"Alderman Starling, a very rich man, without children, the fire at next door to him in our lane, after our men had saved his house, did give 2s. 6d. among thirty of them, and did quarrel with some that would remove the rubbish out of the way of the fire, saying that they come to steal."
Some people were better paid for their fire watches:
The Inner Temple accounts for November 1666 show a payment of £4 to three butlers, Andrew, Richard and Robert, for fire-watching.
One sailor climbed on the roof of the hall [of the Inner Temple] and beat out the flames, for which he was rewarded with £10; he seems to have died, because another £2 was paid to his widow.
The Inn also rewarded a soldier who had played a significant part in this action: 'To a soldier of Kingston, for service done to prevent the firing of the hall, £2.' That was the equivalent of around £2,000 today. The soldier would have gone home to Kingston a hero.
Yup, I don't think of typeset news sheets or printed books as being manuscripts. I think of royal proclamations, hand written books and letters as manuscripts.
"... labourers were sleepness due to the novelty of being housed in the Navy Office, the insides of which they would probably never have seen otherwise."
Or adrenaline. Having lived through two catastrophic California fires, sleep is an elusive thing. The wind can turn and you go from being safe to having minutes to evacuate. Embers the size of bricks can fly two miles in front of the fire lines. One of those in your roof, and you have minutes to get out. I tried to stay awake all night and my husband took the day shift.
I am surprised Pepys undressed down to his skivvies, considering how much help he needed to get dressed. During WWII guys in the Navy slept in their uniforms when at sea because there was no time to dress if the alarms went off. (OK -- I suspect they took their jackets and ties off.)
"... and one's house overrun w/insomniac labourers."
No, he says he slept in the office. I presume they had a gang of people staying there to protect the records should the wind shift and blow the fire towards them again. They couldn't possibly have buried everything in the garden; maybe just the state secrets?
"From them to the office, and there slept with the office full of labourers, who talked, and slept, and walked all night long there."
Over time, Terry has done sterling work adding detail to this awful day. Thanks, Terry.
On item #94 above, the end of the post should read: "Wishes this to be urged upon him, only with the reserve that His Majesty leaves him to make the choice himself. Sends a French gazette. When they hear this sad story of London, they will give all the trouble they can."
The original says that Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington is at Whitehall, and he wrote this update to his colleague, Sir Thomas Clifford MP. Clifford is the Deputy Lieutenant for Devonshire, and a Commissioner for the Sick and Wounded with his relative, John Evelyn. So my guess is that Bennet is on point in the West Country, in case the fighting goes there.
Since I don't think a French gazette is a type of boat sent to pick up Monck, I'm guessing it's a newsletter enclosed for Clifford to see. Evidently Charles II doesn't know his cousin Louis isn't exactly pursuing this war yet.
"There, when I come, I find the gates shut, but no guard kept at all, which troubled me, because of discourse now begun, that there is plot in it, and that the French had done it."
Pepys should be worried ... Woolwich was home to a Royal Naval Dockyard. If the Dutch or the French invaded -- as we know they planned to do -- what's to stop them?
My question is really bigger than Woolwich -- why didn't the French and/or the Dutch take advantage of this disaster? The French were not really serious about doing it, and their fleet was still a week's sailing time away, doing their best to avoid the fights. But the Dutch had troops ready. Maybe some of their ships were still under refit? Seems like this was a lost opportunity for the de Witts who were under attack at the time for mishandling the summer's campaign. Am I guessing the correct answers?
Don't confuse this Richard Browne with Evelyn's father-in-law.
Highlights from his Parliamentary Bio:
As a Presbyterian, Richard Browne MP was secluded at Pride’s Purge and imprisoned for 5 years. On release, he was elected to the 2nd and 3rd Protectorate Parliaments for the City. But he was a royalist conspirator and had to go underground after Booth’s Rising failed in Aug. 1659.
Browne was re-elected for London in 1660. The London apprentices thought highly of him, so he could not be a deputy to Charles II at The Hague. Financially, he did not contribute to the City funds for the interim Government.
After heading Charles II’s triumphal City procession in May 1660, Browne was knighted and given a baronetcy.
In the debates on the indemnity bill, Sir Richard gave a damning account of a private conversation with Col. Adrian Scrope, sealing Scrope’s fate as a regicide.
Browne was Lord Mayor of London from Oct. 1660-1661;
‘Equally feared and hated by the seditious party’, Lord Mayor Sir Richard Browne ‘carried himself very honorably’ during the Fifth Monarchist revolt in Jan., 1661, ‘and caused one of their meeting houses to be pulled down’. The common council voted him a pension for this and other services as maj.-gen. of militia.
In the Cavalier Parliament Browne was named to 63 committees, most connected with trade, with London, considered bills for the better employment of the poor in London and Westminster, and for regulating excise.
Although Sir Richard was now ‘a very dutiful son of the Church of England’, opposing Presbyterians at the Hampton Court Conference, he urged toleration for their ministers when the Act of Uniformity came into force; but in 1663 he was added to the committee to prevent meetings of sectaries.
During the second Dutch war Browne boasted that if there were any bad news from sea, he ‘clapped up several persons that he was afraid of’ to prevent disturbances; but Pepys told him he had no defense to an action of false imprisonment.
During the Great Fire, Sir Richard was ‘but a weak man’, rewarding with £4 the rescue of a chest of his said to contain £10,000.
