The British Civil War Project tells us a few things pertinent to the Diary
Denzil Holles MP was one the commissioners appointed to go to The Hague to deliver Parliament's invitation to Charles II to return to England. Holles preceded Charles to England to prepare for his reception and was appointed to the Privy Council on 5 June 1660.
Denzil Holles MP emerged as the most vindictive of the 34 commissioners appointed to try the Regicides in September and October 1660.
On 20 April 1661, Denzil Holles MP was created 1st Baron Holles of Ifield in Sussex, and served as the English ambassador to Paris from 1662-1667, but his obsession with protocol was severely criticized.
So I like the note above "... He refused the insidious presents offered him by Louis XIV with as much disdain as he had before refused 5000 1. offered him by the parliament, to indemnify him for his losses in the civil war. Ob. 1679-80, Æt. 81. -- A Biographical History of England. J. Granger, 1779."
I wonder what Louis XIV was trying to bribe him to do. Wrong guy!
"Awful lot of name dropping these last few days!" -- yup. I'm wondering if pride goes before a fall after all this.
He appears to have skated out of the prize debacle undetected. He's raking in the money even if the Treasury is bankrupt. People of consequence are inviting him to ride in their carriages. Charles II and James are both fans. I'm surprised his wig still fits on his head.
And he finally seems to be back on good terms with Elizabeth. It's been 18 months of tension at home. Maybe absence made the heart grow fonder.
John Evelyn was a GENTLEMAN; his father was the Royalist Ambassador in Paris and served Queen Henrietta Maria during the Interegnum; his family made gunpowder for the Royalist forces. Pepys is his junior, and might be an up-and-coming helpful spirit with some clout, but he was not a GENTLEMAN in his own right to Evelyn. Furthermore, Evelyn's conversation must have been interesting to Pepys, but Pepys' conversation did not move the needle for Evelyn.
I think this was a meeting to figure out a response to the French going in on the Dutch side. Nice of Charles and James not to require the London people to go to Oxford. Perhaps there was not enough room for all of them at Oxford?
"He could probably have walked quicker straight past Bushey Park, along what is now Hampton Court Road. The river has a huge bend between Kingston and Hampton court, trebling the direct route distance. Maybe he was just enjoying the view."
There was a hurricane here a few days ago. In the 1980's one went through Bushey Park and uprooted hundreds of glorious old trees; with modern equipment it took weeks to clean up the mess. I'm surprised Pepys could take a coach from London to Hampton Court given the state of the roads on a good day. The area is only a little above sea level and would probably have been swampy.
At the Restoration, Charles II's instincts were to exercise a serious role in European affairs, and his new government was sensitive to unflattering comparisons with the influence which the Commonwealth and Protectorate had wielded abroad, plus the Restoration regime was a fragile one. Charles' desire to cut a figure abroad had to be tempered by an appreciation of the costs of international power politics and the threat it could pose to internal security.
Both France and Spain solicited an English alliance.
The Franco-Spanish War had been ended by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, but the politics of western Europe was still bound up with their continuing rivalry.
Plus the Spanish expected some dividends from the support they had given the exiled monarchy in the late 1650s, so in July 1660 Charles II formally ended the war with Spain which had been carried on fitfully since Cromwell's death.
Although Spain had advocates at the English court, it lacked the closeness that Charles II's family ties gave him to France, plus it could not overcome Charles’ enthusiasm for French society and government.
Even so, France's 1654 treaty with Cromwell, and Cardinal Mazarin's disrespect of royalist interests had chilled relations between the two courts, and not until the death of Cardinal Mazarin in March 1661 could relations officially recover.
But by then the Franco-Dutch Treaty was as good as signed, putting cousin Louis XIV reluctantly on the "other" side.
Another action-packed day with lots of guests ... we stay home in hurricanes. But I suppose they had no weather-forecasters telling them how awful it was, so they just carried on regardless with the tiles flying off the rooves and chimneys and houses falling down. We are such wusses.
At the end of a restaurant meal, deciding who pays and how much involves either one person paying, or everyone agreeing "to go Dutch”: that is, pay their share.
The origin of ‘going Dutch” stems from the 17th century wars between England and the Netherlands which left behind some uncomplimentary English slang. For 30 years the Dutch Republic and the English competed over international trade, colonies, and domination of the seas. Starting in 1652, the Dutch and English fought three wars over everything from herring to Manhattan.
English and Dutch propaganda said plagues and fires in the other country were punishments from God.
The Dutch said the English were descended from the Devil, and therefore had tails.
The English called the Dutch “butterboxes” and drunkards.
Over time the word “Dutch” in the English language came to describe anything sub-par and insults grew.
Dutch soldiers needed “Dutch courage,” or alcohol-fueled bravado, to fight.
A “Dutch uncle” was a stern and authoritative figure.
