Monday 7 May 1660

This morning Captain Cuttance sent me 12 bottles of Margate ale. Three of them I drank presently with some friends in the Coach. My Lord went this morning about the flag-ships in a boat, to see what alterations there must be, as to the arms and flags. He did give me order also to write for silk flags and scarlett waistcloathes. For a rich barge; for a noise of trumpets,1 and a set of fidlers.

Very great deal of company come today, among others Mr. Bellasses, Sir Thomas Lenthropp, Sir Henry Chichley, Colonel Philip Honiwood, and Captain Titus, the last of whom my Lord showed all our cabins, and I suppose he is to take notice what room there will be for the King’s entertainment.

Here were also all the Jurates of the town of Dover come to give my Lord a visit, and after dinner all went away.

I could not but observe that the Vice-Admiral after dinner came into the great cabin below, where the Jurates and I and the commanders for want of room dined, and there told us we must drink a health to the King, and himself called for a bottle of wine, and begun his and the Duke of York’s. In the afternoon I lost 5s. at ninepins.

After supper musique, and to bed. Having also among us at the Coach table wrote a letter to the French ambassador, in French, about the release of a ship we had taken.

After I was in bed Mr. Sheply and W. Howe came and sat in my cabin, where I gave them three bottles of Margate ale, and sat laughing and very merry, till almost one o’clock in the morning, and so good night.

38 Annotations

First Reading

Alan Bedford  •  Link

"Jurate" - one who has taken an oath. In English usage, an alderman. Makes sense in this case. The politicians come, stay for dinner, then leave.

Paul Brewster  •  Link

Sir Thomas Lenthropp
Wheatley Footnote: Sir Thomas Leventhorpe, Bart., married Mary, daughter of Sir Capell Bedell, Bart. Died 1671.

Paul Brewster  •  Link

More on Jurates of the town of Dover
Wheatley: "The jurats of the Cinque Ports answered to the aldermen of other towns."

Per the OED:
Jurat ... 2. A municipal officer (esp. of the Cinque Ports) holding a position similar to that of an alderman.

Paul Brewster  •  Link

... among others Mr. Bellasses, Sir Thomas Lenthropp, Sir Henry Chichley, Colonel Philip Honiwood, and Captain Titus
L&M footnotes this list: All were active royalists. Leventhorpe (Lenthropp) and Titus had recently been involved in Booth's rising.

vincent  •  Link

"Jurates" thanks Alan and Paul: jury also from the same latin jurare (juratum: has been sworn) Most of the law is French-Latin based. English was first used in English courts in 1642.

PHE  •  Link

The passage of time
The interesting aspect of this webpage is that we get a real feel for how long Pepys was on the ship and the sense that it is quite tedious. On reading the diary in book form, you would be more inclinded to skim through these pages to pick up just the most interesting bits and get onto more eventful times.

mw  •  Link

PHE a lovely point. Tomorrow and any future arrives as you wish with a book, not so here. I can think of no other situation where I can experience time past in its real equivalent. A fine and important observation. Indeed perhaps it is just that point that makes this diary presentation so real. As opposed to so much of the taught history we commonly experience.
Thanks for that one.

Christo  •  Link

Vincent has clearly never heard of the English Common Law, which predates the Norman Conquest and remains the bedrock of the legal system in both England & Wales and our former colonies. See: http://www.naturenet.net/law/comm…

j a gioia  •  Link

After I was in bed Mr. Sheply and W. Howe came and sat in my cabin ... and sat laughing and very merry, till almost one o’clock in the morning

it's been noted here before, still i find it remarkable how much business/socializing at the time was done while one party was abed. it certainly indicates an overall lack of a modern sense of privacy and one is left wondering how and why the custom changed.

Nix  •  Link

While Christo is correct that much of the SUBSTANTIVE law of English-speaking countries derives from Anglo-Saxon times, Vincent is also right -- courts were conducted, and records kept, in "Law French" for half a milennium after the Conquest. This doesn't mean that they relied on Justinian, but it does mean that much of the language of the law is French- (and hence Latin-) derived. The historic need to be understood in both languages is the reason we have so many duplicative phrases in law (e.g., "cease and desist"). Additionally, some areas of the law (such as marriage and adoption) were controlled by the church rather than the crown, and therefore do have their roots in Rome.

