"I wonder why Sam did not consider going home by coach as he has previously travelled around in one."
In the old days when I lived in London (before UBER and private cab services), when it rained there was NEVER an empty cab to be found. City Councils globally used to limit the number of medallions issued so that drivers could make a decent living and afford to pay the high licensing fees, not understanding that this forced regular people into having cars, and needing garages and parking spaces, etc. creating congested cities.
We read in the last Parliament how they made the same decision in Pepys' time. Too many horses, carts and chariots clogged the roads and made them dirty and rutted, so the MPs reduced the number of medallions issued. Pepys can't even find a link boy. They were sheltering from the storm -- possibly in a church with the other poor and homeless people. That's where the homeless went in those days -- they were not locked out; they were welcomed in.
"... my father’s man, Ned’s, who are angry at my father’s putting him away, ..." "I immediately took Sam's father's man to be someone who worked in the tailors shop rather than a manservant."
John Pepys Snr. owns his own tailoring business, run from his own house in Salisbury Court. He is the proprietor. I don't recall any mention of help or apprentices.
I'm guessing Tom wants to take over his father's business -- and therefore his house, which can accommodate paying guests. For that he needs a wife, and the search is on. Lodgers: Peter Honywood, of all the vast Honywood family, seems to have stayed there the most frequently https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… The overflow of Montagu servants could also stay there -- I've just spent 2 hours trying to find an entry showing this (I recall at least 2) and neither has shown up. Sorry, It was someone like Mr. Moore or Howe ... not an insignificant person.
Mama and papa are packing up, and have told their servant, Ned, that he won't be moving to Brampton with them. Ned now becomes homeless and jobless -- one of hundreds of thousands of servants in England at this time. Hopefully he has carried coal and water, mended windows and run errands efficiently during his years of service, and will get a tip, a good reference, and the clothes he stands up in as severance. (Pepys paid Jane her wages and gave her 2s. 6d. over for 3 years work.)
Pepys would probably prefer to sell the house and give John Snr. some cash for his retirement in the country -- if they can stop mama from spending the fantasy inheritance first. If they don't sell the house, where will the 45/. come from? I doubt Tom can afford it, hence the need for a dowry from his new wife. L&M says Tom was good enough at tailoring that he was made free [of the obligations of apprenticeship] of the Merchant Taylor's Company as a 'foreign' tailor (i.e. living outside the city boundaries) in 1653." https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
And the accounts show why there is no dowry for poor, angry Pall.
"Do Sam and Elizabeth have a mature man in their employ?"
Yes and no: William Hewer was taken on as Pepys' live-in manservant when he was 19/20, and Pepys has found he's good at office work, so Hewer's focus seems to be there now.
Wayneman is the house runner and general help, and I'm guessing he's about 13 from his behavior.
"Manservant" doesn't translate to "butler" if that's what you're asking. Hayter isn't serving them dinner or wine, or answering the front door wearing a braided velvet uniform. He's more like a live-in apprentice, with Latin quizzes thrown in whenever the boss feels like it.
Pepys seems to like being assisted with his daily ablutions and buttoning and bow tying by the maids. (No zippers or elastic in those days, of course.) And I think they wait at the Pepys' table.
It sounds as if the house is "cozy" for the Pepyses and 2 maids, Hewer and young Wayneman (who probably slept on a pallet bed in the kitchen). Much later in the Diary we'll hear of an adult male living with them -- when the house is larger, and he's not employed in the "butler" role either.
As a Navy Commissioner, Pepys has access to people who perform other services when he needs them -- from boatmen to messenger services, not to mention carpenters and roofers. And he can outsource help for cooking, parties and doing the laundry, just as we do today.
'In 1586 one or more got one shilling a dozen by body-count. Each was a moderately high rate of pay for the time.
'In the 1710 edition of "Tusser Redivius", the editor provided his readers some commentary from his own experience.
'There are many Country Fellows very dexterous at Mole catching: Some have a way of setting them with a little Dog, very neatly and diverting, to look on; perhaps, a Gentleman’s or a Farmer’s time may be as well fpent to follow those Fellows, while they are catching for him, as to hunt after a Pack of Dogs, or a setting Dog for Partridges, for they are dexterous at catching both ways; and, without looking after, you may pay for Moles that never hurt you, and belong to their yearly Customers.2
'Both we and the editor suspect that the trade wasn't much changed between Tusser's time and then. The mole-catcher in 1710 seems generally to have been paid by the body-count. While Tusser does not mention it, it seems likely, knowing Tudor times, that some catchers kept the corpses, then, as well, from earlier catches to add to the tally of those that followed.
'The mole-catcher was not only a feature of the Tudor England landscape. The texts of various language and dialect dictionaries inform us as much. 'By language: Latin: Talpicidus -i (m.) = mole catcher talparum venator = mole catcher captor taliparum = mole catcher grumus, grumulus = mole hill French: taupier = mole-catcher German: maulwurf = mole. fanger = mole catcher Dutch: val = mole trap. vanger = mole catcher Welsh: gwazwr -wyr s. m. = molecatcher (also tyrçewr -ewyr s. m.) The Welsh surname Wonter, Wantur, Wontner means mole-catcher. Isle of Wight: want = mole. want ketcher = mole catcher Scotland: Mowdy, Mowdie, Moudie, Mowdie Wark, Modywart s. A mole. Moudy-Hillan, s. A mole-hill. Mowdie-Hoop, s. A mole-hill (from Mowdie, a mole, and Teut. hoop, a heap.)
'In certain areas of England both the mole and mole-catcher were called a “moudy”. The mole was also called moudy Rat. A moudy-hill was a mole-hilL' To this day the part of a plow that digs up the ground is called a “moldboard”.
'Period didactic verse, it is clear, is by no means the historian's only cherished tool. Etymological dictionaries are also a vital resource. The words of languages are storehouses of all kinds of information.
'1 Tusser, Thomas. "Five hundred pointes of good Husbandrie" (1580, 1878). Payne and Herrtage, ed. 35.
'2 Anon. "Tusser Redivivus: Being Part of Mr. Thomas Tuffer's Five Hundred Points Of Husbandry: (1710). 11.'
Since we are talking about a farm ... but this annotation really belongs in Rev. Ralph's annotations:
"While Thomas Tusser's 'Five hundred pointes of good Husbandrie' (1580) is a treasure house of information about daily life on the Tudor farm, getting at it requires patience. Reading early modern English is an acquirement. Spelling and grammar were irregular. The written word and thought process behind the written word were much more highly idiomatic than the centuries since. The works of even so highly-educated a writer as Shakespeare are notorious for often being impentrable by the modern reader or theater-goer.
