Remember the conversation "Captain Grove, and he and I alone to talk of ... the Fishery, ... of which some of them I trust in God will take, I resolved this afternoon to go and consult my Lord Sandwich about it."
In their afternoon conversation Sandwich talks of Sir Edward Ford. SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT in 1666 Sir Edward is the author of "Experimental Proposals how the King may have money to pay and maintain his Fleets, with ease to his people: London may be rebuilt, and all proprietors satisfied: money to be but at six per cent, on pawns, and the Fishing Trade set up, ..."
Then Sandwich promises Pepys "... when it is seasonable to bring me into the commission with others, if any of them take, and I perceive he and Mr. Coventry are resolved to follow it hard."
The bad harvest is making them look to other food sources. King Charles I in 1632 had set up a coastal North Sea protected area, to stop the Dutch from poaching traditional English fishing grounds. Must be time for a rethink.
"Mr. Montagu and the Duke of Buckingham fallen a-pieces, the Duchesse going to a nunnery; ..."
I think this means Charles II was upset with Ned and George for conspiring to replace Catherine, and so Mary Fairfax Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham is going to go to the country until things cool down. I note she married George at Nun Appleton near Nantwich, N. Yorks. (the Fairfax family home) which might explain Pepys thinking she was going to a nunnery.
In the summary it says "She was a favourite of King Charles II." I assume you mean Francis Stuart was a favorite ... not her sister Sophia Stewart Bulkeley or her mother Sophia Stewart.
"and I perceive that by our countenancing of him he do begin to pluck up his head, and will do good things I hope in the yard."
I love "pluck up his head" ... I'm thinking this means Commissioner Peter Pett is getting the hang of being the boss of the Chatham Dockyard, and not spending all his time designing new-fangled ships. It's only taken three months:
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… Monday 3 August 1663 ... And then in the evening walked in the garden, where we conjured him to look after the yard, and for the time to come that he would take the whole faults and ill management of the yard upon himself, he having full power and our concurrence to suspend or do anything else that he thinks fit to keep people and officers to their duty. He, having made good promises, though I fear his performance, we parted (though I spoke so freely that he could have been angry) good friends, and in some hopes that matters will be better for the time to come.
I miss Guy Fawkes night! Used to go to a 17th century pub on the river Teign and watch them, reflected in the river, and against the dark Devon sky. Used to wonder where the Barbary pirates came ashore in 1633, and if William marched this way on his way to Exeter (more probably went the short way, over the moors). Good times.
I've spent the evening reading more about Bartolomé de Las Casas and find that, in my enthusiasm to find evidence that Charles II et al were scurvy knaves, I had made assumptions about Fr. Las Casas.
In the Forward the authors state he would never have accepted any kind of revolt against the power of either the Roman Catholic Church or Spain. His criticism of the conquistadors' behavior, the agents of the Crown, and members of the clergy were relentless and uncompromised. Since he was never formally accused of heterodoxy or suspected of treason, he argued successfully that all rebels were disrupters of ‘the common reason of man’. Like many radicals, Las Casas was, in all respects but one, a staunch conservative.
Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas' believed the Crown had seriously mismanaged its colonies, and the behavior of the colonists had ‘given reason for the name of Christ to be loathed and abominated by countless people’. But Las Casas never disputed that the Spanish were the legitimate rulers of the Americas. Until he died, he believed the indigenous peoples had, in ignorance but in good faith, voluntarily surrendered their natural sovereignty to the King of Spain.
His book, the Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, was written in 1542 and dedicated to Philip II. It was intended to inform the King of what was happening in the Americas in his name, as a warning that if the atrocities continued God would destroy Spain as a punishment.
His "atmospheric anatomy of genocide" was translated into every major European language and published at that time, and widely read for the next 300 years.
So Pepys et al could have read this 100-yer-old incitement in English, if they could find it.
Blaming Catherine of Braganza for not speaking out against the Portugal slave trade is insane. She was born in November, 1638 and educated in a convent to be traded as a political pawn by her family as an obedient Catholic Queen to a foreign land for breeding and treaty purposes. She is now 25, living in the cold land of the Protestant damned, with a husband who doesn't love her, and enjoys teaching her the wrong words in English so people laugh at her. Queen Henrietta Maria, who should be her ally, is busy conspiring to replace her. It could be years before she has the courage to voice an original thought.
