Women are sometimes better suited for a mission, especially if it entails small spaces. Brute strength isn't as vital as it used to be. We've just got to encourage our daughteers to like math, work out and be proud of being smart when they are 14. I'm not sure which of these three is easier.
“Use our inflation calculator to check how prices in the UK have changed over time, from 1209 to 2018.”
You can compare something that cost £10 in 1660 (for example), with its value in today’s currency. The page has descriptive sections explaining how the calculator was created and works.
I'm also astounded by the amount of activities Pepys can fold into a 24-hour period, all of which make the Diary totally fascinating.
I prefer Pepys way of working, being a night person myself. Being in the office in the morning, then leaving the staff to do the final copies of the documents he dictated during the afternoon, and coming back at night to work on projects when it's quiet is a very efficient way to organize your life. Every entrepreneur works weekends because ideas are valuable and you want to capture them while your brain is working on some subject
No great disclaimer is called. His schedule makes sense. It has nothing to do with indulging himself in pleasure, because this is the "proper age" to do it. I think that's a manifestation of what remains of Pepys' Puritanism, and he needed to find a rational for himself for goofing off; something he could say to Elizabeth that made him look wise and profound.
Goofing off isn't always a negative -- enquiring minds want to know. Genius works on the golf course (the solution to DNA realized on the 9th tee). Apples fall from trees when reading a book in the orchard. With Betty Lane, not so much, but you never know.
Would you really hire someone who saw his mistress twice in one work day? Would you hire someone who spends afternoons at the Royal Academy talking about totally unrelated matters like killing dogs, tobacco, coach springs, or watching bodies being disected? Fascinatingly interesting, yes ... work-related no. He wouldn't be working at midnight if he wasn't driving around town showing off his wife and a famous actress to anyone who also wasn't working that afternoon, or going to Westminster Hall in hopes of finding Betty for a nooner. For most of the last 9 months Pepys says he was very jolly and drinking way too much every day.
"... my observation that most men that do thrive in the world, do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it with any pleasure."
Pepysian B.S. again ... his times were not unlike my parents' times: The Depression followed by WWII and the Cold War, and now they are fighting a Korean-sized war. Times were hard. Men had nasty work to do, and women were alone a lot. Our patronizing nouveau riche Diarist passes judgement on his teachers and his elders to justify goofing off himself.
"The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it ..."
I'm not so quick to glad hand Pepys on this: He's been goofing off for the last 9 months, and despite rewriting his vows and catching up on his accounting, business and personal, he's still goofing off and spending time in company he frequently does not like or respect, while ignoring Albermarle and Coventry.
The justifications I can see for having a break now is that there is no money in the bank to be spent, so he can't do much anyways. Plus when the weather improves, the Second Anglo-Dutch War will be on again, and he'll have to do a lot with no money.
Oranges are native to China and they were grown in that country as early as 2,500 BC. The Romans imported oranges but after the fall of Rome they were forgotten in Western Europe. When the Arabs conquered Spain in the 8th century they introduced oranges. Later they were introduced into Italy. In the 16th century Spaniards took oranges to the Americas. In the 17th century rich Englishmen began growing oranges.
Grinling Gibbons built an orangerie at Kensington Palace in 1704 for Queen Anne. But there were earlier ones when they were built by wealthy landowners to house orange and other citrus trees in the winter to protect them from weathering elements.
It is thought that orangeries began to be developed in the 17th century in England because of the development of better glass-making technology so glass could be produced in large sheets. But initial 17th century orangeries were grand structures that were exclusive buildings for wealthy families. The outside would feature external stone and brickwork, while the interior would be decorative and plastered. Surprisingly they had a small amount of glass and were heated by a stove or fire in the walls. Unfortunately these fires often produced fumes that killed plants, so orangeries were not particularly effective at fulfilling their purpose!
They did have south-facing windows so the maximum amount of sunlight could flood through and the walls facing north were thick, to protect against the British cold.
The first Englush orangeries were built during James I and VI's reign, but they didn't become efficient enough to be adopted until William and Mary (the Dutch were better at it than the English). And they took off in the 18th century.
Bananas are native to Southeast Asia. However, by 500 BC they were being grown in India. Alexander the Great ate them and his men took them back to the Western World. By 200 AD bananas were grown in China. Bananas were probably taken to Madagascar by the Arabs and spread from there to mainland Africa. In the 16th century the Portuguese took bananas to the New World.
