"the little blind alehouse" means an alehouse with no windows onto the street, so people outside can't see who is inside. (I don't know if this also means there can be no windows onto a garden or private courtyard.)
A blind bedroom is one without windows. Since people slept in cupboards and box beds, one without windows was probably quite common.
Spain was especially anxious — not without cause — about the Plate fleet and also about Gibraltar. Before she knew she could rely on a Dutch squadron, a message had been sent out to the Indies to divert the flota away from Cadiz and order it to Coruna instead, while at the cost of dislocating the military operations against Portugal large reinforcements were thrown into the Rock.
As yet, nothing was done openly on either side.
Vice Adm. John Lawson had still been operating before Algiers, blockading the port and playing havoc on its shipping with his cruisers.
All September, 1661, De Ruyter, in accordance with his secret orders, lay about Cape St. Vincent to cover the Plate fleet, while Sandwich remained in the Tagus doing honor to the new Queen of England and gracing the marriage rejoicings.
"... my head full of my Lord’s and my own and the office business; where we are now very busy about the business of sending forces to Tangier, and the fleet to my Lord of Sandwich, ..."
Oh good, you are reading the filing between outings, the theater and drinking bouts.
Edited version lifted from: ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS -- 1603-1713 By JULIAN S. CORBETT VOL. II LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1904 https://archive.org/stream/englan… NOTE: I have corrected the scanning errors I could figure out, and left the ones I could not. I've also completed people's names and edited the Victorian grammar
The cloud that hung over Western Europe was daily growing darker, and at the end of August 1661, Sir Richard Fanshawe was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to Lisbon to relieve Sandwich and free his hand for action, while in the following week John Mordaunt, 1st Earl of Peterborough's commission to command the Tangier expedition was signed.
The Tangier military force was planned to consist of 4 foot regiments numbering 3,000 men and a troop of 100 horse. Part was to be newly raised, and part made up from the Dunkirk garrison, and the whole was to be accompanied by a powerful naval escort. 2. 2. For Henry Mordaunt, 2nd Earl of Peterborough's commission and details of the troops, see Col. Davis, History of the Second Queen’s Royal Regiment, a work in which the author has printed or abstracted practically all the really important documents relating to the English occupation of Tangier from a military point of view.
1661 ON THE BRINK OF WAR 27 Such a force took time to prepare.
It was not until December 9, 1661, that the Dunkirk regiments embarked.
Long before Peterborough and his troops could sail, de Ruyter's fleet had been brought up to its full strength of over 20 sail, besides vessels up the Straits on convoy service, and the situation had become in the highest degree critical. The English Government was fully aware of the difficulties before them, and with a man like Albemarle as war minister they were well prepared to meet them.
A danger was, as they had reason to fear, that despite the marriage treaty, Peterborough might not be admitted to Tangier. A clause in his instructions especially contemplates such an eventuality. In case he found it so, he was to return home if — and this is the significant condition — 'if upon join advice with Lord Sandwich you shall not agree upon some further design for our service.' He had also express power to occupy any place that might be in a state of hostility to the British realm.
Clearly, if Spain interfered, Spain was to suffer.
1661 THE BOW OF CROMWELL 21 When we see such men as Albemarle, Sandwich, Carteret, Clarendon and Wriothesley proposing and carrying through the Portuguese alliance and the surrender of Dunkirk, as it were in one movement, it is clear, as was asserted at the time, the two transactions were parts of one great design.
It is also clear the decision to give up Dunkirk and embrace Tangier was the expression of all that was most vigorous and wise in the growing understanding of the nation, the product of the forces and feeling that had been forming it for a century, and the signpost to the characteristic British policy of expansion beyond the Oceans and domination of the Mediterranean Sea. It was Oliver Cromwell who sounded the note and Cromwell who gave the means for carrying it to action.
With Charles II, it was the most typical of Englishmen who put the idea into being — men who represented the central stream of British opinion — as half were the most sober of the Stuart councilors, and half the most moderate of Cromwell's men-at-arms.
The failure of the Mediterranean policy to secure the immediate and wide results that were reasonably expected from it came to obscure its true intention, and, instead of being regarded the trading of Dunkirk for Tangier as a loyal effort to take up the bow of Elizabeth and Cromwell, it has survived as the emblem of the Stuart fatuity.
We have only to follow the history of the Tangier episode to see how unjustly posterity has judged it.
Consider how profound the impression in Europe was, how nearly success was achieved, and how stoutly Charles II clung to his original idea while one after the other all his fondest illusions were shattered, to appraise the Mediterranean policy at its true value.
Edited version lifted from: ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS -- 1603-1713 By JULIAN S. CORBETT VOL. II LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1904 https://archive.org/stream/englan… NOTE: I have corrected the scanning errors I could figure out, and left the ones I could not; I’ve standardized the spelling of names, and unscrambled the Victorian grammar.
20 DUNKIRK AND TANGIER 1661 But it is Gen. George Monck's life that curiously covers the period of development and accentuates [England's Mediterranean policy's] most prominent points. Born and bred in the heart of Elizabethan romance, he had fed on the new spirit. He was related to all the greatest names of that age from Grenville to Howard. Their exploits were his nursery tales. His uncles had fought and died under Drake and Vere, and at the house of his Aunt Stukeley, near the place where he was educated, he must have had the son of Pocahontas for a playfellow and worshipped Raleigh in the flesh as his boyish hero. This colorful childhood was never quite outgrown. He served throughout the 1st Duke of Buckingham's ill-starred attempts to revive the glories of the past age. Then, like his fathers, he had gone to serve the Dutch against their Spanish oppressors, and after 10 years' distinguished service he returned to England with the reputation of the pattern Low Country soldier. It was the eve of the Civil Wars, but as yet all was quiet. But the old spirit was still strong, and young Monck could not rest. Pining adventure, he joined the wild scheme by which 1,000 gentlemen, under the leadership of Prince Rupert and with 1,000,000/. capital, were to sail to conquer Madagascar, and from there to carve out a mighty empire in the East. The civil wars put an end to all such dreams. But when they were over, and Gen. Monck had risen to be Cromwell's right hand, it was intended that he should lead the career of conquest in the West Indies. If he could have been spared from Scotland he might well, as the greatest military administrator and one of the finest strategists of his time, have written a very different page on the Commonwealth history.
