Westminster, early morning: James, duke of York, sips his chocolate by his favorite fireplace. An usher discreetly introduces Navy comptroller Vice Admiral Sir John Mennes, intelligencer Sir Joseph Williamson, and Sir Stephen Fox, army paymaster and recipient of vast budgets for "secret services". Williamson tenders a thin file.
"The Pepys file", the duke guesses. "Thankfully not so thick".
"Indeed, your grace", Williamson says. "But we were right to worry that the fracas lately issuing from Pepys House could deserve the Crown's attention. 'Twas a woman, of course. Your grace knows our Clerk of the Acts..."
"A most devoted servant of his Majestie", York says with a wink and a nod.
"In this case, his errands around London grew so frantic yesterday, and took him to parts so disreputable and so thick with our Agents, that my man needed but two hours to figure his interest: The maid of one Doctor Allbon..."
"Known to you?" York asks.
"A poor, broken fellow", Fox supplies. "But the name is Scot, of course".
"Scotland?" York's mind veers to a thousand theories of sedition and Conspiracies.
"Our trusted Clerk and repository of every Naval secret was also tailed by two Dutch agents and one French, so discreet was he", Williamson says. "Mr. Pepys cares for his appearance, so as things stand, the potential for blackmail..."
"Should, for instance, this broke Scot doctor realize what he's got on his doorstep..."
"Yes, yes, I see", York says.
"We can neutralize some of the key characters", Fox suggests eagerly.
A shrug of ducal shoulders... but without the raised eyebrows that would mean assent, to Fox's slight dismay. York instead asks for notepaper and a quill, scribbles a few words, folds and seals the note. "I have a better idea. Mr Mennes?" The admiral wakes up with a jolt, "ha! Your R'yal 'ness?"
"Pray have this note delivered by a trusted hand to Mrs. Pepys' personal and private attention. Let us lance the boil while it is still small."
"Use Sam's factotum", Williamson adds - with Mennes it never hurts to give precise instructions. "What's his name, Brewer?"
"Hewer", Mennes recalls. "Yes, he'll be perfect. I'll do this right away, while Mr Pepys is at the Office."
From a pocket the duke of York fishes out a fat, freshly-minted gold coin, hands it to Mennes. "Leave that with the boy for his discretion and service to England. Good. So, gentlemen, chill weather, what? An early winter, I say. Chocolate, anyone?"
Sam, on intelligence that the Target is in somewhere about Lincoln's Inn Fields (mapped at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) paces the Strand (https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) in hope of seeing Her at a window. Scant hope indeed, though there is a thin section of the Strand where, perhaps maybe, one could sight the back windows of some building that could be described as "on Lincoln's Inn Fields". Another sign of the patient not being completely rational at this point, though still rational enough not to go 'round the Fields instead, which could have improved the odds but for the Fields apparently being a good place to get mugged by vagrants.
Apart from that, for any problem in London, trust to your wily, all-knowing porter... special rates for gentlemen seeking to (har har) pass a note to a gentlelady to ask how she is. Discretion guaranteed, even for those customers well known around the village that is Whitehall. Why, if Sam had tried the next porter down, he'd have run into this new fellow, one Fygaro, who knows just how to get a note inside the Doctor's house, and could have slipped Sam inside, perhaps dressed as a soldier with papers to claim he's billetted there. Can fix your wig, too.
Whetstone's Park! The very name makes the skin crawl under the rich brocade of our waistcoat. Illegally developed over 30 years ago by a Mr Whetstone but never torn down despite orders, it now festers and hobbles in the twilight zone as "a centre of vice and gambling", as http://www.shadyoldlady.com/locat… puts it - referencing a text at https://www.british-history.ac.uk… dated from 1878, by which time it had degenerated to "an almost untenanted row (...) now chiefly turned into stables". In the 1720s London geographer John Strypes (quoted at https://gutenberg.org/files/21411…) will remember it as "once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants." As of 1668 it courses between Holborn, lately noted for its badwy houses when they were torn down in the eponymous riots of March 1667, and St. Giles, a slightly better neighborhood but still home to a hospital for the poor (need we say more). Just to the south are Lincoln's Inn Fields, "head-quarters of beggars by day and of robbers at night ", on which our 1878 history heaps more fetid-slum descriptions.
So, a fit address for a low-lying "poor broken fellow" (a.k.a. a "wretch"), a proper circle of Hell in which to send your rival, and, while he's no stranger to the better parts of Holborn, hardly the place where an upright Pepys should walk about - unless blinded by Love, with his wig discreetly tucked away.
And so the past week's entries, nearly 3,000 words of detailed happenings in chronological order and full, rigorous, high-resolution self-examination of Sam's inner mood and feelings, were all written in one go and today, after the fact, and without skimping on the first days in the series. Mr Pepys should consider writing novels, he has it in himself. Also we trust he felt better after putting all this turmoil on paper; he should consider inventing psychotherapy.
We note also that a lot of this private writing was done in the Office. Mr Pepys spending hours hunched on his little private black book, writing things in cypher... How would it look like to a suspicious eye? He wasn't the only gentleman keeping a diary, but still. He must have put the "Do not disturb" sign on the door.
The Diary makes it look like Sam "staid" at the Treasury for political tourism, but their minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…) record that he did have business there, which came last and concerned the cutback, already discussed a couple of days ago in a letter from Steven Fox (see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) to the budget for the garrison at Tangiers. "Mr. Pepys' warrant for the quarter ending November last is to be divided, and a warrant made at present for 10,000L. on the Customs. The remainder to be suspended till it has been adjusted to what time Tangier is to have only 55,500L. per an[num]". Fox was also there.
The minutes devote a full 381 words to my Lord Gerard vs. the town of Newcastle, and (likely to the commission reporter's relief) make no allusion to the political mud-slinging to which my lord resorted, and which seems to have got most of Sam's attention. They do make the town's case look better, describing (in their words, paraphrased) my lord as an absentee landlord that was all squeeze and no investment, and his defense as all foot-stamping that only the King could judge his case. It's easy to see how it could have gone downhill from there. Clearly it was quite a melee, and one imagine Sam almost forgetting why he was there, until the exhausted commissioners saw him, the last petitioner left in the back of the room -- now almost empty, strewn with papers and a forgotten wig -- and ticked off that last agenda item before going to lunch.
