"I through the garden to Mr. Coventry, where I saw Mr. Ch. Pett bringing him a modell, and indeed it is a pretty one, for a New Year’s gift;"
Christmas "boxes" (usually of money) were given to your servants and vendors the day after Christmas; gift giving to your superiors and friends usually happened at New Years. Christopher Pett was in the yacht and boat building business, so being friendly with Lord High Admiral James' secretary is a good idea.
William Coventry MP, Secretary to James, Duke of York, had many reasons to go to "Guiny House" where he probably had an office:
In December 1660 a committee of six men, Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke, 2nd Earl of Montgomery; William, Baron Craven of Hampstead Marshall; Sir George Carteret; William Coventry; Sir Ellis Leighton and Cornelius Vermuyden, was named to have charge of The Company of the Royal Adventurers into Africa's affairs. No mention was made of the office of governor or of any court of directors. Apparently it was thought that the committee of six could direct all of the company's affairs. PLUS it was William Coventry MP who was on the first delegation to Charles II for recovering money collected for the redemption of English slaves in Africa, a lifelong interest of his, and his brother, Henry Coventry MP, who served on the second delegation.
No doubt Coventry knew all about Capt. Robert Holmes' commission to make trouble for the Dutch, and more. And all Pepys could talk about was how bad Sir William Batten was?
"... to speak of some means how to part this great familiarity between Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes, and it is easy to do by any good friend of Sir J. Minnes to whom it will be a good service, and he thinks that Sir J. Denham will be a proper man for it, and so do I."
This sounds like Sir John Denham and Sir John Mennes are pals, and Denham could be used to alert Mennes to Battan's perfidity.
However, I find this note in our Annotations for Mennes:
"Sir John Mennes was satirized by Sir John Denham, whose poem about Mennes going from Calais to Boulogne to "eat a pig" is mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his diary.[3] 3^ Robert Bell, Lives of the most eminent literary scientific men of Great Britain, Longmans, 1839, p.56."
Writing a satirical poem isn't something you usually do to a close friend. My guess is that Warren and Pepys will have to rethink this plan.
Just in case you don't get the full import of Pepys note that Anne Hyde, Duchess of York has measels:
Symptoms of measels usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person, and they are infectious for 4 days before the symptoms show. SO ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS OF YORK COULD HAVE INFECTED EVERYONE OVER CHRISTMAS (contracted Dec 18-21 -- infectious starting December 22-25).
Charles II shows no worries, as usual. Since James and Anne live at St. James's Palace, perhaps he feels isolated enough.
Apparently the Duchess of York's measles was not serious:
Measles has been a scourge for centuries. Modern scientists suggest measles evolved after the rise of civilization in the Middle East and may have come from animals; the virus was highly similar to rinderpest, which infected cattle.
3rd to 10th century: physicians in Asia and North Africa identified and diagnosed measles, which was similar to smallpox, another highly contagious disease that triggered rashes and sores.
In 340, Chinese alchemist Ko Hung described the difference between smallpox and measles; a Christian priest, Ahrun, did the same in Egypt about 300 years later. In 910, the Persian physician Rhazes published the most widely celebrated early diagnoses of the two diseases.
1492: Christopher Columbus and European explorers arrive in the Americas, bringing a raft of deadly diseases — including measles — with them.
Native Americans had no natural immunity to many of these diseases. Measles, smallpox, whooping cough, chicken pox, bubonic plague, typhus and malaria — often deadly in Europe — became even more efficient killers in the New World. By some estimates, the Native American population plunged by as much as 95% over the next 150 years due to disease.
Measles is a highly contagious infection caused by the measles virus. Initial signs and symptoms typically include fever, often greater than 40 °C (104.0 °F), cough, runny nose, and inflamed eyes. Two or three days after the start of symptoms, small white spots may form inside the mouth. A red, flat rash which usually starts on the face and then spreads to the rest of the body typically begins three to five days after the start of symptoms.
Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Complications occur in about 30% and may include diarrhea, blindness, inflammation of the brain, and pneumonia among others.
Measles is an airborne disease which spreads easily through the coughs and sneezes of those infected, and contact with saliva or nasal secretions. Nine out of ten people who are not immune and share living space with an infected person will catch it. People are infectious to others from four days before to four days after the start of the rash. People usually do not get the disease more than once.