The first recorded sale of bananas in England was in 1633 however they were expensive until the end of the 19th century.
Bananas have been grown in the Canary Islands since the 16th Century and were mainly used for animal feed or fertilizer.
Bananas were considered exotic in the UK, but steadily became commonplace in the British diet as the banana boats became more frequent.
You'll recall Charles II's favorite mistress was Barbara VILLIERS Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine.
Her mother, also Barbara VILLIERS [Wenman Wentworth] Howard, Countess of Suffolk -- yes, she had 3 husbands -- was currently a Groom of the Stole to Queen Catherine of Braganza.
When King Charles I was beheaded Lady Barbara Villiers Howard, Countess of Suffolk and her husband, James Howard, 3rd Earl of Suffolk, hid out in one of the most palatial properties in the country, Audley End, for the whole of the Interregnum. However, it was very expensive to run, and because of its location close to Newmarket, the Villiers/Howards suggested to Charles he might like to buy it as a nice summer hideout.
And there was nothing Charles II liked more than expensive building projects (except, of course, for women and horses).
I'm curious about your understanding of Pepys' relationship to religion during the Diary years. There's a period when he almost seems to be going "church shopping" ... his scare that Elizabeth will become Roman Catholic ... his "vowes" which seem to be more about positioning himself to make money than to be an upstanding member of the community. Church attendance seems to be more politically-motivated than spiritually uplifting. The revelation that James didn't care if his clerk was a Quaker must have been an eye-opener. I've read that the courtiers bad behavior was as much political protest as anything (my opinion is that the older ones had PTSD and were self-medicating). Are these impressions on the right lines, or was he an athiest hiding-in-plain-sight?
"Sam's over-indulgence with Betty Lane left him with some self-disgust and a real determination to change his ways."
It was Ash Wednesday last week, so Lent is upon him, and the King, Duke, Coventry, Penn, Carteret, Batten et al including Elizabeth and Mr. Milles are home, some looking for scapegoats. Combined, the message is to get back to work, and to act very confident.
I suspect his digust was reserved for Mrs. Lane for stooping so low as to accommodate him. As to a real determination to change -- why should he? In order to be like his "betters" the message is to party on with lots of women; his desire for profit dictates that he should be sober in order to recognize and take advantage of whatever God/fate sends his way, and avoid being implicated in the recent prize scandle which is still playing out. Most of the time his desire to rent coaches has overtaken his pleasure in hangovers. The theaters have not been open recently, so that temptation hasn't raised its head. But soon they will be ...
Margaret Penn, daughter of Sir William Penn and Margaret Jasper Penn, was born 1636. She married Anthony Lowther MP FRS (1642-1692) on February 15, 1667. They had one child, in one source given as Sir Thomas Lowther and in another as Sir William Lowther, 1st Bart of Marske (1670-1705).
Warwick's interest in the Navy probably goes back to March 1636 when he went to work for Archbishop Juxon:
3 June, 1636, William Juxon was made a lord of the admiralty, a post he held until April 1638, when his commission was terminated by King Charles' decision to make young James, Duke of York the lord high admiral. Meetings of the Admiralty Board were consistently held at his house.
That's how I read this entry, Mary K. He partied and drank his way through the plague and a War -- and prospered. How did he rationalize God's apparent approval of his behavior? Well, the wife's home again, people are back in London, the office is where it should be, Court is at Whitehall, and people are watching. Time to put on his red suit and hat, and get back to more sober living. I'm surprised he didn't have more liaisons while living in Greenwich, but perhaps he was too drunk to organize any?
I wonder if people read, or were aware of, previous literary works at this time. I was struck that "4 Of good Works: first of Fasting. 5 Against Gluttony and Drunkenness. 6 Against Excess of Apparel." were addressed by William Langland’s 14th-century poem Piers Plowman which opens with a vision, seen by a dreamer as he relaxes on the Malvern Hills. He sees a ‘fair field full of folk’, of many classes and professions, ‘working and wandering as the world asketh’ – a vision of the whole of human society. He quickly realizes that labor is not fairly distributed: while many labor hard but have barely enough to eat, others squander what those laborers toiled for.
A teacher appears and explains to the dreamer that the root of this injustice is greed. The solution is moderation, which is healthy for the soul, the body, the individual and for society.
