"Before the renovations they would walk on the leads, and talk."
And I bet they will again, Terry -- it's March in London. It's cold, windy, rainy and miserable (it snowed last week and there was a downpour yesterday) -- and it gets dark quite early, even if this particular evening was fine and they could get bundled up and see their way around the garden by the light of the moon and the lights coming through the windows opening onto the area. There's nothing like falling off the edge of your roof in the dark because you can't see something dangerous.
"Pepys would rather Elizabeth not hear from anyone at all (if you think of an exception, post it);"
Today's visit from Father Fogourdy, "and she is mightily for our going to hear a famous Reule preach at the French Embassador’s house:" would be especially worrying. A reminder that just 8 days ago:
Sunday 20 March 1664 (Lord’s day). "Kept my bed all the morning, ... We lay talking all the while, among other things of religion, wherein I am sorry so often to hear my wife talk of her being and resolving to die a Catholique and indeed a small matter, I believe, would absolutely turn her, which I am sorry for."
These events could be that "small matter". I would be worried too.
For centuries the Custom House in London, where customs duties on imports and exports were collected, played a central part in the working of the commercial Thames and was a major source of income for the Exchequer.
At each major English port the officials responsible for collecting duties on behalf of the monarch were based at a building known as Custom House. England’s major export during the early Middle Ages was wool and in 1203 King John introduced a tax on its export. London duties were paid at Wool Quay, immediately upstream from the Tower of London. By the time of Edward I import duties on wine and other goods were providing a considerable income to the Exchequer. London’s first recorded customs building was constructed at Wool Quay by the Sheriff of London in 1382 during the reign of Richard II. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer, Comptroller of the Customs of Wools, Skins and Tanned Hides from 1374 until 1386, was based at Custom House for his work as manager of tax collectors.
Those officials appointed as collectors and controllers during the mid-15th century were from amongst London’s leading merchants and stayed in their posts for short periods, often then rising to higher civic offices. The leading London customs officials during the latter years of Edward IV and reign of Henry VII however were royal servants who held their positions for many years. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth eight principal officers were employed at Custom House, each with between two and 16 men below them.
The medieval Custom House was rebuilt in red brick 1559 of three stories, with the lower level being an open arcade. Inspectors from there known as ‘tide-waiters’ boarded each ship as it arrived to obtain a certificate of the vessel’s cargo, to be recorded at Custom House and the duty calculated. With confiscated goods stored inside, often of a flammable nature, fire was always a danger.
When the Elizabethan property was destroyed in the Great Fire it was the first building that Charles II proposed to be rebuilt, with funds coming from a newly-introduced tax on coal arriving into the capital. The King surprised everyone by appointing Christopher Wren, a professor of astronomy from Oxford, to oversee the work, his first design project in London, at a cost of £10,000.
Christopher Wren’s building was constructed in a U-shape around a courtyard. It featured a main hall known as the Long Room, where merchants and ships’ captains came to make payments. It gave its name to the equivalent office in customs buildings in all Britain’s ports, regardless of their shape and size. Wren’s building was in turn devastated by fire in 1715.
There's nothing like rain to end a riot. And nothing like watching your uncle rail at his wife to caution you not to explode over a dress with expensive lacing -- especially if you have been dressing to the nines recently.
" women in general simply did not attend funerals" -- Mary K, I had forgotten that.
Pepys says, "And being come to the grave as above, Dr. Pierson, the minister of the parish, did read the service for buriall: and so I saw my poor brother laid into the grave; and so all broke up; and I and my wife and Madam Turner and her family to my brother’s, ..." so it reads like at least two women attended. But you are undoubtedly correct about less immediate female members of the family.
Another Diary question which will probably never be answered.
Not a "nice" area: between Old Seacoal Lane and Fleet Lane stood the Fleet Prison, a substantial stone erection built in the mid-12th century with a surrounding moat. Prior to 1641 it was a house of detention for crimes of any nature, but was subsequently used for debtors only.