The costs of Tangier however are on more than a few minds today, since Denis Gauden, at the Victualling Office, also wrote to the Navy Commissioners to complain of being allocated just £8 per man-day for ships at Tangiers; "I intreat you to (...) consider the difference between victualling at Tangier and in England" (State Papers, https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
We encourage the Royal Society's noble fellows, instead of giggling at Mr. Hooke's expt. on testicles, to pay attention to Sig. Donato Rosetti, one of the great, lately ignored, thinkers of the Age, like Galileo in some trouble with the (popish) (ignoble) Inquisition, and who thought "That there is noe ether". The Curator henceforth to be more precise on the titles of books.
Today we had another revelation from espying one of two letters written to Mr. Pepys, found in the State Papers. The first, from John Tinker in Portsmouth, is nothing special and relates how the boatswain of the ship Adventure embezzled sails and cables taken from a French prize (bad!) and, more remarkably, that the ship's gunner is said to have also sold two of the guns (really!)
The other letter is from Edward Byland in Woolwich, who wants Sam to look to various supplies and maintenance for Woolwich, and whose summary concludes: "Wants the plumber to mend the pump, the yard being without water".
Perhaps this shows the depth of our aristocratic inattention to such trifles, but we didn't know that in 1668 England (or anywhere else, really) has plumbers - not in the sense of a tradesman working with lead [latin plumbum], a species surely found all over the rooftops and the occasional drainpipe and which would go back to Antiquity, but here as someone to fix the pump, clearly not made of lead. We note however that it takes connections and a letter to the government to get one, and that Sam had a list of good ones. No wonder he's so popular.
The Treasury's minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…) while not recording all these staff changes, mention today that "Sir Ste. Fox is to see Mr. Pepys' warrant (for 17,500L. for Tangier for the quarter ended the 4th inst.) to say if he have any exceptions to it and to examine when the reduction [of the garrison] of Tangier is to begin".
Sandwich on his inspection there had heard many complaints of the military lording it over Tangiers' civilians and merchants like it owned the place, and downsizing the garrison had been part of his recommendations, which are perhaps making their way after all. If so, Sam could be making some enemies, as Sandwich's man and if his fingerprints are on the downsize.
Separately the minutes also note that "Mr. Montague moves for a fund for money for plate for him. The Privy Council to be moved concerning the plate for Ambassadors". Could this be about My Lord Sandwich, an Ambassador currently in some need of plate? But surely they wouldn't write of him as just "Mr. Montague"?
For the record the State Papers today contain a somewhat interesting letter, to Sam from John Tinker in Portsmouth, on his efforts to get two ropemakers to rat on the usual thieveries and frauds in the yard. One, a Mr. Tong, does so only because "the goods embezzled are sold at a cheaper rate" than his own. Just deal with it, John, OK? Mr Pepys is busy.
Thank you Terry for the link you posted in 2017 and 2020 to "The Life of Edward Montagu, K.G., First Earl of Sandwich", a massive biography published in 1912 by F. R. Harris. Harris opines that My Lord should really have asked cousin Sam to write his speech, because "his [Sandwich's] extant letters show him to have been the most prolix of writers, and he was evidently a poor speaker. He was crushed by the weight of his material".
But, speaking of being crushed, and before we shed tears on how My Lord's want of eloquence hurt his legacy and reputation, let's note that, among his suggestions for the improvement of Tangiers, Harris writes (at page 165) that "He would have had all Barbary Jews banished, for they spied, they betrayed the prices of our commodities, and 'they are beggars, and sucke the monye out of the inhabitants' purses'". By 1839 the Barbary Jews accounted for one-quarter of the population of Tangiers (see https://bible-in-spain-annotated.…) We join them in thanking whatever power made Lord Montagu fumble his speech today, and as a side benefit for not dragging Sam Pepys into it.
Meanwhile, mylord Sandwich, and indirectly our Sam, cannot but be interested in this here State Paper, which closes the "Accounts of the Earl of Sandwich's expenses and receipts as Ambassador Extraordinary to Spain and Portugal, 1666-1668", after they were "examined by the Committee for Foreign Affairs, and allowed with certain reductions".
Earlier this year we had our own debates on what the damage might be, given the eye-popping cost of Court life on the one hand, and the gratuities which (if he behaves) an Ambassador can expect, on the other. Our friend the Venetian ambassador in London, for instance, has bemoaned the rapacious rent he has to pay for his rooms and the extravagant cost of everything in England, and from reports on him and other ambassadors of the time it seems a staff (or entourage) of about 40 people, including a bunch of other nobles used to the good life, is typical of a big Embassy (that would still be a mid-size European embassy as of 2021). On the happy side, recall the 4,000 doublons which Her Catholic majestie of Spain had granted Sandwich "for his maintenance" (see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) and perhaps also the humongous wine licenses more recently signed off to French ambassador Colbert in London. All in all, we had opined that a warrant for £5,000 issued in February "for the entertainment of the Earl of Sandwich (...) and for other expenses in that embassy" (noted at https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) was quite enough.
Well, oopsie. The final numbers (at https://books.google.fr/books?id=…, "Entry Book 30, f. 100" of Nov. 6) are "total receipts, 18,395L. 2s. 0d.; total expenses for ordinaries, 29,965L. 3s. 0d.; for extraordinaries, 7,574L. 18s. 3d", to a total negative balance of £19,144. No wonder cousin Sam was kindly asked for help make ends meet, but, oy nobles, did you think your titles were a free gift just because the king likes you?
But what about the Queen Regent's doublons then? We thought they converted into over £40k. Or were they totally off the books?
By coincidence, this afternoon the Treasury also went (at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) over the budget for the Ambassador to Sweden, currently the coat-turning Earl of Carlisle, and warranted him £10 a day for ordinary (coffee, pencils, horsefeed, &c.), about the same per diem as Sandwich burned in Spain and so perhaps a standard rate (and about what most commoners make in a year, but that's for another day). The council, however, put off a request for wardrobe and jewels; presumably those would be the timid start of "extraordinaries".
