"With Sir W. Batten and Pen to Mr. Coventry’s, and there had a dispute about my claim to the place of Purveyor of Petty-provisions, and at last to my content did conclude to have my hand to all the bills for these provisions and Mr. Turner to purvey them, because I would not have him to lose the place."
It sounds to me as if Pepys was under the impression he had last year paid Mr. Turner for his entire position with the Navy Board. But now he has discovered that Mr. Turner was holding back on this one duty, which probably carried some financial rewards. It sounds as if Pepys now insisted on processing the paperwork so that by the time Turner retires, he would know who provides what, and how to seeminglessly pick up those duties. Transparency is the point.
If Pepys had pushed this further, the Sir Williams would probably have supported Mr. Turner, and Pepys would have made 3 enemies in the office.
'That sense of insecurity must quite often have kept Sam awake at night and been lurking below his cheerfulness and good companionship during the day."
Imagine a whole country feeling like that! All those evenings in the pubs with his old friends was done for good reason.
On the whole, I think Charles II did a pretty good job of playing off interest groups against each other, and avoiding being held responsible for very much. That leaves him open to being thought lazy, but he did play a pretty good game of 3-dimensional political tic-tac-toe. As Pepys must have done also.
L&M suggest this may be John Smith's "The sea-man's grammar" first published in 1627, or Sir Henry Manwayring's [sic] "The sea-man's dictionary" first published in 1644. Pepys kept both -- the Smith in the edition of 1655, and the Manwayring in that of 1667 -- bound together in one volume. PL 1142.
Ordered to transport Prince Charles to the Isles of Scilly early in 1646, his ship was instead detained to help defend Pendennis Castle against the advancing parliamentarians. He later accompanied Prince Charles to Jersey, where he was said to have been ‘as poor as the rest’, and served with the royalist fleet in 1648.
He petitioned to compound in November 1651, when his entire property consisted of ‘a horse and wearing apparel to the value of £8’.
Adm. Sir Henry Mainwaring MP was buried, having died intestate, at Camberwell on 15 May, 1653.
I posted this not only because Sir Henry Mainwaring lived a great life, wrote a helpful book, and was an early sailing master to Charles II (on their trip from the Isles of Scilly to Jersey), but because it shows how impoverished competent men could be in service to their country and to the Navy. Patrimony did not work for anyone's good in naval affairs. This was the sort of story Pepys was hearing and would inform his decisions in later days.
In December 1626, following the failure of Willoughby’s expedition, Mainwaring was appointed to a commission of inquiry into the Navy. He attended meetings until it fizzled out in May 1627, by which time he was helping to ready the fleet being prepared to relieve La Rochelle.
On 20 June he accompanied King James to inspect the troops stationed on the Isle of Wight, but although the expedition set sail 6 days later, Mainwaring stayed in England.
Over the summer of 1627 Buckingham’s forces on the Ile de Ré ran short of supplies, and in Sept., King James sent Mainwaring to Plymouth to take charge of the transports being prepared to relieve the duke. Mainwaring discharged this duty so well that in Oct. Sir Charles, Viscount Wilmot MP reported ‘his knowledge and skill hath greatly advanced the expedition’. Mainwaring stayed at Plymouth during the winter, preparing the forces for a second relief expedition. In March 1628 he helped Sir James Bagg MP put down a mutiny among the sailors.
Following the failure of this expedition, Mainwaring was transferred to Portsmouth, where he briefly assisted in preparing a third expedition to assist the Huguenots.
On 1 June he was dispatched to London to consult with Buckingham about the fleet, and took no further part in the war effort.
Mainwaring had gained nothing by way of wealth or office by his association with Buckingham, and following his assassination in Aug. 1628 he dcided to repair his fortunes by marriage. But ‘steeped in poverty’, his first choice -- a handsome widow with £20,000 -- preferred Heneage Finch MP. In desperation, in 1630 he eloped with a young woman of 23. Fortune Gardiner' father, Sir Thomas Gardiner of Peckham, was a wealthy Surrey gentleman who refused to pay her dowry unless Mainwaring first settled lands on his bride worth £100 p.a. Fortune Mainwaring died in December 1633, just after this settlement was reached, and their only child, a daughter named Christian, died 6 or 7 years later.
The Navy turned in 1632-3 to Mainwaring as an experts for advice on the correct manning levels for its ships. His name was near the top of the list of captains considered for the first Ship Money fleet in 1635, but if he was offered a command he refused it. He did accepted a captaincy in 1636 under the earl of Northumberland, and served in all the remaining Ship Money fleets, rising to the rank of vice-admiral in 1639.
Vice Admiral Sir Henry Mainwaring was outlawed for debt in June 1641, but apparently avoided arrest. Regarded with suspicion by the Long Parliament, in November 1642 he was forced to resign as master of Trinity House, of which he had been a member since at least 1627.
A royalist in the first Civil War, he joined King Charles at Oxford, where in January 1643 he was awarded an honorary degree.
While the prince tried to secure his office, Mainwaring increased pressure on Zouche by offering himself to Dover corporation for re-election to in Jan. 1624. The town’s common council replied that, while grateful for ‘his former kindnesses and pains taken at the last Parliament’, it had decided on Sir Richard Young and Sir Edward Cecil instead. Mainwaring should ‘not to take it unkindly that he was not now elected’, but he was unwilling to drop the matter, and encouraged the borough’s freemen to petition against the return because they were unlawfully excluded from the franchise. He also took to lobbying members of the committee for privileges and returns in Westminster Hall, since he was never asked to appear before the committee in person. As a result of the petition, the Commons declared the election of Young and Cecil void on the grounds the freemen had been unlawfully excluded.
Mainwaring immediately announced he would stand ‘for the first place’ in the new by-election, with Sir Thomas Wilsford MP, as Sir Richard Young informed Lord Zouche, if he ‘could procure himself to be elected by the generality of voices, it will argue that though your lordship will not respect him, yet the inhabitants there do all love him’.
