And, ah, young Monmouth in Paris. You could imagine some secret diplomatic mission about peace with Spain or whatnot, but there's professionals like Temple for that. No, the duke did what any young aristocrat with unlimited time and money would do at this time of year, and he went to Gay Paree for the Carnival. Our sources in the salons report he was given his own apartments in the Palais Royal, was showered with honors and has been quite the success there, until he managed to antagonize the duc d'Orléans (brother to TMC, the second-most ill-advised person to antagonize in Paris) by having such a good time with his wife. TMC had to intervene, and so Monmouth is now kindly excusing himself and going home. Carnival is over anyway. Ah, to be young again, and innocent like the gallant duke... Surely nothing sinister can attach to such a harmless little leprechaun. For now the story appears from page 71 of Anna Keay's "The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth" (Bloomsbury, 2016, on display in Mr. Google's bookshoppe at https://books.google.fr/books?id=…)
There have been reports for some time of a 100-sail French fleet setting off in the Spring. They're in a total war with Spain, so no surprise. Just 4 days ago on 17 March Thomas Holden had sent from Falmouth: "The James of Dover has arrived with wine and brandy from Nantes. She (...) reports that they [the French] are likely to have a war there with Holland, but nothing is said concerning England; also that the French king will have 120 sail of frigates ready the next spring." If it's any comfort, The Most Christian ("TMC") is also having some recruitment problems, and his seamen "frequently run away after being pressed, although the King has passed a severe law against it; 50 French seamen would have come away in that ship, if the master would have carried them". Yeah, French seamen seeking refuge in England; a scene we're not likely to see again for centuries, if ever. (State Paper No. 175, https://www.british-history.ac.uk…; also at https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
We second Charlie's advice to grab any naval volunteer while they're around. If anyone is mad enough to want to sign up for a service that notoriously pays late or not at all and is fairly likely to send them back dead or missing a leg, then let them sign up by all means, and put them to cleaning the decks or something (or sell them to Venice? That channel is still open). The incremental cost, measured largely in biscuits, will be minimal, there probably not being many of them anyway. All of Europe is on a hair trigger; aside from the very real possibility of sudden conflict aside, another war scare and they could all scamper away. And what's the alternative? It's springtime, they'll go back to the farm and won't reappear for 9 months. Or another De la Roche will shows up and recruit them away. Or they'll become Company men. Or worse, if they're really good, they'll go pyrate.
Also yesterday, we had noted in the State Papers an avalanche of budget memos documenting the Administration's effort to also help on its side of the ledger. This is not the place to go into all the details, but a few were picturesque (see March 16 entries at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) They include a 40% salary cut for at least some Commissioners (the Ordnance ones, but there's a precedent); big savings on the hallowed offices of the buckhounds (no more liveries for them), harriers and falconers, a sign that we're not in the Middle Ages anymore, and that Charles is perhaps not much into tally-ho (but we can hear the buckounds' howls too: "my charge! My charge!"); and an "order [to] the Master of the Jewel House to restrict his payments to 8,000L. a year". And that the boss is more into, as we know.
The great cutting reaches even into the Tower, as "the fees allowed for keeping prisoners of quality—viz., 4L. a week for a duke or marquis, and in proportion for persons of inferior quality—are to be reduced one-third". Surely not all for food, but since the last meal for which Sam showed us the bill was around £0.4, it's still enough for a duke to maintain Sam standards of good living all week round. Not that there's that many of them inside, or that they really need the Crown to pay for their room service.
More in our department, a "Warrant to the Duke of York to signify to the Navy Commissioners that the expenses of the Navy are to be reduced to 200,000l. a year in times of peace, the ships being first repaired, and stores replenished by other means".
Well, of course a wine tax. How original. Wine is clearly big business in thirsty, vineyard-less England, and it's all imports from foreigne princes. In December we had seen a petition from Bristol merchants (visible at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) who said their trade in "oils, wines, &c., from Spain and Portugal" to Newfoundland alone, "brings in 40,000L. a year to his Majesty". And interestingly, also in December Sir Robert Vyner, petitioning the King to be paid "30,000L., part of the great Navy debt, of which he is unhappily concerned", had noted that "my request would not much injure the King; the Navy debts will fall first on the wine Act" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…) So the Office has a very direct stake in today's proceedings.
And anyway a good English patriot drinks beer, not French wine. Though now that may change. Yesterday, presumably amid the howls of the wine merchants, were filed "Considerations on laying the new impositions on wines; proposing time for paying the duties, an allowance of an additional percentage for leakage, no limitation on the selling price (...)" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…) The price of wine being regulated (Parliament had recently agreed to keep it flat).
Hmmm... Leakage. Nice loophole. And we wonder, does Sam still keep a couple of tuns discreetly buried where they had been stashed during the Fire?
A touch more color on the "waves"' mechanics, as described by the Académie: With each wave, each of the 4-8 dishes in it would come in multiple copies, in plates to be shared by the nearest guests and which may have repeated at a certain interval (so there seemed to be even more). If empty they would be replaced, and after about 20 minutes they would all be removed as the next wave came in. So, assume 100 guests, 5 waves of 8 dishes each to be shared by groups of 20: maybe 200 plates to juggle with. Speed was also of the essence, the sources noting that even grand dinners lasted just around an hour, so on average one plate every 20 seconds. Plus the drinks. Plus the string quartet.