'Section 17 of the 500 points: “A digression to husbandlie furniture” informs us about the tools and equipment owned by the farmer. The true character of historical times is found in the details of the daily life associated with various employments and trades, so lists like this are a treasure:
'1. Barne locked, gofe ladder, short pitchforke and long, flaile, strawforke and rake, with a fan that is strong : Wing, cartnave and bushel, peck, strike readie hand, get casting sholve, broome, and a sack with a band.1
'To learn the vocabulary is to learn the times. A gofe was a hay-rick or hay-stack. A gofe-ladder, then, was a ladder used to climb to the top of hay-stacks. Cartnave is obscure, until you uncover that it was a board laid down behind or beside a cart to give workers footing in soft terrain. The words “bushel, peck, strike” refer to the different size measuring bins or baskets to be filled in the cart. The sholve (“shove”) teaches us where our word “shovel” comes from.
'A short distance down the section, is another fascinating stanzas: 18 Long ladder to hang al along by the wal, to reach for a neede to the top of thy hal : Beame, scales, with the weights, that be sealed and true, sharp moulspare with barbs, that the mowles do so rue. Here the terms are much more in line with modern usage. Except, that is, for “moulspar” which is a mole-spear. This item is particularly interesting as farmers constantly hired the services of mole catchers.
'Like all farmers, Tusser constantly had moles on his mind. They pop up throughout the 500 pointes. They generally appear under the month of February: Get mowle catcher cunning-lie mowle for to kill, and harrow and cast abrode euerie hill.
February is the 'month that Tusser brings in the mole catcher to clear his farm of the destructive little beasts. But he also has a mole-spear which he considers to be essential to the proper operation of a farm, suggesting that he or his laborers do their own catching between visits.
'The mole catcher was a common skilled tradesman from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century. Every farming area had several competing for the business. According to Thorold and Rogers' "A history of agriculture and prices in England" (1866) at least one mole-catcher was paid by a standard 2-day rate of 5-6 pence in 1542.
September 6. Friday. About noon we came to an anchor between St. Julians (1) and the wooden castle in the mouth of the river of Lisbon, the wind there taking us scant and being tide of ebb until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. About 5 o'clock we got under sail again and came to an anchor in the Bay of Oeiras. (2) This night the Conde da Ponte (3) came on board us.
(1) MS. Gillians. (2) MS. Wyers. (3) Francisco de Mello e Torres (1620-1667) was made Conde da Ponte in 1661, and for his success in the marriage arrangements. He was also Godfather to Catherine of Braganza.
Copied from The Journal of Edward Mountagu, First Earl of Sandwich Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson Printed for the Navy Records Society MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
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The Conde da Ponte -- and more about the negotiations for this marriage which lasted for two decades! https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
September 9. Monday. I was admitted at Court to kiss the hands of the Queen of England (4) and the Queen Mother at the Palace in Lisbon.
(4) Charles II had proclaimed Catherine as Queen without waiting for the actual marriage to take place.
Copied from The Journal of Edward Mountagu, First Earl of Sandwich Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson Printed for the Navy Records Society MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
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"On 23 June 1661 a marriage treaty agreeing upon the union of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza was signed; ... If ever a marriage was made for political and economic reasons, the union of Charles and Catherine was such a match. Catherine brought with her the largest dowry of any English queen consort. Her dowry included Tangier, Bombay, full trading privileges for England in the Indies and a large sum of money for the impoverished Charles. At 21, Catherine was neither young nor pretty and apparently was not considered an important candidate for marriage in other European courts. Spain did not favour the match and the Spanish ambassador spread rumours that Catherine would be a sterile queen, hoping that Charles would look further north in Europe for a suitable wife." FROM https://thehistorypress.co.uk/art… My guess is that Charles proclaimed her as Queen to counter these rumors and plots.
Ribeira Palace, Lisbon, was the main residence of the Kings of Portugal in Lisbon for around 250 years. Its construction was ordered by King Manuel I of Portugal. The palace complex underwent numerous reconstructions and reconfigurations from the original Manueline design, ending with its final Mannerist and Baroque form. The Ribeira Palace, as well as most of the city of Lisbon, was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rib…
Saturday, 24 August, 1661: "... Capt. Isham inquiring for me to take his leave of me, he being upon his voyage to Portugal, and for my letters to my Lord which are not ready." No wonder there has been such a deluge of letters to Sandwich in the last few days, and Pepys finally gets his act together today. He must have been visiting the Crew family for it to come from Lincoln's Inn Fields. Capt. Isham and Lionel Fanshawe are safe hands for the mail.
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Pedro's guess: Sandwich "would have left Alicante by now and is on his way to secure Tangier ready for the handover to Lord Peterborough in January next year. There is no evidence that he went to Portugal until the Queen was ready to set sail for England." Well, yes, there is evidence. His logs tell us he's on his way to Lisbon now, and Tangier was not being readied for anything -- unless there was another action about which I know nothing.
Sandwich left Vice Adm. John Lawson patrolling off ALGIERS at the beginning of August, having been unable to attack them because of the winds: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
"Who or what was an early modern baboon? The term presents many possibilities across the late medieval and early modern periods. The Middle English babewyn described a grotesque decorative figure ... Thus, a medieval baboon described something akin to a monstrous, grinning fool, a symbol of grotesque humor. This association strengthened with the arrival of Barbary apes in Europe during the the 13th century (in Gibraltar) and of other species of monkeys and apes in the 16th century. Like other simians, early modern "baboons" were valued for their seemingly uncanny ability to mimic human behavior. Because baboons participate in broader histories of "monstrous" hybridity, representations of them in early modern literature and art are often infused with a wide array of allegorical meanings. Yet this pictorial and discursive history is linked to scant material, raising questions about the animal's presence in early modern Europe.
