As for the Tuesday of the secret audience, this would have been October 2 (Gregorian, or Sept. 25 Julian). The public entry must have been such an exhausting event that there's no way the secret meet could happen "at the same time", and Piero despite his "impatience" took a leisurely three days to compose his long report. On the other hand, it's not like he had a lot of really usefull news to send home, and he may have twisted his quill this way and that quite a bit to find how to put being fobbed off again in the best light.
On Piero's amazingly detailed report "BEG[ging] THE QUESTION" of what calendar he uses: Venice is this ultra-modern land whence all invention comes - opera, glassware, mirrors such as the northern barbarians can only drool about, while rummaging for a few of their misshapen coins to buy a square yard. Of course it has adopted the newfangled popish invention, the Gregorian calendar. We too were shocked to find out; it makes time as shaky for our Society as a ship's bridge in a storm!
John Evelyn on "17th September", a Thursday, had offered breakfast to the Venetian ambassador, "this being the day of making his public entry" (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) Piero himself sent Venice a detailed report dated September 28 on the spectacular event, which happened "yesterday [so, Sept. 27], a Thursday". Our learned book-seller Mr. Google supplied us with a clever devyce to convert calendars (at https://www.fourmilab.ch/document…) which confirms that the 17th (Julian) is indeed the 27th (Gregorian), and both a Thursday. Argh!
This begs another distressing question, which others more erudite than us have doubtelessly already answered: Which calendar does the Gazette use when it reports foreign dispatches? Now we suspect a patchwork of domestic reports dated in Julian, and foreign news (usually written from the foreigners' standpoint) in Gregorian. To complicate it all, in No. 298 the damn Gazette had a report on Mocenigo's grand entry dated "Sept. 23" and placing it "on Monday last", i.e. 9/21 (Julian).
It supplies the useful detail that the 40 coaches in the ambassador's cavalcade were "Coaches and six Horses" no less. We estimate that the 240 horses, the big coaches and the various escorts on foot and on horse would have made a convoy over 800 meters long. Try to manoeuver that along the ~2 kilometers of twisting streets they navigated from Piero's hourse to the king's barge on dockside. But how could the Gazette print the wrong date for an event so memorable? Or is everyone in England bumbling about and asking "pray, what day are we? I say, I thought we were Monday".
A bleep from the Pepys tracker: It has now seen a letter from Ludkin to Williamson, State Paper No. 116 dated October 6, which says the King passed through Ipswich "on Saturday", October 3, "on his way from Lord Croft's house". If so, this Friday is the latest when he must have been at Croft's, whose digs in Bury St. Edmunds are, like the rest of the King's wanderings in the next few days, northeast of London and nowhere near Guildford or the road from Portsmouth to London, which are far to the south and southwest. So we don't see how Sam can have been with "at Saxham [a village near Bury] (...) during the king's visit", and overnighting in Guildford with Sandwich within less than a couple days at least. If October 1 is when he met My Lord in Southwick, he would have had to turn back immediately after handing over the £500 to be in Bury by October 3.
Maybe all will become clear on October 23? We understand that Sam will leave no doubt on his having been in the king's party. Maybe Charles also stopped at Bury on his way back to London? A bio of the baron (at http://www.clement-jones.com/ps19…) says "Charles visited Baron Crofts at Saxham at least four times, in March 1666, October 1668, April 1670 and October 1676. The main purpose of his visits appears to be to have a good time!"
Another beep on the Pepys tracker: Sir George Downing wrote him from the Treasury, "Do not fail to meet me at Sir Robert Long's house to-morrow, about the money employed for the Fleet, on which we should have met the week before" (State Paper No. 107). His wiki entry says Robert Long MP has a house in Nonsuch, southwest of London and a possible stopover on Sam's way from Portsmouth. Probably there's also a pied-à-terre in London but, if not, either Sir George as he wrote his letter thought Sam was at his desk in the Office, and Sam won't get much rest tonight before he jumps onto another coach (Nonsuch is just far enough to be a pain to get to), or he knew Sam was on the road and a system has been arranged for him to check on the mail.
If the king attended Robert Gertz's resurrected Star Chamber, then he must have did so by magic mirror, as on this day Captain Silas Taylor, our man in Harwich, writes to Sam that "The King and his Royal Highness supped this night at my house, and will lodge here till Monday" (State Paper No. 96, found in the usual place).
The poor captain evidently took time out of a busy day to scratch a whiny letter asking for Sam's help at just the wrong time, when he was on the road on Sandwich duty. First, "Last night", he writes, "the King's Harbingers [his advance party] came and took up all the houses and lodgings". Nice that Silas has a house fit for a king's weekend, though if not his Majestie could do his close-to-the-common-man thing. But he doesn't travel alone, and we rather picture the Court descending like locusts on the good burghers of Harwich, to giggle at their funny accent and outmoded dress; families sent to camp out ("and far, pray, to trouble not his Highness with their noisome smells"); this room hastily repainted in bright pink ("my Lady's favorite color"); the cat drowned in the well ("his Grace is allergic"); pantries stripped bare ("why, look at all this ham and cheese (chomp) why are those beoble alwaych gomblaining? (gulp) And was the tax paid on that wine?") Not to mention those stains in the chapel, that will take weeks to remove ("my, is that catholicism?")
Then the captain is, he writes, "troubled that none of the Navy Commissioners are here, to speak to his Majesty and his Royal Highness about encroachments made upon the yard by the town". Left unsaid is why H.M. can't see that for himself but, aye, the commissioners - they answer his messages with standard letters starting with "Your call is very important to us".
"[A]lso for the want of a boat, when his Majesty comes to Landguard Fort. I am utterly ignorant how to get one supplied. I have stopped all the wherries here and at Ipswich, but not one is fit for them to come into; it is too late now to complain, I must shift as well as I can".