Aye, so what did happen on November 6 then? Were the entries just swapped and should we turn to that for November 5? Snap to it, man! We do know that on this Friday morning you were at the Treasury Board, where a minute [found at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…] records that "Mr. Pepys [was asked] to show how his business stands as to the 10,000L. he is to have of the Customs out of the Exchequer". And where was your mind while the question was asked, and maybe had to be asked again?
Why, something is distracting Mr. Pepys, who is now, uncharacteristically, fumbling with his papers. Old Albermarle, squirming from the dropsy in his Lord High Treasurer's chair at the head of the table, nods and thinks, "so you are now truly one of us, brother Pepys. Already senile".
For the record, an article has just appeared in PLoS One: "Batavia shipwreck timbers reveal a key to Dutch success in 17th-century world trade" (open access at https://journals.plos.org/plosone…) The timber in VOC shipwrecks is dated and analyzed with all the skill of this Age. It is found to have been sourced in Northern Europe from rather more diverse locations than England has access to (no big surprise there) and to have been selected with "Masterly" and "profound knowledge about the soft and perishable nature of sapwood (the outermost part of the wood, just beneath the bark), and its susceptibility to insect attack". All this, together with "Innovative ship design" of the sort Charles presently hopes to be buying from Laurens van Heemskerck, was "key to Dutch success in world-wide trade". The ships thus put under the microscope were all built decades ago in the 1620s but we think Sam would still find the article quite relevant given the hard time he has sourcing good timber from England's dwindling forests.
Indeed, and Straus' choice of illustrations make the matter easy to comment upon, but in fairness we don't know that it's all the choice Sam was offer'd. In 1668 there are quite a few coach-makers, and they may all have their catalogs and conventions exist, but since Mr. Ford's black Model T is still far in the future and everything is made to order, the variety could be infinite.
It could, but was it? There aren't a lot of extant coaches, or contemporary street views showing enough of them, that are precisely dated, clear and not about stage-coaches or royal carriages. Mr Google has shown us "Hackney coaches in London, 1637" (https://cartographicperspectives.…) where they do look all the same and are indeed boxy four-wheelers, as well as a post-Fire engraving of "the second Royal Exchange, Cornhill" (https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) which has 4-5 that look like the nimbler Charles II chariots and also kinda all look the same. Other examples would be nice to find. What Mr Google had to show when we queried his image collection on "Sam Pepys coach" was quite a surprise, but didn't help resolve the issue.
Lying in bed next to becalmed Mrs Pepys, Sam in the quiet of the night listens to the whispers in his head, of what he secretly thinks as the "People from the Future". Tonight they seem to phant'sy choosing his coach... How droll, and they seem to agree with Povy. But he can't decide. How difficult to navigate are the currents of the aristocracy! You look too austere and you're a Roundhead, too flash and you're above your station. You have to find just the right balance. Consider Sir Joseph Williamson, all subdued elegance and discreet professionalism in his portrait at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki…, contrast him with his boss Arlington and all his ribbons at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki…. Flash and young and you're a rake they'll try to drag into their games...
He knows how dear Knepp would react. "Why Sammy, is that your coach? How a-do-ra-ble, it's so vintage, I just a-do-re it, it reminds me of when I was a little girl". Hmm. But it's cheap, at £50. But it's heavy, and the extra horses would eat the price difference with the lighter one. And turning into narrow Seething Lane with that wagon... Hmm. But the newer coach would scream "new money". Hmm... gotta choose soon... Zzzz.
Sam thanks to brother Thomas has narrowly averted the most dreadfull disaster. Pray imagine, if you can, arriving at these temples of fashion where our CoA likes to see and be seen by the Quality - the theaters, Unthanke's, the Pell-Mell, glittering French dinners in Islington, the Duke's - in something "out of fashion and heavy"? The disdainful doormen directing him to the trade entrance, the impatient catcalls from other drivers ("move it, grandpa, you're taking all the street"), the cruel jests at the Society - whose chief interests include improving coaches and their suspension ("a most interesting presentation by Mr. Pepys on the Historie of Ox-cartes"), the ladies unwilling to clamber aboard ("my physician is definite that I should walk in the rain once a week"). Why not go about in a frill and pilgrim hat, too, maybe with a sign saying "I'm a dull accountant and have no ambition"? Why not move right away to Brampton?
The faux-pas would be all the worse for the late 1660s being, as for pocket-watches and calculators, an epoch of fairly sudden and rapid innovation in coach design, an art in which England had stood still for some time and was now catching up to France. For a terrifying comparison between a modern, streamlined Charles II coach and a dinosaurian Charles I design, turn to page 112 of Ralph Straus' stunningly comprehensive "Carriages & Coaches: Their History & Their Evolution" (London, 1912), which our book-seller Mr. Google displays at https://gutenberg.org/files/46216…
Could Sam, who had done quite a bit of research and knew his steel-rimmed wheels and his thoroughbrace suspensions, have really fallen for a Charles I? Today's Diary entry is all Straus found on the matter. He comments, at page 128: "It was felt, no doubt, that fashion in carriages as in everything else would speedily change. Mr. Pepys must have found considerable difficulty in making up his mind. The new chariots were small, light and, so far as he knew, most fashionable; but possibly they were not quite to his taste, and equally possibly they might not be fashionable in ten years’ time." And Sam, with his wall-hangings &c., is more conservative bourgeois than rake, after all. "Also they perhaps lacked the solid dignity of the older carriages, and were less likely to attract public attention—two important considerations." And in the rutted, rubble-strewn London streets, solid dignity may indeed be more advisable than flimsy elegance. "In the end, however, he seems to have chosen a large coach of the old style. Mr. Povey saw it, and poor Pepys knew at once that a dreadful mistake had been made."
"Understand", Sam tells the new girl, "you are to stay only till I get that coach, then we'll get a boy. For what could such a delightful maiden as you understand of mechanicks, eh? Urgh, urgh, urgh".