There is no treatment. Most people with uncomplicated measles will recover with rest and supportive treatment. Patients who become sicker may be developing pneumonia, ear infections, bronchitis (either viral bronchitis or secondary bacterial bronchitis), and brain inflammation. Brain inflammation from measles has a mortality rate of 15%.
Sandwich's house is evidently badly damaged. I wonder if the rebuilding inconvenience is one of the factors leading him to "take the air" in Chelsea later this year. Perhaps they have "guest housing" at Whitehall or St. James's where he could camp? If nothing else, he could stay at the Wardrobe. Interesting Pepys never mentions where he stays temporarily.
This day I observed the house, which I took to be the new tennis-court, newly built next my Lord’s lodgings, to be fallen down by the badness of the foundation or slight working, which my cozen Roger and his discontented party cry out upon, as an example how the King’s work is done, which I am sorry to see him and others so apt to think ill of things. It hath beaten down a good deal of my Lord’s lodgings, and had like to have killed Mrs. Sarah, she having but newly gone out of it.
Presumably it was rebuilt better, because Charles II was playing tennis on December 28, 1663. Pepys does not specify the location of the court.
To answer Robert Gertz' question "Did Holmes have official orders to attack Dutch shipping? Or was he operating loosely as a privateer with unofficial orders, (not to be acknowledged) to hammer Dutch trade?" I guess he didn't have access to the encyclopedia back then. The relevant snippet is:
The second African expedition – 1663 - 1664
"The objectives of the famous 1664 Guinea expedition are unclear. Although Capt. Robert Holmes was later charged with exceeding his orders by capturing Dutch forts and ships there, William Coventry talks of a "game" that was to be started there, which can only mean an Anglo-Dutch war (Bath MSS. CII, ff. 3-13).
"Capt. Robert Holmes' orders, again drafted by Coventry and signed by James, Duke of York, were to 'promote the Interests of the Royal Company' in HMS Jersey and to 'kill, take, sink or destroy such as shall oppose you' (Bath MSS. XCV, ff.3-5) - especially the Goulden Lyon of Flushing, a Dutch West India Company ship that had given the English a lot of trouble.
"The reason for the charges against Capt. Robert Holmes was that his success exceeded even the most unreasonable expectations, and that he was, diplomatically, a convenient scapegoat (a fact of which he seems to have been aware).
"In sight of the Dutch base at Gorée he took the West Indiaman Brill on 27 December 1663."
There's lots more adventures to come, but you'll have to read them for yourself.
This morning I awoke to a Christmas offering from Deborah Swift about gift giving in Tudor times. The day after Christmas "boxes" for servants was normal by then, but gifts between equals and to your superiors happened at New Years.
As a Merry Christmas/end of 2016 gift, JD Davies today posted excerpts from his new book, which contains not only a fabulous picture of Genoese Galleys and their slave rowers, but also a description of how fast they could maneuver and what it took to row a ship like that at 12 knots. Enjoy:
I suspect there were quite a few Uncle Wights trying to father off-spring when their brood either died off unexpectedly early, or a beloved wife turned out to be barren. Does anyone know of other examples -- other than Charles II's 'infatuation' with Monmouth?
Slightly off the point, in 1677: "... following a scandal, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester posed under the name “Dr. Bendo,” who claimed to be able to treat infertility in young women with great success. It’s fair to say that a lot of the women who came to his private surgery did indeed get up the duff, so I suppose the claim was technically correct." See: https://allpoetry.com/Signior-Dil…
Also slightly off the point, I recall one Duke of Devonshire had 13 daughters before he sired the necessary boy ... and about four Duchesses died in the process. Their family portrait featuring the longed-for baby boy and all his sisters hangs in Powderham Castle near Exeter.
The production of an heir was serious business to both men and women.
Meanwhile, back at Whitehall ... When Barbara Villiers Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine's second son was born in 1663, Charles II denied paternity but nevertheless gave her lavish Christmas presents the same year.
Back in 2006 Gus Spier posted: 'No, it makes sense to me, that having gone to Turner's funeral the day before, and seeing Mrs. Turner in her mourning, that Mrs. Pepys would turn to her husband and say, "Sam, that could be me. If (when) that happens to you, what shall I ever do?"'
