Highlights from Sir Stephen Fox' Parliamentary bio:
In his own words ‘a wonderful child of providence’, Fox rose to immense wealth and public prominence from genuinely humble origins. The family status lay between peasantry and gentry; but he received a sound general education as a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, and his elder brother John (who held a post at Court on the dean’s recommendation), brought him into the household of the royal children as a supernumerary servant and play-fellow.
After acting as page to Lady Stafford, Countess of Sunderland, and the Earl of Leicester, Fox entered the service of Lord Percy, master of horse to Charles, Prince of Wales, and under his ‘severe discipline’ followed the Cavalier army in 1644-5 and then went into exile in France and Jersey.
When the royal stables were dispersed in 1650, Fox returned to the modest family home and on 8 Dec. 1651, he married Elizabeth (d. 11 Aug. 1696), da. of William Whittle of London. They had 7 sons and 3 daughters.
His Wiltshire origins stood him in good stead; first Hobbes obtained him the post of keeper of the privy purse to the Earl of Devonshire, and then, on the recommendation of Sir Edward Hyde, he was appointed to manage the meagre financial resources of the exiled Court, under the modest title of clerk of the kitchen.
Hyde found him "well qualified with languages and all other parts of clerkship, honesty and discretion that were necessary for the discharge of such a trust. ... His great industry, modesty, and prudence did very much contribute to the bringing the family [i.e. Household], which for so many years had been under no government, into very good order."
He was granted arms in 1658, and at the Restoration he was promoted to the board of green cloth and given some small Hampshire leaseholds forfeited by one of the regicides.
The big step in his career was his appointment as paymaster to the guards in January 1661: his job was to maintain the good morale of these troops by paying them without long delays and heavy arrears.
Fox was first returned for Salisbury on the Hyde interest in a by-election at the end of 1661. Farley is only 5 miles from Salusbury, and he acquired a nominal property interest by leasing a vacant plot in the Close. His election expenditure totalled £87 10s., most of which went on ‘an entertainment’ for the corporation and a donation to the municipal poor relief fund.
An inactive Member of the Cavalier Parliament, Fox was appointed to 32 committees, including the committee of elections and privileges in 9 sessions, and he made 3 recorded speeches.
Outside the House his importance was increased by the ‘great undertaking’ of 1662, when he assumed personal responsibility for obtaining credit for the Guards' Pay Office. As he could wait up to 14 months before the Treasury reimbursed him, he was allowed to deduct 8 per cent from the crown and 3-½ per cent from the soldiers.
Sasha Clarkson on 25 June 2013 reminded us that Sir Stephen Fox was a founder of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. He married his second wife in 1703 at the age of 73, and fathered 2 sons with her, including Henry Fox, father of Charles-James. He died in 1716 at the age of 89. http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…
To which Mary K on 26 June 2013 replied that The Royal Hospital, Chelsea was partly funded by Sir Stephen Fox, who made possible the establishment of the Hospital by his munificent gift of the £13,000 to acquire the site and finance construction. But it is Charles II who is the acknowledged founder of the Hospital, which celebrates its Founder's Day each year on the anniversary of Charles' birthday.
Bumfodder Yes, this is a 17th-century word for toilet paper. According to the OED, a second usage that popped up not long after this one is “Worthless or inferior literature; any written or printed material that is perceived as useless, tedious, or unnecessary.” In other words, pages you could probably use as toilet paper. Ouch.
L&M: “Scrofula, a tubercular infection of the soft tissues, generally the glands; allegedly healed by the touch of a consecrated King. … In England ceremonies had been held frequently since the reign of Edward III. Under Henry VII an office was added to the service book; it appears (modified and in English) in some prayer books during the reign of King Charles and up to 1719. … There was a great revival of the practice at the Restoration. … At this period the sufferers attended a service at which prayers were offered, and were given a gold coin (‘touchpiece’), touched by the ruler which they hung around their necks. On this occasion over 600 are said to have attended at Whitehall palace. The King thereafter appointed Fridays for the ceremony and limited the number to 200. … The ceremony went out of use under the Hanoverians; Dr. Johnson, as a little boy in Anne’s reign, is said to have been among the last to have been ‘touched’.”