Edward Field pursued Pepys because the rest of the Board were 'parliament-men' as Pepys explains 24 June 1662: "At night news is brought me that Field the rogue hath this day cast me at Guildhall in L30 for his imprisonment, to which I signed his commitment with the rest of the officers; but they having been parliament-men, that he hath begun the law with me; and threatens more, but I hope the Duke of York will bear me out."
Can anyone remind me what Sir William Warren has to do with this -- or is it another matter?
I had never heard of Bartolomé de Las Casas before. I find he published a book, going Caribbean island by island, river and community, detailing problems.
To give you a flavor, here is the opening paragraph of the conclusion:
"I, Bartolomé de Las Casas, or Casaus, a brother in the Dominican Order, was, by the grace of God, persuaded by a number of people here at the Spanish court, out of their concern for the Christian faith and their compassion towards the afflictions and calamities that befall their fellow-men, to write the work you have before you in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved. My deep love of Castile has also been a spur, for I do not wish to see my country destroyed as a divine punishment for sins against the honour of God and the True Faith. It had always been my intention to pen this account, although it has been long delayed by my being taken up with so many other tasks. I completed it in Valencia on the eighth day of December 1542, at a time when the violence, the oppression, the despotism, the killing, the plunder, the depopulation, the outrages, the agonies and the calamities we have described were at their height throughout the New World wherever Christians have set foot. It may be that some areas are worse than others: Mexico City and the surrounding territories are a little better than most, for there, at least, outrages cannot be committed so publicly, as there is justice of a sort, despite the crippling taxation unjustly imposed on the people. Yet I do see hope for the future, for, as the Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V (whose person and whose Empire may God preserve), learns of the crimes committed against his will and against that of God by his servants in the New World and of their treachery towards the people of the continent (for, until now, there has been an effective conspiracy of silence about what has really been happening), he will, as one wedded to the concept of justice and avid to see it prevail, put a stop to the wickedness and undertake a total reform of the administration of this New World that God has bestowed upon him and will do so for the greater glory of the Holy Catholic Church and for the salvation of his own royal soul. Amen."
So the Spanish were made aware of the wickedness they had undertaken 130 years before Pepys' Diary. Maybe it wasn't translated into English, but plenty of people spoke Spanish.
Difficult to imagine discounting something as clear as this ... until you remember how dead-set we seem to be to change the climate right now. Discounting news you don't like is also part of the human condition.
Orphans: Rich ones were "sold" by the monarch to nobles who would then marry them to their children, so taking over their inheritances. Wards of the parish like Pepys' Susan, Jinny and Wayneman got board, lodging and a place to sleep by the kitchen fire. They were the lucky ones.
Miners: No one volunteered to be a tin or coal miner: You were born into a family that did that, and you had no option but to head down the mine as well. It was a designation, like being an "untouchable" in India.
War: Your landlord promised the King he could muster 500 men, and suddenly you found yourself being marched off to Worcester and expected to kill your cousin who had a different landlord. If you survived on the side that lost, you could be deported to a sugar plantation for life.
Or you went to the pub for a drink with your mates, and the Press Gang got you. You would disappear, possibly for years, or killed in battle.
They treated Africans sold by their own people with as little regard as they treated British unfortunates. Lousy. There was no mercy. But there were too many mouths to feed, millions of refugees fleeing plagues, religious persecution, war, and famine caused by floods and crop failures, so on some level perhaps they rationalized exporting people to "empty" lands of plenty and providing them with work was the right thing to do? So long as the slave isn't an Israelite, the Bible repeatedly says you can do it.
Today there are more enslaved people than there were in the 18th century. The "too many people and refugees" excuse is almost the same, but there are no more "empty" lands, so we can only plead GREED to provide the individual solutions. Perhaps we should clean house rather than throw stones?
Being homeless today is the equivalent of being poor then; Approx.1/3 of the population of England slept in the open at this time. Then as now, jail was a form of welfare. You only went to prison before trial; afterwards it was off to the stocks, be branded or mutilated, deported, hung, or hung-drawn-and-quartered/beheaded. Unless you were a debtor, in which case you remained locked up until your family coughed up the money (same today if you can't afford bail) or indentured servitude for X-number of years.
There was in France the galleys. "... at Marseilles ... watching Louis XIV's galleys put to sea with about 2,000 slaves tugging at the oars ..." Robert Boyle, a Biography by Flora Masson http://www.archive.org/details/cu… page 106 These slaves were Frenchmen, not Africans.