A dimension seems to be missing in our debate on whether the Service à la Française was a pell-mell buffet of all dishes landing simultaneously, or a sequential affair: It seems it was both. The Académie Française, for instance (at https://www.canalacademie.com/ida…) notes that a proper 17-18C dinner came in distinct "waves", starting with (1) hors d’œuvre/appetizers/soups and moving on to, (2) fish/meats in sauce, (3) entremets/roasts/salads, (4) meatpies/vegetables and finally (5) cheese and desserts. So it's a lot more structured and organized than a "buffet" or, indeed, a Chinese meal. Proantic, an antiquarian magazine, notes (in https://www.proantic.com/magazine…) that from France, or rather from Versailles, also came various show-off inventions such as silverware, china and saucepans. The point of all this, if you're an up-and-coming aristocrat: with each wave comprising four or eight dishes, the whirlwind of dozens to hundreds of dishes required a train of precisely choreographed footmen which were a good way of flaunting your ample means and the dazzling sophistication of your house. It should definitely have worked on Sam, he of the flagons and salt shakers (another modern invention). It also cluttered the table to the point of requiring guests, if they had plates at all, to hold or balance them on their knees.
Admittedly those are not primary sources. Maybe a 17C butler's manual is online somewhere. Slightly later paintings by Jean François de Troy such as "The Oyster Dinner" (1735, visible at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The…) and (when taken at an extreme) Watteau's "Feast given after the coronation of Louis XV" (1722, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fic…) give an idea of the mess (and fun) this was. Surely England's galleries have even better examples to provide.
And if you couldn't afford all that, why then you weren't dining à la Française, you poor thing. The "Russian style", as it came in the 19th century, was about slightly less theater and flamboyance, room on the table for everyone to have plates and glasses, and meats and fish pre-cut in the kitchen or by a maître-d' on a side table. The secondary sources unhelpfully note that the tradition had already come to France from England before a Russian ambassador to Paris re-introduced it under his flag. We suspect the styles in 1668 were French and Not-French. Not-flamboyant traditions tend to go nameless.
Note that "What is the 'service à la française'" was such a hot topic that the University of Bordeaux had a colloquium with 40 participants about it in 2017 (www.unoeilensalle.fr/quest-ce-que…) They concluded it was about being nice to the customer. Historians specializing in the 21st century recall this to have been a key turning point of that obscure period.
We have been slightly stumped at this letter from Sir W. Coventry, riffled today from Sam's desk:
-- "Mrs. Pley has written in despair of her assignments at Guildhall, on the Navy tallies; hopes there is not cause for so much despair as she shows; the burning of London cannot go so deep in the Royal Aid (for Guildhall is not concerned in the additional aid) as to hazard her money. Pray (...) inquire how much she is likely to lose." [State Papers No. 81.]
Guildhall is where tallies are paid (Sam has been there a couple times), and we take the reference to the Fire to mean that things aren't so bad that the trivial sums due Mrs. Pley can't be paid. The Royal Aid sounds like a welfare program but appears in other sources as the term for budget appropriations to Offices (e.g. at https://www.british-history.ac.uk… and https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) The "additional aid" that Guildhall won't deal with is a bit obscure. And Coventry seems to think that poor fidgeting Mrs. Play still won't get the full value of her tallies anyway.
Mrs. Pley doesn't seem to have left another trace, unless she's related to George Pley, a sailcloth maker involved in the contract Sam was espied drafting just a couple days ago, which would be quite a strange coincidence. Amusingly in the html version of the State Papers she is mis-scanned as "Mrs. Pepys" - fancy that. The printed version scanned at https://play.google.com/books/rea… has to be the correct record; hurray for the printed version.
Tonyel and Elissa, you are both correct that our tongue was indeed in our cheek, and that it had such a jolly time there that it didn't realize, the silly tongue, that "paying off" has, especially in a naval context and since the mid-17th century according to www.lexico.com for instance, not only the meaning of clearing their debt as we thought, but also that of discharging, laying off, seeing off, casting off, seeing on their way, showing the door, and generally saying adios to "a good part of the men" at the Deptford yard.
Our tongue is now chastised, but that letter, apart from making more sense, is now an even more consequential piece of business on Sam's desk. Indeed it continues on how Sam should send the matter to the King's Council - a good idea, imagine if some future Commission nosed into who harmed England's defense industry when the French Peril was so pressing.
The letter also didn't come from nowhere. On March 7 two Deptford officials, W. Fownes and master shipwright Jonas Shish, had written the Commissioners to ask what to do with the "230 shipwrights on the book, though there is no vessel to build or repair but the Loyal London, and no timber nor plank in the yard, if required". Other letters occasionally complain of the workers not sticking around anyway and going off to better jobs, but formally they're apparently not free to do so. But worry not for the Deptford Dockyard, which will endure for 200 years and in 30 years is where tsar Peter the Great will come to learn shipbuilding (check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dep…)
In the URL we like to quote for the State Papers, because it links to scans of the lovely 1893 edition, the last three digits are the page number. Controls to navigate to the preceding or next page appear discreetly at the lower right. An html alternative is https://www.british-history.ac.uk….
Also interesting today, a letter (at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) from the mayor of Falmouth, Thomas Holden to "Hickes" (maybe James, of the Inland Office), who "asks if he hears anything of a war with France". Always good to ask. He's seen instructions to a Dutch captain to avoid the Channel, and ripples may still be spreading from the La Roche/Allin affair of two weeks ago. And so there's unease in the air.