New Girl duly blushes, pretty hands entwined and eyes downcast. "Of course, Sir. 'Twouldn't be proper, Sir". New Girl also thinks, *No way I'd wanna be around that cheapo clunker you're gonna buy anyway, you miser. Now, if you'd gone for a Bellingham with Mr. Hooke's thoroughbrace suspension, I'd have stuck for that and maybe even brought my toolbag...*
Three alternative Pepyses, each sitting in his parallel universe, have arrayed their notes and prepare to fill out those 13 blank pages in their Journall. -------------------------------------------------------- "Up, and..." Pepys I's quill stops indecisively in mid-air. *And what? I sat all morning and did my business? How many hours is it gonna take to write up two weeks? And what's the point of wasting my eyesight on this tripe anyway, nobody will ever read this damn diary. Time I could spend answering the mail, buying a coach, hanging pictures with Bess, tocando cosas... Arrh.* A fat drop of ink falls on the desk and makes a stain. Sam ruins a lace cuff in wiping it, then one of the cardboard tubes from his spectacles falls off. Hewer cracks the door open: "Mr. Pepys? They're starting the staff meeting". -------------------------------------------------------- "Up and..." Pepys II's quill stops indecisively in mid-air. *What can I possibly write of those events that won't get me into the Thames? My lord Sandwich was covertly made a Grand Inquisitor by his Catholick Majestie of Spain. King Charles' secret Jesuit guard took us to Saxham, where at a Sabbath we kissed the arse of the great archdevil Astaroth and pledged to deliver England to the Pope and the French. I saw the King get drunk on the blood of little children.* Hewer cracks the door open: "Mr. Pepys? My lord lieutenant of the Tower is here to get 'those notes', he says. Said you'd understand." -------------------------------------------------------- "Up and..." Pepys III's quill stops indecisively in mid-air. *What was that? Voices again?* He turns around - no one else is there. *What? It sounds like distant laughter.* He can almost make words: "Very funny, Robert"; "I agree, Susan". *Aaaah! It's those people from the future again! Always peeking, reading over his shoulder, commenting!* Is he going madd? Are those the voice of daemons, warming his place in Hell already? Sam flings quill and notebook across the room. "Away!! Leave me alone!" Hewer cracks the door open: "Mr. Pepys? Is everything all right?"
Ooh, we forgot. Our baroquepunk Dymo of course has either a charcoal or (more expensive) a tiny ink brush to caress the embossed paper as it wends out. Ink and glue sold separately.
The Dymo Corporation (not Dynamo) is alive and well, and seems truly a Behemoth of Labell-making. Alongside a range of Optickal printers it still churns out "embossing label makers" (the "Rhino M1011" displayed at https://www.dymo.com/label-makers… is quite fearsome), which bring tears of nostalgia and lyrical reviews from aficionados who, indeed, seem old enough to foist them on their kids and vinyl records.
Sam, who back in February (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) had enrolled Bess and Deb. in a whole day of messy label-making for his books, would certainly have jumped at a Dymo Labelmaker. Let us imagine a pre-steampunk model (baroquepunk, then), an ornate instrument in bronze where a thin paper tape is embossed then gets a thin coating of glue. The mechanism is a trifle, making sufficiently fluid glue is surely within the reach of 17C chymists, and embossing was well in hand, at least for textiles (see https://refashioningrenaissance.e…)
Or would Sam-the-puritan have dismissed it as a vain toy, as he recently did calculating machines, and prevailed over Sam-the-technophile and his alarum watches?
On Saturday last we had left Capt. Silas Taylor (in https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) frantically searching for a boat that his Majestie could use to cross from Harwich to Landguard Fort, on his inspection of the eastern provinces. Today he has a happier report to Sam (now State Paper No. 127 at https://books.google.fr/books?id=…) in which he tells at length how the royal visit went. "Not having any boat or barge fit to receive him, I made a stage to run into the water, upon which he landed"; that's a bit puzzling, given that today it's a 2-kilometer crossing (see a map at https://www.bing.com/maps/?mkt=en…) but perhaps in 1668 the river Stour was narrower.
Anyway. The color we get on Charles' expedition is that it's pretty big, also involving York, Monmouth, Buckingham, Richmond, three other bigwigs big enough to be named, "&c." and their army of servants and hangers-on. Charles didn't sleep at the captain's house after all, he stayed aboard the yacht Henrietta (profile at https://threedecks.org/index.php?…) Along the way, discussing the house, yard property which Silas had amiably told him was really the king's and the object of much admiration, Charles is quoted as proudly telling York, "brother, this house is my house". Or maybe Charles calls Jamie "bro" but Silas doesn't say.
Then the king gets to visiting the fort. "He landed alone the next day, Sunday, at 6 o'clock", and walks 5 miles (8 km). Then we catch him "[e]xamining some drafts [plans of the fortifications] offered by Sir Bernard [de Gomme, a top military engineer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ber…] which he rectified in the field at 2 or 3 stations, with his own hand, by a black lead pen and ruler".
That's pretty hands-on. Charles the popinjay king, criticized for being all pleasure, whips out his black lead pen (let's hope he didn't chew on it) and corrects De Gomme's blueprints, a bit like Kim Jong-un giving "on-the-spot guidance" at a missile factory (for anyone unfamiliar with North Korea, he does that a lot, also correcting blueprints in his own hand while sycophants around him nod in approval and take notes). Maybe De Gomme winced, enthusing, "ooh, an excellent improvement your Majestie, how did we miss that?" while giving a kick to his fellow Dutch aide-de-camp (yea, de Gomme was Dutch) who whispered "nu gaat het instorten [now it's gonna collapse], imbeciel".
Charles & Co. also had a few drinks. The king declined wine "because it was supper time", a show of temperance that shows how he's not debauched everyday; later he had chocolate while "his Royal Highness and others drank Canary".
Comments
Second Reading
About Thursday 19 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Westminster, early morning: James, duke of York, sips his chocolate by his favorite fireplace. An usher discreetly introduces Navy comptroller Vice Admiral Sir John Mennes, intelligencer Sir Joseph Williamson, and Sir Stephen Fox, army paymaster and recipient of vast budgets for "secret services". Williamson tenders a thin file.
