Phil Gyford

Articles

Phil Gyford has written four articles:

Annotations and comments

Phil Gyford has posted 773 annotations/comments since 27 December 2002.

Comments

First Reading

About Thursday 31 May 1660

Phil  •  Link

I've changed "till to" to "till 10" and deleted several comments pointing out the scanning error (thanks folks).

I have been keeping track of obvious Project Gutenberg scanning errors and (recently) been correcting them in the text so we don't have to worry about proof reading on this site. I'll try and find time to post the list of errors and corrections in Recent News shortly. And, yes, I'll be sending the list to Project Gutenberg periodically.

About Oysters

Phil  •  Link

Barrels of Oysters. Copied from Nick Sweeney's annotation of 16 February 1659/60:

"Two barrels seems a lot of what you would think was a very perishable commodity."

This actually came up a year ago on the C18 discussion list, when talking about the barrels of oysters that Samuel Johnson bought for his cat. In fact, the barrels used to store shellfish were much smaller than the sort of barrel one now associates with real-ale houses--between 7 and 13 inches tall--, so Pepys' 'little' barrels were probably the size of a large tin can:

http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A…

You'll find an entire thread on oyster barrels here:

http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A…

About Charles Sackville (Lord Buckhurst)

Phil  •  Link

The entry for Lord Middlesex in Latham's Index volume suggests this is Charles Sackville. Although the entry for Sackville just describes him as "styled Lord Buckhurst."

About Henry Dawes

Phil  •  Link

The Latham Index volume describes Dawes as a merchant, and suggests he might be the Dawes referred to by Pepys on May 18 1660.

About Changed font sizes

Phil  •  Link

Thanks for the feedback folks.

Matt: I mostly use Camino myself, but those bylines anti-alias for me. Everyone has different settings for things I guess.

Susanna: I've no idea why there's a blank space, and I haven't tried (or got) the AOL browser. If I can get it I'll have a try. I'm pleased it's an improvement though!

About Thomas Cade

Phil  •  Link

Latham's Index volume describe Cade simply as "royal chaplain," the Companion volume as "Chaplain to the King in exile."

About Monarchy

Phil  •  Link

Copied from Maureen's post on 3 May 1660:

In the wake of the execution of Charles I - tried, remember, for making war against his own people and refusing to rule within the law - the monarchy was abolished and England made a "Commonwealth and Free State."

When Charles II returned it was by invitation of the newly elected Parliament and on terms more or less dictated by them - including the promise to act within the law (Declaration of Breda).

Other rulers may have seen him as a king in exile but he could not be king of England until England said so!

It is still part of the process that the new ruler is acknowledged by the people and accepted by Parliament, now in token form. This dates back in essence to the process in Anglo-Saxon times, before primogeniture came in, when the new king was chosen from among the eligible nobility.

NB: we had to depose another Stuart king to achieve some sort of order and have removed another since then!

Transcriptions of various relevant documents are at http://www.constitution.org/eng/c…