"Coming home to-night, a drunken boy was carrying by our constable to our new pair of stocks to handsel them, being a new pair and very handsome."
Methinks there are at least two things about this sentence worthy of comment: 1) Substance - a regular Saturday night event (what week went without it?! ask our constable!) is recorded in the Diary; 2) Form - that the stocks are "new" is notably repeated for the Diary - to define, or explain the use of "handsel"?
"handsel" may be one for the OED, but The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition uses a lot of other words for what seems to be "to inaugurate".
hand·sel : NOUN: 1. Chiefly British A gift to express good wishes at the beginning of a new year or enterprise. 2. The first money or barter taken in, as by a new business or on the opening day of business, especially when considered a token of good luck. 3a. A first payment. b. A specimen or foretaste of what is to come. TRANSITIVE VERB:.Inflected forms: hand·seled or hand·selled, hand·sel·ing or hand·sel·ling, hand·sels or hand·sels 1. To give a handsel to. 2. To launch with a ceremonial gesture or gift. 3. To do or use for the first time. ETYMOLOGY: Middle English hanselle, from Old English handselen, a handing over ( hand, hand + selen, gift)and from Old Norse handsal, legal transfer ( hand, hand + sal, a giving). http://www.bartleby.com/61/62/H00…
* * * Q: Is "handsel" a word those of you who are or have been Over There in the UK commonly use/hear?
"to church, where I found our pew altered by taking some of the hind pew to make ours bigger, because of the number of women, more by Sir J. Minnes company than we used to have."
A recurring problem at St Olave, Hart St., solved, or at least ameliorated?
Friday 3 April 1663 “chappell…being most monstrous full, I could not go into my pew, but sat among the quire.” http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Sunday 15 March 1662/63 "with my wife and her woman Ashwell the first time to church, where our pew was so full with Sir J. Minnes’s sister and her daughter, that I perceive, when we come all together, some of us must be shut out, but I suppose we shall come to some order what to do therein." At Bradford’s instance we discussed the issue of the overpopulation of the Navy Office pew http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Might it have been S.O.P. for sea captains to report in to the Navy Office after returning from a voyage?
I note how glad Sam'l is to see "Captain Lambert of the Norwich, this day come from Tangier," a daunting voyage, and that "All staid a pretty while" - to compare sea-stories and debrief one another?
A. Hamilton, L&M say these are the ones pursuant to the voyage to Tangier and Lisbon in 1661-2. Old debts never die, if the accountants are good and honest.
Contra Wheatley's note's claim that Haut Brion is from Medoc...
"Haut-Brion is a First Great Growth of Bordeaux. Actually it is the only one not coming from the Médoc area, but from Pessac Léognan in Graves." - Jean-Philippe Delmas, the third generation of Delmas in charge of oenology at Château Haut Brion http://www.terroir-france.com/int…
"Château Haut-Brion is a First Growth in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. It is one of the most expensive and prestigious wines in France. It is located in Pessac, Graves just one mile (2 km) from the city of Bordeaux (Appellation Graves Controlée). The vineyard consists of 109 acres (441,000 m²) producing 12,000 to 15,000 cases of wine each year. It is the only non-Medoc estate to be included in the famous 1855 classification.[...] The wine has a complex bouquet of ripe fruit, tobacco and mineral, earthy scents. The wine is rich, ripe, medium to full-bodied and well structured. A wine that seems to balance power and elegance, richness and harmony perfectly. It goes very well with beef, lamb, veal and game. "Diarist Samuel Pepys, Philosopher John Locke, Cardinal Richelieu and U.S. President Thomas Jefferson all wrote about the special quality of wine produced at Haut-Brion.".... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C…
Mary re Friday 3 April 1663 “insurrection of the Catholiques” in Ireland.
L&M offers the terse comment that a number of Tories (i.e. Catholic peasants) had risen in protest against the decision of the Court of Claims. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Tory 1566, "an outlaw," specifically "a robber," from Ir. toruighe "plunderer," originally "pursuer, searcher," from O.Ir. toirighim "I pursue," related to toracht "pursuit." About 1646, it emerged as a derogatory term for Irish Catholics dispossessed of their land (some of whom subsequently turned to outlawry); c.1680 applied by Exclusioners to supporters of the Catholic Duke of York (later James II) in his succession to the throne of England. After 1689, Tory was the name of a British political party at first composed of Yorkist Tories of 1680. Superseded c.1830 by Conservative, though it continues to be used colloquially. In American history, Tory was the name given after 1769 to colonists who remained loyal to George III of England. http://www.etymonline.com/index.p…
Not politics, folks, just etymology - we get defined by our opponents, yes?