Today a "M. Wren" - presumably Matthew, of the Society - writes to Sam:
"Found Sir Wm. Coventry very well persuaded of the success of his project of wholly paying off a good part of the men belonging to the Deptford yard, and very desirous that the Navy Commissioners should make the experiment; told him their unwillingness to be responsible for an action of so doubtful an event (...)" (State Papers No. 56, https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
So once again Sam is at the cutting edge. Clearly the only way out of this crisis is to pay as many people as possible, but it's never been done before on this scale and at this speed, and there are risks to control: A very small fraction of the people actually are allergic to money. The Society (perhaps led in this by Mr. Wren, significantly an Oxford graduate) to devise a prudent and deliberate Clinical Triall, to ascertain effectiveness and possible side effects such as the recipient turning to drink, and separately to recommend in what order payment should be made (e.g., starting with the oldest, those with vulnerabilities such as large families or proficiency in French or Dutch, and critical professions like rope-makers). Note that nearly half of the workers may also have to be persuaded, as they fear that salaries could harm their Religion or the modesty of their wives.
Sam is now the town's hottest new celeb. Through powerful telescopes, he is tracked to glittering East End dinners by the engravers of gossip broadsheets such as "Good Morrow!" and "The Illustrated Advisements of the World", who remark on the subdued elegance of his camelott coat, rumors of his Speech being turned to a play, and his seemingly infinite collection of coaches. Why, he came yesterday to Lincoln's Inn Fields in one of the latest Glass Chariots - only the Lord Lieutenant has the same! There, he was seen, oblivious to the revels around him, at a side table with beautiful ladies and Vice-Chamberlain Baronet Sir George Carteret MP, hunched over some papers - "what prodigies of eloquence were flowing then from the quill of our new Bard of the Acts?"
Duh. It's the daily grind. He's onto "the contract for west-country canvas", about which Col. B. Reymes wrote to Sam yesterday, "I desire you to reduce it to writing by Tuesday, when I will subscribe my part". Can't Reymes just draft it himself? He wants a bigger contract too, "if it can be increased to more than 50L. per week, you will add greater encouragement to the manufactory" (State Papers No. 28, https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
Interestingly, yesterday Treasury secretary Downing also wrote up an invite to the Commissioners, "the Treasury Commissioners desire to speak with you on Monday at 8 a.m. about the business of tickets" (S.P., No. 33, same page).
Speaking of preachers? News flash: The authentic introduction and soaring conclusion of Sam's great Speech have been found, preserved in formalin in the braines of a Dogg, in which Mr. Boyle had, as an Expt., recorded it live on the House floor. Hark then:
(...) It is obvious today that England has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her seamen are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, England has given the seagoing people a bad ticket, a ticket which has come back marked insufficient funds. (Applause)
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. (Laughter)
(...) I have a dream that one day on the green hills of Sussex, the widows of pressed seamen and the widows of officers will be able to sit down together at the table of sisterhood and to pay for their meals in cash. (Applause)
(...) I have a dream that my 90,000 little seamen will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their tickets but by the content of their purse. I have a dream today. (Standing ovation; many MPs suddenly wake up and start clapping too; not a dry eye in the House, except perhaps Lord Gerard's)
(An eerily similar and even more powerful speech, for which we affirm our immense respect, can be read or re-read with much profit at www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/…)
It seems unbelievable, as well as unfair, that a long, official speech, given in Parliament no less, admired by all London, on politically red-hot matters, full of crunchy bits about corruption, at a time when everyone trafficked in pamphlets, and in a Kingdome with some of the best record-keeping in the World, has utterly vanished and that not one paragraph of it has surfaced in centuries of pepsyontological excavations. Could there have been only one copy, vanished in '73 with the Office itself? Did everyone else recycle or lose their copies?
Could Sam have spoken for three hours without a text? He certainly likes the art oratory. Apart from the theater, he is a keen critic of preachers and their dull sermons, and didn't he recently (we can't find the entry) visit Temple Bar just to enjoy the pleadings?
And that's it. Yes, it's "Pepes" in the original manuscript (de Beer says), an indication of how Milward may have heard it in the pronounciation of the time.
Tickets may be extremely abused if not well looked to both in counterfeiting tickets, and some may by cheating get double tickets. But it is not in the power of the commissioners of the Navy to increase or diminish the number of tickets. It is ordinary for a ship that is well manned with 700 men to have 1500 or 2000 names in the muster book, because of the several ways of altering and changing men: as by the death of some, the removing of others, and cashiering of others, and taking new men into all their places.
Of 55 ships there was not in two years' war above 5000 men paid by rickets by the Officers of the Navy: whereas treble that number have been paid by the admirals.
It may be there hath been some irregularity in paying with tickets and some that have been paid before others, that were in due order to be paid not so soon.
It was judged necessary by his Royal Highness and so judged by him being our High Admiral, that payment should not be bound up to time and order but that upon some great necessity some may be paid now, that in due order ought to stay until some others should be first paid. And that this should be left to the discretion of the Officers of the Navy: nor can that be called irregular that never was regular; and therefore those officers are not to be condemned, if the pitiful necessity of some have been relieved before others out of the strict order.
Whereas it was objected against those Officers that they had made an order for the due payment of seamen but did not keep and observe that order above one week: Mr Pepys said that such an order was only spoke of and designed, but was never ratified nor signed; nor were any future orders (though some were made) strictly obliging, nor the regularity of them strictly kept.
