A bit off-topic, but the conflict will come up again:
"After the division of the Habsburg crown in 1555 between its Spanish and Austrian branches, the Austrian monarchy consisted of three major units, the hereditary provinces of Austria itself; the so-called crown of Wenceslas, comprising Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia; and the crown of St. Stephen, including Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia. Bohemia and Hungary had became part of the Habsburg dominions in 1527 after the battle of Mohács, though much of Hungary was still contested. Indeed, only the continuing threat of the Turks in southeastern Europe could have united so disparate a group of peoples -Germans, Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Slovaks, Slovenes, Italians, Rumanians, Ruthenians - under a single head. Turkey may, in this sense be said to have engendered the Austrian monarchy; nor was it a coincidence that the final expulsion of Turkey from Europe in the early twentieth century should have been followed shortly after by the collapse and dismemberment of the Habsburg empire. The histories of Turkey and Austria rose and fell together." Greaves, Richard L. & Robert Zaller, Philip V. Cannistraro, Rhoads Murphey: Civilizations of the World, The Human Adventure, Second Ed.; New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993. pp. 625ff. http://hungarian-history.hu/lib/h…
"Every day brings newes of the Turke’s advance into Germany, to the awakeing of all the Christian Princes thereabouts, and possessing himself of Hungary."
--- So begins the Habsburg-Turkish war, or the 1st Turkish war.
"After a period of quiescence following the Treaty of Sitva-Torok (1606) the Turks crossed the Danube in strength in 1663, ravaging Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia [Transylvania]." http://hungarian-history.hu/lib/h…
"The Ottoman Empire interfered in the affairs of Transylvania, always an unruly district, and this interference brought on a war with the Holy Roman Empire, which after some desultory operations really began in 1663. By a personal appeal to the diet at Regensburg Leopold [I, Holy Roman Emperor] induced the princes [of the Empire] to send assistance." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leop…
"Sir W. Batten...has in my absence inveighed against my contract the other day for Warren’s masts, in which he is a knave, and I shall find matter of tryumph, but it vexes me a little."
A little?! Vexation and mixed feelings?
Things have changed since 10 September - "a great contract with Sir W. Warren for 3,000l. worth of masts; but, good God! to see what a man might do, were I a knave, the whole business from beginning to end being done by me out of the office, and signed to by them upon the once reading of it to them, without the least care or consultation either of quality, price, number, or need of them, only in general that it was good to have a store." http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Baldock "Baldock, or Bagdad as the Knight Templars used to call it, grew where the Great North Road crossed the Icknield Way. And a rather untidy crossing it was with the Great North Road turning right onto Icknield for a couple of hundred yards, before turning left to resume its proper direction again.[...] "When, in later years, the Templars fell from grace, the property was transferred to the Knights Hospitallers. The town grew slowly through the centuries and perhaps gained most importance in the coaching days when it was the first main halting stage on the Great North Road out of London. [...] "Baldock gets an eye-brow raising mention in Pepys's diary for August 6th 1661: 'Took horse for London, and with much ado got to Baldwick. There lay, and had a good supper by myself. The landlady being a pretty woman, but I durst not take notice of her, her husband being there.'" http://www.biffvernon.freeserve.c…
Actually, Benvenuto, vice-versa, and it was Pepys's innovation (perhaps he was stuck on the more common -worth). I put in the Background: "Biggleswade is a small market town on the River Ivel in Bedfordshire.[...]— the name Biggleswade is thought to be derived from Biceil, an Anglo-Saxon personal name and Waed, the Saxon word for ‘ford’." "In 1132, Henry I granted the manor of Biggleswade to Bishop Alexander - Alexander the Magnificent - of Lincoln to help endow Lincoln Cathedral. The town was granted a charter to hold a market during the reign of King John (1196–1216) — a market is still held in the market place in the centre of the town every Saturday. "The town is mentioned twice in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. On 22 July 1661, Pepys stopped off in Biggleswade (called ‘Bigglesworth’ by Pepys) to buy a pair of warm woollen stockings." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigg…
"Biggleswade is a small market town on the River Ivel in Bedfordshire.[...]— the name Biggleswade is thought to be derived from Biceil, an Anglo-Saxon personal name and Waed, the Saxon word for ‘ford’. "In 1132, Henry I granted the manor of Biggleswade to Bishop Alexander - Alexander the Magnificent - of Lincoln to help endow Lincoln Cathedral. The town was granted a charter to hold a market during the reign of King John (1196–1216) — a market is still held in the market place in the centre of the town every Saturday. "The town is mentioned twice in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. On 22 July 1661, Pepys stopped off in Biggleswade (called ‘Bigglesworth’ by Pepys) to buy a pair of warm woollen stockings." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigg…
A proclamation of 22 August for the observation of the Lord's Day, to be read once a month for six months - per L&M note. Surely this included Sabbath rest; hence Pepys's need for Lord Sandwich's written warrant for traveling today.