Browne was on the committees for the relief and reconstruction of London, the indemnification of sheriffs, and the suspension of building work along the riverbank (he had an interest as a tenant of Whitefriars Wharf).
He was on the committees for the suppression of Popery and to consider a petition against Mordaunt.
In 1668 Brown was appointed to the committees to bring down the price of timber required for the rebuilding of London, and to receive information on nonconformists.
Sir Richard Browne MP died intestate on 24 Sept. 1669, and was buried at Debden Hall, Essex.
After the Restoration Sir William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven, decided to build a suitable home for Charles I's sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen,
He found that Sir Balthazar Gerbier was advertise himself as an architect by publishing some essays on architecture: A brief Discourse concerning the Three Chief Principals of Magnificent Building (1662) and Counsel and Advise to all Builders (1663). According to William Sanderson, Sir Balthazar Gerbier ‘had little of Art or merit’ (Graphice, 1658, 15), and Samuel Pepys said one of his books was ‘not worth a turd’ (Pepys, Diary, 28 May 1663).
But Craven hired Gerbier anyways ... he had done some large projects before the Civil Wars for George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and he had traveled abroad extensively, so he knew what was involved.
Gerbier died at Hampstead Marshall either in 1663 (according to a petition to Charles II from his daughters who asked for £4,000 in unpaid salary) or in 1667 (according to Gerbier's monument in the local church). He was also buried there. The earlier date limits the work he could have achieved at the house and implies a more substantial role for Winde. For instance, Gerbier died before the piano nobile had been started.
Hampstead Marshall was completed by Captain William Winde.
Balthazar Gerbier's main achievement was the creation of the picture gallery at York House, and it is this aspect of his career which has received most architectural attention.
At the time of Pepys’ Diary, Sir Balthazer Gerbier no longer lived in Bethnal Green.
With the Restoration, Sir Balthazar Gerbier’s suit for reinstatement as Master of Ceremonies was turned away, and he had to retreat into anonymity by the time designs for the temporary triumphal arches for Charles II's coronation were engraved; Colvin notes that J. Ogilvie's Relation of His Majesty's entertainment passing through the City of London to his coronation with a description of the triumphal arches (1661, 2nd ed. 1662) credits the design of the arches to Peter Mills "and another Person, who desir's to have his name concealed", whom Colvin surmises to have been the disgraced Gerbier, who refers to them in his Brief Discourse (1662).
Colvin notes similarities with Peter Paul Rubens' designs for the royal entry of the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp, 1635 (published 1642), with which Sir Balthazar Gerbier would have been familiar.
In the 1660s Sir Balthazar Gerbier's necessities caused him to advertise himself by publishing some essays on architecture: A brief Discourse concerning the Three Chief Principals of Magnificent Building (1662) and Counsel and Advise to all Builders (1663). According to William Sanderson, Sir Balthazar Gerbier ‘had little of Art or merit’ (Graphice, 1658, 15), and Samuel Pepys said one of his books was ‘not worth a turd’ (Pepys, Diary, 28 May 1663).
Gerbier was commissioned to rebuild Hampstead Marshall, Berkshire, for William, 1st Earl of Craven (1608–1697). Gerbier died at Hampstead Marshall either in 1663 (according to a petition to Charles II from his daughters who asked for £4,000 in unpaid salary) or in 1667 (according to Gerbier's monument in the local church). He was also buried there. The earlier date limits the work he could have achieved at the house and implies a more substantial role for Winde. For instance, Gerbier died before the piano nobile had been started.
Hampstead Marshall was completed by Captain William Winde.
Balthazar Gerbier's main achievement was the creation of the picture gallery at York House, and it is this aspect of his career which has received most architectural attention.
As an idea of what they ate aboard ship, I found this information, albeit 60 years before Pepys:
Sir Hugh Platt (1552–1611), an author, alchemist, speculator and inventor whose career touched on the fields of alchemy, general scientific curiosity, cookery and sugar work, cosmetics, gardening and agriculture, food manufacture, victualling, supplies and marketing.
Platt was a Navy victualler. In 1596 he had an idea to solve the provisioning problems of the Navy: pasta. This was the fourth of 5 years of poor harvests; there were riots in Britain and famine across Europe. It was also a time when longer voyages made victualling ships more difficult. Sir Francis Drake’s last voyage to the West Indies in 1595–6 suffered severe hunger.
The traditional sea rations of beef, cheese, liquor and salt fish were not enough.
Platt had a great solution. He laid out the virtues of pasta – or “macaroni” as he called it – in a series of points. 1. First, it is durable, for I have kept the same both sweet and sound, by the space of 3 yeares … 2. It is exceedingly light … 3. It is speedily dressed, for in one half hour, it is sufficiently sodden … 4. It is fresh, and thereby very pleasing unto the Mariner in the midst of his salt Meat … 5. It is cheap … 6. It serveth both instead of bread and meat, whereby it performs a double service. 7. Not being spent it may be laid up in store for a second voyage. 8. It may be made as delicate as you please, by the addition of oyle, butter, sugar and such like. 9. There is sufficient matter to be had all the year long, for the composition thereof.
This pasta proposal gives a good idea of who Sir Hugh Platt was, and shows Elizabethan inventiveness. Platt launched himself on many schemes, and this pasta project was typical. There is the appeal to Platt’s own hands-on experience: the boast about having kept macaroni “sweet and sound” for three years; the indication that he is actually familiar with cooking the stuff, or at least with making it “sodden”. There is the mixture of good thinking – pasta is indeed durable, light and cheap. And there is nonsense: as a pure starch food, it can hardly take the place of both bread and meat. Finally, there is the coy turn to profit at the end. What Platt means when he says that there is “sufficient” pasta to be had all year long is that he can supply sufficient – at a price.
