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

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Second Reading

About Monday 15 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"the Mount cast hard by is called Selbury, from one King Seall buried there, as tradition says."

L&M: Charles II had visite both Avebury and Silbury in 1663 under Aubrey's guidance.

About Sunday 14 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"and of two Heads, on two pillars, in Wells church."

L&M: The heads of a king and a bishop, on the capital of two pillars on the n. side of the nave of the Cathedral. 'It was foretold, when a King should be like that King, and a Bishop like that Bishop; that Abbots should be put down. and Nuns should marry. . . . This Prophecy was Writ in Parchment, and hung in a Table on one of those Pillars, before the Civil-Wars. . . . It was Prophecy'd 300 years before the Reformation. Bishop Knight, was Bishop here at the Reformation, and the Picture (they say) did resemble him': John Aubrey, Miscellanies (1696), p. 95.

About Saturday 13 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

tonyt posted (above) "The 'Marsh' itself was soon to disappear - built over to form Queen's Square, notorious as the site of the 1831 Bristol Reform Riots."

The Bristol Riots of 1831 took place after the House of Lords rejected the second Reform Bill, which aimed to get rid of some of the rotten boroughs and give Britain's fast growing industrial towns such as Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford and Leeds greater representation in the House of Commons. Bristol had been represented in the House of Commons since 1295, but by 1830 only 6,000 of the 104,000 population had the vote.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bri…

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About Saturday 13 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"He shewed us the place where the merchants meet here, and a fine Cross "

L&M: A (?)13th-century cross(enlarged and beautified in 1633) which stood at the junction of the four main streets of the city; removed 1733; now at Stourhead, Wilts. Bristol High Cross was a monumental market cross erected in 1373 in the centre of Bristol. It was built in Decorated Gothic style on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon cross, to commemorate the granting of a charter by Edward III to make Bristol a county, separate from Somerset and Gloucestershire.[1] It was moved to the Stourhead Estate in 1765.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bri…

About Saturday 13 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Up at four o’clock, being by appointment called up to the Cross Bath,"

L&M: A triangular bath so-called from the cross in the middle; being the coolest, it was the one most used in summer. Gentlemen sat in seats around the cross, ladies sat at the side under the arches.

About Friday 12 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"we come before night to the Bath; where I presently stepped out with my landlord, and saw the baths, with people in them."

L&M: Descriptions of 17th-century Bath are in BM Lansdowne, 213, ff. 339+ [1634]; J. Childrey, Britannia Baconica (1661), pp. 32-3; Mundy, iv. 7-8 [1639]; T. Guidott, Discourse of Bathe (1676), ch. xii; James Yonge, Journal (ed. Poynter, pp. 183-4 [1681]; C. Fiennes, Journeys (ed. Morris), pp. 18+ [?1687]. Drawings by Schellinks (1662) are in Drawings of Engl. in 17th cent. (ed. P. H. Hulton, ii. pls 19 (general), 20 (King's Bath) . Cf. P. R. James, The baths of Bath in 16th & 17th centuries.

About Friday 12 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"here saw the tombstone whereon there were only two heads cut, which, the story goes, and credibly, were two sisters, called the Fair Maids of Foscott, that had two bodies upward and one belly, and there lie buried."

L&M: One of the twins was said to have died 'at a tate of maturity' so that 'the survivor was constrained to drag about her lifeless companion, till death released her from her horrid burden': Collinson, loc. cit. The stone remains on the n. wall of the Tower.

About Thursday 11 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"This day from Salisbury I wrote by the post my excuse for not coming home, which I hope will do, for I am resolved to see the Bath,"

L&M: 'The Bath', not 'Bath', was a common 17th-century form of the name.

About Tuesday 9 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"At a time when roads were often in a rough state and sometimes poorly defined, it was common to engage a guide to lead a party by the best way from one town to another when the route was unfamiliar."

L&M note that on 16 June Pepys's party , without a guide, lost its way between Newbury and Reading. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Tuesday 2 June 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Got there by twelve o’clock, taking into my boat, for company, a man that desired a passage — a certain western bargeman, with whom I had good sport, talking of the old woman of Woolwich, and telling him the whole story."

L&M: Western bargemen plied upriver from London Bridge: Woolwich lay in the territory of their rivals, plying downriver.

About Saturday 30 May 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"saw “Philaster;”

L&M: A tragicomedy by Beaumont and Fletcher. According to Genest (i. 82-3), Hart played Philaster and Nell Gwynn, Bellario.

About Wednesday 27 May 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"and this very chair, he tells me, was made for my Lady Lambert!"

L&M: ?Viscountess Lambert (d. 1649), an Irish acquaintance of Penn's, whom Pepys may have mistaken for the wife of the republican Maj. Gen. John Lambert. Gout-chairs often had wheels: cf. Evelyn, iii. 502 (Clarendon's chair).

About Wednesday 27 May 1668

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Up, and to the office, where some time upon Sir D. Gawden’s accounts, and then I by water to Westminster for some Tangier orders,"

L&M: Of the consignment of hemp recently sent by Shaw to the Woolwich reopeyard, 15 or 16 had been rejected by the ckerk: CSPD 1667-8, p. 387.