St. Vincent de Paul was a slave in North Africa, returned after a few years, and "In 1619 ... Louis XIII appointed Vincent chaplain general of the galleys with responsibility for the spiritual well-being of all the galley convicts of France." http://www.svdp-richboro.org/vinc…
Charles II attempted to release/ransom slaves from the Barbary Pirates, with mixed results. For centuries they raided Britain's coastal villages, wiping out whole communities. Queen Henrietta Maria's dwarf, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, was caught, enslaved, and returned to England some years later, inexplicably taller. There were about one million European slaves in North Africa at this time.
"... I am in some hopes that if I can get a grant from the King of such a part of all I discover I may chance to find a way to get something by the by, which do greatly please me the very thoughts of. "
A grant these days means you get a gift of up-front money to fund a project. Here I understand Pepys to want an exclusive agreement with Charles II to save the Navy some money by implementing a system, with his reward to be a percentage of any savings realized.
Don't some companies and the IRS do that today, incentivizing employees to speak up about bad systems, theft, incompetence, whistle-blowing, etc.? The RLS quote seems to be about another situation, or he has information to which we are not yet privy, or his idea of ethics is not the same as ours today.
After this exchange it almost sees too trivial to get back to our usual level of enquiry ... but does anyone know how they anchored their periwigs to their heads?
I'm guessing young Susan ran to William Griffith (the Navy's doorkeeper/ housekeeper) who would be close by. She had probably been told he was the "go to" person if anything went horribly wrong at home and she needed help. There are no eligible Griffens in the Encyclopedia.
Henry VIII came up with the idea of a postal service. He wanted a network of routes radiating from London along which letters of court could be carried by messengers. At various points, fresh horses would be ready to keep the messengers on the move. England had its Royal Mail.
Charles II expanded the Royal Mail to allow the routes to be used by everyone. Staging points evolved into post offices where letters were charged.
Nottingham got its postmaster in 1621. Richard Bullyvant was paid 25 shillings, 7 pence "for his pains in ridinge to Newark, Derby ..."
By 1637, there was a fortnightly delivery of mail from Nottingham to London – by foot! The brave postman had to trek more than 100 miles with the ever-present peril of highwaymen en route.
Because of Newark's position on the main London to York coach route, it held the honor of being head post office in Nottinghamshire, but once mail coaches began to run between Nottingham and the capital in 1784, Newark's importance waned.
Bouncing along the rutted tracks of old England, the coach journey took 24 hours with the Blackamoor's Head at the corner of Nottingham High Street and Pelham Street one of the most important coaching hostels.
Seedsman John Raynor established the first Nottingham post office in his shop on High Street, helped by Thomas Crofts, of Greyfriar Gate, who would tour the town ringing his bell – now on display in the British Postal Museum – accepting and delivering letters, and collecting the postage.
Business boomed, and over the next few decades new coaching routes opened. It became a competitive affair with coach drivers urging their steeds to average speeds of 10 miles an hour. The horses ran for an hour a day, three days a week, and had a career on the first-class service of about four years.
There were also changes in Nottingham, Raynor's post office moving to larger premises in High Street Place and then to Bridlesmith Gate.
In 1831, cast iron plates bearing street names were erected in Nottingham and within a year, demands to make life easier for postmen by numbering properties were first heard.
In 1840 the penny postage scheme, regardless of distance, became law and for the first time, the public could buy the famous Penny Black stamps. People flocked to Bridlesmith Gate where postmaster John Crosby and his staff were "off their heads with work and worry", trying to meet demand.
Envelopes weren't invented until the 1870s – a single sheet of paper sufficed, folded in two and sealed with wax.
The plague did not reach Nottingham until 1667, and a most curious thing was noticed:
"Knob Yard and Vat Yard remind us that Narrow Marsh was at one time the tanners' quarters of Nottingham, for the "knobs" mentioned are the pieces of refuse which were cut from the hides and burnt, while the vats referred to are the tan-pits.
"The tanners in Nottingham must have been attracted to Nottingham for the proximity of Sherwood Forest with its many oaks would give them a plentiful supply of the oak bark necessary for their trade.