Platt was the owner of probably the first macaroni press in London – a kind of extrusion machine, an illustration of which appears in one of his books. Platt’s scheme to alleviate military hunger is really a call for customers for his pasta supply business. It worked: Sir Francis Drake took Platt’s pasta on at least one of his voyages.
For more about Sir Hugh Platt, see https://prospectbooks.co.uk/produ… … Malcolm Thick: Sir Hugh Plat. The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London
Another early resident of Bethnal Green with whom Pepys would probably be familiar was Sir Hugh Platt (1552–1611), an author, alchemist, speculator and inventor whose career touched on the fields of alchemy, general scientific curiosity, cookery and sugar work, cosmetics, gardening and agriculture, food manufacture, victualling, supplies and marketing.
Platt was a Navy victualler. In 1596 he had an idea to solve the provisioning problems of the Navy: pasta. This was the fourth of 5 years of poor harvests; there were riots in Britain and famine across Europe. It was also a time when longer voyages made victualling ships more difficult. Sir Francis Drake’s last voyage to the West Indies in 1595–6 suffered severe hunger. The traditional sea rations of beef, cheese, liquor and salt fish were not enough.
Platt had a great solution. He laid out the virtues of pasta – or “macaroni” as he called it – in a series of points. 1. First, it is durable, for I have kept the same both sweet and sound, by the space of 3 yeares … 2. It is exceedingly light … 3. It is speedily dressed, for in one half hour, it is sufficiently sodden … 4. It is fresh, and thereby very pleasing unto the Mariner in the midst of his salt Meat … 5. It is cheap … 6. It serveth both instead of bread and meat, whereby it performs a double service. 7. Not being spent it may be laid up in store for a second voyage. 8. It may be made as delicate as you please, by the addition of oyle, butter, sugar and such like. 9. There is sufficient matter to be had all the year long, for the composition thereof.
This pasta proposal gives a good idea of who Sir Hugh Platt was, and shows Elizabethan inventiveness. Platt launched himself on many schemes, and this pasta project was typical. There is the appeal to Platt’s own hands-on experience: the boast about having kept macaroni “sweet and sound” for three years; the indication that he is actually familiar with cooking the stuff, or at least with making it “sodden”. There is the mixture of good thinking – pasta is indeed durable, light and cheap. And there is nonsense: as a pure starch food, it can hardly take the place of both bread and meat. Finally, there is the coy turn to profit at the end. What Platt means when he says that there is “sufficient” pasta to be had all year long is that he can supply sufficient – at a price.
Platt was the owner of probably the first macaroni press in London – a kind of extrusion machine, an illustration of which appears in one of his books. Platt’s scheme to alleviate military hunger is really a call for customers for his pasta supply business. It worked: Sir Francis Drake took Platt’s pasta on at least one of his voyages.
For more about Sir Hugh Platt, see https://prospectbooks.co.uk/produ… Malcolm Thick: Sir Hugh Plat. The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London
'After the death of Charles, he was very attentive to the business of his academy, which he had erected at Bethnal-green "for foreign languages, and all noble sciences and exercises"'
For a failed school that lasted 13 months, it interests me that every biography mentions it. Then I found two articles that gave more titillating information:
"While living in Paris, Sir Balthazar Gerbier had inherited a house in Bethnal Green from his father-in-law, Willem Kip, a jeweler and engraver, who died in 1646. This enabled him to open an academy for young gentlemen, which was effectively a school for spies since the curriculum included horsemanship, foreign languages, cosmography, and the construction of military fortifications. It opened in July 1649 and closed in August 1650."
As Gerbier had spent time in France, Spain, Germany and Antwerp, spoke several languages, had been in charge of the 1st Duke of Buckingham's ciphers, had spied on the Flemish Huguenots and betrayed them to the Spanish, and deceived Charles I, he was qualified to be a spy.
And for more about the curriculum: "Sir Balthazer Gerbier, ... by profession a painter and an architect, but not eminent as either, opened an academy at Bethnal Green in 1649, ...
"In addition to the more common branches of education, Gerbier taught astronomy, navigation, architecture, perspective, drawing, limning, engraving, sortification, fireworks, military discipline, the art of well speaking and civil conversation, history, constitutions, and maxims of state, and particular dispositions of nations, riding the great horse, scenes, exercises, and magnificent shows (fn. 12). • 12. The terms for teaching all these arts and sciences were 61. per month, of which 3l. was charged for teaching to ride the great horse. Gentlemen were boarded at 3l. per month. No gentleman of age bound to engage to board for more than one month; those of 16 or 18 years old for a quarter of a year. Perfect Diurnal, Feb. 11, 1650."
Gerbier also offered a form of scholarship for serious students. Maybe they had sufficient spies after a year, and his subsequent flight to the Netherlands was really to establish a spy network, which the Dutch did not appreciate? (We will never know!)
The Greenwich Patriot tells us that Dr. Thomas Plume was a contemporary bibliophile to Pepys. He was Vicar of St. Alfege Greenwich from 1658 to 1704, and his sermons were enjoyed by Pepys and Evelyn. He built his final library in a derelict church in Maldon, Essex (from 1698) and after his death in 1704 the books (more than 8,000 books and pamphlets) were taken, packed in barrels, from Greenwich and Rochester and placed on the shelves in the order they came out of the barrels. And remain in that order today. Although a little later than Pepys' presses, the library gives a good idea of the books available at the time.