It was Sam's cousin, Edward Pepys, who died. Jane Pepys Turner and Elizabeth Pepys Dyke were Edward's sisters. There is no mention of Edward's widow, Elizabeth Pepys, making it to London to collect his body.
Gus' larger point that Samuel's wife would naturally have thought about her own widowhood at this time is absolutely correct.
Thursday 24 December 1663 -- "Up betimes; and though it was a most foggy morning, and cold, yet with a gally down to Eriffe, several times being at a loss whither we went. There I mustered two ships of the King’s, lent by him to the Guiny Company, which are manned better than ours at far less wages."
These ships were the Sophia and the Welcome. Most of the men served at 17s. and 16s. a month, as against 24s. in the navy. (Per L&M note)
Erith, Kent is village on the south bank of the Thames below Woolwich. Henry VIII opened a naval dockyard and an anchorage there. Ships often discharged cargo in Erith before proceeding through the shallows upstream.
Thursday 24 December 1663 -- "Up betimes; and though it was a most foggy morning, and cold, yet with a gally down to Eriffe, several times being at a loss whither we went. There I mustered two ships of the King’s, lent by him to the Guiny Company, which are manned better than ours at far less wages."
These ships were the Sophia and the Welcome. Most of the men served at 17s. and 16s. a month, as against 24s. in the navy. (Per L&M note)
Erith, Kent is village on the south bank of the Thames below Woolwich. Henry VIII opened a naval dockyard and an anchorage there. Ships often discharged cargo in Erith before proceeding through the shallows upstream.
Henry VIII: December 10, 1663: "Calling at Wotton’s, my shoemaker’s, today, he tells me ... that Harris is come to the Duke’s house again; and of a rare play to be acted this week of Davenant’s: the story of Henry the Eighth with all his wives." Davenant revived Shakespeare's Henry VIII at the Duke's House Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields. There is no evidence of Davenant altering this play, although he usually did because he did not own the copyright to the originals. Henry VIII was first performed in 1613, and appeared in print in 1623. Downes (p.24) describes this revival as a great success and Thomas Patrick Betterton played Henry VIII, 'he being instructed in it by Sir William (Davenant), who had had it from Old Mr. Lowen, that had his Instructions from Mr. Shakespeare himself ....' [Henry or Joseph] Harris appeared as Wolsey, and Betterton's wife, Mary Saunderson, was Queen Katherine of Aragon. For more information: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Plague had been a constant threat in London since Medieval times. The outbreak of 1665 began in St. Giles-in-the-Fields and spread to devastate the over-crowded, impoverished areas of Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, St. Giles' and Westminster.
This was quite a send-off for Edward Pepys. According to the Encyclopedia, "He was buried in the church of Tattersett St. Andrews, Norfolk." He must have been known in the City for 20 coaches to turn out, and for Sandwich to think this was an appropriate use of his coach for the morning.
The next thing that puzzles me is that cousin Sam and Beale took precedence over Edward Pepys' two sisters, Jane Pepys Turner and Elizabeth Pepys Dike. Jane's husband, William Turner, was an important man.
"I made up to the mourners," -- I believe that means Sam paid the mourners, so maybe they were "professionals," paid to make lots of noise. Or maybe they accompanied the corpse to Norfolk?
Sam can go to a cock fight -- just because he had never seen one before -- but not a play where he might be seen by Charles II and James. He can't buy books with his own money, but he can be reimbursed by petty cash for office books and spend the money on personal books. He has more money than ever before, but "my poor wife" can't have a velvet dress to look as smart as he does at church. Samuel -- your convoluted logic of what is proper and what is not, is ridiculous. And as for "Among other discourse encouraging him to pursue his love to Mrs. Lane, while God knows I had a roguish meaning in it." -- if she was married, you wouldn't have to worry if she got pregnant, would you?!!! You'd do that to a friend. You all-round rogue.
Comments
Second Reading
About Wednesday 30 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
"I through the garden to Mr. Coventry, where I saw Mr. Ch. Pett bringing him a modell, and indeed it is a pretty one, for a New Year’s gift;"
Christmas "boxes" (usually of money) were given to your servants and vendors the day after Christmas; gift giving to your superiors and friends usually happened at New Years. Christopher Pett was in the yacht and boat building business, so being friendly with Lord High Admiral James' secretary is a good idea.
Pepys comes empty-handed.