Wilford, Francis (d. 1667) - Dean, Ely, 1662-1667, III, vii. 11; Archdeacon of Bedford, Lincoln, 1662-1667, III, ix. 13 http://www.history.ac.uk/fasti/fa…
"after great expectation from Ireland...good news...that all is quiett after our great noise of troubles there"
The "noise" that awakened the "great expectation" [i.e., prospect] was from reports of Friday 3 April 1663 "that there is some bad news from Ireland of an insurrection of the Catholiques there," clarified by Clement http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… and Mary.
Dirk, assuming we are not talking about a 21st-century notion, what "Encroachments in Trade" by Jews were involved? Did the Jews represent the interests of a foreign/competitive power, like the French? Was lumping them together as equally "foreign" a way of sanitizing an ancient, endemic suspicion of Jews as guilty of the crimes imputed to them that I and Australian Susan remind us of?
"gang" - a contemporary-sounding word with a pedigree fit for Pepys:
O.E. gong "a going, journey, way, passage," and O.N. gangr "a group of men, a set," both from P.Gmc. *gangaz (noun of action related to *gangan "to go"), from PIE base *ghengh- "to step" (cf. Skt. jangha "shank," Avestan zanga-"ankle," Lith. zengiu "I stride"). The sense evolution is probably via meaning "a set of articles that are usually taken together in going," especially a set of tools used on the same job. By 1627 this had been extended in nautical speech to mean "a company of workmen," and by 1632 the word was being used, with disapproving overtones, for "any band of persons traveling together." http://www.etymonline.com/index.p…
Why Jews may have been regarded as "foreigners" despite all else:
Jews in diaspora had maintained contact with other communities and with the yeshivot (rabbinical schools) in Babylonia and Palestine and, in the middle ages, with centers of learning in Cairo and Baghdad and Cordova. This far-flung network of connections provided opportunities for a landless people to subsist as merchants. This occupation was socially anomalous in the middle ages and further stigmatized Jews. Here is some of what Henri Pirenne says about the merchant class in the middle ages:
"It was in the course of the tenth century that there reappeared in continental Europe a class of professional merchants whose progress, very slow at first, gathered speed as the following century moved forward. The increase in population, which began to be manifest at the same era, is certainly in direct relation to this phenomenon. It had as a result the detaching from the land an increasingly important number of individuals and committing them to that roving and hazardous existence which, in every agricultural civilization, is the lot of those who no longer find themselves with their roots in/ the soil. (80-81).
"The legal status of the merchants eventually gave them a thoroughly singular place in that society which they astonished in so many respects. By virtue of the wandering existence they led, they were everywhere/ regarded as foreigners. No one knew the origins of these eternal travelers....Just as agrarian civilization had made of the peasant a man whose normal state was servitude, trade made of the merchant a man whose normal condition was liberty. From that time on, ...he was answerable only to public jurisdiction....
"Public authority at the same time took him under its protection. The local princes whose task it was to preserve, in their territories, peace and public order--to which pertained the policing of the highways and the safeguarding of travellers--extended their tutelage over the merchants. (88-89)
*Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade*. Henri Pirenne. Tr. Frank D. Halsey. [1925] 1969, Princeton University Press; Garden City, N.Y. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obid…
I do call it antisemitism,I.A.S., because the Jews in question were in many cases no more "foreigners" than had been many Royalists in their turn; as you say, the wheel turns and now we have "The Last King" http://imdb.com/title/tt0364800/ , or monarch, since the only alternative to monarchy isn't anarchy, as what happened after Jas. II shows.
Also restored with the Monarchy is official antisemitism. Today in the House of Commons:.
Sumptuary Laws, &c.
The House then resumed the Debate upon the last Proposal from the Committee appointed to provide Sumptuary Laws, and to prevent Encroachments in Trade by Jews, and French, and other Foreigners.
Which Proposal was read; and, upon Debate, amended; and was as followeth; viz. "That his Majesty be humbly desired by the House, That no Consulship be continued, or hereafter granted, in any Place, but at the Desire of the respective Merchants trading to that Place; and at such Allowances and Charges only as the Merchants shall consent to give them."
The Question being put, To agree to the Proposal, so amended; It was resolved in the Affirmative.
