References
Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.
1663
- Oct
Newmarket, Suffolk
Map
The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:
- Built-up London – London before the Fire
- City of London wall and Great Fire damage – London after the Fire
Open location in Google Maps: 52.244619, 0.403748
Log in to post an annotation.
If you don't have an account, then register here.
5 Annotations
First Reading
in aqua • Link
Rowley track be just SW of the town at the junction A'1304 A1303 [the old A11] at Cambs/Suffolk border, the Track be 12mile east of Cambridge with Bury St Edmunds to SE at 15 miles. The old A11 be the chariot route [old roman road] from Foul Mere to Norwich [noorth salt]. To the north west be Fen country.
Horses have been making bets since 1174, they Say, to whom be the best rider.
Second Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
Hinchingbrooke is about 34 miles from Newmarket by road today ... who knows what route they would have to take back then. Quite a round trip to see some horse racing. King James' and King Charles' palaces had been wrecked after the Civil War, so Charles II would have needed to stay off site for a year or two during reconstruction.
For more information see http://www.olivercromwell.org/new…
A perpetual round of gaiety continued during the reign of King Charles, who spent as much time as he could in Newmarket. The king would ride around the countryside boasting he never enjoyed such good health as he did in Newmarket. But this was interrupted by the civil war, and with the downfall of the monarchy, Newmarket underwent a serious decline.
The conflict which engulfed England in 1642 began in Newmarket, in the palace in early March when King Charles had a confrontation with a parliamentary deputation demanding he surrender control of the army. ‘By God not for an hour’, he angrily retorted. ‘You have asked such of me that was never asked of a King!’
During the ensuing confrontation Newmarket took the royal side. In 1642 some townspeople tried to raise troops for the king, and six years later, at the height of the second civil war, there was an abortive rising which led to serious fighting in the market place.
Then in June 1647 King Charles was seized at Holdenby House and brought as a prisoner to Newmarket. Here the entire New Model Army massed, and surrounded by this ring of steel, he was kept under house arrest in his palace for nearly two weeks. But his stay was not totally unpleasant, for he was allowed to ride in his coach on Newmarket Heath. And many people, including the local gentry, flocked to see him, especially when he ‘was at Dinner or Supper’ in the Presence Chamber which echoed with prayers for his safety.
King Charles' execution spelled the doom of the royal palace in Newmarket. As is evident from a 1649 survey, it fell into disrepair and was sold off in 1650 to a consortium of 7 men including the regicide Col. John Okey, who pulled down most of the buildings with relish.
By the end of the Interregnum the Jacobean palace was a shadow of its former self: the Prince’s Lodgings had been razed. Parts of the palace still standing (the brew house and stables) were dilapidated. Only the garden ‘was not much altered’. Newmarket’s link with the monarchy seemed broken forever.
Newmarket must have thrilled to hear of the Restoration ...
San Diego Sarah • Link
Cosmo, the future Grand Duke of Turin, visited Newmarket with the Stuart Brothers and many members of the Court in April/May, 1669. His scribe wasn't impressed by the village.
I've standardized names, scanning errors I could figure out, and increased the number of paragraphs:
His highness, before evening, reached Newmarket (where, at the inn of the Maidens, almost opposite to the king's house, quarters had been prepared by his highness's courier) at the precise time that his majesty, with the duke and Prince Robert [RUPERT], had arrived the preceding day.
...
206
...
As soon as his highness alighted from his carriage, he went to the king's house, which compared with the other seats of the English nobility, does not deserve the name of a royal residence; and, on this account, his majesty has taken measures to enlarge it with several new apartments, and to improve the prospect from it.
...
219
Newmarket, an open town of about 200 houses, in the county of Cambridge (although some believe it to be in that of Suffolk) is situated on the declivity of some gently rising hills, which inclose a small valley, and constitute a distinguishing feature in the almost level territory which lies in every direction around it.
It has, in the present day, been brought into repute by the king, who frequents it on account of the horseraces, having been before celebrated only for the market for victuals, which was held there, and was a very abundant one.
In consequence of the example set by the king, the buildings are beginning to improve in appearance, and to increase in numbers, to render it more commodious for the purposes of the court, and more capable of containing the persons who resort thither at the time the king is there.
The territory belongs to my Lord Henry Bennet, Baron Arlington, who lets it on a 21 years' lease, at 6 shillings an acre, the rent to be paid half-yearly, and the tenant being left at full liberty, either to employ the land for pasture, or to plough it up, or to sub-let it.