About Wednesday 30 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
William Coventry MP, Secretary to James, Duke of York, had many reasons to go to "Guiny House" where he probably had an office:
In December 1660 a committee of six men, Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke, 2nd Earl of Montgomery; William, Baron Craven of Hampstead Marshall; Sir George Carteret; William Coventry; Sir Ellis Leighton and Cornelius Vermuyden, was named to have charge of The Company of the Royal Adventurers into Africa's affairs. No mention was made of the office of governor or of any court of directors. Apparently it was thought that the committee of six could direct all of the company's affairs. PLUS it was William Coventry MP who was on the first delegation to Charles II for recovering money collected for the redemption of English slaves in Africa, a lifelong interest of his, and his brother, Henry Coventry MP, who served on the second delegation.
No doubt Coventry knew all about Capt. Robert Holmes' commission to make trouble for the Dutch, and more. And all Pepys could talk about was how bad Sir William Batten was?
About Tuesday 29 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... to speak of some means how to part this great familiarity between Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes, and it is easy to do by any good friend of Sir J. Minnes to whom it will be a good service, and he thinks that Sir J. Denham will be a proper man for it, and so do I."
This sounds like Sir John Denham and Sir John Mennes are pals, and Denham could be used to alert Mennes to Battan's perfidity.
However, I find this note in our Annotations for Mennes:
"Sir John Mennes was satirized by Sir John Denham, whose poem about Mennes going from Calais to Boulogne to "eat a pig" is mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his diary.[3] 3^ Robert Bell, Lives of the most eminent literary scientific men of Great Britain, Longmans, 1839, p.56."
Writing a satirical poem isn't something you usually do to a close friend. My guess is that Warren and Pepys will have to rethink this plan.
About Monday 28 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Just in case you don't get the full import of Pepys note that Anne Hyde, Duchess of York has measels:
Symptoms of measels usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person, and they are infectious for 4 days before the symptoms show. SO ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS OF YORK COULD HAVE INFECTED EVERYONE OVER CHRISTMAS (contracted Dec 18-21 -- infectious starting December 22-25).
Charles II shows no worries, as usual. Since James and Anne live at St. James's Palace, perhaps he feels isolated enough.
About Monday 28 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Apparently the Duchess of York's measles was not serious:
Measles has been a scourge for centuries. Modern scientists suggest measles evolved after the rise of civilization in the Middle East and may have come from animals; the virus was highly similar to rinderpest, which infected cattle.
3rd to 10th century: physicians in Asia and North Africa identified and diagnosed measles, which was similar to smallpox, another highly contagious disease that triggered rashes and sores.
In 340, Chinese alchemist Ko Hung described the difference between smallpox and measles; a Christian priest, Ahrun, did the same in Egypt about 300 years later. In 910, the Persian physician Rhazes published the most widely celebrated early diagnoses of the two diseases.
1492: Christopher Columbus and European explorers arrive in the Americas, bringing a raft of deadly diseases — including measles — with them.
Native Americans had no natural immunity to many of these diseases. Measles, smallpox, whooping cough, chicken pox, bubonic plague, typhus and malaria — often deadly in Europe — became even more efficient killers in the New World. By some estimates, the Native American population plunged by as much as 95% over the next 150 years due to disease.
Highlights from http://www.latimes.com/local/cali…
&&&
Measles is a highly contagious infection caused by the measles virus. Initial signs and symptoms typically include fever, often greater than 40 °C (104.0 °F), cough, runny nose, and inflamed eyes. Two or three days after the start of symptoms, small white spots may form inside the mouth. A red, flat rash which usually starts on the face and then spreads to the rest of the body typically begins three to five days after the start of symptoms.
Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days.
Complications occur in about 30% and may include diarrhea, blindness, inflammation of the brain, and pneumonia among others.
Measles is an airborne disease which spreads easily through the coughs and sneezes of those infected, and contact with saliva or nasal secretions. Nine out of ten people who are not immune and share living space with an infected person will catch it. People are infectious to others from four days before to four days after the start of the rash. People usually do not get the disease more than once.
There is no treatment. Most people with uncomplicated measles will recover with rest and supportive treatment. Patients who become sicker may be developing pneumonia, ear infections, bronchitis (either viral bronchitis or secondary bacterial bronchitis), and brain inflammation. Brain inflammation from measles has a mortality rate of 15%.
