness of Temper; and a general knowledge of men and of things. Had it not pleased God to raise up such an one to steer, in the storm times that we have had (for these last 20 years) the Church in all human probability must have been shipwrecked over and over.’

Like the monarchs he served, Tenison’s worldview was forged in the crucible of the 17th century’s religio-political wars and he had moved into Lambeth Palace determined to effect peace between Church and state. No one doubted his commitment to reforming and revitalizing the Church. He had a well-deserved reputation as a model parish priest in central London parishes like St. Martin-in-the-Fields; he had long supported religious societies like the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the Society for the Promotion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG); an energetic bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of Canterbury, he had worked to improve both clerical quality and Church discipline; and he had written powerfully against both popery and anti-Trinitarianism.

But Archbish Tenison’s sympathies were those of a resolute Whig, He was actively involved in the seven bishops’ resistance to James II’s promulgation of the Declaration of Indulgence in 1688; he worked in 1689 to pass a comprehension bill; he had no truck with non-jurors; he zealously promoted the Hanoverian succession; and he saw the Whigs as the only sure guarantors of a Protestant England.

However, the Church–Whig alliance Archbishop Tenison tried to forge sat poorly with the lower clergy, who were mostly Tory and who did not believe the Protestant Church of England might only be safe when those most committed to the Protestant succession — the Whigs — controlled both Church and state.

Unsurprisingly, even during the spells of Whig supremacy during Queen Anne’s reign, Archbishop Tenison could do little to quell the Tory cries of ‘Church in danger’, or to prevent a crisis like that which attended Henry Sacheverell’s Perils of False Brethren sermon in 1709 and his subsequent trial and acquittal.

Despite Archbishop Tenison’s Whig irenicism, he died in December 1715, having helped to improve Church–Whig relations, but having failed ‘to prevent the church ... from becoming the battlefield of political faction’.

The policies pursued in Church and state after 1689 aimed to prevent a return to revolution. This is hardly registered in the historiography of the Church of England, an institution which played such a great part in the nation’s tumultuous post-Revolution history.

About Thursday 13 August 1663

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Mentions of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison (1636 – 1715) are here, a review of his legacy seems relevant, especially as the Diary years shaped many of his challenges:

Exerpted from: The Church of England, 1714–1783’, in Establishment and Empire: The Development of Anglicanism, 1662–1829,
ed. Jeremy Gregory (Oxford History of Anglicanism, volume 2) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 49–67.
Published 2017

https://www.academia.edu/36765263…

‘My last gave you an account of the Death of our good Lord, and the
circumstances of it; To this I am now to add that the Bishop of Lincoln kissed the King’s hand for the Archbishopric yesterday.’

So Archbishop Tenison’s chaplain, Edmund Gibson, announced Tenison’s death and William Wake’s succession to the see of Canterbury in late December 1715.

From one perspective, Archbishop Tenison’s passing might seem to mark the end of a long, divisive era in the nation’s religious and political history. This chapter argues that it did not; rather, subsequent Church leaders confronted many of the same challenges that had confronted Tenison and other late Stuart churchmen, and they confronted them in Tenisonian ways.

To understand the 18th-century Church of England, then, requires starting with Archbishop Thomas Tenison and the world from which he emerged.

Thomas Tenison served as archbishop of Canterbury under Queen
Anne (r. 1702–14), the last of the Stuarts, the royal family whose members had been usurped not once but twice during the religio-political revolutions of the 17th century.

Queen Anne came to the throne in 1702, hoping to heal the wounds opened up by England’s ‘troubles’. The 17th century had been brutal for the Church of England. The institution had nearly been destroyed in the 1650s, during England’s stretch of ‘unkingship’ and religious disestablishment.

Even after the monarchy’s restoration and the Church of England’s re-establishment in 1660, the memory of those years remained fresh and reminded churchmen what might happen if religious Dissenters got their way.

The Test and Corporation Acts (1661, 1673) disbarred Protestant Dissenters from public office, hoping to prevent a return of the religious and political anarchy of the mid-century.