I thought I was done with Gerbier's school when I found this nugget:
"While living in Paris, Sir Balthazar Gerbier had inherited a house in Bethnal Green from his father-in-law, Willem Kip, a jeweler and engraver, who died in 1646. This enabled him to open an academy for young gentlemen, which was effectively a school for spies since the curriculum included horsemanship, foreign languages, cosmography, and the construction of military fortifications. It opened in July 1649 and closed in August 1650."
Gerbier was in charge of the 1st Duke of Buckingham's ciphers, and had spied on the Royalists in exile. He was qualified.
Any person might speak or read at these public lectures "on any subject, so that it was on unquestionable principles, warrantable terms, consonant with godliness, and with all due respect to the state (fn. 14)." • 14. Perfect Occurrences, Dec. 14, 1649.
An account of Gerbier's academy was published in 1648; and in 1649, "the art of well speaking," being one of the lectures delivered there gratis: this was ridiculed by Butler in his fictitious will of the Earl of Pembroke (fn. 15). • 15. "All my other speeches, of what colour soever, I give to help Sir Balthazer's art of well speaking."
Sir Balthazer Gerbier seems to have been a visionary (fn. 16). • 16. In one of his advertisements, he prosesses to lend from one shilling to fix, gratis, to such as are in extreme need, and have not wherewithal to endeavor their subsistence; whereas, week by week, they may drive on some trade." In the same advertisement he says, "the rarities heretofore-mentioned in a small printed bill are exposed to sale daily at the academy." Perfect Diurnal, March 4, 1650.
After the failure of his Bethnal Green academy, which soon happened (fn. 17), Sir Balthazer Gerbier went to America, where he was ill-treated by the Dutch, and narrowly escaped with his life. • 17. Whitlock's Memorials, p. 441. – around 1650
One of the good things about the Interregnum was the movement towards education. Updated notes from an 18th C. book on the history of London:
"Sir Balthazer Gerbier, ... by profession a painter and an architect, but not eminent as either, opened an academy at Bethnal Green in 1649, imitating the Museum Minervæ. (see above)
In addition to the more common branches of education, Gerbier taught astronomy, navigation, architecture, perspective, drawing, limning, engraving, sortification, fireworks, military discipline, the art of well speaking and civil conversation, history, constitutions, and maxims of state, and particular dispositions of nations, riding the great horse, scenes, exercises, and magnificent shows (fn. 12). • 12. The terms for teaching all these arts and sciences were 61. per month, of which 3l. was charged for teaching to ride the great horse. Gentlemen were boarded at 3l. per month. No gentleman of age bound to engage to board for more than one month; those of 16 or 18 years old for a quarter of a year. Perfect Diurnal, Feb. 11, 1650.
Once a week, at 3 p.m., Sir Balthazer Gerbier gave a public lecture, gratis, on the various sciences which he previously advertised in the newspapers: examples of these advertisements are given in the notes (fn. 13). • 13. On Wednesday next, the second public gratis lecture concerning cosmography, "with 'other academical entertainments for the lovers of learning." Perfect Diurnal, Nov. 23, 1649. Wednesday, 12 Dec. "Lecture "on navigation, succinct orations in Hebrew "on the creation of the world, with an academical entertainment of music, so there be "time for the same." Perfect Diurnal, Dec. 7–14. "The lecture for the next week designed for the ladies and honorable women of this nation on the art of speaking." Perfect Occurrences, Dec. 14. "Sir Balthazer Gerbier desires, that if any lady or virtuous matron will attend his lectures, they will give notice, that they may be the better accommodated according to their quality." Several Proceedings of Parliament, Dec. 21–. Feb. 20, Lecture on music, gratis; when those who are expert in the art have promised to make good what the lecture says in commendation of it." Perfect Diurnal, Feb. 11, &c. 1650. "July 30, was exhibited a Spanish ancient Brazilian course, called Juego de Cannas — the throwing of darts against the desendants with shields (the ground white, covered with flaming stars: the motto, "sans vouloir mal faire,") with an intermixed feigned fight with the sword, and the running of the ring." Perfect Occurrences, July 27, 1649.
• 13. Some of the public exercises above were held in the White Friars, where Gerbier moved his academy in the winter. In some advertisements he complains much of "the extraordinary concourse of unruly people who robbed him, (Tuesday's Journal, Aug. 17, 1649) and treated with savage rudeness his extraordinary services." Several Proceedings of Parliament, Jan. 11, 1650.
Comments
Second Reading
About Saturday 8 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Alderman Starling, a very rich man, without children, the fire at next door to him in our lane, after our men had saved his house, did give 2s. 6d. among thirty of them, and did quarrel with some that would remove the rubbish out of the way of the fire, saying that they come to steal."
Some people were better paid for their fire watches:
The Inner Temple accounts for November 1666 show a payment of £4 to three butlers, Andrew, Richard and Robert, for fire-watching.
One sailor climbed on the roof of the hall [of the Inner Temple] and beat out the flames, for which he was rewarded with £10; he seems to have died, because another £2 was paid to his widow.
The Inn also rewarded a soldier who had played a significant part in this action: 'To a soldier of Kingston, for service done to prevent the firing of the hall, £2.' That was the equivalent of around £2,000 today. The soldier would have gone home to Kingston a hero.