Unlicensed marriages were performed by the Rector of St. James, until 1616 when he was suspended. The trade was taken up by clerical prisoners living within the Rules of the Fleet, and who, having neither cash, character, nor liberty to lose, became the ready instruments of vice, greed, extravagance, and libertinism. http://www.thebookofdays.com/mont…
Prisoners of the Fleet did not have to live within the prison itself; they could take lodgings close to the prison so long as they paid the keeper to compensate him for loss of earnings. The area in which prisoners could exercise this privilege was known as the "Liberty of the Fleet" or the "Rules of the Fleet". The Liberty of the Fleet became known for its quickie weddings. Ministers (or those only claiming to be ministers) set up shop in taverns and houses. Couples wishing to marry in secrecy or in haste flocked to the area - many of them quite drunk and only briefly acquainted. http://www.okima.com/tour/fleet.h…
Monday 25 July 1664: "... and after dinner walked forth, and do what I could I could not keep myself from going through Fleet Lane, but had the sense of safety and honour not to go in, and the rather being a holiday I feared I might meet with some people that might know me. "
So I take it that Pepys didn't enter one of the establishments where he might have met one of the women available for such a 'marriage'.
Friday 18 December 1663 "... and down to Woolwich, calling at Ham Creeke, ... and so to the Ropeyarde and Docke, discoursing several things, and so back again and did the like at Deptford, and I find that it is absolutely necessary for me to do thus once a weeke at least all the yeare round, which will do me great good, ..."
Pepys hasn't been able to do this once a week, but he is certainly there more frequently than last year. I suspect he is trying to create a sense of urgency and excellence so they will be "ship shape" when preparations for war finally occur. (I'm thinking of the long ride he took with Coventry last year to Chatham when they did good-cop-bad-cop on poor old Pett. I see Pepys is getting more in-put from Coventry these days than from Sandwich.) http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
I doubt the Montagu girls went to Tom's funeral, so this might have been a condolence call, even though Sam doesn't record it that way. I doubt the Earl and Countess could just "stop by," so sending the girls would make sense ... maybe it's time for Sam to reconsider that postponed dinner party?
"... it snowing this morning a little, which from the mildness of the winter and the weather beginning to be hot and the summer to come on apace, is a little strange to us."
This probably influenced Sam's decision to bury Tom fast.
"... and then to my chamber with a fire till late at night looking over my brother Thomas’s papers, ..." ... "... there is no mention of it being particularly cold, if this meant that Sam had a fire lit so he could burn papers as he discarded them ..."
Australian Susan, in mid-March it still gets dark quite early, and it is always cold, wet and blowy at this time of year. Sam needed the fire for heat and light, and yes, I'm sure he burned a few pieces of paper as well.
"Bess faking each and every Sunday at church for Sam's sake."
On the other hand, I'm more horrified than surprised at Bess' revelation. Over the years I have noted how seldom Pepys reports they attended church together, and how often he was out "church shopping" usually alone. His apparent lack of conformity and frequent complaints about dull Scots sermons may have led Bess to think she could speak frankly at a time of mutual introspection.
My horror comes from saddling her husband with this politically-explosive secret as he climbs the perilous career ladder.
"Thence to my brother’s and ... am much beholden to Mr. Honeywood’s man in doing of it. His name is Herbert, one that says he knew me when he lived with Sir Samuel Morland, but I have forgot him." From : http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Peter Honywood lodged at Tom Pepys'. (L&M footnote, 16 March 1664) -- brother of Col. Henry and Michael Honywood.
Sunday 19 January 1661/62 -- and thence into the Old Bayly ... to my uncle Fenner’s; ... he having lately married a midwife that is old and ugly, and that hath already brought home to him a daughter and three children, ... NAMELY AUNT HESTER FENNER
Tom's decline made me think of Spike Millikan's headstone which reads, "I told you I was ill" -- but in Gaelic because the Diocese didn't approve. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_new… southern_counties/3742443.stm
Again the link is too long for this website, so if you feel moved to read the story, copy and link it up yourself.
"... Madam Turner ... her chief errand to tell me that she had got Dr. Wiverly, her Doctor, to search my brother’s mouth, where Mr. Powell says there is an ulcer, from thence he [POWELL] concludes that he [TOM] hath had the pox. But the Doctor swears that there is not, nor ever was any, and my brother being very sensible, which I was glad to hear, he [TOM] did talk with him [WIVERLY] about it, and he [TIM] did wholly disclaim that ever he had the disease, or that ever he said to Powell that he had it."
