L&M strike us as those literary types who didn't pay attention in science class, for "burning sulpher and aqua vitae [ethyl alcohol]" would combust with eerie little blue flames, barely visible, unspectacular and not evocative of burning wood, and as the former would convert to pungent effluvia of sulpher dioxide, its main effect would be to send everyone fleeing the theater, wheezing and rubbing their eyes. Obviously half of Westminster could then burn along with the abandoned decor.
Not that cities on fire aren't reasonably commonplace; if memory serves, just last month the Gazette had a terse paragraph to inform us that Moscow had burned to the ground again. In the play, what's burning is the town of Ternate, in the Moluccas, a bizarre and pagan place that not many Europeans might empathize with. Even so, we marvel that it took, at most, less than 2½ years after the Great Fire for someone to dare show "a town on fire" on a London stage, and for such a perceptive, involved and consummate Londoner as Sam to just find it "a good scene".
From Paris, under a radiant Sun - though France is, of course, always under his Most Christian Majestie's radiance - we salute Mr. Pepys' I-will-do-it spirit, and his closing of the year with only £5 outstanding from so much expense. Our health & estate excellent, for which we thank Providence, and wish its Blessings & the ſame on our Lords & Ladies of this Society, a happy birth-day to mynheer vM, & to all a happy New Year, Anno Domini MDCLXIX.
Estimates! Word of dread! Estimates made wrong, by recipes and a witch's brew of assumptions soon forgotten! Indeed, "the want of orderly supplies of money has occasioned the disuse of these [estimates]", though they were meant precisely to deal with want of money, but it also caused "the introduction of many irregularities, and an utter incapacity to distinguish the charge of any particular work". We imagine the clerks throwing their quills and papers in the air and dancing around the tables, maddened by the pointlessness of it all, and perhaps by the opportunities afforded by all the Estimating. Sam's frequent complaint of chaos in the books doesn't stem just from incompetent accounting (such as the shoddy ship's book he moaned about on the 18th, see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) but partly from the very method by which they are kept, all this horrid guess-work, vaguely scribbled on some napkin, at how much the beer should come to.
The letter closes, of course, with a demand for more money, but with this humble suggestion: "We renew our request for a warrant that the money arising from the sale of lops, tops and bark of trees, felled in his Majesty's forests for the use of the Navy, may be employed towards defraying the charge of felling, converting and transporting the timber sent to the King's yards", likely a good part of the expenses. So it's not just the deer that feed off the bark in this winterly season.
The State Papers today also record a long memo from John Mennes on how to reform the books, which we will spare this Society. We prefer to quote a letter sent on Sunday last (27 December) by the crusty Captain Tinker from his Portsmouth arsenal, to Sam, who for the Diary had understandably favored better memories of drums, trumpets and Sir Downing's wartime anecdotes: The Papers' summary begins, "Hopes the galliot hoy that came in has brought shovels, as there are none to be had here". Sam of the coach and beautiful horses is also the go-to man for shovels, apparently, but imagine how Louis XIV would chuckle; "Beaufort! Ready the fleet! They don't even have shovels! We invade now!"
We had been under the impression that nothing too ponderous was going on in the Office this week, other than the re-powdering of wigs, crafting of menus for New Year and 12th Night receptions, and Sam's vague but routine mornings of "business". Also that, of late, his conferences with and that grandee were mostly about personal politics within and (from without) against the Office.
Along comes a 2½ page from "the Navy Commissioners to the Treasury Commissioners", blazoned with six signatures that seem likely to include Sam's, and that must have taken quite a bit of time to draft and re-draft. It is unusually long, crisp and to the point in its summary in the State Papers (at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) which seem to give it largely verbatim.
"We are informed by the Navy Treasurers", the Navy Coms begin with disbelieving tremors of horror as the new budget year is just 48 hours away, "that the sole fund upon which we are to be supported for the expense of the ensuing year, and for defraying the remainder of the last year's charge [debt], is an assignment upon the Customs for 200,000L." Aye, that had been good news, but - Lord in Heavens, is that the coffer's bare wood we feel under the 200k? And it's not a false bottom? Oh nooooo!
Follows a customary reminder of how discredited the deadbeat Navy is to its suppliers, but this time with revealing detail on how it really works: The Office "submitt[ed] to see the stores, through want of money, supplied at dearer rates". Simple enough; of this its critics disapproved, so "[h]aving observed the reproach our office has suffered", and trusting that the £200,000 would be followed by more, "we have resolved no more to carry on the service at any other than the market prices, without having first laid the case before his Royal Highness [York] or you". At this, HRH did caution that there might in fact not be more, and the habit of padding some extra to buy on credit shouldn't be shed so early: "We have been directed by the Lord Admiral to revive the method of governing ourselves by estimates on each particular service".
How touching are the anecdotes which his Royal Highness told today, in the safety of his private bubble. The world, reduced to the lawyers, churchmen and souldiers, is so much simpler without the vulgar ploughmen who constitute by far the majority of its population. From Whitehall they seem invisible.