Taken from another man's view of a walk through the ruins:
http://www.historytoday.com/alan-…
About Friday 7 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
Yup, I don't think of typeset news sheets or printed books as being manuscripts. I think of royal proclamations, hand written books and letters as manuscripts.
About Thursday 6 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... labourers were sleepness due to the novelty of being housed in the Navy Office, the insides of which they would probably never have seen otherwise."
Or adrenaline. Having lived through two catastrophic California fires, sleep is an elusive thing. The wind can turn and you go from being safe to having minutes to evacuate. Embers the size of bricks can fly two miles in front of the fire lines. One of those in your roof, and you have minutes to get out. I tried to stay awake all night and my husband took the day shift.
I am surprised Pepys undressed down to his skivvies, considering how much help he needed to get dressed. During WWII guys in the Navy slept in their uniforms when at sea because there was no time to dress if the alarms went off. (OK -- I suspect they took their jackets and ties off.)
About Friday 7 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
ooooohhhh how embarrassing .. that was too easy, Arby! But I bet you're right.
About Friday 7 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"the Dutch being come out only to make a shew, and please their people; but in very bad condition as to stores; victuals, and men."
The answer to my question about why the Dutch did not invade when England was so vulnerable.
About Friday 7 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"L&M: A MS newsletter ..."
Anyone know what MS stands for?
About Thursday 6 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... and one's house overrun w/insomniac labourers."
No, he says he slept in the office. I presume they had a gang of people staying there to protect the records should the wind shift and blow the fire towards them again. They couldn't possibly have buried everything in the garden; maybe just the state secrets?
"From them to the office, and there slept with the office full of labourers, who talked, and slept, and walked all night long there."
About Wednesday 5 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
Over time, Terry has done sterling work adding detail to this awful day. Thanks, Terry.
On item #94 above, the end of the post should read: "Wishes this to be urged upon him, only with the reserve that His Majesty leaves him to make the choice himself. Sends a French gazette. When they hear this sad story of London, they will give all the trouble they can."
The original says that Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington is at Whitehall, and he wrote this update to his colleague, Sir Thomas Clifford MP. Clifford is the Deputy Lieutenant for Devonshire, and a Commissioner for the Sick and Wounded with his relative, John Evelyn. So my guess is that Bennet is on point in the West Country, in case the fighting goes there.
Since I don't think a French gazette is a type of boat sent to pick up Monck, I'm guessing it's a newsletter enclosed for Clifford to see. Evidently Charles II doesn't know his cousin Louis isn't exactly pursuing this war yet.
About Wednesday 5 September 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
"There, when I come, I find the gates shut, but no guard kept at all, which troubled me, because of discourse now begun, that there is plot in it, and that the French had done it."
Pepys should be worried ... Woolwich was home to a Royal Naval Dockyard. If the Dutch or the French invaded -- as we know they planned to do -- what's to stop them?
My question is really bigger than Woolwich -- why didn't the French and/or the Dutch take advantage of this disaster? The French were not really serious about doing it, and their fleet was still a week's sailing time away, doing their best to avoid the fights. But the Dutch had troops ready. Maybe some of their ships were still under refit? Seems like this was a lost opportunity for the de Witts who were under attack at the time for mishandling the summer's campaign. Am I guessing the correct answers?
About Maj.-Gen. Ald. Sir Richard Browne
San Diego Sarah • Link
Don't confuse this Richard Browne with Evelyn's father-in-law.
Highlights from his Parliamentary Bio:
As a Presbyterian, Richard Browne MP was secluded at Pride’s Purge and imprisoned for 5 years. On release, he was elected to the 2nd and 3rd Protectorate Parliaments for the City. But he was a royalist conspirator and had to go underground after Booth’s Rising failed in Aug. 1659.
Browne was re-elected for London in 1660. The London apprentices thought highly of him, so he could not be a deputy to Charles II at The Hague. Financially, he did not contribute to the City funds for the interim Government.
After heading Charles II’s triumphal City procession in May 1660, Browne was knighted and given a baronetcy.
In the debates on the indemnity bill, Sir Richard gave a damning account of a private conversation with Col. Adrian Scrope, sealing Scrope’s fate as a regicide.
Browne was Lord Mayor of London from Oct. 1660-1661;
‘Equally feared and hated by the seditious party’, Lord Mayor Sir Richard Browne ‘carried himself very honorably’ during the Fifth Monarchist revolt in Jan., 1661, ‘and caused one of their meeting houses to be pulled down’. The common council voted him a pension for this and other services as maj.-gen. of militia.
In the Cavalier Parliament Browne was named to 63 committees, most connected with trade, with London, considered bills for the better employment of the poor in London and Westminster, and for regulating excise.
Although Sir Richard was now ‘a very dutiful son of the Church of England’, opposing Presbyterians at the Hampton Court Conference, he urged toleration for their ministers when the Act of Uniformity came into force; but in 1663 he was added to the committee to prevent meetings of sectaries.
During the second Dutch war Browne boasted that if there were any bad news from sea, he ‘clapped up several persons that he was afraid of’ to prevent disturbances; but Pepys told him he had no defense to an action of false imprisonment.
During the Great Fire, Sir Richard was ‘but a weak man’, rewarding with £4 the rescue of a chest of his said to contain £10,000.
Browne was on the committees for the relief and reconstruction of London, the indemnification of sheriffs, and the suspension of building work along the riverbank (he had an interest as a tenant of Whitefriars Wharf).