{Since famine was widespread in the 17th century, it's reasonable to think Charles II's plump mistresses were a political challenge to the church.)
Piers Plowman is also concerned with injustice, so greed forms part of the diagnosis for many of social ills, including corruption in the law, government and church. Over-consumption and excessive desire for anything, even things good in themselves, can cause problems.
Piers Plowman concludes that solutions imposed from outside can only do so much. Moderation demands self-control which is difficult to learn.
The medieval church developed practices intended to help "believers" confront and master the gluttonous desires of the human heart: confession, penance and fasting, hoping to teach people to rule their desires rather than be ruled by them.
I particularly like that the dreamer is warned about ‘spilling’ time and speech. Time is a finite resource. Speech is precious, even sacred, and the poem describes speech with some beautiful metaphors: it is a joyous ‘game of heaven’ and a ‘spire of grace’, a green shoot alive with possibility and hope. Words are ‘God’s gleeman’ (‘minstrel’) and his musical instrument, a ‘fiddle’, which needs to be tuned properly before it can make music. These metaphors imagine words as a source of pleasure: because they are beautiful and powerful it is wrong to waste them.
Many other medieval writers also condemned idle chatter, spreading gossip and slander, which results in hurting others.
I wonder what they would have made of Rochester and the other Wits and Merry Gang members! All represented political statements against the Puritan church.
(This feels uncomfortably modern: mean girls, trolls and ill-considered tweets would certainly come in for sermons and homilies.)
The same Gijs Rommelse who co-authored the paper excerpted above, is a guest on a blog I follow. He reveals in this blog the concerns raised about the welfare of Dutch sailors captured in the Wars, and the discrepancy between theory and reality in the treatment of foreign prisoners of war in England, with examples and citations not included in the above.
Pepys was too busy to attend yet another execution today. A pious Roman Catholic, William Dillon Esq., was hanged for killing a Mr. J. Web during a brawl on London’s Long Acre. His closing statement was:
“Good People, I stand here a Spectacle to God, Angels and Men, sad and deplorable (I believe) to you, but in my inward Reflections on my Regenerate Estate, in my dear and blessed Saviour Jesus, full of Spiritual Hopes and Comfort.
“I declare myself to you all a true and constant Christian, an Apostolical Romane Catholick, and on that account, I am particularly obliged to protest that my hopes are totally and solely placed in the Al-sufficient [sic] Merits of my glorious Redeemer, from whose Merits, the Merits of Man receive their total supernatural condignity and worth. To help the compleating of the Sufferings of his own Body, in his mystical, I am come here to participate of his beloved Crosse, sanctified and dignified by his own most pretious blood.
“I give thanks to those deserving and charitable Persons, who desired and endeavoured my longer Life, for my better Repentance and amendment. But although they have failed in their Merciful Intercessions for me, there is an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the Just, whose Power is infinite, to save to the uttermost.
“As I infold myself in the Arms of his rich and embracing Mercy, so I would be joyned with you all in his Divine, as I am in my own derived charity.
"I wish you all good, as I should have done that very person, if known to me, for whose Death I am condemned. God Omniscient knoweth my Innocency in that particular, being in my Conscience so clear and free from that guilt, that to my knowledge I never touched the Man. May they have the benefit of the blood of Christ, who have occasioned the losse of mine; and God forgive me in His, as I do them for my own.”
SPOILER: After his execution Dillon was anatomized as was the custom of the times, which is how we will meet his cold remains, two days from now, through this Diary.
Comments
Second Reading
About Thursday 8 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Women are sometimes better suited for a mission, especially if it entails small spaces. Brute strength isn't as vital as it used to be. We've just got to encourage our daughteers to like math, work out and be proud of being smart when they are 14. I'm not sure which of these three is easier.
About Values today
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Bank of England has an inflation indicator:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/m…
“Use our inflation calculator to check how prices in the UK have changed over time, from 1209 to 2018.”
You can compare something that cost £10 in 1660 (for example), with its value in today’s currency. The page has descriptive sections explaining how the calculator was created and works.
About Saturday 10 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
I'm also astounded by the amount of activities Pepys can fold into a 24-hour period, all of which make the Diary totally fascinating.