Occasionally they do surface, with pitchforks and bad manners, and we do not resist quoting this State Paper, a report written today from Pembroke to John Williamson, on how a ship cast onshore, "laden with wine and fruit (...) fell into the hands of the rude multitude [urgh!] who turned the wines out to carry the casks away". That says something about either the quality of the wines, or the earthy priorities of the rude multitude. (Apparently they showed less interest in the fruit).
Also admirable is the Duke's fondness for the Spanish troops in Flanders. True enough, while the Gazette (perhaps a bit selective in this case) often tells of plunder and atrocities by the French, such reports seem rarer in the Spaniards' case, and in Franche Comté the locals were not exactly welcoming Louis' troops as liberators when they overran the Spaniards earlier this year. But the Spanish troops in Flanders came across as less than happy and indifferent to money when Dom Juan, expected to show up with the pay after the treaty of Aachen was signed, chose instead to stay home.
HRH may also have paused to reflect that the Spaniards, being the occupying colonial power in the Low Countries, may not have to beg very hard for the Dutch they encounter in the street to get the message, and may also not feel obliged to carry their bags in return.
Having boarded this great Train (of coaches, of course) in 1665, may we join those voices of the past to beg and pray that the wheel keeps turning beyond the you-know-what prophesied for May 1669.
There will be further occasion to discuss this End of the World as it draws nearer, but maybe it is not too early to humbly suggest that, at that point when Sam rests his quill (and his eyes), be appended the shorter, briefer, more obscure but also very interesting diary he did keep on his mission to Tangiers from 30 July 1683 to 1 December 1684? That would be 16 months of nearly virgin Pepysland to travel, comment upon and contrast with 14 years ago. It's full of exotica, unfairly dismissed as a footnote to the Great Work, hard to find, and would feel indeed as a Reprieve...
Today a denunciation is written to John Williamson, by a Dr Sam. Hinde and a Jo. Carlile, of "seditious and unlawful (...) sordid conventicles" of Dissenters, Catholicks or Phanatiques ('tis unclear which), held by a Mr. Wivel "at the Victual Office built by Sir Denis Gauden" in Dover, a place "originally called Maison de Dieu [God's house]" and which could have been expected to now be cleansed and repurposed to Naval matters, but where "his Majesty's employment has slackened" (all this in a State Paper, No. 65 at https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
I have here proof of sedition at the slacker Victual Office... Oh, the cabal we could devise, by connecting dots and spreading the rumor, if we were, say, a disgruntled supplier, sea-captain or competitor.
'Tis the Season, when half the coaches of London are full of Account Books, as the worm-eaten tomes are pulled from dusty shelves, and the Captains' lies therein inspected to judge their skill at hiding their Rake-Offs. Today Mr. W. Jessop also has this "Receipt (...) for the use of the Committee of Accounts, of two books of contracts made by the Navy Commissioners between 1664 and 1667" (State Papers, at https://play.google.com/books/rea… of course). They would seem to be the books found perused by Col. Thomson. A Wm. Jessop reappears in the State Papers (same volume, p. 652) as "keeper of the writings in the Duchy Office", implying that the ships' books weren't held by the Navy Office (though we had seen reference to its having a full collection), but in grander and even safer hands in the Duke of York's chambers. If so, it didn't take long for Thomson to find these many "errors".
Let's have a thought for Sam's fellow bureaucrat William Jessop, forever pickled in history with heavy books of contracts under his arm as he clambers onto a coach... Unless, the Receipt being "by W. Jessop", he just signed it off, remaining safe at his desk amid the archives, wishing the bearer good luck (and, to himself, that the three-ring binder would be soon invented).
On the phanaticks, their more or less overt huddlings and the nervousness all this ferment currently inspires, we had seen on November 27 this letter from a Mr. Ralph Grey, of Newcastle, to "Henry Brabant" (State Papers at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) "I entreat you to buy me a sword to walk in town with, for if the fanatics hold on, it will not be safe to be without one. They are mighty high since you went to London, and had a fast last Wednesday", at which "upwards of 500 were present".
Additional problem to always keep in mind, in any case, while in the city bustle (for instance, if you're a government official with a pretty new coach): "persons marched off to them who have received the Sacrament according to the Church of England", and perhaps they had more than Bibles in their hands. Mr. Grey, however, isn't just any bystander: In 1667 he was the sheriff of Newcastle, and Brabant was its mayor (list at https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/site…. You'd think an ex-sheriff would have or could buy his own sword, though).
Earlier in the day, as Sam sat down to "The Unfortunate Lovers", Billy the coachman was joining the brasero set outside the theater where the other coachmen were stamping their feet and passing 'round the sack bottle against the cold. They whistle appreciatively at his beautiful green livery and toast it as the unwitting homage it seems to mother Ireland.
"So who's the new master?" "Any fun?" "Any scandal already?"
"Hey guys, I just got there. Some quill-pusher. Dull as a lead guinea. He tiptoes around his wife. Works in the Navy Office on Seething".
