Sasha Clarkson

Annotations and comments

Sasha Clarkson has posted 752 annotations/comments since 16 February 2013.

Comments

Second Reading

About Monday 15 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

'Whig' originated as an abbreviation of 'Whiggamore': thus both historical English party political labels originated as terms of abuse directed against poor rebels.

It is thought that Whiggamores were originally mare drivers, whose nickname derived from "the cry of Whiggam with which they encouraged their horses".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whi…

As for the historical origin of 'Tory', a friend sent me a postcard once with the definition, reproduced here:
https://twitter.com/SashaClarkson…

"Tory. First quoted in The Irish State Papers, January 24, 1656, as 'tories and other lawless persons', - Irish 'toiridhe', 'tor', 'toruighe', lit. 'a (hostile) pursuer', hence, 'a plunderer'."

Nothing much has changed ;)

About Thursday 11 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

I think that Louise and Zexufang have the right of it re the hyperbole, but I also looked up 'hand to fist' in the 13 vol OED, and drew a blank.

However, it occurred to me that Sam might also have meant a jocular variation of 'hand to hand', meaning that he and Elizabeth were, playfully, almost fighting with each other as they grabbed at the meat.

Personal cutlery use was still rare in those days: according to Wikipedia, "most of Europe did not adopt use of the fork until the 18th century".

About Saturday 6 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Hi Bill - in England, the Civil War was over by 1651, and although some troops would have been lost in Ireland, according to your figure the defeated Irish increased their population post 1650.

In 'History Of England Under The Stuarts', G M Trevellyan* quoted figures in the tens of thousands for English emigration to America in the early 1600s, but nothing for the later period.

Of course, the Great Plague of 1665-6 killed an estimated 200 000 people; smallpox and other diseases regularly culled town and city populations: this seems to have outweighed war, and emigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gre…

*Trevellyan quotes Justin Winsor's book linked below as the source of his statistics; I suspect that there's a lot more information there relevant to this discussion. :)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/sh…

About Saturday 6 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Thank you Bill :)
Interesting figures - what would have been the main factors in the English decline between 1650 and 1700?

As well as war, plague and any change in marital habits, this is the era when emigration to North America took off, for both political and economic reasons. It's difficult to find stats though ...

About Saturday 6 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

I seem to recall reading that London's death rate was greater than its birth rate until the nineteenth century. One reason for labour being available from the country was that the various Enclosure/Inclosure Acts, and "improvements" to land management resulted in peasants being thrown off the land with no means of support, thus leaving them with little option but to try their luck in the towns.

Of course, younger sons of landowners were in a similar position, hence Sam's father John ended up as a gentleman tailor in Fleet Street.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inc…

About Friday 5 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Brave - bravo as in "fierce, wild, savage,".

Of course there the "Wild" or "Rough Coast" in Catalonia, the "Costa Brava"

It seems that the word's semantic evolution is akin to that of "wicked" in modern slang.

About Thursday 4 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Why Colet's desire for a renewed emphasis on Greek?

Colet was a churchman and theologian of the pre-reformation Renaissance, when there was already widespread questioning of Church orthodoxy. Part of this was an interest in the Bible in its original languages, and a desire for new and better translations of the Bible and other early Christian texts. Much of the New Testament was written in Greek, and Christian versions of the Old Testament were based on the Septuagint, a translation of the Torah into Greek by Hellenised or bilingual Jewish scholars, initiated by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. This is why several Old Testament books have Greek names. This was brought home to me when Inter-Railing in 1972, as ΕΞΟΔΟΣ (EXODOS) was stamped in blue upon my passport upon leaving Greece. (The entry stamp was ΕΙΣΟΔΟΣ in red.) :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sep…

One major influence on the Renaissance was the fall of Constantinople in 1453: in the chaos, many scholars and librarians escaped, bringing with them Greek texts which had been lost to scholarship in Western Europe. This helped stimulate developments in mathematics and science amongst many other areas.

About Wednesday 3 February 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Re Sarah on "finding a place", "buts" or "ands", etc.

It has been said that Brits and Americans were "divided by a common language". I think that's certainly true of Pepys & friends, and the modern Anglophone! :)

About Sunday 31 January 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

I kept a detailed diary for several years in the 1970s (some of which makes me cringe to read now.) I started it because I didn't want, at some point in the future, to look back on my younger self and see just an empty void. However, I couldn't and didn't record everything. I wrote about my friends, daily activities, and books which I read, but very little about my parents, to whom I was very close. A diary written mainly for one's own later perusal is bound to omit things one takes for granted. This doesn't mean that they aren't important, but rather that they are so embedded in one's being that there is no need for a written record. So I think it is with Sam.

I get rather annoyed by the glee with which some annotators rush to judgement, both over what Sam *has* recorded, and now what he has not.

About Thursday 28 January 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Hmm - I don't think the "finding a place" in the context of 17th century idiom is ambiguous at all: I've never seen it, or similar expressions, used in the sense of lodgings in any pre 20th century literature. Will isn't much younger than Elizabeth and has a responsible job as Sam's PA. Hence, Will is likely be aware of available navy jobs, as well as, via his father's and uncle Blackborne's merchant connections, positions in the "private sector". So it wouldn't be unnatural for Elizabeth to ask him to keep his ear to the ground for something suitable for Balthy.

About Sunday 24 January 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

I first became aware of the Duchy of Savoy as a result of watching a children's TV adventure series, 'The Flashing Blade', round about 1970.

Although (very loosely) based on the War of Mantua/Monferrato Succession, the series took huge liberties with both history and geography, including moving the fortress of Casale from Piedmont to the Pyrenees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War…

About Monday 18 January 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Re the discussions as to whether Mr Benson was Dutch or not, one should remember that the Netherlands was never linguistically uniform, being home to a fair number of languages/dialects, some more Scandinavian, others more German in character. This is/was further complicated by the maritime trade between the neighbouring states of this area.

One interesting group of dialects/lanuages is Frisian, very closely related to English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fri…

About Monday 11 January 1663/64

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

Many people have tremors to a greater or lesser degree. A common form, "essential tremor" runs in my own family: some have it very mildly, and others more severely. Essential Tremor is rather more common than Parkinson's disease, but to a casual observer the symptoms are similar. My father had ET early in life, which was made much worse by shellshock, having been blasted from the turret of a tank, in WWII. Strangely enough, for much of his life he was involved in professional and amateur dramatics, and it did not interfere with his stage performances.

Sir John Lawson may have been suffering from some form of ET, exacerbated by his own experiences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ess…