A second result of the educational change was a transformation in the educational of English clergy: the universities remained the major centers for training clergymen
Around 50% of university students were not members of the gentry; most of them came from either clerical families or 'plebian' families, i.e., non-gentlemen, and frequently they were intend for clerical careers THIS WAS JOHN AND SAMUEL PEPYS.
They took the traditional university course leading to a bachelor's degree and perhaps to a master's degree. Their numbers also rose, and these recruits produced a transformation in the educational level of parish clergy
By the 1630s, after 2 generations, a largely graduate clergy was established in England. In the diocese of Worcester in 1580, only 23% of the clergy were graduates, by 1640 it was 84%, similar to other dioceses
So, a second effect was the transformation of the education of the clergy
The third effect was the general proliferation of schooling for common people
The 16th and early 17th centuries were the great age of school foundation, especially of endowed grammar schools. Many principal schools in English cities carry a name linking them to this period of major educational expansion and the founding of grammar schools. They were often founded with money donated by merchants, leading members of the clergy, or local members of the gentry, and the motivation was a mixture of religious zeal and regional patriotism
For example, in Lancashire in 1480 there were 3 endowed grammar schools; by 1540 there were 12; by 1600 there were 28; by 1640 there were 50. By 1640, every major Lancashire town and some relatively minor ones had a grammar school Two thirds of the money donated for school foundation in Lancashire came from London merchants, lawyers and others of Lancashire origin who left part of their fortune to found a school in their home county, to help boys like themselves to get a start
The endowed grammar schools offered a variety of types of schooling. The education was in part classical, as the name implies, preparing boys for the universities, but they also catered to the needs of others. They had what was described as the 'vernacular side' where the teaching was mostly in English, and they often also had a 'petty section'
The petty section would focus on the '3 R's' – actually it was the 4 R's: reading, writing, 'rithmetic and religion. 'Petty schools' were sprang up and died away according to whether or not there was a schoolmaster who wanted to open one and run it for a while. They became increasingly common all over England. Petty schools taught basic literacy often accompanied by a little bit of commercial arithmetic
By the early 17th century, most country towns in England had a grammar school and several petty schools. Many villages had a petty school, kept by local clergymen, with the teaching taking place in the church porch, weather permitting
The Inns of Court in London adapted less to the needs of these new students. Students got no special instruction. There was no tutorial system. They were told to read law books, to attend the courts to see how it was done, and to attend formal exercises in the Inns where they would plead cases, sort of mock hearings.
English common law at this time was considered appallingly difficult. It hadn't been systematized. It's been described by one legal historian as "a formless, confused jumble of undigested particulars successfully resisting all efforts at simplification or systematic statement." You just had to learn it all. Students who tried found it seriously awful.
Simonds d'Ewes, who spent 2 years at the Inns of Court after he finished at Cambridge, described his time there as "amongst the unhappiest days of my life."
Wilfrid Prest, a historian of the Inns of Court, thinks the average gentleman attending the Inns probably didn't learn much about the law. Nevertheless, they were considered important as a sort of finishing school, a center for all kinds of informal learning. They were located in London, between the City of London and the royal capital of Westminster where the courts were held, and they exposed students to all the things which were available in the metropolis. They attended plays. They went to sermons at the churches of the city. They hung out in the taverns, and so forth.
One student who came from Dorset, named William Freke, attended the Inns of Court in the 1620s, and left us a list of the books he bought during his time at the Inns. He bought religious works, many devotional books, books on physiognomy, on arithmetic, and on travel. He bought history books, and popular romances, and he was interested in drama. He owned an early copy of Shakespeare's Othello. But amongst all the books, he only bought one law book. Significantly it was a classic, "Littleton on Tenures", the outline of land tenure law, which was exactly what a gentleman like William Freke would need to know when he returned to his family's estates.
Not all of the gentry went to the Inns, but many only did some of it, but it led to a significant transformation of the educational experience of the social elite. Some statistics: in 1563, of the members of Parliament only 26% had attended university, by 1642 50% had attended university. Of the Justices of the Peace serving in 6 counties, in 1562 only 5% of them had attended university. By 1636, in the same 6 counties, it was 62%. A real transformation in the educational experience of these vital members of the political nation had taken place.
Many of the young (often around 13 years old) gentry students lived in their colleges as what were called "fellow commoners." They ate with the master and fellows of the college at the high table, not down in the body of the hall with more 'plebian' students. They rarely took a degree. Most of them pursued studies privately with tutors who were chosen and paid by their parents within particular colleges to oversee their education and to look after their moral welfare. Many students slept in their tutors' rooms. There were "truckle beds" that could be pushed to the wall and pulled out at night, where the students would sleep, with their their tutor in his room next door. Instead of the usual formal course of the university (Latin, rhetoric, logic and philosophy leading to the bachelor's degree) tutors devised more modern courses including history, literature, geography, modern divinity, and modern philosophy. Some prepared reading lists for their students. Some prepared for their students 'digests' of key quotations, sort of 16th-century handouts: quotes from the classics they could drop into conversation, which would help the students memorize them. This is the origin of the Oxford and Cambridge tutorial system.
We have a diary account of a Cambridge education in the early 17th century from a student named Simonds d'Ewes. Between 1617 and 1619, d'Ewes attended St. John's College, Cambridge and studied logic, ethics, moral philosophy and history with his tutor, Richard Holdsworth, who was a well-known Puritan divine. He also went to a few of the university lectures -- although not many. He practiced his letter style in English and in Latin (it was important to write a good letter). He went to sermons in the churches of the city, discussed modern theology with his tutor, and he kept a theological commonplace book. He was being trained in Calvinist theology, and he rounded the whole thing off with what he described as "my often conversing with learned men of other colleges and the prime young students of mine own." All of this was in accordance with the desires of gentry parents to have an education which was suitable for a learned and polished gentleman of the renaissance ideal. Richard Holdsworth, d'Ewes tutor, describing it well in a letter about one of his students. He was recruiting someone to tutor the boy and described the boy's father's desires as follows: "His father means not to have him a scholar by profession but only to be seasoned with the varnish of learning and piety." That sums up what they wanted: "His father means him not to have him a scholar by profession" -- God forbid -- "but only to be seasoned with the varnish of learning and piety."
THIS WAS THE EDUCATION THAT MONTAGU AND JOHN WILMOT, 2nd EARL OF ROCHESTER HAD. MONTAGU THEN WENT ON TO THE INNS OF COURT, WHILE ROCHESTER LEFT FOR A 2 YEAR EUROPEAN TOUR.