Nix  •  Link

More on Law French --

The application of the French, Latin-derived title "jurate" to these officials, rather than the Anglo-Saxon "alderman", illustrates that what England had was really a mix of Norman and pre-Norman legal rules and institutions. They are from the area closest, physically and presumably culturally, to France -- hence "Cinque Ports". My dictionary indicates that "jurat" is still the term used for certain municipal officers in the Channel Islands. It is also worth noting that, while we think of the jury as the quintessential Anglo-Saxon legal institution, the word itself originates from the Latin "jurare", to swear, and the concept of trial by jury was introduced by the Normans.

vincent  •  Link

"never heard of the English Common Law" nay I 'eard of it, lo and behold did suffer it. It may be common (as dirt) or like common land (taken away by common law) or common sense (sometimes available). It did not mean me and my kind knew what it said(n'estpas). I not be Juras Prudent. I am no longer in your jurisdiction or under your judicial control. Any way I jury rigged up this answer ;

language hat  •  Link

duplicative phrases:
I suspect these come more from the desire of lawyers to cover every conceivable circumstance and interpretation. In any case, your example doesn't work, because "cease" and "desist" are both from French.

Emilio  •  Link

'cease' and 'desist' are both from French
I had noticed that, too. If they had meant to balance the phrase for Middle English and French speakers, it would have been something more like "stop and cease."
I do wonder, though - first recorded usage of of 'cease' was about a couple hundred years earlier than that of 'desist,' and 'cease' is still the more common word. 'Cease' would have likely been the word more familiar to the average person, so I wonder if such duplications may have been meant to cover a class rather than a language divide.

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

Maybe they're not duplicative?

Perhaps the reason "cease and desist" are used together is because they can be interpreted as telling someone to "stop, and continue to stop" an action?

Nigel Pond  •  Link

Re: Duplicative Words

I think Todd has hit the nail on the head: "cease" and "desist" do not mean exactly the same thing. Used together they mean "stop doing it and don't do it in the future". Then of course there is the old chestnut to fall back on -- that lawyers were paid by the word so it was in their best interest to use as many words as possible.

On a side note, as a barrister and some time Classics scholar, it pains me to see the current Lord Chancellor removing Latin expressions from legal practice. They had persisted for so long simply because they encapsulated in a few words concepts that in English require many more words to define.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

vk  •  Link

I'm sorry, but I do not see this distinction between 'cease' and 'desist'. 'Continue to stop' does not appear to make semantic sense.

maureen  •  Link

Imagine saying the equivalent to a stroppy three year old! First, you are to stop doing that. Second, you are not to start again as soon as my back is turned.

Second Reading

Bill  •  Link

"a noise of trumpets" What a pleasant phrase that is.

Francis. Why, then, cover and set them down; and see if thou
find out Sneak's noise; Mistress Tearsheet would fain hear
music.
---Henry IV, part 2, ii, 4

I hear him coming, and a whole noise of Fidlers at his Heels.
---The Maiden Queen, John Dryden, 1667

(The Maiden Queen was noteworthy as a vehicle for Nell Gwyn, who played the heroine Florimel. Pepys raved about her performance in his Diary — "so great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before...." He returned to see the play eight more times. It was also a special favorite of the King, who reportedly called it "his play."
--Wikipedia, 2013)

Dick Wilson  •  Link

Would my brothers at the bar ever employ Latin/French for purposes of obfuscation? Why, res ipsa loquitur! And I have heard that in ancient Rome, lawyers would confuse things by lapsing into Greek.

Gillian Bagwell  •  Link

Sorry, Bill - it wasn't "The Maiden Queen" but "Secret Love" in which Nell played Florimel. It was by Dryden - he wrote the part just for her, and the play established her and her lover and mentor Charles Hart as the William Powell and Myrna Loy of the 1660s, playing in a series of "gay couple" comedies (the old kind of gay couple!).

Nell's career on and off stage is a big part of my novel about her, "The Darling Strumpet."

john  •  Link

As to the legal (ab)use of language and its historical journey, I heartily recommend "Party of the First Part: The Curious World of Legalese" by Adam Freedman. Though an American author, he traces its roots back to England.

Gillian Bagwell  •  Link

Ah, I should have remembered that, Bill! I was thinking of "The Indian Queen."

Neil Ferguson  •  Link

A mere 12 yrs after it was written ..but let me express my appreciation of the humour of Vincent's riposte re Common Law

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"He did give me order also to write for silk flags and scarlett waistcloathes."