Wilsford’s father-in-law, Kentish politician Sir Edwin Sandys MP, championed the cause, but could not prevent the reelection of Young and Cecil because the mayor of Dover declared Mainwaring ineligible, having lost the freedom of the borough by absence.
By the end of March 1624, Mainwaring, not having secured reelection or reinstatement to office, had only succeeded in infuriating Lord Zouche.
On selling the lord wardenship to Buckingham in July, Zouche expressly stipulated that Mainwaring ‘shall have no place or command in the Cinque Ports during the duke of Buckingham’s time, in respect of his ungrateful labouring the Lord Zouche’s disgrace at the Court and Parliament and threatening of revenge of those poor men, who did satisfy truths of his misdemeanours’.
On the outbreak of war with Spain in 1625, Mainwaring stayed on the sidelines of English activity, because the Cadiz expedition's commander was Sir Edward Cecil MP, whom Mainwaring had just briefly unseated.
In June 1626 Mainwaring was listed as a candidate for command of one of the king’s ships in the expedition to be led by Lord Willoughby, but either he was not offered a commission or declined to serve.
A few months later it was rumoured Mainwaring had succeeded in blowing up an old ship with a vessel that he had built ‘artificially made to go underwater’. News of his success is said to have reached the ears of Buckingham, who demanded to see Mainwaring’s new submarine. (The Dutchman Cornelius Drebble was experimenting with submarines in England at this time.)
In Feb. 1623, Mainwaring applied for the post of flag-captain to the earl of Rutland, who had been given command of the fleet to bring Prince Charles and Buckingham back from Spain. King James supported this request, and in Apr. Lord Zouche was advised by Secretary Sir Edward Conway MP not to refuse Mainwaring leave.
By then Zouche had heard reports that Mainwaring seldom lodged in Dover Castle, had recently brawled in the street and was a notorious womaniser, had already written to Mainwaring demanding that he resign.
Mainwaring, on receiving this letter, was appalled, and on 9 Apr. he protested his innocence. ‘I am sure the world cannot tax me for keeping any women or frequenting their companies’, he declared. Although he had been involved in a brawl, he claimed merely to have been defending himself from an assailant whom he had not provoked. As for not lodging in the castle, it was true that he had recently stayed in town with his old friend, Sir Henry Carey, Viscount Rochford, but this had been at Rochford’s invitation and had only been for a couple of nights. Mainwaring pleaded with Zouche to suspend final judgement until he had a full hearing, but the aged lord warden refused, and after receiving an assurance that King James would not interfere, dismissed him from office in early May.
Following his return to England in the autumn of 1623, Mainwaring spread the real reason for his dismissal was that he was considered guilty of ‘effecting the duke of Buckingham’s desires’. This charge, not made public by Zouche, was justified, as Mainwaring now considered the youthful Buckingham rather than the aged Zouche as his patron.
In the copy of his Seaman’s Dictionary which he gave to Buckingham sometime before he left for Spain, Mainwaring described Buckingham as ‘my most honoured lord and patron’. In contrast, the dedication in the copy given to Zouche refers merely to ‘my ever most honoured lord, Edward, Lord Zouche’.
Mainwaring knew that by courting Buckingham he had offended Zouche, but he determined to secure reinstatement, and enlisted the aid of both Prince Charles and Buckingham. Prince Charles, impressed with Mainwaring’s performance on the return journey from Spain, wrote to Zouche at the beginning of Nov., while Buckingham promised he would, if necessary, obtain the signatures of all the gentry of Kent and Dover on his behalf. Zouche remained unmoved, whereupon Prince Charles demanded he justify his decision to sack Mainwaring in writing. Zouche was obliged not only to repeat his earlier accusations but also to claim that he had been forced to take action because he feared that Mainwaring would bring disgrace upon his office by allowing himself to be arrested at the suit of his creditors. Charles brushed aside Zouche’s paper, declaring he found Mainwaring to be ‘both a discreet and an able gentleman’.
The townsmen of Dover found it impossible to provide a candidate for the other seat, so in early Dec. the mayor invited Mainwaring, who then notified Zouche that he intended to stand. Rather than express satisfaction, Zouche took umbrage at Mainwaring’s casual mention in his letter of Lord Wotton, whereupon Mainwaring had to reassure Zouche, disingenuously as events revealed, that he was not trying to switch patrons.
Mainwaring played a minor role in the Parliament: he made 9 recorded speeches. He spoke first on 27 Feb. 1621, when he opposed a bill to transfer control of lighthouses to the Trinity House of Deptford, declaring it would be more suitable to pass control of the lighthouses on the Kent coast over to the lord warden, whose local knowledge was superior to that of Trinity House. To make his point, he mentioned existing arrangements at Dover for providing pilots, saying that although the members of Trinity House were able seamen, ‘when they come to the Downs they have a pilot’ provided by the lord warden.
Eight days later he was appointed to the committees for the standardization of the militia’s arms and for the subsidy bill.
On 12 Mar. he defended the right of the Cinque Ports to remain exempt from payment of subsidies, on the grounds that payment ‘would prejudice the king’.
On hearing news that a Hamburg ship carrying sugar, spices and coin to the value of £4,000 had been wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, Mainwaring obtained leave of the Commons to be absent for a few days. On hurrying down to Deal, the serjeant of the Admiralty of the Cinque Ports who was also answerable to Zouche, refused to allow him to take the goods to Dover without special warrant, to his chagrin.
Mainwaring returned to Westminster by early April.
During the Easter recess he attended the grand committee on trade, when he again defended his constituents’ interests in the lighthouses bill.
Speaking on 9 Apr., he pointed out that the Cinque Ports had maintained lighthouses long before Trinity House.
On 24 May he intervened during the debate on the bill to allow free fishing off the American coast to demand that no fish be sold by the planters to any foreigners or carried in any vessels but English ones.
On 19 Nov. 1622 Dover corporation ordered he be given a hogshead of wine ‘towards his charges, he requiring no allowance’.
