Thursday 8 August 1667

Up, and all the morning at the office, where busy, and at noon home to dinner, where Creed dined with us, who tells me that Sir Henry Bellasses is dead of the duell he fought about ten days ago, with Tom Porter; and it is pretty to see how the world talk of them as a couple of fools, that killed one another out of love. After dinner to the office a while, and then with my wife to the Temple, where I light and sent her to her tailor’s. I to my bookseller’s; where, by and by, I met Mr. Evelyn, and talked of several things, but particularly of the times: and he tells me that wise men do prepare to remove abroad what they have, for that we must be ruined, our case being past relief, the kingdom so much in debt, and the King minding nothing but his lust, going two days a-week to see my Lady Castlemayne at Sir D. Harvy’s. He gone, I met with Mr. Moore, who tells me that my Lord Hinchingbroke is now with his mistress, but not that he is married, as W. Howe come and told us the other day. So by coach to White Hall, and there staid a little, thinking to see Sir G. Carteret, but missed him, and so by coach took up my wife, and so home, and as far as Bow, where we staid and drank, and there, passing by Mr. Lowther and his lady, they stopped and we talked a little with them, they being in their gilt coach, and so parted; and presently come to us Mr. Andrews, whom I had not seen a good while, who, as other merchants do, do all give over any hopes of things doing well, and so he spends his time here most, playing at bowles. After dining together at the coach-side, we with great pleasure home, and so to the office, where I despatched my business, and home to supper, and to bed.

25 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

John Evelyn's Diary

8th August, 1667. Visited Mr. Oldenburg, a close prisoner in the Tower, being suspected of writing intelligence. I had an order from Lord Arlington, Secretary of State, which caused me to be admitted. This gentleman was secretary to our Society, and I am confident will prove an innocent person.

http://bit.ly/cOXQbW

Terry Foreman  •  Link

SPOILER

"After the Restoration [ Henry Oldenburg ] became an early member (original fellow) of the Royal Society (founded in 1660), and served as its first secretary along with John Wilkins, maintaining an extensive network of scientific contacts through Europe. He also became the founding editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Oldenburg began the practice of sending submitted manuscripts to experts who could judge their quality before publication. This was the beginning of both the modern scientific journal and the practice of peer review.[5] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society continues today and is the longest running scientific journal in the world.

"He was briefly imprisoned as a suspected spy, in 1667, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henr…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Today's entries are particularly illustrative of the contrast and asymmetry of the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn and the difference in their social class.

On the 15th a report on Evelyn's "account" will dramatize this. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...who tells me that Sir Henry Bellasses is dead of the duell he fought about ten days ago, with Tom Porter; and it is pretty to see how the world talk of them as a couple of fools..."

"I like not such grinning honor..." Falstaff, Henry IV Part I.

Larry Bunce  •  Link

...and he tells me that wise men do prepare to remove abroad what they have, for that we must be ruined, our case being past relief, the kingdom so much in debt...
I have seen websites with this very assessment of the current world situation. Maybe this time it will really happen that way.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...come to us Mr. Andrews, whom I had not seen a good while, who, as other merchants do, do all give over any hopes of things doing well, and so he spends his time here most, playing at bowles."

"Aren't you even going to try for it, Mr. Andrews?"
-"A Night to Remember"

JWB  •  Link

Oldenburg on his suspect correspondence: "...this expressed from me some words of complaint of neglect & security on our side..."

See: Henry Oldenburg: shaping the Royal Society By Marie Boas Hall, p117

http://books.google.com/books?id=…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Oldenburg on his suspect correspondence: “…this expressed from me some words of complaint of neglect & security on our side…”"

JWB, thanks for the read of poor Oldenburg, whose crime had been to say abroad what was commonly said everywhere in London -- as Pepys has attested.

nix  •  Link

I think there have been some previous instances in which Samuel mentions some interaction with Evelyn, and I vaguely recall one or two quotations from Evelyn mentioning Samuel -- but I don't think in any of them we had both of their versions of the same encounter. Have there been any?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Evelyn will first mention Pepys in his diary in 1669, but corresponded with Pepys on business as Commissioner for the Sick and Wounded since 1665, and opined in one letter they should know each other better.

For details see *Particular friends: the correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn* By Guy De la Bédoyère, p. 11
http://bit.ly/d9hLPY

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Creed...tells me that Sir Henry Bellasses is dead of the duell he fought about ten days ago, with Tom Porter"

Belasyse died on the 11th: Pepys recorded an account of the quarrel the day after it occurred: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… (L&M note)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"He gone, I met with Mr. Moore, who tells me that my Lord Hinchingbroke is now with his mistress, but not that he is married, as W. Howe come and told us the other day."

Hinchingbrooke and Anne Boyle marry in January, 1667/68. My guess is that they were now living in the same household so they got to know each other before being married. Her date of birth is not known, but I guess she was in her early 20's, which I understand to be a bit old for these arrangements???

Her father, the 2nd Earl of Cork, had recently been elevated to being the 1st Earl of Burlington. He buys Burlington House (next to Clarendon House) around this time, so maybe Anne and Edward were helping him set up house, as it was a convenient address for Hinchingbrooke to attend the House of Commons?