Yet the Glorious Revolution (1688–9), itself a response to the ‘thoroughgoing project of Catholic modernization’ of James II’s reign, had ushered in a new kind of religious settlement, one which had at its core the Toleration Act (1689), a piece of legislation which allowed the Church to retain its establishment status while at the same time depriving the institution of its functional monopoly on public worship and legally confirming and condoning England’s religious pluralism.

About Tuesday 6 August 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... the Quakers do still continue, and rather grow than lessen."

“Allowed our trayne soldiers their charges when they apprehended some Quakers in our town and conveyed them to prison 13/-“ -- From the Upton Constable’s Account Book 1661

About Monday 6 May 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

Half the entries in the journal, which spans more than a decade, are after the death of Mary in late 1659 and before the birth of John in early 1662.

ODNB identifies the preceding marriage as that between Thomas Rugg and Elizabeth Cox at St. Clement Danes, in the City of Westminster, London, both of Covent Garden.

The will of the widow of Thomas Rugge, Elizabeth Rugge née Cox (d.1695) of St. Giles in the Fields, only mentions her nephew, John Rugge of Bugden in the County of Huntingdon. This was the John Rugge (d.1720) of the Inner Temple, London and Stirtloe, Buckden, Huntingdonshire, gentleman, who married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Robert Wright, Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

The Rugge coat of arms can be seen on the monument of Francis Rugge (1535–1607), Mayor of Norwich at St. Andrew's Church in Norwich.

The Rugge family owned property in Hoveton from at least 1533, when William Rugge, abbot of St. Bennet's, conveyed the manor of Greengate to Robert Rugge, his brother, alderman of Norwich.
The family held property there until at least 1618.

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tho…

Not much for a man of substance who confirms and elaborates on such times of upheaval. I can't even find that ODNB for him.

About Monday 6 May 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Since this is the last of Thomas Rugge's welcome comments, perhaps his bio is called for:

Thomas Rugge (died c. 1670/72) was a diarist and later compiler of 'Mercurius Politicus Redivivus'. The "Diurnall" of Thomas Rugge, preserved in the British Museum, corroborates Pepys in many ways.

Self-description for his diary:
MERCURIUS POLITICUS REDIVIVUS
or, A Collection of the most materiall occurrences and transactions
in Public Affairs since Anno Dni, 1659, until
28 March 1672,
serving as an annuall diurnall for future satisfaction and information,
BY THOMAS RUGGE.

Est natura hominum novitatis avida. — Plinius.

Thomas Rugge's Diurnall is preserved in the British Library. It belonged in 1693 to Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, and was purchased by the British Museum at Heber's sale in February 1836. It was published as The diurnal of Thomas Rugg, 1659-1661 by William Lewis Sachse ed. in 1961.

Rugge was descended from an ancient Norfolk family: his ancestors are described as two Aldermen of Norwich, and William Rugge, Bishop of Norwich.

According to Rugge's Diurnall, in London: "And theire ware also att this time a Turkish drink to bee sould, almost every street, called coffee, and another kind of drink called tee, and also a drink called Chacolate, which was a very harty drink."

Thomas Rugge paid tax for 9 hearths when he lived in Covent Garden, Middlesex in 1666. Before that he lived in King Street 1651–c.1663.

His death seems to have occurred about 1672; in the Diary for 1671 he complains that on account of his declining health, his entries will be but few. Nothing has been traced of his circumstances beyond his living for 14 years in Covent Garden, then a fashionable locality.

He may have been the Thomas Rugge of St. Paul, Covent Garden whose will was probated on 31 March 1670, although this predates those journal entries. That would make him the Thomas Rugge who was buried on 16 March 1669/70 at St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

At St. Paul's, Covent Garden, we find the following parish registry entries:
Elizabeth, baptised 26 Oct. 1653, daughter to Thomas and Elizabeth Rugg, born on 26 Oct., the first entry of the registers of St. Paul's Church, Convent Garden, London.
Ann, baptised 11 Dec. 1654, daughter to Thomas and Elizabeth Rugg, born 11 Dec, 1654, buried 9 May 1657 at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, Anna, daughter of Tho: Rugg
Mary, baptised on 27 June 1659, daughter to Thomas and Eliza: Rugg, born on 26 June 1659, buried 12 Oct. 1659 at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, Mary, daughter of Tho: Rugg
John, baptised 16 April 1662, son of Thomas and Elizabeth Rugg, buried 17 Oct, 1673 at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, John, son of Thomas Rugg
(During the Commonwealth, date of birth had to be registered in the parish registers.)