@@@
From:
TRAVELS OF COSMO THE THIRD, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY,
THROUGH ENGLAND,
DURING THE REIGN OF KING CHARLES THE SECOND (1669)
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN MANUSCRIPT
https://archive.org/stream/travel…
His highness, Cosmo, must be considered only as a traveler. Under his direction, the narrator of the records was Count Lorenzo Magalotti, afterwards Secretary to the Academy del Cimento, and one of the most learned and eminent characters of the court of Ferdinand II.
Third Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
Cosmo's narrative continued the next day:
At 4 o'clock in the morning of 1/11 May, 1669, the king, with the Duke of York, Prince Robert [RUPERT], and the other attendants of his court, departed from Newmarket for London, in very windy and boisterous weather;
220
and his highness having heard mass, gave audience to my Lords Blandford, Thomond, Bernard Howard, and others, who had come to pay their respects to him;
and at 7 set off in his carriage, with all his suite, for Cambridge, which is 11 miles from Newmarket.
The whole of the country for the first 5 miles was a level plain, and for the most part pasture land; it then changed into a well-cultivated corn country, divided into fields, surrounded with hedges, and encircled with willows, which, from the humidity of the soil, grow there in great abundance, and so it continued all the way to Cambridge, where his highness, on his arrival, went to the Rose Inn.
@@@
BLANDFORD = Google seems unable to understand there was a Lord Blandford before John Churchill who became the Marquis of Blandford 40 years after this. A search on the House of Commons site is also unhelpful. Maybe this Blandford was a Scottish or Irish peer? Ideas anyone???
THORMOND = Henry O'Brien, 7th Earl of Thomond PC (Ire) (1620 – 1691) an Irish peer, styled Lord Ibrackan from 1639 to 1657. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen…
BERNARD HOWARD, possibly https://www.geni.com/people/Berna…
@@@
The description of the day now moves to Cambridge: https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
From:
TRAVELS OF COSMO THE THIRD, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY,
THROUGH ENGLAND,
DURING THE REIGN OF KING CHARLES THE SECOND (1669)
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN MANUSCRIPT
https://archive.org/stream/travel…
His highness, Cosmo, must be considered only as a traveler. Under his direction, the narrator of the records was Count Lorenzo Magalotti, afterwards Secretary to the Academy del Cimento, and one of the most learned and eminent characters of the court of Ferdinand II.
San Diego Sarah • Link
Like his grandfather, Charles II built a palace in Newmarket.
Construction began in 1668; the architect was William Samwell, although there is a tradition Sir Christopher Wren was involved in the work, if we are to believe an anecdote dating from the 18th century:
This relates that when the new building was completed Charles found the ceilings too low – he was over 6 ft. tall – and complained to Sir Christopher who, a much shorter man, brazenly claimed they were quite high enough. Whereupon, ‘the King squatted down to his height and creeping about in this whimsical posture cried “Aye, Sir Christopher, I think they are high enough!"'
Charles II’s residence occupied a slightly different site from that of the Jacobean palace. An 18th century plan shows the second Caroline palace was centered around a large courtyard with a projecting wing to the southwest.
To judge by contemporary accounts the Newmarket Palace was not an impressive structure: according to Cosmo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who visited Newmarket in 1669, ‘the King’s house, compared with other seats of the English nobility, does not deserve the name of a royal residence’, while in 1670 John Evelyn was equally disparaging, saying it was ‘mean enough, and hardly capable for a hunting house, let alone a royal palace!’
[ONE YEAR IS HARDLY ENOUGH TIME TO BUILD A PALACE, SO EITHER THEY WERE STAYING IN THE FIRST PART, OR ANOTHER BUILDING ALTOGETHER. - SDS]
Such adverse comments should not be allowed to detract from the major role which Charles II’s palace played in the life of not just Newmarket but England as a whole in the second half of the 17th century.
During Charles II’s frequent visits here, the mansion became the focus of Court festivities, as John Evelyn discovered in October 1671 when he found it alive with ‘dancing, feasting, revelling’, although, he added with more than a whiff of puritanical disapproval, ‘more resembling a luxuriously abandoned rout than a Christian Court’.
FROM
Cromwellian Britain - Newmarket
By By John Sutton
https://www.olivercromwell.org/ne…