He reached England in March, and at Newmarket gave King James the Venetians’ request. Although sympathetic, James was unwilling to lend any part of his fleet to a foreign power for, as Archbishop Abbot observed, were the ships to be captured James would be honor-bound to recover them, by force if necessary. But James was taken with Mainwaring’s idea of sending a fleet to the Mediterranean, ostensibly to deal with the pirates who were operating out of Algiers, but really to watch Spanish naval preparations. Nothing was done immediately, but Mainwaring planted the seed for the subsequent expedition to Algiers.
Following the collapse of his plans to return to Venice with a squadron of warships, Mainwaring was at a loose end. In April 1619 the new lord admiral, George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, asked the Venetian ambassador, Donato, that Mainwaring be found employment by the Republic, to no avail. By the end of 1619 Mainwaring was acting as an interpreter for Buckingham at meetings between the marquess and Donato.
In Feb. 1620 the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Zouche, out of ‘mere pity’ as he later claimed, gave Mainwaring the lieutenancy of Dover Castle. One of Mainwaring’s first duties was to greet the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, whose machinations had so blighted his career. Rather than wait in the town of Dover, Mainwaring went to the beach to meet Gondomar, who remarked that, in gratitude for this courtesy, he would forgive Mainwaring 12 crowns out of the millions he owed Spain.
While lieutenant of Dover Castle, Mainwaring wrote a dictionary of nautical terms for those ‘whose quality, attendance, indisposition of body (or the like)’ prevented them from attaining a firm knowledge of ‘the parts, qualities and manner of doing things with ships’, for, as he observed, ‘very few gentlemen (though they be called seamen) do fully and wholly understand what belongs to their profession’. The Seaman’s Dictionary was circulated in manuscript by its author. Dedication copies were presented to, among others, Zouche, Buckingham, Algernon Percy, 10th earl of Northumberland, and Archbishop Abbot. It was printed in 1644.
Mainwaring was not chosen to serve on the expedition to Algiers which left England in Oct. 1620.
Following the announcement in Nov, 1620 of parliamentary elections, Mainwaring must have expected he would be one of the lord warden’s candidates for the 2 seats at Dover. Except in 1601, when sickness had prevented it, since 1584 the lord warden had always nominated the lieutenant. But when Zouche draw up his lists of candidates for the Cinque Ports, Mainwaring was not mentioned.
Following his official rehabilitation, Mainwaring was employed by the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Zouche, to commission the construction of a 40-ton pinnace, which was launched in August 1616.
He subsequently wrote a paper on the whereabouts, practices and best means to suppress piracy, which was presented to King James in 1618. With no trace of irony, Mainwaring advised the king ‘never to grant any pardon’ to pirates, but ‘to put them all to death, or make slaves of them’, as pirates would only abandon their trade ‘when Your Highness leaves pardoning’.
Towards the end of Dec. 1617, Mainwaring was secretly approached by the Venetian secretary in England, Lionello, who asked if he would be willing to serve the Venetian Republic, which had recently uncovered a plot by Spain to seize control of Venice. King James had recently granted permission for the Venetians to hire some warships in England, and Mainwaring was asked to scour the Thames to find suitable vessels. Mainwaring was delighted at this, and identified several ships, but the Venetian ambassador had no authority to appoint a commander for the squadron. In March 1618 Mainwaring asked King James, who had appointed him as a Gentleman of his Bedchamber, to intercede on his behalf. James not only obliged but, after sending Sir Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery to convey to the ambassador his ‘very earnest commendation’, knighted Mainwaring at Woking.
The doge and senate, anxious that other sea captains would be unwilling to sail under the command of a former pirate, preferred to bestowed Command of the ships on Sir Henry Peyton. Undeterred, Sir Henry Mainwaring privately offered his services in person to the Venetians’ captain-general. The Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, vigorously protested, and since King James was determined to conclude a marriage alliance with Spain, Mainwaring was told to delay his departure until after Gondomar had left England in mid-July. In order to disguise his true intentions, Mainwaring spread the rumor that he had gone to Ireland to resume his career as a buccaneer.
On reaching Venice, Mainwaring was greeted by the English ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton, who called him ‘this redeemed Neptune’. Through Wotton, Mainwaring explained to the Venetians that they would be better off using 3 purpose-built warships rather than the rag-tag squadron of 7 merchantmen he had scraped together for them. Impressed by this advice, the Venetians instructed Mainwaring to return to England in order to ask King James to lend them 3 warships.
Sir Henry Mainwaring set out in Jan. 1619, with 600 crowns in his pocket and the promise of 200 more per month, expecting to return soon, so he left behind his trunk of books and mathematical instruments.
Sir Henry Manwayring AKA Sir Henry Mainwaring MP (1587-1653), of Dover Castle, Kent; later of Camberwell, Surrey.
As a younger son of a Shropshire gentleman, Mainwaring had to make his own way in the world. He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford in July 1602, and he was admitted to the Inner Temple in Nov. 1604.
In June 1611 he obtained the reversion to the captaincy of a castle on the Hampshire coast. In Oct., lord admiral Nottingham authorized him to suppress the pirates operating in the Bristol Channel.
In 1612 Mainwaring purchased a small ship for £700, as he planned to accompany Sir Thomas Shirley to Persia to fight the Turks, but he was stopped from sailing by the Spanish ambassador, who feared the ships being assembled by Shirley would be used against Spanish interests. Mainwaring was incensed and, following Shirley’s departure, he fitted out another vessel ostensibly for a trading voyage to West Africa. Despite providing surety for his good conduct, he left without permission, and began to wreak havoc on Spanish shipping.
Operating out of Mamora (modern-day Mehidia), on the west coast of Morocco, he amassed a private fleet of between 30 or 40 ships, and by the summer of 1613 had collected around £3,500 worth of goods from ships trading to Spain. He avoided damaging the interests of British subjects, and in the spring of 1614, on learning that he had seized vessels belonging to an Irish merchant, he made full restitution to the man’s factor.