As it was, Gen. George Monck, as the Duke of Albemarle built up a fresh reputation as an admiral against the Dutch, to command single-handed the most powerful fleet that had ever sailed the seas, and to lead it to victory against the greatest of the Dutch seamen.
In his new sphere he lived to complete Adm. Robert Blake's work and perfect the soldier's influence on the naval art. It was Albemarle who raised the Navy to the position of a true science, and posterity has recognized him as the real father of modern naval tactics.
Terry posted above a letter from Pepys to Sandwich regarding civil unrest and sickness being in London. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… Both must have been bad, and it's a puzzle that Pepys doesn't mention either in the Diary that I recall. The Venetian Ambassadoir reported on both to the Doge:
46. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
"... Evil humours still persist in this kingdom and are hard to purge away while there is the diversity of religions and creeds which at present infects England.
"These persons think of nothing but how to shuffle the cards again and rekindle civil strife, and win advantages for their party, which is by no means small. It seems that with the help and correspondence of the malcontents of Scotland, who are not a few, they were meditating some disturbance in this city, and thought the king's journey a favourable opportunity to give it effect. When his Majesty was gone and London almost empty owing to the multitude that would follow the Court there would be a chance to let blaze the wrath which the sectaries cherish.
"But the plans prepared being discovered it was easy to prevent them by the measures taken. Houses were searched, persons arrested, arms sequestered and various munitions of war of which a great quantity were found scattered about in different parts of the metropolis, in secret underground places, and in several parts of the kingdom; so they were able to explode the threatened mine.
"For this reason and for others also which do not permit the Court to be far away, it would seem that the king's journey is put off and perhaps postponed altogether to some more opportune time, when affairs are more pacified which as yet are far too balanced and unstable.
"London, the 9th September, 1661." [Italian.]
@@@
So Charles II's trip to Worcester never happened?! He prorogued Parliament on the excuse that he wanted to leave for a progress there on July 30.
"Evil humours still persist in this kingdom and are hard to purge away while there is the diversity of religions and creeds which at present infects England." Does this refer to sickness being hard to overcome because God is upset by all presence of non-Conformists, Anglicans and Catholics? The Ambassador is, of course, Catholic and would find London a very Un-Godly place. Or is it part of what I've made into a seperate paragraph, which changes the meaning of the "evil humours" making them lead to "rekindle civil strife"?
I've opted for it being two paragraphs with the first addressing the sickness and the second the unrest because of Pepys letter. London was suffering from two problems.
52. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
After news and rumors about Mediterrandean adventures and the Barbary pirates, the Ambassador continues:
Having repaired the gondolas, which were all in pieces, having them regilded and much of the inlay reset, I had them out on the Thames yesterday and presented them to his Majesty with suitable remarks.
It is impossible to express his Majesty's pleasure or how they were praised by the king, Court and everyone.
His Majesty at once got in with the duke and duchess of York and another lady of the Court, and also made me enter. Other gentlemen of the palace followed in the second. He took a short course on the river, before a great crowd assembled to see them, their richness, grace and lightness being generally admired with praises for the gondoliers also. He said many times that he had never seen anything finer or more gallant.
He charged me expressly to thank your Serenity for the present, which he valued greatly and he would see that the gondoliers were well treated. It would really seem that the present of your Serenity stands apart from the many others that have been made by many other princes.
This week he was presented by the States of Holland with a little vessel to sail on the Thames, of great beauty (fn. 5) but he is more pleased with the gondolas, and he enjoys nothing so much as going on the water.
In speaking of the speed of gondolas and barques the gondoliers told him that there is another kind of craft called ‘fisolere’ (fn. 6) which go much quicker and with these they could show him quick rowing, describing the nature of the boat, to his Majesty's extreme delight.
The king at once sent for me and said that after receiving such an honour he ought not immediately to ask for another, but what he heard of the ‘fisolere’ and his passion for anything that floats would excuse him. He asked me to beg the Senate for one of these and I consented, having already told him of the state's desire to gratify him in every possible way.
The gondoliers tell me the form which the ‘fisolere’ ought to have for this river and I will send full particulars to the Magistracy alle Rason Vecchie. The duke of York told me yesterday that he also would like gondolas; but he would not trouble the Senate and asked me to get some at his own cost. Many other lords of the Court have already spoken to me, all being most eager for such craft, so greatly have those sent by your Serenity caught the general taste. London, 23 September, 1661.
Footnotes: • 5. A yacht presented by the Dutch East India Company. Evelyn: Diary, page 278. See also Pepys: Diary, Vol. ii., page 101. • 6. “Barque petite, legere et rapide,” used for hunting moorhens (fisolo) or curlews, a winter sport of Venetian gentlemen. Made to carry the master with 7 or 8 servants. Jal: Glossaire Nautique, page 697.
FROM: 'Venice: September 1661', in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 33, 1661-1664, ed. Allen B Hinds (London, 1932), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk….
46. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
After a lot of Mediterranian angst, and news of sickness and unrest in London, Amb. Francesco Giavarina comes to the saga of the subject of the gondolas: ... The ship from Leghorn with the gondolas arrived in the Downs this week and the news reached London the day before yesterday. When the wind serves it will enter the Thames and anchor not far from this metropolis. I will then have them put in the water and set right, and subsequently present them to his Majesty. I have informed him of their arrival, at which he expressed his delight, declaring that immediately they reach the river he will go to see them, while manifesting great curiosity and his indebtedness to the Senate. I am sure that the sight will please him greatly, as from the account of ministers I know he was not a little gratified that the mission of the ambassadors extraordinary was expressly for offices with his Majesty, without any charge for other princes, as was reported here and suspected. When I spoke with any one about it I did not fail to assure them that this was so, and that it was a mark of esteem for his Majesty and the whole nation. London, the 9th September, 1661. [Italian.]
So far, so good. @@@
49. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
Owing to contrary winds the ship with the two gondolas could not enter the Thames before yesterday, when it cast anchor 35 miles from this city. I went at once to see them and found them much damaged and in poor condition with great leaks caused by the excessive heat on the long voyage and some of the packages are not in good condition.
They were put into lighters yesterday evening and reached London to-day.
Moved by curiosity the king took a pleasure barge on the river to meet and inspect them, so eager is he. I at once had the packing opened and the bodies sunk, so that after they are seasoned a little they may be taken to a boat yard and the damage repaired. I am also giving orders for all that is unstuck and broken to be repaired, and with permission, I will enter the cost in my accounts.