I prefer Pepys way of working, being a night person myself. Being in the office in the morning, then leaving the staff to do the final copies of the documents he dictated during the afternoon, and coming back at night to work on projects when it's quiet is a very efficient way to organize your life. Every entrepreneur works weekends because ideas are valuable and you want to capture them while your brain is working on some subject
No great disclaimer is called. His schedule makes sense. It has nothing to do with indulging himself in pleasure, because this is the "proper age" to do it. I think that's a manifestation of what remains of Pepys' Puritanism, and he needed to find a rational for himself for goofing off; something he could say to Elizabeth that made him look wise and profound.
Goofing off isn't always a negative -- enquiring minds want to know. Genius works on the golf course (the solution to DNA realized on the 9th tee). Apples fall from trees when reading a book in the orchard. With Betty Lane, not so much, but you never know.
Would you really hire someone who saw his mistress twice in one work day? Would you hire someone who spends afternoons at the Royal Academy talking about totally unrelated matters like killing dogs, tobacco, coach springs, or watching bodies being disected? Fascinatingly interesting, yes ... work-related no. He wouldn't be working at midnight if he wasn't driving around town showing off his wife and a famous actress to anyone who also wasn't working that afternoon, or going to Westminster Hall in hopes of finding Betty for a nooner. For most of the last 9 months Pepys says he was very jolly and drinking way too much every day.
"... my observation that most men that do thrive in the world, do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it with any pleasure."
Pepysian B.S. again ... his times were not unlike my parents' times: The Depression followed by WWII and the Cold War, and now they are fighting a Korean-sized war. Times were hard. Men had nasty work to do, and women were alone a lot. Our patronizing nouveau riche Diarist passes judgement on his teachers and his elders to justify goofing off himself.
About Saturday 10 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it ..."
I'm not so quick to glad hand Pepys on this: He's been goofing off for the last 9 months, and despite rewriting his vows and catching up on his accounting, business and personal, he's still goofing off and spending time in company he frequently does not like or respect, while ignoring Albermarle and Coventry.
The justifications I can see for having a break now is that there is no money in the bank to be spent, so he can't do much anyways. Plus when the weather improves, the Second Anglo-Dutch War will be on again, and he'll have to do a lot with no money.
About Tuesday 6 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Pepys encyclopedia has a page for oranges
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Tuesday 6 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Oranges are native to China and they were grown in that country as early as 2,500 BC. The Romans imported oranges but after the fall of Rome they were forgotten in Western Europe. When the Arabs conquered Spain in the 8th century they introduced oranges. Later they were introduced into Italy. In the 16th century Spaniards took oranges to the Americas. In the 17th century rich Englishmen began growing oranges.
Grinling Gibbons built an orangerie at Kensington Palace in 1704 for Queen Anne. But there were earlier ones when they were built by wealthy landowners to house orange and other citrus trees in the winter to protect them from weathering elements.
It is thought that orangeries began to be developed in the 17th century in England because of the development of better glass-making technology so glass could be produced in large sheets. But initial 17th century orangeries were grand structures that were exclusive buildings for wealthy families. The outside would feature external stone and brickwork, while the interior would be decorative and plastered. Surprisingly they had a small amount of glass and were heated by a stove or fire in the walls. Unfortunately these fires often produced fumes that killed plants, so orangeries were not particularly effective at fulfilling their purpose!
They did have south-facing windows so the maximum amount of sunlight could flood through and the walls facing north were thick, to protect against the British cold.
The first Englush orangeries were built during James I and VI's reign, but they didn't become efficient enough to be adopted until William and Mary (the Dutch were better at it than the English). And they took off in the 18th century.
More at https://www.orangeries-uk.co.uk/t… -- and from visiting Ham House and other places with orangeries.
About Tuesday 6 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Bananas are native to Southeast Asia. However, by 500 BC they were being grown in India. Alexander the Great ate them and his men took them back to the Western World. By 200 AD bananas were grown in China. Bananas were probably taken to Madagascar by the Arabs and spread from there to mainland Africa. In the 16th century the Portuguese took bananas to the New World.
The first recorded sale of bananas in England was in 1633 however they were expensive until the end of the 19th century.
Bananas have been grown in the Canary Islands since the 16th Century and were mainly used for animal feed or fertilizer.
Bananas were considered exotic in the UK, but steadily became commonplace in the British diet as the banana boats became more frequent.
Gleaned from http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/2…
About Audley End House, Essex
San Diego Sarah • Link
You'll recall Charles II's favorite mistress was Barbara VILLIERS Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine.