A few months later he arrived off Newfoundland with 8 vessels intending to protect English fishermen from attacks by the king of Spain’s Flemish allies, but the Spanish, taking advantage of his absence, seized Mamora.
On his return to Morocco that autumn, Mainwaring was forced to move his operations to Villafranca, which the duke of Savoy, then at war with Spain, had declared to be a free port. Despite losing one of his ships to enemy action in January 1615, Mainwaring badly mauled a small squadron of Spanish warships in the following June so the Spaniards fled to Lisbon.
Mainwaring’s victory over the Spanish squadron coincided with the end of Savoy’s brief war with Spain. It also coincided with the opening of informal negotiations between England and Spain for a Spanish Match for Prince Charles. Sometime over the summer, King James, under pressure from Spain, sent Mainwaring an ultimatum: Provided he returned to England he would be given a free pardon, but if he failed to do so the king would have to dispatch a fleet to the Mediterranean to destroy his squadron.
Not wishing to fight his Englishmen, and no longer welcome in Savoy, Mainwaring sailed his ships to north-west Ireland, from where, in November, he opened negotiations with King James through his friends in England. By the end of 1615, Mainwaring had presented himself to the Privy Council, and allowed his ships to be impounded at Dover, but his pardon was not sealed until June 1616.
Lord Macaulay (Thomas Babington, 1800-1859) observed: "There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the Navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen."
"Picturing Divinity in John Donne's Writings" -- by Kirsten Stirling 192 Pages 23.4 x 15.6 cm 6 colour illus.
A new approach to the visual arts in the work of John Donne The 5 known portraits of John Donne and the many artworks bequeathed in his will bear witness to his interest in painting. His interest in art is also evident in his writings, with poems and sermons including many references to pictures and engravings, painters and sculptors. However, Donne never used his familiarity with painterly techniques to produce a simple ekphrasis or description in his writings. This book offers a new approach to Donne's rich and nuanced presentation of the visual arts in his writing, arguing that even his explicit allusions to pictures are less concrete than they may first appear.
Although Donne was familiar with contemporary treatises on art, many of his most compelling references to paintings and painterly techniques come from his reading of theology, including works by Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther. These previously unidentified sources for Donne's painterly imagery help us to understand how the plastic arts become his tool to reveal the limits of representation, and thus to point beyond the material realm towards the unrepresentable and unknowable divine.
This study provides new insights on some of his best-known poems, both secular and religious, and extends our appreciation of John Donne as an artist constantly exploring the limits of his own practice as a poet - and preacher - as he confronts the relationship between the human and the divine.
On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC.
Paperback 9781843847076 March 2024 £29.99 / $39.95
Since we don't have a dedicated page for music, I'm going to mention a book here which aims to explain the importance of music to the Early Modern period (as a compliment to Mr. Lawes). After all, music is an expression of mathematics, and many Early Modern mathemeticians were also philosophers. There is a link in our brains connecting these two functions.
"Music, Nature and Divine Knowledge in England, 1650-1750: Between the Rational and the Mystical" -- by Tom Dixon. Edited by Penelope Gouk, Chloë Dixon and Philippe Sarrasin Robichaud.
During a period of tumultuous change in English political, religious and cultural life, music signified the unspeakable presence of the divine in the world for many.
What was the role of music in the early modern subject's sensory experience of divinity? While the English intellectuals Peter Sterry (1613-72), Richard Roach (1662-1730), William Stukeley (1687-1765) and David Hartley (1705-57), have not been remembered for their 'musicking', this book explores how the musical reflections of these individuals expressed alternative and often uncustomary conceptions of God, the world, and the human psyche. Music is always potentially present in their discourse, emerging as a crucial form of mediation between states: exoteric and esoteric, material and spiritual, outer and inner, public and private, rational and mystical.
Dixon shows how Sterry, Roach, Stukeley and Hartley's shared belief in truly universal salvation was articulated through a language of music, implying a feminising influence that set these male individuals apart from contemporaries who often strictly emphasised the rational -- i.e. the supposedly masculine-aspects of religion. Musical discourse, instead, provided a link to a spiritual plane that brought these intellectuals closer to 'ultimate reality'. Theirs was a discourse firmly rooted in the real existence of contemporary musical practices, both in terms of the forms and styles implied in the writings under discussion and the physical circumstances in which these musical genres were created and performed.
Through exploring ways in which the idea of music was employed in written transmission of elite ideas, this book challenges conventional classifications of a 17th-century 'Scientific Revolution' and an 18th-century 'Enlightenment', defending an alternative narrative of continuity and change across a number of scholarly disciplines, from 17th-century English intellectual history and theology, to musicology and the social history of music.
Hardcover 9781783277674 May 2023 £85.00 / $125.00
Ebook (EPUB) 9781800109735 May 2023 £24.99 / $29.95
Ebook (EPDF) 9781800109728 May 2023 £24.99 / $29.95
The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd Volume One Edited by Brian Vickers
Associate editor Darren Freebury-Jones
First, complete, integrated corpus of this major Elizabethan writer and first critical edition of his collected works in over 100 years, with major new discoveries of authorship and attribution.
Thomas Kyd (1558-94) is best known as author of "The Spanish Tragedy", the first revenge play, hugely influential on Shakespeare and other dramatists. He also wrote another love tragedy, "Soliman and Perseda", and "Cornelia", a classical tragedy translated from the French. This is a small canon for a dramatist described as "industrious".
Kyd worked between 1585 and 1594, when the instability in the London theatre caused by the plague led to companies breaking up and plays being published anonymously. For over a century scholars have been searching for Kyd plays, the most frequently attributed being "Arden of Faversham".
Uniting accepted methods with modern electronic data processing, Brian Vickers has endorsed Kyd's authorship of "Arden" and added two other plays: "King Leir" (Shakespeare's main source), and "Fair Em, a comedy" justifying Jonson's reference to "sporting Kyd".
His research has also identified Kyd as co-author with Nashe of 'harey the vi', which became "1 Henry VI" after Shakespeare adapted it to his "Wars of the Roses" sequence.