They - "are heartily grieved" that "my Lord...will hasten up to London, and that he is resolved to go to Chelsey again" - are "studious how to prevent if it be possible"
Yesterday I got to thinking that from the vantage of the Fens and "the Breedlings’ of the place", Sandwich's heading for London is surely going to Babel/Babylon (cities being spawning places for corruption) - but to Chelsea and Mrs. Betty Beck?! Unimaginable.
William Godwin (1756-1836) was "[b]orn at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, Godwin's family on both sides were middle-class people, and it was probably only as a joke that he, a stern political reformer and philosophical radical, attempted to trace his pedigree to a time before the Norman Conquest to the great earl, Godwine." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will…
The town neigboring Boston, Massachusetts, in Mew England, on the north side of the Charles River, across from Fenway Park, is Cambridge. http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=ma…
Boston is a town in the Cambridgeshire fens. Emigrants from Boston named settlements after the town, notably Boston, Massachusetts, USA, whose baseball team, the Red Sox, play in Fenway Park, in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood, on reclaimed wetlands, in part tidal, "The Back Bay Fens (also called The Fens)". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back…
CHATTERIS [1911 Britannica] "a market town in the Wisbech parliamentary division of Cambridgeshire, England, 25z m. N. by W. of Cambridge.... It lies in the midst of the flat Fen country. The church of St Peter is principally Decorated; and there are fragments of a Benedictine convent founded in the loth century and rebuilt after fire in the first half of the 14th.... To the north runs the great Forty-foot Drain, also called Vermuyden's, after the Dutch engineer whose name is associated with the fen drainage works of the middle of the 17th century." http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/C…
FENS [from the 1911 Britannica] "a district in the east of England, possessing a distinctive history and peculiar characteristics. ...Although low and flat, and seamed by innumerable water-courses, the entire region is not, as the Roman name of Metaris Aestuarium would imply, a river estuary, but a bay of the North Sea, silted up, of which the Wash is the last remaining portion. [...] The earliest inhabitants of this region of whom we have record were the British tribes of the Iceni confederation; the Romans, who subdued them, called them Coriceni or Coritani. In Saxon times the inhabitants of the Fens were known (e.g. to Bede) as Gyrvii, and are described as traversing the country on stilts. Macaulay, writing of the year 1689, gives to them the name of Breedlings, and describes them as 'a half-savage population ... who led an amphibious life, sometimes wading, sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm ground to another.' In the end of the 18th century those who dwelt in the remoter parts were scarcely more civilized, being known to their neighbours by the expressive term of 'Slodgers.' These rude fen-dwellers have in all ages been animated by a tenacious love of liberty. Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, the worthy foe of the Romans; Hereward the Saxon, who defied William the Conqueror; Cromwell and his Ironsides, are representative of the fenman's spirit at its best. The fen peasantry showed a stubborn defence of their rights, not only when they resisted the encroachments and selfish appropriations of the 'adventurers' in the 17th century, in the Bedford Level, in Deeping Fen, and in the Witham Fens, and again in the 18th century, when Holland Fen was finally enclosed, but also in the Peasants' Rising of 1381, and in the Pilgrimage of Grace in the reign of Henry VIII." http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/F…
"St Ives is most famous for the nursery rhyme and riddle *As I Was Going to St Ives*. It is not clear whether the rhyme refers to the Cambridgeshire town or one of several other St Ives around the country. However, this St Ives in Cambridgeshire has a pub named 'The Seven Wives', and it used to be a serious market town, much more famous than a fishing village of the same name." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_I…
Parson Drove, originally a township and chapelry of Leverington, became a separate ecclesiastical district under the Leverington Rectory Act (1870)…..The parish consists in effect of the fen end of Leverington; it has no separate manorial history […] The scattered village is situated about 6½ miles west of Wisbech and 4½ miles south-west of Leverington. […] Fendyke Bank, the great bank stretching from Cloughs Cross on the Lincolnshire border southwards to Guyhirn, is one of the most important in the district. For many hundreds of years it was the bastion of defence against the fresh waters coming down from the upland counties, and the landward counterpart to the old sea bank on the east side of Leverington. Fendyke protected the whole district on the north side of Wisbech which includes Tydd St. Giles, Newton, Leverington, Guyhirn, and Wisbech St. Mary. Its importance cannot therefore be exaggerated, and the most stringent measures were taken to ensure its safety. The obligation to maintain the bank was imposed on the landowners in the protected parishes.