Alas, poor Silas! If he, who represents the Office at Harwich, can't find a simple wherry (a small river boat), who can? Imagine him, running along the wharves in his king-is-here finery, increasingly desperate, while a lieutenant on the beach tries to gain time by showing seashells to the king and duke: "You here! Your boat is requisitioned - pfew! What a foul smell of rotten fish! You can go! You! Argh, the crew's full of buboes! This one? No, they're Dutch. This one, maybe, if we scrub them hard enough? Rats, it just sank. Those are drunk. Those are Dissenters. The 'Glorious Oliver'? I don't think so. Jack? I still owe him ten pounds. Ah, if only Mr. Pepys had been there! Mr. Pepys would know! Mr. Pepys knows everything. Now I will end my days in the Barbadoes, for sure..."
And so concludes the month of September, anno 1668, God save the king. In what vortex has our hero disappeared? Here is a mysterie for our Society to tease, but, to Entertain us in these 13 days, be advised that our book-seller Mr. Google offers volume IX of the State Papers (Domestic) of the reign of Charles II, covering October 1668 to December 1669 in the 1894 edition printed by Eyre & Spottiswood on Fleet Street, at
Aye, in this volume we get all of 14 months, of ships arriving laden with pilchards, passes granted for horses to France and complaints about unpaid bills, clear through December 1669. Why, this should be more than enough for our Purpose, judging by certain prophecie we heard. As we emerged from Mr. Google's, our boy struggling to carry our 800-page tome, this crazy Astrologer was marching by, shouting "the world will end on May 31st, 1669!" Not for nothing does His Majestie wisely forbid such horoscopes. Who will rid us of these phanatickes and charlatans? We promptly had the Watch bundle away the old fool to Newgate.
Everyone seems very relaxed about the incident at the Burlingtons', but we feel it deserves a thorough investigation. This is Sam's beautiful periwigg, the pride of his shaven pate, that we're talkin' about. First, the mechanicks of the event: We were under the impression that said wig reached to shoulder-length, so Sam would have had to sit with his back directly over the flame; how can anyone so used to sealing-candles and to periwiggs, and as alert to open flames as anyone living in 1668, be so negligent? Tut-tut, says Smokey Bear. The alternative is that Sam wasn't sitting but standing, but the candle would then have to be a good 30 centimeters tall, which seems a bit much for sealing letters even in a lordly house.
In this case the fire had to be intense enough for the hair to crackle audibly! We're not talking about some vague smoldering here. Cue Sam yanking off the flaming wig and setting fire to the curtains, the tocsin rung, Londoners throwing their clocks into the river and burying their cheese again, jews and Catholicks killed just in case 'twas them, Louis XIV seizing his chance to invade.
The Curator of Expts. should be directed to stop torturing doggs for a moment and to procure some wigs, to ascertain from what Distance, depending e.g. on the Dryness and Nature of the Hair, would a significant Fire Risk arise, and how ardent the combustion must be for an Audible noise to issue. All periwigged heads in attendance nod approval; it seems more urgent than all this tedious tinkering with air pressure; also, it's not like it never happens. Consider, for instance, the Hogarthian illustration at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik…, which postdates today's entry by over a century but could well be what today's scene looked like? Or this one, more recent still, at https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/T…, which we find hilarious and a proof that Wigs On Fire tend to be considered funny, even though they're likely to hurt a lot?
Wigs on Fire in fact might be as commonplace as inkstains, in a city full of offices full of wigs and sealing candles, since Sam then casually proceeds to Westminster and the Exchequer, fearless of giggles about "liar, liar, wig on fire". Hey, every other bureaucrat or official he meets there also has a few singed locks, it shows how hard you work for His Majestie.
We expect that Sam, swinging by home, picked a fresh wig before heading for the theater, where the working-man look wouldn't do. (If not - Knepp, offstage, twirling a hairlock: "My Sammy-boy needs a patch for his wiggy? Why sir, would you peruse our catalog?") But while buying more ribbons rates a mention, fixing the wig doesn't.
The public entry of Venetian ambassador Piero Mocenigo wasn't a small thing, by the way. He describes it at length (in document 348, dated September 28 - Gregorian - at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) 40 coaches carrying Piero, Anglesey, Arundel and hundreds of courtiers, parading for 3 miles, a 20-gun salute, a big State dinner, the works. The convoy, going all over the place to show off while trying to stick to the least ruined parts of London, may have passed by the Office's neighborhood before dropping everyone off at the barges. But Sam wasn't invited despite all the connections he could have used (HM, HRH, the Navy, Tangiers, Evelyn, or maybe he was and declined). Our intrepid reporter also didn't go sightsee despite his attraction for the royal glitter, and stuck to his paperwork, then was busy with girls and the theater.
Not-so-fast. It seems a bit early for Gauden to pop the bubbly, because, says our summary of the Order in Council, he still has to "tak[e] into co-partnership within 15 days 2 other fit and responsible persons approved by the King". So the job is so big that he needs two subcontractors; no surprise there, but how come, after all these weeks of negotiations, that he has to be given (or at any rate, is given) two weeks to produce them and get them approved? It looks like, after getting four bids, checking and re-checking them, and the Council spending an hour on it, all we have is a price and very likely Sam's kickback, but not a lot of visibility or confidence on how the Gauden Corp. will pull it off.
Sam and Dennis are kicking back, with mutual toasts and winks aplenty. "So when can I phant'sy meeting your two mysterious partners, Dennis? Less than two weeks, I trust". Gauden, after another sip: "Oh, have no concern, Mr. Pepys. All's in hand. They'll be on time. The Dutch are very reliable". Sam chokes on his bubbly and almost drops his glass: "Dutch??" "Well, aye. Good butter in those biscuits. 'Twas either them or Soleiman General Supply in Constantinople, to meet those prices. What's the problem? The French buy everything from them too".