Notes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mea…
About Wednesday 24 June 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sandwich's house is evidently badly damaged. I wonder if the rebuilding inconvenience is one of the factors leading him to "take the air" in Chelsea later this year. Perhaps they have "guest housing" at Whitehall or St. James's where he could camp? If nothing else, he could stay at the Wardrobe. Interesting Pepys never mentions where he stays temporarily.
About Tennis court (Whitehall Palace)
San Diego Sarah • Link
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… --
This day I observed the house, which I took to be the new tennis-court, newly built next my Lord’s lodgings, to be fallen down by the badness of the foundation or slight working, which my cozen Roger and his discontented party cry out upon, as an example how the King’s work is done, which I am sorry to see him and others so apt to think ill of things. It hath beaten down a good deal of my Lord’s lodgings, and had like to have killed Mrs. Sarah, she having but newly gone out of it.
Presumably it was rebuilt better, because Charles II was playing tennis on December 28, 1663. Pepys does not specify the location of the court.
About Sunday 27 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
To answer Robert Gertz' question "Did Holmes have official orders to attack Dutch shipping? Or was he operating loosely as a privateer with unofficial orders, (not to be acknowledged) to hammer Dutch trade?" I guess he didn't have access to the encyclopedia back then. The relevant snippet is:
The second African expedition – 1663 - 1664
"The objectives of the famous 1664 Guinea expedition are unclear. Although Capt. Robert Holmes was later charged with exceeding his orders by capturing Dutch forts and ships there, William Coventry talks of a "game" that was to be started there, which can only mean an Anglo-Dutch war (Bath MSS. CII, ff. 3-13).
"Capt. Robert Holmes' orders, again drafted by Coventry and signed by James, Duke of York, were to 'promote the Interests of the Royal Company' in HMS Jersey and to 'kill, take, sink or destroy such as shall oppose you' (Bath MSS. XCV, ff.3-5) - especially the Goulden Lyon of Flushing, a Dutch West India Company ship that had given the English a lot of trouble.
"The reason for the charges against Capt. Robert Holmes was that his success exceeded even the most unreasonable expectations, and that he was, diplomatically, a convenient scapegoat (a fact of which he seems to have been aware).
"In sight of the Dutch base at Gorée he took the West Indiaman Brill on 27 December 1663."
There's lots more adventures to come, but you'll have to read them for yourself.
About Friday 25 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
This morning I awoke to a Christmas offering from Deborah Swift about gift giving in Tudor times. The day after Christmas "boxes" for servants was normal by then, but gifts between equals and to your superiors happened at New Years.
For more information, enjoy: http://englishhistoryauthors.blog…
About Friday 26 June 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
As a Merry Christmas/end of 2016 gift, JD Davies today posted excerpts from his new book, which contains not only a fabulous picture of Genoese Galleys and their slave rowers, but also a description of how fast they could maneuver and what it took to row a ship like that at 12 knots. Enjoy:
https://jddavies.com/2016/12/19/m…
About Wednesday 11 May 1664
San Diego Sarah • Link
I suspect there were quite a few Uncle Wights trying to father off-spring when their brood either died off unexpectedly early, or a beloved wife turned out to be barren. Does anyone know of other examples -- other than Charles II's 'infatuation' with Monmouth?
Slightly off the point, in 1677: "... following a scandal, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester posed under the name “Dr. Bendo,” who claimed to be able to treat infertility in young women with great success. It’s fair to say that a lot of the women who came to his private surgery did indeed get up the duff, so I suppose the claim was technically correct." See: https://allpoetry.com/Signior-Dil…
Also slightly off the point, I recall one Duke of Devonshire had 13 daughters before he sired the necessary boy ... and about four Duchesses died in the process. Their family portrait featuring the longed-for baby boy and all his sisters hangs in Powderham Castle near Exeter.
The production of an heir was serious business to both men and women.
About Friday 25 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Meanwhile, back at Whitehall ... When Barbara Villiers Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine's second son was born in 1663, Charles II denied paternity but nevertheless gave her lavish Christmas presents the same year.
I wonder what they were.
About Friday 25 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Back in 2006 Gus Spier posted: 'No, it makes sense to me, that having gone to Turner's funeral the day before, and seeing Mrs. Turner in her mourning, that Mrs. Pepys would turn to her husband and say, "Sam, that could be me. If (when) that happens to you, what shall I ever do?"'