This ceremony is usually traced to Edward the Confessor, but there is no direct evidence of the early Norman kings having touched for the evil. Sir John Fortescue, in his defense of the House of Lancaster against that of York, argued that the crown could not descend to a female, because the Queen is not qualified by the form of anointing her, used at the coronation, to cure the disease called the King’s evil.
Burn asserts, “History of Parish Registers,” 1862, p. 179, that “between 1660 and 1682, 92,107 persons were touched for the evil.” Everyone coming to the court for that purpose, brought a certificate signed by the minister and churchwardens, that he had not at any time been touched by His Majesty. The practice was supposed to have expired with the Stuarts, but the point being disputed, reference was made to the library of the Duke of Sussex, and 4 several Oxford editions of the Book of Common Prayer were found, all printed after the accession of the house of Hanover, and all containing, as an integral part of the service, “The Office for the Healing.”
The stamp of gold with which the King crossed the sore of the sick person was called an angel, and of the value of 10 shillings. It had a hole bored through it, through which a ribbon was drawn, and the angel was hanged about the patient’s neck till the cure was perfected. The stamp has the impression of St. Michael the Archangel on one side, and a ship in full sail on the other.
“My Lord Anglesey had a daughter cured of the King’s evil with three others on Tuesday.” — MS. Letter of William Greenhill to Lady Bacon, dated December 31, 1629, preserved at Audley End.
Charles II “touched” before he came to the throne. “It is certain that the King hath very often touched the sick, as well at Breda, where he touched 260 from Saturday, 17 April to Sunday, 23 May, as at Bruges and Bruxels, during the residence he made there; and the English assure … it was not without success, since it was the experience that drew thither every day, a great number of those diseased even from the most remote provinces of Germany.” — Sir William Lower’s Relation of the Voiage and Residence which Charles the II. hath made in Holland, Hague, 1660, p. 78. Sir William Lower gives a long account of the touching for the evil by Charles before the Restoration. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
John Frederic de Friesendorff, Ambassador from Sweden was an "Ingenious and a perfect connoisseur of cabinet and trade secrets, he was used in Sweden for several diplomatic posts, among other things to conclude an alliance with England in 1661, about which mission he gave a description, which contains several strange data. "Raised by Charles II to an English baronet and knight in 1661, ..." https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
In March 1959 -- only 15 months ago -- Protector Richard Cromwell had sent Montagu to the Baltic to counteract a Dutch attempt to intervene in the war between Sweden and Denmark-Norway. Although this mission was so ambiguous it could not be fulfilled, Montagu was one of the few people in England with first hand knowledge of the region who could assist the Swedish Amb. John Frederic de Friesendorff in whatever he was up to which earned him that baronetcy. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
I asked the Google librarian about a "English treaty with Sweden in 1661" and the librarian answered: "The Treaty of Cardis was a peace settlement made in 1661 between Tsardom of Russia and the Swedish Empire. This particular agreement ended the Russo–Swedish War (1656–1658)."
Anyone know if the librarian has lost their mind, or if this was really something Charles II, Montagu and Amb. de Friesendorff were working on? The Russians are not mentioned in any of the resources I cited.
Thankfully the Google librarian is now fluent in Swedish:
Born in 1617 in Bremen. Parents: the prefect of Rothenburg and Bremen-Vörde Hieronymus von Friesendorff and mother a von Bockholtz .
Accepted by the national treasurer count Gabriel Oxenstierna in Swedish service, Friesendorff was appointed Swedish resident in Portugal in 1649 and 4 years later a chamber councilor.
Ingenious and a perfect connoisseur of cabinet and trade secrets, he was used in Sweden for several diplomatic posts, among other things to conclude an alliance with England in 1661, about which mission he gave a description, which contains several strange data.
Raised by Charles II to an English baronet and knight in 1661, he was appointed a German baron a few years later by Emperor Leopold and received the title of court and commercial councilor in Sweden.
Together with A. v. Eick, who then became commercial president in Gothenburg, he proposed to help Swedish trade [by] the establishment of a general factory, for which privilege was issued in 1662.