About Thursday 2 May 1667

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

Wither's 'Furor-poeticus (i.e.) propheticus' (1660) seems dazed by the changing times.

He greeted the restoration with ‘Speculum speculativum, or, A Considering Glass’ (1660), a plea for reconciliation which went to 3 editions.

A reference to Venner's Rising in ‘Fides-Anglicana’ indicates it must have been written after Jan.1661.

George Wither may have then been under surveillance since he was discovered writing 'Vox vulgi', which accused the new parliament of ‘carnal policies’ towards those excluded from the Act of Oblivion.
He was arrested and sent to Newgate in spring 1661, then, owing to illness, moved to the house of a Mr. Northrop, one of Charles II's messengers, in Aug. 1661.

On 14 Aug. 1661 George Wither's trial was ordered by the council,
and on 22 Aug. 1661, he was returned to Newgate;
He remained in Newgate until 24 March 1662, when he was examined before the House of Commons on seditious libel charges, convicted, and sent to the Tower.

On 9 April 1663, Elizabeth Emerson Wither was sent to George Wither ‘to bring from him his Recantation and Submission’.

Despite being denied writing materials, he was able to publish 'An Improvement of Imprisonment' (1661),
Joco-Serio: Strange News, of a Discourse between Two Dead Giants (1661),
The Prisoners Plea (1661-2),
Paralellogrammaton (1662),
A Proclamation … to … Great Brittain (1662),
Verses Intended to the King's Majesty (1662), and
A Declaration of Major George Wither (1662).

Wither was released from the Tower, aged 75, on 27 July 1663.
Undeterred, he continued pamphleteering and published 'Tuba-pacifica' (1664), which warned England against a Dutch war.

A dissident pro-Dutch group led from prison by Col. Robert Lilburne was under investigation in March 1665. One of the books ‘much cried up amongst them’ was a ‘seditious book called “George Withers' New Years Gift”'.

In June 1665 Wither refers to being a prisoner at his house in the Savoy and a ‘private Poem’, books and writings being confiscated (‘An advertisement, Three Private Meditations,' 1665).

On 23 July 1666 a warrant was issued for the arrest of George Wither, Henry Eversden, Sarah Anderston, Elizabeth Goslin, and Margaret Hickes for distributing his 'Sigh for the Pitchers' (1666), a sequel to 'Tuba-pacifica'.

Wither collected his writings from 1662 to 1665 in his 'A Memorandum to London'.

Wither's last work appears to be 'Ecchoes from the Sixth Trumpet' (1666), a collection of extracts from his prophetic poems that was republished posthumously as 'Nil ultra, or, The Last Works of Captain George Wither' (1668)
and 'Fragmenta prophetica, or, The Remains of George Wither' (1669).

George Wither died on 2 May 1667, aged 78, and was buried in the Chapel Royal of the Savoy Hospital in the Strand.

Much more about this prolific author and public figure at
http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/l…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo…

About Thursday 2 May 1667

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

PART 3

Capt. Wither's 'Letters of Advice', published in November 1644, was the first printed response to discussions of the ‘recruiter’ elections and gave directions for the selection of candidates intended to replace those who had joined King Charles in Oxford. He was unsuccessfully standing for a seat in Guildford.

From the mid-1640s Capt. George Wither began to be identified with radicals, in particular with the Levellers.

A passage from 'Vox pacifica' was quoted at the end of a pamphlet put out in September 1645, ‘England's Miserie and Remedie’, which defended John Lilburne. George Wither had been imprisoned at the time as Lilburne and Richard Overton as part of the Presbyterians' attempt to reassert control.

Lilburne admired Wither's 'Vox pacifica;, and in his 'England's Birth-Right Justified' (1645) called on his readers to look to ‘that Gallant man, Major George Withers advice … in his late Book’.