"The Pepys file", the duke guesses. "Thankfully not so thick".
"Indeed, your grace", Williamson says. "But we were right to worry that the fracas lately issuing from Pepys House could deserve the Crown's attention. 'Twas a woman, of course. Your grace knows our Clerk of the Acts..."
"A most devoted servant of his Majestie", York says with a wink and a nod.
"In this case, his errands around London grew so frantic yesterday, and took him to parts so disreputable and so thick with our Agents, that my man needed but two hours to figure his interest: The maid of one Doctor Allbon..."
"Known to you?" York asks.
"A poor, broken fellow", Fox supplies. "But the name is Scot, of course".
"Scotland?" York's mind veers to a thousand theories of sedition and Conspiracies.
"For the sake of discretion we haven't hauled him in yet but we checked www.ancestry.co.uk and the best matches were at www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collect…", and they're all Scots."
"Our trusted Clerk and repository of every Naval secret was also tailed by two Dutch agents and one French, so discreet was he", Williamson says. "Mr. Pepys cares for his appearance, so as things stand, the potential for blackmail..."
"Should, for instance, this broke Scot doctor realize what he's got on his doorstep..."
"Yes, yes, I see", York says.
"We can neutralize some of the key characters", Fox suggests eagerly.
A shrug of ducal shoulders... but without the raised eyebrows that would mean assent, to Fox's slight dismay. York instead asks for notepaper and a quill, scribbles a few words, folds and seals the note. "I have a better idea. Mr Mennes?" The admiral wakes up with a jolt, "ha! Your R'yal 'ness?"
"Pray have this note delivered by a trusted hand to Mrs. Pepys' personal and private attention. Let us lance the boil while it is still small."
"Use Sam's factotum", Williamson adds - with Mennes it never hurts to give precise instructions. "What's his name, Brewer?"
"Hewer", Mennes recalls. "Yes, he'll be perfect. I'll do this right away, while Mr Pepys is at the Office."
From a pocket the duke of York fishes out a fat, freshly-minted gold coin, hands it to Mennes. "Leave that with the boy for his discretion and service to England. Good. So, gentlemen, chill weather, what? An early winter, I say. Chocolate, anyone?"
About Wednesday 18 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Sam, on intelligence that the Target is in somewhere about Lincoln's Inn Fields (mapped at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) paces the Strand (https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) in hope of seeing Her at a window. Scant hope indeed, though there is a thin section of the Strand where, perhaps maybe, one could sight the back windows of some building that could be described as "on Lincoln's Inn Fields". Another sign of the patient not being completely rational at this point, though still rational enough not to go 'round the Fields instead, which could have improved the odds but for the Fields apparently being a good place to get mugged by vagrants.
Apart from that, for any problem in London, trust to your wily, all-knowing porter... special rates for gentlemen seeking to (har har) pass a note to a gentlelady to ask how she is. Discretion guaranteed, even for those customers well known around the village that is Whitehall. Why, if Sam had tried the next porter down, he'd have run into this new fellow, one Fygaro, who knows just how to get a note inside the Doctor's house, and could have slipped Sam inside, perhaps dressed as a soldier with papers to claim he's billetted there. Can fix your wig, too.
About Monday 16 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Whetstone's Park! The very name makes the skin crawl under the rich brocade of our waistcoat. Illegally developed over 30 years ago by a Mr Whetstone but never torn down despite orders, it now festers and hobbles in the twilight zone as "a centre of vice and gambling", as http://www.shadyoldlady.com/locat… puts it - referencing a text at https://www.british-history.ac.uk… dated from 1878, by which time it had degenerated to "an almost untenanted row (...) now chiefly turned into stables". In the 1720s London geographer John Strypes (quoted at https://gutenberg.org/files/21411…) will remember it as "once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants." As of 1668 it courses between Holborn, lately noted for its badwy houses when they were torn down in the eponymous riots of March 1667, and St. Giles, a slightly better neighborhood but still home to a hospital for the poor (need we say more). Just to the south are Lincoln's Inn Fields, "head-quarters of beggars by day and of robbers at night ", on which our 1878 history heaps more fetid-slum descriptions.
So, a fit address for a low-lying "poor broken fellow" (a.k.a. a "wretch"), a proper circle of Hell in which to send your rival, and, while he's no stranger to the better parts of Holborn, hardly the place where an upright Pepys should walk about - unless blinded by Love, with his wig discreetly tucked away.
About Sunday 15 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
And so the past week's entries, nearly 3,000 words of detailed happenings in chronological order and full, rigorous, high-resolution self-examination of Sam's inner mood and feelings, were all written in one go and today, after the fact, and without skimping on the first days in the series. Mr Pepys should consider writing novels, he has it in himself. Also we trust he felt better after putting all this turmoil on paper; he should consider inventing psychotherapy.
We note also that a lot of this private writing was done in the Office. Mr Pepys spending hours hunched on his little private black book, writing things in cypher... How would it look like to a suspicious eye? He wasn't the only gentleman keeping a diary, but still. He must have put the "Do not disturb" sign on the door.
About Friday 13 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The Diary makes it look like Sam "staid" at the Treasury for political tourism, but their minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…) record that he did have business there, which came last and concerned the cutback, already discussed a couple of days ago in a letter from Steven Fox (see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) to the budget for the garrison at Tangiers. "Mr. Pepys' warrant for the quarter ending November last is to be divided, and a warrant made at present for 10,000L. on the Customs. The remainder to be suspended till it has been adjusted to what time Tangier is to have only 55,500L. per an[num]". Fox was also there.
The minutes devote a full 381 words to my Lord Gerard vs. the town of Newcastle, and (likely to the commission reporter's relief) make no allusion to the political mud-slinging to which my lord resorted, and which seems to have got most of Sam's attention. They do make the town's case look better, describing (in their words, paraphrased) my lord as an absentee landlord that was all squeeze and no investment, and his defense as all foot-stamping that only the King could judge his case. It's easy to see how it could have gone downhill from there. Clearly it was quite a melee, and one imagine Sam almost forgetting why he was there, until the exhausted commissioners saw him, the last petitioner left in the back of the room -- now almost empty, strewn with papers and a forgotten wig -- and ticked off that last agenda item before going to lunch.