“Dutch feasts” were parties where the host got drunk first, while a “Dutch reckoning” was an unitemized bill with unexpected charges.
“Dutch comfort” was small consolation when a bad situation could have been worse.
Even the Dutch oven (a lidded pot that can be used for baking) may be part of this trend: It’s not really an oven, but the Dutch were good at producing them.
But “to go Dutch” is an American term. “Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl” says one of the first references to a “Dutch treat” (i.e. not really treating someone else at all) appeared in a New York Times article in 1877. The term combined the old British sport of mocking the Dutch with a reference to the contemporary German-American practice of people buying their own drink (confusing ‘Dutch’ with ‘Deutsch’ or “German).
Finally in 1934 the Dutch government asked officials to avoid using the term, so “Dutch” slang today seems dated. That’s fitting for a linguistic practice based on centuries-old jealousies.
Tomorrow Pepys reports bad storms: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… Tuesday 23 January 1666 ... A most furious storm all night and morning.
Diary of Ralph Josselin (Private Collection) Sunday 21 January 1666) document 70014995 Jan. 21. weather cold and wet for which god be blessed. our ponds empty and almost without water. http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/earl…
Greenwich and Deptford and Wricklemarsh (north and east of Blackheath) are all very close to each other, and it would be easy for Pepys to visit all of them in a morning.
"Ay, there's the rub," is the phrase I've always heard. I assumed it meant a sticking point, as in a bump in a smooth surface which would wear on a wheel or other object trying to pass by unimpeded. It would rub against the smooth surface and slow things down -- as in a brake.
Here Pepys has found some bureaucratic sticking point which must be solved before the ships get their licenses to sail for Tangier.
"Pale - presumably is the fence or rail on each side of the bridge. But I thought the bridge had shops on it - were there walkways on either side?"
There was a break in the buildings around the middle of the bridge, a fire break as I recall. Presumably the Pales (pailings) would have been there at the very least, and the west-east blast of wind would make crossing from the south to the north end of the bridge very dangerous.
Remember the time Pepys told us about crossing London Bridge, when he fell down and nearly broke his leg between the boards, and had to be rescued by a constable? https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
"Did Bess hang tapestries or would she have hung wallpaper ...?"
According to Diane and Michael Preston’s book, “A pirate of exquisite mind: explorer, naturalist, and buccaneer: the life of William Dampier” counterfeit damask was fashionable flock wallpaper used by Mrs. Pepys to paper her closet. https://books.google.com/books?id…...
The Pepys went shopping on Monday, 8 January 1665/66 "Up, and my wife and I by coach to Bennett’s, in Paternoster Row, ... and thence to a place to look over some fine counterfeit damasks to hang my wife’s closett, and pitched upon one, and so by coach home again,"
Another amazing day ... from the City to Greenwich, to Deptford, to Wricklemarsh south of Blackheath, and back to the City for lunch with Elizabeth and pick up his accounting, then off to Whitehall, then back to Deptford, and to the City again for a meeting. And he would have had to have send notes to everyone ahead of time -- and received confirmations back -- so people would be in place for each meeting. The Thames in January is very cold. He presumably shot the Bridge at least once today. You would be hard pressed to achieve this today, with reliable public transportation.
Jeanine's comment about Dr. Bendo is misleading or those of you not familiar with John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester:
An episode in 1676 involving a drunken fight with the night guard resulted in one of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester's friends being killed, and Rochester was -- again -- banished by Charles II. Unwilling to return to the boring life in the country with his long-suffering wife, Rochester decided to go into hiding by disguising himself as a quack doctor named Dr. Bendo.
"When the profligate Earl of Rochester, under the name of "Alexander Bendo," played the part of a mountebank physician in the City, he took up his lodgings in Tower Street, next door to the Black Swan, at a goldsmith's house, where he gave out that he was sure of being seen "from 3 of the clock in the afternoon till 8 at night."
"Being under an unlucky accident, which obliged him to keep out of the way, he disguised himself so that his nearest friends could not have known him, and set up in Tower Street for an Italian mountebank, where he [had a stage and] practised physic some weeks not without success." — Burnet's Life, p. 37, ed. 1680. -- London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.
Comments
Second Reading
About Denzil Holles (Baron Holles)
San Diego Sarah • Link
The British Civil War Project tells us a few things pertinent to the Diary
Denzil Holles MP was one the commissioners appointed to go to The Hague to deliver Parliament's invitation to Charles II to return to England. Holles preceded Charles to England to prepare for his reception and was appointed to the Privy Council on 5 June 1660.
Denzil Holles MP emerged as the most vindictive of the 34 commissioners appointed to try the Regicides in September and October 1660.
On 20 April 1661, Denzil Holles MP was created 1st Baron Holles of Ifield in Sussex, and served as the English ambassador to Paris from 1662-1667, but his obsession with protocol was severely criticized.