In August 1647 the Presbyterians lost control of parliament when the army marched on London and purged the house of its Presbyterian leaders.
Its actions were justified by Wither in his 'Carmen expostulatorium' (1647).

George Wither was freed on 20 October 1647 and recommended for the position of chief searcher in the customs house at Dover.

Despite being a friend of Cromwell's, Wither's contemplation of Cromwell's death, 'Salt upon Salt' (1659) condemned the change in Cromwell that made him eager to accept the crown and criticized his funeral as an idolatrous show, ‘a very costly Puppet-play’

With the Restoration, Hambledon and the Surrey estates Wither had purchased in 1648 reverted to the bishop of Winchester. And sometime before 1665, he moved to the Savoy, which gave legal sanctuary to debtors.

About Thursday 2 May 1667

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

PART 2

On 8 September 1642, after the outbreak of the first civil war, George Wither received the commission of captain for a Surrey troop of horse, and he served in the parliamentary forces for a year.

On 14 October, 1642 Capt. Wither was appointed commander of Farnham Castle under the direction of Robert Devereaux, 3rd Earl of Essex, Sir Richard Onslow, and Nicholas Stoughton. He later complained that provisions and numbers were inadequate and he received little aid.

When the Royalist army entered Surrey, Capt. Wither received orders from London to abandon Farnham Castle. That night, with the Royalist army only a few miles away, he took his servants and wagons to the castle and rescued ammunition and men.

On the following day Royalist forces, commanded by Sir John Denham, took Farnham Castle and plundered Wither's nearby Wanborough estate, forcing out Elizabeth Wither and their children.

Capt. Wither's troop was ordered to Kingston-on-Thames, where Royalist forces had halted in their march on London, and then on to Turnham Green on 13 November 1642 where he joined a 24,000-man force.

Wither remained in Kent until March 1643, raising money from delinquents and possibly confiscating Royalist property as the king's forces withdrew.

In April 1643 Mary Hunt Wither died and he inherited Bentworth. Capt. Wither may have returned briefly to Bentworth, as in May 1643 he was appointed to a Hampshire committee responsible for raising funds to support the militia.

In August and September 1643 Capt. Wither fought at the siege of Gloucester under Col. John Middleton, one of Robert Devereaux, 3rd Earl of Essex's officers.

Capt. Wither gave his account of his war experiences in 'Campo-musae', dedicated to the Earl of Essex. This was published in December 1643 and went into 3 English editions and one Scottish.

In October 1643 Wither put out his own version of the newspaper Mercurius Rusticus, its title borrowed from a royalist newspaper, which drew on his war experience to offer advice on the defense of Hampshire, Surrey, and Kent.

On 9 July, 1644 Capt. Wither was made a Surrey justice of the peace, he published anonymously 'The Speech without Door'. He claimed this speech was delivered to a public meeting outside parliament and once more offered advice on war policy and defended the sequestration of Royalists' estates as a means of promoting the war effort and effecting social change in the countryside.

About Thursday 2 May 1667

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Unlamented by Pepys, today died George Withers, a poet and Parliamentarian. He had spent most of the 1660s in prison for writing an unpublished poem critical of the Cavalier Parliament.

George Wither (1588–1667) was born in June 1588 at Bentworth, near Alton, Hampshire, the eldest of 10 children of George Wither (1563–1629) of Bentworth and his wife, Mary Hunt (d. 1643), of nearby Theddon (or Fidding) Grange.

His long life spanned one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of England, during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, King James I and VI, King Charles, the Civil Wars, the Parliamentary period and the Restoration period of Charles II.

Between the ages of 15 and 17 George Wither studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. Despite his neighbors' advice that his father put him to some mechanic trade, he was sent to one of the Inns of Chancery, eventually obtaining an introduction at Court.

George Wither came into conflict with the Stationers' Company in the 1620s and 1630s over 2 main issues: his attempts to publish his psalms, and his royal patent of 1623. The monopoly on the English psalter was held by senior members of the company. Wither unsuccessfully tried to get his psalms published in 1625 in Cambridge as a way of circumventing this monopoly, and they were eventually published in the Netherlands.

In 1625, the plague struck London and provided the occasion for George Wither's ‘Historie of the pestilence’ -- a copy of which is found in Pepys' Library, but not mentioned in the Diary.