Sir Basil "1st Baronet Dixwell of Broome House" Dixwell Born 22 Jun 1640 in Folkestone, Kent Died 7 May 1668, aged 27 in London
ANCESTORS: Son of Mark Dixwell and Elizabeth (Reade) Oxenden Brother of Elizabeth (Dixwell) Chute, Alice Dixwell, Bennett (Dixwell) Digges, Herdson Dixwell and William Dixwell
Husband of Dorothy (Peyton) Dixwell — married 15 Mar 1659 in Chelsea, London
DESCENDANTS Father of Elizabeth (Dixwell) Oxenden, Dorothy Dixwell, Basil Dixwell MP, the 2nd Baronet Dixwell and Mark Dixwell
To be a colonel when you are a teenager, even at a time when it was an honorary title indicating you paid for a troop of soldiers, takes some doing. He is not mentioned anywhere that I can find to have done that.
And Basil Dixwell was honored as the 1st Baronet at aged 20, a month into the Restoration. WHY??? Charles II owed him for something.
My theory is that the Dixwells had sheltered some high profile Royalists at Broome House, who were on their way to the Continent via Deal or Dover during the Interregnum. Again, I have no proof of that to offer.
L&M Companion: Possibly Thomas Hill, in 1663 a messanger of the chamber. Or he may be Thomas Hill of Grey's Inn, who married Elinor Webb on 18 September, 1655 at St. Margaret's. She was a widow by 1665.
June 16: "... and so to my Lord’s lodgings, where he told me that he did look after the place of the Clerk of the Acts ..."
Montagu closed the deal in 8 days. Thank you, my Lord, for putting the right man in the right job at the right time. Naval history would probably have been much more dull if you had not.
JayW's information about Wales sent me to the Google library again:
Why is Wales not separate from England? Wales is a constituent country which forms part of the United Kingdom because it has its own government and national identity. However, it is not a sovereign country because the UK government still has authority when it comes to law-making.
Why doesn't Wales have its own legal system? Wales has been part of a unified legal jurisdiction with England since the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, during the reign of Henry VIII, and so does not have its own criminal justice system.
@@@
The Tudors were originally a Welsh family -- Henry VIII must have appreciated the advantages of unifing the islands, and was successful with step 1. The Stuarts, James I and VI and Queen Anne, tried step 2 with Scotland in 1603 and a century later -- with much less success! Everyone's failure with step 3, to incorporate a united Ireland into a United Kingdom, is well documented. The occasional references to "Great Britain" in the 17th century were purely aspirational. Thanks, Jay, I had never clearly thought about this before.
Rachel Fane (1612/13–1680), the fifth daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland by his wife Mary Mildmay (d. 1640), daughter and eventual sole heiress of Sir Anthony Mildmay (d. 1617), of Apethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire.
Apethorpe Hall was where Rachel grew up -- she would have been one when King James first laid eyes on George Villiers there in 1614. James loved the place so much he paid to have the house extended to accommodate his friends on their repeated visits -- and during 21st century rennovations they found a secret passage way between the King's bedchamber and another bedroom!!!! http://www.thecrownchronicles.co.…
As an impressionable child, Rachel was exposed to how wealthy women ruled their homes, and to the lives of the rich and famous. And she wrote about it all -- her unpublished manuscripts have been found and are now held at the Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone,
Her surviving writings includes not only drama and poetry but also a set of accounts compiled during her first marriage with Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath, covering the period 1639-1654. These accounts, and Lady Rachel’s earlier dramatic work, place her in an economy of commodities and luxury goods — silks, sugar, sables — that by the 1620s was entwined with English trade, colonialism, and the transatlantic slave trade.
Fane was also connected with the English colonial adventures in Ireland through the Earl of Bath, who owned large estates in Limerick and Armagh which the Countess of Bath passed on to her nephew, Sir Henry Fane.
The mid-17th century, when Lady Rachel Fane was writing, saw the expansion of English colonization and its exploitation of enforced African and indigenous labor, increasing attempts to limit the political agency of children, and the reconfiguration of the family and the domestic sphere. All of these developments are reflected in her work.
Her social position also meant that her portrait was painted at least 4 times.
The Countess of Bath was not a published author, but for women's study students today she has left us invaluable clues to how wealthy women lived and thought in the mid-17th century.
Info gleaned from https://emctc.tome.press/chapter/… -- skip the first half of the article which has nothing to do with her. It also has a picture of Apethorpe and 4 of her portraits -- she was beautiful.