So Tom was coherent for a while in the early morning, and fortunately Jane Turner was able to get her own doctor to see him at that time. That cleared up a lot of things.
Yes, The., was 12 -- and nowhere does it say she was present when they were talking about Tom's condition. She was probably playing with the mastiff puppy in the garden.
The death of the great admiral, Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, at the battle of Solebay, on May 28, 1672, removed the other splendid father-in-law of the Burlington family. His funeral, "by water to Westminster, in solemn pomp," must have affected the inmates of the house in Pall Mall as well as the families in the two Piccadilly palaces. "They will not have me live," Lord Sandwich had said sadly to John Evelyn before he sailed. [1]
It is certain the whole trend of politics at this time — the crypto-Catholic movement, burrowing its way into Protestant England; the capuchins flitting about between Whitehall and St. James's; the alliance with the French against the Dutch, and the prolonged war with Holland; the plottings and placings of the Cabal, and the quarrels and changes in the royal harem, which had pushed up to the very door of the house in Pall Mall — must have been utterly distasteful to Robert Boyle and his passionately Puritan sister.[2] [1] Evelyn's Diary, [2] Katharine Boyle Jones, Lady Ranelagh
Comments
Second Reading
About Sunday 27 March 1664
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Before the renovations they would walk on the leads, and talk."
And I bet they will again, Terry -- it's March in London. It's cold, windy, rainy and miserable (it snowed last week and there was a downpour yesterday) -- and it gets dark quite early, even if this particular evening was fine and they could get bundled up and see their way around the garden by the light of the moon and the lights coming through the windows opening onto the area. There's nothing like falling off the edge of your roof in the dark because you can't see something dangerous.
About Monday 28 March 1664
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Pepys would rather Elizabeth not hear from anyone at all (if you think of an exception, post it);"
Today's visit from Father Fogourdy, "and she is mightily for our going to hear a famous Reule preach at the French Embassador’s house:" would be especially worrying. A reminder that just 8 days ago:
Sunday 20 March 1664 (Lord’s day).
"Kept my bed all the morning, ... We lay talking all the while, among other things of religion, wherein I am sorry so often to hear my wife talk of her being and resolving to die a Catholique and indeed a small matter, I believe, would absolutely turn her, which I am sorry for."
These events could be that "small matter". I would be worried too.
About Thursday 29 November 1666
San Diego Sarah • Link
Aphra Behr's works are now available to all:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2…
About Custom House
San Diego Sarah • Link
http://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.…
For centuries the Custom House in London, where customs duties on imports and exports were collected, played a central part in the working of the commercial Thames and was a major source of income for the Exchequer.
At each major English port the officials responsible for collecting duties on behalf of the monarch were based at a building known as Custom House. England’s major export during the early Middle Ages was wool and in 1203 King John introduced a tax on its export. London duties were paid at Wool Quay, immediately upstream from the Tower of London. By the time of Edward I import duties on wine and other goods were providing a considerable income to the Exchequer. London’s first recorded customs building was constructed at Wool Quay by the Sheriff of London in 1382 during the reign of Richard II. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer, Comptroller of the Customs of Wools, Skins and Tanned Hides from 1374 until 1386, was based at Custom House for his work as manager of tax collectors.
Those officials appointed as collectors and controllers during the mid-15th century were from amongst London’s leading merchants and stayed in their posts for short periods, often then rising to higher civic offices. The leading London customs officials during the latter years of Edward IV and reign of Henry VII however were royal servants who held their positions for many years. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth eight principal officers were employed at Custom House, each with between two and 16 men below them.
The medieval Custom House was rebuilt in red brick 1559 of three stories, with the lower level being an open arcade. Inspectors from there known as ‘tide-waiters’ boarded each ship as it arrived to obtain a certificate of the vessel’s cargo, to be recorded at Custom House and the duty calculated. With confiscated goods stored inside, often of a flammable nature, fire was always a danger.