"Barker Gate (another way of saying Tanners' Street, as the ancient name for a tanner was a barker) is one of the oldest streets of Nottingham and it is thought the tanners settled there in order to be near the water of the little river Beck, which has now disappeared underground. ... Eventually the waters of the Beck were insufficient for their purpose, and so the trade migrated into Narrow Marsh, but it was not entirely confined to Narrow Marsh, for there were tan pits at the east end of St. Peter's Church yard, and a great house at the corner of Pepper Street and St. Peter's Church Walk is built upon the site of a tannery.
"In 1667 there were 100 master tanners in Nottingham ...
"Tanners Hall Court was a courtyard leading off Maltmill Lane, and in it was situated an old building called Tanners Hall. Apparently the tanners used it as their guildhall. ...
During the plague, which visited Nottingham about 1667, Tanners Hall was used for Assize purposes, for it was found that the stench and effluvia arising from the tanning process was an excellent disinfectant and the whole of the Marsh area seems to have been free from plague which was raging in the other parts of the town. So marked was this, that the more opulent citizens eagerly purchased or rented houses within the area in order to escape the terrible visitation which was going on elsewhere.
My question to you all: Was a similar "safe area" around tanneries noted anywhere else? Maybe this is a clue to the virus -vs- rat debate.
I'm surprised Pepys isn't waiting for at least James, Duke of York to wear the latest French fashion first. Making the boss look dowdy and unfashionable doesn't seem to be good office politics. But I suppose the older, more follically-challenged like Clarendon and Pepys' Navy Board colleagues are already wearing them, for warmth if nothing else. Okay, don't wait for the Stuart brothers.
I wonder if Pepys was going thin on top, and he's been too vain to tell us?
Comments
Second Reading
About Friday 6 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
It was a fishy day for Pepys:
Remember the conversation "Captain Grove, and he and I alone to talk of ... the Fishery, ... of which some of them I trust in God will take, I resolved this afternoon to go and consult my Lord Sandwich about it."
In their afternoon conversation Sandwich talks of Sir Edward Ford. SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT in 1666 Sir Edward is the author of "Experimental Proposals how the King may have money to pay and maintain his Fleets, with ease to his people: London may be rebuilt, and all proprietors satisfied: money to be but at six per cent, on pawns, and the Fishing Trade set up, ..."
Then Sandwich promises Pepys "... when it is seasonable to bring me into the commission with others, if any of them take, and I perceive he and Mr. Coventry are resolved to follow it hard."
The bad harvest is making them look to other food sources. King Charles I in 1632 had set up a coastal North Sea protected area, to stop the Dutch from poaching traditional English fishing grounds. Must be time for a rethink.
About Friday 6 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Was there such a thing as a Church of England nunnery in 1663? Mary Fairfax Villiers was a very Godly lady, and obviously brought up a Puritan.
Now if it were Anne Hyde, Duchess of York going to a nunnery, there were quite a few RC English ones established on the continent at that time.
About Friday 6 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Mr. Montagu and the Duke of Buckingham fallen a-pieces, the Duchesse going to a nunnery; ..."
I think this means Charles II was upset with Ned and George for conspiring to replace Catherine, and so Mary Fairfax Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham is going to go to the country until things cool down. I note she married George at Nun Appleton near Nantwich, N. Yorks. (the Fairfax family home) which might explain Pepys thinking she was going to a nunnery.
About Sophia Stewart
San Diego Sarah • Link
In the summary it says "She was a favourite of King Charles II." I assume you mean Francis Stuart was a favorite ... not her sister Sophia Stewart Bulkeley or her mother Sophia Stewart.
About Edward Mountagu (Ned)
San Diego Sarah • Link
I'm confused ... Ned is said to have been Master of the Horse to both the Queen Mother and Queen Catherine. Is it both, or did he get a job change?
About Friday 6 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
"and I perceive that by our countenancing of him he do begin to pluck up his head, and will do good things I hope in the yard."
I love "pluck up his head" ... I'm thinking this means Commissioner Peter Pett is getting the hang of being the boss of the Chatham Dockyard, and not spending all his time designing new-fangled ships. It's only taken three months:
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Monday 3 August 1663
... And then in the evening walked in the garden, where we conjured him to look after the yard, and for the time to come that he would take the whole faults and ill management of the yard upon himself, he having full power and our concurrence to suspend or do anything else that he thinks fit to keep people and officers to their duty. He, having made good promises, though I fear his performance, we parted (though I spoke so freely that he could have been angry) good friends, and in some hopes that matters will be better for the time to come.