Her mother, also Barbara VILLIERS [Wenman Wentworth] Howard, Countess of Suffolk -- yes, she had 3 husbands -- was currently a Groom of the Stole to Queen Catherine of Braganza.
When King Charles I was beheaded Lady Barbara Villiers Howard, Countess of Suffolk and her husband, James Howard, 3rd Earl of Suffolk, hid out in one of the most palatial properties in the country, Audley End, for the whole of the Interregnum. However, it was very expensive to run, and because of its location close to Newmarket, the Villiers/Howards suggested to Charles he might like to buy it as a nice summer hideout.
And there was nothing Charles II liked more than expensive building projects (except, of course, for women and horses).
About Tuesday 6 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Spring Cleaning underway -- glad it wasn't laundry day. He's forgotten that detail before and found no lunch prepared.
About Ask Pepys author Dr Kate Loveman a question
San Diego Sarah • Link
I'm curious about your understanding of Pepys' relationship to religion during the Diary years. There's a period when he almost seems to be going "church shopping" ... his scare that Elizabeth will become Roman Catholic ... his "vowes" which seem to be more about positioning himself to make money than to be an upstanding member of the community. Church attendance seems to be more politically-motivated than spiritually uplifting. The revelation that James didn't care if his clerk was a Quaker must have been an eye-opener. I've read that the courtiers bad behavior was as much political protest as anything (my opinion is that the older ones had PTSD and were self-medicating). Are these impressions on the right lines, or was he an athiest hiding-in-plain-sight?
About Monday 5 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Sam's over-indulgence with Betty Lane left him with some self-disgust and a real determination to change his ways."
It was Ash Wednesday last week, so Lent is upon him, and the King, Duke, Coventry, Penn, Carteret, Batten et al including Elizabeth and Mr. Milles are home, some looking for scapegoats. Combined, the message is to get back to work, and to act very confident.
I suspect his digust was reserved for Mrs. Lane for stooping so low as to accommodate him. As to a real determination to change -- why should he? In order to be like his "betters" the message is to party on with lots of women; his desire for profit dictates that he should be sober in order to recognize and take advantage of whatever God/fate sends his way, and avoid being implicated in the recent prize scandle which is still playing out. Most of the time his desire to rent coaches has overtaken his pleasure in hangovers. The theaters have not been open recently, so that temptation hasn't raised its head. But soon they will be ...
About Margaret Lowther (b. Penn)
San Diego Sarah • Link
Margaret Penn, daughter of Sir William Penn and Margaret Jasper Penn, was born 1636. She married Anthony Lowther MP FRS (1642-1692) on February 15, 1667. They had one child, in one source given as Sir Thomas Lowther and in another as Sir William Lowther, 1st Bart of Marske (1670-1705).
About Anthony Lowther
San Diego Sarah • Link
It appears Mr. Lowther was 5 years younger than Margaret, who was born in 1636. His biography as an MP is at
https://www.historyofparliamenton…
About Friday 2 March 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Warwick's interest in the Navy probably goes back to March 1636 when he went to work for Archbishop Juxon:
3 June, 1636, William Juxon was made a lord of the admiralty, a post he held until April 1638, when his commission was terminated by King Charles' decision to make young James, Duke of York the lord high admiral. Meetings of the Admiralty Board were consistently held at his house.
-- gleaned from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/19…
About Wednesday 28 February 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
That's how I read this entry, Mary K. He partied and drank his way through the plague and a War -- and prospered. How did he rationalize God's apparent approval of his behavior? Well, the wife's home again, people are back in London, the office is where it should be, Court is at Whitehall, and people are watching. Time to put on his red suit and hat, and get back to more sober living. I'm surprised he didn't have more liaisons while living in Greenwich, but perhaps he was too drunk to organize any?
About Monday 22 October 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
I wonder if people read, or were aware of, previous literary works at this time. I was struck that
"4 Of good Works: first of Fasting.
5 Against Gluttony and Drunkenness.
6 Against Excess of Apparel."
were addressed by William Langland’s 14th-century poem Piers Plowman which opens with a vision, seen by a dreamer as he relaxes on the Malvern Hills. He sees a ‘fair field full of folk’, of many classes and professions, ‘working and wandering as the world asketh’ – a vision of the whole of human society. He quickly realizes that labor is not fairly distributed: while many labor hard but have barely enough to eat, others squander what those laborers toiled for.