L&M: To decorate the ship bringing home the King. The Council of Sate's instructions to this effect are in Sandwich MSS, App., ff. 208, 213, 222. The Admiralty Commissioners had in fact ordered silk flags for the Naseby on this day; the waistcloths were ordered on the 11th: CSPD 1659-60, pp.431-2, 437.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Very great deal of company come today, among others Mr. Bellasses, Sir Thomas Lenthropp, Sir Henry Chichley, Colonel Philip Honiwood, and Captain Titus"

L&M: All were active royalists. Leventhorpe ('Lenthropp') and Titus had recently been involved in Booth's rising. Titus was a Groom of the Bedchamber to the King.

Concerning Sir George Booth's recent personal history: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Meanwhile, back at Whitehall:

After Oliver Cromwell's death, Katharine "Kate" Boyle Jones, Lady Ranelagh returned from Ireland to her house in the Mall. Almost her neighbor, John Milton was living in his garden-house in Petty France. He was still in correspondence with her son, Dick Jones, and his tutor Henry Oldenburg in Paris; Milton was still Latin Secretary to the Council, with Andrew Marvell as his assistant.

The uneasy dawn of the New Year 1660 found him, despondent but undaunted, still fighting hard, by tract-warfare, for a doomed Republic.

John Milton the Pamphleteer and John Lambert the General are remembered together as the last two opponents of the Restoration.

In March, 1660 after John Milton's printed exhortations to the Council and to Gen. George Monck, the blind Latin secretary was discharged from his office, and an order was issued for the arrest of his publisher.

On May 7, 1660 — the day before Charles II was proclaimed in London — John Milton disappeared from his garden-house in Petty France.

Nobody knows what was done about his 3 daughters aged 14, 13 and 8 years old, or whose friendly hand guided the blind man's steps into his hiding-place. "In the house of a friend in Bartholomew Close" — a narrow passage, entered from West Smithfield under an archway that was old, even in Milton's day — Milton lay concealed for more than 3 months.
1 Part of the Church of the Old Priory of St. Bartholomew.

From: Robert Boyle, a biography, by Flora Masson
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu…

Dave Bonta  •  Link

Here's a great blog post about Margate ale: https://thingsturnedup.uk/2014/04…
A snippet:

What was it like, Margate or Northdown ale, which were the same thing? Potent, evidently. The diarist John Evelyn didn’t admit to actually drinking it, but noted in his diary on 19 May 1672: ‘Went to Margate … This town much consists of brewers of a certain heady ale, and they deal much in malt, etc.’ Later, Margate’s early 18th-century historian John Lewis, curate at St John in Thanet, gives a further clue:

"About 40 Years ago one — Prince of this place drove a great Trade here in brewing a particular Sort of Ale, which from its being first brewed at a place called North-down in this Parish went by the name of North-down Ale, and afterwards was called Mergate Ale. But whether its owing to the Art of brewing this liquor the dying with Inventor of it, or the humour of the Gentry and People altering to the liking the Pale North Country Ale better, the present brewers vend little or none of what they call by the name of Mergate-Ale, which is a great disadvantage to their Trade."

The brewer was probably John Prince who died in 1687, and Lewis thinks his ale was relatively dark. But Northdown ale was famous before Prince’s time, and there was certainly a malting operation up on the cliff above Margate by 1615 [...]

Phil C.  •  Link

So interesting to be reading these entries at the time of King Charles III's coronation!

Stephane Chenard  •  Link

For our continued archivall pleasure the State Papers provide the "Order in the Admiralty Committee", indeed dated May 7, "on an order of the Council of State of 5 May", to send "with all speed to Gen. Montague" a full collection of "such standards (...) as were in use before 1648 (...) and such other silk flags as may complete a suit for the Naseby", along with an army of painters and carvers to make it fit for a king.

We expect the Diary to be full of this shortly, what with all the noise and interesting crafts for Sam to observe and get in the way of, but wait: We're not talking of a few ribbons here, nor of pulling moldy old flags from storage, for attached to the Order, is a "Note of 24 silk pendants of from 12 to 30 yards each, that are to be made by Mr. Young". 30 yards of silk! 27 meters, if the yard of 1660 is (as it seems) already the same as that of later ages.

Leaving aside the phantasticall cost of it ('tho we note that, also today, the same Council of State begs the same Admiralty to advise "how the charge [the cost, of the Navy] may be lessened") - and whether poor Mr. Young will ever be paid - where amid the tangle of ropes, shrouds and guy-wires are we going to hang all this delicate fluttering silk?