About Thursday 5 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
I miss Guy Fawkes night! Used to go to a 17th century pub on the river Teign and watch them, reflected in the river, and against the dark Devon sky. Used to wonder where the Barbary pirates came ashore in 1633, and if William marched this way on his way to Exeter (more probably went the short way, over the moors). Good times.
About Wednesday 4 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
I've spent the evening reading more about Bartolomé de Las Casas and find that, in my enthusiasm to find evidence that Charles II et al were scurvy knaves, I had made assumptions about Fr. Las Casas.
In the Forward the authors state he would never have accepted any kind of revolt against the power of either the Roman Catholic Church or Spain. His criticism of the conquistadors' behavior, the agents of the Crown, and members of the clergy were relentless and uncompromised. Since he was never formally accused of heterodoxy or suspected of treason, he argued successfully that all rebels were disrupters of ‘the common reason of man’. Like many radicals, Las Casas was, in all respects but one, a staunch conservative.
Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas' believed the Crown had seriously mismanaged its colonies, and the behavior of the colonists had ‘given reason for the name of Christ to be loathed and abominated by countless people’. But Las Casas never disputed that the Spanish were the legitimate rulers of the Americas. Until he died, he believed the indigenous peoples had, in ignorance but in good faith, voluntarily surrendered their natural sovereignty to the King of Spain.
His book, the Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, was written in 1542 and dedicated to Philip II. It was intended to inform the King of what was happening in the Americas in his name, as a warning that if the atrocities continued God would destroy Spain as a punishment.
His "atmospheric anatomy of genocide" was translated into every major European language and published at that time, and widely read for the next 300 years.
So Pepys et al could have read this 100-yer-old incitement in English, if they could find it.
About Wednesday 4 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Blaming Catherine of Braganza for not speaking out against the Portugal slave trade is insane. She was born in November, 1638 and educated in a convent to be traded as a political pawn by her family as an obedient Catholic Queen to a foreign land for breeding and treaty purposes. She is now 25, living in the cold land of the Protestant damned, with a husband who doesn't love her, and enjoys teaching her the wrong words in English so people laugh at her. Queen Henrietta Maria, who should be her ally, is busy conspiring to replace her. It could be years before she has the courage to voice an original thought.
About Thursday 5 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Edward Field pursued Pepys because the rest of the Board were 'parliament-men' as Pepys explains 24 June 1662: "At night news is brought me that Field the rogue hath this day cast me at Guildhall in L30 for his imprisonment, to which I signed his commitment with the rest of the officers; but they having been parliament-men, that he hath begun the law with me; and threatens more, but I hope the Duke of York will bear me out."
Can anyone remind me what Sir William Warren has to do with this -- or is it another matter?
About Wednesday 4 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
I had never heard of Bartolomé de Las Casas before. I find he published a book, going Caribbean island by island, river and community, detailing problems.
To give you a flavor, here is the opening paragraph of the conclusion:
"I, Bartolomé de Las Casas, or Casaus, a brother in the Dominican Order, was, by the grace of God, persuaded by a number of people here at the Spanish court, out of their concern for the Christian faith and their compassion towards the afflictions and calamities that befall their fellow-men, to write the work you have before you in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved. My deep love of Castile has also been a spur, for I do not wish to see my country destroyed as a divine punishment for sins against the honour of God and the True Faith. It had always been my intention to pen this account, although it has been long delayed by my being taken up with so many other tasks. I completed it in Valencia on the eighth day of December 1542, at a time when the violence, the oppression, the despotism, the killing, the plunder, the depopulation, the outrages, the agonies and the calamities we have described were at their height throughout the New World wherever Christians have set foot. It may be that some areas are worse than others: Mexico City and the surrounding territories are a little better than most, for there, at least, outrages cannot be committed so publicly, as there is justice of a sort, despite the crippling taxation unjustly imposed on the people. Yet I do see hope for the future, for, as the Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V (whose person and whose Empire may God preserve), learns of the crimes committed against his will and against that of God by his servants in the New World and of their treachery towards the people of the continent (for, until now, there has been an effective conspiracy of silence about what has really been happening), he will, as one wedded to the concept of justice and avid to see it prevail, put a stop to the wickedness and undertake a total reform of the administration of this New World that God has bestowed upon him and will do so for the greater glory of the Holy Catholic Church and for the salvation of his own royal soul. Amen."