A teacher appears and explains to the dreamer that the root of this injustice is greed. The solution is moderation, which is healthy for the soul, the body, the individual and for society.
{Since famine was widespread in the 17th century, it's reasonable to think Charles II's plump mistresses were a political challenge to the church.)
Piers Plowman is also concerned with injustice, so greed forms part of the diagnosis for many of social ills, including corruption in the law, government and church. Over-consumption and excessive desire for anything, even things good in themselves, can cause problems.
Piers Plowman concludes that solutions imposed from outside can only do so much. Moderation demands self-control which is difficult to learn.
The medieval church developed practices intended to help "believers" confront and master the gluttonous desires of the human heart: confession, penance and fasting, hoping to teach people to rule their desires rather than be ruled by them.
I particularly like that the dreamer is warned about ‘spilling’ time and speech. Time is a finite resource. Speech is precious, even sacred, and the poem describes speech with some beautiful metaphors: it is a joyous ‘game of heaven’ and a ‘spire of grace’, a green shoot alive with possibility and hope. Words are ‘God’s gleeman’ (‘minstrel’) and his musical instrument, a ‘fiddle’, which needs to be tuned properly before it can make music. These metaphors imagine words as a source of pleasure: because they are beautiful and powerful it is wrong to waste them.
Many other medieval writers also condemned idle chatter, spreading gossip and slander, which results in hurting others.
I wonder what they would have made of Rochester and the other Wits and Merry Gang members! All represented political statements against the Puritan church.
(This feels uncomfortably modern: mean girls, trolls and ill-considered tweets would certainly come in for sermons and homilies.)
For more on Piers Plowman: https://www.historytoday.com/arch…
About Sunday 25 February 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"He tells me my Lord Chancellor seems his very good friend ..."
I should hope so, since this Montagu/Carteret shindig is being held at Chancellor Hyde's house, and he apparently isn't invited.
About The Commission of Sick and Wounded Prisoners
San Diego Sarah • Link
The same Gijs Rommelse who co-authored the paper excerpted above, is a guest on a blog I follow. He reveals in this blog the concerns raised about the welfare of Dutch sailors captured in the Wars, and the discrepancy between theory and reality in the treatment of foreign prisoners of war in England, with examples and citations not included in the above.
https://www.civilwarpetitions.ac.…
About Friday 27 January 1664/65
San Diego Sarah • Link
Pepys' and Evelyn's work on behalf of the COMMISSION FOR SICK AND WOUNDED PRISONERS is expanded upon at:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Thursday 25 February 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
Pepys was too busy to attend yet another execution today. A pious Roman Catholic, William Dillon Esq., was hanged for killing a Mr. J. Web during a brawl on London’s Long Acre. His closing statement was:
“Good People, I stand here a Spectacle to God, Angels and Men, sad and deplorable (I believe) to you, but in my inward Reflections on my Regenerate Estate, in my dear and blessed Saviour Jesus, full of Spiritual Hopes and Comfort.
“I declare myself to you all a true and constant Christian, an Apostolical Romane Catholick, and on that account, I am particularly obliged to protest that my hopes are totally and solely placed in the Al-sufficient [sic] Merits of my glorious Redeemer, from whose Merits, the Merits of Man receive their total supernatural condignity and worth. To help the compleating of the Sufferings of his own Body, in his mystical, I am come here to participate of his beloved Crosse, sanctified and dignified by his own most pretious blood.
“I give thanks to those deserving and charitable Persons, who desired and endeavoured my longer Life, for my better Repentance and amendment. But although they have failed in their Merciful Intercessions for me, there is an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the Just, whose Power is infinite, to save to the uttermost.
“As I infold myself in the Arms of his rich and embracing Mercy, so I would be joyned with you all in his Divine, as I am in my own derived charity.
"I wish you all good, as I should have done that very person, if known to me, for whose Death I am condemned. God Omniscient knoweth my Innocency in that particular, being in my Conscience so clear and free from that guilt, that to my knowledge I never touched the Man. May they have the benefit of the blood of Christ, who have occasioned the losse of mine; and God forgive me in His, as I do them for my own.”
SPOILER: After his execution Dillon was anatomized as was the custom of the times, which is how we will meet his cold remains, two days from now, through this Diary.
See http://www.executedtoday.com/2019…