"How many "baboons" were there in early modern England? Where did they come from? Who brought them there and why? And how many performed on London's stages? To answer such questions, we need to grapple with the many meanings of the term in early modern English, but also with the shifts in meaning between early modern and modern systems of species nomenclature. It is tempting to think what we might term a baboon — one of 5 species of Old World monkeys inhabiting Africa and the Middle East that are among the largest non-hominid primates — maps neatly onto early modern definitions of baboons. But to do so ignores not only the many other meanings of "baboon" within Renaissance contexts but also the ways in which language reveals changing relationships between humans and other species of animals. Renaissance systems of species classification, like Swiss naturalist Conrad Cesner's influential binomial system in the mid-16th century, emerged in tandem with the arrival of many New World animals in Europe, including simians, suggesting that the etymological relationships between creatures described as "apes," "jackanapes," "marmosets," "monkeys," or "baboons" may be more meaningful than scholars have recognized. Some important distinctions exist: The first tailed monkeys in Europe were most likely Brazilian marmosets. ...
"By the end of the 16th century, "Barbary ape" no longer signified both Iberian and African short-tailed macaques: "Gibralter" emerges as a popular term for short-tailed monkeys from southern Spain while "Barbary" connoted Northern African species. Philological distinctions between simians may seem semantic, but, as the terms "Barbary" and "Gibraltar" make immediately clear, animals were associated with foreign places, even as they became more prevalent in England. ..."
There's much more -- since it's a PDF I find I have to enter the title to gain access to the paper.
A baboon -- this was an established name for an exotic something by Pepys' day. An academic article was written on the subject: '"To Bark with Judgment": Playing Baboon in Early Modern London' by HOLLY DUGAN
At one point she says '... the arrival of Barbary apes in Europe during the middle of the 13th century (in Gibraltar) and of other species of monkeys and apes in the 16th century. Like other simians, early modern "baboons" were valued for their seemingly uncanny ability to mimic human behavior.'
It's interesting: "The surprising presence of performing baboons in early modern London has been mostly forgotten or overlooked; yet a striking amount of plays between 1595 and 1616 mention their presence, suggesting that simians may have been more important to London's stage history than we have realized. Plays like Syr Cyles Goosecappe (circa 1600), Every Woman in Her Humor (circa 1600), Shakespeare's Othello (1604) and Macbeth (1606), Jonson's Volpone (1606), Lording Barry's Bam-Alley (1607-08), and Cooke's City Gallant (1612), along with texts like Thomas Dekker's fests to Make you Merry (1607) and Samuel Rowland's Humors Looking Glasse (1608), document the popularity of troupes of performing baboons in early modern London.
"This forgotten aspect of the Renaissance English stage connects with some of the most celebrated aspects of the theater itself — its profound mimetic potential to represent real and imagined social spaces. It also gestures towards its underbelly: its harsh labor conditions, spectacular violence, and audiences who were seemingly willing to laugh at both.
"In this essay, I connect early modern cultural ideas about baboons with some of the valences of their performance history, arguing that both suggest early modern London's stage baboons may have been more culturally relevant than we think. That there might be baboons where we anticipate human actors is itself interesting; that we are unsure of whether a number of early modern performers were human or baboon — blind Gew, Bavian in Shakespeare's Two Noble Kinsmen, and Thomas Greene's "apes," to name just a few — is even more so. A zoological approach to early modern London's stages thus reveals a slippage between human and animal actors. This was true of early modern "baboonizers," performers who specialized in bawdy mimicry that cut across species boundaries. Baboonizing, as a popular theatrical trope, connected the pleasures of mimesis on the Renaissance stage with its violent and intimate histories of human and animal interaction. Because these links worked in real and imagined ways (both onstage and off), early modern London's stage baboons remind us that the lines between aping and acting was often deliberately blurred. The lack of any conclusive archival evidence about the species of these performers may reveal more than we think about the material realities of the stage and those who worked there.
In 1667, an author, who preserved his anonymity by employing the initials EVL, published a pamphlet entitled "The cautious Hollander. Shown in a dialogue between a politician, a merchant, a sea-captain. All three upright Hollanders. An Englishman, resident in Holland." He proposed that ‘Worse even than sudden death by water, fire, the sword or other deadly weapon is the frightful expiration from hunger, thirst, cold or other privation, to which one would not subject a dog. Nevertheless, in England our Dutch captives have met their deaths by all these cruel means, so that in places every tenth, ninth, eighth, seventh; yea, even every fourth or third man died or, more accurately, was driven to his death. This conduct is in flagrant contravention of the Rights of all Peoples and would not be possible without such violation.’
September 2. Monday. Plying up for Cape Espichel.* In the afternoon we met the Martin frigate, and Capt. Bennett came on board me from Lisbon.
Copied from The Journal of Edward Mountagu, First Earl of Sandwich Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson Printed for the Navy Records Society MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
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* MS Pitcher [I don't understand this either, but that's what the book says]
Cape Espichel is a cape situated on the western coast of the civil parish of Castelo, municipality of Sesimbra, in the Portuguese district of Setúbal, at the southwestern corner of the Setubal Peninsula. It is characterized by an acute protrusion of the coastline into the Atlantic Ocean, and it consists of a promontory plateau, over 130 meters above sea level, defined by dramatic, sheer cliffs all around the delimitation of the cape against the ocean. The location offers elevated sweeping views, from Cascais and the Sintra Mountains, and the Caparica coast to the north, and to the southeast the beaches south of Tróia and beyond to Sines. Cape Espichel is part of the Espichel Special Protection Zone (ZPE Espichel) and the Arrábida Natural Park. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap…
On July 27 Sandwich sent Capt. Bennett and the Martin to Lisbon to deliver a letter from Charles II to King Alfonso IV. Recently they have been leaving messages in ports with fresh orders. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
September 1. Sunday. About 6 in the morning Cape St. Vincent bore of us E. and by N. 7 or 8 leagues off.
Copied from The Journal of Edward Mountagu, First Earl of Sandwich Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson Printed for the Navy Records Society MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
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Cape St. Vincent (37 deg N Latitude) or Cabo de São Vicente in Portuguese is the southwestern point of Portugal and continental Europe. The dramatic landscape and breathtaking views make the cape one of the not-to-miss places in the Algarve. It's also known as the End of the World. https://thealgarvefamily.com/cabo…
However, Col. Blood may have been sponsored in the kidnapping by Ormonde's rivals at court. It was soon alleged that Blood had been prompted into the attack by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who assuredly had the connections with prominent dissidents, former Cromwellians, and republicans to stage such an affair. According to Roger North, he had at one time set himself up as 'one of the heads of that faction' (North, 1.68).
Buckingham’s feuds at court were intense, occasionally violent, and he 'hated the Duke of Ormonde mortally' (Carte, 2.424).