"Rachel Fane Bourchier, Countess of Bath, married secondly Lionel Cranfield, 3rd Earl of Middlesex, in 1655, but retained her precedency as Countess of Bath by royal warrant."
Rachel Fane was the daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and Mary daughter and heir of Sir Anthony Mildmay.
She married firstly Henry Bourchier, Earl of Bath, who died in 1654.
Rachel Fane Bourchier, Countess of Bath, married secondly Lionel Cranfield, 3rd Earl of Middlesex, in 1655, but retained her precedency as Countess of Bath by royal warrant.
She and the Earl of Middlesex were separated on 13 June 1661 granted by the Court of Arches, on the grounds of cruelty and desertion. '
She presented collections of books to the value of £200 decorated with this stamp to Emmanuel College Cambridge in 1659, and made a similar gift to Trinity College Dublin in 1671.
"Mr. Morrice the upholsterer came himself to-day to take notice what furniture we lack for our lodgings at Whitehall."
Capt. Robert Morris was not the Court Upholsterer -- and that position was contentious at this time, as I outlined on June 19, 1660 at https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-n…
Charles II’s taste was moulded by Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis XIII. This might be why Montagu lacked furniture -- he needed to change the look of his Whitehall quarters to be more fashionable.
I also asked my lawn cutting question on the Pepys' Group email network, and got the following answers:
From Phil Gifford: Lawns were established as an indispensable element of garden design during the 18th century. Eighteenth-century landscape designers stylised English pastoral scenery – by far the most prominent surface treatment in their idiom was cropped grass. Beyond the ha-ha, sheep cattle or deer may have maintained the sward. But next to the house, it was required that men with scythes regularly trim the herbage, an extremely labour intensive and skilled task. The aesthetic demanded as smooth a surface as possible. When you consider that grass was predominantly a resource for feeding livestock, the notion of constantly employing men to remove it can be considered an outrageous act of ostentation. The modern history of the lawn can be said to really get going once lawn-mowing technology was developed and adopted during the 19th century. But it is important to remember that the earliest lawns were very much the preserve of the elite. Lawns have held a powerful aspirational appeal ever since. I’ve seen other places say lawns began in the 17th century.
I’ve tried some scything this and last summer – it must be very difficult to cut everything to an even lawn length, but maybe they were a bit less fussy in those days because they didn’t have lawnmowers to compare the result with.
Susan Byars agreed: hand labor with scythes in areas where indiscriminate sheep and goats might eat other plants. Elizabeth Pearcey added shears to the list. Joe Novitski voted for sheep.
"The game was played on a huge strip of land, in this case about 1000 yards long and so was more like golf than Croquet - players took great swings at the balls in an effort to hoof them as far along the pitch as possible."
How did they keep the grass short for games like this, and for golf (which interestingly Pepys never mentions -- apparently the Stuart brothers did not play)?
Sheep and goats used under supervision might do it ...?
At the beginning of The Diary, Montagu is living quietly at Hinchingbrooke. For an account of the 1659 events in the Baltic which led to his retirement in difficult circumstances, see https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
For a deep dive into the Baltic affaires that had Montagu sent there with 41 ships in the summer of 1659, see "Ships, sailors, and mediators: England's naval aid to Sweden 1658-1659" by Mary Elizabeth Ailes, an associate professor in the History Department at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sh…
The universal silence about Montagu's outreach to Charles II indicates how secret it was -- nothing official must exist.
Comments
Third Reading
About Sir Stephen Fox
San Diego Sarah • Link
Highlights from Sir Stephen Fox' Parliamentary bio:
In his own words ‘a wonderful child of providence’, Fox rose to immense wealth and public prominence from genuinely humble origins.
The family status lay between peasantry and gentry; but he received a sound general education as a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, and his elder brother John (who held a post at Court on the dean’s recommendation), brought him into the household of the royal children as a supernumerary servant and play-fellow.
After acting as page to Lady Stafford, Countess of Sunderland, and the Earl of Leicester, Fox entered the service of Lord Percy, master of horse to Charles, Prince of Wales, and under his ‘severe discipline’ followed the Cavalier army in 1644-5 and then went into exile in France and Jersey.
When the royal stables were dispersed in 1650, Fox returned to the modest family home and on 8 Dec. 1651, he married Elizabeth (d. 11 Aug. 1696), da. of William Whittle of London. They had 7 sons and 3 daughters.