In case you wonder if there would be any bubbly in any case - yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His… says as of 1668 it was flowing in London, and "the English were among the first who saw the tendency of Champagne to sparkle as a desirable trait".
Re-reading this Society's lively debate of 2011 on the merits of private contractors vs. civil servants, we also wonder if we're likely to hear the same in the salons of 1668 (this gives us a good excuse to put on our best wig and go sample the port). Because, as HRH's kind sentiments attest, the King, to whom England by the grace of God personally belongs, doesn't have either contractors or a civil service, he has servants. He can kick them around, and their letters show often enough that he pays them out of compassion, when they end up invoking a feudal obligation that's often been buttressed by actual military service, not clause 3.5A in some contract supposed to bind him. Sam with his competitive tenders (did he have compliance matrices?) and the Navy as one big centralized enterprise were just ahead of their time.
Thomas Povey may not have been the brightest bulb in Sam's opinion, but he wrote "I have seen the wonders of the Peak, wherein I travelled underground; and beautiful Chatsworth, glorious in its structure" - why, that sounds like Coleridge. Evelyn was right to call him "a nice contriver of all elegancies" (as we see in https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…)
Williamson was clearly expected to chucke at his vignettes of those second-tier earls and dukes Povey toured, for whatever motive; he seems to have been on a mission, unaddressed in his letter. So what could be this mysterious Peak he beheld, with its mine or (if England had any) tunnel? How was the wife of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle and author of Sam's favorite comedy "Sir Martin Mar-all", the "Queen of Sheba"?
We also like, in today's State Papers, No. 143, a petition to the King from two French bakers, Adrian le Pore and Sam. Caron, who want the bakers guild, who wants to shut them down 'coz they're foreigners, to leave them alone because "their trade (...) is for their countrymen only, and (...) not to the disadvantage of any English baker".
Which implies that there's enough French in London to sustain a French bakery, and that they'd rather shop there than at an English bakery (this we understand, religion apart - English bread, pfwargh). And it's been like this since Henry VIII, one of whose century-old laws they invoke. But if you're English and throw a French dinner, of the fashionable sort that so impressed Sam a few months ago (to the point of rigging one up too, if memory serves) - how do you get the right bread, then? If, poor you, you don't have a French cook to send to the French bakery? Do you then don a fake French moustache, and a fake Inspector-Clouzeau accent? ("I will tekk zis nice baguette oveur zere, plize"). Of course Sam could send Betty.
Blount/Hull and Granger don't make it easy on us by having such bland names. A "padder" was, dictionaries inform us, a thief who stole on foot, so little more than a pickpocket; small fry. Note that you had to be a bit crazy to do it in London during the plague; maybe he just robbed empty houses, like everyone else. Then he graduated to stealing mail, a capital crime from which photo IDs and barred checks were later to remove all the fun.
He didn't make it to our favorite encyclopedia of villains, the Newgate Calendar, or in any other record which our bookseller Mr. Google has at hand. But so did Thomas Lympus, who had also planned to decamp to France but was caught and hung by the neck in 1739 - the Calendar, written in the mid-19C, sighs on this occasion that "the security now given to our mail-coaches render[s] an open attempt on them impracticable, unless sustained by a whole band of robbers" [https://www.exclassics.com/newgat…, with a nice engraving]. So also did Huffey White and Richard Kendall, executed in 1813, after stealing "from the Leeds mail (...) a bill of exchange for £200 which became due on the following day", a real case of simultaneous good/bad luck [https://www.exclassics.com/newgat…] A quick search of http://www.britishexecutions.co.uk for keyword "mail" recalls around 70 of these sad stories through the mid-19C.
But not Blount et al. We hope they'll surface in some future State Paper, because hey, they didn't just steal letters of exchange but forged them to up the value; put stuff back in the next day's bag to be undiscovered, which shows some brains; potentially had a way of getting into the House of Commons; had that French connection (ha!), valuable in itself in these post-war months when the Quality is settling bills for its manors in Normandy, and quite a few money orders must be crossing the Channel; and - what's this? Arresting them would be a "particular service to" my lord Arlington? Now that's piquant. Now that's another level. What did Blount get his hands on that so annoys the secretary of State, at such an interesting time in England's relation with France?
More on "le bouquet", of Colbert spreading plague as well as cash: Sir Richard Bulstrode caught the rumor as well, and two days ago (on September 12) debunked it in his own diary: "The report of the sickness being in the French ambassador's house is found to have noe ground, one page haveing only happened to dye after a sickness, as the ambassador says, of many weekes, and all his family not haveing now one sick person in it" (https://archive.org/details/bulst…, page 60).
So, all's fine. "Noe ground". Colbert, on Leicester House's doorstep, thanks the assembled newsmen, declines requests to show his groin and armpits, and hands everyone a purse. We're all a bit hair-triggered, though, uh? As a reminder though, you can't catch the sickness by handling money.
More material has come to our attention on how and when to send bags of cash to Portsmouth. In his Memoirs, Sir Richard Bulstrode MP will write on September 10 that the King, having planned to swing by Portsmouth on the next day, "appointed 10,000 pounds to be immediately sent down to pay off the Guards there, and accordingly the money was ordered to be sent down in cartes, under a safe guard, to be there this day at farthest".
So cartes, not coaches. And the yards aren't the only place in Portsmouth where the money's raining this week - assuming it's not all the same £10,000, and Clifford's "yards" are indeed the shipyards and not Bulstrode's "Guards", or vice versa. And we have to admire His Majestie's astuteness, in visiting a place just after (aye, not before!) everyone has been paid off, especially everyone holding a musket. With the royal visit, the Portsmouth taverns must have been interesting indeed.
Sir Richard's papers are in Mr. Google's book-shop at https://archive.org/details/bulst…, unfortunately in an Inconvenient format; this at their page 60.