From: 'House of Commons Journal Volume 8: 8 April 1663', Journal of the House of Commons: volume 8: 1660-1667 (1802), p. 468. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…" Date accessed: 08 April 2006.
* * *
Historical background:
"To finance his war to conquer Wales, Edward I of England taxed the Jewish moneylenders. When the Jews could no longer pay, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, the Jews saw Edward abolish their "privilege" to lend money, choke their movements and activities and were forced to wear a yellow patch. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested, over 300 of them taken to the Tower of London and executed, while others killed in their homes. The complete banishment of all Jews from the country in 1290 led to thousands killed and drowned while fleeing and the absence of Jews from England for three and a half centuries, until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell reversed the policy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti…"
The background of this is recalled in Chaucer's Prioresses tale's wail "O yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also/ With cursed Jewes" in 1255; such blood libel having set off a pogrom against Jews in Lincoln and King Henry III [Edward I's father] had 91 Jews of Lincoln seized and sent to London, where eighteen of them were executed "and the remainder lingered in prison until Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was in possession of the Jewry at the time, made terms for them." http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com…
A century before that, in Suffolk, also on the East coast of England, Master Hugo had carved the antisemitic tract in walrus ivory known as "The Bury St. Edmunds Cross," which has resided since the 1960's at the Cloisters Museum in upper Manhattan, NYC, where I have studied it more than once. http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/11/….
Comments
First Reading
About Sunday 12 April 1663
TerryF • Link
JWB, sorry, that should have been "handselled"...
About Sunday 12 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"Does L&M give this final sentence with 'carrying' where syntax in any era requires 'carried'?"
Bradford, yes they do (I made pains to check).
JWB, thanks for the link to the earlier occurrence, "handsellig", and language hat's clarification of it. That was a while back indeed!
About Sunday 12 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"in nearly 70 years of living in England, I have never heard or read the word ‘handsel’" - until now, Tony Eldridge!
The Select Glossary says "to try out, use for the first time," but my "inaugurate" preserves the ceremony of the older usage.
About Sunday 12 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"Coming home to-night, a drunken boy was carrying by our constable to our new pair of stocks to handsel them, being a new pair and very handsome."
Methinks there are at least two things about this sentence worthy of comment:
1) Substance - a regular Saturday night event (what week went without it?! ask our constable!) is recorded in the Diary;
2) Form - that the stocks are "new" is notably repeated for the Diary - to define, or explain the use of "handsel"?
"handsel" may be one for the OED, but The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition uses a lot of other words for what seems to be "to inaugurate".
hand·sel :
NOUN: 1. Chiefly British A gift to express good wishes at the beginning of a new year or enterprise. 2. The first money or barter taken in, as by a new business or on the opening day of business, especially when considered a token of good luck. 3a. A first payment. b. A specimen or foretaste of what is to come.
TRANSITIVE VERB:.Inflected forms: hand·seled or hand·selled, hand·sel·ing or hand·sel·ling, hand·sels or hand·sels
1. To give a handsel to. 2. To launch with a ceremonial gesture or gift. 3. To do or use for the first time.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English hanselle, from Old English handselen, a handing over ( hand, hand + selen, gift)and from Old Norse handsal, legal transfer ( hand, hand + sal, a giving).
http://www.bartleby.com/61/62/H00…
* * *
Q: Is "handsel" a word those of you who are or have been Over There in the UK commonly use/hear?
About Sunday 12 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"to church, where I found our pew altered by taking some of the hind pew to make ours bigger, because of the number of women, more by Sir J. Minnes company than we used to have."
A recurring problem at St Olave, Hart St., solved, or at least ameliorated?
Friday 3 April 1663 “chappell…being most monstrous full, I could not go into my pew, but sat among the quire.” http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Sunday 15 March 1662/63 "with my wife and her woman Ashwell the first time to church, where our pew was so full with Sir J. Minnes’s sister and her daughter, that I perceive, when we come all together, some of us must be shut out, but I suppose we shall come to some order what to do therein." At Bradford’s instance we discussed the issue of the overpopulation of the Navy Office pew http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
About Saturday 11 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Might it have been S.O.P. for sea captains to report in to the Navy Office after returning from a voyage?
I note how glad Sam'l is to see "Captain Lambert of the Norwich, this day come from Tangier," a daunting voyage, and that "All staid a pretty while" - to compare sea-stories and debrief one another?
About Saturday 11 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Minor SPOILER abt. Lord Sandwich's accounts
They will be settled by SP's intervention and Sandwich's repute as a GOOD debtor at the end of this month, so not to worry.