His Wiltshire origins stood him in good stead; first Hobbes obtained him the post of keeper of the privy purse to the Earl of Devonshire, and then, on the recommendation of Sir Edward Hyde, he was appointed to manage the meagre financial resources of the exiled Court, under the modest title of clerk of the kitchen.
Hyde found him "well qualified with languages and all other parts of clerkship, honesty and discretion that were necessary for the discharge of such a trust. ... His great industry, modesty, and prudence did very much contribute to the bringing the family [i.e. Household], which for so many years had been under no government, into very good order."
He was granted arms in 1658, and at the Restoration he was promoted to the board of green cloth and given some small Hampshire leaseholds forfeited by one of the regicides.
The big step in his career was his appointment as paymaster to the guards in January 1661: his job was to maintain the good morale of these troops by paying them without long delays and heavy arrears.
Fox was first returned for Salisbury on the Hyde interest in a by-election at the end of 1661. Farley is only 5 miles from Salusbury, and he acquired a nominal property interest by leasing a vacant plot in the Close.
His election expenditure totalled £87 10s., most of which went on ‘an entertainment’ for the corporation and a donation to the municipal poor relief fund.
An inactive Member of the Cavalier Parliament, Fox was appointed to 32 committees, including the committee of elections and privileges in 9 sessions, and he made 3 recorded speeches.
Outside the House his importance was increased by the ‘great undertaking’ of 1662, when he assumed personal responsibility for obtaining credit for the Guards' Pay Office. As he could wait up to 14 months before the Treasury reimbursed him, he was allowed to deduct 8 per cent from the crown and 3-½ per cent from the soldiers.
About Sir Stephen Fox
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sasha Clarkson on 25 June 2013 reminded us that Sir Stephen Fox was a founder of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.
He married his second wife in 1703 at the age of 73, and fathered 2 sons with her, including Henry Fox, father of Charles-James.
He died in 1716 at the age of 89. http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo…
To which Mary K on 26 June 2013 replied that The Royal Hospital, Chelsea was partly funded by Sir Stephen Fox, who made possible the establishment of the Hospital by his munificent gift of the £13,000 to acquire the site and finance construction.
But it is Charles II who is the acknowledged founder of the Hospital, which celebrates its Founder's Day each year on the anniversary of Charles' birthday.
About House of office
San Diego Sarah • Link
Bumfodder
Yes, this is a 17th-century word for toilet paper.
According to the OED, a second usage that popped up not long after this one is “Worthless or inferior literature; any written or printed material that is perceived as useless, tedious, or unnecessary.”
In other words, pages you could probably use as toilet paper. Ouch.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/artic…
About Scrofula (The King's Evil)
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M: “Scrofula, a tubercular infection of the soft tissues, generally the glands; allegedly healed by the touch of a consecrated King. … In England ceremonies had been held frequently since the reign of Edward III. Under Henry VII an office was added to the service book; it appears (modified and in English) in some prayer books during the reign of King Charles and up to 1719. … There was a great revival of the practice at the Restoration. … At this period the sufferers attended a service at which prayers were offered, and were given a gold coin (‘touchpiece’), touched by the ruler which they hung around their necks. On this occasion over 600 are said to have attended at Whitehall palace. The King thereafter appointed Fridays for the ceremony and limited the number to 200. … The ceremony went out of use under the Hanoverians; Dr. Johnson, as a little boy in Anne’s reign, is said to have been among the last to have been ‘touched’.”
As transcribed by Paul Brewster on 23 Jun 2003
About Scrofula (The King's Evil)
San Diego Sarah • Link
This ceremony is usually traced to Edward the Confessor, but there is no direct evidence of the early Norman kings having touched for the evil. Sir John Fortescue, in his defense of the House of Lancaster against that of York, argued that the crown could not descend to a female, because the Queen is not qualified by the form of anointing her, used at the coronation, to cure the disease called the King’s evil.
