Annotations and comments

Terry Foreman has posted 16,447 annotations/comments since 28 June 2005.

Comments

Second Reading

About Friday 26 July 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"but I heed not what he says, though upon enquiry I do find that things in the Parliament are in a great disorder."

L&M: A great volume of legislation had still to be passed, and attendance, particularly among government supporters, had fallen off.

About Goody Gorham

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Widow Gorham's alehouse, owned by Robert Pepys, was to pass to Peoys's father and then to Pepys himself after the death of the tenant." (L&M ii, p.138)

About Saturday 20 July 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Then Sir Robert and I fell to talk about the money due to us upon surrender from Piggott, 164l., which he tells me will go with debts to the heir at law,"

L&M: This was a mortgage owed by Richard Pigott of Bramptonto the late Robert Pepys, on the security of his lands and houses in Brampton. Despite the challenge from the heir-at-law(Thomas Pepys), it passed to the executors in the settlement of 14 February 1663: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… But Pigott could not repay it without selling the land, and for this Thomas Pepys's consent was not obtained until July 1663: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Sunday 7 July 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"we made shift to serve them what we had of wine and other things;"

L&M: The funeral costs, together with the apothecary's bills, came to £80 (or, according to another account, £95): PL (unoff.), Freshfield MSS, nos. 8 and 9.

About Uncle Robert's Will

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Copyhold tenure was a form of customary tenure of land common in England from the Middle Ages. The land was held according to the custom of the manor, and the mode of landholding took its name from the fact that the "title deed" received by the tenant was a copy of the relevant entry in the manorial court roll. A tenant – or mesne lord – who held land in this way was legally known as a copyholder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop…

About Tuesday 2 July 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"went to Sir William Davenant’s Opera; this being the fourth day that it hath begun, and the first that I have seen it."

L&M: Pepys here refers to the new theatre in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields, yo wjoch Davenant had transferred the Duke of York's Company from the Salisbury Court Theatre, Whitefriars. Like Thomas Killigrew's Theatre Royal in nearby Vere St, the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre was a converted tennis-court building. Davenant equipped it with a proscenium arch and proscenium doors and used movable scenery on it. These facts partly explain Pepys's application of the term 'opera' to this theatre, for opera at this time was closely associated with the use of painted scenery and stage machines. Pepys's reference is now generally accepted as fixing the date of the opening of this theatre at 28 June 1661. Downes states (p. 20) that the opening was 'in Spring, 1662', but his dating is evidently incorrect, for Pepys mentions another performance at this theatre on 11 September 1661. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Sunday 30 June 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Myself humming to myself (which now-a-days is my constant practice since I begun to learn to sing) the trillo"

L&M: Not the modern trill but the accelerated reiteration of the same note. He was still hoping that Goodgroome could teach him the trillo on 7 September 1667
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/….

About Wednesday 26 June 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I heard my father had been to find me about special business; so I took coach and went to him, and found by a letter to him from my aunt that my uncle Robert is taken with a dizziness in his head,"

L&M: Robert Pepys of Brampton died on 5 July.

About The Alchemist (Ben Jonson)

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"to the Theatre, "The Alchymist," which is a most incomparable play”

L&M: A comedy by Ben Jonson, first acted in 1610, and published in 1612. Now at the TR, Vere st. It was the third of Jonson's comedies to be revived after the Restoration -- Pepys's notice of attending it on 22 June 1661 is the first specific record of a post-Restoration performance, though a broadside entitled Prologue to the reviv'd alchemist appeared in 1660. Subtle, the alchenist, was one of Walter Clun's best roles, as Pepys notes at 4 August 1664. The cast listed by Downes (pp. 4-5) is probably the one for the 1669 revival, not for this performance; see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Friday 21 June 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Home, and so to the Exchequer, where I met with my uncle Wight, and home with him to dinner, where among others (my aunt being out of town), Mr. Norbury and I did discourse of his wife’s house and land at Brampton, which I find too much for me to buy."

L&M: George Norbury ('Uncle Norbury'), a Londoner had married the sister of Aunt wight. Both he and his wife had property in Brampton.

About Capt. Jonas Poole

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Jonas Poole had commanded the Swiftsure (44-6 guns; built Deptford, 1621; rebuilt 1653) in which Penn had sailed in 1654 to the conquest of Jamaica
(L&M 6/13/1661 and Index).

About Monday 10 June 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"So I back to the Wardrobe, and there found my Lord going to Trinity House, this being the solemn day of choosing Master, and my Lord is chosen"

L&M: He succeeded Albemarle and served for the usual term of one year.

About Sunday 2 June 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"It rained very hard, as it hath done of late so much that we begin to doubt a famine,"

L&M: The sharp rise in prices of grain from 1660 to 1661 is shown in J. E. Thorold Rogers, Hist. Agric. etc., vi. 68-9.

About Thursday 30 May 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"To the office again, where Sir G. Carteret came and sat a while, he being angry for Sir Williams making of the maisters of this fleet upon their own heads without a full table."

L&M: Cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… For much business two was a quorum (see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… ), but the issue of warrants of appointments to ships' masters could be lucrative: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…