About Saturday 11 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"Bad news for Sandwich! Has text been omitted?"
A. Hamilton, L&M say these are the ones pursuant to the voyage to Tangier and Lisbon in 1661-2. Old debts never die, if the accountants are good and honest.
About Friday 10 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Contra Wheatley's note's claim that Haut Brion is from Medoc...
"Haut-Brion is a First Great Growth of Bordeaux. Actually it is the only one not coming from the Médoc area, but from Pessac Léognan in Graves." - Jean-Philippe Delmas, the third generation of Delmas in charge of oenology at Château Haut Brion http://www.terroir-france.com/int…
"Château Haut-Brion is a First Growth in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. It is one of the most expensive and prestigious wines in France. It is located in Pessac, Graves just one mile (2 km) from the city of Bordeaux (Appellation Graves Controlée). The vineyard consists of 109 acres (441,000 m²) producing 12,000 to 15,000 cases of wine each year. It is the only non-Medoc estate to be included in the famous 1855 classification.[...] The wine has a complex bouquet of ripe fruit, tobacco and mineral, earthy scents. The wine is rich, ripe, medium to full-bodied and well structured. A wine that seems to balance power and elegance, richness and harmony perfectly. It goes very well with beef, lamb, veal and game.
"Diarist Samuel Pepys, Philosopher John Locke, Cardinal Richelieu and U.S. President Thomas Jefferson all wrote about the special quality of wine produced at Haut-Brion."....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C…
About Friday 10 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Mary re Friday 3 April 1663 “insurrection of the Catholiques” in Ireland.
L&M offers the terse comment that a number of Tories (i.e. Catholic peasants) had risen in protest against the decision of the Court of Claims. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Tory
1566, "an outlaw," specifically "a robber," from Ir. toruighe "plunderer," originally "pursuer, searcher," from O.Ir. toirighim "I pursue," related to toracht "pursuit." About 1646, it emerged as a derogatory term for Irish Catholics dispossessed of their land (some of whom subsequently turned to outlawry); c.1680 applied by Exclusioners to supporters of the Catholic Duke of York (later James II) in his succession to the throne of England. After 1689, Tory was the name of a British political party at first composed of Yorkist Tories of 1680. Superseded c.1830 by Conservative, though it continues to be used colloquially. In American history, Tory was the name given after 1769 to colonists who remained loyal to George III of England. http://www.etymonline.com/index.p…
Not politics, folks, just etymology - we get defined by our opponents, yes?
About Francis Wilford (Dean of Ely)
TerryF • Link
Also Chaplain to the King, 1660-1667; Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 1661-1667. (L&M Companion)
About Francis Wilford (Dean of Ely)
TerryF • Link
Wilford, Francis (d. 1667) - Dean, Ely, 1662-1667, III, vii. 11; Archdeacon of Bedford, Lincoln, 1662-1667, III, ix. 13
http://www.history.ac.uk/fasti/fa…
About Friday 10 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"after great expectation from Ireland...good news...that all is quiett after our great noise of troubles there"
The "noise" that awakened the "great expectation" [i.e., prospect] was from reports of Friday 3 April 1663 "that there is some bad news from Ireland of an insurrection of the Catholiques there," clarified by Clement http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… and Mary.
About Thursday 9 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Thanks, Aus.Susan, I wondered whether they were figments of....
About Thursday 9 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"Tom Hater did post an entry without giving Sir John a chance to sign off on it."
"One could wonder how our Sam might feel if the roles had been reversed"
Keen query, Robert; one could also wonder how our Sam might behave! (like a coxcomb, etc.?)
About Wednesday 8 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Antisemitism
Dirk, assuming we are not talking about a 21st-century notion, what "Encroachments in Trade" by Jews were involved? Did the Jews represent the interests of a foreign/competitive power, like the French? Was lumping them together as equally "foreign" a way of sanitizing an ancient, endemic suspicion of Jews as guilty of the crimes imputed to them that I and Australian Susan remind us of?