Burn asserts, “History of Parish Registers,” 1862, p. 179, that “between 1660 and 1682, 92,107 persons were touched for the evil.” Everyone coming to the court for that purpose, brought a certificate signed by the minister and churchwardens, that he had not at any time been touched by His Majesty. The practice was supposed to have expired with the Stuarts, but the point being disputed, reference was made to the library of the Duke of Sussex, and 4 several Oxford editions of the Book of Common Prayer were found, all printed after the accession of the house of Hanover, and all containing, as an integral part of the service, “The Office for the Healing.”
The stamp of gold with which the King crossed the sore of the sick person was called an angel, and of the value of 10 shillings. It had a hole bored through it, through which a ribbon was drawn, and the angel was hanged about the patient’s neck till the cure was perfected. The stamp has the impression of St. Michael the Archangel on one side, and a ship in full sail on the other.
“My Lord Anglesey had a daughter cured of the King’s evil with three others on Tuesday.” — MS. Letter of William Greenhill to Lady Bacon, dated December 31, 1629, preserved at Audley End.
Charles II “touched” before he came to the throne. “It is certain that the King hath very often touched the sick, as well at Breda, where he touched 260 from Saturday, 17 April to Sunday, 23 May, as at Bruges and Bruxels, during the residence he made there; and the English assure … it was not without success, since it was the experience that drew thither every day, a great number of those diseased even from the most remote provinces of Germany.” — Sir William Lower’s Relation of the Voiage and Residence which Charles the II. hath made in Holland, Hague, 1660, p. 78. Sir William Lower gives a long account of the touching for the evil by Charles before the Restoration.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Saturday 23 June 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
John Frederic de Friesendorff, Ambassador from Sweden was an "Ingenious and a perfect connoisseur of cabinet and trade secrets, he was used in Sweden for several diplomatic posts, among other things to conclude an alliance with England in 1661, about which mission he gave a description, which contains several strange data.
"Raised by Charles II to an English baronet and knight in 1661, ..."
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
In March 1959 -- only 15 months ago -- Protector Richard Cromwell had sent Montagu to the Baltic to counteract a Dutch attempt to intervene in the war between Sweden and Denmark-Norway.
Although this mission was so ambiguous it could not be fulfilled, Montagu was one of the few people in England with first hand knowledge of the region who could assist the Swedish Amb. John Frederic de Friesendorff in whatever he was up to which earned him that baronetcy.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
I asked the Google librarian about a "English treaty with Sweden in 1661" and the librarian answered: "The Treaty of Cardis was a peace settlement made in 1661 between Tsardom of Russia and the Swedish Empire. This particular agreement ended the Russo–Swedish War (1656–1658)."
Anyone know if the librarian has lost their mind, or if this was really something Charles II, Montagu and Amb. de Friesendorff were working on? The Russians are not mentioned in any of the resources I cited.
About Johan Fredrik von Friesendorff
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thankfully the Google librarian is now fluent in Swedish:
Born in 1617 in Bremen.
Parents: the prefect of Rothenburg and Bremen-Vörde Hieronymus von Friesendorff and mother a von Bockholtz .
Accepted by the national treasurer count Gabriel Oxenstierna in Swedish
service, Friesendorff was appointed Swedish resident in Portugal in 1649 and 4 years later a chamber councilor.
Ingenious and a perfect connoisseur of cabinet and trade secrets, he was used in Sweden for several diplomatic posts, among other things to conclude an alliance with England in 1661, about which mission he gave a description, which contains several strange data.
Raised by Charles II to an English baronet and knight in 1661, he was appointed a German baron a few years later by Emperor Leopold and received the title of court and commercial councilor in Sweden.
Together with A. v. Eick, who then became commercial president in Gothenburg, he proposed to help Swedish trade [by] the establishment of a general factory, for which privilege was issued in 1662.
Died in 1669.
Married in 1656 to Margareta Elisabet Gärffelt.
http://runeberg.org/sbh/a0364.html
About Col. Basil Dixwell
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sir Basil "1st Baronet Dixwell of Broome House" Dixwell
Born 22 Jun 1640 in Folkestone, Kent
Died 7 May 1668, aged 27 in London
ANCESTORS:
Son of Mark Dixwell and Elizabeth (Reade) Oxenden
Brother of Elizabeth (Dixwell) Chute,
Alice Dixwell,
Bennett (Dixwell) Digges,
Herdson Dixwell
and William Dixwell
Husband of Dorothy (Peyton) Dixwell — married 15 Mar 1659 in Chelsea, London
DESCENDANTS
Father of Elizabeth (Dixwell) Oxenden,
Dorothy Dixwell,
Basil Dixwell MP, the 2nd Baronet Dixwell
and Mark Dixwell
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dix…
To be a colonel when you are a teenager, even at a time when it was an honorary title indicating you paid for a troop of soldiers, takes some doing. He is not mentioned anywhere that I can find to have done that.
