Damned Ranter

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Damned Ranter has posted four annotations/comments since 3 January 2024.

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Third Reading

About Wednesday 1 May 1661

Damned Ranter  •  Link

London to Portsmouth is about 75 miles (120km) by the old roads, so 2 days' travelling is pretty good going, considering that this is the age before turnpike roads. And with stops to play bowls.

About A bill of exchange

Damned Ranter  •  Link

That doesn't look like a bill of exchange; or at least not all of one. There's no mention of the amount for a start. That had to be written in longhand, as "seventy pounds sterling" or some such formula. Not in Arabic numbers- it's too easy to add zeroes on the end to turn seventy into, say, seven hundred pounds. And the currency needs to be specified- there was, for example, the Scottish pound worth then about a twelfth of a pound sterling. The date is uncertain; it's difficult to interpret it either as 31 or xxxi, and it's unlikely that he would have had a BOE drafted and re- assigned (using another scribe) on the same day. One assumes that it would have been clearer according to the handwriting customs of the time. Probably a good job it never went to court.

The numbers that are there are completely enigmatic. They are written with a different pen, a different ink, and hand. All resemble those of the assignation below. It's not a date, nor an amount. And it wasn't written by Pepys. The "Registered" and signature may be his.

About Seething Lane

Damned Ranter  •  Link

"By the west end of this parish church (Allhallows Barking) and chapel, lieth Sidon lane, now corruptly called Sything Lane, from Tower street up to Hart street." - Stow's Survey of London (1598- my edition 1929).