These commissioners do altogether justify themselves from any indirect or partial paying by tickets, but only where mere necessity did compel them.
The third charge was their discharging men and ships by tickets, to which he answered, that they were so far from doing it to the disadvantage of the men, that because they had not ready money to pay them (which they say was the only reason why they paid by tickets) they victualled some ships that were to be laid up, only to keep the men in pay until they were in capacity to pay them.
Then the House went upon the business of the day, to hear the defence of the Commissioners and Officers of the Navy in the paying of seamen by tickets. They came to the bar and one Pepes undertook the whole business for all the rest. He made a narrative of almost three hours long: in answer to these particulars.
First that it was Lord Brunkard that paid seamen at Chatham by tickets.
Secondly my lord being asked why he did so, made this answer I know what I have to do.
Thirdly that in paying by tickets they did it irregularly: as that they paid tickets that. were bought, before those that brought their own tickets and had done the service.
Fourthly, there being an order made for the regular paying of the seamen and soldiers yet they kept not that order.
Pepes divided his narrative into these three heads.
First he showed the usefulness and necessity of tickets.
Secondly concerning the charge of irregular paying by tickets.
Thirdly concerning the paying of seamen and ships by tickets.
For the first that tickets were useful and necessary.
First in regard of men that are dead, to whose widows and executors they give tickets, by which they may receive the pay of those that are dead. And upon the death of a commander of one ship and a new commander placed in his room, it may be he may bring with him 20 or 40 soldiers or seamen and so it is necessary to give them tickets.
Secondly tickets are necessary upon the change of men, as if they put out unserviceable and take in more serviceable men.
Thirdly tickets are necessary where there is not ready money. He said that no tickets were granted but such as were signed by the commander of the ship.
So, three hours of juicy scandalous stuff, and Sam emerged from it in squeaky-clean glory. Bravo indeed. We can imagine him, outside the hearing room, as MPs emerge yawning and muttering on their way to lunch (and drink). The Commissioners, who "stood" at the bar for 3 hours, gracefully sit at last on a bench. Sam is besieged by newsmen from the Gazettes, whose portraitists jostle furiously to capture him on their easels and woodcuts, amid the flash of lanterns and sprays of woodchips. "Mr. Peeps, is it true that ..?" "Mr. Peeps, we understand you said that ..?" And from the painters, trying to get the angle: "Mr. Peeeps!" "Mr. Clerk of the Acts!" And from one: "Mr. Secretary, look this way please".
Our bookseller Mr. Google, of Scanning Lane near the Cloud, let us have enough of a peek at the diary of Mr John Milward MP to Discover that notes taken by (or at least attributed to) the latter on this Glorious Day were reproduced in a trade journal, The Mariner's Mirror, in 1928. And yes, that source is online (under doi:10.1080/00253359.1928.10655451). The article is "Reports of Pepys's Speech in the House of Commons, March 5th, 1668, Communicated by Mr E. S. de Beer", The Mariner's Mirror, vol. 14, No. 1 (January 1928), pp. 55-63.
Whether it is the same content as appears in the member's Diary, we know not, but it adds valuable detail to the summary in Grey's Debates and, touchingly (at least for Pepsyans) it says the Commissioners "came to the bar and one Pepes undertook the whole business for all the rest. He made a narrative of almost three hours long".
De Beer's article also reproduces Grey's Debates. On Milward, he describes his source as "from British Museum Additional MS. 334I3, ff. 55, 56. This manuscript contains reports of debates from September 18th, 1666, until May 8th, 1668, when it breaks off." [This is also the period covered by Milward's diary, so we suspect it's the same stuff in a nicer binding]. "The reporting is not very good; the manuscript was apparently compiled outside the House from rough notes, not from shorthand notes, but it is valuable on account of the reports of numerous debates which are not reported elsewhere, such as those on the charges against Peter Pett. The British Museum Catalogue of MSS. associates it with John Milward or Millward, member for Derby from 1665 to 1670."
Milward (if it's him) adds to Grey's in relating the myriad ways tickets have been abused, by Admirals declaring triple the headcount known to the Commissioners, counterfeiting and the like, all adding to the complication of changes and turnover in the crews which the ticket system just couldn't handle, since "it is not in the power of the commissioners of the Navy to increase or diminish the number of tickets" - an almost open incitation to just bending the rules. He notes also that the resourceful Commissioners "victualled some ships that were to be laid up, only to keep the men in pay until they were in capacity to pay them".
Sam wasn't the only one to speak but not everyone had his eloquence (or sheer, opposition-crushing stamina and command of detail). Milward notes that "First that it was Lord Brunkard that paid seamen at Chatham by tickets. Secondly my lord being asked why he did so, made this answer I know what I have to do."
Alone now in the tavern after the others went off to see their mistresses, John Downing tries to puzzle out, if he can after all, the discussion at the Commission of the Treasury.
Nah. Wasn't ever good at calculus. Especially after a bottle of sack, heh heh. What's the point anyway, if Pepys redoes everything overnight. I liked Downing's wig, though. Gotta have the same. So something will remain of these 3 hours in a stuffy room.