Blood was later linked with Buckingham; they were associated before 1671 is not unlikely, given Blood and Buckingham's connections with the nonconformist community. Blood, if no one else among the nonconformists, seems to have believed Buckingham was their protector. Moreover, a letter sent from Blood to to his wife, Mary Holcroft Blood, in November 1670 indicates that he was near to reaching some form of agreement with an important personage that month.
The Duke of Ormonde's son, Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, believed Buckingham was behind the attack on his father and openly threatened him should such an attack happen again. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl… shows the depth of their animosity.
Six months later, on 9 May, 1671, Col. Blood engaged in the last daring escapade of this sequence: his attempt to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London.
This finally led to Col. Thomas Blood’s capture and to a change in his fortunes in the world of conspiracy and espionage. ... Charles II forgave him and gave him a pension, so long as he continued to work for spymaster Sir William Josephson. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
For more about this outrageous Irishman, read COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD, CROWN-STEALER 1618-1680 BY WILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTT, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY EDWARD WHEELOCK GENESEE PRESS, ROCHESTER, N.Y. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/e…
Another entry which concerns things in the future not covered by the Diary, and this Mr. Leving -- and my final post on the notorious Irishman, Col. Thomas Blood:
In July 1667 Col. Blood launched the first of a trio of daring adventures that made his name notorious. He helped rescue his friend, the plotter Capt. John Mason, from an escort of soldiers who were taking him -- and Mr. Leving -- to York for his trial and probable execution.
The ambush at Darrington, near Doncaster, during which 5 of Capt. John Mason's guards were shot, was described by Col. Edmund Ludlow as agreeable 'work for the Lord' (Bodl. Oxf., MS Eng. hist. c.487, 1265). https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Col. Blood was badly wounded and recognized by an informer travelling with the party, but escaped.
Three years later another ambush reinforced Col. Blood's notoriety. On the evening of 6 December, 1670, 5 men led by a 'Dr. Allen' ambushed the carriage of James Butler, Duke of Ormonde as he was quietly returning to his residence at Clarendon House after escorting William of Orange to a dinner in the City of London. The raiders intended either to murder the duke or to hold him for ransom for some 'ten or twenty thousand pounds' (Eighth Report, HMC, 155).
The plan went badly wrong. The elderly Duke fought back and brought down the horse, with its rider, on which the kidnappers were trying to place him. They then fired pistols at the prostrate Ormonde as he was lying on the road — and missed. With signs of pursuit in the offing, ‘Dr. Allen’ and his men fled.
A committee of the House of Lords was appointed to investigate the crime and soon discovered the names of the leading perpetrators: Thomas Blood (alias Dr. Allen, Aylett, Aylofe, or Aleck), Thomas Blood Jr. (alias Hunt), and Richard Halliwell (alias Holloway). All 3 men and their dependents evaded the officers sent to seize them. A price of £1,000 was set upon their heads by the government.
Col. Blood had not forgiven the former Lord Lt. of Ireland for the seizure of the lands nor for the imprisonment and execution of his brother-in-law and friends in 1663. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
According to one version, he intended to pay Ormonde back in kind: the attackers were said to have dragged the duke to Tyburn and were attempting to string him up when he broke free.
In November 1666, the Irish Protestant conspiritor, Col. Thomas Blood, was on the edges of the failed Pentland Rising in Scotland.
Sojourns in Lancashire and Westmorland followed, but evidently tiring of these rebellious courses Col. Blood and his family returned to London and in 1667 he was almost arrested on several occasions.
Mary Holcroft Blood and her family set up in Shoreditch, while their eldest son, Thomas Jr., was apprenticed to an apothecary in Southwark (later taking to highway robbery under the alias Hunt).
Col. Thomas Blood, using the aliases Doctor Ayliffe and Doctor Allen, practiced as a physician (despite lacking any qualifications) in semi-retirement from conspiracy. But “Dr.” Blood, the conspirator in the 1660s, was not all he seemed. There is evidence that he had contacted the government, and may even have worked for them as a double agent spying on his friends.
The papers of Joseph Williamson, under-secretary and the regime's security chief, appear to place Blood on the side of the regime in 1666, and possibly indicate his involvement in the scheme to capture Col. Edmund Ludlow. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
This ambiguous role explains how Col. Thomas Blood managed to survive unscathed in this period ...
As with any disaster, there were theories and back-stories of plots:
The Irish comspirator, known as Col. Thomas Blood, visited the Dutch Republic in 1664-5, before returning to London. Thereafter he was reported to be engaged in several intrigues against the regime, from organizing meetings in Coleman Street (a notorious den of nonconformity, both religious and political) to outwitting the government's ‘trepanners’, trying to stay one jump ahead of the authorities and, in 1665, the plague.
In 1666 Thomas Blood was recruited for a secret mission: he and his friend John Lockyer visited the republican regicide Edmund Ludlow to try to persuade him to leave his exile in Switzerland and join with Algernon Sidney and others in a plan to overthrow the Restoration regime. This plot was backed by the Dutch government, but in his fearful exile Ludlow chose to remain where he was and write his manuscript history of his times.
Col. Blood returned to England was and almost certainly in London during the Great Fire of September 1666. [I can't help wondering what he experienced, and how he reacted.]
Comments
Third Reading
About Tuesday 10 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
"This night I found Mary, my cozen W. Joyce’s maid, come to me to be my cook maid, and so my house is full again."
Much as Pepys loved young Jane Birch, she was not really a cook. This maid is experienced in the kitchen, so he anticipates his home life improving.
Plus Elizabeth's "ugly" lady's maid is also expected to be an improvement on Pall/Jane's ministries.
Life is looking up!
About Tuesday 10 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
"I wonder why Sam did not consider going home by coach as he has previously travelled around in one."
In the old days when I lived in London (before UBER and private cab services), when it rained there was NEVER an empty cab to be found.
City Councils globally used to limit the number of medallions issued so that drivers could make a decent living and afford to pay the high licensing fees, not understanding that this forced regular people into having cars, and needing garages and parking spaces, etc. creating congested cities.
We read in the last Parliament how they made the same decision in Pepys' time. Too many horses, carts and chariots clogged the roads and made them dirty and rutted, so the MPs reduced the number of medallions issued.
Pepys can't even find a link boy. They were sheltering from the storm -- possibly in a church with the other poor and homeless people. That's where the homeless went in those days -- they were not locked out; they were welcomed in.
About Monday 26 August 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... my father’s man, Ned’s, who are angry at my father’s putting him away, ..."
"I immediately took Sam's father's man to be someone who worked in the tailors shop rather than a manservant."