So I like the note above "... He refused the insidious presents offered him by Louis XIV with as much disdain as he had before refused 5000 1. offered him by the parliament, to indemnify him for his losses in the civil war. Ob. 1679-80, Æt. 81. -- A Biographical History of England. J. Granger, 1779."
I wonder what Louis XIV was trying to bribe him to do. Wrong guy!
http://bcw-project.org/biography/…
About Monday 29 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Actually it was his father-in-law who was the Ambassador. Sorry.
About Friday 26 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Awful lot of name dropping these last few days!" -- yup. I'm wondering if pride goes before a fall after all this.
He appears to have skated out of the prize debacle undetected. He's raking in the money even if the Treasury is bankrupt. People of consequence are inviting him to ride in their carriages. Charles II and James are both fans. I'm surprised his wig still fits on his head.
And he finally seems to be back on good terms with Elizabeth. It's been 18 months of tension at home. Maybe absence made the heart grow fonder.
About Wednesday 24 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Scarf - scarves. I rest my case ... not all these words have "devolved" yet.
About Monday 29 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
John Evelyn was a GENTLEMAN; his father was the Royalist Ambassador in Paris and served Queen Henrietta Maria during the Interegnum; his family made gunpowder for the Royalist forces. Pepys is his junior, and might be an up-and-coming helpful spirit with some clout, but he was not a GENTLEMAN in his own right to Evelyn. Furthermore, Evelyn's conversation must have been interesting to Pepys, but Pepys' conversation did not move the needle for Evelyn.
About Sunday 28 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
I think this was a meeting to figure out a response to the French going in on the Dutch side. Nice of Charles and James not to require the London people to go to Oxford. Perhaps there was not enough room for all of them at Oxford?
About Sunday 28 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
I was about to add the hurricane entry:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Sunday 28 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"He could probably have walked quicker straight past Bushey Park, along what is now Hampton Court Road. The river has a huge bend between Kingston and Hampton court, trebling the direct route distance. Maybe he was just enjoying the view."
There was a hurricane here a few days ago. In the 1980's one went through Bushey Park and uprooted hundreds of glorious old trees; with modern equipment it took weeks to clean up the mess. I'm surprised Pepys could take a coach from London to Hampton Court given the state of the roads on a good day. The area is only a little above sea level and would probably have been swampy.
About Monday 30 September 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
Some background on the powers at play here:
At the Restoration, Charles II's instincts were to exercise a serious role in European affairs, and his new government was sensitive to unflattering comparisons with the influence which the Commonwealth and Protectorate had wielded abroad, plus the Restoration regime was a fragile one. Charles' desire to cut a figure abroad had to be tempered by an appreciation of the costs of international power politics and the threat it could pose to internal security.
Both France and Spain solicited an English alliance.
The Franco-Spanish War had been ended by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, but the politics of western Europe was still bound up with their continuing rivalry.
Plus the Spanish expected some dividends from the support they had given the exiled monarchy in the late 1650s, so in July 1660 Charles II formally ended the war with Spain which had been carried on fitfully since Cromwell's death.
Although Spain had advocates at the English court, it lacked the closeness that Charles II's family ties gave him to France, plus it could not overcome Charles’ enthusiasm for French society and government.
Even so, France's 1654 treaty with Cromwell, and Cardinal Mazarin's disrespect of royalist interests had chilled relations between the two courts, and not until the death of Cardinal Mazarin in March 1661 could relations officially recover.
But by then the Franco-Dutch Treaty was as good as signed, putting cousin Louis XIV reluctantly on the "other" side.
This spat today was therefore rather significant.
About Wednesday 24 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
I'm old school apparently ... roof, rooves, hoof, hooves. I just looked it up on line and you are correct.
About Wednesday 24 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Another action-packed day with lots of guests ... we stay home in hurricanes. But I suppose they had no weather-forecasters telling them how awful it was, so they just carried on regardless with the tiles flying off the rooves and chimneys and houses falling down. We are such wusses.
About Saturday 10 October 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Talking about "Dutch" things from the era:
At the end of a restaurant meal, deciding who pays and how much involves either one person paying, or everyone agreeing "to go Dutch”: that is, pay their share.
The origin of ‘going Dutch” stems from the 17th century wars between England and the Netherlands which left behind some uncomplimentary English slang. For 30 years the Dutch Republic and the English competed over international trade, colonies, and domination of the seas. Starting in 1652, the Dutch and English fought three wars over everything from herring to Manhattan.
English and Dutch propaganda said plagues and fires in the other country were punishments from God.
The Dutch said the English were descended from the Devil, and therefore had tails.
The English called the Dutch “butterboxes” and drunkards.
Over time the word “Dutch” in the English language came to describe anything sub-par and insults grew.
