"and by and by come letters from Tangier from my Lord, telling me how, upon a great defete given to the Portuguese there by the Moors, he had put in 300 men into the town, and so he is in possession,"
L&M: Sandwich to Pepys, 20/30 January; printed in HMC, Eliot Hodgkin, p. 157 (mistakenly ascribed to 1661). The Portuguese defeat had occurred on 12 January and is described in Sandwich, pp. 114-15. On the 14th Sandwich sent 80 men from his own ship into the lower castle, and stronger parties went ashore on the 17th and the 23rd. See Sandwich, loc. cit.; Routh, pp. 9-10.
"that being done I fell to entering these two good songs of Mr. Lawes, “Helpe, helpe, O helpe,” and “O God of Heaven and Hell” in my song book, to which I have got Mr. Child to set the base to the Theorbo,"
"Having agreed with Sir Wm. Pen and my wife to meet them at the Opera, and finding by my walking in the streets, which were every where full of brick-battes and tyles flung down by the extraordinary wind the last night"
L&M: Dr D.J. Shove writes: "Windy Tuesday" was certainly the best documented, and in S. England perhaps the worst, storm between 1362 and 1703. It was associated with the death of the Queen of Bohemia, all Europe being affected by the gales about this time. Rugge (ii, F12r) estimated the damage at £11m and described the London streets as full of "brick bats, tileshards, spouts, sheets of lead...hats and feathers and perriwigs". Cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… Evelyn 17 February; Mirabilis annus secundus (1662): A full and certain account of the last great wind (1661/2); C.E. Britton in Met. Mag. (1939)/22-4.
CORRECTION "After we had done at the office, I walked to the Wardrobe, where with Mr. Moore and Mr. Lewis Phillips after dinner we did agree upon the agreement between us and Prior and I did seal and sign it."
CORRECTION "Lay long in bed, then up to the office (we having changed our days to Tuesday and Saturday in the morning and Thursday at night),"
L&M: Pepys's office memorandun-book has a note under this date: 'We altered our sittings to Tuesd. & Saturday mornings and Thursday afterniin': PRO, Admin. 195/3520, f.br.
"After we had done at the office, I walked to the Wardrobe, where with Mr. Moore and Mr. Lewis Phillips after dinner we did agree upon the agreement between us and Prior and I did seal and sign it."
L&M: Pepys's office memorandun-book has a note under this date: 'We altered our sittings to Tuesd. & Saturday mornings and Thursday afterniin': PRO, Admin. 195/3520, f.br.
"He preached upon David’s words, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,” and made a pretty good sermon, though not extraordinary."
L&M: The text was from Ps. 118, xvii [KJV: I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.]; the preacher (Thomas Jacombe, Rector of St Martin's, Ludgate Hill) a Presbyterian. Jane Turner had been ill since at least November 1661: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
"So home, and drew up our report for Sir N. Crispe’s sasse.
L&M: Navy Board to Lord Treasurer, 19 February (copy PL 2871, pp. 657-9), advising against use of the site, and proposing instead the cutting of a channel from Blackwall through the Isle of Dogs to Limehouse. For the report from Trinity House, see HMC, Rep., 8/1/1/250 b.
"(though he had some discourse with me about my family and arms) he says nothing at all, nor mentions us either in Cambridgeshire or Norfolk. But I believe, indeed, our family were never considerable."
L&M: Pepys knew almost nothing about the history of the medieval Pepyses: see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… They had been settled in and around Cottenham (Cambs.) from at least the 14th century -- in Bryant's words (i. 2, 3) 'villeins in breed and tenure' and occasionally 'rural bureaucrats' (e.g. Reeves of Crowland Abbey). Since Elizabethan times they had acquired more substance -- the main line, from the diarest's great-grandfather, John Pepys, onwards, being owners of Impington manor. John had a son and a grandson who served as recorders and M.P.'s for Cambridge. No Pepys had held high county office. In the marriage market the outstanding successes were the Elizabethan John who married a small fortune (with which he is said to have bought his manor), and the diarist's great aunt who married into the Mountagus. Arms had been confirmed to Thomas Pepys of South Creake, Norf. (cousin of Pepys's great-grandfather) in 1563.
" one Mr. Templer (an ingenious man and a person of honour he seems to be) dined; and, discoursing of the nature of serpents, he told us some that in the waste places of Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and that do feed upon larks, which they take thus: They observe when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with their mouths uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson up to the bird; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange."
L&M: This story may be based on a misunderstanding of the fact that birds often attack snakes: see e.g., E. Topsell, Hist. Serpents (1608), pp. 25+. It has not been traced elsewhere. Pepys's informant may have been Benjamin Templer, ex-Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, whose Northampshire living at Ashley ws not far from the Crews' country house at Stene.
"Walking in the garden to give the gardener directions what to do this year (for I intend to have the garden handsome),"
L&M: Henty Wise, gardener, later submitted a bill (8 May 1662) for £3 15s. for work on the Navy Office garden: PRO, Adm. 20/2, p. 28. Possibly he is the gardener here referred to. The famous Henry Wise, gardener to William III and Anne, may have been his son.