John Pepys Snr. owns his own tailoring business, run from his own house in Salisbury Court. He is the proprietor. I don't recall any mention of help or apprentices.
I'm guessing Tom wants to take over his father's business -- and therefore his house, which can accommodate paying guests. For that he needs a wife, and the search is on.
Lodgers:
Peter Honywood, of all the vast Honywood family, seems to have stayed there the most frequently
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
The overflow of Montagu servants could also stay there -- I've just spent 2 hours trying to find an entry showing this (I recall at least 2) and neither has shown up. Sorry, It was someone like Mr. Moore or Howe ... not an insignificant person.
Mama and papa are packing up, and have told their servant, Ned, that he won't be moving to Brampton with them.
Ned now becomes homeless and jobless -- one of hundreds of thousands of servants in England at this time. Hopefully he has carried coal and water, mended windows and run errands efficiently during his years of service, and will get a tip, a good reference, and the clothes he stands up in as severance. (Pepys paid Jane her wages and gave her 2s. 6d. over for 3 years work.)
Pepys would probably prefer to sell the house and give John Snr. some cash for his retirement in the country -- if they can stop mama from spending the fantasy inheritance first.
If they don't sell the house, where will the 45/. come from? I doubt Tom can afford it, hence the need for a dowry from his new wife.
L&M says Tom was good enough at tailoring that he was made free [of the obligations of apprenticeship] of the Merchant Taylor's Company as a 'foreign' tailor (i.e. living outside the city boundaries) in 1653."
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
And the accounts show why there is no dowry for poor, angry Pall.
About Monday 26 August 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Do Sam and Elizabeth have a mature man in their employ?"
Yes and no: William Hewer was taken on as Pepys' live-in manservant when he was 19/20, and Pepys has found he's good at office work, so Hewer's focus seems to be there now.
Wayneman is the house runner and general help, and I'm guessing he's about 13 from his behavior.
"Manservant" doesn't translate to "butler" if that's what you're asking. Hayter isn't serving them dinner or wine, or answering the front door wearing a braided velvet uniform. He's more like a live-in apprentice, with Latin quizzes thrown in whenever the boss feels like it.
Pepys seems to like being assisted with his daily ablutions and buttoning and bow tying by the maids. (No zippers or elastic in those days, of course.)
And I think they wait at the Pepys' table.
It sounds as if the house is "cozy" for the Pepyses and 2 maids, Hewer and young Wayneman (who probably slept on a pallet bed in the kitchen). Much later in the Diary we'll hear of an adult male living with them -- when the house is larger, and he's not employed in the "butler" role either.
As a Navy Commissioner, Pepys has access to people who perform other services when he needs them -- from boatmen to messenger services, not to mention carpenters and roofers. And he can outsource help for cooking, parties and doing the laundry, just as we do today.
About Coome Farm
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION:
'In 1586 one or more got one shilling a dozen by body-count. Each was a moderately high rate of pay for the time.
'In the 1710 edition of "Tusser Redivius", the editor provided his readers some commentary from his own experience.
'There are many Country Fellows very dexterous at Mole catching: Some have a way of setting them with a little Dog, very neatly and diverting, to look on; perhaps, a Gentleman’s or a Farmer’s time may be as well fpent to follow those Fellows, while they are catching for him, as to hunt after a Pack of Dogs, or a setting Dog for Partridges, for they are dexterous at catching both ways; and, without looking after, you may pay for Moles that never hurt you, and belong to their yearly Customers.2
'Both we and the editor suspect that the trade wasn't much changed between Tusser's time and then. The mole-catcher in 1710 seems generally to have been paid by the body-count. While Tusser does not mention it, it seems likely, knowing Tudor times, that some catchers kept the corpses, then, as well, from earlier catches to add to the tally of those that followed.
'The mole-catcher was not only a feature of the Tudor England landscape. The texts of various language and dialect dictionaries inform us as much.
'By language:
Latin:
Talpicidus -i (m.) = mole catcher
talparum venator = mole catcher
captor taliparum = mole catcher
grumus, grumulus = mole hill
French:
taupier = mole-catcher
German:
maulwurf = mole. fanger = mole catcher
Dutch:
val = mole trap. vanger = mole catcher
Welsh:
gwazwr -wyr s. m. = molecatcher (also tyrçewr -ewyr s. m.)
The Welsh surname Wonter, Wantur, Wontner means mole-catcher.
Isle of Wight:
want = mole. want ketcher = mole catcher
Scotland:
Mowdy, Mowdie, Moudie, Mowdie Wark, Modywart s. A mole.
Moudy-Hillan, s. A mole-hill.
Mowdie-Hoop, s. A mole-hill (from Mowdie, a mole, and Teut. hoop, a heap.)
'In certain areas of England both the mole and mole-catcher were called a “moudy”. The mole was also called moudy Rat. A moudy-hill was a mole-hilL'
To this day the part of a plow that digs up the ground is called a “moldboard”.
'Period didactic verse, it is clear, is by no means the historian's only cherished tool. Etymological dictionaries are also a vital resource. The words of languages are storehouses of all kinds of information.
'1 Tusser, Thomas. "Five hundred pointes of good Husbandrie" (1580, 1878). Payne and Herrtage, ed. 35.
'2 Anon. "Tusser Redivivus: Being Part of Mr. Thomas Tuffer's Five Hundred Points Of Husbandry: (1710). 11.'
Thanks to Medieval and Tudor Topics:
https://vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.…
About Coome Farm
San Diego Sarah • Link
Since we are talking about a farm ... but this annotation really belongs in Rev. Ralph's annotations:
"While Thomas Tusser's 'Five hundred pointes of good Husbandrie' (1580) is a treasure house of information about daily life on the Tudor farm, getting at it requires patience. Reading early modern English is an acquirement. Spelling and grammar were irregular. The written word and thought process behind the written word were much more highly idiomatic than the centuries since. The works of even so highly-educated a writer as Shakespeare are notorious for often being impentrable by the modern reader or theater-goer.
'Section 17 of the 500 points: “A digression to husbandlie furniture” informs us about the tools and equipment owned by the farmer. The true character of historical times is found in the details of the daily life associated with various employments and trades, so lists like this are a treasure:
'1. Barne locked, gofe ladder, short pitchforke and long,
flaile, strawforke and rake, with a fan that is strong :
Wing, cartnave and bushel, peck, strike readie hand,
get casting sholve, broome, and a sack with a band.1
'To learn the vocabulary is to learn the times.