So the Spanish were made aware of the wickedness they had undertaken 130 years before Pepys' Diary. Maybe it wasn't translated into English, but plenty of people spoke Spanish.
Difficult to imagine discounting something as clear as this ... until you remember how dead-set we seem to be to change the climate right now. Discounting news you don't like is also part of the human condition.
Taken from: http://www.columbia.edu/~daviss/w…
About Wednesday 4 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Orphans: Rich ones were "sold" by the monarch to nobles who would then marry them to their children, so taking over their inheritances. Wards of the parish like Pepys' Susan, Jinny and Wayneman got board, lodging and a place to sleep by the kitchen fire. They were the lucky ones.
Miners: No one volunteered to be a tin or coal miner: You were born into a family that did that, and you had no option but to head down the mine as well. It was a designation, like being an "untouchable" in India.
War: Your landlord promised the King he could muster 500 men, and suddenly you found yourself being marched off to Worcester and expected to kill your cousin who had a different landlord. If you survived on the side that lost, you could be deported to a sugar plantation for life.
Or you went to the pub for a drink with your mates, and the Press Gang got you. You would disappear, possibly for years, or killed in battle.
They treated Africans sold by their own people with as little regard as they treated British unfortunates. Lousy. There was no mercy. But there were too many mouths to feed, millions of refugees fleeing plagues, religious persecution, war, and famine caused by floods and crop failures, so on some level perhaps they rationalized exporting people to "empty" lands of plenty and providing them with work was the right thing to do? So long as the slave isn't an Israelite, the Bible repeatedly says you can do it.
Today there are more enslaved people than there were in the 18th century. The "too many people and refugees" excuse is almost the same, but there are no more "empty" lands, so we can only plead GREED to provide the individual solutions. Perhaps we should clean house rather than throw stones?
About Wednesday 4 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
My two cents on the 17th century slave trade:
Being homeless today is the equivalent of being poor then; Approx.1/3 of the population of England slept in the open at this time. Then as now, jail was a form of welfare. You only went to prison before trial; afterwards it was off to the stocks, be branded or mutilated, deported, hung, or hung-drawn-and-quartered/beheaded. Unless you were a debtor, in which case you remained locked up until your family coughed up the money (same today if you can't afford bail) or indentured servitude for X-number of years.
There was in France the galleys. "... at Marseilles ... watching Louis XIV's galleys put to sea with about 2,000 slaves tugging at the oars ..." Robert Boyle, a Biography by Flora Masson
http://www.archive.org/details/cu… page 106
These slaves were Frenchmen, not Africans.
St. Vincent de Paul was a slave in North Africa, returned after a few years, and "In 1619 ... Louis XIII appointed Vincent chaplain general of the galleys with responsibility for the spiritual well-being of all the galley convicts of France."
http://www.svdp-richboro.org/vinc…
Charles II attempted to release/ransom slaves from the Barbary Pirates, with mixed results. For centuries they raided Britain's coastal villages, wiping out whole communities. Queen Henrietta Maria's dwarf, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, was caught, enslaved, and returned to England some years later, inexplicably taller. There were about one million European slaves in North Africa at this time.
CONTINUED BELOW
About Wednesday 4 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... I am in some hopes that if I can get a grant from the King of such a part of all I discover I may chance to find a way to get something by the by, which do greatly please me the very thoughts of. "
A grant these days means you get a gift of up-front money to fund a project. Here I understand Pepys to want an exclusive agreement with Charles II to save the Navy some money by implementing a system, with his reward to be a percentage of any savings realized.
Don't some companies and the IRS do that today, incentivizing employees to speak up about bad systems, theft, incompetence, whistle-blowing, etc.? The RLS quote seems to be about another situation, or he has information to which we are not yet privy, or his idea of ethics is not the same as ours today.
About Wednesday 4 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
After this exchange it almost sees too trivial to get back to our usual level of enquiry ... but does anyone know how they anchored their periwigs to their heads?
About Tuesday 3 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
I'm guessing young Susan ran to William Griffith (the Navy's doorkeeper/ housekeeper) who would be close by. She had probably been told he was the "go to" person if anything went horribly wrong at home and she needed help. There are no eligible Griffens in the Encyclopedia.
About Monday 2 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
Terry - that's not his hair ... that's a wig! But you're right about his hypochondriac need to examine every medical irregularity in 1663.