Dutch soldiers needed “Dutch courage,” or alcohol-fueled bravado, to fight.
A “Dutch uncle” was a stern and authoritative figure.
“Dutch feasts” were parties where the host got drunk first, while a “Dutch reckoning” was an unitemized bill with unexpected charges.
“Dutch comfort” was small consolation when a bad situation could have been worse.
Even the Dutch oven (a lidded pot that can be used for baking) may be part of this trend: It’s not really an oven, but the Dutch were good at producing them.
But “to go Dutch” is an American term. “Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl” says one of the first references to a “Dutch treat” (i.e. not really treating someone else at all) appeared in a New York Times article in 1877. The term combined the old British sport of mocking the Dutch with a reference to the contemporary German-American practice of people buying their own drink (confusing ‘Dutch’ with ‘Deutsch’ or “German).
Finally in 1934 the Dutch government asked officials to avoid using the term, so “Dutch” slang today seems dated. That’s fitting for a linguistic practice based on centuries-old jealousies.
For more see: https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti…
About Capt. John Graunt
San Diego Sarah • Link
In 2012 the modern-day Gresham College hosted a talk on Dr. Graunt and his contribution to science and history.
It's available in PDF from
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture…
About Monday 22 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Tomorrow Pepys reports bad storms:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Tuesday 23 January 1666
... A most furious storm all night and morning.
Diary of Ralph Josselin (Private Collection)
Sunday 21 January 1666) document 70014995
Jan. 21. weather cold and wet for which god be blessed. our ponds empty and almost without water.
http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/earl…
About Col. Thomas Blount
San Diego Sarah • Link
Greenwich and Deptford and Wricklemarsh (north and east of Blackheath) are all very close to each other, and it would be easy for Pepys to visit all of them in a morning.
About Wednesday 24 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Ay, there's the rub," is the phrase I've always heard. I assumed it meant a sticking point, as in a bump in a smooth surface which would wear on a wheel or other object trying to pass by unimpeded. It would rub against the smooth surface and slow things down -- as in a brake.
Here Pepys has found some bureaucratic sticking point which must be solved before the ships get their licenses to sail for Tangier.
About Wednesday 24 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Pale - presumably is the fence or rail on each side of the bridge. But I thought the bridge had shops on it - were there walkways on either side?"
There was a break in the buildings around the middle of the bridge, a fire break as I recall. Presumably the Pales (pailings) would have been there at the very least, and the west-east blast of wind would make crossing from the south to the north end of the bridge very dangerous.
Remember the time Pepys told us about crossing London Bridge, when he fell down and nearly broke his leg between the boards, and had to be rescued by a constable? https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Sunday 21 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Did Bess hang tapestries or would she have hung wallpaper ...?"
According to Diane and Michael Preston’s book, “A pirate of exquisite mind: explorer, naturalist, and buccaneer: the life of William Dampier” counterfeit damask was fashionable flock wallpaper used by Mrs. Pepys to paper her closet.
https://books.google.com/books?id…...
The Pepys went shopping on Monday, 8 January 1665/66
"Up, and my wife and I by coach to Bennett’s, in Paternoster Row, ... and thence to a place to look over some fine counterfeit damasks to hang my wife’s closett, and pitched upon one, and so by coach home again,"
About Monday 22 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Another amazing day ... from the City to Greenwich, to Deptford, to Wricklemarsh south of Blackheath, and back to the City for lunch with Elizabeth and pick up his accounting, then off to Whitehall, then back to Deptford, and to the City again for a meeting. And he would have had to have send notes to everyone ahead of time -- and received confirmations back -- so people would be in place for each meeting. The Thames in January is very cold. He presumably shot the Bridge at least once today. You would be hard pressed to achieve this today, with reliable public transportation.
About Monday 22 January 1665/66
San Diego Sarah • Link
Jeanine's comment about Dr. Bendo is misleading or those of you not familiar with John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester:
An episode in 1676 involving a drunken fight with the night guard resulted in one of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester's friends being killed, and Rochester was -- again -- banished by Charles II.
Unwilling to return to the boring life in the country with his long-suffering wife, Rochester decided to go into hiding by disguising himself as a quack doctor named Dr. Bendo.
"When the profligate Earl of Rochester, under the name of "Alexander Bendo," played the part of a mountebank physician in the City, he took up his lodgings in Tower Street, next door to the Black Swan, at a goldsmith's house, where he gave out that he was sure of being seen "from 3 of the clock in the afternoon till 8 at night."
"Being under an unlucky accident, which obliged him to keep out of the way, he disguised himself so that his nearest friends could not have known him, and set up in Tower Street for an Italian mountebank, where he [had a stage and] practised physic some weeks not without success." — Burnet's Life, p. 37, ed. 1680. -- London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.