He was on the committees for the suppression of Popery and to consider a petition against Mordaunt.
In 1668 Brown was appointed to the committees to bring down the price of timber required for the rebuilding of London, and to receive information on nonconformists.
Sir Richard Browne MP died intestate on 24 Sept. 1669, and was buried at Debden Hall, Essex.
https://www.historyofparliamenton…
About Greenwich Palace
San Diego Sarah • Link
In 2019 true north and magnetic north are the same at the Greenwich Oservatory for the first time in 360 years ...
https://www.sciencealert.com/comp…
About Hamstead Marshall (Berkshire)
San Diego Sarah • Link
After the Restoration Sir William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven, decided to build a suitable home for Charles I's sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen,
He found that Sir Balthazar Gerbier was advertise himself as an architect by publishing some essays on architecture: A brief Discourse concerning the Three Chief Principals of Magnificent Building (1662) and Counsel and Advise to all Builders (1663). According to William Sanderson, Sir Balthazar Gerbier ‘had little of Art or merit’ (Graphice, 1658, 15), and Samuel Pepys said one of his books was ‘not worth a turd’ (Pepys, Diary, 28 May 1663).
But Craven hired Gerbier anyways ... he had done some large projects before the Civil Wars for George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and he had traveled abroad extensively, so he knew what was involved.
Gerbier died at Hampstead Marshall either in 1663 (according to a petition to Charles II from his daughters who asked for £4,000 in unpaid salary) or in 1667 (according to Gerbier's monument in the local church). He was also buried there. The earlier date limits the work he could have achieved at the house and implies a more substantial role for Winde. For instance, Gerbier died before the piano nobile had been started.
Hampstead Marshall was completed by Captain William Winde.
Balthazar Gerbier's main achievement was the creation of the picture gallery at York House, and it is this aspect of his career which has received most architectural attention.
see: https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10…
About Sir Balthazar Gerbier
San Diego Sarah • Link
At the time of Pepys’ Diary, Sir Balthazer Gerbier no longer lived in Bethnal Green.
With the Restoration, Sir Balthazar Gerbier’s suit for reinstatement as Master of Ceremonies was turned away, and he had to retreat into anonymity by the time designs for the temporary triumphal arches for Charles II's coronation were engraved; Colvin notes that J. Ogilvie's Relation of His Majesty's entertainment passing through the City of London to his coronation with a description of the triumphal arches (1661, 2nd ed. 1662) credits the design of the arches to Peter Mills "and another Person, who desir's to have his name concealed", whom Colvin surmises to have been the disgraced Gerbier, who refers to them in his Brief Discourse (1662).
Colvin notes similarities with Peter Paul Rubens' designs for the royal entry of the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp, 1635 (published 1642), with which Sir Balthazar Gerbier would have been familiar.
In the 1660s Sir Balthazar Gerbier's necessities caused him to advertise himself by publishing some essays on architecture: A brief Discourse concerning the Three Chief Principals of Magnificent Building (1662) and Counsel and Advise to all Builders (1663). According to William Sanderson, Sir Balthazar Gerbier ‘had little of Art or merit’ (Graphice, 1658, 15), and Samuel Pepys said one of his books was ‘not worth a turd’ (Pepys, Diary, 28 May 1663).
Gerbier was commissioned to rebuild Hampstead Marshall, Berkshire, for William, 1st Earl of Craven (1608–1697). Gerbier died at Hampstead Marshall either in 1663 (according to a petition to Charles II from his daughters who asked for £4,000 in unpaid salary) or in 1667 (according to Gerbier's monument in the local church). He was also buried there. The earlier date limits the work he could have achieved at the house and implies a more substantial role for Winde. For instance, Gerbier died before the piano nobile had been started.
Hampstead Marshall was completed by Captain William Winde.
Balthazar Gerbier's main achievement was the creation of the picture gallery at York House, and it is this aspect of his career which has received most architectural attention.
see: https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10…
About Victualling
San Diego Sarah • Link
As an idea of what they ate aboard ship, I found this information, albeit 60 years before Pepys:
Sir Hugh Platt (1552–1611), an author, alchemist, speculator and inventor whose career touched on the fields of alchemy, general scientific curiosity, cookery and sugar work, cosmetics, gardening and agriculture, food manufacture, victualling, supplies and marketing.
Platt was a Navy victualler. In 1596 he had an idea to solve the provisioning problems of the Navy: pasta. This was the fourth of 5 years of poor harvests; there were riots in Britain and famine across Europe. It was also a time when longer voyages made victualling ships more difficult. Sir Francis Drake’s last voyage to the West Indies in 1595–6 suffered severe hunger.
The traditional sea rations of beef, cheese, liquor and salt fish were not enough.
Platt had a great solution. He laid out the virtues of pasta – or “macaroni” as he called it – in a series of points.