And Basil Dixwell was honored as the 1st Baronet at aged 20, a month into the Restoration. WHY??? Charles II owed him for something.
My theory is that the Dixwells had sheltered some high profile Royalists at Broome House, who were on their way to the Continent via Deal or Dover during the Interregnum. Again, I have no proof of that to offer.
About Mr Hill (a)
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M Companion: Possibly Thomas Hill, in 1663 a messanger of the chamber. Or he may be Thomas Hill of Grey's Inn, who married Elinor Webb on 18 September, 1655 at St. Margaret's. She was a widow by 1665.
About Mr Hill (b)
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M Companion: Mr. Hill may have been Pepys’ neighbor, John Hill of Axe Yard as he appears in the rate books of 1661 as living there.
About Saturday 23 June 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
June 16: "... and so to my Lord’s lodgings, where he told me that he did look after the place of the Clerk of the Acts ..."
Montagu closed the deal in 8 days. Thank you, my Lord, for putting the right man in the right job at the right time. Naval history would probably have been much more dull if you had not.
About Friday 22 June 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
JayW's information about Wales sent me to the Google library again:
Why is Wales not separate from England?
Wales is a constituent country which forms part of the United Kingdom because it has its own government and national identity.
However, it is not a sovereign country because the UK government still has authority when it comes to law-making.
Why doesn't Wales have its own legal system?
Wales has been part of a unified legal jurisdiction with England since the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, during the reign of Henry VIII, and so does not have its own criminal justice system.
@@@
The Tudors were originally a Welsh family -- Henry VIII must have appreciated the advantages of unifing the islands, and was successful with step 1.
The Stuarts, James I and VI and Queen Anne, tried step 2 with Scotland in 1603 and a century later -- with much less success!
Everyone's failure with step 3, to incorporate a united Ireland into a United Kingdom, is well documented.
The occasional references to "Great Britain" in the 17th century were purely aspirational.
Thanks, Jay, I had never clearly thought about this before.
About Fane, Lady Rachel (Countess of Bath)
San Diego Sarah • Link
Rachel Fane (1612/13–1680), the fifth daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland by his wife Mary Mildmay (d. 1640), daughter and eventual sole heiress of Sir Anthony Mildmay (d. 1617), of Apethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire.
Apethorpe Hall was where Rachel grew up -- she would have been one when King James first laid eyes on George Villiers there in 1614.
James loved the place so much he paid to have the house extended to accommodate his friends on their repeated visits -- and during 21st century rennovations they found a secret passage way between the King's bedchamber and another bedroom!!!!
http://www.thecrownchronicles.co.…
As an impressionable child, Rachel was exposed to how wealthy women ruled their homes, and to the lives of the rich and famous.
And she wrote about it all -- her unpublished manuscripts have been found and are now held at the Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone,
Her surviving writings includes not only drama and poetry but also a set of accounts compiled during her first marriage with Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath, covering the period 1639-1654. These accounts, and Lady Rachel’s earlier dramatic work, place her in an economy of commodities and luxury goods — silks, sugar, sables — that by the 1620s was entwined with English trade, colonialism, and the transatlantic slave trade.
Fane was also connected with the English colonial adventures in Ireland through the Earl of Bath, who owned large estates in Limerick and Armagh which the Countess of Bath passed on to her nephew, Sir Henry Fane.
The mid-17th century, when Lady Rachel Fane was writing, saw the expansion of English colonization and its exploitation of enforced African and indigenous labor, increasing attempts to limit the political agency of children, and the reconfiguration of the family and the domestic sphere. All of these developments are reflected in her work.
Her social position also meant that her portrait was painted at least 4 times.
The Countess of Bath was not a published author, but for women's study students today she has left us invaluable clues to how wealthy women lived and thought in the mid-17th century.