Pepys' education was more representative of the education available in England than I expected. This is excepts from a lecture about education at the time:
The 16th century saw the transition from sons being educated in noble households by tutors or chaplains to an ideal where sons first attended local grammar schools, and then moved to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. After that, sometimes they went on to the Inns of Court in London, which were much like Oxford or Cambridge colleges, but devoted to the study of the law. Sometimes they were called England's third university although they were a separate set of institutions.
The universities and the Inns of Court got this role in elite education by default. In the 1530s, some humanist advisers on education considered the universities as primarily the place for training clergymen. They wanted to found a new academy for the elite, ideally located near London. The idea came to nothing, so by the mid-16th century sons of the nobility followed earlier precedents by attending the universities and sometimes going on to the Inns of Court.
By the late 16th century, the trickle of gentlemen and noblemen into the universities and the Inns had become a stream, and soon it was a flood. Many Oxford and Cambridge college buildings which survive today were erected at this time to accommodate the larger numbers of students, and several new colleges were founded for the same reason. By the early 17th century the numbers of students in these institutions was at its highest -- not to be equalled before the 19th century.
This meant a significant change in the social composition of Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Undergraduates by the early 17th century at Emmanuel College, Cambridge was 63% of gentry birth. King's College had 58% of gentry birth, and Jesus and St. John's just less than 50%. It was the same at Oxford.
The universities had to adapt to educating new types of students with different needs, and a new pattern emerged.
"I have always found marriage by proxy to be a most peculiar idea."
The local royals and nobles wanted to see their girl in her wedding finery, and to have a big party. Then they sent her off, already secure in her vows, to her husband, where the receiving party got to have their party. She got married twice to make sure the finality of the situation was well imprinted in her mind,
No jets -- no TV -- no Zoom -- having all those leaders leave the country for a bash in another country left them open to revolts and sedition.
In the 17th century most coal was taken from small and shallow "bell pits". Pits were often on common land and run by small groups of families. These families worked in teams. Hewers used a pick or crowbar to remove the coal from the seam while women and children carried the coal to the surface. Pits seldom employed more than 40 of 50 miners and often less than 20. (1) (1) J. F. C. Harrison, The Common People (1984) page 143
As surface deposits became exhausted, coal miners were forced to go deeper into the ground. One of the major problems of mining for coal in the 17th and 18th centuries was flooding. Colliery owners used several different methods to solve this problem. These included pumps worked by windmills and teams of men and animals carrying endless buckets of water. (2) (2) John S. Allen, Thomas Newcomen : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
Thomas Newcomen worked on developing a machine to pump water out of the mines. He eventually came up with the idea of a machine that would rely on atmospheric air pressure to work the pumps, a system which would be safe, if rather slow. The "steam entered a cylinder and raised a piston; a jet of water cooled the cylinder, and the steam condensed, causing the piston to fall, and thereby lift water." (3) (3) Charles R. Morris, The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution (2014) page 42
Of course, conditions only got worse when the water pumps arrived -- for a complete history of coal mining and the associated child labor laws, see https://spartacus-educational.com…
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Queen Elizabeth freed the last English serfs in 1574. But serfdom remained in Scotland until the Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775 prevented the creation of the status, and 1799, when coal miners who had been kept in serfdom prior to the 1775 Act gained emancipation. However, most Scottish serfs had been freed by then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His…
It just so happens that one of the most notorious, Rev. Laurence Clarkson, died in the debtors' prison at Ludgate in 1667. He fell into debt after he loaned 100/. to some people to rebuild after the Great Fire, and they absconded with the money. Sometimes good deads are punished.
Clarkson ranks right alongside the most notorious of the cult leaders of the 20th century! But apparently he reformed after sampling everything the Anglican sects could offer at the time. http://www.icknieldindagations.co… -- about 3/4 way down and https://spartacus-educational.com…
Charles III will wear the St. Edward’s Crown for his coronation, which was last used for crowning Elizabeth II in 1953. The crown is made of a solid gold frame that weighs nearly 5 lbs. along with a purple velvet cap and an ermine band. It is adorned with 444 gemstones, including rubies, sapphires, garnets, topazes, and tourmalines.
The crown was commissioned in 1661 by the Royal Goldsmith, Robert Vyner, for the coronation of Charles II. It replaced a medieval crown that was first discovered in 1163 in the tomb of the 11th-century saint, King Edward the Confessor. The crown was melted down by parliamentarians in 1649 following the execution of Charles I.
After the ceremony, Charles III will change to the lighter Imperial State Crown for the procession back to Buckingham Palace (on the site of Arlington House, home of Henry Bennet in Diary days). This crown is made of gold and set with 2,868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 269 pearls, and 4 rubies. It also features some of the most famous jewels in the Royal collection, including the Black Prince’s Ruby, the Stuart Sapphire, and the Cullinan II diamond, the largest diamond ever mined. Originally made for the coronation of George VI in 1937, the crown replaced Queen Victoria’s crown in 1838. It was also worn by Elizabeth II during her coronation. Most recently, it was placed on the Queen’s coffin during her state funeral. Jewellery experts at U.K. retailer Steven Stone estimate the crown’s value to be worth £2.5 million. https://time.com/6274736/king-cha…
These historic items do not belong to monarch. They belong to the State. An interesting side note is that they were used as collateral for America's wartime loans to Britain, as defaulting and thereby losing them was completely non-negotiable.
The office of King’s Champion began in the reign of William the Conqueror. It was the Champion’s duty to ride, on a white charger, fully clad in armour, into Westminster Hall during the coronation banquet.
His role was to defend the monarch’s honour and challenge any person who dared to deny the sovereign’s right to the throne to a duel.
Queen Victoria dispensed with traditional ride and challenge custom at her coronation, and Henry Dymoke – Queen’s Champion at the time – was made a baronet by way of compensation. https://anglotopia.net/site-news/…
The monarch used to make their way through the City of London to Westminster the day before the coronation, seeing a series of pageants set on elaborate stages as part of the journey.
Charles II was the last king to spend the night before the Coronation in the Tower of London, and then to go in procession from the Tower to Westminster Abbey. https://anglotopia.net/site-news/…
It does seem excessive, MartinVT. Professors L&M had access to many historical documents during the decades they took compiling their information, so I tend to believe them. Maybe the Exchequer was settling the messenger's account for multiple deliveries, or this was a quarterly payment? Did it include paying for hiring approx. 8 post horses (guessing one per hour)? Whatever the case, he made the run apparently without being paid.