The evidence suggests that Kyd and Shakespeare co-authored "Edward III".
'The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd" brings together for the first time his dramas, poetry, translations, and letters in accurate modernized editions, each text edited by one of a team of internationally renowned scholars, accompanied by commentaries, collation notes, and introductions. Kyd emerges as a pioneering playwright of much greater generic range than has been hitherto recognized. His newly defined canon will stimulate a fresh evaluation of English drama in this crucial period.
Hardcover 9781843846949 March 2024 £120.00 / $180.00
Ebook (EPDF) 9781805432517 March 2024 £55.00 / $80.00
Now there's a book tackling one Early Modern theme of Puritanism: militarism.
"A rich analysis of the mindset of Puritans and of their theology which justified military action and acts of killing.
'Godly Violence in the Puritan Atlantic World, 1636–1676: A Study of Military Providentialism' by Matthew Rowley "recounts Puritan struggles for military dominance and for an authoritative interpretation of God's agency in war. It asks: What did Puritans say was God's will in warfare; and how did they claim to know?
"It applies the term 'military providentialism' to this attempt to understand God's will and agency in war; and the term 'godly violence' to an act of killing that was deemed to be both just and holy.
"The book explores these themes by examining Puritan warfare against 4 groups: Native Americans, royalist Episcopalians, Irish Catholics and Scottish Presbyterians.
'Godly Violence in the Puritan Atlantic World, 1636–1676' "employs a wide range of printed and archival sources: sermons, treatises, official documents, newsbooks, letters, diaries, poems and objects related to material culture; and considers private providential interpretations written by obscure individuals alongside published works by more prominent people.
"Overall, the book provides a rich analysis of the mindset which sustained Puritan political theology and military action at the time when Puritans were at the height of their power on both sides of the Atlantic."
Hardcover 9781837650149 February 2024 £80.00 / $115.00
Ebook (EPDF) 9781800108554 February 2024 $29.95 / £24.99
Ebook (EPUB) 9781800108561 February 2024 £24.99 / $29.95
Since I mentioned the Divine Right of Kings, this is a good time to mention a book, "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688: Religion, Politics, and Ideas" which discusses many subjects touched on during the last 9 years:
What did people in Restoration England think the correct relationship between church state should be? And how did this thinking evolve?
Based on the author, Mark Goldie's published essays, revised and updated with a new overarching introduction, this book explores the debates in Restoration England about 'godly rule', "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688" assesses some of the crucial transitions in English history: how the late Reformation gave way to the early Enlightenment; how Royalism became Toryism and Puritanism became Whiggism; how the power of churchmen was challenged by virulent anticlericalism; how the verities of "divine right" theory revived and collapsed.
"Providing a distinctive account of English thought in the era between the two revolutions of the Stuart century, "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688" discusses the ideological foundations of emerging party politics, and the deep intellectual roots of competing visions for the commonwealth, placing the power of religion, and the taming of religion, squarely alongside constitutional battles within secular politics."
Hardcover 9781783277360 September 2023 £95.00 / $140.00
Ebook (EPUB) 9781800106673 September 2023 $29.95 / £24.99
Col. Edward King, a new name for my list of Parliamentary Committeemen responsible for disbanding the Army and the Navy:
On 4 Aug. 1660, Col. Edward King MP reported a bill to set up a disbandment commission.
On 6 Sept. 1660 Col. King MP obtained an order from the House empowering the disbandment commissioners to obtain assistance from the civil authorities, and was nominated to the commission. He was among those ordered to amend the instructions so that the garrisons should be disbanded last, and helped to manage a conference.
On 18 Dec. 1660, Col. King MP objected that the report by John Birch MP on the debts of the army and navy had not been authorized by the committee.
The Commissioners were Members of Parliament assembled for the sole purpose of paying off the Army and Navy in 1661: This Commission included William Prynne MP https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl… Col. John Birch MP https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl… and the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Browne MP https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl… They all had brief experience in dealing with the sailors and paperwork, but have discovered it's not as simple as it appeared when they were just helping.
William Jessop was added as their clerk -- probably serving an equal to Mr. Hayter -- a step-down for a former Admiralty official (secretary to Warwick 1642-5 and to the Admiralty Committee 1645-53), after which he served the Council of State (as Assistant Clerk in 1653, and Clerk 1654-9, 1659-60). From this Parliamentary Committee's point-of-view, he's an educated person to employ behind the scenes to get The Navy Pay completed. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
On 18 Dec. 1660, Col. King MP objected that the report by John Birch MP on the debts of the army and navy had not been authorized by the committee. Although generally unsympathetic to royalist claims for compensation, he obtained an order for the sister of Sir Edward Seymour to recover £3,571 sequestrated from the customs farmers in 1644.
Together with William Prynne MP and John Barton MP, Col. King was ordered to bring in a bill to recover £10,000 for charitable purposes from the prize commissioners and maintenance trustees.
He was teller against a proviso to the college leases bill precluding fellows and scholars from claiming restoration to their places. He considered that compensation for officials of the court of wards should be left entirely to the King, and was named to the committee to consider the Lords’ amendments to the bill. He was among those ordered to prepare reasons on the bill for confirming marriages. Assisted by Prynne and Birch, he prepared a bill to recover arrears of excise, and steered it successfully through committee. But this did not prevent him from again taking issue with Birch over his proposal for a general excise on all foreign commodities, which, he again claimed, had not been approved by the committee.
Although resigned to the celebration of Christmas, Col. King MP seconded the unsuccessful motion of Robert Shapcote for a session on [what we call] Boxing Day.
Col. Edward King MP did not stand for re-election in 1661, and was described as ‘a great abettor of sectaries and nonconformists’.