The words "Navy Office" bring a torrent of well-wishing and inquiries. "He can get that paper they give you to not get pressed? He can get my uncle's pension paid? He can get me to Virginia? You got a pass to enter the yards?" &c., &c.
In comes waltzing the smiling, affable man from the Benevolent Society for Coachmen's Needs. As always, he has a flask of much better sack, and in his faint Dutch accent offers "a good barber for your tooth-ache, a Hindoo balm for your bottom-sores, a free loan for your old Ma, your letters writ'n and sent to Kilkenny, a nice girl for your solace", in return for "jolly anecdotes, worthless discarded papers, a few seconds' perusal of house keys", &c., &c. Billy takes a swig of the free booze, wishes him good evening like the others, and nods to himself, pensively.
Meanwhile, Sam wallows in self-satisfaction, the new coach smell, and Bess' lovingly arranged floral cushions. His own coach! His own bloody coach! He can go anywhere (well, almost, a stern mental image of My Wife corrects him). He can make it turn left, or turn right, at will (hmm, but not here of course, have to follow the ruts). He can, er, stretch his legs like this!
The coach enters one of the newly finished, straightened and paved sections of Fleet Street. Sam thumps the roof with his cane (no gentleman without a cane, if only as an ostensible roof-thumper). "Coachman! Faster! Let's make my baby's wheels throw sparks!"
Up above, bundled against the bitter cold in his leprechaun suit, the coachman does what he can and cracks his whip for effect. "Aye, m'lord. But, not with these horses, b'yer leave, m'lord, as we discussed".
The coach plods along. A cat, snoozing in the middle of the street, eyes its approach, licks a paw, stretches, and dodders away, sticking its tongue at the horses. A hackney zooms past, spraying mud, its daredevil driver yelling "Make way!" Soon the Pepyses are back in the twisting, muddy, rubble-strewn labyrinth that surrounds Seething Lane. The horses, smelling their new home, crawl slightly faster.
Today the Treasury commissioners signed off on no less than twenty two warrants for Dennis Gauden, awarding him a total of £12,000 for victualling (record at http://british-history.ac.uk/cal-…) Serious moolah, and perhaps a nick-of-time result of Sam's hard work yesterday.
If so, the bureaucracy moved unusually fast, but 'twas about time, as we find, in a letter from Chatham to the Navy Coms, some Evidence that victualling was becoming a problem area indeed: Of the crew kept on the freshly docked Golden Hand, it is written: "Pray order the victualling of the 20 men, and fish instead of oatmeal, as the men would not eat it" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…) Yes, the ship is docked, but they're not going to work very hard on a lunch of oatmeal. And, the ship being docked, they don't have to eat the menu and can walk off the H.M.S. Oatmeal anytime.
Sam is thus an important cog in the fast-complicating geopolitics of Barbary. Still, couldn't this have waited until the next regular meeting with the duke? Did he need to be rushed with the news just now, while unfolding his dinner napkin?
Sam, having whispered his Important Secret News to His Royal Highness in full view of the entire Court, has made his Intricate Bows, brushed the Persian carpets with his hat and left. The duke chuckles and leans toward the King: "Hey, gossip-master, didn't Pepys just act a bit showy just now? Any idea why?"
"Hmpf?" the King says, around a mouthful of pheasant. "Hmm, the man just got his own wheels", he adds, after a glance at the "Daily List of New Coaches" which Williamson just placed in front of him. "He's coach-drunk".
"Oooh, he's not going to think he's one of Us, is he?", the Queen asks. "Send him the taxman if so!"
"We do that when they also start to put diamonds on their wives, dearie", the King says, stuffing some pineapple in the Queen's mouth. "Don't worry".
Oh, and Allin's victualling. That other admiral is presently on a mission to clean up the western Med a bit of all those Barbary pyrates, who molest good Christian vessels and, incidentally, serve as one of the Sultan's levers should he need to send anyone messages on, for instance, not interfering with his besieging of the Venetians at Candia. It's a sensitive job, and how embarrassing if the pyrates, or the restless natives on the coast, should get Allin's biscuits and leave him stranded.
On November 28, the duke of York's secretary Matthew Wren had forwarded to Sam a dispatch from Allin, with a cover letter nothing that "though dated from Tangiers, it is manifest that it was from Algiers, so it is 50 days old" (note to Allin: please date your letters, dealing with these huge distances is already complicated enough). "Considering how many more [days] it must be before any letter will reach Leghorn [Livorno, west coast of Italy]", Wren (or maybe Allin) "fears he will be past that place before orders about his victualling can come thither". So there's a bit of suspense, given that drawing and sending the letters of credit also take time. Wren suggests "to give Sir Thos. Allin the whole credit he desires at Cadiz", with the funds arranged there to be made good for purchases at Leghorn. Got all that?