As the king is extraordinarily eager to see them I will hasten their repairs as much as possible and then present them, but this cannot happen till the middle of next week, as it needs time to do all that is necessary.
Meanwhile the gondoliers are working; they are all four in good health and eager to be presented to his Majesty.
Owing to my attention to this matter I cannot devote much time to this despatch and beg the Senate to pardon me, especially as there is nothing of importance. ...
Welcome Raj -- in the text "link" is one of many words printed in blue. Click on it -- or any word in blue -- and you'll find our Encyclopedia page about links and linkboys in this case, and many other wonderful things.
It's a handy way of avoiding repeating information over and over again.
Clearly Lawson and Sandwich thought De Ruyter was not to be trusted, and for all of October and November 1661 they lay where they were, watching, with a division continually out in the 'Gut' of the Straits.
Their force was not strong, nor were their stores plentiful, and as the weeks passed without any news of Henry Mordaunt, 2nd Earl of Peterborough and the Tangier regiment having sailed, Sandwich grew anxious.
A Tangier update, adapted from ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS -- 1603-1713 By JULIAN S. CORBETT VOL. II LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1904 https://archive.org/stream/englan… NOTE: I have corrected the scanning errors and up-dated content.
Spain was especially anxious — with cause — about the Plate fleet, and also about Gibraltar. Before she knew she could rely on a Dutch squadron, a message was sent to the Indies to divert the flota away from Cadiz and order it to Coruna instead, while (at the cost of dislocating the military operations against Portugal) large reinforcements were put onto the Rock. As yet, nothing was done openly on either side.
Vice Adm. John Lawson was still operating before Algiers, blockading the port and playing havoc on its shipping with his cruisers.
All September, 1661, De Ruyter, in accordance with his secret orders, lay about Cape St. Vincent to cover the Plate fleet, while Sandwich remained in the Tagus honoring the new Queen of England and gracing the marriage celebrations.
In the first days of October, 1661, an alarm reached Sandwich that a combined Dutch and Spanish fleet was off Tangier. He now had 10 sail under his orders, and in the midst of the marriage festivities he suddenly put to sea and sent forward a despatch vessel to Algiers to summons Lawson to his aid.
28 FIRST OCCUPATION OF THE STRAITS 1661 A week later Sandwich was before Tangier, but there was no sign of an enemy. In 5 days Lawson appeared.
Tangier was still safe, but the situation was as strained as ever.
De Ruyter had moved down to the Straits.
Lawson, on his way from Algiers, had spoken with De Ruyter off Malasfa. The Dutch admiral informed him that he was there to make war on the corsairs. As a matter of fact, although De Ruyter had no intention of leaving the Straits until further orders, he really was -- for the moment -- devoting his attention to the Barbary pirates.
By the end of September, 1661, De Ruyter had been told the Plate fleet was safe in Coruna, and he at once deployed his squadron in the business upon which it had ostensibly come out. Lawson was engaged in the same quest, and with ‘rough ingenuity' asked De Ruyter to communicate his private signal that they might co-operate more easily. De Ruyter, too old a hand to be drawn in by such a confidence trick, refused, and with this information Lawson had joined Sandwich at Tangier. 1. 1 Vie de De Ruiter, p. 1(58.
I posted a bit about the Straits on the Gibraltar page -- strategically Tangier and Gibraltar were interchangeable in Charles II's Mediterranean policy.
"... now I can hardly reclaim myself to look after my great business of settling Gravely business, until now almost too late."
Be it the devil or the demon drink or those stage ladies to blame, Pepys is still focused on his personal business and deadlines, not the fate of the nation. Sandwich also purely notes his personal major interactions, while keeping us ignorant of what's happening around them. If you want to know where the action is that's consuming the navy, it's at Tangier. Background information only -- no spoilers https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The British occupation of Gibralter and Tangier did upset a lot of people. For instance, the fright the Vatican received just from Oliver Cromwell's 1650's cruising squadron; a Protestant gatekeeper the mouth of the Mediterranean could only be an abiding menace to Rome and France plus all Mediterranean trade. Just suppose England imposed a tax for sailing through the Straits, and insisted on inspecting every ship?
Control of the Straits of Gibraltar, the mouth of the Mediterranean, was a very big deal. Queen Elizabeth saw it, as did Cromwell, and in the 1660's Charles II was attempting it by accepting Tangier from the Portuguese.
For more about this on-going Mediterranean policy (with lots of spoilers, depending on where you are in the Diary), see ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS 1603-1713 BY JULIAN S. CORBETT VOL. I. and II LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1904 Vol I is before the Diary https://archive.org/stream/englan… Vol 2 is roughly the Restoration onwards https://archive.org/stream/englan…
Wake up, Pepys -- Batten loaned you the 40/. because he didn't want you to look into ways of making more money off naval contracts. So long as you're happy doing the filing, messing around with Penn's tankard, drinking too much, and being absent from the office, the old Admirals can make lots of commissions dealing with their pals. By all means, add another room -- and, yes, spend your time supervising the painters. History is being enabled across the garden in the Navy Office, and you don't seem to be aware of it.
The L&M Companion has nothing about Gravely -- and perhaps more significantly, no essay per se on Pepys' inheritance and the following years of law suits. But Pauline found and reposted the info. under Robert Pepys -- thank you, Pauline. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
@@@
For the history of Gravely, no better info can be found than the BHO -- British History On Line -- site:
There is one helpful paragraph under Gravely, Cams.: "In the 16th and early 17th century the Wiseman family held c. 200 a[cres], divided and sold c. 1650. (fn. 40) "Half passed through Robert Pepys (d. 1661), an uncle of the diarist, to the Brookes. (fn. 41) "Leonard Nightingale of Yelling (Hunts.), who bought the other half in 1650, devised it in 1660 to his kinsman Geoffrey Nightingale of Kneesworth. (fn. 42) "The estate, 157 a. after 1660, descended in that family (fn. 43) until Sir Charles E. Nightingale, Bt., in 1807 sold the 175 a. allotted at inclosure to the Londoner Richard Haighton (d. 1813)."
40. Ramsey Chron. 199; cf. Rot. Hund. (Rec. Com.), ii. ct. rolls 35 Eliz. 1; 20 Jas. 1; 1 Chas. 1; 1650. 41. V.C.H. Cambs. i. ct. roll 14 Chas. 11; cf. Diary of Sam. Pepys, ed. R. C. Latham and W. Matthews, ii. 136, 180-2; x. 320- 2. https://www.british-history.ac.uk… 42. Jesus Coll Mun., 2, ct. rolls 1650, 1660.
