Annotations and comments

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

Comments

Second Reading

About Wednesday 11 February 1662/63

Terry Foreman  •  Link

The tryal of Sir Henry Vane, Kt. at the Kings Bench, Westminster, June the 2d. and 6th, 1662 together with what he intended to have spoken the day of his sentence (June 11) for arrest of judgment (had he not been interrupted and over-ruled by the court) and his bill of exceptions : with other occasional speeches, &c. : also his speech and prayer, &c. on the scaffold.
Vane, Henry, Sir, 1612?-1662, defendant., England and Wales. Court of King's Bench. [London: s.n.], 1662.
Early English Books Online [total text]
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo…

About Wednesday 17 April 1667

Terry Foreman  •  Link

The Brounckers

"When we come to the Duke of York’s I was spoke to by Mr. Bruncker on behalf of Carcasse."

L&M note: Henry Brouncker was a Groom of the Bedchamber in the Duke's Household, and the brother of Lord [William, 2nd Viscount] Brouncker], whom Carkesse served a clerk.
---------
Pepys told an anecdote of their father, Sir William, 1st Viscount Brouncker (d. 1645): https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Sunday 27 December 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"But he tells me the sad news, that he is out of all expectations that ever the debts of the Navy will be paid, if the Parliament do not enable the King to do it by money; all they can hope for to do out of the King’s revenue being but to keep our wheels a-going on present services, and, if they can, to cut off the growing interest: which is a sad story, and grieves me to the heart."

L&M: A more ceerful (but less accurate ) impression is conveyed by a despatch (15 January 1669) of Lindenov, the Danish envoy: W. Westergaard (ed.), First Triple Alliance, p. 70. Downing was now Secretary to thee Treasury.
---------------
The 1668 Triple Alliance (Swedish;Trippelalliansen) was formed by England, the Swedish Empire, and the Dutch Republic in May 1668. It was created in response to the occupation of the Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comté by France. Although Spain and Emperor Leopold were not signatories, they were closely involved in the negotiations.

It consisted of three separate agreements; a defensive alliance, an undertaking to oblige Spain and France to make peace, plus secret clauses that included mediating an end to the war between Spain and Portugal and enforcing the peace by military action if required.

The Alliance was short-lived, both Sweden and England backing France at the outset of the 1672 to 1678 Franco-Dutch War but marked the point at which England and the Republic came to see France as a common threat. This makes it the forerunner of the Grand Alliance that fought the 1688 to 1697 Nine Years War and the 1701 to 1714 War of the Spanish Succession.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri…

About Sunday 14 April 1667

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Turkeywork (alternately turkey-work or turkey work; sometimes called setwork and Norwich work) is a knotted-and-cut pile furnishing textile produced in England from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. Turkeywork was used for table carpets, cupboard carpets, cushions, and especially for matched sets of upholstery for chair seats and backs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tur…

Turkeywork was produced by professional weavers in England from the 16th century.[5][7] Short lengths or thrums of worsted wool were hand-knotted using the Turkish or Ghiordes knot (also called the symmetrical knot) on a linen or hemp-fibre warp.[3][4] The colourful wool was shorn to produced a dense, even pile. Designs originally imitated so-called 'Turkey carpets'[7], the general name in Early Modern England for imported carpets of Middle Eastern origin[8], which became popular for furniture covers (and less often, floor carpets) in the 16th century.

Economic historian Eric Kerridge records commercial production of turkeywork carpets as early as 1553 in Windsor, and "in Norwich in 1583, in York in 1595, and in Bradford in 1639".[10] These carpets were used to cover tables, hutches, and similar furniture, as well as for cushions and chair seats. Turkeywork was generally too expensive for use as floor carpets, "for each knot had to be formed separately by laying a thrum across two warp ends, folding it back under and inwards, and drawing its two ends up between the warps."[10] However, for "chairs given hard use in eating, meeting, and parade rooms, it formed an especially satisfactory covering, being both durable and colorful."[11] Turkeywork chairs were ordered by the dozen for meeting and committee rooms in the Palace of Whitehall and Holyrood Palace[5], and turkeywork coverings for seating furniture were exported to both Europe and Colonial America. The 1658 inventory of a Boston merchant includes "2 turkie bottoms and backs for chayres", and a 1685 inventory in Philadelphia includes "1 doz. and 6 new backs & seats of Turkey work for Chairs".[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tur…