A great breach was made in the bank in 1437, when 13,400 acres were flooded through the default of one Thomas Flower, the owner of 24 acres in Wisbech High Fen. (fn. 5) Further breaches occurred in 1570 (fn. 6) and in 1770. At the latter date a gap 130 yards wide was made, probably at Abel’s Gull. Parts of the country-side were flooded to a depth of 6 feet, and were not brought back into cultivation for three years. So sudden was the disaster that some fled for their lives to Thorney Abbey and the higher lands around. (fn. 7)
The Fendyke may be said to mark the boundary between the ‘peat’ and ‘silt’ portions of the parish. The former, comprising Parson Drove Fen, has always been less highly valued and was formerly used mainly as sheep pasturage; it is sparsely populated. The latter, which is the area of ancient settlement, forms part of the Wisbech fruit-growing and market-gardening district.
The 2-mile road called Parson Drove or Parson Drove Gate, along which the nucleus of the village is built, was formerly a green drove and wider than it is now. The inclosure of pieces of common land beside the road has brought it down to its present width; a small strip of common remains at the western end, and the former extent of the rest of the commons is still clearly visible. A fence used to stretch across the eastern end at Gates End Bridge, to prevent cattle straying upon Overdyke Bank.
Pepys, who visited Parson Drove on 17 and 18 September 1663, described it as a ‘heathen place’ where he had to sleep in a ‘sad, cold, stony chamber in a miserable inn’. His visit was made in connexion with the affairs of his deceased aunt Beatrice, relict of John Day of Wisbech, (fn. 8) who held much property in Leverington, especially in Outnewlands Field and Fen Croft. (fn. 9) ‘Uncle Perkins’, mentioned by the diarist as then living in Parson Drove in a poor way, was the husband of Jane Pepys, the diarist’s aunt. (fn. 10) The inn in which the diarist lodged was the Swan which in 1834 belonged to Charles Boucher, a brewer, who altered it drastically. Pepys, who was very susceptible to environment, reacted unfavourably to the Fens. The roads, houses, living conditions, even the gnats from undrained swamps, come in for severe criticism.
From: ‘Wisbech Hundred: Chapeiry of Parson Drove’, A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 4: City of Ely; Ely, N. and S. Witchford and Wisbech Hundreds (2002), pp. 197-200. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…. Date accessed: 17 September 2006.
Comments
First Reading
About Tuesday 22 September 1663
TerryF • Link
Dirk, very nice point.
BTW, the page you link to has a very nice map of Ottoman Empire at its most expansive: http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/g…
About Tuesday 22 September 1663
TerryF • Link
A bit off-topic, but the conflict will come up again:
"After the division of the Habsburg crown in 1555 between its Spanish and Austrian branches, the Austrian monarchy consisted of three major units, the hereditary provinces of Austria itself; the so-called crown of Wenceslas, comprising Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia; and the crown of St. Stephen, including Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia. Bohemia and Hungary had became part of the Habsburg dominions in 1527 after the battle of Mohács, though much of Hungary was still contested. Indeed, only the continuing threat of the Turks in southeastern Europe could have united so disparate a group of peoples -Germans, Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Slovaks, Slovenes, Italians, Rumanians, Ruthenians - under a single head. Turkey may, in this sense be said to have engendered the Austrian monarchy; nor was it a coincidence that the final expulsion of Turkey from Europe in the early twentieth century should have been followed shortly after by the collapse and dismemberment of the Habsburg empire. The histories of Turkey and Austria rose and fell together." Greaves, Richard L. & Robert Zaller, Philip V. Cannistraro, Rhoads Murphey: Civilizations of the World, The Human Adventure, Second Ed.; New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993. pp. 625ff.
http://hungarian-history.hu/lib/h…
About Tuesday 22 September 1663
TerryF • Link
"Every day brings newes of the Turke’s advance into Germany, to the awakeing of all the Christian Princes thereabouts, and possessing himself of Hungary."