No wonder HRH passed the file to Wren (York, shaking head in disbelief after scanning a few lines: "Mr. Wren, is that truly what common Members of the Publick do all day?" "Why yes, your royal highness, in the King's service of course". "How droll. Have more chocolate, Wren, it's way more than one poor duke can drink"). And yea, imagine how some of those guys, now retired to the farm in far Somerset with a peg-leg, gangrene, PTSD and overdue pay, may have reacted to some deskbound Admiral in London asking for how many sausages they had really truly signed off 4 years ago.
Thank you again JWB of 2011, wherever you be now, for giving Penn a voice and his rightful right to respond. Often has the Admiral, seen here through Sam's eyes mainly, been treated by our Society as a buffoon, a false rogue, a bad host and a Thrower of Shite Over the Leads. We say Justice, Justice for Admiral Sir Will!
The "Memorials of the Professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn, Knt.", two volumes, totalling well over 1,000 pages, published in 1833 by his great-grandson Granville Penn, owes much to Sam, quoting whole pages of the Diary where alas, Penn didn't have the foresight (or the time) to write his own (except apparently during his glorious Caribbean service), but Granville makes it clear what a false rogue this Pepys too, in his ruthless betrayals of the man who had taught him his job; check out pages 486-489 in particular, on Sam concealing evidence to deflect the prize-ships inquiry from Sandwich to Penn back in April.
Anyway. At pages 514-519, does Penn's response to the Great Letter appear in full. It's a monument of grovelling, for which York surrounded as he must have been with grovellers and genuflections, must have had little patience indeed, also featuring a lot of whining and excuses about poor health, and assurances of dutiful office attendance and "stay[ing] on the post-nights until the letters were signed". It's not very Admiral-like, unless it's an admiral standing at attention before his minister (they can tremble just like lieutenants before admirals, a very pretty sight).
It does add color on Penn's drudge work: "I could not get books", then was constantly interrupted, then had to "cast every book twice, many whereof have six or eight victuallings (...) and many of them two or three voyages in the same book, which are reckoned but for one account". On pursers, "the death of many, and the cashiering of others, which occasions great confusion in the accounts", for whatever reason. "I have passed, for service foreign and domestic, three hundred and thirty accounts of pursers; for doing which, I have been forced to examine, at the least, a thousand certificates; beside several, after examination, I have totally rejected; and many of the former I have been forced to return twice, some thrice, before they arrive at the punctuality necessary. The returning of which certificates (by reason of the remote habitation of several of the officers who were required to certify matter-of-fact more clear)", &c. &c., woe is Penn.
The Lords Commiſsioners of His Majesties Treaſury, having by His Majeſties Command, upon Conſideration, the making of a New Contract for the Victualling of His Majeſties Navy, have thought fit to publish that they will be ready to receive the Propoſals of any able and ſufficient Undertakers, on Thursday being the 20th of August inſtant at Three of the Clock in the Afternoon; and in the meantime, ſuch as are desirous to undertake the ſaid Victualling, may repair to Sir George Downing, and ſee the Conditions under which it is to be performed; that ſo they may the better propoſe the doing the same at reaſonable rates. ********************************************
And ſo, here they must be lining up, the hopeful Undertakers, in their best doublets and rental wigs and with their bribes (nay) gifts (nay) samples in hand; at least those who needed the Gazette to know, since this notice appears for the first time in an issue that contains articles datelined through August 25, and the real players may have been discussing their Propoſals in Sir George's backroom over his fine port for a few days.
Or maybe not. "Williamson was hasty", Downing would say, "we do not yet have the making of a New Contract. We'll get back in touch! Yes, do leave a case of your ſamples along with your card". And notice it's the Treasury that invited everyone, to a party which it's actually the Navy Board that's organizing; no wonder there was a mixup.
And maybe there won't be such a riot of Undertakers at Sir George's door anyway. The Navy must have quite a reputation for bankrupting its suppliers, and could mainly attract the naive and the especially crooked ("'reaſonable rates', we said!") Unless (as we suspect) everyone in England is already in debt to everyone else; the Navy, in actually paying after a few years, is in fact a better deal than most of the Quality; and "supplier to His Majeſties Navy" (or "battle-tested against the slimy Dutch") is a label worth paying for ("If my biscuits don't spoil? Why, our boys depend on 'em from Barbadoes to Bombay!")
And so on and on, for over an hour, while the clerks in the next room strain to listen and not to laugh out loud, on a day when Sam was roused at 3 and got up at 5 for no good reason.
Then poor Mrs. Daniel shows up, unaware of her poor timing. "I leave you to your discussion grope", Penn says, holding the door for the lady as she fumbles a half-curtsey. "I mean group. Your servant, madam. Have fun".
No wonder she doesn't get the loaner if Sam doesn't get Das Thing, as he brutally tells the Diary. And the quid pro quo is rarely so explicit as today, with the Thing exposed in plain English as a jewel on a cushion of folderol – the unusually rich mix of language suggests how exasperated Sam still was when he recalled the episode and wrote it out.
Or is it that, notwithstanding Mrs. Daniel's open-mindedness (she knows the frailty of men), there is just no Opportunity? Penn waits outside ten minutes, then winks at the clerks and cracks the door open: "And Pepys, I forgot to ask... Oh, sorry. I'll come back later!"
Comments
Second Reading
About Monday 5 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
As for the Tuesday of the secret audience, this would have been October 2 (Gregorian, or Sept. 25 Julian). The public entry must have been such an exhausting event that there's no way the secret meet could happen "at the same time", and Piero despite his "impatience" took a leisurely three days to compose his long report. On the other hand, it's not like he had a lot of really usefull news to send home, and he may have twisted his quill this way and that quite a bit to find how to put being fobbed off again in the best light.