The costs of Tangier however are on more than a few minds today, since Denis Gauden, at the Victualling Office, also wrote to the Navy Commissioners to complain of being allocated just £8 per man-day for ships at Tangiers; "I intreat you to (...) consider the difference between victualling at Tangier and in England" (State Papers, https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
About Thursday 12 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
We encourage the Royal Society's noble fellows, instead of giggling at Mr. Hooke's expt. on testicles, to pay attention to Sig. Donato Rosetti, one of the great, lately ignored, thinkers of the Age, like Galileo in some trouble with the (popish) (ignoble) Inquisition, and who thought "That there is noe ether". The Curator henceforth to be more precise on the titles of books.
Today we had another revelation from espying one of two letters written to Mr. Pepys, found in the State Papers. The first, from John Tinker in Portsmouth, is nothing special and relates how the boatswain of the ship Adventure embezzled sails and cables taken from a French prize (bad!) and, more remarkably, that the ship's gunner is said to have also sold two of the guns (really!)
The other letter is from Edward Byland in Woolwich, who wants Sam to look to various supplies and maintenance for Woolwich, and whose summary concludes: "Wants the plumber to mend the pump, the yard being without water".
Perhaps this shows the depth of our aristocratic inattention to such trifles, but we didn't know that in 1668 England (or anywhere else, really) has plumbers - not in the sense of a tradesman working with lead [latin plumbum], a species surely found all over the rooftops and the occasional drainpipe and which would go back to Antiquity, but here as someone to fix the pump, clearly not made of lead. We note however that it takes connections and a letter to the government to get one, and that Sam had a list of good ones. No wonder he's so popular.
About Wednesday 11 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The Treasury's minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…) while not recording all these staff changes, mention today that "Sir Ste. Fox is to see Mr. Pepys' warrant (for 17,500L. for Tangier for the quarter ended the 4th inst.) to say if he have any exceptions to it and to examine when the reduction [of the garrison] of Tangier is to begin".
Sandwich on his inspection there had heard many complaints of the military lording it over Tangiers' civilians and merchants like it owned the place, and downsizing the garrison had been part of his recommendations, which are perhaps making their way after all. If so, Sam could be making some enemies, as Sandwich's man and if his fingerprints are on the downsize.
Separately the minutes also note that "Mr. Montague moves for a fund for money for plate for him. The Privy Council to be moved concerning the plate for Ambassadors". Could this be about My Lord Sandwich, an Ambassador currently in some need of plate? But surely they wouldn't write of him as just "Mr. Montague"?
About Sunday 8 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
For the record the State Papers today contain a somewhat interesting letter, to Sam from John Tinker in Portsmouth, on his efforts to get two ropemakers to rat on the usual thieveries and frauds in the yard. One, a Mr. Tong, does so only because "the goods embezzled are sold at a cheaper rate" than his own. Just deal with it, John, OK? Mr Pepys is busy.
About Monday 9 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Thank you Terry for the link you posted in 2017 and 2020 to "The Life of Edward Montagu, K.G., First Earl of Sandwich", a massive biography published in 1912 by F. R. Harris. Harris opines that My Lord should really have asked cousin Sam to write his speech, because "his [Sandwich's] extant letters show him to have been the most prolix of writers, and he was evidently a poor speaker. He was crushed by the weight of his material".
But, speaking of being crushed, and before we shed tears on how My Lord's want of eloquence hurt his legacy and reputation, let's note that, among his suggestions for the improvement of Tangiers, Harris writes (at page 165) that "He would have had all Barbary Jews banished, for they spied, they betrayed the prices of our commodities, and 'they are beggars, and sucke the monye out of the inhabitants' purses'". By 1839 the Barbary Jews accounted for one-quarter of the population of Tangiers (see https://bible-in-spain-annotated.…) We join them in thanking whatever power made Lord Montagu fumble his speech today, and as a side benefit for not dragging Sam Pepys into it.
About Friday 6 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Meanwhile, mylord Sandwich, and indirectly our Sam, cannot but be interested in this here State Paper, which closes the "Accounts of the Earl of Sandwich's expenses and receipts as Ambassador Extraordinary to Spain and Portugal, 1666-1668", after they were "examined by the Committee for Foreign Affairs, and allowed with certain reductions".
Earlier this year we had our own debates on what the damage might be, given the eye-popping cost of Court life on the one hand, and the gratuities which (if he behaves) an Ambassador can expect, on the other. Our friend the Venetian ambassador in London, for instance, has bemoaned the rapacious rent he has to pay for his rooms and the extravagant cost of everything in England, and from reports on him and other ambassadors of the time it seems a staff (or entourage) of about 40 people, including a bunch of other nobles used to the good life, is typical of a big Embassy (that would still be a mid-size European embassy as of 2021). On the happy side, recall the 4,000 doublons which Her Catholic majestie of Spain had granted Sandwich "for his maintenance" (see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) and perhaps also the humongous wine licenses more recently signed off to French ambassador Colbert in London. All in all, we had opined that a warrant for £5,000 issued in February "for the entertainment of the Earl of Sandwich (...) and for other expenses in that embassy" (noted at https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) was quite enough.
Well, oopsie. The final numbers (at https://books.google.fr/books?id=…, "Entry Book 30, f. 100" of Nov. 6) are "total receipts, 18,395L. 2s. 0d.; total expenses for ordinaries, 29,965L. 3s. 0d.; for extraordinaries, 7,574L. 18s. 3d", to a total negative balance of £19,144. No wonder cousin Sam was kindly asked for help make ends meet, but, oy nobles, did you think your titles were a free gift just because the king likes you?
But what about the Queen Regent's doublons then? We thought they converted into over £40k. Or were they totally off the books?