Info gleaned from https://emctc.tome.press/chapter/… -- skip the first half of the article which has nothing to do with her. It also has a picture of Apethorpe and 4 of her portraits -- she was beautiful.
About Friday 22 June 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
Mrs. Turner isn't as "in" as she likes to think:
"Rachel Fane Bourchier, Countess of Bath, married secondly Lionel Cranfield, 3rd Earl of Middlesex, in 1655, but retained her precedency as Countess of Bath by royal warrant."
About Fane, Lady Rachel (Countess of Bath)
San Diego Sarah • Link
Bourchier, Rachel, Countess of Bath (1613 -1680)
Rachel Fane was the daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and Mary daughter and heir of Sir Anthony Mildmay.
She married firstly Henry Bourchier, Earl of Bath, who died in 1654.
Rachel Fane Bourchier, Countess of Bath, married secondly Lionel Cranfield, 3rd Earl of Middlesex, in 1655, but retained her precedency as Countess of Bath by royal warrant.
She and the Earl of Middlesex were separated on 13 June 1661 granted by the Court of Arches, on the grounds of cruelty and desertion. '
She presented collections of books to the value of £200 decorated with this stamp to Emmanuel College Cambridge in 1659, and made a similar gift to Trinity College Dublin in 1671.
https://armorial.library.utoronto…
About Friday 22 June 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Mr. Morrice the upholsterer came himself to-day to take notice what furniture we lack for our lodgings at Whitehall."
Capt. Robert Morris was not the Court Upholsterer -- and that position was contentious at this time, as I outlined on June 19, 1660 at
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-n…
Charles II’s taste was moulded by Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis XIII.
This might be why Montagu lacked furniture -- he needed to change the look of his Whitehall quarters to be more fashionable.
About Pell Mell
San Diego Sarah • Link
I also asked my lawn cutting question on the Pepys' Group email network, and got the following answers:
From Phil Gifford:
Lawns were established as an indispensable element of garden design during the 18th century. Eighteenth-century landscape designers stylised English pastoral scenery – by far the most prominent surface treatment in their idiom was cropped grass. Beyond the ha-ha, sheep cattle or deer may have maintained the sward.
But next to the house, it was required that men with scythes regularly trim the herbage, an extremely labour intensive and skilled task. The aesthetic demanded as smooth a surface as possible. When you consider that grass was predominantly a resource for feeding livestock, the notion of constantly employing men to remove it can be considered an outrageous act of ostentation.
The modern history of the lawn can be said to really get going once lawn-mowing technology was developed and adopted during the 19th century. But it is important to remember that the earliest lawns were very much the preserve of the elite. Lawns have held a powerful aspirational appeal ever since.
I’ve seen other places say lawns began in the 17th century.
I’ve tried some scything this and last summer – it must be very difficult to cut everything to an even lawn length, but maybe they were a bit less fussy in those days because they didn’t have lawnmowers to compare the result with.
Info from https://www.gardensillustrated.co…
Susan Byars agreed: hand labor with scythes in areas where indiscriminate sheep and goats might eat other plants.
Elizabeth Pearcey added shears to the list.
Joe Novitski voted for sheep.
The Pepys Group email works! To join, go to
https://pepysdiary.groups.io/g/di…
About Pell Mell
San Diego Sarah • Link
"The game was played on a huge strip of land, in this case about 1000 yards long and so was more like golf than Croquet - players took great swings at the balls in an effort to hoof them as far along the pitch as possible."
How did they keep the grass short for games like this, and for golf (which interestingly Pepys never mentions -- apparently the Stuart brothers did not play)?
Sheep and goats used under supervision might do it ...?
About Sir Edward Mountagu ("my Lord," Earl of Sandwich)
San Diego Sarah • Link
At the beginning of The Diary, Montagu is living quietly at Hinchingbrooke. For an account of the 1659 events in the Baltic which led to his retirement in difficult circumstances, see
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Baltic ("The Sound")
San Diego Sarah • Link
For a deep dive into the Baltic affaires that had Montagu sent there with 41 ships in the summer of 1659, see
"Ships, sailors, and mediators: England's naval aid to Sweden 1658-1659"
by Mary Elizabeth Ailes, an associate professor in the History Department at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sh…
The universal silence about Montagu's outreach to Charles II indicates how secret it was -- nothing official must exist.