Col. Edward King's arrest by the deputy lieutenants during the 1665 second Anglo-Dutch war was, he asserted, merely an act of personal revenge on the part of Sir Robert Carr. He was released after 3 months, but in February 1666 he was committed to the Tower for refusing to give security to the deputy lieutenants for his peaceable demeanour, "by entering into a bond for £2,000 ... to appear where he should be directed by the lord lieutenant or any two deputy lieutenants after 20 hours notice in writing left at his house, to discover all plots, conspiracies etc. and to abstain from all conventicles and seditious meetings." Col. King claimed such conditions were ‘illegal, infamous and servile’. He bribed his way out of prison, but was defeated by Sir Henry Belasyse in a by-election in 1667, after which Col. King may have moved to London, where 2 of his daughters were living.
In 1670 Col. Edward King was described as appearing ‘daily upon the Exchange, not merely to promote sedition but rebellion and treason also’ in his zeal against the renewal of the Conventicles Act.
When a licence was granted for a Presbyterian meeting at Col. Edward King's house in Ashby in 1672, it was reported that "for many years he has endeavoured to protect those questioned for non-conformity ... in the ecclesiastical court at Lincoln, where at common law he has counselled or set on above 90 actions."
Comments
Third Reading
About Thursday 14 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
"With Sir W. Batten and Pen to Mr. Coventry’s, and there had a dispute about my claim to the place of Purveyor of Petty-provisions, and at last to my content did conclude to have my hand to all the bills for these provisions and Mr. Turner to purvey them, because I would not have him to lose the place."
It sounds to me as if Pepys was under the impression he had last year paid Mr. Turner for his entire position with the Navy Board. But now he has discovered that Mr. Turner was holding back on this one duty, which probably carried some financial rewards.
It sounds as if Pepys now insisted on processing the paperwork so that by the time Turner retires, he would know who provides what, and how to seeminglessly pick up those duties. Transparency is the point.
If Pepys had pushed this further, the Sir Williams would probably have supported Mr. Turner, and Pepys would have made 3 enemies in the office.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
'That sense of insecurity must quite often have kept Sam awake at night and been lurking below his cheerfulness and good companionship during the day."
Imagine a whole country feeling like that!
All those evenings in the pubs with his old friends was done for good reason.
On the whole, I think Charles II did a pretty good job of playing off interest groups against each other, and avoiding being held responsible for very much. That leaves him open to being thought lazy, but he did play a pretty good game of 3-dimensional political tic-tac-toe. As Pepys must have done also.
About Anon's 'The Seaman's Grammar and Dictionary'
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M suggest this may be John Smith's "The sea-man's grammar" first published in 1627, or Sir Henry Manwayring's [sic] "The sea-man's dictionary" first published in 1644. Pepys kept both -- the Smith in the edition of 1655, and the Manwayring in that of 1667 -- bound together in one volume. PL 1142.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION:
Ordered to transport Prince Charles to the Isles of Scilly early in 1646, his ship was instead detained to help defend Pendennis Castle against the advancing parliamentarians.
He later accompanied Prince Charles to Jersey, where he was said to have been ‘as poor as the rest’, and served with the royalist fleet in 1648.
He petitioned to compound in November 1651, when his entire property consisted of ‘a horse and wearing apparel to the value of £8’.
Adm. Sir Henry Mainwaring MP was buried, having died intestate, at Camberwell on 15 May, 1653.
Excerpted from his Parliamentary bio:
https://historyofparliamentonline…
@@@
I posted this not only because Sir Henry Mainwaring lived a great life, wrote a helpful book, and was an early sailing master to Charles II (on their trip from the Isles of Scilly to Jersey), but because it shows how impoverished competent men could be in service to their country and to the Navy.
Patrimony did not work for anyone's good in naval affairs. This was the sort of story Pepys was hearing and would inform his decisions in later days.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 7:
In December 1626, following the failure of Willoughby’s expedition, Mainwaring was appointed to a commission of inquiry into the Navy.
He attended meetings until it fizzled out in May 1627, by which time he was helping to ready the fleet being prepared to relieve La Rochelle.
On 20 June he accompanied King James to inspect the troops stationed on the Isle of Wight, but although the expedition set sail 6 days later, Mainwaring stayed in England.
Over the summer of 1627 Buckingham’s forces on the Ile de Ré ran short of supplies, and in Sept., King James sent Mainwaring to Plymouth to take charge of the transports being prepared to relieve the duke.
Mainwaring discharged this duty so well that in Oct. Sir Charles, Viscount Wilmot MP reported ‘his knowledge and skill hath greatly advanced the expedition’.
Mainwaring stayed at Plymouth during the winter, preparing the forces for a second relief expedition.
In March 1628 he helped Sir James Bagg MP put down a mutiny among the sailors.
Following the failure of this expedition, Mainwaring was transferred to Portsmouth, where he briefly assisted in preparing a third expedition to assist the Huguenots.
On 1 June he was dispatched to London to consult with Buckingham about the fleet, and took no further part in the war effort.
Mainwaring had gained nothing by way of wealth or office by his association with Buckingham, and following his assassination in Aug. 1628 he dcided to repair his fortunes by marriage.
But ‘steeped in poverty’, his first choice -- a handsome widow with £20,000 -- preferred Heneage Finch MP.
In desperation, in 1630 he eloped with a young woman of 23. Fortune Gardiner' father, Sir Thomas Gardiner of Peckham, was a wealthy Surrey gentleman who refused to pay her dowry unless Mainwaring first settled lands on his bride worth £100 p.a.
Fortune Mainwaring died in December 1633, just after this settlement was reached, and their only child, a daughter named Christian, died 6 or 7 years later.
The Navy turned in 1632-3 to Mainwaring as an experts for advice on the correct manning levels for its ships.
His name was near the top of the list of captains considered for the first Ship Money fleet in 1635, but if he was offered a command he refused it.
He did accepted a captaincy in 1636 under the earl of Northumberland, and served in all the remaining Ship Money fleets, rising to the rank of vice-admiral in 1639.
Vice Admiral Sir Henry Mainwaring was outlawed for debt in June 1641, but apparently avoided arrest.
Regarded with suspicion by the Long Parliament, in November 1642 he was forced to resign as master of Trinity House, of which he had been a member since at least 1627.
