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San Diego Sarah has posted 9,734 annotations/comments since 6 August 2015.

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Third Reading

About Sunday 18 August 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

From Sandwich's log, in the Med.:

August 18. Sunday. I sent the Hampshire into Malaga road with directions for the Martin frigate if she were not passed by thense.

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

@@@

Malaga Road --
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

He seems to have lost the Martin!!!!

About Friday 16 August 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

From Sandwich's log, in the Med.:

August 16. Friday. Thwart off Cape de Gata.

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 de Gata -- The Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park (Spanish: Parque natural del Cabo de Gata-Níjar) is a natural park located in Almería, Spain. It is the largest protected coastal area in Andalusia, featuring a rugged landscape. The park is located on the southeastern coast of Spain, the only region in Europe with a hot desert climate.

The eponymous mountain range of the Sierra del Cabo de Gata forms a volcanic rock formation with sharp peaks and crags. The highest peak on this mountain range is El Fraile (Sierra del Cabo de Gata). It falls steeply to the Mediterranean Sea, creating jagged 100-metre (330 ft.) high cliffs divided by gullies, creating numerous small coves and white-sand beaches.

There are numerous small rocky islands and coral reefs in the area.

Excerpted from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cab…

Thwart:
verb -- prevent (someone) from accomplishing something:
"he never did anything to thwart his father"

noun -- a structural crosspiece sometimes forming a seat for a rower in a boat.

preposition -- from one side to another side of (an area); across:
archaic, literary
"a pink-tinged cloud spread thwart the shore"

adverb -- from one side to another side of an area.
archaic, literary

In this case it sounds like The Thwart is the entrance to a cove or sheltered bay ... anyone know the area?

About Friday 9 August 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"It be hard to be a juggling of 3 bosses: Sandwich, 2 Wills, & Sir George keeping him on his toes."

Not to mention James, Duke of York and his Navy Secretary, Mr. Coventry.

About Wednesday 2 July 1662

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Toren observed in 2005: "I think one should remember, too, that death was not a stranger in those days."

Pepys mentions or attends more than 30 funerals during the 9-1/2 years of the Diary. That's way more than I have attended in the last 10 years -- and we both experienced a pandemic and a devastating fire in that decade:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

About Wednesday 16 July 1662

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"What is a Portugall ring and how can it be made of coconut?"

When I Googled Coconut rings, up came an eBay page featuring wooden coconut rings for fingers, but none had stones set in them.

From the history I found on coconut palms, it appears "The Portuguese carried coconuts from the Indian Ocean to the West Coast of Africa, ... and the plantations established there were a source of material that made it into the Caribbean and also to coastal Brazil."
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

It appears Pepys is experiencing this evolutionary event.

About Coconut

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

Olsen and his colleagues believe the Pacific coconuts were introduced to the Indian Ocean thousands of years ago by ancient Austronesians establishing trade routes connecting Southeast Asia to Madagascar and coastal east Africa.

Olsen points out that no genetic admixture is found in the more northerly Seychelles, which fall outside the trade route. He adds that a recent study of rice varieties found in Madagascar shows there is a similar mixing of the japonica and indica rice varieties from Southeast Asia and India.

To add to the historical shiver, the present-day inhabitants of the Madagascar highlands are descendants of the ancient Austronesians, Olsen says.

The scientists were astonished by the amount of structure in the coconut DNA, enough structure to allow them to trace some of the coconuts travels with humans.

The Indian Ocean coconut was transported to the New World by Europeans much later.
The Portuguese carried coconuts from the Indian Ocean to the West Coast of Africa, Olsen says, and the plantations established there were a source of material that made it into the Caribbean and also to coastal Brazil.

So the coconuts that you find today in Florida are largely the Indian ocean type, Olsen says, which is why they tend to have the niu kafa form.

On the Pacific side of the New World tropics the coconuts are Pacific Ocean coconuts. Some appear to have been transported there in pre-Columbian times by ancient Austronesians moving east rather than west.

During the colonial period, the Spanish brought coconuts to the Pacific coast of Mexico from the Philippines, which was for a time governed on behalf of the King of Spain from Mexico.
This is why, Olsen says, you find Pacific type coconuts on the Pacific coast of Central America and Indian type coconuts on the Atlantic coast.