Citation: 'Graveley: Manor and other estates', in A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 9, Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds, ed. A P M Wright, C P Lewis( London, 1989), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk… [accessed 10 September 2024].
Excerpt based on a book review: William J. Bulman, Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-107-07368-5 https://www.academia.edu/29297523…
In Restoration England, the ‘high church’ heirs of the executed Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancelor, William Laud, and the pre-Interregnum Caroline divines anticipated a restored, Episcopal, church establishment as a place in which to salvage the Laudian vision for England.
Unembarrassed by Puritan charges of ‘popery’, they asserted the ‘divine right’ of bishops, priestly authority, and the scriptural validity of liturgical ritual. Their political theory was grounded in the monarchical security of the church without injuring clerical authority.
Because of the wavering religious policies of the restored Stuarts -- and division within the church -- their ideas hardly had time to be implemented. With the Whig domination of the church after the “Glorious” Revolution, the neo-Laudian program unraveled.
The losers in 1688, these high churchmen were the unlikely carriers of enlightenment. In the whiggish arc of progress they are usually left in the shadows as champions of priestly tyranny; unmovably dogmatic critics of the latitudinarian comity of the gentle erastianism of 1688; bigoted opponents of toleration, they are portrayed as the obstructers of Protestantism’s emancipatory potential.
Of what, counter-intuitively, did the ‘Anglican enlightenment’ consist?
Despite the neo-Laudians’ brief 28 years, [the author] identifies a consequential transformation. It was a shift in perspective on how to achieve the union of civic and sacral communities under an essentialist clericalism. In the neo-Laudian search for creative ways to defend their orthodoxy, they needed to justify Laudian commitments as being not just essentials, but essentially reasonable, and to explain the church’s pastoral mission as one of communicating such to reasonable minds.
These enlightening reconfigurations came from a productive tension: given political instability and confessional division, how could the church justify its monopoly on public religion without resorting to coercive excess?
The answer was for the clergy to explain and educate the population on the natural and universal characteristics of religious essentials. In confronting heterodoxy, the church possesses tools other than politically-enforced conformity or sacramental-disciplinary leverage.
Their gamble was that their high church orthodoxy would be vindicated by a comparative assessment based on universal criteria, and by enlisting inherent human reasonableness to recognize it.
A recent book, Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715 by William Bulman is largely organized around the biography of Rev. Lancelot Addison, a 17th century clergymen and orientalist.
The most engaging ‘plot point’ is Rev. Lancelot Addison’s tenure as chaplain (and sometime colonial intelligencer from 1662 – 1670) at Tangier, the North African port colony ceded to England by Portugal in 1661.
The literary outcome of Rev. Lancelot Addison’s engagement in Tangier, based on interlocutions with indigenous scholars and religious authority, captures the study’s most radically universalizing moment.
A unique logic governs Rev. Lancelot Addison’s gathering of historical and ethnographic knowledge, driven neither by comparative anthropology as an end in itself, nor by the virtues of scholarly cosmopolitanism as such. Addison’s ambition is to vindicate the ‘primitive’ truths of high church ecclesiology and ceremony in evidence gathered from outside European Christendom.
Approximations of such truths in Judaism and Islam, however imperfectly manifested, suggest that the foundations of (high church) orthodoxy lie in a universal natural religion.
If this global triangulation of evidence suggests a dangerous flirtation with relativism, the purpose of this perspectival disembedding is really to bolster orthodoxy and to de-legitimate its rivals at home, even if it means searching beyond Christianity.
Essentials become universals – the ironic outcome of dogma in search of global validation.
Was this, as author Bulman suggests, ‘perhaps the first’ enlightenment to emerge in early modern Europe? Demonstrating such an idea would require a broader study incorporating continental analogs largely neglected in his book (e.g., Dutch, Prussian), and tracing the vectors of cross-fertilization connecting them.
Rev. Addison in 1675 published in London a rather interesting, if neglected, work entitled “The Present State of the Jews: (More particularly relating to those in Barbary.) Wherein is contained an exact Account of their Customs, Secular and Religious”. (1) (1) see https://www.cambridge.org/core/jo…
I wonder if Pepys knew that the Latin name for apples is malum, which is also the word for evil?
The Bible never specifies what the forbidden fruit was in the Garden of Eden. We tend to think that it was an apple that was eaten by Adam and Eve, but the Bible does not specify what kind of fruit grew on the tree of forbidden knowledge. This omission has led to much speculation amongst believers and scholars, with figs, grapes, pomegranates, and citrons all suggested as candidates.
The apple emerged as the common consensus because its Latin name is malum, which is also the word for evil — a linguistic quirk that apparently seemed too poignant to ignore. Nothing in the original text suggests this is anything more than an etymological coincidence, but the association has stuck.
Comments
Third Reading
About Thursday 12 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
"the little blind alehouse" means an alehouse with no windows onto the street, so people outside can't see who is inside. (I don't know if this also means there can be no windows onto a garden or private courtyard.)
A blind bedroom is one without windows. Since people slept in cupboards and box beds, one without windows was probably quite common.
About Gridiron (Shoe Lane)
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M has nothing about The Gridiron.
gridiron -- noun
1: a grate for broiling food
Put the steaks on the gridiron.
2: something consisting of or covered with a network
a gridiron of streets
3: a football field
The two teams will face each other on the gridiron.
My guess is that this was an inn that served food.
About Monday 30 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION
Spain was especially anxious — not without cause — about the Plate fleet and also about Gibraltar. Before she knew she could rely on a Dutch squadron, a message had been sent out to the Indies to divert the flota away from Cadiz and order it to Coruna instead, while at the cost of dislocating the military operations against Portugal large reinforcements were thrown into the Rock.
As yet, nothing was done openly on either side.
Vice Adm. John Lawson had still been operating before Algiers, blockading the port and playing havoc on its shipping with his cruisers.
All September, 1661, De Ruyter, in accordance with his secret orders, lay about Cape St. Vincent to cover the Plate fleet, while Sandwich remained in the Tagus doing honor to the new Queen of England and gracing the marriage rejoicings.