A gofe was a hay-rick or hay-stack.
A gofe-ladder, then, was a ladder used to climb to the top of hay-stacks. Cartnave is obscure, until you uncover that it was a board laid down behind or beside a cart to give workers footing in soft terrain.
The words “bushel, peck, strike” refer to the different size measuring bins or baskets to be filled in the cart.
The sholve (“shove”) teaches us where our word “shovel” comes from.
'A short distance down the section, is another fascinating stanzas:
18 Long ladder to hang al along by the wal,
to reach for a neede to the top of thy hal :
Beame, scales, with the weights, that be sealed and true,
sharp moulspare with barbs, that the mowles do so rue.
Here the terms are much more in line with modern usage.
Except, that is, for “moulspar” which is a mole-spear. This item is particularly interesting as farmers constantly hired the services of mole catchers.
'Like all farmers, Tusser constantly had moles on his mind. They pop up throughout the 500 pointes. They generally appear under the month of February:
Get mowle catcher cunning-lie mowle for to kill,
and harrow and cast abrode euerie hill.
February is the 'month that Tusser brings in the mole catcher to clear his farm of the destructive little beasts. But he also has a mole-spear which he considers to be essential to the proper operation of a farm, suggesting that he or his laborers do their own catching between visits.
'The mole catcher was a common skilled tradesman from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century. Every farming area had several competing for the business. According to Thorold and Rogers' "A history of agriculture and prices in England" (1866) at least one mole-catcher was paid by a standard 2-day rate of 5-6 pence in 1542.
About Monday 9 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
I was so excited by Sandwich meeting Queens Catherine and Luisa that I omitted the second paragraph of his log:
This morning Capt. Diamond with the Martin frigate set sail for the Straights to look out Sir John Lawson.
@@@
The Martin
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Capt. Diamond: possibly/probably Thomas
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The Straights
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Vice Adm. Sir John Lawson was last heard of a month ago ...
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Friday 6 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sandwich's log: at Lisbon.
September 6. Friday.
About noon we came to an anchor between St. Julians (1) and the wooden castle in the mouth of the river of Lisbon, the wind there taking us scant and being tide of ebb until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. About 5 o'clock we got under sail again and came to an anchor in the Bay of Oeiras. (2)
This night the Conde da Ponte (3) came on board us.
(1) MS. Gillians.
(2) MS. Wyers.
(3) Francisco de Mello e Torres (1620-1667) was made Conde da Ponte in 1661, and for his success in the marriage arrangements. He was also
Godfather to Catherine of Braganza.
Copied from
The Journal of Edward Mountagu,
First Earl of Sandwich
Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson
Printed for the Navy Records Society
MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
@@@
The Conde da Ponte -- and more about the negotiations for this marriage which lasted for two decades!
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Monday 9 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sandwich's log: at Lisbon.
September 9. Monday.
I was admitted at Court to kiss the hands of the Queen of England (4) and the Queen Mother at the Palace in Lisbon.
(4) Charles II had proclaimed Catherine as Queen without waiting for the actual marriage to take place.
Copied from
The Journal of Edward Mountagu,
First Earl of Sandwich
Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson
Printed for the Navy Records Society
MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
@@@
"On 23 June 1661 a marriage treaty agreeing upon the union of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza was signed; ... If ever a marriage was made for political and economic reasons, the union of Charles and Catherine was such a match. Catherine brought with her the largest dowry of any English queen consort. Her dowry included Tangier, Bombay, full trading privileges for England in the Indies and a large sum of money for the impoverished Charles. At 21, Catherine was neither young nor pretty and apparently was not considered an important candidate for marriage in other European courts. Spain did not favour the match and the Spanish ambassador spread rumours that Catherine would be a sterile queen, hoping that Charles would look further north in Europe for a suitable wife."
FROM https://thehistorypress.co.uk/art…
My guess is that Charles proclaimed her as Queen to counter these rumors and plots.
Catherine of Braganza, Queen of England
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Maria Luisa Francisca de Guzman, Dowager Queen of Portugal
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Ribeira Palace, Lisbon, was the main residence of the Kings of Portugal in Lisbon for around 250 years. Its construction was ordered by King Manuel I of Portugal. The palace complex underwent numerous reconstructions and reconfigurations from the original Manueline design, ending with its final Mannerist and Baroque form.
The Ribeira Palace, as well as most of the city of Lisbon, was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rib…
About Monday 26 August 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Saturday, 24 August, 1661: "... Capt. Isham inquiring for me to take his leave of me, he being upon his voyage to Portugal, and for my letters to my Lord which are not ready."
No wonder there has been such a deluge of letters to Sandwich in the last few days, and Pepys finally gets his act together today. He must have been visiting the Crew family for it to come from Lincoln's Inn Fields. Capt. Isham and Lionel Fanshawe are safe hands for the mail.
@@@
Pedro's guess: Sandwich "would have left Alicante by now and is on his way to secure Tangier ready for the handover to Lord Peterborough in January next year. There is no evidence that he went to Portugal until the Queen was ready to set sail for England."
Well, yes, there is evidence. His logs tell us he's on his way to Lisbon now, and Tangier was not being readied for anything -- unless there was another action about which I know nothing.
Sandwich left Vice Adm. John Lawson patrolling off ALGIERS at the beginning of August, having been unable to attack them because of the winds: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Does anyone have Lawson's logs available?
About Saturday 24 August 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION:
"Who or what was an early modern baboon?
The term presents many possibilities across the late medieval and early modern periods. The Middle English babewyn described a grotesque decorative figure ... Thus, a medieval baboon described something akin to a monstrous, grinning fool, a symbol of grotesque humor.
This association strengthened with the arrival of Barbary apes in Europe during the the 13th century (in Gibraltar) and of other species of monkeys and apes in the 16th century.
Like other simians, early modern "baboons" were valued for their seemingly uncanny ability to mimic human behavior.
Because baboons participate in broader histories of "monstrous" hybridity, representations of them in early modern literature and art are often infused with a wide array of allegorical meanings.
Yet this pictorial and discursive history is linked to scant material, raising questions about the animal's presence in early modern Europe.
"How many "baboons" were there in early modern England?
Where did they come from?
Who brought them there and why?
And how many performed on London's stages?
To answer such questions, we need to grapple with the many meanings of the term in early modern English, but also with the shifts in meaning between early modern and modern systems of species nomenclature.