Comments
Second Reading
About Saturday 21 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
And, ah, young Monmouth in Paris. You could imagine some secret diplomatic mission about peace with Spain or whatnot, but there's professionals like Temple for that. No, the duke did what any young aristocrat with unlimited time and money would do at this time of year, and he went to Gay Paree for the Carnival. Our sources in the salons report he was given his own apartments in the Palais Royal, was showered with honors and has been quite the success there, until he managed to antagonize the duc d'Orléans (brother to TMC, the second-most ill-advised person to antagonize in Paris) by having such a good time with his wife. TMC had to intervene, and so Monmouth is now kindly excusing himself and going home. Carnival is over anyway. Ah, to be young again, and innocent like the gallant duke... Surely nothing sinister can attach to such a harmless little leprechaun. For now the story appears from page 71 of Anna Keay's "The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth" (Bloomsbury, 2016, on display in Mr. Google's bookshoppe at https://books.google.fr/books?id=…)
About Saturday 21 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
There have been reports for some time of a 100-sail French fleet setting off in the Spring. They're in a total war with Spain, so no surprise. Just 4 days ago on 17 March Thomas Holden had sent from Falmouth: "The James of Dover has arrived with wine and brandy from Nantes. She (...) reports that they [the French] are likely to have a war there with Holland, but nothing is said concerning England; also that the French king will have 120 sail of frigates ready the next spring." If it's any comfort, The Most Christian ("TMC") is also having some recruitment problems, and his seamen "frequently run away after being pressed, although the King has passed a severe law against it; 50 French seamen would have come away in that ship, if the master would have carried them". Yeah, French seamen seeking refuge in England; a scene we're not likely to see again for centuries, if ever. (State Paper No. 175, https://www.british-history.ac.uk…; also at https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
About Wednesday 18 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
We second Charlie's advice to grab any naval volunteer while they're around. If anyone is mad enough to want to sign up for a service that notoriously pays late or not at all and is fairly likely to send them back dead or missing a leg, then let them sign up by all means, and put them to cleaning the decks or something (or sell them to Venice? That channel is still open). The incremental cost, measured largely in biscuits, will be minimal, there probably not being many of them anyway. All of Europe is on a hair trigger; aside from the very real possibility of sudden conflict aside, another war scare and they could all scamper away. And what's the alternative? It's springtime, they'll go back to the farm and won't reappear for 9 months. Or another De la Roche will shows up and recruit them away. Or they'll become Company men. Or worse, if they're really good, they'll go pyrate.
About Tuesday 17 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Also yesterday, we had noted in the State Papers an avalanche of budget memos documenting the Administration's effort to also help on its side of the ledger. This is not the place to go into all the details, but a few were picturesque (see March 16 entries at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) They include a 40% salary cut for at least some Commissioners (the Ordnance ones, but there's a precedent); big savings on the hallowed offices of the buckhounds (no more liveries for them), harriers and falconers, a sign that we're not in the Middle Ages anymore, and that Charles is perhaps not much into tally-ho (but we can hear the buckounds' howls too: "my charge! My charge!"); and an "order [to] the Master of the Jewel House to restrict his payments to 8,000L. a year". And that the boss is more into, as we know.
The great cutting reaches even into the Tower, as "the fees allowed for keeping prisoners of quality—viz., 4L. a week for a duke or marquis, and in proportion for persons of inferior quality—are to be reduced one-third". Surely not all for food, but since the last meal for which Sam showed us the bill was around £0.4, it's still enough for a duke to maintain Sam standards of good living all week round. Not that there's that many of them inside, or that they really need the Crown to pay for their room service.
More in our department, a "Warrant to the Duke of York to signify to the Navy Commissioners that the expenses of the Navy are to be reduced to 200,000l. a year in times of peace, the ships being first repaired, and stores replenished by other means".
About Tuesday 17 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Well, of course a wine tax. How original. Wine is clearly big business in thirsty, vineyard-less England, and it's all imports from foreigne princes. In December we had seen a petition from Bristol merchants (visible at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) who said their trade in "oils, wines, &c., from Spain and Portugal" to Newfoundland alone, "brings in 40,000L. a year to his Majesty". And interestingly, also in December Sir Robert Vyner, petitioning the King to be paid "30,000L., part of the great Navy debt, of which he is unhappily concerned", had noted that "my request would not much injure the King; the Navy debts will fall first on the wine Act" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…) So the Office has a very direct stake in today's proceedings.
And anyway a good English patriot drinks beer, not French wine. Though now that may change. Yesterday, presumably amid the howls of the wine merchants, were filed "Considerations on laying the new impositions on wines; proposing time for paying the duties, an allowance of an additional percentage for leakage, no limitation on the selling price (...)" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…) The price of wine being regulated (Parliament had recently agreed to keep it flat).
Hmmm... Leakage. Nice loophole. And we wonder, does Sam still keep a couple of tuns discreetly buried where they had been stashed during the Fire?
About Wednesday 11 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
A touch more color on the "waves"' mechanics, as described by the Académie: With each wave, each of the 4-8 dishes in it would come in multiple copies, in plates to be shared by the nearest guests and which may have repeated at a certain interval (so there seemed to be even more). If empty they would be replaced, and after about 20 minutes they would all be removed as the next wave came in. So, assume 100 guests, 5 waves of 8 dishes each to be shared by groups of 20: maybe 200 plates to juggle with. Speed was also of the essence, the sources noting that even grand dinners lasted just around an hour, so on average one plate every 20 seconds. Plus the drinks. Plus the string quartet.