About Monday 5 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
On Piero's amazingly detailed report "BEG[ging] THE QUESTION" of what calendar he uses: Venice is this ultra-modern land whence all invention comes - opera, glassware, mirrors such as the northern barbarians can only drool about, while rummaging for a few of their misshapen coins to buy a square yard. Of course it has adopted the newfangled popish invention, the Gregorian calendar. We too were shocked to find out; it makes time as shaky for our Society as a ship's bridge in a storm!
John Evelyn on "17th September", a Thursday, had offered breakfast to the Venetian ambassador, "this being the day of making his public entry" (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) Piero himself sent Venice a detailed report dated September 28 on the spectacular event, which happened "yesterday [so, Sept. 27], a Thursday". Our learned book-seller Mr. Google supplied us with a clever devyce to convert calendars (at https://www.fourmilab.ch/document…) which confirms that the 17th (Julian) is indeed the 27th (Gregorian), and both a Thursday. Argh!
This begs another distressing question, which others more erudite than us have doubtelessly already answered: Which calendar does the Gazette use when it reports foreign dispatches? Now we suspect a patchwork of domestic reports dated in Julian, and foreign news (usually written from the foreigners' standpoint) in Gregorian. To complicate it all, in No. 298 the damn Gazette had a report on Mocenigo's grand entry dated "Sept. 23" and placing it "on Monday last", i.e. 9/21 (Julian).
It supplies the useful detail that the 40 coaches in the ambassador's cavalcade were "Coaches and six Horses" no less. We estimate that the 240 horses, the big coaches and the various escorts on foot and on horse would have made a convoy over 800 meters long. Try to manoeuver that along the ~2 kilometers of twisting streets they navigated from Piero's hourse to the king's barge on dockside. But how could the Gazette print the wrong date for an event so memorable? Or is everyone in England bumbling about and asking "pray, what day are we? I say, I thought we were Monday".
About Friday 2 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
A bleep from the Pepys tracker: It has now seen a letter from Ludkin to Williamson, State Paper No. 116 dated October 6, which says the King passed through Ipswich "on Saturday", October 3, "on his way from Lord Croft's house". If so, this Friday is the latest when he must have been at Croft's, whose digs in Bury St. Edmunds are, like the rest of the King's wanderings in the next few days, northeast of London and nowhere near Guildford or the road from Portsmouth to London, which are far to the south and southwest. So we don't see how Sam can have been with "at Saxham [a village near Bury] (...) during the king's visit", and overnighting in Guildford with Sandwich within less than a couple days at least. If October 1 is when he met My Lord in Southwick, he would have had to turn back immediately after handing over the £500 to be in Bury by October 3.
Maybe all will become clear on October 23? We understand that Sam will leave no doubt on his having been in the king's party. Maybe Charles also stopped at Bury on his way back to London? A bio of the baron (at http://www.clement-jones.com/ps19…) says "Charles visited Baron Crofts at Saxham at least four times, in March 1666, October 1668, April 1670 and October 1676. The main purpose of his visits appears to be to have a good time!"
About Monday 5 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Another beep on the Pepys tracker: Sir George Downing wrote him from the Treasury, "Do not fail to meet me at Sir Robert Long's house to-morrow, about the money employed for the Fleet, on which we should have met the week before" (State Paper No. 107). His wiki entry says Robert Long MP has a house in Nonsuch, southwest of London and a possible stopover on Sam's way from Portsmouth. Probably there's also a pied-à-terre in London but, if not, either Sir George as he wrote his letter thought Sam was at his desk in the Office, and Sam won't get much rest tonight before he jumps onto another coach (Nonsuch is just far enough to be a pain to get to), or he knew Sam was on the road and a system has been arranged for him to check on the mail.
About Saturday 3 October 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
If the king attended Robert Gertz's resurrected Star Chamber, then he must have did so by magic mirror, as on this day Captain Silas Taylor, our man in Harwich, writes to Sam that "The King and his Royal Highness supped this night at my house, and will lodge here till Monday" (State Paper No. 96, found in the usual place).
The poor captain evidently took time out of a busy day to scratch a whiny letter asking for Sam's help at just the wrong time, when he was on the road on Sandwich duty. First, "Last night", he writes, "the King's Harbingers [his advance party] came and took up all the houses and lodgings". Nice that Silas has a house fit for a king's weekend, though if not his Majestie could do his close-to-the-common-man thing. But he doesn't travel alone, and we rather picture the Court descending like locusts on the good burghers of Harwich, to giggle at their funny accent and outmoded dress; families sent to camp out ("and far, pray, to trouble not his Highness with their noisome smells"); this room hastily repainted in bright pink ("my Lady's favorite color"); the cat drowned in the well ("his Grace is allergic"); pantries stripped bare ("why, look at all this ham and cheese (chomp) why are those beoble alwaych gomblaining? (gulp) And was the tax paid on that wine?") Not to mention those stains in the chapel, that will take weeks to remove ("my, is that catholicism?")
Then the captain is, he writes, "troubled that none of the Navy Commissioners are here, to speak to his Majesty and his Royal Highness about encroachments made upon the yard by the town". Left unsaid is why H.M. can't see that for himself but, aye, the commissioners - they answer his messages with standard letters starting with "Your call is very important to us".
"[A]lso for the want of a boat, when his Majesty comes to Landguard Fort. I am utterly ignorant how to get one supplied. I have stopped all the wherries here and at Ipswich, but not one is fit for them to come into; it is too late now to complain, I must shift as well as I can".