---
So begins the Habsburg-Turkish war, or the 1st Turkish war.
"After a period of quiescence following the Treaty of Sitva-Torok (1606) the Turks crossed the Danube in strength in 1663, ravaging Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia [Transylvania]." http://hungarian-history.hu/lib/h…
"The Ottoman Empire interfered in the affairs of Transylvania, always an unruly district, and this interference brought on a war with the Holy Roman Empire, which after some desultory operations really began in 1663. By a personal appeal to the diet at Regensburg Leopold [I, Holy Roman Emperor] induced the princes [of the Empire] to send assistance." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leop…
About Monday 21 September 1663
TerryF • Link
"Perhaps his father’s boy, whom he’d referred to before?"
Indeed 'twas, Todd, Only yesterday - "...I mounted, and, with my father’s boy, upon a horse I borrowed of Captain Ferrers, we rode..."
About Monday 21 September 1663
TerryF • Link
jeannine, do you suppose RG will have SP, suffering from exhaustion (and perhaps swamp fever), hallucinating a "boy"?
About Monday 21 September 1663
TerryF • Link
"Sir W. Batten...has in my absence inveighed against my contract the other day for Warren’s masts, in which he is a knave, and I shall find matter of tryumph, but it vexes me a little."
A little?! Vexation and mixed feelings?
Things have changed since 10 September - "a great contract with Sir W. Warren for 3,000l. worth of masts; but, good God! to see what a man might do, were I a knave, the whole business from beginning to end being done by me out of the office, and signed to by them upon the once reading of it to them, without the least care or consultation either of quality, price, number, or need of them, only in general that it was good to have a store." http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
About Baldock (or Baldwick), Hertfordshire
TerryF • Link
Baldock
"Baldock, or Bagdad as the Knight Templars used to call it, grew where the Great North Road crossed the Icknield Way. And a rather untidy crossing it was with the Great North Road turning right onto Icknield for a couple of hundred yards, before turning left to resume its proper direction again.[...] "When, in later years, the Templars fell from grace, the property was transferred to the Knights Hospitallers. The town grew slowly through the centuries and perhaps gained most importance in the coaching days when it was the first main halting stage on the Great North Road out of London. [...] "Baldock gets an eye-brow raising mention in Pepys's diary for August 6th 1661: 'Took horse for London, and with much ado got to Baldwick. There lay, and had a good supper by myself. The landlady being a pretty woman, but I durst not take notice of her, her husband being there.'" http://www.biffvernon.freeserve.c…
About Sunday 20 September 1663
TerryF • Link
"Bigglesworth -> Biggleswade"
Actually, Benvenuto, vice-versa, and it was Pepys's innovation (perhaps he was stuck on the more common -worth). I put in the Background: "Biggleswade is a small market town on the River Ivel in Bedfordshire.[...]— the name Biggleswade is thought to be derived from Biceil, an Anglo-Saxon personal name and Waed, the Saxon word for ‘ford’."
"In 1132, Henry I granted the manor of Biggleswade to Bishop Alexander - Alexander the Magnificent - of Lincoln to help endow Lincoln Cathedral. The town was granted a charter to hold a market during the reign of King John (1196–1216) — a market is still held in the market place in the centre of the town every Saturday.
"The town is mentioned twice in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. On 22 July 1661, Pepys stopped off in Biggleswade (called ‘Bigglesworth’ by Pepys) to buy a pair of warm woollen stockings." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigg…
About Biggleswade (or Bigglesworth), Bedfordshire
TerryF • Link
"Biggleswade is a small market town on the River Ivel in Bedfordshire.[...]— the name Biggleswade is thought to be derived from Biceil, an Anglo-Saxon personal name and Waed, the Saxon word for ‘ford’. "In 1132, Henry I granted the manor of Biggleswade to Bishop Alexander - Alexander the Magnificent - of Lincoln to help endow Lincoln Cathedral. The town was granted a charter to hold a market during the reign of King John (1196–1216) — a market is still held in the market place in the centre of the town every Saturday.