About Funerals

Terry Foreman  •  Link

FUNERALS

The importance of paying due honour to the deceased is clear enough in the diary. The first and apparently the easiest duty of the bereaved was to ensure that as many relatives and friends as possible would attend. Tickets would be issued, but do not seem to have succeeded in limiting the numbers -- to gatecrash might be a mark of respect. Public assembly rooms might be hired for the gathering -- two city halls were required at the funeral of the goldsmith Sir Thomas Vyner -- but even so, they were often, in Pepys's experience, uncomfortably crowded. According to his estimates, four or five hundred people attended the funeral of Anthony Joyce, and roughly two hundred coaches were required to carry Sir Wiliam Batten's mourners from London to his burial at Walthamstow. The numbers in the funeral procession might, in the case of an important person, be swollen by the hiring of professional mourners -- old men or women (according to thesex of thedeceased) who walked in couples ahead of the hearse, their numbercorresponding to his or her age.

The second duty of the deceased's family was to provide the proper habiliments of mourning. Black cloth would be given beforehand to near relatives and servants. At the funeral, scarves and hatbands would be distributed, together with mourning rings that were graded to the rank and degree of relationship of the recipient. The rings, of gold and black enamel, would often be providedfor in the will of the deceased. The house and church would be draped in black for days on end, and mourning coaches would be hired for the funeral and for the customary month's mourning afterwards. At Pepys's own funeral in 1703 mourning was presented to 40 people and 123 rings (of three grades costing 20s., 15s. and 10s.) were distributed. In the case of men of gentle birth (Edward Pepys of Broomthorpe for example), hatchments displaying their arms would be hung from the windows of the house and placed on the hearse. Afternoon was the usual time for the ceremony, but the upper classes preferred to be buried at night. Pepys himself was buried at 9 p.m. The rich spent lavishly on these occasions -- there are records of funerals at about this time costing over £1000, and a state funeral (like Albemarle's) cost £6000 -- and humbler folk probably overspent. The wine and biscuit, the hire of a hall and undertaker, the charges for parson, sexton and ringers were all expenses that could hardly be avoided.

(L&M, Vol. X, Companion)

About Saturday 1 March 1661/62

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"From my reading about Shakespeare, I gather much of the play writing was collaborative. In the 1660's many of Shakespeare's plays were rewritten to appeal to the new generation of theater-goers. Maybe it was more like sitcom or Saturday Night Life writing is today ... a group of creative people sitting around a table throwing out ideas and jokes and recording what they considered the best. The person who pays the writers gets to be the "author". I doubt Lorne Michels writes much."

Wikipedia offers a take on how The Spanish Curate was writ by several hands that differs from the Saturday Night Live (sic) model::
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

About Saturday 1 March 1661/62

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Does anyone have the feeling that when S goes to see a play is it not advertised who wrote it? "

On 1 January he recorded how publi were the adverts of plays: "Up and went forth with Sir W. Pen by coach towards Westminster, and in my way seeing that the “Spanish Curate” was acted today, I light and let him go alone, and I home again and sent to young Mr. Pen and his sister to go anon with my wife and I to the Theatre." https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Thursday 21 November 1661

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"What do you think this means exactly: "it being the first afternoon that we have sat, which we are now to do always, so long as the Parliament sits," -- does he have to sit in Parliament and watch what is going on?"

The Navy Board will now change its sittings from mornings to afternoons, so that any MP on the Board (Pepys is not one, but Penn and Batten were).

About Wednesday 23 December 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"He says that Sir D. Gawden is mightily troubled at Pen’s being put upon him, by the Duke of York, and that he believes he will get clear of it"

L&M: Penn had been joined with Sir Denis Gauden and his son Benjamin Gauden in the contract for navy victualling, as a means of providing some official check on the victualler: CSPD 1668-9, p. 208.

About Tuesday 2 April 1667

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Sir William Temple was created the 1st Bart. on 31 Jan. 1666. He was strongly pro-Dutch, and was recognized as the principal architect of the Triple Alliance in 1668."

The 1668 Triple Alliance (Swedish;Trippelalliansen) was formed by England, the Swedish Empire, and the Dutch Republic in May 1668. It was created in response to the occupation of the Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comté by France. Although Spain and Emperor Leopold were not signatories, they were closely involved in the negotiations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri…

About Sunday 20 December 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"He told us, too, that Turenne being now become a Catholique, he is likely to get over the head of Colbert, their interests being contrary;"

L&M: Turenne (under whom the Duke had served in 1652-5) had become a Roman Catholic in the previous October. His political influence never rivalled that of Colbert.

About Sunday 20 December 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"the Duke of York in good humour did fall to tell us many fine stories of the wars in Flanders, and how the Spaniards are the [best] disciplined foot in the world"

L&M: The Duke had served with the Spaniards in two campaigns in 1657-8.