About General Post Office
San Diego Sarah • Link
Read more at http://www.nottinghampost.com/byg…
Henry VIII came up with the idea of a postal service. He wanted a network of routes radiating from London along which letters of court could be carried by messengers. At various points, fresh horses would be ready to keep the messengers on the move. England had its Royal Mail.
Charles II expanded the Royal Mail to allow the routes to be used by everyone. Staging points evolved into post offices where letters were charged.
Nottingham got its postmaster in 1621. Richard Bullyvant was paid 25 shillings, 7 pence "for his pains in ridinge to Newark, Derby ..."
By 1637, there was a fortnightly delivery of mail from Nottingham to London – by foot! The brave postman had to trek more than 100 miles with the ever-present peril of highwaymen en route.
Because of Newark's position on the main London to York coach route, it held the honor of being head post office in Nottinghamshire, but once mail coaches began to run between Nottingham and the capital in 1784, Newark's importance waned.
Bouncing along the rutted tracks of old England, the coach journey took 24 hours with the Blackamoor's Head at the corner of Nottingham High Street and Pelham Street one of the most important coaching hostels.
Seedsman John Raynor established the first Nottingham post office in his shop on High Street, helped by Thomas Crofts, of Greyfriar Gate, who would tour the town ringing his bell – now on display in the British Postal Museum – accepting and delivering letters, and collecting the postage.
Business boomed, and over the next few decades new coaching routes opened. It became a competitive affair with coach drivers urging their steeds to average speeds of 10 miles an hour. The horses ran for an hour a day, three days a week, and had a career on the first-class service of about four years.
There were also changes in Nottingham, Raynor's post office moving to larger premises in High Street Place and then to Bridlesmith Gate.
In 1831, cast iron plates bearing street names were erected in Nottingham and within a year, demands to make life easier for postmen by numbering properties were first heard.
In 1840 the penny postage scheme, regardless of distance, became law and for the first time, the public could buy the famous Penny Black stamps. People flocked to Bridlesmith Gate where postmaster John Crosby and his staff were "off their heads with work and worry", trying to meet demand.
Envelopes weren't invented until the 1870s – a single sheet of paper sufficed, folded in two and sealed with wax.
About Plague
San Diego Sarah • Link
The plague did not reach Nottingham until 1667, and a most curious thing was noticed:
"Knob Yard and Vat Yard remind us that Narrow Marsh was at one time the tanners' quarters of Nottingham, for the "knobs" mentioned are the pieces of refuse which were cut from the hides and burnt, while the vats referred to are the tan-pits.
"The tanners in Nottingham must have been attracted to Nottingham for the proximity of Sherwood Forest with its many oaks would give them a plentiful supply of the oak bark necessary for their trade.
"Barker Gate (another way of saying Tanners' Street, as the ancient name for a tanner was a barker) is one of the oldest streets of Nottingham and it is thought the tanners settled there in order to be near the water of the little river Beck, which has now disappeared underground. ... Eventually the waters of the Beck were insufficient for their purpose, and so the trade migrated into Narrow Marsh, but it was not entirely confined to Narrow Marsh, for there were tan pits at the east end of St. Peter's Church yard, and a great house at the corner of Pepper Street and St. Peter's Church Walk is built upon the site of a tannery.
"In 1667 there were 100 master tanners in Nottingham ...
"Tanners Hall Court was a courtyard leading off Maltmill Lane, and in it was situated an old building called Tanners Hall. Apparently the tanners used it as their guildhall. ...
During the plague, which visited Nottingham about 1667, Tanners Hall was used for Assize purposes, for it was found that the stench and effluvia arising from the tanning process was an excellent disinfectant and the whole of the Marsh area seems to have been free from plague which was raging in the other parts of the town. So marked was this, that the more opulent citizens eagerly purchased or rented houses within the area in order to escape the terrible visitation which was going on elsewhere.
My question to you all: Was a similar "safe area" around tanneries noted anywhere else? Maybe this is a clue to the virus -vs- rat debate.
Lots more info at: http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/ar…
About Monday 2 November 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
I'm surprised Pepys isn't waiting for at least James, Duke of York to wear the latest French fashion first. Making the boss look dowdy and unfashionable doesn't seem to be good office politics. But I suppose the older, more follically-challenged like Clarendon and Pepys' Navy Board colleagues are already wearing them, for warmth if nothing else. Okay, don't wait for the Stuart brothers.
I wonder if Pepys was going thin on top, and he's been too vain to tell us?