A royalist in the first Civil War, he joined King Charles at Oxford, where in January 1643 he was awarded an honorary degree.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 6
While the prince tried to secure his office, Mainwaring increased pressure on Zouche by offering himself to Dover corporation for re-election to in Jan. 1624.
The town’s common council replied that, while grateful for ‘his former kindnesses and pains taken at the last Parliament’, it had decided on Sir Richard Young and Sir Edward Cecil instead.
Mainwaring should ‘not to take it unkindly that he was not now elected’, but he was unwilling to drop the matter, and encouraged the borough’s freemen to petition against the return because they were unlawfully excluded from the franchise.
He also took to lobbying members of the committee for privileges and returns in Westminster Hall, since he was never asked to appear before the committee in person.
As a result of the petition, the Commons declared the election of Young and Cecil void on the grounds the freemen had been unlawfully excluded.
Mainwaring immediately announced he would stand ‘for the first place’ in the new by-election, with Sir Thomas Wilsford MP, as Sir Richard Young informed Lord Zouche, if he ‘could procure himself to be elected by the generality of voices, it will argue that though your lordship will not respect him, yet the inhabitants there do all love him’.
Wilsford’s father-in-law, Kentish politician Sir Edwin Sandys MP, championed the cause, but could not prevent the reelection of Young and Cecil because the mayor of Dover declared Mainwaring ineligible, having lost the freedom of the borough by absence.
By the end of March 1624, Mainwaring, not having secured reelection or reinstatement to office, had only succeeded in infuriating Lord Zouche.
On selling the lord wardenship to Buckingham in July, Zouche expressly stipulated that Mainwaring ‘shall have no place or command in the Cinque Ports during the duke of Buckingham’s time, in respect of his ungrateful labouring the Lord Zouche’s disgrace at the Court and Parliament and threatening of revenge of those poor men, who did satisfy truths of his misdemeanours’.
On the outbreak of war with Spain in 1625, Mainwaring stayed on the sidelines of English activity, because the Cadiz expedition's commander was Sir Edward Cecil MP, whom Mainwaring had just briefly unseated.
In June 1626 Mainwaring was listed as a candidate for command of one of the king’s ships in the expedition to be led by Lord Willoughby, but either he was not offered a commission or declined to serve.
A few months later it was rumoured Mainwaring had succeeded in blowing up an old ship with a vessel that he had built ‘artificially made to go underwater’. News of his success is said to have reached the ears of Buckingham, who demanded to see Mainwaring’s new submarine. (The Dutchman Cornelius Drebble was experimenting with submarines in England at this time.)
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 5
In Feb. 1623, Mainwaring applied for the post of flag-captain to the earl of Rutland, who had been given command of the fleet to bring Prince Charles and Buckingham back from Spain.
King James supported this request, and in Apr. Lord Zouche was advised by Secretary Sir Edward Conway MP not to refuse Mainwaring leave.
By then Zouche had heard reports that Mainwaring seldom lodged in Dover Castle, had recently brawled in the street and was a notorious womaniser, had already written to Mainwaring demanding that he resign.
Mainwaring, on receiving this letter, was appalled, and on 9 Apr. he protested his innocence. ‘I am sure the world cannot tax me for keeping any women or frequenting their companies’, he declared. Although he had been involved in a brawl, he claimed merely to have been defending himself from an assailant whom he had not provoked. As for not lodging in the castle, it was true that he had recently stayed in town with his old friend, Sir Henry Carey, Viscount Rochford, but this had been at Rochford’s invitation and had only been for a couple of nights.
Mainwaring pleaded with Zouche to suspend final judgement until he had a full hearing, but the aged lord warden refused, and after receiving an assurance that King James would not interfere, dismissed him from office in early May.
Following his return to England in the autumn of 1623, Mainwaring spread the real reason for his dismissal was that he was considered guilty of ‘effecting the duke of Buckingham’s desires’. This charge, not made public by Zouche, was justified, as Mainwaring now considered the youthful Buckingham rather than the aged Zouche as his patron.
In the copy of his Seaman’s Dictionary which he gave to Buckingham sometime before he left for Spain, Mainwaring described Buckingham as ‘my most honoured lord and patron’.
In contrast, the dedication in the copy given to Zouche refers merely to ‘my ever most honoured lord, Edward, Lord Zouche’.
Mainwaring knew that by courting Buckingham he had offended Zouche, but he determined to secure reinstatement, and enlisted the aid of both Prince Charles and Buckingham.
Prince Charles, impressed with Mainwaring’s performance on the return journey from Spain, wrote to Zouche at the beginning of Nov., while Buckingham promised he would, if necessary, obtain the signatures of all the gentry of Kent and Dover on his behalf.
Zouche remained unmoved, whereupon Prince Charles demanded he justify his decision to sack Mainwaring in writing.
Zouche was obliged not only to repeat his earlier accusations but also to claim that he had been forced to take action because he feared that Mainwaring would bring disgrace upon his office by allowing himself to be arrested at the suit of his creditors.
Charles brushed aside Zouche’s paper, declaring he found Mainwaring to be ‘both a discreet and an able gentleman’.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 4
The townsmen of Dover found it impossible to provide a candidate for the other seat, so in early Dec. the mayor invited Mainwaring, who then notified Zouche that he intended to stand.
Rather than express satisfaction, Zouche took umbrage at Mainwaring’s casual mention in his letter of Lord Wotton, whereupon Mainwaring had to reassure Zouche, disingenuously as events revealed, that he was not trying to switch patrons.
Mainwaring played a minor role in the Parliament: he made 9 recorded speeches.
He spoke first on 27 Feb. 1621, when he opposed a bill to transfer control of lighthouses to the Trinity House of Deptford, declaring it would be more suitable to pass control of the lighthouses on the Kent coast over to the lord warden, whose local knowledge was superior to that of Trinity House. To make his point, he mentioned existing arrangements at Dover for providing pilots, saying that although the members of Trinity House were able seamen, ‘when they come to the Downs they have a pilot’ provided by the lord warden.