It was Sam's cousin, Edward Pepys, who died. Jane Pepys Turner and Elizabeth Pepys Dyke were Edward's sisters. There is no mention of Edward's widow, Elizabeth Pepys, making it to London to collect his body.
Gus' larger point that Samuel's wife would naturally have thought about her own widowhood at this time is absolutely correct.
About Welcome
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thursday 24 December 1663 -- "Up betimes; and though it was a most foggy morning, and cold, yet with a gally down to Eriffe, several times being at a loss whither we went. There I mustered two ships of the King’s, lent by him to the Guiny Company, which are manned better than ours at far less wages."
These ships were the Sophia and the Welcome. Most of the men served at 17s. and 16s. a month, as against 24s. in the navy. (Per L&M note)
Erith, Kent is village on the south bank of the Thames below Woolwich. Henry VIII opened a naval dockyard and an anchorage there. Ships often discharged cargo in Erith before proceeding through the shallows upstream.
For more information, see: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
About Sophia
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thursday 24 December 1663 -- "Up betimes; and though it was a most foggy morning, and cold, yet with a gally down to Eriffe, several times being at a loss whither we went. There I mustered two ships of the King’s, lent by him to the Guiny Company, which are manned better than ours at far less wages."
These ships were the Sophia and the Welcome. Most of the men served at 17s. and 16s. a month, as against 24s. in the navy. (Per L&M note)
Erith, Kent is village on the south bank of the Thames below Woolwich. Henry VIII opened a naval dockyard and an anchorage there. Ships often discharged cargo in Erith before proceeding through the shallows upstream.
For more information, see: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
About Thursday 24 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Henry VIII: December 10, 1663: "Calling at Wotton’s, my shoemaker’s, today, he tells me ... that Harris is come to the Duke’s house again; and of a rare play to be acted this week of Davenant’s: the story of Henry the Eighth with all his wives." Davenant revived Shakespeare's Henry VIII at the Duke's House Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields. There is no evidence of Davenant altering this play, although he usually did because he did not own the copyright to the originals. Henry VIII was first performed in 1613, and appeared in print in 1623. Downes (p.24) describes this revival as a great success and Thomas Patrick Betterton played Henry VIII, 'he being instructed in it by Sir William (Davenant), who had had it from Old Mr. Lowen, that had his Instructions from Mr. Shakespeare himself ....' [Henry or Joseph] Harris appeared as Wolsey, and Betterton's wife, Mary Saunderson, was Queen Katherine of Aragon. For more information: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
About Shoreditch
San Diego Sarah • Link
Plague had been a constant threat in London since Medieval times. The outbreak of 1665 began in St. Giles-in-the-Fields and spread to devastate the over-crowded, impoverished areas of Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, St. Giles' and Westminster.
About Wednesday 23 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
This was quite a send-off for Edward Pepys. According to the Encyclopedia, "He was buried in the church of Tattersett St. Andrews, Norfolk." He must have been known in the City for 20 coaches to turn out, and for Sandwich to think this was an appropriate use of his coach for the morning.
The next thing that puzzles me is that cousin Sam and Beale took precedence over Edward Pepys' two sisters, Jane Pepys Turner and Elizabeth Pepys Dike. Jane's husband, William Turner, was an important man.
"I made up to the mourners," -- I believe that means Sam paid the mourners, so maybe they were "professionals," paid to make lots of noise. Or maybe they accompanied the corpse to Norfolk?
-- More mysteries that will never be answered.
About Tuesday 22 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sam can go to a cock fight -- just because he had never seen one before -- but not a play where he might be seen by Charles II and James. He can't buy books with his own money, but he can be reimbursed by petty cash for office books and spend the money on personal books. He has more money than ever before, but "my poor wife" can't have a velvet dress to look as smart as he does at church. Samuel -- your convoluted logic of what is proper and what is not, is ridiculous. And as for "Among other discourse encouraging him to pursue his love to Mrs. Lane, while God knows I had a roguish meaning in it." -- if she was married, you wouldn't have to worry if she got pregnant, would you?!!! You'd do that to a friend. You all-round rogue.
About Tuesday 15 December 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thank you, Sasha ... an "l" not a "1". Of course! (Interesting ... grammatically that should read "a 'l' not an 'one.'" Oh well!)