Alas, poor Silas! If he, who represents the Office at Harwich, can't find a simple wherry (a small river boat), who can? Imagine him, running along the wharves in his king-is-here finery, increasingly desperate, while a lieutenant on the beach tries to gain time by showing seashells to the king and duke: "You here! Your boat is requisitioned - pfew! What a foul smell of rotten fish! You can go! You! Argh, the crew's full of buboes! This one? No, they're Dutch. This one, maybe, if we scrub them hard enough? Rats, it just sank. Those are drunk. Those are Dissenters. The 'Glorious Oliver'? I don't think so. Jack? I still owe him ten pounds. Ah, if only Mr. Pepys had been there! Mr. Pepys would know! Mr. Pepys knows everything. Now I will end my days in the Barbadoes, for sure..."
About Monday 28 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Evidently it caught fire. The elevated writing desk makes perfect sense (maybe something like this: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo…)
And we should like to see that video. But now we worry that the crackling sound may have come from... roasting nits!
About Wednesday 30 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
And so concludes the month of September, anno 1668, God save the king. In what vortex has our hero disappeared? Here is a mysterie for our Society to tease, but, to Entertain us in these 13 days, be advised that our book-seller Mr. Google offers volume IX of the State Papers (Domestic) of the reign of Charles II, covering October 1668 to December 1669 in the 1894 edition printed by Eyre & Spottiswood on Fleet Street, at
https://books.google.fr/books?id=…
Aye, in this volume we get all of 14 months, of ships arriving laden with pilchards, passes granted for horses to France and complaints about unpaid bills, clear through December 1669. Why, this should be more than enough for our Purpose, judging by certain prophecie we heard. As we emerged from Mr. Google's, our boy struggling to carry our 800-page tome, this crazy Astrologer was marching by, shouting "the world will end on May 31st, 1669!" Not for nothing does His Majestie wisely forbid such horoscopes. Who will rid us of these phanatickes and charlatans? We promptly had the Watch bundle away the old fool to Newgate.
About Monday 28 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Everyone seems very relaxed about the incident at the Burlingtons', but we feel it deserves a thorough investigation. This is Sam's beautiful periwigg, the pride of his shaven pate, that we're talkin' about. First, the mechanicks of the event: We were under the impression that said wig reached to shoulder-length, so Sam would have had to sit with his back directly over the flame; how can anyone so used to sealing-candles and to periwiggs, and as alert to open flames as anyone living in 1668, be so negligent? Tut-tut, says Smokey Bear. The alternative is that Sam wasn't sitting but standing, but the candle would then have to be a good 30 centimeters tall, which seems a bit much for sealing letters even in a lordly house.
In this case the fire had to be intense enough for the hair to crackle audibly! We're not talking about some vague smoldering here. Cue Sam yanking off the flaming wig and setting fire to the curtains, the tocsin rung, Londoners throwing their clocks into the river and burying their cheese again, jews and Catholicks killed just in case 'twas them, Louis XIV seizing his chance to invade.
The Curator of Expts. should be directed to stop torturing doggs for a moment and to procure some wigs, to ascertain from what Distance, depending e.g. on the Dryness and Nature of the Hair, would a significant Fire Risk arise, and how ardent the combustion must be for an Audible noise to issue. All periwigged heads in attendance nod approval; it seems more urgent than all this tedious tinkering with air pressure; also, it's not like it never happens. Consider, for instance, the Hogarthian illustration at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik…, which postdates today's entry by over a century but could well be what today's scene looked like? Or this one, more recent still, at https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/T…, which we find hilarious and a proof that Wigs On Fire tend to be considered funny, even though they're likely to hurt a lot?
Wigs on Fire in fact might be as commonplace as inkstains, in a city full of offices full of wigs and sealing candles, since Sam then casually proceeds to Westminster and the Exchequer, fearless of giggles about "liar, liar, wig on fire". Hey, every other bureaucrat or official he meets there also has a few singed locks, it shows how hard you work for His Majestie.
We expect that Sam, swinging by home, picked a fresh wig before heading for the theater, where the working-man look wouldn't do. (If not - Knepp, offstage, twirling a hairlock: "My Sammy-boy needs a patch for his wiggy? Why sir, would you peruse our catalog?") But while buying more ribbons rates a mention, fixing the wig doesn't.
About Thursday 17 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The public entry of Venetian ambassador Piero Mocenigo wasn't a small thing, by the way. He describes it at length (in document 348, dated September 28 - Gregorian - at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) 40 coaches carrying Piero, Anglesey, Arundel and hundreds of courtiers, parading for 3 miles, a 20-gun salute, a big State dinner, the works. The convoy, going all over the place to show off while trying to stick to the least ruined parts of London, may have passed by the Office's neighborhood before dropping everyone off at the barges. But Sam wasn't invited despite all the connections he could have used (HM, HRH, the Navy, Tangiers, Evelyn, or maybe he was and declined). Our intrepid reporter also didn't go sightsee despite his attraction for the royal glitter, and stuck to his paperwork, then was busy with girls and the theater.
About Saturday 26 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Not-so-fast. It seems a bit early for Gauden to pop the bubbly, because, says our summary of the Order in Council, he still has to "tak[e] into co-partnership within 15 days 2 other fit and responsible persons approved by the King". So the job is so big that he needs two subcontractors; no surprise there, but how come, after all these weeks of negotiations, that he has to be given (or at any rate, is given) two weeks to produce them and get them approved? It looks like, after getting four bids, checking and re-checking them, and the Council spending an hour on it, all we have is a price and very likely Sam's kickback, but not a lot of visibility or confidence on how the Gauden Corp. will pull it off.
Sam and Dennis are kicking back, with mutual toasts and winks aplenty. "So when can I phant'sy meeting your two mysterious partners, Dennis? Less than two weeks, I trust". Gauden, after another sip: "Oh, have no concern, Mr. Pepys. All's in hand. They'll be on time. The Dutch are very reliable". Sam chokes on his bubbly and almost drops his glass: "Dutch??" "Well, aye. Good butter in those biscuits. 'Twas either them or Soleiman General Supply in Constantinople, to meet those prices. What's the problem? The French buy everything from them too".