In 1650, the Rump Parliament passed an Act criminalizing adultery, and made the act punishable by death. Thomas shows that this legislation was an attempt to unify a wide array of religious groups. 51 51 K. Thomas, ‘The Puritans and Adultery: The Act of 1650 Reconsidered’, in Puritans and Revolutionaries, Oxford 1978, pp. 257 – 282.
The Act provided for harsher punishment for women than for men. This was inevitable, because in the perceptions of the age, a woman committing adultery was committing a worse act than a man doing the same thing. The contemporary concept of adultery showed that when the husband was in the wrong, he filled his wife’s heart with grief and jealousy and shame, while a woman in adultery risked introducing bastards into the family, depriving lawful heirs of their rightful inheritance. 52 52 K. Thomas, ‘The Puritans and Adultery: The Act of 1650 Reconsidered’, in Puritans and Revolutionaries, ed. D. Pennington and K. Thomas, Oxford 1978, pp. 259-60.
For many reasons the Act couldn't be well implemented, it was part of 16th - 17th Century efforts at social control by the elite. But efforts at social control could be subverted.
John Milton’s "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" shows that Milton wanted to give the right of divorce solely to men. Hill sees this as a tool of social control, and a way to introduce new social patterns on the easy-going sexual habits of society. This was aimed at increasing the rights of men. Milton explained that unless this right to divorce existed, adultery and brothels would increase.
When Mrs. Attaway used John Milton’s logic to leave her husband, it was a radical subversion of Milton’s idea of control. 53 53 S. Davies, Unbridled Spirits, pp.108-9.
Following a series of attempts to legislate against adultery in Parliament which failed, the Rump Parliament passed the Commonwealth (Adultery) Act in May 1650, inter alia imposing the death penalty for adultery, that was defined as sexual intercourse between a married woman and a man other than her husband. Both partners would be liable for death sentence in such case. If a man (married or unmarried) had sex with an unmarried woman (including widow), that would be fornication, punishable only by 3 months for first offenders (applicable to both partners).
However, like all legislation passed by the Commonwealth, the act was repealed following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. https://www.academia.edu/1305291/…
A more lasting change during the Early Modern period was that it became possible to prosecute for adultery in English common law due to developments in the common-law concept of loss of consortium, which made it possible for a cuckold to bring a civil case against an adulterer under tort law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adu…
Mrs. Cromwell appears to have been maligned by everyone after the Restoration:
"Yet at least one study emphasizes how Elizabeth Cromwell was a target for critics, both on the Royalist right and the Leveller left, and how the Protectorate in turn built up a picture of Elizabeth to satisfy its brand of politics. Republican opponents of the Protectorate attacked Elizabeth as a would-be Queen who fueled the overreaching of her husband.
"Royalists, after the Restoration, had a class attack, sneering at the woman who was supposedly more suited for the barn than for the palace. 41 41 Katharine Gillespie, ‘Elizabeth Cromwell's Kitchen Court: Republicanism and the Consort’, Genders 33, 2001, http://www.Genders.org. [BELOW]
"As a major study on Elizabeth Cromwell argues: “The criticisms of Elizabeth that emerge from both the "left" -- the republican critiques of the post-regicidal grandees and their wives -- as well as the "right" -- the popular royalist critiques of the republic -- reveal the degree to which debates over the scope and function of private and public spheres within particular political orders are often waged through the cultural politics of gender. Both republican and royalist representations of Elizabeth Cromwell are enmeshed in larger disputes over the contradictions that each side perceived within the entity of a Protectorate -- the body politic that emerged during the Interregnum period as neither a monarchy nor a republic but rather an uneasy synthesis of the two, not unlike "Protectorate Joan," as Elizabeth was often called.
"As an oxymoronic plebeian queen, Elizabeth Cromwell's class and gender identities were used by both sides to project their sense of what the abject and excessive feature was that tipped the scale of the Protectorate towards the social and political failure it met with at the return of Charles II in 1660.” 42 42 Katharine Gillespie, ‘Elizabeth Cromwell's Kitchen Court: Republicanism and the Consort’, Genders 33, 2001, paragraph 5.
"Likewise, in the eyes of middle-class England, the vagabond life of the gypsy was sometimes attractive, sometimes condemnable. The law as it stood could be applied to execute a gypsy simply for being a gypsy. Gypsies put up a stout resistance to all efforts to make them give up their travelling life. They were a standing offence to those who wished to force the English lower classes to become wage laborers. Since they had no original village, they could not be flogged back there and made to work – the standard method for treating vagabonds.
"Moreover, gypsies at times seem to have been connected to popular resistance to encroaching capitalism. "In 1723, Billy Marshall, chief of the Galloway gypsies, was leader of a popular revolt by ‘Levellers’ against enclosing landlords. 39 39 C. Hill, Liberty Against the Law, pp. 131-3.
"Hill shows that the ballad literature of the 17th Century brings out 2 reasons why this life seemed attractive to women -– they would not be considered the property of their husbands, and they would enjoy sexual freedom. In ‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies’, for example, a neglected wife of wealthy gentry background discards her ‘silken gown’ and makes a break for liberty by joining the gypsies. When her husband tries to get her back by reminding her of the wealth she is leaving behind, she remarks that all this was his show (of which, by implication, she was a part). 40 40 C. Hill, Liberty Against the Law, pp.137-140. For ‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies’, see p. 138.
Gypsys -- called Travellers today -- have always posed a problem in Europe, as they are nomadic in a world of property owners. After the enclosures, the nomads had nowhere to go. The enclosures were in progress in the 17th century, so the problems posed by the gypsys was current for Pepys.
I feel obliged to preface the last 3 paragraphs of my post which you'll find intact in the next annotation down (they come from a paper called "Christopher Hill: Women Turning the World Upside Down"). If you want info re women's rights at this time, it is helpful, but quotes Hill, who is a tad contraversial in academic circles today. If you don't care about the debate, skip to the next annotation which is about gypsys:
Historian J. E. Christopher Hill is close to unparalleled in the annals of 20th century writing. Few scholars have left such a deep imprint on their chosen field. Between his first essay, ‘The English Revolution 1640’, written in 1940, and 'Liberty Against the Law', published in 1996, Hill developed consistent themes, and with that, opened doors to new research.
It was Hill who established that the 3 Civil Wars of mid-17th Century England was not a mere constitutional revolution nor a narrowly defined religious conflict, but a multifaceted social revolution, of world-historical significance, whose full implications can be understood only by leaving the palace voices and hearing the people's words.
Hill made this clear in the ‘Introduction’ to 'The World Turned Upside Down' which portrays the wide range of radical ideas that emerged from below during the Civil Wars.