Excerpted from
https://source.wustl.edu/2011/06/…
Deep history of coconuts decoded
Written in coconut DNA are two origins of cultivation, several ancient trade routes, and the history of the colonization of the Americas
By Diana Lutz June 24, 2011

About Coconut

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

PART 2

The coconut in the grocery store is like a cherry pit without the fleshy part. What’s fleshy in the stone fruits like cherries is the fibrous husk of the coconut.

“The lack of universal domestication traits together with the long history of human interaction with coconuts, made it difficult to trace the coconut’s cultivation origins strictly by morphology,” Olsen says.

The DNA project got started when Gunn, who had long been interested in palm evolution, and who was then at the Missouri Botanical Garden, contacted Olsen, who had the laboratory facilities needed to study palm DNA.
Together they won a National Geographic Society grant that allowed Gunn to collect coconut DNA in regions of the western Indian Ocean for which there were no data. She sent home snippets of leaf tissue from the center of the coconut tree’s crown in zip-lock bags to be analyzed.

“We had reason to suspect that coconuts from these regions — especially Madagascar and the Comoros Islands — might show evidence of ancient ‘gene flow’ events brought about by ancient Austronesians setting up migration routes and trade routes across the southern Indian Ocean,” Olsen says.

Olsen’s lab genotyped 10 microsatellite regions in each palm sample. Microsatellites are regions of stuttering DNA where the same few nucleotide units are repeated many times.
Mutations pop up and persist pretty easily in these regions because they usually don’t affect traits that are important to survival and so aren’t selected against, Olsen says. “So we can use these genetic markers to ‘fingerprint’ the coconut,” he says.

The most striking finding of the new DNA analysis is that the Pacific and Indian Ocean coconuts are quite distinct genetically. “About a third of the total genetic diversity can be partitioned between two groups that correspond to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean,” Olsen says.

In the Pacific, coconuts were probably first cultivated in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, ... In the Indian Ocean, the likely center of cultivation was the southern periphery of India, including Sri Lanka, the Maldives and the Laccadives.

The definitive domestication traits —the dwarf habit, self-pollination and niu vai fruits — arose only in the Pacific, and then only in a small subset of Pacific coconuts, which is why Olsen speaks of origins of cultivation rather than of domestication.

One exception to the general Pacific/Indian Ocean split is Madagascar and the Comoros Islands, where Gunn had collected the samples. Their coconuts are a genetic mixture of Indian Ocean and Pacific types.

About Coconut

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The coconut (the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera) is the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom: in one neat package it provides a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. It can also serve as flotation device.

No wonder people from ancient Austronesians to Capt. Bligh pitched a few coconuts aboard before setting sail.

So extensively is the history of the coconut interwoven with the history of people traveling that Kenneth M. Olsen, PhD, a plant evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, didn’t expect to find much geographical structure to coconut genetics when he examined the DNA of more than 1,300 coconuts from all over the world.

It turned out that there are 2 populations of coconuts, a finding that suggests the coconut was cultivated in 2 locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin.
Coconut genetics also preserve a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.

The discoveries ... are described in a 2011 online issue of the journal PLoS One.

Before the DNA era, biologists recognized a domesticated plant by its morphology. But it was hard to translate coconut morphology into a plausible evolutionary history.

A tall coconut with niu kafa fruit. The meat of these coconuts, called copra, is often dried, ground and pressed for oil, and their fiber is spun into rope, or coir.

There are two distinctively different forms of the coconut fruit, known as niu kafa and niu vai, Samoan names for traditional Polynesian varieties. The niu kafa form is triangular and oblong with a large fibrous husk. The niu vai form is rounded and contains abundant sweet coconut “water” when unripe.

“Quite often the niu vai fruit are brightly colored when they’re unripe, either bright green, or bright yellow. Sometimes they’re a beautiful gold with reddish tones,” Olsen says.

Coconuts also have been traditionally classified into tall and dwarf varieties based on the tree “habit,” or shape. Most coconuts are talls, but there are also dwarfs that are only several feet tall when they begin reproducing. Dwarfing suggests domestication, but only 5 percent of the world’s coconuts have the dwarf form.
Dwarfs tend to be used for “eating fresh,” and the tall forms for coconut oil and fiber.
“Almost all the dwarfs are self-fertilizing and those three traits — being dwarf, having the rounded sweet fruit and being self-pollinating — are thought to be the definitive domestication traits,” Olsen says.

“You almost always find coconuts near human habitations,” Olsen says, and “while the niu vai is an obvious domestication form, the niu kafa form is also heavily exploited for copra (the dried meat ground and pressed to make oil) and coir (fiber woven into rope).

