Annotations and comments

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

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First Reading

About Pistole

Terry F  •  Link

pistole

SYLLABICATION: pis·tole
PRONUNCIATION: p-stol
NOUN: 1. A gold coin equal to two escudos, formerly used in Spain. 2. Any of several gold coins used in various European countries until the late 19th century.
ETYMOLOGY: French, back-formation from pistolet, diminutive of pistole, pistol. See pistol.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. http://www.bartleby.com/61/18/P03…

About Saturday 15 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

Likely Pepys's Civil Lawyers were in the Temple's Inner or Outer Courts, where he drops by frequently to discuss business as he ambulated through the interesection of Fleet Street and the Strand http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo… We hear no comment from Pepys about visiting the Doctors’ Commons, though it is not far away.

About Saturday 15 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

The Latinity of English Civil Law is the mark of the learnedness of one of "the three black robes" of the original learned professions -- theology, law, medicine -- and not a sign of Roman Law training or influence per se.
A well-known example of a provision of Common Law that goes by a Latin name is *habeas corpus*, the "Great Writ", attested as early as 1305, whose enshrining in the Act of 1679, beyond the Diary, but provoked by events it attests to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habe…

About Saturday 15 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

“Civil Lawyers" redux
There is no evidence so far that Pepys's Civil Lawyers were found in the "Doctors' Commons [which] was a society of lawyers practising civil law in London. Like the Inns of Court [Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple, and Middle Temple] of the common lawyers, the society had buildings....situated near St. Paul's Cathedral."
Alas the Doctors' Commons was eventually unable to compete with the Inns of Court due to the poor quality of its advocacy, a matter Pepys would have been keenly monitoring, wherever he hired a lawyer. "In the 19th century, the institution of Doctors' Commons and its members were looked upon as old-fashioned and slightly ridiculous. A satirical description of Doctors' Commons can be found in Charles Dickens' Sketches by Boz and also in his novel David Copperfield." All quotations from Doctors’ Commons, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doct…

About Sunday 16 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

A close friend was churched in joyful Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, her first, born with no problems, in New York, New York (to repeat an anti-Catholic slogan of which Pepys was supposedly fond) 30 years ago; but perhaps, Australian Susan, that isn't "nowadays" - sometimes I forget how swifly time passes.

About Levant (Turkey) Company

Terry F  •  Link

The trading companies were the outreach of Guilds and Companies of the City.
"On the 9th of May 1345, twenty-two members of the ancient Guild of Pepperers founded a fraternity which, in 1376, became The Company of Grocers of London.
"The Fraternity was entrusted with the duty of garbling, or preventing the adulteration of spices and drugs, as well as with the charge of the King's Beam, which weighed all merchandise sold by the Aver-de-Poys weight or the peso grosso. The Company probably derives its name from the Latin, grossarius, one who buys and sells in the gross, in other words a wholesale merchant: since its earliest days the members were wholesale dealers in spices and foreign produce." [whose agents followed the trade-routes to the source in the East] http://www.grocershall.co.uk/comp…

About Sunday 16 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

"to church, where Mrs. Goodyer, now Mrs. Buckworth, was churched"

"Placed between the Rite for the Burial of the Dead, the Commination and the Prayers to be Used at Sea among the Occasional Offices in the back of the Book of Common Prayer we find a short rite which bears the rather long title: The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth, commonly called the Churching of Women. Though its practise has mainly died out in the past years, the rite has survived all major prayer book reforms and is also, though in a modified form, to be found in the 1979 version of the American Prayer Book and in the Alternative Service Book." http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mikef/chur…

About Levant (Turkey) Company

Terry F  •  Link

"1581 the Turkey Company was formed, and in 1592 it merged with the Venice Company (founded 1583) to form the Levant Company. It obtained a patent from Elizabeth I for the exclusive right to trade in currants (dried white grapes, i.e. golden raisins). The Company also purchased wine, cotton and silk from the Eastern Mediterranean."
http://history.wisc.edu/sommervil…

About Bands

Terry F  •  Link

Bands
"In the early sixteenth century "bands" referred to the shirt neck-band under a ruff. For the rest of the century, when ruffs were still worn, and in the seventeenth century, band referred to all the variations of these neckwear. All bands or collars arose from a standing neck-band of varying heights. They were tied at the throat with band-strings ending in tiny tassels or crochet-covered balls.
"Bands were adopted for legal, official, ecclesiastical and academical use in the mid-seventeenth century. They varied from those worn by priests (very long, of cambric or linen, and reaching over the chest), to the much shorter ecclesiastical bands of black gauze with white hem showing on the outside. Both were developments of the seventeenth century lay collar.
"Bands varied from small white turn-down collars and ruffs to point lace bands, depending upon fashion, until mid-seventeenth century when plain white bands came to be invariable neck-wear of all judges, serjeants, barristers, students and clerical and academical men.
"The bands are two strips of bleached holland or similar material, falling down the front from the collar. Plain linen 'falling bands', developed from the falling collar, replaced the ruff about 1640. By 1650 they were universal. Originally in the form of a wide collar, tied with a lace in front, by the 1680's they had diminished to the traditional form of two rectangles of linen tied at the throat."
http://www.geocities.com/noelcox/…