About Wednesday 11 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
A dimension seems to be missing in our debate on whether the Service à la Française was a pell-mell buffet of all dishes landing simultaneously, or a sequential affair: It seems it was both. The Académie Française, for instance (at https://www.canalacademie.com/ida…) notes that a proper 17-18C dinner came in distinct "waves", starting with (1) hors d’œuvre/appetizers/soups and moving on to, (2) fish/meats in sauce, (3) entremets/roasts/salads, (4) meatpies/vegetables and finally (5) cheese and desserts. So it's a lot more structured and organized than a "buffet" or, indeed, a Chinese meal. Proantic, an antiquarian magazine, notes (in https://www.proantic.com/magazine…) that from France, or rather from Versailles, also came various show-off inventions such as silverware, china and saucepans. The point of all this, if you're an up-and-coming aristocrat: with each wave comprising four or eight dishes, the whirlwind of dozens to hundreds of dishes required a train of precisely choreographed footmen which were a good way of flaunting your ample means and the dazzling sophistication of your house. It should definitely have worked on Sam, he of the flagons and salt shakers (another modern invention). It also cluttered the table to the point of requiring guests, if they had plates at all, to hold or balance them on their knees.
Admittedly those are not primary sources. Maybe a 17C butler's manual is online somewhere. Slightly later paintings by Jean François de Troy such as "The Oyster Dinner" (1735, visible at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The…) and (when taken at an extreme) Watteau's "Feast given after the coronation of Louis XV" (1722, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fic…) give an idea of the mess (and fun) this was. Surely England's galleries have even better examples to provide.
And if you couldn't afford all that, why then you weren't dining à la Française, you poor thing. The "Russian style", as it came in the 19th century, was about slightly less theater and flamboyance, room on the table for everyone to have plates and glasses, and meats and fish pre-cut in the kitchen or by a maître-d' on a side table. The secondary sources unhelpfully note that the tradition had already come to France from England before a Russian ambassador to Paris re-introduced it under his flag. We suspect the styles in 1668 were French and Not-French. Not-flamboyant traditions tend to go nameless.
Note that "What is the 'service à la française'" was such a hot topic that the University of Bordeaux had a colloquium with 40 participants about it in 2017 (www.unoeilensalle.fr/quest-ce-que…) They concluded it was about being nice to the customer. Historians specializing in the 21st century recall this to have been a key turning point of that obscure period.
About Wednesday 11 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
We have been slightly stumped at this letter from Sir W. Coventry, riffled today from Sam's desk:
-- "Mrs. Pley has written in despair of her assignments at Guildhall, on the Navy tallies; hopes there is not cause for so much despair as she shows; the burning of London cannot go so deep in the Royal Aid (for Guildhall is not concerned in the additional aid) as to hazard her money. Pray (...) inquire how much she is likely to lose." [State Papers No. 81.]
Guildhall is where tallies are paid (Sam has been there a couple times), and we take the reference to the Fire to mean that things aren't so bad that the trivial sums due Mrs. Pley can't be paid. The Royal Aid sounds like a welfare program but appears in other sources as the term for budget appropriations to Offices (e.g. at https://www.british-history.ac.uk… and https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) The "additional aid" that Guildhall won't deal with is a bit obscure. And Coventry seems to think that poor fidgeting Mrs. Play still won't get the full value of her tallies anyway.
Mrs. Pley doesn't seem to have left another trace, unless she's related to George Pley, a sailcloth maker involved in the contract Sam was espied drafting just a couple days ago, which would be quite a strange coincidence. Amusingly in the html version of the State Papers she is mis-scanned as "Mrs. Pepys" - fancy that. The printed version scanned at https://play.google.com/books/rea… has to be the correct record; hurray for the printed version.
About Monday 9 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Tonyel and Elissa, you are both correct that our tongue was indeed in our cheek, and that it had such a jolly time there that it didn't realize, the silly tongue, that "paying off" has, especially in a naval context and since the mid-17th century according to www.lexico.com for instance, not only the meaning of clearing their debt as we thought, but also that of discharging, laying off, seeing off, casting off, seeing on their way, showing the door, and generally saying adios to "a good part of the men" at the Deptford yard.
Our tongue is now chastised, but that letter, apart from making more sense, is now an even more consequential piece of business on Sam's desk. Indeed it continues on how Sam should send the matter to the King's Council - a good idea, imagine if some future Commission nosed into who harmed England's defense industry when the French Peril was so pressing.
The letter also didn't come from nowhere. On March 7 two Deptford officials, W. Fownes and master shipwright Jonas Shish, had written the Commissioners to ask what to do with the "230 shipwrights on the book, though there is no vessel to build or repair but the Loyal London, and no timber nor plank in the yard, if required". Other letters occasionally complain of the workers not sticking around anyway and going off to better jobs, but formally they're apparently not free to do so. But worry not for the Deptford Dockyard, which will endure for 200 years and in 30 years is where tsar Peter the Great will come to learn shipbuilding (check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dep…)
In the URL we like to quote for the State Papers, because it links to scans of the lovely 1893 edition, the last three digits are the page number. Controls to navigate to the preceding or next page appear discreetly at the lower right. An html alternative is https://www.british-history.ac.uk….
About Monday 9 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Also interesting today, a letter (at https://play.google.com/books/rea…) from the mayor of Falmouth, Thomas Holden to "Hickes" (maybe James, of the Inland Office), who "asks if he hears anything of a war with France". Always good to ask. He's seen instructions to a Dutch captain to avoid the Channel, and ripples may still be spreading from the La Roche/Allin affair of two weeks ago. And so there's unease in the air.