When the Elizabethan property was destroyed in the Great Fire it was the first building that Charles II proposed to be rebuilt, with funds coming from a newly-introduced tax on coal arriving into the capital. The King surprised everyone by appointing Christopher Wren, a professor of astronomy from Oxford, to oversee the work, his first design project in London, at a cost of £10,000.
Christopher Wren’s building was constructed in a U-shape around a courtyard. It featured a main hall known as the Long Room, where merchants and ships’ captains came to make payments. It gave its name to the equivalent office in customs buildings in all Britain’s ports, regardless of their shape and size. Wren’s building was in turn devastated by fire in 1715.
About Saturday 26 March 1664
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Mrs. Hunt coming to see my wife by chance dined here with us."
She must have remembered that it was Stone Feast today! How much of an accident was this visit really???? Uh-huh.
About Saturday 26 March 1664
San Diego Sarah • Link
There's nothing like rain to end a riot. And nothing like watching your uncle rail at his wife to caution you not to explode over a dress with expensive lacing -- especially if you have been dressing to the nines recently.
About Wednesday 23 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
" women in general simply did not attend funerals" -- Mary K, I had forgotten that.
Pepys says, "And being come to the grave as above, Dr. Pierson, the minister of the parish, did read the service for buriall: and so I saw my poor brother laid into the grave; and so all broke up; and I and my wife and Madam Turner and her family to my brother’s, ..." so it reads like at least two women attended. But you are undoubtedly correct about less immediate female members of the family.
Another Diary question which will probably never be answered.
About Fleet Lane
San Diego Sarah • Link
Not a "nice" area: between Old Seacoal Lane and Fleet Lane stood the Fleet Prison, a substantial stone erection built in the mid-12th century with a surrounding moat. Prior to 1641 it was a house of detention for crimes of any nature, but was subsequently used for debtors only.
Unlicensed marriages were performed by the Rector of St. James, until 1616 when he was suspended. The trade was taken up by clerical prisoners living within the Rules of the Fleet, and who, having neither cash, character, nor liberty to lose, became the ready instruments of vice, greed, extravagance, and libertinism. http://www.thebookofdays.com/mont…
Prisoners of the Fleet did not have to live within the prison itself; they could take lodgings close to the prison so long as they paid the keeper to compensate him for loss of earnings. The area in which prisoners could exercise this privilege was known as the "Liberty of the Fleet" or the "Rules of the Fleet". The Liberty of the Fleet became known for its quickie weddings. Ministers (or those only claiming to be ministers) set up shop in taverns and houses. Couples wishing to marry in secrecy or in haste flocked to the area - many of them quite drunk and only briefly acquainted. http://www.okima.com/tour/fleet.h…
Monday 25 July 1664:
"... and after dinner walked forth, and do what I could I could not keep myself from going through Fleet Lane, but had the sense of safety and honour not to go in, and the rather being a holiday I feared I might meet with some people that might know me. "
So I take it that Pepys didn't enter one of the establishments where he might have met one of the women available for such a 'marriage'.
About Halfway House
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... walked to Redriffe (calling and eating a bit of collops and eggs at Half-way house), ..."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
About Thursday 24 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
Friday 18 December 1663
"... and down to Woolwich, calling at Ham Creeke, ... and so to the Ropeyarde and Docke, discoursing several things, and so back again and did the like at Deptford, and I find that it is absolutely necessary for me to do thus once a weeke at least all the yeare round, which will do me great good, ..."
Pepys hasn't been able to do this once a week, but he is certainly there more frequently than last year. I suspect he is trying to create a sense of urgency and excellence so they will be "ship shape" when preparations for war finally occur. (I'm thinking of the long ride he took with Coventry last year to Chatham when they did good-cop-bad-cop on poor old Pett. I see Pepys is getting more in-put from Coventry these days than from Sandwich.) http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
About Wednesday 23 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
I doubt the Montagu girls went to Tom's funeral, so this might have been a condolence call, even though Sam doesn't record it that way. I doubt the Earl and Countess could just "stop by," so sending the girls would make sense ... maybe it's time for Sam to reconsider that postponed dinner party?
About Monday 21 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... it snowing this morning a little, which from the mildness of the winter and the weather beginning to be hot and the summer to come on apace, is a little strange to us."