Ah ... the Great Fire has created a housing crisis. That would be a good reason for unusual arrangements.

Lots of unknowns here; but don't misunderstand Pepys' comment. They were chaperoned.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Mr. Lowther and his lady, they stopped and we talked a little with them, they being in their gilt coach, ..."

Pepys playing the spurned lover ... Pegg, the one who got away.

No matter how much gilt they painted on their coach, the box on wheels had no springs. I hope the seats were well padded.

Mary K  •  Link

No springs at all?

In 1625 one Edward Knapp was granted a patent "for hanging the bodies of coaches by springs of steel." Who knows how this coach was suspended, leather straps or steel springs?

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

I suspect we don't have a definitive answer to your question, Mary K.

The most authoritative blog I know of is British History Online, and their history of coach building page leaves it an open question. As Terry points out, the Royal Society was interested in improving them as soon as possible, meaning they were very uncomfortable, and probably destroyed when they wore out.

In other places I've seen it stated that things didn't improve measurable until Boyle's mathematics on elasticity were applied.

https://www.british-history.ac.uk…

Louise Hudson  •  Link

Larry Bunce on 9 August 2010

Pepys: ...and he tells me that wise men do prepare to remove abroad what they have, for that we must be ruined, our case being past relief, the kingdom so much in debt...

"I have seen websites with this very assessment of the current world situation. Maybe this time it will really happen that way."

Now, 20 years after Larry Bunce's comment and 563 years after Pepys' we've got similar assessments of the world--and to make things even worse, in 2020 we are in the midst of a worldwide plague.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Louise Hudson  •  Link

Correction: It's only 10 years since Larry Bunce's comment.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Coach springs ... maybe this is what I was remembering, as I reviewed Robert Hooke's story this week, and he formulated elasticity, not Robert Boyle:

"Robert Hooke is one of the most neglected natural philosophers of all time. The inventor of, amongst other things, the iris diaphragm in cameras, the universal joint used in motor vehicles, the balance wheel in a watch."
http://inventors.about.com/librar…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Or maybe it was this:

"Hooke's Law would eventually become the science behind coil springs. He died in 1703, never having married or had children.

"Automobile suspension systems, playground toys, furniture, and even retractable ballpoint pens employ springs these days. Most have an easily predicted behavior when force is applied. But someone had to take Hooke’s philosophy and put it to use before all these useful tools could be developed.

"R. Tradwell received the first patent for a coil spring in 1763 in Great Britain. Leaf springs were all the rage at the time, but they required significant maintenance, including regular oiling. The coil spring was much more efficient and less squeaky.

"It would be almost another hundred years before the first coil spring made of steel found its way into furniture: It was used in an armchair in 1857."

https://www.thoughtco.com/spring-…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Pepys doesn’t mention this, but Chancellor Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon’s wife, Francis, died today.

Wikipedia says, ‘Her husband in his memoirs wrote of his wife in somewhat guarded terms, but their surviving letters suggest that it was a close and affectionate marriage, strong enough to survive a four-year separation during the English Civil War. His unusually intimate friendship with Anne Villiers, Countess of Morton (a cousin of his first wife, Anne Ayliffe), never seems to have posed a threat to the happiness of his second marriage, and in any case this friendship ended in a bitter quarrel some time before Lady Morton's death in 1654.
‘Frances' death after a short illness was undoubtedly a great blow to her husband, at a time when he was fighting desperately to stave off the threat of impeachment. In his will of 1666, he refers to Frances as "my dearly beloved wife who hath accompanied and assisted me in all my distress with greater resignation and courage and in all respects deserved much more from me than I can repay to her."
‘Another tribute to her character came from the diplomat Henry Coventry, who was then engaged in the peace negotiations at Breda, and wrote that the news of Frances' serious illness made him "very unfit for the business". On hearing of her death he wrote to Clarendon, "I do from the bottom of my heart condole with you."’

What lousy timing. And for Anne Hyde as well, who had just lost two sons.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

john  •  Link

Carriage suspension is fascinating (maybe because I have suffered riding in a few wagons with no suspension). I have no good reference as to when leaf or coil springs were first used but according to Boyer, "Mediaeval Suspended Carriages" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2850…) the first suspended carriages were suspended by chains and appeared in the 14th century.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

At some date between 9 - 26 August, 1667 Lady Castlemaine returns to her apartments over the Holbein Gate, thus ratifying her peace with Charles II soon after the signing of the Treaty of Breda, which brought peace to England, France and Holland.

My Lady Castlemaine, Being a Life of Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine,
afterwards Duchess of Cleveland -- By Philip IV Sergeant, B.J.,
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO, PATERNOSTER R0W 1912
page 149
https://archive.org/stream/mylady…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Sir Henry Belasyse of Worlaby MP ‘ran a great hazard’ by concealing George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham when his arrest for treasonable practices was ordered in February 1667; but the Duke became groundlessly jealous of an intrigue between Belasyse and his mistress, Anna Maria Brudenell Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, and made him [BELASYSE] ‘ill returns’ when he [BUCKINGHAM] was restored to favor.

Belasyse was mortally wounded after a drunken quarrel with a friend at the house of Sir Robert Carr, and buried on 16 Aug., 1667, at St. Giles-in-the-Fields.

https://www.historyofparliamenton…

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