In case you wonder if there would be any bubbly in any case - yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His… says as of 1668 it was flowing in London, and "the English were among the first who saw the tendency of Champagne to sparkle as a desirable trait".
About Friday 25 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Re-reading this Society's lively debate of 2011 on the merits of private contractors vs. civil servants, we also wonder if we're likely to hear the same in the salons of 1668 (this gives us a good excuse to put on our best wig and go sample the port). Because, as HRH's kind sentiments attest, the King, to whom England by the grace of God personally belongs, doesn't have either contractors or a civil service, he has servants. He can kick them around, and their letters show often enough that he pays them out of compassion, when they end up invoking a feudal obligation that's often been buttressed by actual military service, not clause 3.5A in some contract supposed to bind him. Sam with his competitive tenders (did he have compliance matrices?) and the Navy as one big centralized enterprise were just ahead of their time.
About Friday 25 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Thomas Povey may not have been the brightest bulb in Sam's opinion, but he wrote "I have seen the wonders of the Peak, wherein I travelled underground; and beautiful Chatsworth, glorious in its structure" - why, that sounds like Coleridge. Evelyn was right to call him "a nice contriver of all elegancies" (as we see in https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…)
Williamson was clearly expected to chucke at his vignettes of those second-tier earls and dukes Povey toured, for whatever motive; he seems to have been on a mission, unaddressed in his letter. So what could be this mysterious Peak he beheld, with its mine or (if England had any) tunnel? How was the wife of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle and author of Sam's favorite comedy "Sir Martin Mar-all", the "Queen of Sheba"?
About Thursday 24 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
We also like, in today's State Papers, No. 143, a petition to the King from two French bakers, Adrian le Pore and Sam. Caron, who want the bakers guild, who wants to shut them down 'coz they're foreigners, to leave them alone because "their trade (...) is for their countrymen only, and (...) not to the disadvantage of any English baker".
Which implies that there's enough French in London to sustain a French bakery, and that they'd rather shop there than at an English bakery (this we understand, religion apart - English bread, pfwargh). And it's been like this since Henry VIII, one of whose century-old laws they invoke. But if you're English and throw a French dinner, of the fashionable sort that so impressed Sam a few months ago (to the point of rigging one up too, if memory serves) - how do you get the right bread, then? If, poor you, you don't have a French cook to send to the French bakery? Do you then don a fake French moustache, and a fake Inspector-Clouzeau accent? ("I will tekk zis nice baguette oveur zere, plize"). Of course Sam could send Betty.
About Thursday 24 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Blount/Hull and Granger don't make it easy on us by having such bland names. A "padder" was, dictionaries inform us, a thief who stole on foot, so little more than a pickpocket; small fry. Note that you had to be a bit crazy to do it in London during the plague; maybe he just robbed empty houses, like everyone else. Then he graduated to stealing mail, a capital crime from which photo IDs and barred checks were later to remove all the fun.
He didn't make it to our favorite encyclopedia of villains, the Newgate Calendar, or in any other record which our bookseller Mr. Google has at hand. But so did Thomas Lympus, who had also planned to decamp to France but was caught and hung by the neck in 1739 - the Calendar, written in the mid-19C, sighs on this occasion that "the security now given to our mail-coaches render[s] an open attempt on them impracticable, unless sustained by a whole band of robbers" [https://www.exclassics.com/newgat…, with a nice engraving]. So also did Huffey White and Richard Kendall, executed in 1813, after stealing "from the Leeds mail (...) a bill of exchange for £200 which became due on the following day", a real case of simultaneous good/bad luck [https://www.exclassics.com/newgat…] A quick search of http://www.britishexecutions.co.uk for keyword "mail" recalls around 70 of these sad stories through the mid-19C.
But not Blount et al. We hope they'll surface in some future State Paper, because hey, they didn't just steal letters of exchange but forged them to up the value; put stuff back in the next day's bag to be undiscovered, which shows some brains; potentially had a way of getting into the House of Commons; had that French connection (ha!), valuable in itself in these post-war months when the Quality is settling bills for its manors in Normandy, and quite a few money orders must be crossing the Channel; and - what's this? Arresting them would be a "particular service to" my lord Arlington? Now that's piquant. Now that's another level. What did Blount get his hands on that so annoys the secretary of State, at such an interesting time in England's relation with France?
About Monday 14 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
More on "le bouquet", of Colbert spreading plague as well as cash: Sir Richard Bulstrode caught the rumor as well, and two days ago (on September 12) debunked it in his own diary: "The report of the sickness being in the French ambassador's house is found to have noe ground, one page haveing only happened to dye after a sickness, as the ambassador says, of many weekes, and all his family not haveing now one sick person in it" (https://archive.org/details/bulst…, page 60).
So, all's fine. "Noe ground". Colbert, on Leicester House's doorstep, thanks the assembled newsmen, declines requests to show his groin and armpits, and hands everyone a purse. We're all a bit hair-triggered, though, uh? As a reminder though, you can't catch the sickness by handling money.
About Monday 7 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
More material has come to our attention on how and when to send bags of cash to Portsmouth. In his Memoirs, Sir Richard Bulstrode MP will write on September 10 that the King, having planned to swing by Portsmouth on the next day, "appointed 10,000 pounds to be immediately sent down to pay off the Guards there, and accordingly the money was ordered to be sent down in cartes, under a safe guard, to be there this day at farthest".
So cartes, not coaches. And the yards aren't the only place in Portsmouth where the money's raining this week - assuming it's not all the same £10,000, and Clifford's "yards" are indeed the shipyards and not Bulstrode's "Guards", or vice versa. And we have to admire His Majestie's astuteness, in visiting a place just after (aye, not before!) everyone has been paid off, especially everyone holding a musket. With the royal visit, the Portsmouth taverns must have been interesting indeed.