About Monday 9 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Today a "M. Wren" - presumably Matthew, of the Society - writes to Sam:
"Found Sir Wm. Coventry very well persuaded of the success of his project of wholly paying off a good part of the men belonging to the Deptford yard, and very desirous that the Navy Commissioners should make the experiment; told him their unwillingness to be responsible for an action of so doubtful an event (...)" (State Papers No. 56, https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
So once again Sam is at the cutting edge. Clearly the only way out of this crisis is to pay as many people as possible, but it's never been done before on this scale and at this speed, and there are risks to control: A very small fraction of the people actually are allergic to money. The Society (perhaps led in this by Mr. Wren, significantly an Oxford graduate) to devise a prudent and deliberate Clinical Triall, to ascertain effectiveness and possible side effects such as the recipient turning to drink, and separately to recommend in what order payment should be made (e.g., starting with the oldest, those with vulnerabilities such as large families or proficiency in French or Dutch, and critical professions like rope-makers). Note that nearly half of the workers may also have to be persuaded, as they fear that salaries could harm their Religion or the modesty of their wives.
About Sunday 8 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Sam is now the town's hottest new celeb. Through powerful telescopes, he is tracked to glittering East End dinners by the engravers of gossip broadsheets such as "Good Morrow!" and "The Illustrated Advisements of the World", who remark on the subdued elegance of his camelott coat, rumors of his Speech being turned to a play, and his seemingly infinite collection of coaches. Why, he came yesterday to Lincoln's Inn Fields in one of the latest Glass Chariots - only the Lord Lieutenant has the same! There, he was seen, oblivious to the revels around him, at a side table with beautiful ladies and Vice-Chamberlain Baronet Sir George Carteret MP, hunched over some papers - "what prodigies of eloquence were flowing then from the quill of our new Bard of the Acts?"
Duh. It's the daily grind. He's onto "the contract for west-country canvas", about which Col. B. Reymes wrote to Sam yesterday, "I desire you to reduce it to writing by Tuesday, when I will subscribe my part". Can't Reymes just draft it himself? He wants a bigger contract too, "if it can be increased to more than 50L. per week, you will add greater encouragement to the manufactory" (State Papers No. 28, https://play.google.com/books/rea…)
Interestingly, yesterday Treasury secretary Downing also wrote up an invite to the Commissioners, "the Treasury Commissioners desire to speak with you on Monday at 8 a.m. about the business of tickets" (S.P., No. 33, same page).
About Friday 6 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Speaking of preachers? News flash: The authentic introduction and soaring conclusion of Sam's great Speech have been found, preserved in formalin in the braines of a Dogg, in which Mr. Boyle had, as an Expt., recorded it live on the House floor. Hark then:
(...) It is obvious today that England has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her seamen are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, England has given the seagoing people a bad ticket, a ticket which has come back marked insufficient funds. (Applause)
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. (Laughter)
(...) I have a dream that one day on the green hills of Sussex, the widows of pressed seamen and the widows of officers will be able to sit down together at the table of sisterhood and to pay for their meals in cash. (Applause)
(...) I have a dream that my 90,000 little seamen will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their tickets but by the content of their purse. I have a dream today. (Standing ovation; many MPs suddenly wake up and start clapping too; not a dry eye in the House, except perhaps Lord Gerard's)
(An eerily similar and even more powerful speech, for which we affirm our immense respect, can be read or re-read with much profit at www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/…)
About Friday 6 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
It seems unbelievable, as well as unfair, that a long, official speech, given in Parliament no less, admired by all London, on politically red-hot matters, full of crunchy bits about corruption, at a time when everyone trafficked in pamphlets, and in a Kingdome with some of the best record-keeping in the World, has utterly vanished and that not one paragraph of it has surfaced in centuries of pepsyontological excavations. Could there have been only one copy, vanished in '73 with the Office itself? Did everyone else recycle or lose their copies?
Could Sam have spoken for three hours without a text? He certainly likes the art oratory. Apart from the theater, he is a keen critic of preachers and their dull sermons, and didn't he recently (we can't find the entry) visit Temple Bar just to enjoy the pleadings?
About Thursday 5 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
And that's it. Yes, it's "Pepes" in the original manuscript (de Beer says), an indication of how Milward may have heard it in the pronounciation of the time.
About Thursday 5 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
[Part 2]
Tickets may be extremely abused if not well looked to both in counterfeiting tickets, and some may by cheating get double tickets. But it is not in the power of the commissioners of the Navy to increase or diminish the number of tickets. It is ordinary for a ship that is well manned with 700 men to have 1500 or 2000 names in the muster book, because of the several ways of altering and changing men: as by the death of some, the removing of others, and cashiering of others, and taking new men into all their places.
Of 55 ships there was not in two years' war above 5000 men paid by rickets by the Officers of the Navy: whereas treble that number have been paid by the admirals.
It may be there hath been some irregularity in paying with tickets and some that have been paid before others, that were in due order to be paid not so soon.
It was judged necessary by his Royal Highness and so judged by him being our High Admiral, that payment should not be bound up to time and order but that upon some great necessity some may be paid now, that in due order ought to stay until some others should be first paid. And that this should be left to the discretion of the Officers of the Navy: nor can that be called irregular that never was regular; and therefore those officers are not to be condemned, if the pitiful necessity of some have been relieved before others out of the strict order.
Whereas it was objected against those Officers that they had made an order for the due payment of seamen but did not keep and observe that order above one week: Mr Pepys said that such an order was only spoke of and designed, but was never ratified nor signed; nor were any future orders (though some were made) strictly obliging, nor the regularity of them strictly kept.