He took pains to explore the voices of the ‘inarticulate’ and the ‘silent’ majority. Predictably, historians hostile to the aspirations of subaltern masses and politically conservative in the present cannot stomach Hill. 2 2 I use the term subaltern in the original Gramscian, not the post-modernist Subaltern Studies sense.
Maurice Ashley, when he revised his 'England in the Seventeenth Century', cautioned his readers in the bibliographic note: “It should be remembered that all Dr. Hill’s books are written from a highly sophisticated Marxist stand-point”. 4 4 Maurice Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century (revised edition of 1977), Harmondsworth, p. 259.
So much for the preamble. Whether or not Hill is a "Marxist", I leave you. From what I've read, he identified trends that led to many different modern outcomes. Whether you have to be a Marxist to recognize Marxist precedents, ...???
Thanks for the explanation about massy timbers. I was worried Pepys meant mossy timbers, and was about to call out the coast guard.
On your thought about Pepys taking a tippler while he was checking out the wine "cellar": In the Navy, where no one has much privacy or room for personal belongings, the idea of theft or making trouble of any sort is always met with great severity, even today. Your Honor has to mean something when living in cramped quarters like this. So no, Pepys would have kept his acquisitiveness to himself -- and waited until he got back to his quarters and asked the purser for whatever he wanted. I'm sure he and Montagu and the officers had as much booze as they desired. It was the unlucky fellows below in the hammocks who had rations of whatever passed for grog at this time? Small beer maybe? Grog per se didn't arrive until 1740, and the Royal Navy has never been entirely sober to my knowledge. But no one stole it, on pain of the cat-o'nine-tails or keel-hauling or something equally unpleasant. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
The Royal Charles was an 80-gun first-rate 3-decker ship of the line of the English Navy. [1] 1 ^ a b c Lavery, Ships of the Line vol.1, p160.
She was originally called Naseby, built by Peter Pett, and launched at Woolwich dockyard in 1655, for the navy of the Commonwealth of England, and named in honor of Sir Thomas, Lord Fairfax's decisive 1645 victory over the Royalist forces during the English Civil Wars.
The Naseby was ordered in 1654 as one of 4 second rates, intended to carry 60 guns each. However, she was altered during construction to mount a complete battery of guns along the upper deck (compared with the partial battery on this deck of her intended sisters, on which there were no gun ports in the waist along this deck), and so was reclassed as a first rate.
In the run-up to the June 1660 return of Charles II, during May 1660 the Naseby was anchored in The Downs off Deal, where her laurel-crowned figurehead of Oliver Cromwell was removed before sailing to the Dutch Republic at the head of the fleet sent to bring Charles II back to England, captained by Sir Edward Montagu and still under her Parliamentary name.[2] 2 Parliamentary Intelligencer, April 30 to May 7, 1660, in Random Edition References
John Evelyn’s 1661 work "Fumifugium" criticized the polluted air in the capital. Part of the complaint was the damage that Evelyn claimed polluted air was doing to the water both in the city, and to those who lived downstream who he said emerged after bathing covered in a “web” of dust and grime.
Evelyn’s issues with the air highlight the importance of smell in Early Modern understandings of disease. If “corrupt” or “putrid” air was key to the spread of illness, the stench of the River Fleet was not only unpleasant – it was life threatening.
The threat of pollution therefore took two forms. There was the waste that ended up in the river, and the smell that resulted from it.
The author Ben Jonson, whose house was near the Fleet River, took the state of the river as inspiration for his poem “On the Famous Voyage” which paints a nauseatingly vivid picture of the waterway’s condition through a mock voyage down it circa 1610: “Your dainty Nostrils (in so hot a Season, When every Clerk eats Artichokes and Peason, Laxative Lettuce, and such windy Meat) Tempt such a passage? when each Privies Seat Is fill’d with Buttock? And the Walls do sweat Urine, and Plasters? When the Noise doth beat Upon your Ears, of Discords so unsweet?” https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/04-2…
The waste and smell appeared again in scenarios where authorities did take action against polluters: In 1627, a case was brought by London residents against a house that made “allom”. (Alum, as it is known today, was produced through the “boiling of urine” and the complaints were aimed at the “noisome stinking scum of a frothy substance” that it was dumping into the water.) Both the smell and contamination were claimed to have “cast many of [the nearby residents] into extremity of great sicknesses” and the building was shut down.
Thomas Powell lamented the river’s treatment in a 1679 religious work, suggesting people treated God in a similar way to the river: poorly. “The Thames brings us in our Riches, our Gold, Silks, Spices: and we throw all our filth into the Thames”.
You might think that this was as bad as it could get, but a 1696 pamphlet suggested that the Thames was better off than most English rivers, which enjoyed fewer protections and in contrast were “choaked up with Filth”.
In a world without permanent sewage or waste disposal systems, it is unsurprising Early Modern rivers ended up in the state they did, despite legal protections. But the reaction to their pollution shows us that, even in a time with limited alternatives, this scenario was not accepted without complaint. https://theconversation.com/noiso…
In January 1660 Dr. James Sharp and 5 other Scottish ministers had been sent to London by the leading Resolutioner ministers to share the views of the Scottish Presbyterian party with Gen. George Monck.
Dr. Sharp stayed in London until May 4, 1660, when Gen. Monck sent him to Breda to ask for Charles II’s agreement to this settlement of ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland.
Dr. Sharp returned to London on May 26, 1660, and stayed until the middle of August, talking with the leading persons there while staying in close contact with the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland, who placed their entire confidence in him. (His letters are in the university of Glasgow library and in Wodrow’s History.) https://www.electricscotland.com/…
Comments
Third Reading
About Pepys' education
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 4
A second result of the educational change was a transformation in the educational of English clergy: the universities remained the major centers for training clergymen
Around 50% of university students were not members of the gentry; most of them came from either clerical families or 'plebian' families, i.e., non-gentlemen, and frequently they were intend for clerical careers
THIS WAS JOHN AND SAMUEL PEPYS.
They took the traditional university course leading to a bachelor's degree and perhaps to a master's degree. Their numbers also rose, and these recruits produced a transformation in the educational level of parish clergy
By the 1630s, after 2 generations, a largely graduate clergy was established in England.
In the diocese of Worcester in 1580, only 23% of the clergy were graduates, by 1640 it was 84%, similar to other dioceses
So, a second effect was the transformation of the education of the clergy
The third effect was the general proliferation of schooling for common people
The 16th and early 17th centuries were the great age of school foundation, especially of endowed grammar schools.
Many principal schools in English cities carry a name linking them to this period of major educational expansion and the founding of grammar schools.