Coruna, northern Spain https://www.britannica.com/place/…
Tangier https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Cadiz https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
De Ruyter https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Lawson https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Peterborough https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Albemarle https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The marriage celebrations https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Cape St. Vincent https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Lisbon and the Tagus River https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Algiers https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Gibraltar https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The Straits https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Dunkirk https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl… NO SPOILERS, JUST CATCH-UP
Amb. Sir Richard Fanshawe https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Monday 30 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... my head full of my Lord’s and my own and the office business; where we are now very busy about the business of sending forces to Tangier, and the fleet to my Lord of Sandwich, ..."
Oh good, you are reading the filing between outings, the theater and drinking bouts.
Edited version lifted from:
ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE
OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS -- 1603-1713
By JULIAN S. CORBETT
VOL. II
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1904
https://archive.org/stream/englan…
NOTE: I have corrected the scanning errors I could figure out, and left the ones I could not. I've also completed people's names and edited the Victorian grammar
The cloud that hung over Western Europe was daily growing darker, and at the end of August 1661, Sir Richard Fanshawe was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to Lisbon to relieve Sandwich and free his hand for action, while in the following week John Mordaunt, 1st Earl of Peterborough's commission to command the Tangier expedition was signed.
The Tangier military force was planned to consist of 4 foot regiments numbering 3,000 men and a troop of 100 horse. Part was to be newly raised, and part made up from the Dunkirk garrison, and the whole was to be accompanied by a powerful naval escort. 2.
2. For Henry Mordaunt, 2nd Earl of Peterborough's commission and details of the troops, see Col. Davis, History of the Second Queen’s Royal Regiment, a work in which the author has printed or abstracted practically all the really important documents relating to the English occupation of Tangier from a military point of view.
1661 ON THE BRINK OF WAR 27
Such a force took time to prepare.
It was not until December 9, 1661, that the Dunkirk regiments embarked.
Long before Peterborough and his troops could sail, de Ruyter's fleet had been brought up to its full strength of over 20 sail, besides vessels up the Straits on convoy service, and the situation had become in the highest degree critical. The English Government was fully aware of the difficulties before them, and with a man like Albemarle as war minister they were well prepared to meet them.
A danger was, as they had reason to fear, that despite the marriage treaty, Peterborough might not be admitted to Tangier. A clause in his instructions especially contemplates such an eventuality. In case he found it so, he was to return home if — and this is the significant condition — 'if upon join advice with Lord Sandwich you shall not agree upon some further design for our service.' He had also express power to occupy any place that might be in a state of hostility to the British realm.
Clearly, if Spain interfered, Spain was to suffer.
About George Monck (Duke of Albemarle)
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION
1661 THE BOW OF CROMWELL 21
When we see such men as Albemarle, Sandwich, Carteret, Clarendon and Wriothesley proposing and carrying through the Portuguese alliance and the surrender of Dunkirk, as it were in one movement, it is clear, as was asserted at the time, the two transactions were parts of one great design.
It is also clear the decision to give up Dunkirk and embrace Tangier was the expression of all that was most vigorous and wise in the growing understanding of the nation, the product of the forces and feeling that had been forming it for a century, and the signpost to the characteristic British policy of expansion beyond the Oceans and domination of the Mediterranean Sea.
It was Oliver Cromwell who sounded the note and Cromwell who gave the means for carrying it to action.
With Charles II, it was the most typical of Englishmen who put the idea into being — men who represented the central stream of British opinion — as half were the most sober of the Stuart councilors, and half the most moderate of Cromwell's men-at-arms.
The failure of the Mediterranean policy to secure the immediate and wide results that were reasonably expected from it came to obscure its true intention, and, instead of being regarded the trading of Dunkirk for Tangier as a loyal effort to take up the bow of Elizabeth and Cromwell, it has survived as the emblem of the Stuart fatuity.
We have only to follow the history of the Tangier episode to see how unjustly posterity has judged it.
Consider how profound the impression in Europe was, how nearly success was achieved, and how stoutly Charles II clung to his original idea while one after the other all his fondest illusions were shattered, to appraise the Mediterranean policy at its true value.
About George Monck (Duke of Albemarle)
San Diego Sarah • Link
Edited version lifted from:
ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE
OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS -- 1603-1713
By JULIAN S. CORBETT
VOL. II
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1904
https://archive.org/stream/englan…
NOTE: I have corrected the scanning errors I could figure out, and left the ones I could not; I’ve standardized the spelling of names, and unscrambled the Victorian grammar.
20 DUNKIRK AND TANGIER 1661
But it is Gen. George Monck's life that curiously covers the period of development and accentuates [England's Mediterranean policy's] most prominent points.
Born and bred in the heart of Elizabethan romance, he had fed on the new spirit. He was related to all the greatest names of that age from Grenville to Howard. Their exploits were his nursery tales. His uncles had fought and died under Drake and Vere, and at the house of his Aunt Stukeley, near the place where he was educated, he must have had the son of Pocahontas for a playfellow and worshipped Raleigh in the flesh as his boyish hero.
This colorful childhood was never quite outgrown.
He served throughout the 1st Duke of Buckingham's ill-starred attempts to revive the glories of the past age.
Then, like his fathers, he had gone to serve the Dutch against their Spanish oppressors, and after 10 years' distinguished service he returned to England with the reputation of the pattern Low Country soldier. It was the eve of the Civil Wars, but as yet all was quiet.
But the old spirit was still strong, and young Monck could not rest.
Pining adventure, he joined the wild scheme by which 1,000 gentlemen, under the leadership of Prince Rupert and with 1,000,000/. capital, were to sail to conquer Madagascar, and from there to carve out a mighty empire in the East.
The civil wars put an end to all such dreams.
But when they were over, and Gen. Monck had risen to be Cromwell's right hand, it was intended that he should lead the career of conquest in the West Indies.
If he could have been spared from Scotland he might well, as the greatest military administrator and one of the finest strategists of his time, have written a very different page on the Commonwealth history.
As it was, Gen. George Monck, as the Duke of Albemarle built up a fresh reputation as an admiral against the Dutch, to command single-handed the most powerful fleet that had ever sailed the seas, and to lead it to victory against the greatest of the Dutch seamen.
In his new sphere he lived to complete Adm. Robert Blake's work and perfect the soldier's influence on the naval art. It was Albemarle who raised the Navy to the position of a true science, and posterity has recognized him as the real father of modern naval tactics.