"So home, and I put in at Sir W. Batten’s, where Major Holmes was, and in our discourse and drinking I did give Sir J. Mennes’ health, which he swore he would not pledge, and called him knave and coward (upon the business of Holmes with the Swedish ship lately), which we all and I particularly did desire him to forbear, he being of our fraternity, which he took in great dudgeon, and I was vexed to hear him persist in calling him so, though I believe it to be true, but however he is to blame and I am troubled at it."
L&M: On 7 December 1661 Pepys in his loyalty to Sandwich had been 'glad to hear' this reflection on Mennes.
"I am troubled to hear that the Turks do take more and more of our ships in the Straights, and that our merchants here in London do daily break, and are still likely to do so."
L&M: Twenty-two ships had been taken, 11 of them English: CSPVen. 1661-4, p. 94 (13 January). On 27 January the Venetian resident reported the capture of two further English ships and the unsuccessful chase of a third: ib., p. 100. This despite the presence of a Dutch and an English fleet in the Western Mediterranean.
"She took occasion to talk of her sister Wight’s making much of the Wights, who for namesake only my uncle do shew great kindness to, so I fear may do us that are nearer to him a great deal of wrong, if he should die without children, which I am sorry for."
L&M: George Norbury and William Wight had married sisters. The latter (half-brother of Pepys's father) was a merchant of London whose only son had died. In 1664 he proposed to Elizabeth Pepys that they should together have a child whom he would make his heir: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… He died intestate in 1672 leaving £4000, of which, after litigation with his widow, Pepys's father was awarded one-third of a moiety: Whitear, pp. 161-5.
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Second Reading
About Martin Beckman
Terry Foreman • Link
Image of English Tangier
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Engli…
About Thursday 20 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"and by and by come letters from Tangier from my Lord, telling me how, upon a great defete given to the Portuguese there by the Moors, he had put in 300 men into the town, and so he is in possession,"
L&M: Sandwich to Pepys, 20/30 January; printed in HMC, Eliot Hodgkin, p. 157 (mistakenly ascribed to 1661). The Portuguese defeat had occurred on 12 January and is described in Sandwich, pp. 114-15. On the 14th Sandwich sent 80 men from his own ship into the lower castle, and stronger parties went ashore on the 17th and the 23rd. See Sandwich, loc. cit.; Routh, pp. 9-10.
About Thursday 20 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"This morning came Mr. Child to see me, and set me something to my Theorbo,"
L&M: William Child (one of the King's private musicians) was probably providing theorbo tablature: cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Saturday 24 November 1660
Terry Foreman • Link
"that being done I fell to entering these two good songs of Mr. Lawes, “Helpe, helpe, O helpe,” and “O God of Heaven and Hell” in my song book, to which I have got Mr. Child to set the base to the Theorbo,"
L&M : For these songs, see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Pepys probably had Henry Lawes's Second book of ayres and dialogues (1655) containing them but for accompaniment it provided only unfigured bass lines. This entry suggests that he was copying them into a MS book, with accompaniments in tablature for theorbo bt Child.
About Tuesday 18 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"Having agreed with Sir Wm. Pen and my wife to meet them at the Opera, and finding by my walking in the streets, which were every where full of brick-battes and tyles flung down by the extraordinary wind the last night"
L&M: Dr D.J. Shove writes: "Windy Tuesday" was certainly the best documented, and in S. England perhaps the worst, storm between 1362 and 1703. It was associated with the death of the Queen of Bohemia, all Europe being affected by the gales about this time. Rugge (ii, F12r) estimated the damage at £11m and described the London streets as full of "brick bats, tileshards, spouts, sheets of lead...hats and feathers and perriwigs". Cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Evelyn 17 February; Mirabilis annus secundus (1662): A full and certain account of the last great wind (1661/2); C.E. Britton in Met. Mag. (1939)/22-4.
About Tuesday 18 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
CORRECTION
"After we had done at the office, I walked to the Wardrobe, where with Mr. Moore and Mr. Lewis Phillips after dinner we did agree upon the agreement between us and Prior and I did seal and sign it."
L&M: This concerned the purchase of a house at Brampton: see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Tuesday 18 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
CORRECTION
"Lay long in bed, then up to the office (we having changed our days to Tuesday and Saturday in the morning and Thursday at night),"
L&M: Pepys's office memorandun-book has a note under this date: 'We altered our sittings to Tuesd. & Saturday mornings and Thursday afterniin': PRO, Admin. 195/3520, f.br.
About Tuesday 18 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"After we had done at the office, I walked to the Wardrobe, where with Mr. Moore and Mr. Lewis Phillips after dinner we did agree upon the agreement between us and Prior and I did seal and sign it."
L&M: Pepys's office memorandun-book has a note under this date: 'We altered our sittings to Tuesd. & Saturday mornings and Thursday afterniin': PRO, Admin. 195/3520, f.br.
About Sunday 16 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"He preached upon David’s words, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,” and made a pretty good sermon, though not extraordinary."