1. First, it is durable, for I have kept the same both sweet and sound, by the space of 3 yeares …
2. It is exceedingly light …
3. It is speedily dressed, for in one half hour, it is sufficiently sodden …
4. It is fresh, and thereby very pleasing unto the Mariner in the midst of his salt Meat …
5. It is cheap …
6. It serveth both instead of bread and meat, whereby it performs a double service.
7. Not being spent it may be laid up in store for a second voyage.
8. It may be made as delicate as you please, by the addition of oyle, butter, sugar and such like.
9. There is sufficient matter to be had all the year long, for the composition thereof.
This pasta proposal gives a good idea of who Sir Hugh Platt was, and shows Elizabethan inventiveness. Platt launched himself on many schemes, and this pasta project was typical. There is the appeal to Platt’s own hands-on experience: the boast about having kept macaroni “sweet and sound” for three years; the indication that he is actually familiar with cooking the stuff, or at least with making it “sodden”. There is the mixture of good thinking – pasta is indeed durable, light and cheap. And there is nonsense: as a pure starch food, it can hardly take the place of both bread and meat. Finally, there is the coy turn to profit at the end. What Platt means when he says that there is “sufficient” pasta to be had all year long is that he can supply sufficient – at a price.
Platt was the owner of probably the first macaroni press in London – a kind of extrusion machine, an illustration of which appears in one of his books. Platt’s scheme to alleviate military hunger is really a call for customers for his pasta supply business. It worked: Sir Francis Drake took Platt’s pasta on at least one of his voyages.
For more about Sir Hugh Platt, see https://prospectbooks.co.uk/produ… …
Malcolm Thick: Sir Hugh Plat. The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London
About Bethnal Green
San Diego Sarah • Link
Another early resident of Bethnal Green with whom Pepys would probably be familiar was Sir Hugh Platt (1552–1611), an author, alchemist, speculator and inventor whose career touched on the fields of alchemy, general scientific curiosity, cookery and sugar work, cosmetics, gardening and agriculture, food manufacture, victualling, supplies and marketing.
Platt was a Navy victualler. In 1596 he had an idea to solve the provisioning problems of the Navy: pasta. This was the fourth of 5 years of poor harvests; there were riots in Britain and famine across Europe. It was also a time when longer voyages made victualling ships more difficult. Sir Francis Drake’s last voyage to the West Indies in 1595–6 suffered severe hunger. The traditional sea rations of beef, cheese, liquor and salt fish were not enough.
Platt had a great solution. He laid out the virtues of pasta – or “macaroni” as he called it – in a series of points.
1. First, it is durable, for I have kept the same both sweet and sound, by the space of 3 yeares …
2. It is exceedingly light …
3. It is speedily dressed, for in one half hour, it is sufficiently sodden …
4. It is fresh, and thereby very pleasing unto the Mariner in the midst of his salt Meat …
5. It is cheap …
6. It serveth both instead of bread and meat, whereby it performs a double service.
7. Not being spent it may be laid up in store for a second voyage.
8. It may be made as delicate as you please, by the addition of oyle, butter, sugar and such like.
9. There is sufficient matter to be had all the year long, for the composition thereof.
This pasta proposal gives a good idea of who Sir Hugh Platt was, and shows Elizabethan inventiveness. Platt launched himself on many schemes, and this pasta project was typical. There is the appeal to Platt’s own hands-on experience: the boast about having kept macaroni “sweet and sound” for three years; the indication that he is actually familiar with cooking the stuff, or at least with making it “sodden”. There is the mixture of good thinking – pasta is indeed durable, light and cheap. And there is nonsense: as a pure starch food, it can hardly take the place of both bread and meat. Finally, there is the coy turn to profit at the end. What Platt means when he says that there is “sufficient” pasta to be had all year long is that he can supply sufficient – at a price.
Platt was the owner of probably the first macaroni press in London – a kind of extrusion machine, an illustration of which appears in one of his books. Platt’s scheme to alleviate military hunger is really a call for customers for his pasta supply business. It worked: Sir Francis Drake took Platt’s pasta on at least one of his voyages.
For more about Sir Hugh Platt, see https://prospectbooks.co.uk/produ…
Malcolm Thick: Sir Hugh Plat. The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London
About Sir Balthazar Gerbier
San Diego Sarah • Link
'After the death of Charles, he was very attentive to the business of his academy, which he had erected at Bethnal-green "for foreign languages, and all noble sciences and exercises"'
For a failed school that lasted 13 months, it interests me that every biography mentions it. Then I found two articles that gave more titillating information:
"While living in Paris, Sir Balthazar Gerbier had inherited a house in Bethnal Green from his father-in-law, Willem Kip, a jeweler and engraver, who died in 1646. This enabled him to open an academy for young gentlemen, which was effectively a school for spies since the curriculum included horsemanship, foreign languages, cosmography, and the construction of military fortifications. It opened in July 1649 and closed in August 1650."
As Gerbier had spent time in France, Spain, Germany and Antwerp, spoke several languages, had been in charge of the 1st Duke of Buckingham's ciphers, had spied on the Flemish Huguenots and betrayed them to the Spanish, and deceived Charles I, he was qualified to be a spy.
This came from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10…
And for more about the curriculum:
"Sir Balthazer Gerbier, ... by profession a painter and an architect, but not eminent as either, opened an academy at Bethnal Green in 1649, ...
"In addition to the more common branches of education, Gerbier taught astronomy, navigation, architecture, perspective, drawing, limning, engraving, sortification, fireworks, military discipline, the art of well speaking and civil conversation, history, constitutions, and maxims of state, and particular dispositions of nations, riding the great horse, scenes, exercises, and magnificent shows (fn. 12).
• 12. The terms for teaching all these arts and sciences were 61. per month, of which 3l. was charged for teaching to ride the great horse. Gentlemen were boarded at 3l. per month. No gentleman of age bound to engage to board for more than one month; those of 16 or 18 years old for a quarter of a year. Perfect Diurnal, Feb. 11, 1650."
