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

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First Reading

About Saturday 30 July 1664

Terry F  •  Link

The Troubles prefigured

Ossory to Ormond

Written from: [Dublin]
Date: 30 July 1664
Shelfmark: MS. Carte 220, fol(s). 141-142
Document type: Holograph

Among the Bills now transmitted is one for upbringing, in the Protestant Religion, the children of deceased Catholic parents. The writer has little liking for it. He accounts it "a force" to take children out of the hands of their nearest relatives, and to breed them up in another faith than theirs. It is, he thinks, plainly a harsh, if not an unwarrantable, way of propagating religion. And opinions, too, grow in persecution.
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/s…

About Thursday 11 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

Absent Dirk: from the Carte Calendar

Aernoot Van der Beke to Pieter Straetman

Written from: London
Date: 11/21 August 1664
Shelfmark: MS. Carte 75, fol(s). 201
Document type: Original

Has received Strateman's letter advising him of the seizure of the ship Bishop of Galloway. Cannot decide as to the steps to be taken thereupon, until after receipt of an answer to a letter which he has written to Mr Lynch of Galway.
Dutch.
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/s…

Thanks for the date clarification, Pedro.

About Thursday 11 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

Today in Den Haag and spoilers (extending the post two days ago by our Pedro):

"[Grand Pensionary of Holland Johan] DeWitt realized that a fleet could scarcely be dispatched to Guinea from Holland without being discovered. Therefore, he together with six of his councillors decided to send secret orders to [Admiral] DeRuyter to sail at once for the coast of Guinea. On account of a peculiarity of the Dutch government, however, it was impossible to dispatch these orders without first securing a resolution of the States General....On August 11, 1664, the secretary of the States General read the resolution very quickly, during which time DeWitt and his six cohorts raised so much disturbance by loud conversation that no one in the room heard what was being read....The trick succeeded admirably. DeWitt was now in possession of the necessary authority, and orders were dispatched at once to DeRuyter to leave his post in the Mediterranean and to sail for the west coast of Africa without revealing his destination to Lawson, the English commander [also pursuing barbary pirates]. He was instructed to recover for the West India Company those places which Holmes had seized and to deliver to Valckenburg, the Dutch general on the Gold Coast, all the effects of the English which were not necessary for the different factories of the company."
"The Company of Royal Adventurers," George F. Zook, *The Journal of Negro History*, Vol IV--April, 1919 -- No. 2. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21…

About Wednesday 10 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

"to the post-office"

So read L&M, explaining this is presumably a reference to the "'faire banquetting house covered with lead' in the garden behind the Post Office which then stood opposite the Stocks and at the junction of Threadneedle St and Cornhill. After the Fire Princes St was made across the area" as in the 1746 map http://www.motco.com/Map/81002/Se…

About Wednesday 10 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

"contrary to Chaucer's words to the Sun, 'that he should lend his light to them that small seals grave'"

"What proferestow thy light here for to selle?
Go selle it hem that smale seles graven,
We wol thee nought, us nedeth no day haven."

Geoffrey Chaucer, *Troilus and Criseyde*: Book III, lines 1461-3
http://omacl.org/Troilus/troilus3…

About Monday 8 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

Mennes does a dotard's power-grab? Pepys peeps nought, but writes it all down, bides time.

About Flora's Vagaries (Richard Rhodes)

Terry F  •  Link

'FLORA'S VAGARIES OR FIGARYS' is the title of a comedy written by Richard Rhodes, played first at Christ Church, Oxford, Jan 8, 1663 when Rhodes was a student there, and afterward at the Theatre Royal. Set in Verona Otrante uses a friar to carry on an affair with Lodovico- based on Boccaccio, Decameron, Day iii.
http://books.google.com/books?id=…'s+figarys&source=web&ots=MQLZfHS-i9&sig=O-N3awkhfpRZnR5T6zHGR81buEg#PPA99,M1

About Sunday 7 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

"he do discover that the wings of a moth is made just as the feathers of the wing of a bird,"

Such discoveries were all the rage. Robert Hooke's *Micrographia* (1665) also includes Observ. 46 Of a white Moth (pp. 185-196) A description of the seathers and wings of this, and several other Insects (197, 198) Divers Considerations about the wings, and the flying of insects and Birds. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/…

About Sunday 7 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

"I would to God they would either conform, or be more wise, and not be catched!"

I assume he has his man Thomas Hayter, chronic conventicler, in mind.

About Sunday 7 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

When did Pepys see the new boy? Pepys "having at home met with a letter of Captain Cooke's, with which [1] he had sent a boy for me to see, whom he did intend to recommend to me. I therefore went and there met and spoke with him [Cooke]. He gives me great hopes of the boy, which pleases me, and at Chappell I there met Mr. Blagrave, who gives a report of the boy, and [2] he showed me him" -- not that it matters.

About Friday 5 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

"the acoustics of the musique room" should be like a tiled bathroom without lots of toweling -- very "bright", as the term is.

About Friday 5 August 1664

Terry F  •  Link

discreet
1340, from O.Fr. discret, from L. discretus "separated, distinct," in M.L. "discerning, careful," from pp. of discernere "distinguish" (see discern). Spellings discrete and nativized discreet co-existed until after c.1600, when discreet became the common word for "careful, prudent," and discrete was maintained in philosophy, medicine, music and other disciplines that remembered L. and tried to stick close to it.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.p…