By coincidence, this afternoon the Treasury also went (at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) over the budget for the Ambassador to Sweden, currently the coat-turning Earl of Carlisle, and warranted him £10 a day for ordinary (coffee, pencils, horsefeed, &c.), about the same per diem as Sandwich burned in Spain and so perhaps a standard rate (and about what most commoners make in a year, but that's for another day). The council, however, put off a request for wardrobe and jewels; presumably those would be the timid start of "extraordinaries".
About Friday 6 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Aye, so what did happen on November 6 then? Were the entries just swapped and should we turn to that for November 5? Snap to it, man! We do know that on this Friday morning you were at the Treasury Board, where a minute [found at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…] records that "Mr. Pepys [was asked] to show how his business stands as to the 10,000L. he is to have of the Customs out of the Exchequer". And where was your mind while the question was asked, and maybe had to be asked again?
Why, something is distracting Mr. Pepys, who is now, uncharacteristically, fumbling with his papers. Old Albermarle, squirming from the dropsy in his Lord High Treasurer's chair at the head of the table, nods and thinks, "so you are now truly one of us, brother Pepys. Already senile".
About Sunday 1 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
For the record, an article has just appeared in PLoS One: "Batavia shipwreck timbers reveal a key to Dutch success in 17th-century world trade" (open access at https://journals.plos.org/plosone…) The timber in VOC shipwrecks is dated and analyzed with all the skill of this Age. It is found to have been sourced in Northern Europe from rather more diverse locations than England has access to (no big surprise there) and to have been selected with "Masterly" and "profound knowledge about the soft and perishable nature of sapwood (the outermost part of the wood, just beneath the bark), and its susceptibility to insect attack". All this, together with "Innovative ship design" of the sort Charles presently hopes to be buying from Laurens van Heemskerck, was "key to Dutch success in world-wide trade". The ships thus put under the microscope were all built decades ago in the 1620s but we think Sam would still find the article quite relevant given the hard time he has sourcing good timber from England's dwindling forests.
About Friday 30 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Indeed, and Straus' choice of illustrations make the matter easy to comment upon, but in fairness we don't know that it's all the choice Sam was offer'd. In 1668 there are quite a few coach-makers, and they may all have their catalogs and conventions exist, but since Mr. Ford's black Model T is still far in the future and everything is made to order, the variety could be infinite.
It could, but was it? There aren't a lot of extant coaches, or contemporary street views showing enough of them, that are precisely dated, clear and not about stage-coaches or royal carriages. Mr Google has shown us "Hackney coaches in London, 1637" (https://cartographicperspectives.…) where they do look all the same and are indeed boxy four-wheelers, as well as a post-Fire engraving of "the second Royal Exchange, Cornhill" (https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) which has 4-5 that look like the nimbler Charles II chariots and also kinda all look the same. Other examples would be nice to find. What Mr Google had to show when we queried his image collection on "Sam Pepys coach" was quite a surprise, but didn't help resolve the issue.
About Friday 30 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Lying in bed next to becalmed Mrs Pepys, Sam in the quiet of the night listens to the whispers in his head, of what he secretly thinks as the "People from the Future". Tonight they seem to phant'sy choosing his coach... How droll, and they seem to agree with Povy. But he can't decide. How difficult to navigate are the currents of the aristocracy! You look too austere and you're a Roundhead, too flash and you're above your station. You have to find just the right balance. Consider Sir Joseph Williamson, all subdued elegance and discreet professionalism in his portrait at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki…, contrast him with his boss Arlington and all his ribbons at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki…. Flash and young and you're a rake they'll try to drag into their games...
He knows how dear Knepp would react. "Why Sammy, is that your coach? How a-do-ra-ble, it's so vintage, I just a-do-re it, it reminds me of when I was a little girl". Hmm. But it's cheap, at £50. But it's heavy, and the extra horses would eat the price difference with the lighter one. And turning into narrow Seething Lane with that wagon... Hmm. But the newer coach would scream "new money". Hmm... gotta choose soon... Zzzz.
About Friday 30 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Sam thanks to brother Thomas has narrowly averted the most dreadfull disaster. Pray imagine, if you can, arriving at these temples of fashion where our CoA likes to see and be seen by the Quality - the theaters, Unthanke's, the Pell-Mell, glittering French dinners in Islington, the Duke's - in something "out of fashion and heavy"? The disdainful doormen directing him to the trade entrance, the impatient catcalls from other drivers ("move it, grandpa, you're taking all the street"), the cruel jests at the Society - whose chief interests include improving coaches and their suspension ("a most interesting presentation by Mr. Pepys on the Historie of Ox-cartes"), the ladies unwilling to clamber aboard ("my physician is definite that I should walk in the rain once a week"). Why not go about in a frill and pilgrim hat, too, maybe with a sign saying "I'm a dull accountant and have no ambition"? Why not move right away to Brampton?
The faux-pas would be all the worse for the late 1660s being, as for pocket-watches and calculators, an epoch of fairly sudden and rapid innovation in coach design, an art in which England had stood still for some time and was now catching up to France. For a terrifying comparison between a modern, streamlined Charles II coach and a dinosaurian Charles I design, turn to page 112 of Ralph Straus' stunningly comprehensive "Carriages & Coaches: Their History & Their Evolution" (London, 1912), which our book-seller Mr. Google displays at https://gutenberg.org/files/46216…
Could Sam, who had done quite a bit of research and knew his steel-rimmed wheels and his thoroughbrace suspensions, have really fallen for a Charles I? Today's Diary entry is all Straus found on the matter. He comments, at page 128: "It was felt, no doubt, that fashion in carriages as in everything else would speedily change. Mr. Pepys must have found considerable difficulty in making up his mind. The new chariots were small, light and, so far as he knew, most fashionable; but possibly they were not quite to his taste, and equally possibly they might not be fashionable in ten years’ time." And Sam, with his wall-hangings &c., is more conservative bourgeois than rake, after all. "Also they perhaps lacked the solid dignity of the older carriages, and were less likely to attract public attention—two important considerations." And in the rutted, rubble-strewn London streets, solid dignity may indeed be more advisable than flimsy elegance. "In the end, however, he seems to have chosen a large coach of the old style. Mr. Povey saw it, and poor Pepys knew at once that a dreadful mistake had been made."