About About fruit and vegetables

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

L&M: Some fevers, as well as colic, were attributed to the easting of fruit.

'In Summer time crude Humors breed ... by eating of fruit, and over-much drinking [which] being mixed with Choller, do breed bastard Tertians': L. Riverius, "The practice of physic ..." (1672), p. 580.

The sale of certain fruits was forbidden in London during plague-time: C. Hole, Engl. home-life, 1500-1800, p. 13.
See also Priv. Corr., ii. 63, 85; Burton's Anat. of melancholy (ed. Shilleto), i. 253-4; ii. 29.

About Saturday 10 August 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"I went to my Lady’s and dined with her, and after dinner took the two young gentlemen and the two ladies ..."

The 2 young gentlemen probably were Edward, Lord Hinchingbrooke and Sidney; and the 2 ladies were probably Mrs. Jemima and Paulina "Pall" Montagu -- which is why "uncle" Sam escorted them home at night.

He was showing off his new and improved house and staircase to the children! We can relate.

About Sir Edward Mountagu ("my Lord," Earl of Sandwich)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The surviving Montagu children:

Jemima (1646–1671) Mrs. Jem
Edward (1648–1688) Viscount Hinchingbrooke
Paulina (1649–1669) Pall
Sidney (1650–1727)
Oliver (c. 1655–1689)
John (c. 1655–1729)
Charles (1658–1721)
Anne (1660–1729)
Catherine (1661–1757)
James (b. 1664)

About Privy Seal Office

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The Signet and Privy Seal office was situated in what is now Whitehall Yard, a little north of the site of the United Service Institution. -- Wheatley, 1899.

About Thursday 6 September 1666

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Excerpted from GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM -- 1628-1687 : A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF THE RESTORATION
By WINIFRED Anne Henrietta Christine Herbert Gardner, LADY BURGHCLERE
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. LONDON
1903
https://archive.org/stream/cu3192…

"In the midst of [a month of entertaining Lady Anna Maria Brudenel and Francis Talbot, Countess and 11th Earl of Shrewsbury, and her parents, Lord Robert and Lady Anna Savage Brudenell, Countess and 2nd Earl of Cardigan, and their respective retinues at York House in York] arrived the news of the Great Fire of London.

Buckingham instantly repaired to Charles II, but the letter he addressed to his Deputy Lieutenants in Yorkshire, gives a vivid picture of the sensational and alarming rumors which must have materially increased the horror of the situation.

184 BUCKINGHAM AT COURT [chap. vi.

“Worksop, 6 September, 1666.
“Gentlemen, —
“A servant of my own is sent to me from London to let me know, that in all probability before I could receive the letter the whole city of London within the walls would be in ashes. This messenger told me that before he came away, he saw all Cheapside and Pawls Church on fire. Thames Street and all that part of the Town had been burnt before. Since that, another man is come from London that assures me Holborn is also set on fire, and that about threescore French and Dutch are taken, that were firing of houses; besides this week, the posts are stopped, which must either proceed from the burning of the Post Office, or from some insurrection in those parts, it being almost impossible that a thing of this nature could be effected without a farther design.

“I am going myself immediately to His Majesty, as my duty obliges me, in the meantime I have sent this to let you know the state of our affaires, and in case you receive no letters from London at the time that you ought to receive them, by the poste on Saturday night next, that you immediately summon all the Militia under my command to be in arms with all the speed imaginable, and to keep them together till further order from me or from His Majesty.

“If I find upon my way to London, or when I am there, reason to alter this order, I shall dispatch one immediately to you about it, in the meantime I desire you to acquaint the Lords and Deputy Lieutenants of the East and North Ryding of Yorkshire with what orders I have sent you, and I do not doubt but they will follow your example, —

“I am, Gentlemen, Your most affectionate friend and servant,
“Buckingham.

“Since the writing of this letter a Gentleman is come from London that assures me almost all the Strand is burnt, and that a great many Anabaptists have been taken setting houses on fire, as well as French and Dutch.” 1
1 C. J. Smith's “Historical and Literary Curiosities."

Yes, I have updated the spelling.

About Tuesday 6 August 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Scube -- click through on Mr. Phillips in the text and read the first annotation. He's the local expert on local affairs, and will probably have useful background info on the troublesome will. If he does, my guess is that Pepys may hire him -- if he doesn't, he won't.