Gerbier also offered a form of scholarship for serious students. Maybe they had sufficient spies after a year, and his subsequent flight to the Netherlands was really to establish a spy network, which the Dutch did not appreciate? (We will never know!)
For more about Gerbier and Bethnal Green https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
About Thomas Plume (Vicar of Greenwich)
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Greenwich Patriot tells us that Dr. Thomas Plume was a contemporary bibliophile to Pepys. He was Vicar of St. Alfege Greenwich from 1658 to 1704, and his sermons were enjoyed by Pepys and Evelyn. He built his final library in a derelict church in Maldon, Essex (from 1698) and after his death in 1704 the books (more than 8,000 books and pamphlets) were taken, packed in barrels, from Greenwich and Rochester and placed on the shelves in the order they came out of the barrels. And remain in that order today. Although a little later than Pepys' presses, the library gives a good idea of the books available at the time.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Sunday 1 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
I thought I was done with Gerbier's school when I found this nugget:
"While living in Paris, Sir Balthazar Gerbier had inherited a house in Bethnal Green from his father-in-law, Willem Kip, a jeweler and engraver, who died in 1646. This enabled him to open an academy for young gentlemen, which was effectively a school for spies since the curriculum included horsemanship, foreign languages, cosmography, and the construction of military fortifications. It opened in July 1649 and closed in August 1650."
Gerbier was in charge of the 1st Duke of Buckingham's ciphers, and had spied on the Royalists in exile. He was qualified.
This came from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10…
About Sunday 1 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 2
Any person might speak or read at these public lectures "on any subject, so that it was on unquestionable principles, warrantable terms, consonant with godliness, and with all due respect to the state (fn. 14)."
• 14. Perfect Occurrences, Dec. 14, 1649.
An account of Gerbier's academy was published in 1648; and in 1649, "the art of well speaking," being one of the lectures delivered there gratis: this was ridiculed by Butler in his fictitious will of the Earl of Pembroke (fn. 15).
• 15. "All my other speeches, of what colour soever, I give to help Sir Balthazer's art of well speaking."
Sir Balthazer Gerbier seems to have been a visionary (fn. 16).
• 16. In one of his advertisements, he prosesses to lend from one shilling to fix, gratis, to such as are in extreme need, and have not wherewithal to endeavor their subsistence; whereas, week by week, they may drive on some trade." In the same advertisement he says, "the rarities heretofore-mentioned in a small printed bill are exposed to sale daily at the academy." Perfect Diurnal, March 4, 1650.
After the failure of his Bethnal Green academy, which soon happened (fn. 17), Sir Balthazer Gerbier went to America, where he was ill-treated by the Dutch, and narrowly escaped with his life.
• 17. Whitlock's Memorials, p. 441. – around 1650
For more about Bethnal Green https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
About Sunday 1 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
One of the good things about the Interregnum was the movement towards education. Updated notes from an 18th C. book on the history of London:
"Sir Balthazer Gerbier, ... by profession a painter and an architect, but not eminent as either, opened an academy at Bethnal Green in 1649, imitating the Museum Minervæ. (see above)
In addition to the more common branches of education, Gerbier taught astronomy, navigation, architecture, perspective, drawing, limning, engraving, sortification, fireworks, military discipline, the art of well speaking and civil conversation, history, constitutions, and maxims of state, and particular dispositions of nations, riding the great horse, scenes, exercises, and magnificent shows (fn. 12).
• 12. The terms for teaching all these arts and sciences were 61. per month, of which 3l. was charged for teaching to ride the great horse. Gentlemen were boarded at 3l. per month. No gentleman of age bound to engage to board for more than one month; those of 16 or 18 years old for a quarter of a year. Perfect Diurnal, Feb. 11, 1650.
Once a week, at 3 p.m., Sir Balthazer Gerbier gave a public lecture, gratis, on the various sciences which he previously advertised in the newspapers: examples of these advertisements are given in the notes (fn. 13).
• 13. On Wednesday next, the second public gratis lecture concerning cosmography, "with 'other academical entertainments for the lovers of learning." Perfect Diurnal, Nov. 23, 1649.
Wednesday, 12 Dec. "Lecture "on navigation, succinct orations in Hebrew "on the creation of the world, with an academical entertainment of music, so there be "time for the same." Perfect Diurnal, Dec. 7–14.
"The lecture for the next week designed for the ladies and honorable women of this nation on the art of speaking." Perfect Occurrences, Dec. 14. "Sir Balthazer Gerbier desires, that if any lady or virtuous matron will attend his lectures, they will give notice, that they may be the better accommodated according to their quality."
Several Proceedings of Parliament, Dec. 21–. Feb. 20, Lecture on music, gratis; when those who are expert in the art have promised to make good what the lecture says in commendation of it." Perfect Diurnal, Feb. 11, &c. 1650. "July 30, was exhibited a Spanish ancient Brazilian course, called Juego de Cannas — the throwing of darts against the desendants with shields (the ground white, covered with flaming stars: the motto, "sans vouloir mal faire,") with an intermixed feigned fight with the sword, and the running of the ring." Perfect Occurrences, July 27, 1649.
• 13. Some of the public exercises above were held in the White Friars, where Gerbier moved his academy in the winter. In some advertisements he complains much of "the extraordinary concourse of unruly people who robbed him, (Tuesday's Journal, Aug. 17, 1649) and treated with savage rudeness his extraordinary services." Several Proceedings of Parliament, Jan. 11, 1650.