They were often founded with money donated by merchants, leading members of the clergy, or local members of the gentry, and the motivation was a mixture of religious zeal and regional patriotism
For example, in Lancashire in 1480 there were 3 endowed grammar schools; by 1540 there were 12; by 1600 there were 28; by 1640 there were 50.
By 1640, every major Lancashire town and some relatively minor ones had a grammar school
Two thirds of the money donated for school foundation in Lancashire came from London merchants, lawyers and others of Lancashire origin who left part of their fortune to found a school in their home county, to help boys like themselves to get a start
The endowed grammar schools offered a variety of types of schooling. The education was in part classical, as the name implies, preparing boys for the universities, but they also catered to the needs of others.
They had what was described as the 'vernacular side' where the teaching was mostly in English, and they often also had a 'petty section'
The petty section would focus on the '3 R's' – actually it was the 4 R's: reading, writing, 'rithmetic and religion.
'Petty schools' were sprang up and died away according to whether or not there was a schoolmaster who wanted to open one and run it for a while.
They became increasingly common all over England.
Petty schools taught basic literacy often accompanied by a little bit of commercial arithmetic
By the early 17th century, most country towns in England had a grammar school and several petty schools.
Many villages had a petty school, kept by local clergymen, with the teaching taking place in the church porch, weather permitting
About Pepys' education
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 3
The Inns of Court in London adapted less to the needs of these new students. Students got no special instruction. There was no tutorial system. They were told to read law books, to attend the courts to see how it was done, and to attend formal exercises in the Inns where they would plead cases, sort of mock hearings.
English common law at this time was considered appallingly difficult. It hadn't been systematized. It's been described by one legal historian as "a formless, confused jumble of undigested particulars successfully resisting all efforts at simplification or systematic statement." You just had to learn it all. Students who tried found it seriously awful.
Simonds d'Ewes, who spent 2 years at the Inns of Court after he finished at Cambridge, described his time there as "amongst the unhappiest days of my life."
Wilfrid Prest, a historian of the Inns of Court, thinks the average gentleman attending the Inns probably didn't learn much about the law. Nevertheless, they were considered important as a sort of finishing school, a center for all kinds of informal learning. They were located in London, between the City of London and the royal capital of Westminster where the courts were held, and they exposed students to all the things which were available in the metropolis.
They attended plays.
They went to sermons at the churches of the city.
They hung out in the taverns, and so forth.
One student who came from Dorset, named William Freke, attended the Inns of Court in the 1620s, and left us a list of the books he bought during his time at the Inns.
He bought religious works, many devotional books, books on physiognomy, on arithmetic, and on travel.
He bought history books, and popular romances, and he was interested in drama.
He owned an early copy of Shakespeare's Othello.
But amongst all the books, he only bought one law book. Significantly it was a classic, "Littleton on Tenures", the outline of land tenure law, which was exactly what a gentleman like William Freke would need to know when he returned to his family's estates.
Not all of the gentry went to the Inns, but many only did some of it, but it led to a significant transformation of the educational experience of the social elite.
Some statistics: in 1563, of the members of Parliament only 26% had attended university, by 1642 50% had attended university.
Of the Justices of the Peace serving in 6 counties, in 1562 only 5% of them had attended university. By 1636, in the same 6 counties, it was 62%.
A real transformation in the educational experience of these vital members of the political nation had taken place.
About Pepys' education
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 2
Many of the young (often around 13 years old) gentry students lived in their colleges as what were called "fellow commoners." They ate with the master and fellows of the college at the high table, not down in the body of the hall with more 'plebian' students.
They rarely took a degree. Most of them pursued studies privately with tutors who were chosen and paid by their parents within particular colleges to oversee their education and to look after their moral welfare.
Many students slept in their tutors' rooms. There were "truckle beds" that could be pushed to the wall and pulled out at night, where the students would sleep, with their their tutor in his room next door.
Instead of the usual formal course of the university (Latin, rhetoric, logic and philosophy leading to the bachelor's degree) tutors devised more modern courses including history, literature, geography, modern divinity, and modern philosophy. Some prepared reading lists for their students. Some prepared for their students 'digests' of key quotations, sort of 16th-century handouts: quotes from the classics they could drop into conversation, which would help the students memorize them.
This is the origin of the Oxford and Cambridge tutorial system.
We have a diary account of a Cambridge education in the early 17th century from a student named Simonds d'Ewes.
Between 1617 and 1619, d'Ewes attended St. John's College, Cambridge and studied logic, ethics, moral philosophy and history with his tutor, Richard Holdsworth, who was a well-known Puritan divine. He also went to a few of the university lectures -- although not many. He practiced his letter style in English and in Latin (it was important to write a good letter). He went to sermons in the churches of the city, discussed modern theology with his tutor, and he kept a theological commonplace book. He was being trained in Calvinist theology, and he rounded the whole thing off with what he described as "my often conversing with learned men of other colleges and the prime young students of mine own."
All of this was in accordance with the desires of gentry parents to have an education which was suitable for a learned and polished gentleman of the renaissance ideal.
Richard Holdsworth, d'Ewes tutor, describing it well in a letter about one of his students. He was recruiting someone to tutor the boy and described the boy's father's desires as follows: "His father means not to have him a scholar by profession but only to be seasoned with the varnish of learning and piety."
That sums up what they wanted:
"His father means him not to have him a scholar by profession" -- God forbid -- "but only to be seasoned with the varnish of learning and piety."
THIS WAS THE EDUCATION THAT MONTAGU AND JOHN WILMOT, 2nd EARL OF ROCHESTER HAD. MONTAGU THEN WENT ON TO THE INNS OF COURT, WHILE ROCHESTER LEFT FOR A 2 YEAR EUROPEAN TOUR.
About Pepys' education
San Diego Sarah • Link
Pepys' education was more representative of the education available in England than I expected. This is excepts from a lecture about education at the time:
The 16th century saw the transition from sons being educated in noble households by tutors or chaplains to an ideal where sons first attended local grammar schools, and then moved to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
After that, sometimes they went on to the Inns of Court in London, which were much like Oxford or Cambridge colleges, but devoted to the study of the law. Sometimes they were called England's third university although they were a separate set of institutions.
The universities and the Inns of Court got this role in elite education by default. In the 1530s, some humanist advisers on education considered the universities as primarily the place for training clergymen.
They wanted to found a new academy for the elite, ideally located near London. The idea came to nothing, so by the mid-16th century sons of the nobility followed earlier precedents by attending the universities and sometimes going on to the Inns of Court.
