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

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Second Reading

About Wednesday 5 June 1667

Terry Foreman  •  Link

La Reyne le veult ("The Queen wills it") or Le Roy le veult ("The King wills it") is a Norman French phrase used in the Parliament of the United Kingdom to signify that a public bill (including a private member's bill) has received royal assent from the monarch of the United Kingdom. It is a legacy of the time prior to 1488 when parliamentary and judicial business was conducted in French, the language of the educated classes dating to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is one of a small number of Norman French phrases that continue to be used in the course of parliamentary procedure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_…

About Friday 22 January 1668/69

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I met with Mr. Dancre, the famous landscape painter, with whom I was on Wednesday; and he took measure of my panels in my dining-room, where, in the four, I intend to have the four houses of the King, White Hall, Hampton Court, Greenwich, and Windsor."

L&M: On 31 March Pepys decided to have a view of Rome instead of the picture of Hampton Court. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Friday 31 May 1667

Terry Foreman  •  Link

More context from Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, v. i. 100.

ADRIANA

I will attend my husband, be his nurse,
Diet his sickness, for it is my office
100And will have no attorney but myself;
And therefore let me have him home with me.

About John Pepys (a, father)

Terry Foreman  •  Link

John Pepys, sen. career.

As a boy of about 14 he went to London from Impington to serve his apprenticeship to a tailor in St Bride's parish, off Fleet St, and never moved from the parish until he surrendered his house and business to his son Tom in 1661 [about 46 years later]. It seems virtually certain therefore that he succeeded his own master there, eventually being made free [of the obligations of apprenticeship] of the Merchant Taylor's Company as a 'foreign' tailor (i.e. living outside the city boundaries) in 1653." (L&M Companion)

About Wednesday 29 May 1667

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Dad (John Pepys Sen.) is in his element!

"As a boy of about 14 he went to London from Impington to serve his apprenticeship to a tailor in St Bride's parish, off Fleet St, and never moved from the parish until he surrendered his house and business to his son Tom in 1661 [about 46 years later]. It seems virtually certain therefore that he succeeded his own master there, eventually being made free [of the obligations of apprenticeship] of the Merchant Taylor's Company as a 'foreign' tailor (i.e. living outside the city boundaries) in 1653." (L&M Companion)

So, Batch, Dad was no doubt seeing old friends and colleagues, with whom he could dine, drink and lodge. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

About Wednesday 20 January 1668/69

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"And thence heard at the Council-board the City...and the company of Strangers Merchants...debate the business of water-baylage; a tax demanded upon all goods, by the City, imported and exported: which these Merchants oppose, and demanding leave to try the justice of the City's demand by a Quo Warranto, which the City opposed, the Merchants did quite lay the City on their backs with great triumph, the City's cause being apparently too weak:"

L&M: This was one of several disputes about this tax lasting until 1680, when the King caused a nolle prosequi [prosecutors' declarations that they are voluntarily ending a case] to be entered on the verdict now given against the City: LRO, PRO, PC, CTB.

About Wednesday 20 January 1668/69

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"And thence heard at the Council-board the City...and the company of Strangers Merchants...debate the business of water-baylage; a tax demanded upon all goods, by the City, imported and exported: which these Merchants oppose, and demanding leave to try the justice of the City's demand by a Quo Warranto, which the City opposed, the Merchants did quite lay the City on their backs with great triumph, the City’s cause being apparently too weak: but here I observed Mr. Gold, the merchant, to speak very well, and very sharply, against the City. "

Pepys periodically listens to trials, assessing how they are argued, e.g:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/search…

Does this deserve a study?

About Saturday 4 May 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Pedro. on 5 May 2004 • Link • Flag
Distance travelled//escape after Worcester./
A Long distance path (for Walkers) is called the Monarch's Way (Worcester to Shoreham) 982km/610 miles."

The Monarch's Way is a 625-mile (1,006 km)[1] long-distance footpath in England that approximates the escape route taken by King Charles II in 1651 after being defeated in the Battle of Worcester.[2] It runs from Worcester via Bristol and Yeovil to Brighton. All of the footpath is waymarked. The waymark is yellow and shows a picture of the ship Surprise above the Prince of Wales three-point feathered crown which is superimposed on a Royal Oak tree (which is at Boscobel House) in black. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon…

About Tuesday 19 January 1668/69

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"so to the King’s house, to see “Horace;”"

L&M: By Pierre Corneille (1640); the first four acts translated by Mrs Katherine Philips, the last by Sir John Denham. This version was was first acted by amateurs at Court in 1668, after being published in Katherine Philipss Poems (1667).

About Monday 18 January 1668/69

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"... I paid Sheres his 100l., given him for his pains in drawing the plate of Tangier fortifications, &c."

L&M: Untraced: a 'Prospect of Tangier' was in the possession of the Pepys Cockerell family in 1824 (Harvard Houghton Lib ., b. MS, Eng. 991). He had been ordered to conduct a survey of the fortification and mole in the previous autumn: Sir H. Cholmley, Short account of . . . mole (? 1680), p. 3.

About Sunday 16 December 1666

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"then away to White Hall, and there walked up and down to the Queen’s side"

I presume "the Queen’s side" is not the side of the body of Queen Catherine, but an area of Whitehall Palace, to which Pepys will frequently refer:
https://www.google.com/search?num…

"Anon to chapel, by the King’s closet, and heard a very good anthemne. "
This plan of the Royal Palace of Whitehall [1680] shows the chapel by thhe King's closet: http://www.londonancestor.com/map…

About Sir Charles Harbord (jun.)

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Sir Charles Harbord (jun.), kt 1665 (1637-72).
A protégé of Sandwich, distrusted (probably unfairly) by Pepys; third son of Sir Charles, sen. (d. 1679), Surveyor of Crown Lands, a friend of Sandwich. The young Harbord accompanied Sandwich to Tangier in 1661 and by 1662 was commanding a company of foot in the garrison, looking after Sandwich's property yhere and doing a little trading on his own account. After serving under Sandwich in the 1665 campaign, he went with him to Madrid as a private secretary, afterwards visiting Tangier and exrcuting the very skilled drawings which Sandwich later had engraved. In 1668-9 Sandwich proposed to have him made paymaster at Tangier (much to Pwepys's annoyance), but the post was never established. At the outbreak of war in 1672 he joined Sandwich as a volunteer on board his flagship and perished with him at the battle of Sole Bay. His elder brother William was to prove one of the fiercest of Pepys's parliamentary critics during the Popish Plot crisis.
(L&M Companion)

About Sunday 17 January 1668/69

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Here I met Hugh May, and he brings me to the knowledge of Sir Henry Capell, a Member of Parliament, and brother of my Lord of Essex, who hath a great value, it seems, for me; and they appoint a day to come and dine with me, and see my books, and papers of the Office, which I shall be glad to shew them, and have opportunity to satisfy them therein."

L&M: For the visit, see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Capel seems to have been curious about Pepys since hearing his speech to th Commons in March 1668.

About Saturday 11 May 1667

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Piracy in West Africa: The world's most dangerous seas?

The seas off West Africa's oil-rich coastline are now the most dangerous in the world for shipping, according to a new report.

One Earth Future, which produces an annual State of Maritime Piracy, says that while attacks have been falling substantially in some regions of the world, in West Africa they've been on the rise and are now more frequent than anywhere else. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-af…