This probably influenced Sam's decision to bury Tom fast.
About Sunday 20 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... and then to my chamber with a fire till late at night looking over my brother Thomas’s papers, ..." ... "... there is no mention of it being particularly cold, if this meant that Sam had a fire lit so he could burn papers as he discarded them ..."
Australian Susan, in mid-March it still gets dark quite early, and it is always cold, wet and blowy at this time of year. Sam needed the fire for heat and light, and yes, I'm sure he burned a few pieces of paper as well.
About Sunday 20 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Bess faking each and every Sunday at church for Sam's sake."
On the other hand, I'm more horrified than surprised at Bess' revelation. Over the years I have noted how seldom Pepys reports they attended church together, and how often he was out "church shopping" usually alone. His apparent lack of conformity and frequent complaints about dull Scots sermons may have led Bess to think she could speak frankly at a time of mutual introspection.
My horror comes from saddling her husband with this politically-explosive secret as he climbs the perilous career ladder.
About John Herbert
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Thence to my brother’s and ... am much beholden to Mr. Honeywood’s man in doing of it. His name is Herbert, one that says he knew me when he lived with Sir Samuel Morland, but I have forgot him." From : http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Peter Honywood lodged at Tom Pepys'. (L&M footnote, 16 March 1664) -- brother of Col. Henry and Michael Honywood.
About Hester Fenner
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sunday 19 January 1661/62 -- and thence into the Old Bayly ... to my uncle Fenner’s; ... he having lately married a midwife that is old and ugly, and that hath already brought home to him a daughter and three children, ... NAMELY AUNT HESTER FENNER
About Tuesday 15 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
It has been brought to my attention that this relink takes you to an index page. However, when you select the top story
BBC NEWS | UK | England | Southern Counties | Milligan gets last ...
it takes you to the story, with the link I posted. Technology ... ??? I dunno.
About Tuesday 15 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... the epitaph for a tombstone ..."
Tom's decline made me think of Spike Millikan's headstone which reads, "I told you I was ill" -- but in Gaelic because the Diocese didn't approve.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_new… southern_counties/3742443.stm
Again the link is too long for this website, so if you feel moved to read the story, copy and link it up yourself.
About Tuesday 15 March 1663/64
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... Madam Turner ... her chief errand to tell me that she had got Dr. Wiverly, her Doctor, to search my brother’s mouth, where Mr. Powell says there is an ulcer, from thence he [POWELL] concludes that he [TOM] hath had the pox. But the Doctor swears that there is not, nor ever was any, and my brother being very sensible, which I was glad to hear, he [TOM] did talk with him [WIVERLY] about it, and he [TIM] did wholly disclaim that ever he had the disease, or that ever he said to Powell that he had it."
So Tom was coherent for a while in the early morning, and fortunately Jane Turner was able to get her own doctor to see him at that time. That cleared up a lot of things.
Yes, The., was 12 -- and nowhere does it say she was present when they were talking about Tom's condition. She was probably playing with the mastiff puppy in the garden.
About Sir Edward Mountagu ("my Lord," Earl of Sandwich)
San Diego Sarah • Link
Robert Boyle, a biography, by Flora Masson - Page 292
https://www.archive.org/stream/cu…
The death of the great admiral, Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, at the battle of Solebay, on May 28, 1672, removed the other splendid father-in-law of the Burlington family. His funeral, "by water to Westminster, in solemn pomp," must have affected the inmates of the house in Pall Mall as well as the families in the two Piccadilly palaces. "They will not have me live," Lord Sandwich had said sadly to John Evelyn before he sailed. [1]
It is certain the whole trend of politics at this time — the crypto-Catholic movement, burrowing its way into Protestant England; the capuchins flitting about between Whitehall and St. James's; the alliance with the French against the Dutch, and the prolonged war with Holland; the plottings and placings of the Cabal, and the quarrels and changes in the royal harem, which had pushed up to the very door of the house in Pall Mall — must have been utterly distasteful to Robert Boyle and his passionately Puritan sister.[2]
[1] Evelyn's Diary,
[2] Katharine Boyle Jones, Lady Ranelagh