About Sir Robert Bernard

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

Most of the time Serjeants were the only advocates given rights of audience in the Court of Common Pleas.
Until the 17th century they were also first in the order of precedence in the Court of King's Bench and Court of Chancery, which gave them priority in motions before the court.
Serjeants also had the privilege of being immune from most normal forms of lawsuit – they could only be sued by a writ from the Court of Chancery.
It was held as an extension of this that servants of Serjeants could only be sued in the Common Pleas.
In exchange for these privileges, Serjeants were expected to represent anybody who asked, regardless of their ability to pay, and they serve as deputy judges to hear cases when there was no judge available.

A Serjeant made a King's Counsel or judge would still retain these social privileges.
As the cream of the legal profession, Serjeants earned higher fees than barristers.

Excerpted from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ser…

About Sir Robert Bernard

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

A Serjeant-at-Law (SL), usually called a Serjeant, was a member of an order of barristers at the English and Irish Bar.
The position of Serjeant-at-Law, or Sergeant-Counter, was centuries old; there are writs dating to 1300 which identify them as being in France before the Norman Conquest.
The Serjeants are the oldest formally create order in Englandm and during the 16th century they rose as a small, elite group of lawyers who took much of the work in the central common law courts.

With the creation of Queen's (or King's) Counsel during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the order gradually declined, with each monarch creating more King's or Queen's Counsel.

The Serjeants' exclusive jurisdictions ended with the Judicature Act 1873.

For centuries the Serjeants had exclusive jurisdiction over the Court of Common Pleas, being the only lawyers allowed to argue a case there.
At the same time, they had rights of audience in the other central common law courts (the Court of King's Bench and Exchequer of Pleas) and precedence over all other lawyers.

Only Serjeants-at-Law could become judges of these courts, and socially the Serjeants ranked above Knights Bachelor and Companions of the Bath.
Their wives had the right to be addressed as "Lady —".

The decline of the Serjeants-at-Law started in 1596, when Francis Bacon persuaded Queen Elizabeth to appoint him "Queen's Counsel Extraordinary" (QC), a new creation which gave him precedence over the Serjeants. This was not a formal creation: he was not granted a patent of appointment until King James finally awarded it in 1604.
The creation of Queen's and King's Counsel was initially small; King James created at least one other, and King Charles four.
Following the Restoration this increased, with a few appointed each year. The largest change came about with William IV, who appointed an average of 9 a year ...

Every new Queen's and King's Counsel created reduced the Serjeants' importance; the most junior QC took precedence over the most senior Serjeant.

The traditional process of being called to the order of Serjeants-at-Law stayed fairly constant: the Serjeants would recommend prospective candidates to the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He would pass the names to the Lord Chancellor, who would appoint the new Serjeants. This was a way to select potential judges free from political favouritism – only Serjeants could become judges, so Serjeants provided a neutral judiciary.

About Thursday 30 January 1661/62

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

I think we can guess Pepys' views, Irish Susan.
He grew up in the City of London and Cambridgeshire -- both Puritan strongholds. As a teen he was sent to Cambridge University, and goodness knows who were his influences there, and what "radical" ideas he was introduced to. Then he went to work for his cousin, Edward Montagu -- and we learned last year that he was basically a non-believer. We don't know why.
We do know that Montagu took Pepys to see King Charles being beheaded; and although he worked for Charles II's restoration, is wasn't because he was a Stuart fanatic -- if Richard Cromwell had had the charisma to keep the county together, Sandwich would have preferred to back him.
Faced with the Army fighting the Army, in 1659 Sandwich pragmatically recognized that a strong outsider was England's best hope for avoiding more bloodshed.
My guess is that Pepys was influenced by many of the same facts and conversations that formed Montagu's point-of-view. They also both saw where their bread was buttered. They are now making the best of the hands dealt to them.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

Many ethical people today work diligently for companies that have large downsides -- think energy companies, some of the finance companies, technology companies, or the defense industry. Those multi-national concerns have GDPs larger than many countries. Those workers' desire to do the right thing and change the company / system / culture from within is part of the long-term solution to those downsides.

About Wednesday 7 August 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Nate Lockwood -- I think you're bringing a 21st century question to a 17th century non-question: Pepys lived less than 200 years from the Pope being able to consider his Catholic Church as being the universal church. (Of course, that didn't count the Greek, Russian and Orthodox Churches, but that's splitting a straw which happened 1,000 years ago.) Those pesky Protestants created this question.

The French and Spanish kings were competing for being the most Godly and most conservative.
(Isn't it nice we don't have to deal with this nonsense any more!)