Allin's situation is not helped, at this time, by the fairly furious and successful campaign being waged along the Barbary coast by a certain Taffaletta, sultan of Morocco (by his real name Al-Rashid ibn Sharif, as per https://dbpedia.org/page/Al-Rashi…) about whom dispatches have of late taken more and more space in the Gazette. Thus in No. 315 we read that on September 29 Allin "arrived before Algier, where he has made a new peace with the people", but in the next paragraph also how "Taffaletta (...) ha[s] by his Conquests taken on him not only the Title of King, but Emperour of Barbary". In No. 311 we had seen a breathless dispatch from October 14 on how "Taffalette (...) having now taken (...) the fourth part [a quarter] of Barbary, made himself sole Emperour of Fesse [Fez] and Morocco, killed the King of Morocco (...) and reduced the whole Country to his obedience".
So Cadiz, just across the Straits, is a much healthier place where to send money or victuall the fleet, and since Taffaletta is starting to worry the Spaniards enough (the Gazette also tells us) for them to raise new troops, Allin should also be quite welcome there.
The morning's business perhaps also had something to do with a letter which Gauden's partner Admiral Sir William Penn had sent on November 30 to the Commissioners [State Papers, 249 No. 189], suggesting they "should appoint a person to examine and cast up the papers and accounts that have not passed your view". Though Penn silkily assures them "doubt[ing] not that all faithfulness and diligence has been used", he sighs that errors may well creep in given the accounts' "variety and intricacy", and has noted in passing that "many" of the victualler's accounts "were never produced but at this juncture of time". Hence, in all likelihood, a bit of a scramble to check if there's any major time-bomb, as Gauden's contract and all things Gauden are about to receive more senior attention than usual. The Attorney General at this time is Thomas Povey, whose record (at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) as not terribly competent, bent on formalities and not hugely friendly to Sam, suggest it's best indeed not to give him anything unseemly to trip upon in Gauden's contract or accounts.
Gawden had written to Sam yesterday from the Victualling Office, to "entreat you to look over the memorial that you took when the draft of the contract was before the Treasury Commissioners, and corrected and amended with the consent of all sides. I think the point as to necessary money in the fair draft does not concur with what was agreed on; I wish the paper enclosed to be considered and agreed on against Monday, as the Attorney-General cannot draw the contract until that be done" [State Paper, 250 No. 9, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…] It does look complicated enough to take up the whole morning; Sam may want to enable the "track changes" function in Word.
Green and red livery? There has to be a reason. We turned to "Green: The History of a Color", the highly recommended study by French historian Michel Pastoureau, and found little encouragement there: Since the Middle Ages poor color green, its pigment unstable and often toxic, was that of weird errant knights, fickle youth (which we're not anymore, right Mr. Pepys?) and other fey creatures. With red, of the hunt - something alien to Sam. More recently, green has become the color of money (and so perhaps of budget managers), and moneylenders have adopted green hats and tableclothes, but as of the late 17C it's also shunned by sailors (it attracts lightning) and in the theater (brings bad luck).
Pastoureau quotes a 16C heraldry guru who advises against red-and-green, "a livery most common" despite the negative associations, "and most ugly" - perhaps, if the fashion mob wouldn't have the green stuff, the rest of us would since it was cheaper? It may also have been easier to spot in the riot of colors that was swingin' London (just check out a few official portraits, not much puritan black and no prohibition on bright colors there), making it easier to find the coach in the Westminster parking lot. The coat of arms adopted in 1660 by My Lord Sandwich (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear…) happens to have quite a bit of green and red in it, too.
Maybe Sam hasn't read Pastoureau's book (published in 2000) and, having a green bed and a green dining room, just thinks it's pretty, the color of Brampton fields, sea-green, &c. Let him figure out later why the captains (and, hmm, the actresses maybe) cross themselves before boarding his coach.
The cover letter to a spy's report, apparently from St. Malo, is written today by Capt. Anthony Deane in Portsmouth for John Williamson (and preserved, of course, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) It informs us of King Louis' giant naval fleet will soon be ready for whatever, and that "he pays all workmen every 15 days, and therefore is well served".
Copy to Sam, the paymasters and beancounters, and to Treasury and select MPs. Such punctuality may not be universal even in France, for we seem to recall a Gazette notice of French troops left unpaid and abandoned in Flanders, where they rioted and plundered. But we phant'sy an arms control treaty, wherein the Parties agree to all be as slow-paying as the slowest.
"Whore!" How original. But, again, how commonplace a profession on Whetstone's Park, home to the new employer procured for Ms Willett's, at least until he decided to move, with his chest of drawers, to more reputable quarters (safer, too, should the next Bawdy House riot have taken aim at his lodgings; briefing at https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) Coincidence?
The new Treasurers record in their minutes (preserved at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) that, on the occasion of their "being also the first time" assembled with the Duke, they passed a "Money warrant for 3,449L 8s. 10d to Mr. Pepys for Tangier in full for the quarter ended the 4th inst[ant]". This would be the balance of the budget on which Sam had got an advance last Friday (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) One more reason to whistle a happy tune on the way to your peaceful home...