About Thursday 9 April 1663
TerryF • Link
"gang" - a contemporary-sounding word with a pedigree fit for Pepys:
O.E. gong "a going, journey, way, passage," and O.N. gangr "a group of
men, a set," both from P.Gmc. *gangaz (noun of action related to *gangan "to go"), from PIE base *ghengh- "to step" (cf. Skt. jangha "shank," Avestan zanga-"ankle," Lith. zengiu "I stride"). The sense evolution is probably via meaning "a set of articles that are usually taken together in going," especially a set of tools used on the same job. By 1627 this had been extended in nautical speech to mean "a company of workmen," and by 1632 the word was being used, with disapproving overtones, for "any band of persons traveling together." http://www.etymonline.com/index.p…
About Wednesday 8 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Why Jews may have been regarded as "foreigners" despite all else:
Jews in diaspora had maintained contact with other communities and with the yeshivot (rabbinical schools) in Babylonia and Palestine and, in the middle ages, with centers of learning in Cairo and Baghdad and Cordova. This far-flung network of connections provided opportunities for a landless people to subsist as merchants. This occupation was socially anomalous in the middle ages and further stigmatized Jews. Here is some of what Henri Pirenne says about the merchant class in the middle ages:
"It was in the course of the tenth century that there reappeared in continental Europe a class of professional merchants whose progress, very slow at first, gathered speed as the following century moved forward. The increase in population, which began to be manifest at the same era, is certainly in direct relation to this phenomenon. It had as a result the detaching from the land an increasingly important number of individuals and committing them to that roving and hazardous existence which, in every agricultural civilization, is the lot of those who no longer find themselves with their roots in/ the soil. (80-81).
"The legal status of the merchants eventually gave them a thoroughly singular place in that society which they astonished in so many respects. By virtue of the wandering existence they led, they were everywhere/ regarded as foreigners. No one knew the origins of these eternal travelers....Just as agrarian civilization had made of the peasant a man whose normal state was servitude, trade made of the merchant a man whose normal condition was liberty. From that time on, ...he was answerable only to public jurisdiction....
"Public authority at the same time took him under its protection. The local princes whose task it was to preserve, in their territories, peace and public order--to which pertained the policing of the highways and the safeguarding of travellers--extended their tutelage over the merchants. (88-89)
*Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade*. Henri Pirenne. Tr. Frank D. Halsey. [1925] 1969, Princeton University Press; Garden City, N.Y. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obid…
About Wednesday 8 April 1663
TerryF • Link
I do call it antisemitism,I.A.S., because the Jews in question were in many cases no more "foreigners" than had been many Royalists in their turn; as you say, the wheel turns and now we have "The Last King" http://imdb.com/title/tt0364800/ , or monarch, since the only alternative to monarchy isn't anarchy, as what happened after Jas. II shows.
About Wednesday 8 April 1663
TerryF • Link
Also restored with the Monarchy is official antisemitism. Today in the House of Commons:.
Sumptuary Laws, &c.
The House then resumed the Debate upon the last Proposal from the Committee appointed to provide Sumptuary Laws, and to prevent Encroachments in Trade by Jews, and French, and other Foreigners.
Which Proposal was read; and, upon Debate, amended; and was as followeth; viz.
"That his Majesty be humbly desired by the House, That no Consulship be continued, or hereafter granted, in any Place, but at the Desire of the respective Merchants trading to that Place; and at such Allowances and Charges only as the Merchants shall consent to give them."
The Question being put, To agree to the Proposal, so amended;
It was resolved in the Affirmative.
From: 'House of Commons Journal Volume 8: 8 April 1663',
Journal of the House of Commons: volume 8: 1660-1667 (1802), p. 468. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…"
Date accessed: 08 April 2006.
* * *
Historical background:
"To finance his war to conquer Wales, Edward I of England taxed the Jewish moneylenders. When the Jews could no longer pay, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, the Jews saw Edward abolish their "privilege" to lend money, choke their movements and activities and were forced to wear a yellow patch.
The heads of Jewish households were then arrested, over 300 of them taken to the Tower of London and executed, while others killed in their homes. The complete banishment of all Jews from the country in 1290 led to thousands killed and drowned while fleeing and the absence of Jews from England for three and a half centuries, until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell reversed the policy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti…"
The background of this is recalled in Chaucer's Prioresses tale's wail
"O yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also/ With cursed Jewes" in 1255; such blood libel having set off a pogrom against Jews in Lincoln and King Henry III [Edward I's father] had 91 Jews of Lincoln seized and sent to London, where eighteen of them were executed "and the remainder lingered in prison until Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was in possession of the Jewry at the time, made terms for them." http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com…
A century before that, in Suffolk, also on the East coast of England, Master Hugo had carved the antisemitic tract in walrus ivory known as "The Bury St. Edmunds Cross," which has resided since the 1960's at the Cloisters Museum in upper Manhattan, NYC, where I have studied it more than once. http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/11/….