Band -
"The neckband of a shirt, smock, or partlet. Also collar (standing band). Bands could be 'plain' (without ornament or lace), 'falling' or rabat (French, worn normally turned down), or 'ruff bands' (which were pleated and stiffened). In a 'falling' band, the 'stock' or 'strip' of the ruff was fastened to the shirt by pins and the collar or band made fit the neck by darts or 'clocks'. De Medici ruffs were fastened to the shirt in the same method but were supported in an upright position by a starched or wired support (supportasse) and left open. Bands and ruffs were considered the dress of the gentry and anyone who did not wear them was considered a ruffian. Bands and ruffs were usually white but during the latter half of the 16th Century, colors were added to the starches. Red, blue, purple, and goose-turd green are mentioned but yellow seemed to be the most popular. The ties that were used to fasten the band closed were known as 'band strings' and were usually tasseled at the end."
http://www.vertetsable.com/resear…

About Masts

Terry F  •  Link

"Sam's early spreadsheet" - Ding Kalis, you are surely spot on.
For this Encyclopedia entry, here is the part of the Nov. 12 1662 Diary entry to which you refer:
"From thence, without drinking a drop of wine, home to my office and there made an end, though late, of my collection of the prices of masts for these twelve years to this day, in order to the buying of some of Wood, and I bound it up in painted paper to lie by as a book for future use." http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

About Saturday 15 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

The Origins of Legal Institutions

"At the end of the thirteenth century in the majority of western European countries we find, in addition to a body of ecclesiastical lawyers, a legal profession of a civil character emerging. Except in France where it appeared in its own right this profession was at first subordinated to the great landlords of the feudal system. In England this was not so, for it was the churchmen who in that country held the great power in the courts until the latter part of the reign of Henry III. The organization of law as we know it in England dates from Edward I's time [1239 – 1307], when the legal personnel, except the Chancellor and the Keeper of the Rolls, became lay instead of clerical.

"In all countries of Western Europe during the fourteenth centuries, a fully organized legal profession with strict discipline and recognized ranks came into being. Judges by this time were in criminal cases usually answerable to the king alone, and in civil cases were more often than not deputies of the feudal lords only in name. In England judges were chosen from the Serjeants-at-Law, who were the members of the Order of the Coif, who were the original Pleaders in courts, had their own Inns, the Serjeants' Inns. Those ranking below the degree of the Coif were organized in the Inns of Court and Chancery, which attained their final form at this period.
- Excerpts from "A History of Legal Dress In Europe", W.N. Hargreaves-Mawdsley
http://www.harcourts.com/legal-or…

So the question of Bishops being members of the House of Lords, which Sam has discussed, and of which he disapproves, had a long history.

About Executions

Terry F  •  Link

Justice and Discipline in Tangier and throughout the British Army http://www.kipar.org/military-his…

"In Tangier the courts martial from 1663-1669 awarded six sentences of death for acts of neglect on sentry duty, insubordination and violence to superiors. In five cases execution was by shooting, and in one by hanging. There were seven sentences of death for desertion and theft from comrades, all carried out by the less honourable method of hanging, which was also awarded for rape, acting as a spy, and unauthorised plunder....

[The sentence "for being asleep upon the centinels post" was] "to be whipt by the Executioner forward and backward through the Parade drawne in two ranks, his lashes soundly laid on" (the same punishment was awarded for the same crime in the Roman Legions)."

"Soldier Running the Gauntlet, 1695. (French) This was the usual punishment for stealing from fellow-soldiers. While exemplary punishment could be extremely severe, harsh practices such as floggings were considered 'inhumane' as normal punishment. Engraving after Guérard." http://www.kipar.org/military-his…

About Saturday 15 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

"Civil Lawyers"

L&M note: "The dispute about the will of Robert Pepys of Brampton would be settled by civil (i.e. ecclesiastical) lawyers in a church court, which had jurisdiction in testamentary matters. The case was in fact settled out of court: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… "

I wonder when the name and the concept of the court changed from "ecclesiastical" to "civil"?

About Friday 14 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

Elizabeth's brother & confidante, Balty, makes her case.

Again we turn to Pauline on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 9:57 pm | Link
Balty enters the diary on February 8:
“At home my wife's brother brought her a pretty black dog which I liked very well, and went away again.”

Claire Tomalin notes in her biography of Pepys that this going away again without asking Sam for something was unusual.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…

About Wednesday 12 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

"the gentlewoman, being pretty handsome, and singing, makes me have a good mind to her."

L&M note: "(? Winifred) Gosnell, later an actress; she stayed only from 5 to 9 December."

Puzzling note, given Sam's current financial prudence, unless he has some further interest....

About Friday 14 November 1662

Terry F  •  Link

"one of the Bowyers", i.e. daughters of Will Bowyer

Pauline on Thu 13 Mar 2003, 10:22 am | Link
Will Bowyer was among the friends and colleagues that Sam hangs out with at this time. Claire Tomalin, in “Samuel Pepys: the Unequaled Self,” lists out the names of these young men who appear in the early pages of the diary. [p67] “Will Bowyer was only a doorkeeper, but his father Robert was an usher at the Exchequer, and he prided himself on keeping a paternal eye on the clerks and often invited them home to his houseful of daughters in Westminster, and sometimes to his country place in Buckinghamshire. He and his wife made friends with Elizabeth, and Sam sometimes called him “father Bowyer.”
http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…