About Monday 26 August 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Terry posted above a letter from Pepys to Sandwich regarding civil unrest and sickness being in London.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Both must have been bad, and it's a puzzle that Pepys doesn't mention either in the Diary that I recall. The Venetian Ambassadoir reported on both to the Doge:
46. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
"... Evil humours still persist in this kingdom and are hard to purge away while there is the diversity of religions and creeds which at present infects England.
"These persons think of nothing but how to shuffle the cards again and rekindle civil strife, and win advantages for their party, which is by no means small. It seems that with the help and correspondence of the malcontents of Scotland, who are not a few, they were meditating some disturbance in this city, and thought the king's journey a favourable opportunity to give it effect. When his Majesty was gone and London almost empty owing to the multitude that would follow the Court there would be a chance to let blaze the wrath which the sectaries cherish.
"But the plans prepared being discovered it was easy to prevent them by the measures taken. Houses were searched, persons arrested, arms sequestered and various munitions of war of which a great quantity were found scattered about in different parts of the metropolis, in secret underground places, and in several parts of the kingdom; so they were able to explode the threatened mine.
"For this reason and for others also which do not permit the Court to be far away, it would seem that the king's journey is put off and perhaps postponed altogether to some more opportune time, when affairs are more pacified which as yet are far too balanced and unstable.
"London, the 9th September, 1661."
[Italian.]
@@@
So Charles II's trip to Worcester never happened?! He prorogued Parliament on the excuse that he wanted to leave for a progress there on July 30.
"Evil humours still persist in this kingdom and are hard to purge away while there is the diversity of religions and creeds which at present infects England."
Does this refer to sickness being hard to overcome because God is upset by all presence of non-Conformists, Anglicans and Catholics? The Ambassador is, of course, Catholic and would find London a very Un-Godly place.
Or is it part of what I've made into a seperate paragraph, which changes the meaning of the "evil humours" making them lead to "rekindle civil strife"?
I've opted for it being two paragraphs with the first addressing the sickness and the second the unrest because of Pepys letter. London was suffering from two problems.
About Gondolas ("Gundaloes"/"Gundilows")
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION:
52. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
After news and rumors about Mediterrandean adventures and the Barbary pirates, the Ambassador continues:
Having repaired the gondolas, which were all in pieces, having them regilded and much of the inlay reset, I had them out on the Thames yesterday and presented them to his Majesty with suitable remarks.
It is impossible to express his Majesty's pleasure or how they were praised by the king, Court and everyone.
His Majesty at once got in with the duke and duchess of York and another lady of the Court, and also made me enter. Other gentlemen of the palace followed in the second. He took a short course on the river, before a great crowd assembled to see them, their richness, grace and lightness being generally admired with praises for the gondoliers also. He said many times that he had never seen anything finer or more gallant.
He charged me expressly to thank your Serenity for the present, which he valued greatly and he would see that the gondoliers were well treated.
It would really seem that the present of your Serenity stands apart from the many others that have been made by many other princes.
This week he was presented by the States of Holland with a little vessel to sail on the Thames, of great beauty (fn. 5) but he is more pleased with the gondolas, and he enjoys nothing so much as going on the water.
In speaking of the speed of gondolas and barques the gondoliers told him that there is another kind of craft called ‘fisolere’ (fn. 6) which go much quicker and with these they could show him quick rowing, describing the nature of the boat, to his Majesty's extreme delight.
The king at once sent for me and said that after receiving such an honour he ought not immediately to ask for another, but what he heard of the ‘fisolere’ and his passion for anything that floats would excuse him. He asked me to beg the Senate for one of these and I consented, having already told him of the state's desire to gratify him in every possible way.
The gondoliers tell me the form which the ‘fisolere’ ought to have for this river and I will send full particulars to the Magistracy alle Rason Vecchie.
The duke of York told me yesterday that he also would like gondolas; but he would not trouble the Senate and asked me to get some at his own cost.
Many other lords of the Court have already spoken to me, all being most eager for such craft, so greatly have those sent by your Serenity caught the general taste.
London, 23 September, 1661.
Footnotes:
• 5. A yacht presented by the Dutch East India Company. Evelyn: Diary, page 278. See also Pepys: Diary, Vol. ii., page 101.
• 6. “Barque petite, legere et rapide,” used for hunting moorhens (fisolo) or curlews, a winter sport of Venetian gentlemen. Made to carry the master with 7 or 8 servants. Jal: Glossaire Nautique, page 697.
About Gondolas ("Gundaloes"/"Gundilows")
San Diego Sarah • Link
FROM:
'Venice: September 1661', in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 33, 1661-1664, ed. Allen B Hinds (London, 1932), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk….
46. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
After a lot of Mediterranian angst, and news of sickness and unrest in London, Amb. Francesco Giavarina comes to the saga of the subject of the gondolas:
...
The ship from Leghorn with the gondolas arrived in the Downs this week and the news reached London the day before yesterday. When the wind serves it will enter the Thames and anchor not far from this metropolis.
I will then have them put in the water and set right, and subsequently present them to his Majesty. I have informed him of their arrival, at which he expressed his delight, declaring that immediately they reach the river he will go to see them, while manifesting great curiosity and his indebtedness to the Senate.
I am sure that the sight will please him greatly, as from the account of ministers I know he was not a little gratified that the mission of the ambassadors extraordinary was expressly for offices with his Majesty, without any charge for other princes, as was reported here and suspected.
When I spoke with any one about it I did not fail to assure them that this was so, and that it was a mark of esteem for his Majesty and the whole nation.
London, the 9th September, 1661.
[Italian.]
So far, so good.
@@@
49. Francesco Giavarina, Venetian Resident in England, to the Doge and Senate.
Owing to contrary winds the ship with the two gondolas could not enter the Thames before yesterday, when it cast anchor 35 miles from this city. I went at once to see them and found them much damaged and in poor condition with great leaks caused by the excessive heat on the long voyage and some of the packages are not in good condition.
They were put into lighters yesterday evening and reached London to-day.
Moved by curiosity the king took a pleasure barge on the river to meet and inspect them, so eager is he. I at once had the packing opened and the bodies sunk, so that after they are seasoned a little they may be taken to a boat yard and the damage repaired. I am also giving orders for all that is unstuck and broken to be repaired, and with permission, I will enter the cost in my accounts.
As the king is extraordinarily eager to see them I will hasten their repairs as much as possible and then present them, but this cannot happen till the middle of next week, as it needs time to do all that is necessary.