"The town is mentioned twice in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. On 22 July 1661, Pepys stopped off in Biggleswade (called ‘Bigglesworth’ by Pepys) to buy a pair of warm woollen stockings." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigg…
About Sunday 20 September 1663
TerryF • Link
A proclamation of 22 August for the observation of the Lord's Day, to be read once a month for six months - per L&M note. Surely this included Sabbath rest; hence Pepys's need for Lord Sandwich's written warrant for traveling today.
About Saturday 19 September 1663
TerryF • Link
And Pepys was "bit cruelly...by the gnatts."
Great article, Pedro! Now I hope we will not see whether the "gnatts" were ague(malaria)-bearing mosquitoes.
About Saturday 19 September 1663
TerryF • Link
Paul, L&M also transcribe the puzzling construction. I think your construal of it must be correct.
About Saturday 19 September 1663
TerryF • Link
Are Messrs Howe and Pepys up to any good?
They
- "are heartily grieved" that "my Lord...will hasten up to London, and that he is resolved to go to Chelsey again"
- are "studious how to prevent if it be possible"
Yesterday I got to thinking that from the vantage of the Fens and "the Breedlings’ of the place", Sandwich's heading for London is surely going to Babel/Babylon (cities being spawning places for corruption) - but to Chelsea and Mrs. Betty Beck?! Unimaginable.
About Wisbech, Cambridgeshire
TerryF • Link
William Godwin (1756-1836) was "[b]orn at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, Godwin's family on both sides were middle-class people, and it was probably only as a joke that he, a stern political reformer and philosophical radical, attempted to trace his pedigree to a time before the Norman Conquest to the great earl, Godwine." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will…
About Friday 18 September 1663
TerryF • Link
The town neigboring Boston, Massachusetts, in Mew England, on the north side of the Charles River, across from Fenway Park, is Cambridge. http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=ma…
About Friday 18 September 1663
TerryF • Link
Boston is a town in the Cambridgeshire fens. Emigrants from Boston named settlements after the town, notably Boston, Massachusetts, USA, whose baseball team, the Red Sox, play in Fenway Park, in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood, on reclaimed wetlands, in part tidal, "The Back Bay Fens (also called The Fens)". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back…
About Chatteris, Cambridgeshire
TerryF • Link
CHATTERIS
[1911 Britannica] "a market town in the Wisbech parliamentary division of Cambridgeshire, England, 25z m. N. by W. of Cambridge.... It lies in the midst of the flat Fen country. The church of St Peter is principally Decorated; and there are fragments of a Benedictine convent founded in the loth century and rebuilt after fire in the first half of the 14th.... To the north runs the great Forty-foot Drain, also called Vermuyden's, after the Dutch engineer whose name is associated with the fen drainage works of the middle of the 17th century." http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/C…
About Friday 18 September 1663
TerryF • Link
FENS
[from the 1911 Britannica] "a district in the east of England, possessing a distinctive history and peculiar characteristics. ...Although low and flat, and seamed by innumerable water-courses, the entire region is not, as the Roman name of Metaris Aestuarium would imply, a river estuary, but a bay of the North Sea, silted up, of which the Wash is the last remaining portion. [...] The earliest inhabitants of this region of whom we have record were the British tribes of the Iceni confederation; the Romans, who subdued them, called them Coriceni or Coritani. In Saxon times the inhabitants of the Fens were known (e.g. to Bede) as Gyrvii, and are described as traversing the country on stilts. Macaulay, writing of the year 1689, gives to them the name of Breedlings, and describes them as 'a half-savage population ... who led an amphibious life, sometimes wading, sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm ground to another.' In the end of the 18th century those who dwelt in the remoter parts were scarcely more civilized, being known to their neighbours by the expressive term of 'Slodgers.' These rude fen-dwellers have in all ages been animated by a tenacious love of liberty. Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, the worthy foe of the Romans; Hereward the Saxon, who defied William the Conqueror; Cromwell and his Ironsides, are representative of the fenman's spirit at its best. The fen peasantry showed a stubborn defence of their rights, not only when they resisted the encroachments and selfish appropriations of the 'adventurers' in the 17th century, in the Bedford Level, in Deeping Fen, and in the Witham Fens, and again in the 18th century, when Holland Fen was finally enclosed, but also in the Peasants' Rising of 1381, and in the Pilgrimage of Grace in the reign of Henry VIII." http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/F…