It is tempting to think what we might term a baboon — one of 5 species of Old World monkeys inhabiting Africa and the Middle East that are among the largest non-hominid primates — maps neatly onto early modern definitions of baboons.
But to do so ignores not only the many other meanings of "baboon" within Renaissance contexts but also the ways in which language reveals changing relationships between humans and other species of animals.
Renaissance systems of species classification, like Swiss naturalist Conrad Cesner's influential binomial system in the mid-16th century, emerged in tandem with the arrival of many New World animals in Europe, including simians, suggesting that the etymological relationships between creatures described as "apes," "jackanapes," "marmosets," "monkeys," or "baboons" may be more meaningful than scholars have recognized.
Some important distinctions exist: The first tailed monkeys in Europe were most likely Brazilian marmosets. ...
"By the end of the 16th century, "Barbary ape" no longer signified both Iberian and African short-tailed macaques: "Gibralter" emerges as a popular term for short-tailed monkeys from southern Spain while "Barbary" connoted Northern African species.
Philological distinctions between simians may seem semantic, but, as the terms "Barbary" and "Gibraltar" make immediately clear, animals were associated with foreign places, even as they became more prevalent in England. ..."
There's much more -- since it's a PDF I find I have to enter the title to gain access to the paper.
About Saturday 24 August 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
A baboon -- this was an established name for an exotic something by Pepys' day. An academic article was written on the subject: '"To Bark with Judgment": Playing Baboon in Early Modern London' by HOLLY DUGAN
At one point she says '... the arrival of Barbary apes in Europe during the middle of the 13th century (in Gibraltar) and of other species of monkeys and apes in the 16th century. Like other simians, early modern "baboons" were valued for their seemingly uncanny ability to mimic human behavior.'
It's interesting:
"The surprising presence of performing baboons in early modern London has been mostly forgotten or overlooked; yet a striking amount of plays between 1595 and 1616 mention their presence, suggesting that simians may have been more important to London's stage history than we have realized.
Plays like Syr Cyles Goosecappe (circa 1600),
Every Woman in Her Humor (circa 1600),
Shakespeare's Othello (1604) and Macbeth (1606),
Jonson's Volpone (1606),
Lording Barry's Bam-Alley (1607-08),
and Cooke's City Gallant (1612),
along with texts like Thomas Dekker's fests to Make you Merry (1607) and
Samuel Rowland's Humors Looking Glasse (1608),
document the popularity of troupes of performing baboons in early modern London.
"This forgotten aspect of the Renaissance English stage connects with some of the most celebrated aspects of the theater itself — its profound mimetic potential to represent real and imagined social spaces. It also gestures towards its underbelly: its harsh labor conditions, spectacular violence, and audiences who were seemingly willing to laugh at both.
"In this essay, I connect early modern cultural ideas about baboons with some of the valences of their performance history, arguing that both suggest early modern London's stage baboons may have been more culturally relevant than we think.
That there might be baboons where we anticipate human actors is itself interesting; that we are unsure of whether a number of early modern performers were human or baboon — blind Gew, Bavian in Shakespeare's Two Noble Kinsmen, and Thomas Greene's "apes," to name just a few — is even more so.
A zoological approach to early modern London's stages thus reveals a slippage between human and animal actors. This was true of early modern "baboonizers," performers who specialized in bawdy mimicry that cut across species boundaries.
Baboonizing, as a popular theatrical trope, connected the pleasures of mimesis on the Renaissance stage with its violent and intimate histories of human and animal interaction. Because these links worked in real and imagined ways (both onstage and off), early modern London's stage baboons remind us that the lines between aping and acting was often deliberately blurred.
The lack of any conclusive archival evidence about the species of these performers may reveal more than we think about the material realities of the stage and those who worked there.
About The Commission of Sick and Wounded Prisoners
San Diego Sarah • Link
In 1667, an author, who preserved his anonymity by employing the initials EVL, published a pamphlet entitled "The cautious Hollander. Shown in a dialogue between a politician, a merchant, a sea-captain. All three upright Hollanders. An Englishman, resident in Holland."
He proposed that ‘Worse even than sudden death by water, fire, the sword or other deadly weapon is the frightful expiration from hunger, thirst, cold or other privation, to which one would not subject a dog. Nevertheless, in England our Dutch captives have met their deaths by all these cruel means, so that in places every tenth, ninth, eighth, seventh; yea, even every fourth or third man died or, more accurately, was driven to his death. This conduct is in flagrant contravention of the Rights of all Peoples and would not be possible without such violation.’
from "Prisoners of war: the lowest priority"
https://www.civilwarpetitions.ac.…
About Monday 2 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sandwich's log: in the Atlantic off Portugal.
September 2. Monday. Plying up for Cape Espichel.*
In the afternoon we met the Martin frigate, and Capt. Bennett came on board me from Lisbon.
Copied from
The Journal of Edward Mountagu,
First Earl of Sandwich
Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson
Printed for the Navy Records Society
MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
@@@
* MS Pitcher [I don't understand this either, but that's what the book says]
Cape Espichel is a cape situated on the western coast of the civil parish of Castelo, municipality of Sesimbra, in the Portuguese district of Setúbal, at the southwestern corner of the Setubal Peninsula.
It is characterized by an acute protrusion of the coastline into the Atlantic Ocean, and it consists of a promontory plateau, over 130 meters above sea level, defined by dramatic, sheer cliffs all around the delimitation of the cape against the ocean.
The location offers elevated sweeping views, from Cascais and the Sintra Mountains, and the Caparica coast to the north, and to the southeast the beaches south of Tróia and beyond to Sines.
Cape Espichel is part of the Espichel Special Protection Zone (ZPE Espichel) and the Arrábida Natural Park.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap…
On July 27 Sandwich sent Capt. Bennett and the Martin to Lisbon to deliver a letter from Charles II to King Alfonso IV. Recently they have been leaving messages in ports with fresh orders.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
The Martin
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Sunday 1 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
From Sandwich's log, in the Atlantic:
September 1. Sunday. About 6 in the morning Cape St. Vincent bore of us E. and by N. 7 or 8 leagues off.