Meanwhile the gondoliers are working; they are all four in good health and eager to be presented to his Majesty.
Owing to my attention to this matter I cannot devote much time to this despatch and beg the Senate to pardon me, especially as there is nothing of importance. ...
London, 16 September, 1661.
About Dr John Williams
San Diego Sarah • Link
Dr. Williams' house was in Holborn. -- Wheatley, 1899.
About Tuesday 10 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Welcome Raj -- in the text "link" is one of many words printed in blue. Click on it -- or any word in blue -- and you'll find our Encyclopedia page about links and linkboys in this case, and many other wonderful things.
It's a handy way of avoiding repeating information over and over again.
About Peter Pett (Commissioner of the Navy)
San Diego Sarah • Link
A video of how 16th century galleons worked, and about ship-building (with helpful vocabulary):
https://youtu.be/3pYqXrFx6S8?si=3…
About Sunday 6 October 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION
Clearly Lawson and Sandwich thought De Ruyter was not to be trusted, and for all of October and November 1661 they lay where they were, watching, with a division continually out in the 'Gut' of the Straits.
Their force was not strong, nor were their stores plentiful, and as the weeks passed without any news of Henry Mordaunt, 2nd Earl of Peterborough and the Tangier regiment having sailed, Sandwich grew anxious.
TO BE CONTINUED
Coruna, northern Spain https://www.britannica.com/place/…
Tangier https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
De Ruyter https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Lawson https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Peterborough https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The marriage celebrations https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Cape St. Vincent https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Lisbon and the Tagus River https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Algiers https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Gibraltar https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The Straits https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl… -- none of my searches identified "the Gut"
Malasfa -- I wonder if this means Malaga? Google sends me to Malaysia!
About Sunday 6 October 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
A Tangier update, adapted from
ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE
OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS -- 1603-1713
By JULIAN S. CORBETT
VOL. II
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1904
https://archive.org/stream/englan…
NOTE: I have corrected the scanning errors and up-dated content.
Spain was especially anxious — with cause — about the Plate fleet, and also about Gibraltar. Before she knew she could rely on a Dutch squadron, a message was sent to the Indies to divert the flota away from Cadiz and order it to Coruna instead, while (at the cost of dislocating the military operations against Portugal) large reinforcements were put onto the Rock.
As yet, nothing was done openly on either side.
Vice Adm. John Lawson was still operating before Algiers, blockading the port and playing havoc on its shipping with his cruisers.
All September, 1661, De Ruyter, in accordance with his secret orders, lay about Cape St. Vincent to cover the Plate fleet, while Sandwich remained in the Tagus honoring the new Queen of England and gracing the marriage celebrations.
In the first days of October, 1661, an alarm reached Sandwich that a combined Dutch and Spanish fleet was off Tangier. He now had 10 sail under his orders, and in the midst of the marriage festivities he suddenly put to sea and sent forward a despatch vessel to Algiers to summons Lawson to his aid.
28 FIRST OCCUPATION OF THE STRAITS 1661
A week later Sandwich was before Tangier, but there was no sign of an enemy. In 5 days Lawson appeared.
Tangier was still safe, but the situation was as strained as ever.
De Ruyter had moved down to the Straits.
Lawson, on his way from Algiers, had spoken with De Ruyter off Malasfa. The Dutch admiral informed him that he was there to make war on the corsairs. As a matter of fact, although De Ruyter had no intention of leaving the Straits until further orders, he really was -- for the moment -- devoting his attention to the Barbary pirates.
By the end of September, 1661, De Ruyter had been told the Plate fleet was safe in Coruna, and he at once deployed his squadron in the business upon which it had ostensibly come out.
Lawson was engaged in the same quest, and with ‘rough ingenuity' asked De Ruyter to communicate his private signal that they might co-operate more easily. De Ruyter, too old a hand to be drawn in by such a confidence trick, refused, and with this information Lawson had joined Sandwich at Tangier. 1.
1 Vie de De Ruiter, p. 1(58.
About Mediterranean (The Straits)
San Diego Sarah • Link
I posted a bit about the Straits on the Gibraltar page -- strategically Tangier and Gibraltar were interchangeable in Charles II's Mediterranean policy.
Gibraltar - https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The Mediterranean policy of Queen Elizabeth, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Sunday 8 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... now I can hardly reclaim myself to look after my great business of settling Gravely business, until now almost too late."
Be it the devil or the demon drink or those stage ladies to blame, Pepys is still focused on his personal business and deadlines, not the fate of the nation. Sandwich also purely notes his personal major interactions, while keeping us ignorant of what's happening around them.
If you want to know where the action is that's consuming the navy, it's at Tangier.
Background information only -- no spoilers
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The British occupation of Gibralter and Tangier did upset a lot of people. For instance, the fright the Vatican received just from Oliver Cromwell's 1650's cruising squadron; a Protestant gatekeeper the mouth of the Mediterranean could only be an abiding menace to Rome and France plus all Mediterranean trade. Just suppose England imposed a tax for sailing through the Straits, and insisted on inspecting every ship?
Control of the Straits of Gibraltar, the mouth of the Mediterranean, was a very big deal. Queen Elizabeth saw it, as did Cromwell, and in the 1660's Charles II was attempting it by accepting Tangier from the Portuguese.
For more about this on-going Mediterranean policy (with lots of spoilers, depending on where you are in the Diary), see
ENGLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN : A STUDY OF THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF BRITISH POWER WITHIN THE STRAITS 1603-1713
BY JULIAN S. CORBETT
VOL. I. and II
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1904
Vol I is before the Diary https://archive.org/stream/englan…
Vol 2 is roughly the Restoration onwards
https://archive.org/stream/englan…
Wake up, Pepys -- Batten loaned you the 40/. because he didn't want you to look into ways of making more money off naval contracts. So long as you're happy doing the filing, messing around with Penn's tankard, drinking too much, and being absent from the office, the old Admirals can make lots of commissions dealing with their pals. By all means, add another room -- and, yes, spend your time supervising the painters. History is being enabled across the garden in the Navy Office, and you don't seem to be aware of it.