Comments
Second Reading
About Thursday 7 January 1668/69
Stephane Chenard • Link
L&M strike us as those literary types who didn't pay attention in science class, for "burning sulpher and aqua vitae [ethyl alcohol]" would combust with eerie little blue flames, barely visible, unspectacular and not evocative of burning wood, and as the former would convert to pungent effluvia of sulpher dioxide, its main effect would be to send everyone fleeing the theater, wheezing and rubbing their eyes. Obviously half of Westminster could then burn along with the abandoned decor.
Not that cities on fire aren't reasonably commonplace; if memory serves, just last month the Gazette had a terse paragraph to inform us that Moscow had burned to the ground again. In the play, what's burning is the town of Ternate, in the Moluccas, a bizarre and pagan place that not many Europeans might empathize with. Even so, we marvel that it took, at most, less than 2½ years after the Great Fire for someone to dare show "a town on fire" on a London stage, and for such a perceptive, involved and consummate Londoner as Sam to just find it "a good scene".
About Thursday 31 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
From Paris, under a radiant Sun - though France is, of course, always under his Most Christian Majestie's radiance - we salute Mr. Pepys' I-will-do-it spirit, and his closing of the year with only £5 outstanding from so much expense. Our health & estate excellent, for which we thank Providence, and wish its Blessings & the ſame on our Lords & Ladies of this Society, a happy birth-day to mynheer vM, & to all a happy New Year, Anno Domini MDCLXIX.
About Tuesday 29 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Estimates! Word of dread! Estimates made wrong, by recipes and a witch's brew of assumptions soon forgotten! Indeed, "the want of orderly supplies of money has occasioned the disuse of these [estimates]", though they were meant precisely to deal with want of money, but it also caused "the introduction of many irregularities, and an utter incapacity to distinguish the charge of any particular work". We imagine the clerks throwing their quills and papers in the air and dancing around the tables, maddened by the pointlessness of it all, and perhaps by the opportunities afforded by all the Estimating. Sam's frequent complaint of chaos in the books doesn't stem just from incompetent accounting (such as the shoddy ship's book he moaned about on the 18th, see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) but partly from the very method by which they are kept, all this horrid guess-work, vaguely scribbled on some napkin, at how much the beer should come to.
The letter closes, of course, with a demand for more money, but with this humble suggestion: "We renew our request for a warrant that the money arising from the sale of lops, tops and bark of trees, felled in his Majesty's forests for the use of the Navy, may be employed towards defraying the charge of felling, converting and transporting the timber sent to the King's yards", likely a good part of the expenses. So it's not just the deer that feed off the bark in this winterly season.
The State Papers today also record a long memo from John Mennes on how to reform the books, which we will spare this Society. We prefer to quote a letter sent on Sunday last (27 December) by the crusty Captain Tinker from his Portsmouth arsenal, to Sam, who for the Diary had understandably favored better memories of drums, trumpets and Sir Downing's wartime anecdotes: The Papers' summary begins, "Hopes the galliot hoy that came in has brought shovels, as there are none to be had here". Sam of the coach and beautiful horses is also the go-to man for shovels, apparently, but imagine how Louis XIV would chuckle; "Beaufort! Ready the fleet! They don't even have shovels! We invade now!"
About Tuesday 29 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
We had been under the impression that nothing too ponderous was going on in the Office this week, other than the re-powdering of wigs, crafting of menus for New Year and 12th Night receptions, and Sam's vague but routine mornings of "business". Also that, of late, his conferences with and that grandee were mostly about personal politics within and (from without) against the Office.
Along comes a 2½ page from "the Navy Commissioners to the Treasury Commissioners", blazoned with six signatures that seem likely to include Sam's, and that must have taken quite a bit of time to draft and re-draft. It is unusually long, crisp and to the point in its summary in the State Papers (at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) which seem to give it largely verbatim.
"We are informed by the Navy Treasurers", the Navy Coms begin with disbelieving tremors of horror as the new budget year is just 48 hours away, "that the sole fund upon which we are to be supported for the expense of the ensuing year, and for defraying the remainder of the last year's charge [debt], is an assignment upon the Customs for 200,000L." Aye, that had been good news, but - Lord in Heavens, is that the coffer's bare wood we feel under the 200k? And it's not a false bottom? Oh nooooo!
Follows a customary reminder of how discredited the deadbeat Navy is to its suppliers, but this time with revealing detail on how it really works: The Office "submitt[ed] to see the stores, through want of money, supplied at dearer rates". Simple enough; of this its critics disapproved, so "[h]aving observed the reproach our office has suffered", and trusting that the £200,000 would be followed by more, "we have resolved no more to carry on the service at any other than the market prices, without having first laid the case before his Royal Highness [York] or you". At this, HRH did caution that there might in fact not be more, and the habit of padding some extra to buy on credit shouldn't be shed so early: "We have been directed by the Lord Admiral to revive the method of governing ourselves by estimates on each particular service".
About Sunday 20 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
How touching are the anecdotes which his Royal Highness told today, in the safety of his private bubble. The world, reduced to the lawyers, churchmen and souldiers, is so much simpler without the vulgar ploughmen who constitute by far the majority of its population. From Whitehall they seem invisible.