Paintings of the Naseby (soon to be the Royal Charles), such as the beautiful Dutch (ahem) one on the ship's Wikipedia page, shows how cramped it is, about 13 by 40 meters times two decks for Pepys, his bottles and the rest, and imply the mainmast itself is about 30 meters high. We find only one drawing (at https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections…) of the ship as it will be on the Big Day, adorned with what looks like about 19 silk pendants. Another image, of the future Sovereign of the Seas (at https://www.worldhistory.org/imag…) confirms us in the art of hanging those streamers.

On the Royal Charles they look to have been cut to about 10 yards long - more work to expedite, so "all speed" indeed, by your leave. Let's still hope the wind blows gently and in the right direction.

Mary K  •  Link

I love that letter that our hero wrote to the French ambassador "in French." Clearly an accomplishment thought to be worth mentioning.

MartinVT  •  Link

To revisit the topic of legal doublets explored in the previous readings, here's a nice essay on how this practice may have evolved: https://writingcooperative.com/co… It states that originally, the doublets consisted of English and French-derived words to cover both bases (like give and grant), but eventually just became something lawyers liked to do, regardless of where the words came from (like cease and desist).

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

No one answered j a gioia's question prompted by "After I was in bed Mr. Sheply and W. Howe came and sat in my cabin ... and sat laughing and very merry, till almost one o’clock in the morning.

"it's been noted here before, still i find it remarkable how much business/socializing at the time was done while one party was abed. it certainly indicates an overall lack of a modern sense of privacy and one is left wondering how and why the custom changed."

Many Tudor and Stuart houses had connecting rooms upstairs and down with no passages, so you walked through one room to get to another.
It was the Georgians who wanted passageways, and to make their servants invisible. Not so common to find that in the UK in old houses now, because walls have been altered to create private spaces.

And j a g assumes a level of privilege, then and now. I recall that it's estimated that in Stuart times about 1/4 of the population slept under hedgerows -- they were homeless. I trust it's not that bad these days, but it's still way too high.

In Inns you paid extra not to have strangers share your room. Poor families all slept in the same bed, for warmth amongst other things. There was a trundle bed under Pepys' bed for his boy, mentioned occasionally.

But j a g's talking about entertaining guests while in bed. Again, wealthy men still do it when it's convenient. Women were and are chaperoned, by butlers and ladies-in-waiting, even in Pepys' day.

Charles II is about to introduce a French court custom: getting dressed and undressed in public. You paid a lot extra to get into that room!

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... during May 1660 the Naseby was anchored in The Downs off Deal, where her laurel-crowned figurehead of Oliver Cromwell was removed before sailing to the Dutch Republic at the head of the fleet sent to bring Charles II back to England, captained by Sir Edward Montagu and still under her Parliamentary name.[2]

2 Parliamentary Intelligencer, April 30 to May 7, 1660, in Random Edition
References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS…

Off with his head!!!???

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

More about John Milton's house in Petty France.

Taken from:
Old and New London: Volume 4.
Originally published by Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London, 1878.

Westminster: Tothill Fields and neighbourhood
Pages 14-26
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…

The house No. 19, York Street occupies the site of the residence of John Milton, which was one of the garden-houses for which the author of "Paradise Lost" appears to have had a preference.
Part of the grounds have been walled up, and appropriated to the house formerly inhabited by Jeremy Bentham.
The cotton willow-tree planted by the great poet was in a flourishing condition a few years back, although the trunk showed great signs of decay; it has now entirely disappeared, and in the place of the garden workshops and other buildings have sprung up.
The present frontage of the house answers to No. 19 in this street, but it is evident that the original front was that facing the Park. On this side Jeremy Bentham placed a small tablet, with the following inscription: "Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets."

In the old wall which bounded the garden on the Park side, opposite the house, were the indications of a door, long built up, which was probably used by Milton in passing between his house and Whitehall during his intercourse with Cromwell in the capacity of Latin secretary.
In the house itself the arrangement of the windows has been entirely changed. It is probable that they formerly extended along the whole front, with sliding frames or lattices, divided by paneled spaces.
The original paneling remains in the large room on the first floor.
The upper rooms are small, and the staircase, which has not been altered, is steep and narrow.
The ground-floor seems to have been comprised in one large room, as the original fireplace was evidently situated about the centre of the wall on the west side. This was probably the family room, or compromise between kitchen and parlor, so common to the economy of houses of respectable pretensions in the olden time.

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