These commissioners do altogether justify themselves from any indirect or partial paying by tickets, but only where mere necessity did compel them.
The third charge was their discharging men and ships by tickets, to which he answered, that they were so far from doing it to the disadvantage of the men, that because they had not ready money to pay them (which they say was the only reason why they paid by tickets) they victualled some ships that were to be laid up, only to keep the men in pay until they were in capacity to pay them.
At three of the clock we attended the king ....
About Thursday 5 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
[And here's the text attributed to Milward]:
[Part 1]
March 5•••
Then the House went upon the business of the day, to hear the defence of the Commissioners and Officers of the Navy in the paying of seamen by tickets. They came to the bar and one Pepes undertook the whole business for all the rest. He made a narrative of almost three hours long: in answer to these particulars.
First that it was Lord Brunkard that paid seamen at Chatham by tickets.
Secondly my lord being asked why he did so, made this answer I know what I have to do.
Thirdly that in paying by tickets they did it irregularly: as that they paid tickets that. were bought, before those that brought their own tickets and had done the service.
Fourthly, there being an order made for the regular paying of the seamen and soldiers yet they kept not that order.
Pepes divided his narrative into these three heads.
First he showed the usefulness and necessity of tickets.
Secondly concerning the charge of irregular paying by tickets.
Thirdly concerning the paying of seamen and ships by tickets.
For the first that tickets were useful and necessary.
First in regard of men that are dead, to whose widows and executors they give tickets, by which they may receive the pay of those that are dead. And upon the death of a commander of one ship and a new commander placed in his room, it may be he may bring with him 20 or 40 soldiers or seamen and so it is necessary to give them tickets.
Secondly tickets are necessary upon the change of men, as if they put out unserviceable and take in more serviceable men.
Thirdly tickets are necessary where there is not ready money. He said that no tickets were granted but such as were signed by the commander of the ship.
About Thursday 5 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
So, three hours of juicy scandalous stuff, and Sam emerged from it in squeaky-clean glory. Bravo indeed. We can imagine him, outside the hearing room, as MPs emerge yawning and muttering on their way to lunch (and drink). The Commissioners, who "stood" at the bar for 3 hours, gracefully sit at last on a bench. Sam is besieged by newsmen from the Gazettes, whose portraitists jostle furiously to capture him on their easels and woodcuts, amid the flash of lanterns and sprays of woodchips. "Mr. Peeps, is it true that ..?" "Mr. Peeps, we understand you said that ..?" And from the painters, trying to get the angle: "Mr. Peeeps!" "Mr. Clerk of the Acts!" And from one: "Mr. Secretary, look this way please".
About Thursday 5 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Our bookseller Mr. Google, of Scanning Lane near the Cloud, let us have enough of a peek at the diary of Mr John Milward MP to Discover that notes taken by (or at least attributed to) the latter on this Glorious Day were reproduced in a trade journal, The Mariner's Mirror, in 1928. And yes, that source is online (under doi:10.1080/00253359.1928.10655451). The article is "Reports of Pepys's Speech in the House of Commons, March 5th, 1668, Communicated by Mr E. S. de Beer", The Mariner's Mirror, vol. 14, No. 1 (January 1928), pp. 55-63.
Whether it is the same content as appears in the member's Diary, we know not, but it adds valuable detail to the summary in Grey's Debates and, touchingly (at least for Pepsyans) it says the Commissioners "came to the bar and one Pepes undertook the whole business for all the rest. He made a narrative of almost three hours long".
De Beer's article also reproduces Grey's Debates. On Milward, he describes his source as "from British Museum Additional MS. 334I3, ff. 55, 56. This manuscript contains reports of debates from September 18th, 1666, until May 8th, 1668, when it breaks off." [This is also the period covered by Milward's diary, so we suspect it's the same stuff in a nicer binding]. "The reporting is not very good; the manuscript was apparently compiled outside the House from rough notes, not from shorthand notes, but it is valuable on account of the reports of numerous debates which are not reported elsewhere, such as those on the charges against Peter Pett. The British Museum Catalogue of MSS. associates it with John Milward or Millward, member for Derby from 1665 to 1670."
Milward (if it's him) adds to Grey's in relating the myriad ways tickets have been abused, by Admirals declaring triple the headcount known to the Commissioners, counterfeiting and the like, all adding to the complication of changes and turnover in the crews which the ticket system just couldn't handle, since "it is not in the power of the commissioners of the Navy to increase or diminish the number of tickets" - an almost open incitation to just bending the rules. He notes also that the resourceful Commissioners "victualled some ships that were to be laid up, only to keep the men in pay until they were in capacity to pay them".
Sam wasn't the only one to speak but not everyone had his eloquence (or sheer, opposition-crushing stamina and command of detail). Milward notes that "First that it was Lord Brunkard that paid seamen at Chatham by tickets. Secondly my lord being asked why he did so, made this answer I know what I have to do."
About Wednesday 4 March 1667/68
Stephane Chenard • Link
Alone now in the tavern after the others went off to see their mistresses, John Downing tries to puzzle out, if he can after all, the discussion at the Commission of the Treasury.
Nah. Wasn't ever good at calculus. Especially after a bottle of sack, heh heh. What's the point anyway, if Pepys redoes everything overnight. I liked Downing's wig, though. Gotta have the same. So something will remain of these 3 hours in a stuffy room.