Occasionally they do surface, with pitchforks and bad manners, and we do not resist quoting this State Paper, a report written today from Pembroke to John Williamson, on how a ship cast onshore, "laden with wine and fruit (...) fell into the hands of the rude multitude [urgh!] who turned the wines out to carry the casks away". That says something about either the quality of the wines, or the earthy priorities of the rude multitude. (Apparently they showed less interest in the fruit).
Also admirable is the Duke's fondness for the Spanish troops in Flanders. True enough, while the Gazette (perhaps a bit selective in this case) often tells of plunder and atrocities by the French, such reports seem rarer in the Spaniards' case, and in Franche Comté the locals were not exactly welcoming Louis' troops as liberators when they overran the Spaniards earlier this year. But the Spanish troops in Flanders came across as less than happy and indifferent to money when Dom Juan, expected to show up with the pay after the treaty of Aachen was signed, chose instead to stay home.
HRH may also have paused to reflect that the Spaniards, being the occupying colonial power in the Low Countries, may not have to beg very hard for the Dutch they encounter in the street to get the message, and may also not feel obliged to carry their bags in return.
About Sunday 20 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Having boarded this great Train (of coaches, of course) in 1665, may we join those voices of the past to beg and pray that the wheel keeps turning beyond the you-know-what prophesied for May 1669.
There will be further occasion to discuss this End of the World as it draws nearer, but maybe it is not too early to humbly suggest that, at that point when Sam rests his quill (and his eyes), be appended the shorter, briefer, more obscure but also very interesting diary he did keep on his mission to Tangiers from 30 July 1683 to 1 December 1684? That would be 16 months of nearly virgin Pepysland to travel, comment upon and contrast with 14 years ago. It's full of exotica, unfairly dismissed as a footnote to the Great Work, hard to find, and would feel indeed as a Reprieve...
About Wednesday 9 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Today a denunciation is written to John Williamson, by a Dr Sam. Hinde and a Jo. Carlile, of "seditious and unlawful (...) sordid conventicles" of Dissenters, Catholicks or Phanatiques ('tis unclear which), held by a Mr. Wivel "at the Victual Office built by Sir Denis Gauden" in Dover, a place "originally called Maison de Dieu [God's house]" and which could have been expected to now be cleansed and repurposed to Naval matters, but where "his Majesty's employment has slackened" (all this in a State Paper, No. 65 at https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
I have here proof of sedition at the slacker Victual Office... Oh, the cabal we could devise, by connecting dots and spreading the rumor, if we were, say, a disgruntled supplier, sea-captain or competitor.
About Friday 18 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
'Tis the Season, when half the coaches of London are full of Account Books, as the worm-eaten tomes are pulled from dusty shelves, and the Captains' lies therein inspected to judge their skill at hiding their Rake-Offs. Today Mr. W. Jessop also has this "Receipt (...) for the use of the Committee of Accounts, of two books of contracts made by the Navy Commissioners between 1664 and 1667" (State Papers, at https://play.google.com/books/rea… of course). They would seem to be the books found perused by Col. Thomson. A Wm. Jessop reappears in the State Papers (same volume, p. 652) as "keeper of the writings in the Duchy Office", implying that the ships' books weren't held by the Navy Office (though we had seen reference to its having a full collection), but in grander and even safer hands in the Duke of York's chambers. If so, it didn't take long for Thomson to find these many "errors".
Let's have a thought for Sam's fellow bureaucrat William Jessop, forever pickled in history with heavy books of contracts under his arm as he clambers onto a coach... Unless, the Receipt being "by W. Jessop", he just signed it off, remaining safe at his desk amid the archives, wishing the bearer good luck (and, to himself, that the three-ring binder would be soon invented).
About Saturday 5 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
On the phanaticks, their more or less overt huddlings and the nervousness all this ferment currently inspires, we had seen on November 27 this letter from a Mr. Ralph Grey, of Newcastle, to "Henry Brabant" (State Papers at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) "I entreat you to buy me a sword to walk in town with, for if the fanatics hold on, it will not be safe to be without one. They are mighty high since you went to London, and had a fast last Wednesday", at which "upwards of 500 were present".
Additional problem to always keep in mind, in any case, while in the city bustle (for instance, if you're a government official with a pretty new coach): "persons marched off to them who have received the Sacrament according to the Church of England", and perhaps they had more than Bibles in their hands. Mr. Grey, however, isn't just any bystander: In 1667 he was the sheriff of Newcastle, and Brabant was its mayor (list at https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/site…. You'd think an ex-sheriff would have or could buy his own sword, though).
About Thursday 3 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Earlier in the day, as Sam sat down to "The Unfortunate Lovers", Billy the coachman was joining the brasero set outside the theater where the other coachmen were stamping their feet and passing 'round the sack bottle against the cold. They whistle appreciatively at his beautiful green livery and toast it as the unwitting homage it seems to mother Ireland.
"So who's the new master?" "Any fun?" "Any scandal already?"
"Hey guys, I just got there. Some quill-pusher. Dull as a lead guinea. He tiptoes around his wife. Works in the Navy Office on Seething".