Copied from
The Journal of Edward Mountagu,
First Earl of Sandwich
Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665
Edited by RC Anderson
Printed for the Navy Records Society
MDCCCCXXIX
Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62
@@@
Cape St. Vincent (37 deg N Latitude) or Cabo de São Vicente in Portuguese is the southwestern point of Portugal and continental Europe. The dramatic landscape and breathtaking views make the cape one of the not-to-miss places in the Algarve. It's also known as the End of the World.
https://thealgarvefamily.com/cabo…
About Thursday 7 February 1666/67
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION:
However, Col. Blood may have been sponsored in the kidnapping by Ormonde's rivals at court. It was soon alleged that Blood had been prompted into the attack by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, who assuredly had the connections with prominent dissidents, former Cromwellians, and republicans to stage such an affair. According to Roger North, he had at one time set himself up as 'one of the heads of that faction' (North, 1.68).
Buckingham’s feuds at court were intense, occasionally violent, and he 'hated the Duke of Ormonde mortally' (Carte, 2.424).
Blood was later linked with Buckingham; they were associated before 1671 is not unlikely, given Blood and Buckingham's connections with the nonconformist community.
Blood, if no one else among the nonconformists, seems to have believed Buckingham was their protector. Moreover, a letter sent from Blood to to his wife, Mary Holcroft Blood, in November 1670 indicates that he was near to reaching some form of agreement with an important personage that month.
The Duke of Ormonde's son, Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, believed Buckingham was behind the attack on his father and openly threatened him should such an attack happen again.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl… shows the depth of their animosity.
Six months later, on 9 May, 1671, Col. Blood engaged in the last daring escapade of this sequence: his attempt to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London.
This finally led to Col. Thomas Blood’s capture and to a change in his fortunes in the world of conspiracy and espionage. ... Charles II forgave him and gave him a pension, so long as he continued to work for spymaster Sir William Josephson.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
For more about this outrageous Irishman, read
COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD, CROWN-STEALER 1618-1680
BY WILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTT, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,
SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY EDWARD WHEELOCK
GENESEE PRESS, ROCHESTER, N.Y.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/e…
About Thursday 7 February 1666/67
San Diego Sarah • Link
Another entry which concerns things in the future not covered by the Diary, and this Mr. Leving -- and my final post on the notorious Irishman, Col. Thomas Blood:
In July 1667 Col. Blood launched the first of a trio of daring adventures that made his name notorious. He helped rescue his friend, the plotter Capt. John Mason, from an escort of soldiers who were taking him -- and Mr. Leving -- to York for his trial and probable execution.
The ambush at Darrington, near Doncaster, during which 5 of Capt. John Mason's guards were shot, was described by Col. Edmund Ludlow as agreeable 'work for the Lord' (Bodl. Oxf., MS Eng. hist. c.487, 1265).
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Col. Blood was badly wounded and recognized by an informer travelling with the party, but escaped.
Three years later another ambush reinforced Col. Blood's notoriety. On the evening of 6 December, 1670, 5 men led by a 'Dr. Allen' ambushed the carriage of James Butler, Duke of Ormonde as he was quietly returning to his residence at Clarendon House after escorting William of Orange to a dinner in the City of London. The raiders intended either to murder the duke or to hold him for ransom for some 'ten or twenty thousand pounds' (Eighth Report, HMC, 155).
The plan went badly wrong. The elderly Duke fought back and brought down the horse, with its rider, on which the kidnappers were trying to place him. They then fired pistols at the prostrate Ormonde as he was lying on the road — and missed. With signs of pursuit in the offing, ‘Dr. Allen’ and his men fled.
A committee of the House of Lords was appointed to investigate the crime and soon discovered the names of the leading perpetrators: Thomas Blood (alias Dr. Allen, Aylett, Aylofe, or Aleck), Thomas Blood Jr. (alias Hunt), and Richard Halliwell (alias Holloway). All 3 men and their dependents evaded the officers sent to seize them. A price of £1,000 was set upon their heads by the government.
Col. Blood had not forgiven the former Lord Lt. of Ireland for the seizure of the lands nor for the imprisonment and execution of his brother-in-law and friends in 1663.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
According to one version, he intended to pay Ormonde back in kind: the attackers were said to have dragged the duke to Tyburn and were attempting to string him up when he broke free.
About Saturday 16 June 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
And more about that fine Mr. Williamson:
In November 1666, the Irish Protestant conspiritor, Col. Thomas Blood, was on the edges of the failed Pentland Rising in Scotland.
Sojourns in Lancashire and Westmorland followed, but evidently tiring of these rebellious courses Col. Blood and his family returned to London and in 1667 he was almost arrested on several occasions.
Mary Holcroft Blood and her family set up in Shoreditch, while their eldest son, Thomas Jr., was apprenticed to an apothecary in Southwark (later taking to highway robbery under the alias Hunt).
Col. Thomas Blood, using the aliases Doctor Ayliffe and Doctor Allen, practiced as a physician (despite lacking any qualifications) in semi-retirement from conspiracy. But “Dr.” Blood, the conspirator in the 1660s, was not all he seemed. There is evidence that he had contacted the government, and may even have worked for them as a double agent spying on his friends.
The papers of Joseph Williamson, under-secretary and the regime's security chief, appear to place Blood on the side of the regime in 1666, and possibly indicate his involvement in the scheme to capture Col. Edmund Ludlow.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
This ambiguous role explains how Col. Thomas Blood managed to survive unscathed in this period ...
Sadly the Oxford Directory of National Biography requires a subscription
https://www.oxforddnb.com/display…
We'll learn more of Col. Thomas Blood's saga later.
About Sunday 2 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
As with any disaster, there were theories and back-stories of plots:
The Irish comspirator, known as Col. Thomas Blood, visited the Dutch Republic in 1664-5, before returning to London. Thereafter he was reported to be engaged in several intrigues against the regime, from organizing meetings in Coleman Street (a notorious den of nonconformity, both religious and political) to outwitting the government's ‘trepanners’, trying to stay one jump ahead of the authorities and, in 1665, the plague.
In 1666 Thomas Blood was recruited for a secret mission: he and his friend John Lockyer visited the republican regicide Edmund Ludlow to try to persuade him to leave his exile in Switzerland and join with Algernon Sidney and others in a plan to overthrow the Restoration regime.
This plot was backed by the Dutch government, but in his fearful exile Ludlow chose to remain where he was and write his manuscript history of his times.
Col. Blood returned to England was and almost certainly in London during the Great Fire of September 1666. [I can't help wondering what he experienced, and how he reacted.]
Sadly the Oxford Directory of National Biography requires a subscription
https://www.oxforddnb.com/display…
We'll learn more of Col. Thomas Blood's saga later.
About Coleman Street
San Diego Sarah • Link
WORSHIP not workship! Sorry about that!