By the late 16th century, the trickle of gentlemen and noblemen into the universities and the Inns had become a stream, and soon it was a flood. Many Oxford and Cambridge college buildings which survive today were erected at this time to accommodate the larger numbers of students, and several new colleges were founded for the same reason.
By the early 17th century the numbers of students in these institutions was at its highest -- not to be equalled before the 19th century.
This meant a significant change in the social composition of Oxford and Cambridge colleges.
Undergraduates by the early 17th century at Emmanuel College, Cambridge was 63% of gentry birth. King's College had 58% of gentry birth, and Jesus and St. John's just less than 50%. It was the same at Oxford.
The universities had to adapt to educating new types of students with different needs, and a new pattern emerged.
About Sunday 27 April 1662
San Diego Sarah • Link
"I have always found marriage by proxy to be a most peculiar idea."
The local royals and nobles wanted to see their girl in her wedding finery, and to have a big party. Then they sent her off, already secure in her vows, to her husband, where the receiving party got to have their party. She got married twice to make sure the finality of the situation was well imprinted in her mind,
No jets -- no TV -- no Zoom -- having all those leaders leave the country for a bash in another country left them open to revolts and sedition.
This was the logical compromise.
About Chaldron
San Diego Sarah • Link
In the 17th century most coal was taken from small and shallow "bell pits". Pits were often on common land and run by small groups of families. These families worked in teams. Hewers used a pick or crowbar to remove the coal from the seam while women and children carried the coal to the surface. Pits seldom employed more than 40 of 50 miners and often less than 20. (1)
(1) J. F. C. Harrison, The Common People (1984) page 143
As surface deposits became exhausted, coal miners were forced to go deeper into the ground. One of the major problems of mining for coal in the 17th and 18th centuries was flooding. Colliery owners used several different methods to solve this problem. These included pumps worked by windmills and teams of men and animals carrying endless buckets of water. (2)
(2) John S. Allen, Thomas Newcomen : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
Thomas Newcomen worked on developing a machine to pump water out of the mines. He eventually came up with the idea of a machine that would rely on atmospheric air pressure to work the pumps, a system which would be safe, if rather slow. The "steam entered a cylinder and raised a piston; a jet of water cooled the cylinder, and the steam condensed, causing the piston to fall, and thereby lift water." (3)
(3) Charles R. Morris, The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution (2014) page 42
Of course, conditions only got worse when the water pumps arrived -- for a complete history of coal mining and the associated child labor laws, see
https://spartacus-educational.com…
@@@
Queen Elizabeth freed the last English serfs in 1574. But serfdom remained in Scotland until the Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775 prevented the creation of the status, and 1799, when coal miners who had been kept in serfdom prior to the 1775 Act gained emancipation. However, most Scottish serfs had been freed by then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His…
About Sunday 29 December 1667
San Diego Sarah • Link
cum salis grano above mentions the Ranters.
It just so happens that one of the most notorious, Rev. Laurence Clarkson, died in the debtors' prison at Ludgate in 1667. He fell into debt after he loaned 100/. to some people to rebuild after the Great Fire, and they absconded with the money. Sometimes good deads are punished.
Clarkson ranks right alongside the most notorious of the cult leaders of the 20th century! But apparently he reformed after sampling everything the Anglican sects could offer at the time.
http://www.icknieldindagations.co… -- about 3/4 way down
and https://spartacus-educational.com…
About Tuesday 23 April 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Charles III will wear the St. Edward’s Crown for his coronation, which was last used for crowning Elizabeth II in 1953.
The crown is made of a solid gold frame that weighs nearly 5 lbs. along with a purple velvet cap and an ermine band. It is adorned with 444 gemstones, including rubies, sapphires, garnets, topazes, and tourmalines.
The crown was commissioned in 1661 by the Royal Goldsmith, Robert Vyner, for the coronation of Charles II.
It replaced a medieval crown that was first discovered in 1163 in the tomb of the 11th-century saint, King Edward the Confessor.
The crown was melted down by parliamentarians in 1649 following the execution of Charles I.
After the ceremony, Charles III will change to the lighter Imperial State Crown for the procession back to Buckingham Palace (on the site of Arlington House, home of Henry Bennet in Diary days).
This crown is made of gold and set with 2,868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 269 pearls, and 4 rubies. It also features some of the most famous jewels in the Royal collection, including the Black Prince’s Ruby, the Stuart Sapphire, and the Cullinan II diamond, the largest diamond ever mined.
Originally made for the coronation of George VI in 1937, the crown replaced Queen Victoria’s crown in 1838. It was also worn by Elizabeth II during her coronation. Most recently, it was placed on the Queen’s coffin during her state funeral.
Jewellery experts at U.K. retailer Steven Stone estimate the crown’s value to be worth £2.5 million.
https://time.com/6274736/king-cha…
These historic items do not belong to monarch. They belong to the State. An interesting side note is that they were used as collateral for America's wartime loans to Britain, as defaulting and thereby losing them was completely non-negotiable.
The crown jewels never left the country, and only recently was it revealed where King George personally hid them. It must have been very large biscuit tin!
https://bankunderground.co.uk/202…
https://history.blog.gov.uk/2020/…
https://britishheritage.com/histo….
About Tuesday 23 April 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
The office of King’s Champion began in the reign of William the Conqueror.
It was the Champion’s duty to ride, on a white charger, fully clad in armour, into Westminster Hall during the coronation banquet.
His role was to defend the monarch’s honour and challenge any person who dared to deny the sovereign’s right to the throne to a duel.
Queen Victoria dispensed with traditional ride and challenge custom at her coronation, and Henry Dymoke – Queen’s Champion at the time – was made a baronet by way of compensation.
https://anglotopia.net/site-news/…
About Tuesday 23 April 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
The monarch used to make their way through the City of London to Westminster the day before the coronation, seeing a series of pageants set on elaborate stages as part of the journey.
Charles II was the last king to spend the night before the Coronation in the Tower of London, and then to go in procession from the Tower to Westminster Abbey.
https://anglotopia.net/site-news/…
About Thursday 26 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
To be really clear, I should have said "Your PERSONAL Honor has to mean something when living in cramped quarters like this."
His Honor, Lord Montagu is a whole other subject.
About Friday 27 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
It does seem excessive, MartinVT. Professors L&M had access to many historical documents during the decades they took compiling their information, so I tend to believe them.
Maybe the Exchequer was settling the messenger's account for multiple deliveries, or this was a quarterly payment? Did it include paying for hiring approx. 8 post horses (guessing one per hour)? Whatever the case, he made the run apparently without being paid.