Sir Richard's papers are in Mr. Google's book-shop at https://archive.org/details/bulst…, unfortunately in an Inconvenient format; this at their page 60.
About Thursday 17 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
No wonder HRH passed the file to Wren (York, shaking head in disbelief after scanning a few lines: "Mr. Wren, is that truly what common Members of the Publick do all day?" "Why yes, your royal highness, in the King's service of course". "How droll. Have more chocolate, Wren, it's way more than one poor duke can drink"). And yea, imagine how some of those guys, now retired to the farm in far Somerset with a peg-leg, gangrene, PTSD and overdue pay, may have reacted to some deskbound Admiral in London asking for how many sausages they had really truly signed off 4 years ago.
About Thursday 17 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Thank you again JWB of 2011, wherever you be now, for giving Penn a voice and his rightful right to respond. Often has the Admiral, seen here through Sam's eyes mainly, been treated by our Society as a buffoon, a false rogue, a bad host and a Thrower of Shite Over the Leads. We say Justice, Justice for Admiral Sir Will!
The "Memorials of the Professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn, Knt.", two volumes, totalling well over 1,000 pages, published in 1833 by his great-grandson Granville Penn, owes much to Sam, quoting whole pages of the Diary where alas, Penn didn't have the foresight (or the time) to write his own (except apparently during his glorious Caribbean service), but Granville makes it clear what a false rogue this Pepys too, in his ruthless betrayals of the man who had taught him his job; check out pages 486-489 in particular, on Sam concealing evidence to deflect the prize-ships inquiry from Sandwich to Penn back in April.
Anyway. At pages 514-519, does Penn's response to the Great Letter appear in full. It's a monument of grovelling, for which York surrounded as he must have been with grovellers and genuflections, must have had little patience indeed, also featuring a lot of whining and excuses about poor health, and assurances of dutiful office attendance and "stay[ing] on the post-nights until the letters were signed". It's not very Admiral-like, unless it's an admiral standing at attention before his minister (they can tremble just like lieutenants before admirals, a very pretty sight).
It does add color on Penn's drudge work: "I could not get books", then was constantly interrupted, then had to "cast every book twice, many whereof have six or eight victuallings (...) and many of them two or three voyages in the same book, which are reckoned but for one account". On pursers, "the death of many, and the cashiering of others, which occasions great confusion in the accounts", for whatever reason. "I have passed, for service foreign and domestic, three hundred and thirty accounts of pursers; for doing which, I have been forced to examine, at the least, a thousand certificates; beside several, after examination, I have totally rejected; and many of the former I have been forced to return twice, some thrice, before they arrive at the punctuality necessary. The returning of which certificates (by reason of the remote habitation of several of the officers who were required to certify matter-of-fact more clear)", &c. &c., woe is Penn.
About Monday 24 August 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The contract had better be finalized soon (and spoiler: it won't, it's gonna drag for days) for the Gazette, in No. 287 has already printed this
*******************************************
Advertiſement
The Lords Commiſsioners of His Majesties Treaſury, having by His Majeſties Command, upon Conſideration, the making of a New Contract for the Victualling of His Majeſties Navy, have thought fit to publish that they will be ready to receive the Propoſals of any able and ſufficient Undertakers, on Thursday being the 20th of August inſtant at Three of the Clock in the Afternoon; and in the meantime, ſuch as are desirous to undertake the ſaid Victualling, may repair to Sir George Downing, and ſee the Conditions under which it is to be performed; that ſo they may the better propoſe the doing the same at reaſonable rates.
********************************************
And ſo, here they must be lining up, the hopeful Undertakers, in their best doublets and rental wigs and with their bribes (nay) gifts (nay) samples in hand; at least those who needed the Gazette to know, since this notice appears for the first time in an issue that contains articles datelined through August 25, and the real players may have been discussing their Propoſals in Sir George's backroom over his fine port for a few days.
Or maybe not. "Williamson was hasty", Downing would say, "we do not yet have the making of a New Contract. We'll get back in touch! Yes, do leave a case of your ſamples along with your card". And notice it's the Treasury that invited everyone, to a party which it's actually the Navy Board that's organizing; no wonder there was a mixup.
And maybe there won't be such a riot of Undertakers at Sir George's door anyway. The Navy must have quite a reputation for bankrupting its suppliers, and could mainly attract the naive and the especially crooked ("'reaſonable rates', we said!") Unless (as we suspect) everyone in England is already in debt to everyone else; the Navy, in actually paying after a few years, is in fact a better deal than most of the Quality; and "supplier to His Majeſties Navy" (or "battle-tested against the slimy Dutch") is a label worth paying for ("If my biscuits don't spoil? Why, our boys depend on 'em from Barbadoes to Bombay!")
About Tuesday 15 September 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
And so on and on, for over an hour, while the clerks in the next room strain to listen and not to laugh out loud, on a day when Sam was roused at 3 and got up at 5 for no good reason.
Then poor Mrs. Daniel shows up, unaware of her poor timing. "I leave you to your discussion grope", Penn says, holding the door for the lady as she fumbles a half-curtsey. "I mean group. Your servant, madam. Have fun".
No wonder she doesn't get the loaner if Sam doesn't get Das Thing, as he brutally tells the Diary. And the quid pro quo is rarely so explicit as today, with the Thing exposed in plain English as a jewel on a cushion of folderol – the unusually rich mix of language suggests how exasperated Sam still was when he recalled the episode and wrote it out.
Or is it that, notwithstanding Mrs. Daniel's open-mindedness (she knows the frailty of men), there is just no Opportunity? Penn waits outside ten minutes, then winks at the clerks and cracks the door open: "And Pepys, I forgot to ask... Oh, sorry. I'll come back later!"