The words "Navy Office" bring a torrent of well-wishing and inquiries. "He can get that paper they give you to not get pressed? He can get my uncle's pension paid? He can get me to Virginia? You got a pass to enter the yards?" &c., &c.
In comes waltzing the smiling, affable man from the Benevolent Society for Coachmen's Needs. As always, he has a flask of much better sack, and in his faint Dutch accent offers "a good barber for your tooth-ache, a Hindoo balm for your bottom-sores, a free loan for your old Ma, your letters writ'n and sent to Kilkenny, a nice girl for your solace", in return for "jolly anecdotes, worthless discarded papers, a few seconds' perusal of house keys", &c., &c. Billy takes a swig of the free booze, wishes him good evening like the others, and nods to himself, pensively.
About Thursday 3 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Meanwhile, Sam wallows in self-satisfaction, the new coach smell, and Bess' lovingly arranged floral cushions. His own coach! His own bloody coach! He can go anywhere (well, almost, a stern mental image of My Wife corrects him). He can make it turn left, or turn right, at will (hmm, but not here of course, have to follow the ruts). He can, er, stretch his legs like this!
The coach enters one of the newly finished, straightened and paved sections of Fleet Street. Sam thumps the roof with his cane (no gentleman without a cane, if only as an ostensible roof-thumper). "Coachman! Faster! Let's make my baby's wheels throw sparks!"
Up above, bundled against the bitter cold in his leprechaun suit, the coachman does what he can and cracks his whip for effect. "Aye, m'lord. But, not with these horses, b'yer leave, m'lord, as we discussed".
The coach plods along. A cat, snoozing in the middle of the street, eyes its approach, licks a paw, stretches, and dodders away, sticking its tongue at the horses. A hackney zooms past, spraying mud, its daredevil driver yelling "Make way!" Soon the Pepyses are back in the twisting, muddy, rubble-strewn labyrinth that surrounds Seething Lane. The horses, smelling their new home, crawl slightly faster.
About Thursday 3 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Today the Treasury commissioners signed off on no less than twenty two warrants for Dennis Gauden, awarding him a total of £12,000 for victualling (record at http://british-history.ac.uk/cal-…) Serious moolah, and perhaps a nick-of-time result of Sam's hard work yesterday.
If so, the bureaucracy moved unusually fast, but 'twas about time, as we find, in a letter from Chatham to the Navy Coms, some Evidence that victualling was becoming a problem area indeed: Of the crew kept on the freshly docked Golden Hand, it is written: "Pray order the victualling of the 20 men, and fish instead of oatmeal, as the men would not eat it" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…) Yes, the ship is docked, but they're not going to work very hard on a lunch of oatmeal. And, the ship being docked, they don't have to eat the menu and can walk off the H.M.S. Oatmeal anytime.
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Sam is thus an important cog in the fast-complicating geopolitics of Barbary. Still, couldn't this have waited until the next regular meeting with the duke? Did he need to be rushed with the news just now, while unfolding his dinner napkin?
Sam, having whispered his Important Secret News to His Royal Highness in full view of the entire Court, has made his Intricate Bows, brushed the Persian carpets with his hat and left. The duke chuckles and leans toward the King: "Hey, gossip-master, didn't Pepys just act a bit showy just now? Any idea why?"
"Hmpf?" the King says, around a mouthful of pheasant. "Hmm, the man just got his own wheels", he adds, after a glance at the "Daily List of New Coaches" which Williamson just placed in front of him. "He's coach-drunk".
"Oooh, he's not going to think he's one of Us, is he?", the Queen asks. "Send him the taxman if so!"
"We do that when they also start to put diamonds on their wives, dearie", the King says, stuffing some pineapple in the Queen's mouth. "Don't worry".
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Oh, and Allin's victualling. That other admiral is presently on a mission to clean up the western Med a bit of all those Barbary pyrates, who molest good Christian vessels and, incidentally, serve as one of the Sultan's levers should he need to send anyone messages on, for instance, not interfering with his besieging of the Venetians at Candia. It's a sensitive job, and how embarrassing if the pyrates, or the restless natives on the coast, should get Allin's biscuits and leave him stranded.
On November 28, the duke of York's secretary Matthew Wren had forwarded to Sam a dispatch from Allin, with a cover letter nothing that "though dated from Tangiers, it is manifest that it was from Algiers, so it is 50 days old" (note to Allin: please date your letters, dealing with these huge distances is already complicated enough). "Considering how many more [days] it must be before any letter will reach Leghorn [Livorno, west coast of Italy]", Wren (or maybe Allin) "fears he will be past that place before orders about his victualling can come thither". So there's a bit of suspense, given that drawing and sending the letters of credit also take time. Wren suggests "to give Sir Thos. Allin the whole credit he desires at Cadiz", with the funds arranged there to be made good for purchases at Leghorn. Got all that?