About St Ives, Cambridgeshire
TerryF • Link
"St Ives is most famous for the nursery rhyme and riddle *As I Was Going to St Ives*. It is not clear whether the rhyme refers to the Cambridgeshire town or one of several other St Ives around the country. However, this St Ives in Cambridgeshire has a pub named 'The Seven Wives', and it used to be a serious market town, much more famous than a fishing village of the same name." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_I…
About Parson Drove, Cambridgeshire
TerryF • Link
CHAPELRY OF PARSON DROVE
Parson Drove, originally a township and chapelry of Leverington, became a separate ecclesiastical district under the Leverington Rectory Act (1870)…..The parish consists in effect of the fen end of Leverington; it has no separate manorial history
[…]
The scattered village is situated about 6½ miles west of Wisbech and 4½ miles south-west of Leverington.
[…]
Fendyke Bank, the great bank stretching from Cloughs Cross on the Lincolnshire border southwards to Guyhirn, is one of the most important in the district. For many hundreds of years it was the bastion of defence against the fresh waters coming down from the upland counties, and the landward counterpart to the old sea bank on the east side of Leverington. Fendyke protected the whole district on the north side of Wisbech which includes Tydd St. Giles, Newton, Leverington, Guyhirn, and Wisbech St. Mary. Its importance cannot therefore be exaggerated, and the most stringent measures were taken to ensure its safety. The obligation to maintain the bank was imposed on the landowners in the protected parishes.
A great breach was made in the bank in 1437, when 13,400 acres were flooded through the default of one Thomas Flower, the owner of 24 acres in Wisbech High Fen. (fn. 5) Further breaches occurred in 1570 (fn. 6) and in 1770. At the latter date a gap 130 yards wide was made, probably at Abel’s Gull. Parts of the country-side were flooded to a depth of 6 feet, and were not brought back into cultivation for three years. So sudden was the disaster that some fled for their lives to Thorney Abbey and the higher lands around. (fn. 7)
The Fendyke may be said to mark the boundary between the ‘peat’ and ‘silt’ portions of the parish. The former, comprising Parson Drove Fen, has always been less highly valued and was formerly used mainly as sheep pasturage; it is sparsely populated. The latter, which is the area of ancient settlement, forms part of the Wisbech fruit-growing and market-gardening district.
The 2-mile road called Parson Drove or Parson Drove Gate, along which the nucleus of the village is built, was formerly a green drove and wider than it is now. The inclosure of pieces of common land beside the road has brought it down to its present width; a small strip of common remains at the western end, and the former extent of the rest of the commons is still clearly visible. A fence used to stretch across the eastern end at Gates End Bridge, to prevent cattle straying upon Overdyke Bank.
Pepys, who visited Parson Drove on 17 and 18 September 1663, described it as a ‘heathen place’ where he had to sleep in a ‘sad, cold, stony chamber in a miserable inn’. His visit was made in connexion with the affairs of his deceased aunt Beatrice, relict of John Day of Wisbech, (fn. 8) who held much property in Leverington, especially in Outnewlands Field and Fen Croft. (fn. 9) ‘Uncle Perkins’, mentioned by the diarist as then living in Parson Drove in a poor way, was the husband of Jane Pepys, the diarist’s aunt. (fn. 10) The inn in which the diarist lodged was the Swan which in 1834 belonged to Charles Boucher, a brewer, who altered it drastically. Pepys, who was very susceptible to environment, reacted unfavourably to the Fens. The roads, houses, living conditions, even the gnats from undrained swamps, come in for severe criticism.
From: ‘Wisbech Hundred: Chapeiry of Parson Drove’, A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 4: City of Ely; Ely, N. and S. Witchford and Wisbech Hundreds (2002), pp. 197-200. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…. Date accessed: 17 September 2006.