About Tuesday 20 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
"Understand", Sam tells the new girl, "you are to stay only till I get that coach, then we'll get a boy. For what could such a delightful maiden as you understand of mechanicks, eh? Urgh, urgh, urgh".
New Girl duly blushes, pretty hands entwined and eyes downcast. "Of course, Sir. 'Twouldn't be proper, Sir". New Girl also thinks, *No way I'd wanna be around that cheapo clunker you're gonna buy anyway, you miser. Now, if you'd gone for a Bellingham with Mr. Hooke's thoroughbrace suspension, I'd have stuck for that and maybe even brought my toolbag...*
About Monday 19 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Three alternative Pepyses, each sitting in his parallel universe, have arrayed their notes and prepare to fill out those 13 blank pages in their Journall.
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"Up, and..." Pepys I's quill stops indecisively in mid-air. *And what? I sat all morning and did my business? How many hours is it gonna take to write up two weeks? And what's the point of wasting my eyesight on this tripe anyway, nobody will ever read this damn diary. Time I could spend answering the mail, buying a coach, hanging pictures with Bess, tocando cosas... Arrh.* A fat drop of ink falls on the desk and makes a stain. Sam ruins a lace cuff in wiping it, then one of the cardboard tubes from his spectacles falls off. Hewer cracks the door open: "Mr. Pepys? They're starting the staff meeting".
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"Up and..." Pepys II's quill stops indecisively in mid-air. *What can I possibly write of those events that won't get me into the Thames? My lord Sandwich was covertly made a Grand Inquisitor by his Catholick Majestie of Spain. King Charles' secret Jesuit guard took us to Saxham, where at a Sabbath we kissed the arse of the great archdevil Astaroth and pledged to deliver England to the Pope and the French. I saw the King get drunk on the blood of little children.* Hewer cracks the door open: "Mr. Pepys? My lord lieutenant of the Tower is here to get 'those notes', he says. Said you'd understand."
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"Up and..." Pepys III's quill stops indecisively in mid-air. *What was that? Voices again?* He turns around - no one else is there. *What? It sounds like distant laughter.* He can almost make words: "Very funny, Robert"; "I agree, Susan". *Aaaah! It's those people from the future again! Always peeking, reading over his shoulder, commenting!* Is he going madd? Are those the voice of daemons, warming his place in Hell already? Sam flings quill and notebook across the room. "Away!! Leave me alone!" Hewer cracks the door open: "Mr. Pepys? Is everything all right?"
About Saturday 17 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Ooh, we forgot. Our baroquepunk Dymo of course has either a charcoal or (more expensive) a tiny ink brush to caress the embossed paper as it wends out. Ink and glue sold separately.
About Saturday 17 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The Dymo Corporation (not Dynamo) is alive and well, and seems truly a Behemoth of Labell-making. Alongside a range of Optickal printers it still churns out "embossing label makers" (the "Rhino M1011" displayed at https://www.dymo.com/label-makers… is quite fearsome), which bring tears of nostalgia and lyrical reviews from aficionados who, indeed, seem old enough to foist them on their kids and vinyl records.
Sam, who back in February (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) had enrolled Bess and Deb. in a whole day of messy label-making for his books, would certainly have jumped at a Dymo Labelmaker. Let us imagine a pre-steampunk model (baroquepunk, then), an ornate instrument in bronze where a thin paper tape is embossed then gets a thin coating of glue. The mechanism is a trifle, making sufficiently fluid glue is surely within the reach of 17C chymists, and embossing was well in hand, at least for textiles (see https://refashioningrenaissance.e…)
Or would Sam-the-puritan have dismissed it as a vain toy, as he recently did calculating machines, and prevailed over Sam-the-technophile and his alarum watches?
About Thursday 8 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
On Saturday last we had left Capt. Silas Taylor (in https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) frantically searching for a boat that his Majestie could use to cross from Harwich to Landguard Fort, on his inspection of the eastern provinces. Today he has a happier report to Sam (now State Paper No. 127 at https://books.google.fr/books?id=…) in which he tells at length how the royal visit went. "Not having any boat or barge fit to receive him, I made a stage to run into the water, upon which he landed"; that's a bit puzzling, given that today it's a 2-kilometer crossing (see a map at https://www.bing.com/maps/?mkt=en…) but perhaps in 1668 the river Stour was narrower.
Anyway. The color we get on Charles' expedition is that it's pretty big, also involving York, Monmouth, Buckingham, Richmond, three other bigwigs big enough to be named, "&c." and their army of servants and hangers-on. Charles didn't sleep at the captain's house after all, he stayed aboard the yacht Henrietta (profile at https://threedecks.org/index.php?…) Along the way, discussing the house, yard property which Silas had amiably told him was really the king's and the object of much admiration, Charles is quoted as proudly telling York, "brother, this house is my house". Or maybe Charles calls Jamie "bro" but Silas doesn't say.
Then the king gets to visiting the fort. "He landed alone the next day, Sunday, at 6 o'clock", and walks 5 miles (8 km). Then we catch him "[e]xamining some drafts [plans of the fortifications] offered by Sir Bernard [de Gomme, a top military engineer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ber…] which he rectified in the field at 2 or 3 stations, with his own hand, by a black lead pen and ruler".
That's pretty hands-on. Charles the popinjay king, criticized for being all pleasure, whips out his black lead pen (let's hope he didn't chew on it) and corrects De Gomme's blueprints, a bit like Kim Jong-un giving "on-the-spot guidance" at a missile factory (for anyone unfamiliar with North Korea, he does that a lot, also correcting blueprints in his own hand while sycophants around him nod in approval and take notes). Maybe De Gomme winced, enthusing, "ooh, an excellent improvement your Majestie, how did we miss that?" while giving a kick to his fellow Dutch aide-de-camp (yea, de Gomme was Dutch) who whispered "nu gaat het instorten [now it's gonna collapse], imbeciel".
Charles & Co. also had a few drinks. The king declined wine "because it was supper time", a show of temperance that shows how he's not debauched everyday; later he had chocolate while "his Royal Highness and others drank Canary".