Allin's situation is not helped, at this time, by the fairly furious and successful campaign being waged along the Barbary coast by a certain Taffaletta, sultan of Morocco (by his real name Al-Rashid ibn Sharif, as per https://dbpedia.org/page/Al-Rashi…) about whom dispatches have of late taken more and more space in the Gazette. Thus in No. 315 we read that on September 29 Allin "arrived before Algier, where he has made a new peace with the people", but in the next paragraph also how "Taffaletta (...) ha[s] by his Conquests taken on him not only the Title of King, but Emperour of Barbary". In No. 311 we had seen a breathless dispatch from October 14 on how "Taffalette (...) having now taken (...) the fourth part [a quarter] of Barbary, made himself sole Emperour of Fesse [Fez] and Morocco, killed the King of Morocco (...) and reduced the whole Country to his obedience".
So Cadiz, just across the Straits, is a much healthier place where to send money or victuall the fleet, and since Taffaletta is starting to worry the Spaniards enough (the Gazette also tells us) for them to raise new troops, Allin should also be quite welcome there.
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The morning's business perhaps also had something to do with a letter which Gauden's partner Admiral Sir William Penn had sent on November 30 to the Commissioners [State Papers, 249 No. 189], suggesting they "should appoint a person to examine and cast up the papers and accounts that have not passed your view". Though Penn silkily assures them "doubt[ing] not that all faithfulness and diligence has been used", he sighs that errors may well creep in given the accounts' "variety and intricacy", and has noted in passing that "many" of the victualler's accounts "were never produced but at this juncture of time". Hence, in all likelihood, a bit of a scramble to check if there's any major time-bomb, as Gauden's contract and all things Gauden are about to receive more senior attention than usual. The Attorney General at this time is Thomas Povey, whose record (at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) as not terribly competent, bent on formalities and not hugely friendly to Sam, suggest it's best indeed not to give him anything unseemly to trip upon in Gauden's contract or accounts.
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Gawden had written to Sam yesterday from the Victualling Office, to "entreat you to look over the memorial that you took when the draft of the contract was before the Treasury Commissioners, and corrected and amended with the consent of all sides. I think the point as to necessary money in the fair draft does not concur with what was agreed on; I wish the paper enclosed to be considered and agreed on against Monday, as the Attorney-General cannot draw the contract until that be done" [State Paper, 250 No. 9, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…] It does look complicated enough to take up the whole morning; Sam may want to enable the "track changes" function in Word.
About Sunday 22 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Green and red livery? There has to be a reason. We turned to "Green: The History of a Color", the highly recommended study by French historian Michel Pastoureau, and found little encouragement there: Since the Middle Ages poor color green, its pigment unstable and often toxic, was that of weird errant knights, fickle youth (which we're not anymore, right Mr. Pepys?) and other fey creatures. With red, of the hunt - something alien to Sam. More recently, green has become the color of money (and so perhaps of budget managers), and moneylenders have adopted green hats and tableclothes, but as of the late 17C it's also shunned by sailors (it attracts lightning) and in the theater (brings bad luck).
Pastoureau quotes a 16C heraldry guru who advises against red-and-green, "a livery most common" despite the negative associations, "and most ugly" - perhaps, if the fashion mob wouldn't have the green stuff, the rest of us would since it was cheaper? It may also have been easier to spot in the riot of colors that was swingin' London (just check out a few official portraits, not much puritan black and no prohibition on bright colors there), making it easier to find the coach in the Westminster parking lot. The coat of arms adopted in 1660 by My Lord Sandwich (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear…) happens to have quite a bit of green and red in it, too.
Maybe Sam hasn't read Pastoureau's book (published in 2000) and, having a green bed and a green dining room, just thinks it's pretty, the color of Brampton fields, sea-green, &c. Let him figure out later why the captains (and, hmm, the actresses maybe) cross themselves before boarding his coach.
About Saturday 21 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The cover letter to a spy's report, apparently from St. Malo, is written today by Capt. Anthony Deane in Portsmouth for John Williamson (and preserved, of course, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) It informs us of King Louis' giant naval fleet will soon be ready for whatever, and that "he pays all workmen every 15 days, and therefore is well served".
Copy to Sam, the paymasters and beancounters, and to Treasury and select MPs. Such punctuality may not be universal even in France, for we seem to recall a Gazette notice of French troops left unpaid and abandoned in Flanders, where they rioted and plundered. But we phant'sy an arms control treaty, wherein the Parties agree to all be as slow-paying as the slowest.
About Friday 20 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
"Whore!" How original. But, again, how commonplace a profession on Whetstone's Park, home to the new employer procured for Ms Willett's, at least until he decided to move, with his chest of drawers, to more reputable quarters (safer, too, should the next Bawdy House riot have taken aim at his lodgings; briefing at https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) Coincidence?
About Friday 20 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The new Treasurers record in their minutes (preserved at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) that, on the occasion of their "being also the first time" assembled with the Duke, they passed a "Money warrant for 3,449L 8s. 10d to Mr. Pepys for Tangier in full for the quarter ended the 4th inst[ant]". This would be the balance of the budget on which Sam had got an advance last Friday (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) One more reason to whistle a happy tune on the way to your peaceful home...