About Graveley
San Diego Sarah • Link
The L&M Companion has nothing about Gravely -- and perhaps more significantly, no essay per se on Pepys' inheritance and the following years of law suits. But Pauline found and reposted the info. under Robert Pepys -- thank you, Pauline.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
@@@
For the history of Gravely, no better info can be found than the BHO -- British History On Line -- site:
There is one helpful paragraph under Gravely, Cams.:
"In the 16th and early 17th century the Wiseman family held c. 200 a[cres], divided and sold c. 1650. (fn. 40)
"Half passed through Robert Pepys (d. 1661), an uncle of the diarist, to the Brookes. (fn. 41)
"Leonard Nightingale of Yelling (Hunts.), who bought the other half in 1650, devised it in 1660 to his kinsman Geoffrey Nightingale of Kneesworth. (fn. 42)
"The estate, 157 a. after 1660, descended in that family (fn. 43) until Sir Charles E. Nightingale, Bt., in 1807 sold the 175 a. allotted at inclosure to the Londoner Richard Haighton (d. 1813)."
40. Ramsey Chron. 199; cf. Rot. Hund. (Rec. Com.), ii. ct. rolls 35 Eliz. 1; 20 Jas. 1; 1 Chas. 1; 1650.
41. V.C.H. Cambs. i. ct. roll 14 Chas. 11; cf. Diary of Sam. Pepys, ed. R. C. Latham and W. Matthews, ii. 136, 180-2; x. 320- 2.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
42. Jesus Coll Mun., 2, ct. rolls 1650, 1660.
Citation: 'Graveley: Manor and other estates', in A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 9, Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds, ed. A P M Wright, C P Lewis( London, 1989), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk… [accessed 10 September 2024].
About Anglicanism
San Diego Sarah • Link
Excerpt based on a book review:
William J. Bulman, Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(hardcover) ISBN 978-1-107-07368-5
https://www.academia.edu/29297523…
In Restoration England, the ‘high church’ heirs of the executed Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancelor, William Laud, and the pre-Interregnum Caroline divines anticipated a restored, Episcopal, church establishment as a place in which to salvage the Laudian vision for England.
Unembarrassed by Puritan charges of ‘popery’, they asserted the ‘divine right’ of bishops, priestly authority, and the scriptural validity of liturgical ritual.
Their political theory was grounded in the monarchical security of the church without injuring clerical authority.
Because of the wavering religious policies of the restored Stuarts -- and division within the church -- their ideas hardly had time to be implemented. With the Whig domination of the church after the “Glorious” Revolution, the neo-Laudian program unraveled.
The losers in 1688, these high churchmen were the unlikely carriers of enlightenment.
In the whiggish arc of progress they are usually left in the shadows as champions of priestly tyranny; unmovably dogmatic critics of the latitudinarian comity of the gentle erastianism of 1688; bigoted opponents of toleration, they are portrayed as the obstructers of Protestantism’s emancipatory potential.
Of what, counter-intuitively, did the ‘Anglican enlightenment’ consist?
Despite the neo-Laudians’ brief 28 years, [the author] identifies a consequential transformation.
It was a shift in perspective on how to achieve the union of civic and sacral communities under an essentialist clericalism.
In the neo-Laudian search for creative ways to defend their orthodoxy, they needed to justify Laudian commitments as being not just essentials, but essentially reasonable, and to explain the church’s pastoral mission as one of communicating such to reasonable minds.
These enlightening reconfigurations came from a productive tension: given political instability and confessional division, how could the church justify its monopoly on public religion without resorting to coercive excess?
The answer was for the clergy to explain and educate the population on the natural and universal characteristics of religious essentials.
In confronting heterodoxy, the church possesses tools other than politically-enforced conformity or sacramental-disciplinary leverage.
Their gamble was that their high church orthodoxy would be vindicated by a comparative assessment based on universal criteria, and by enlisting inherent human reasonableness to recognize it.
Ironies abound here.
About Tangier, Morocco
San Diego Sarah • Link
From a book review:
A recent book, Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715 by William Bulman is largely organized around the biography of Rev. Lancelot Addison, a 17th century clergymen and orientalist.
The most engaging ‘plot point’ is Rev. Lancelot Addison’s tenure as chaplain (and sometime colonial intelligencer from 1662 – 1670) at Tangier, the North African port colony ceded to England by Portugal in 1661.
The literary outcome of Rev. Lancelot Addison’s engagement in Tangier, based on interlocutions with indigenous scholars and religious authority, captures the study’s most radically universalizing moment.
A unique logic governs Rev. Lancelot Addison’s gathering of historical and ethnographic knowledge, driven neither by comparative anthropology as an end in itself, nor by the virtues of scholarly cosmopolitanism as such. Addison’s ambition is to vindicate the ‘primitive’ truths of high church ecclesiology and ceremony in evidence gathered from outside European Christendom.
Approximations of such truths in Judaism and Islam, however imperfectly manifested, suggest that the foundations of (high church) orthodoxy lie in a universal natural religion.
If this global triangulation of evidence suggests a dangerous flirtation with relativism, the purpose of this perspectival disembedding is really to bolster orthodoxy and to de-legitimate its rivals at home, even if it means searching beyond Christianity.
Essentials become universals – the ironic outcome of dogma in search of global validation.
Was this, as author Bulman suggests, ‘perhaps the first’ enlightenment to emerge in early modern Europe? Demonstrating such an idea would require a broader study incorporating continental analogs largely neglected in his book (e.g., Dutch, Prussian), and tracing the vectors of cross-fertilization connecting them.
Rev. Addison in 1675 published in London a rather interesting, if neglected, work entitled “The Present State of the Jews: (More particularly relating to those in Barbary.) Wherein is contained an exact Account of their Customs, Secular and Religious”. (1) (1) see https://www.cambridge.org/core/jo…
Rev. Addison also published “A Discourse on Tangier” which we might find interesting.
https://archive.org/stream/bim_ea…
About Apples
San Diego Sarah • Link
I wonder if Pepys knew that the Latin name for apples is malum, which is also the word for evil?
The Bible never specifies what the forbidden fruit was in the Garden of Eden. We tend to think that it was an apple that was eaten by Adam and Eve, but the Bible does not specify what kind of fruit grew on the tree of forbidden knowledge.
This omission has led to much speculation amongst believers and scholars, with figs, grapes, pomegranates, and citrons all suggested as candidates.
The apple emerged as the common consensus because its Latin name is malum, which is also the word for evil — a linguistic quirk that apparently seemed too poignant to ignore. Nothing in the original text suggests this is anything more than an etymological coincidence, but the association has stuck.
More fascinating if unrelated info from:
https://historyfacts.com/science-…