L&M: The text was from Ps. 118, xvii [KJV: I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.]; the preacher (Thomas Jacombe, Rector of St Martin's, Ludgate Hill) a Presbyterian. Jane Turner had been ill since at least November 1661: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Saturday 15 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"So home, and drew up our report for Sir N. Crispe’s sasse.
L&M: Navy Board to Lord Treasurer, 19 February (copy PL 2871, pp. 657-9), advising against use of the site, and proposing instead the cutting of a channel from Blackwall through the Isle of Dogs to Limehouse. For the report from Trinity House, see HMC, Rep., 8/1/1/250 b.
About Saturday 15 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"With the two Sir Williams to the Trinity-house; and there in their society had the business debated of Sir Nicholas Crisp’s sasse at Deptford."
L&M: See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Tuesday 11 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"So home to musique, my mind being full of our alteracons in the garden,"
L&M: See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Tuesday 11 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"[T]hen my brother Tom came, and spoke to him about selling of Sturtlow."
L&M: Part of Pepys's Uncle Robert's estate in Huntingdonshire, near Brampton; sold in the following year: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Monday 10 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"(though he had some discourse with me about my family and arms) he says nothing at all, nor mentions us either in Cambridgeshire or Norfolk. But I believe, indeed, our family were never considerable."
L&M: Pepys knew almost nothing about the history of the medieval Pepyses: see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
They had been settled in and around Cottenham (Cambs.) from at least the 14th century -- in Bryant's words (i. 2, 3) 'villeins in breed and tenure' and occasionally 'rural bureaucrats' (e.g. Reeves of Crowland Abbey). Since Elizabethan times they had acquired more substance -- the main line, from the diarest's great-grandfather, John Pepys, onwards, being owners of Impington manor. John had a son and a grandson who served as recorders and M.P.'s for Cambridge. No Pepys had held high county office. In the marriage market the outstanding successes were the Elizabethan John who married a small fortune (with which he is said to have bought his manor), and the diarist's great aunt who married into the Mountagus. Arms had been confirmed to Thomas Pepys of South Creake, Norf. (cousin of Pepys's great-grandfather) in 1563.
About Tuesday 4 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
" one Mr. Templer (an ingenious man and a person of honour he seems to be) dined; and, discoursing of the nature of serpents, he told us some that in the waste places of Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and that do feed upon larks, which they take thus: They observe when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with their mouths uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson up to the bird; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange."
L&M: This story may be based on a misunderstanding of the fact that birds often attack snakes: see e.g., E. Topsell, Hist. Serpents (1608), pp. 25+. It has not been traced elsewhere. Pepys's informant may have been Benjamin Templer, ex-Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, whose Northampshire living at Ashley ws not far from the Crews' country house at Stene.
About Monday 3 February 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"we do hear great noise of mirth at Sir William Batten’s, tearing the ribbands from my Lady and him."
L&M: Cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Saturday 25 January 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"Walking in the garden to give the gardener directions what to do this year (for I intend to have the garden handsome),"
L&M: Henty Wise, gardener, later submitted a bill (8 May 1662) for £3 15s. for work on the Navy Office garden: PRO, Adm. 20/2, p. 28. Possibly he is the gardener here referred to. The famous Henry Wise, gardener to William III and Anne, may have been his son.
About Sunday 19 January 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"So home, and I put in at Sir W. Batten’s, where Major Holmes was, and in our discourse and drinking I did give Sir J. Mennes’ health, which he swore he would not pledge, and called him knave and coward (upon the business of Holmes with the Swedish ship lately), which we all and I particularly did desire him to forbear, he being of our fraternity, which he took in great dudgeon, and I was vexed to hear him persist in calling him so, though I believe it to be true, but however he is to blame and I am troubled at it."
L&M: On 7 December 1661 Pepys in his loyalty to Sandwich had been 'glad to hear' this reflection on Mennes.
About Sunday 19 January 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"I am troubled to hear that the Turks do take more and more of our ships in the Straights, and that our merchants here in London do daily break, and are still likely to do so."
L&M: Twenty-two ships had been taken, 11 of them English: CSPVen. 1661-4, p. 94 (13 January). On 27 January the Venetian resident reported the capture of two further English ships and the unsuccessful chase of a third: ib., p. 100. This despite the presence of a Dutch and an English fleet in the Western Mediterranean.
About Sunday 19 January 1661/62
Terry Foreman • Link
"She took occasion to talk of her sister Wight’s making much of the Wights, who for namesake only my uncle do shew great kindness to, so I fear may do us that are nearer to him a great deal of wrong, if he should die without children, which I am sorry for."
L&M: George Norbury and William Wight had married sisters. The latter (half-brother of Pepys's father) was a merchant of London whose only son had died. In 1664 he proposed to Elizabeth Pepys that they should together have a child whom he would make his heir: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… He died intestate in 1672 leaving £4000, of which, after litigation with his widow, Pepys's father was awarded one-third of a moiety: Whitear, pp. 161-5.