About King's Bench Court
San Diego Sarah • Link
The King's Bench dealt with matters of divorce:
In 1650, the Rump Parliament passed an Act criminalizing adultery, and made the act punishable by death. Thomas shows that this legislation was an attempt to unify a wide array of religious groups. 51
51 K. Thomas, ‘The Puritans and Adultery: The Act of 1650 Reconsidered’, in Puritans and Revolutionaries, Oxford 1978, pp. 257 – 282.
The Act provided for harsher punishment for women than for men. This was inevitable, because in the perceptions of the age, a woman committing adultery was committing a worse act than a man doing the same thing. The contemporary concept of adultery showed that when the husband was in the wrong, he filled his wife’s heart with grief and jealousy and shame, while a woman in adultery risked introducing bastards into the family, depriving lawful heirs of their rightful inheritance. 52
52 K. Thomas, ‘The Puritans and Adultery: The Act of 1650 Reconsidered’, in Puritans and Revolutionaries, ed. D. Pennington and K. Thomas, Oxford 1978, pp. 259-60.
For many reasons the Act couldn't be well implemented, it was part of 16th - 17th Century efforts at social control by the elite. But efforts at social control could be subverted.
John Milton’s "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" shows that Milton wanted to give the right of divorce solely to men. Hill sees this as a tool of social control, and a way to introduce new social patterns on the easy-going sexual habits of society. This was aimed at increasing the rights of men. Milton explained that unless this right to divorce existed, adultery and brothels would increase.
When Mrs. Attaway used John Milton’s logic to leave her husband, it was a radical subversion of Milton’s idea of control. 53
53 S. Davies, Unbridled Spirits, pp.108-9.
Following a series of attempts to legislate against adultery in Parliament which failed, the Rump Parliament passed the Commonwealth (Adultery) Act in May 1650, inter alia imposing the death penalty for adultery, that was defined as sexual intercourse between a married woman and a man other than her husband. Both partners would be liable for death sentence in such case.
If a man (married or unmarried) had sex with an unmarried woman (including widow), that would be fornication, punishable only by 3 months for first offenders (applicable to both partners).
However, like all legislation passed by the Commonwealth, the act was repealed following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.
https://www.academia.edu/1305291/…
A more lasting change during the Early Modern period was that it became possible to prosecute for adultery in English common law due to developments in the common-law concept of loss of consortium, which made it possible for a cuckold to bring a civil case against an adulterer under tort law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adu…
About Elizabeth Cromwell
San Diego Sarah • Link
Mrs. Cromwell appears to have been maligned by everyone after the Restoration:
"Yet at least one study emphasizes how Elizabeth Cromwell was a target for critics, both on the Royalist right and the Leveller left, and how the Protectorate in turn built up a picture of Elizabeth to satisfy its brand of politics. Republican opponents of the Protectorate attacked Elizabeth as a would-be Queen who fueled the overreaching of her husband.
"Royalists, after the Restoration, had a class attack, sneering at the woman who was supposedly more suited for the barn than for the palace. 41 41 Katharine Gillespie, ‘Elizabeth Cromwell's Kitchen Court: Republicanism and the Consort’, Genders 33, 2001, http://www.Genders.org. [BELOW]
"As a major study on Elizabeth Cromwell argues: “The criticisms of Elizabeth that emerge from both the "left" -- the republican critiques of the post-regicidal grandees and their wives -- as well as the "right" -- the popular royalist critiques of the republic -- reveal the degree to which debates over the scope and function of private and public spheres within particular political orders are often waged through the cultural politics of gender. Both republican and royalist representations of Elizabeth Cromwell are enmeshed in larger disputes over the contradictions that each side perceived within the entity of a Protectorate -- the body politic that emerged during the Interregnum period as neither a monarchy nor a republic but rather an uneasy synthesis of the two, not unlike "Protectorate Joan," as Elizabeth was often called.
"As an oxymoronic plebeian queen, Elizabeth Cromwell's class and gender identities were used by both sides to project their sense of what the abject and excessive feature was that tipped the scale of the Protectorate towards the social and political failure it met with at the return of Charles II in 1660.” 42
42 Katharine Gillespie, ‘Elizabeth Cromwell's Kitchen Court: Republicanism and the Consort’, Genders 33, 2001, paragraph 5.
EXCERPTED FROM Christopher Hill: Women Turning the World Upside Down, by Soma Marik (2004)
https://www.academia.edu/1305291/…
Remember Montagu's snobbish sneers about Monck and his relatives at the start of the Diary? Class warfare was alive and well.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Thursday 3 September 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Likewise, in the eyes of middle-class England, the vagabond life of the gypsy was sometimes attractive, sometimes condemnable. The law as it stood could be applied to execute a gypsy simply for being a gypsy. Gypsies put up a stout resistance to all efforts to make them give up their travelling life. They were a standing offence to those who wished to force the English lower classes to become wage laborers. Since they had no original village, they could not be flogged back there and made to work – the standard method for treating vagabonds.
"Moreover, gypsies at times seem to have been connected to popular resistance to encroaching capitalism.
"In 1723, Billy Marshall, chief of the Galloway gypsies, was leader of a popular revolt by ‘Levellers’ against enclosing landlords. 39
39 C. Hill, Liberty Against the Law, pp. 131-3.
"Hill shows that the ballad literature of the 17th Century brings out 2 reasons why this life seemed attractive to women -– they would not be considered the property of their husbands, and they would enjoy sexual freedom. In ‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies’, for example, a neglected wife of wealthy gentry background discards her ‘silken gown’ and makes a break for liberty by joining the gypsies. When her husband tries to get her back by reminding her of the wealth she is leaving behind, she remarks that all this was his show (of which, by implication, she was a part). 40
40 C. Hill, Liberty Against the Law, pp.137-140. For ‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies’, see p. 138.
FROM Christopher Hill: Women Turning the World Upside Down, by Soma Marik (2004)
https://www.academia.edu/1305291/…
About Thursday 3 September 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Gypsys -- called Travellers today -- have always posed a problem in Europe, as they are nomadic in a world of property owners. After the enclosures, the nomads had nowhere to go. The enclosures were in progress in the 17th century, so the problems posed by the gypsys was current for Pepys.
I feel obliged to preface the last 3 paragraphs of my post which you'll find intact in the next annotation down (they come from a paper called "Christopher Hill: Women Turning the World Upside Down"). If you want info re women's rights at this time, it is helpful, but quotes Hill, who is a tad contraversial in academic circles today. If you don't care about the debate, skip to the next annotation which is about gypsys:
Historian J. E. Christopher Hill is close to unparalleled in the annals of 20th century writing. Few scholars have left such a deep imprint on their chosen field.