Late in 1629 there was an upturn in George Wither's fortunes when he inherited -- along with his mother -- his father's estate at Bentworth.

When George Wither was 42 he married Elizabeth Emerson of South Lambert in the early 1630s. They had 6 children but only 2, Robert, born in 1635, and Elizabeth, survived infancy. According to Aubrey, Elizabeth Emerson Wither was ‘a great wit, and would write in verse too’.

John Taylor, the Water Poet, in his vitriolic attack on George Wither, charged him with cheating Dr. Howson, bishop of Durham, out of £500 when he was his steward, possibly in the early 1630s. Wither does not refer to Dr. Howson or to time spent in Durham in any of his writings.

George Wither probably traveled in the Low Countries in the early 1630s. The dedication to 'The Psalmes of David', published in the Netherlands in 1632, speaks of an audience with the exiled Elizabeth of Bohemia/the Winter Queen, who may have given him at this time the presents of jewels and plate that he was later forced to sell.

About Sunday 7 February 1668/69

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"One wonders why on earth he bothered ..."

My theory is that writing the Diary had become increasingly burdensome, and Pepys was subconsciously inventing reasons to stop writing it. He might even have been bored by it. To amuse himself, in this case he even made the obscure even more obscure.

About Friday 3 May 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The Rev. Ralph tells us today that not everyone appreciated the grandure of Charles II's coronation (see the original for the layout which leaves me puzzled, and doesn't copy accurately here):

Diary of Ralph Josselin (Private Collection)
3.5.1661 (Friday 3 May 1661)
document 70013055

May. 3. rode into London and saw the triumphal arches. stately. vanity, no rich cost in the front of one besides Heathenism. there is this troubled me,

a statue of K. James -- in the middle above -- of K. Charles
prominent, a death
Divo Jacobo -- statue of Charles -- Divo Carolo
Imperium sine fine dedi.

divers sad particulars on the face of the arch. the High motto being En quodiscordia cives. etc. on the side of Charles. there was an effigy of stakes and faggots to burn people of the Heads of the regicides on poles. and warlike Instruments broken.

I had sad reflections on the vain flattery, the lord prevent villainous wickedness, but if surely it will not be sine fine.

reported the Portugal princess will become protestant and go to Chapel with the King: a Spaniard protestant.

@@@

"a Spaniard protestant." -- Portugal had been free of Spanish rule for about 30 years; I guess he was being ironic?

About Barbara Palmer (Countess of Castlemaine)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

A new biography by Andrea Zuvich will be published in the fall of 2024 -- you can preorder at
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1526769…

"Barbara Villiers was a woman so beautiful, so magnetic and so sexually attractive that she captured the hearts of many in Stuart-era Britain. Her beauty is legendary: she became the muse of artists such as Peter Lely, the inspiration of writers such as John Dryden and the lover of John Churchill, the future great military leader whom we also know as the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Her greatest amorous conquest was Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with whom she had a tempestuous and passionate relationship for the better part of a decade.

"But this loveliest of Stuart-era ladies had a dark side. She hurt and humiliated her husband, Roger Palmer, for decades with her unashamedly adulterous lifestyle, she plotted the ruin of her enemies, constantly gambled away vast sums of money, is remembered for the destruction of the Tudor-era Nonsuch Palace, and was known to unleash terrible rages when crossed. Crassly lampooned by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and subjected to verbal and written assaults, she was physically abused by a later, violent spouse.

"Barbara lived through some of the most turbulent times in British history: civil war, the Great Plague of London, which saw the deaths of around 100,000 people, the Great Fire of London, which destroyed much of the medieval city, and foreign conflicts such as the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Williamite wars, and the War of the Spanish Succession.

"An impoverished aristocrat who rose to become a wealthy countess and then a duchess, taking her lovers from all walks of life, Barbara laughed at the morals of her time and used her natural talents and her ruthless determination to the material benefit of herself and her numerous offspring.

"In great stately homes and castles such as Hampton Court Palace, her portraits are widely seen and appreciated today. She had an insatiable appetite for life, love, riches, amusement, and power. She was simply ‘ravenous’ …"