Annotations and comments

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

Comments

First Reading

About Saturday 21 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

"Commission of Rebellion" -

"The name of a writ issuing out of chancery, generally directed to four special commissioners named by the plaintiff, commanding them to attach the defendant wheresoever he may be found within the state as a rebel and contemner of the law, so as to have him in chancery on a certain day therein named. This writ may be issued after an attachment with proclamation and a return of *non est inventus*" ("he/she is.not found") - (Law) The [words written by] the sheriff on a writ, when the defendant is not [to be] found in his [bailiwick.] http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c254.h…

About Friday 20 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

No domestic dramas today

No mention of Bess's "termes," her fear of Sam's bringing Pall back in favor of Mary Ashwell, etc.

Funny how there are entries like today's after several when his domestic concerns play a far larger role; but life's like that.

About Friday 20 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

"to Deptford, and there...had a call"

To have a call ~ apparently have a muster of all hands at the yard, or call out the yard (cf. the info on "call-books").

About Thursday 19 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

The Pepys family politics of recent weeks unveiled?

"Dined by my wife’s bedside, she not being yet well. We fell out almost upon my discourse of delaying the having of Ashwell, where my wife believing that I have a mind to have Pall, which I have not, though I could wish she did deserve to be had."

I imagine that Bess's belief may have animated her recent appeals to Balty for alternatives to Pall?

Poor Pall.

About Thursday 19 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

“my eyes begin to fail me"

L&M note this was Samuel's first complaint about the ailment that would eventually terminate the Diary, but not cost him his sight altogether, as he feared.

Is there a consensus in the scholarship about the nature of Sam's vision disorder?

About Thursday 19 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

"our times being changed because of the parliament sitting"

L&M note that during the present session of parliament they met on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

About Wednesday 18 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

So, does the issue remain whether "casting up with Captain Cocke their accounts of 500 tons of hemp brought from Riga" teaches Sam how to fix the books in calculating the Navy claims, OR whether he learns what to watch out for in dealing with merchants such as Captain Cocke?

As I read it, there is as yet no consensus among us as to what the "many things worth my knowledge" are...or?

About Wednesday 18 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

The "long prorogation" of Parliament clarified!

Thank you, Leslie Katz, for the lesson for this Colonial (and for others, I wot).

About Tuesday 17 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

Pedro, surely you are [circumstantially] correct!

Although in the past "Mr.Pickering" has been linked to both John and Edward, today's seems to me to be probably John. Sorry, no help, just my concurrence.

About Tuesday 17 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

girl

On the one hand we have in Aqua Scripto's view that, per the OED, "she looks to be worn out shell"; but on the other, Aus.Susan's that she is perhaps "someone youthful" (I think he would have written "like a girl" had he meant "that she has to play this side-saddle", which was indeed not uncommon for women until the mid-20th century).

I do believe Samuel is being a man of his time, or perhaps just a Samuel.

Recall more than a half-century later James Boswell reports: "I told [Samuel Johnson] I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. Johnson: 'Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.'" http://www.samueljohnson.com/dogw…

About Tuesday 17 February 1662/63

Terry F  •  Link

jade

Todd Bernhardt, I too found this a puzzling use, since there are

jade (2)
"worn-out horse," c.1386, possibly from O.N. jalda "mare," from Finno-Ugric (cf. Mordvin al'd'a "mare"). As a term of abuse for a woman, it dates from 1560. Jaded "dulled by continual indulgence" is from 1631.
harridan
1700, "one that is half Whore, half Bawd" ["Dictionary of the Canting Crew"]; "a decayed strumpet" [Johnson], from Fr. haridelle "a poore tit, or leane ill-favored jade," [Cotgrave, 1611], in Fr. from 16c., of unknown origin.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.p…