Between his first essay, ‘The English Revolution 1640’, written in 1940, and 'Liberty Against the Law', published in 1996, Hill developed consistent themes, and with that, opened doors to new research.
It was Hill who established that the 3 Civil Wars of mid-17th Century England was not a mere constitutional revolution nor a narrowly defined religious conflict, but a multifaceted social revolution, of world-historical significance, whose full implications can be understood only by leaving the palace voices and hearing the people's words.
Hill made this clear in the ‘Introduction’ to 'The World Turned Upside Down' which portrays the wide range of radical ideas that emerged from below during the Civil Wars.
He took pains to explore the voices of the ‘inarticulate’ and the ‘silent’ majority. Predictably, historians hostile to the aspirations of subaltern masses and politically conservative in the present cannot stomach Hill. 2 2 I use the term subaltern in the original Gramscian, not the post-modernist Subaltern Studies sense.
Maurice Ashley, when he revised his 'England in the Seventeenth Century', cautioned his readers in the bibliographic note: “It should be remembered that all Dr. Hill’s books are written from a highly sophisticated Marxist stand-point”. 4
4 Maurice Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century (revised edition of 1977), Harmondsworth, p. 259.
So much for the preamble. Whether or not Hill is a "Marxist", I leave you. From what I've read, he identified trends that led to many different modern outcomes. Whether you have to be a Marxist to recognize Marxist precedents, ...???
About Thursday 26 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thanks for the explanation about massy timbers. I was worried Pepys meant mossy timbers, and was about to call out the coast guard.
On your thought about Pepys taking a tippler while he was checking out the wine "cellar": In the Navy, where no one has much privacy or room for personal belongings, the idea of theft or making trouble of any sort is always met with great severity, even today. Your Honor has to mean something when living in cramped quarters like this.
So no, Pepys would have kept his acquisitiveness to himself -- and waited until he got back to his quarters and asked the purser for whatever he wanted. I'm sure he and Montagu and the officers had as much booze as they desired.
It was the unlucky fellows below in the hammocks who had rations of whatever passed for grog at this time? Small beer maybe? Grog per se didn't arrive until 1740, and the Royal Navy has never been entirely sober to my knowledge. But no one stole it, on pain of the cat-o'nine-tails or keel-hauling or something equally unpleasant.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Royal Charles (was Naseby)
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Royal Charles was an 80-gun first-rate 3-decker ship of the line of the English Navy. [1]
1 ^ a b c Lavery, Ships of the Line vol.1, p160.
She was originally called Naseby, built by Peter Pett, and launched at Woolwich dockyard in 1655, for the navy of the Commonwealth of England, and named in honor of Sir Thomas, Lord Fairfax's decisive 1645 victory over the Royalist forces during the English Civil Wars.
The Naseby was ordered in 1654 as one of 4 second rates, intended to carry 60 guns each. However, she was altered during construction to mount a complete battery of guns along the upper deck (compared with the partial battery on this deck of her intended sisters, on which there were no gun ports in the waist along this deck), and so was reclassed as a first rate.
In the run-up to the June 1660 return of Charles II, during May 1660 the Naseby was anchored in The Downs off Deal, where her laurel-crowned figurehead of Oliver Cromwell was removed before sailing to the Dutch Republic at the head of the fleet sent to bring Charles II back to England, captained by Sir Edward Montagu and still under her Parliamentary name.[2]
2 Parliamentary Intelligencer, April 30 to May 7, 1660, in Random Edition
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS….
About Thursday 23 January 1661/62
San Diego Sarah • Link
London fog, or miasma:
John Evelyn’s 1661 work "Fumifugium" criticized the polluted air in the capital. Part of the complaint was the damage that Evelyn claimed polluted air was doing to the water both in the city, and to those who lived downstream who he said emerged after bathing covered in a “web” of dust and grime.
Evelyn’s issues with the air highlight the importance of smell in Early Modern understandings of disease. If “corrupt” or “putrid” air was key to the spread of illness, the stench of the River Fleet was not only unpleasant – it was life threatening.
The threat of pollution therefore took two forms. There was the waste that ended up in the river, and the smell that resulted from it.
The author Ben Jonson, whose house was near the Fleet River, took the state of the river as inspiration for his poem “On the Famous Voyage” which paints a nauseatingly vivid picture of the waterway’s condition through a mock voyage down it circa 1610:
“Your dainty Nostrils (in so hot a Season, When every Clerk eats Artichokes and Peason, Laxative Lettuce, and such windy Meat) Tempt such a passage? when each Privies Seat Is fill’d with Buttock? And the Walls do sweat Urine, and Plasters? When the Noise doth beat Upon your Ears, of Discords so unsweet?”
https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/04-2…
The waste and smell appeared again in scenarios where authorities did take action against polluters:
In 1627, a case was brought by London residents against a house that made “allom”. (Alum, as it is known today, was produced through the “boiling of urine” and the complaints were aimed at the “noisome stinking scum of a frothy substance” that it was dumping into the water.)
Both the smell and contamination were claimed to have “cast many of [the nearby residents] into extremity of great sicknesses” and the building was shut down.
Thomas Powell lamented the river’s treatment in a 1679 religious work, suggesting people treated God in a similar way to the river: poorly. “The Thames brings us in our Riches, our Gold, Silks, Spices: and we throw all our filth into the Thames”.
You might think that this was as bad as it could get, but a 1696 pamphlet suggested that the Thames was better off than most English rivers, which enjoyed fewer protections and in contrast were “choaked up with Filth”.
In a world without permanent sewage or waste disposal systems, it is unsurprising Early Modern rivers ended up in the state they did, despite legal protections. But the reaction to their pollution shows us that, even in a time with limited alternatives, this scenario was not accepted without complaint.
https://theconversation.com/noiso…
About Saturday 26 May 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
MEANWHILE, in London ...
In January 1660 Dr. James Sharp and 5 other Scottish ministers had been sent to London by the leading Resolutioner ministers to share the views of the Scottish Presbyterian party with Gen. George Monck.
Dr. Sharp stayed in London until May 4, 1660, when Gen. Monck sent him to Breda to ask for Charles II’s agreement to this settlement of ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland.
Dr. Sharp returned to London on May 26, 1660, and stayed until the middle of August, talking with the leading persons there while staying in close contact with the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland, who placed their entire confidence in him. (His letters are in the university of Glasgow library and in Wodrow’s History.)
https://www.electricscotland.com/…