Eight days later he was appointed to the committees for the standardization of the militia’s arms and for the subsidy bill.
On 12 Mar. he defended the right of the Cinque Ports to remain exempt from payment of subsidies, on the grounds that payment ‘would prejudice the king’.
On hearing news that a Hamburg ship carrying sugar, spices and coin to the value of £4,000 had been wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, Mainwaring obtained leave of the Commons to be absent for a few days. On hurrying down to Deal, the serjeant of the Admiralty of the Cinque Ports who was also answerable to Zouche, refused to allow him to take the goods to Dover without special warrant, to his chagrin.
Mainwaring returned to Westminster by early April.
During the Easter recess he attended the grand committee on trade, when he again defended his constituents’ interests in the lighthouses bill.
Speaking on 9 Apr., he pointed out that the Cinque Ports had maintained lighthouses long before Trinity House.
On 24 May he intervened during the debate on the bill to allow free fishing off the American coast to demand that no fish be sold by the planters to any foreigners or carried in any vessels but English ones.
On 19 Nov. 1622 Dover corporation ordered he be given a hogshead of wine ‘towards his charges, he requiring no allowance’.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 3
He reached England in March, and at Newmarket gave King James the Venetians’ request. Although sympathetic, James was unwilling to lend any part of his fleet to a foreign power for, as Archbishop Abbot observed, were the ships to be captured James would be honor-bound to recover them, by force if necessary.
But James was taken with Mainwaring’s idea of sending a fleet to the Mediterranean, ostensibly to deal with the pirates who were operating out of Algiers, but really to watch Spanish naval preparations.
Nothing was done immediately, but Mainwaring planted the seed for the subsequent expedition to Algiers.
Following the collapse of his plans to return to Venice with a squadron of warships, Mainwaring was at a loose end.
In April 1619 the new lord admiral, George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, asked the Venetian ambassador, Donato, that Mainwaring be found employment by the Republic, to no avail.
By the end of 1619 Mainwaring was acting as an interpreter for Buckingham at meetings between the marquess and Donato.
In Feb. 1620 the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Zouche, out of ‘mere pity’ as he later claimed, gave Mainwaring the lieutenancy of Dover Castle.
One of Mainwaring’s first duties was to greet the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, whose machinations had so blighted his career. Rather than wait in the town of Dover, Mainwaring went to the beach to meet Gondomar, who remarked that, in gratitude for this courtesy, he would forgive Mainwaring 12 crowns out of the millions he owed Spain.
While lieutenant of Dover Castle, Mainwaring wrote a dictionary of nautical terms for those ‘whose quality, attendance, indisposition of body (or the like)’ prevented them from attaining a firm knowledge of ‘the parts, qualities and manner of doing things with ships’, for, as he observed, ‘very few gentlemen (though they be called seamen) do fully and wholly understand what belongs to their profession’.
The Seaman’s Dictionary was circulated in manuscript by its author. Dedication copies were presented to, among others, Zouche, Buckingham, Algernon Percy, 10th earl of Northumberland, and Archbishop Abbot. It was printed in 1644.
Mainwaring was not chosen to serve on the expedition to Algiers which left England in Oct. 1620.
Following the announcement in Nov, 1620 of parliamentary elections, Mainwaring must have expected he would be one of the lord warden’s candidates for the 2 seats at Dover. Except in 1601, when sickness had prevented it, since 1584 the lord warden had always nominated the lieutenant.
But when Zouche draw up his lists of candidates for the Cinque Ports, Mainwaring was not mentioned.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 2
Following his official rehabilitation, Mainwaring was employed by the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Zouche, to commission the construction of a 40-ton pinnace, which was launched in August 1616.
He subsequently wrote a paper on the whereabouts, practices and best means to suppress piracy, which was presented to King James in 1618. With no trace of irony, Mainwaring advised the king ‘never to grant any pardon’ to pirates, but ‘to put them all to death, or make slaves of them’, as pirates would only abandon their trade ‘when Your Highness leaves pardoning’.
Towards the end of Dec. 1617, Mainwaring was secretly approached by the Venetian secretary in England, Lionello, who asked if he would be willing to serve the Venetian Republic, which had recently uncovered a plot by Spain to seize control of Venice.
King James had recently granted permission for the Venetians to hire some warships in England, and Mainwaring was asked to scour the Thames to find suitable vessels.
Mainwaring was delighted at this, and identified several ships, but the Venetian ambassador had no authority to appoint a commander for the squadron.
In March 1618 Mainwaring asked King James, who had appointed him as a Gentleman of his Bedchamber, to intercede on his behalf. James not only obliged but, after sending Sir Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery to convey to the ambassador his ‘very earnest commendation’, knighted Mainwaring at Woking.
The doge and senate, anxious that other sea captains would be unwilling to sail under the command of a former pirate, preferred to bestowed Command of the ships on Sir Henry Peyton.
Undeterred, Sir Henry Mainwaring privately offered his services in person to the Venetians’ captain-general.
The Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, vigorously protested, and since King James was determined to conclude a marriage alliance with Spain, Mainwaring was told to delay his departure until after Gondomar had left England in mid-July.
In order to disguise his true intentions, Mainwaring spread the rumor that he had gone to Ireland to resume his career as a buccaneer.
On reaching Venice, Mainwaring was greeted by the English ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton, who called him ‘this redeemed Neptune’.
Through Wotton, Mainwaring explained to the Venetians that they would be better off using 3 purpose-built warships rather than the rag-tag squadron of 7 merchantmen he had scraped together for them.
Impressed by this advice, the Venetians instructed Mainwaring to return to England in order to ask King James to lend them 3 warships.
Sir Henry Mainwaring set out in Jan. 1619, with 600 crowns in his pocket and the promise of 200 more per month, expecting to return soon, so he left behind his trunk of books and mathematical instruments.
About Wednesday 13 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sir Henry Manwayring AKA Sir Henry Mainwaring MP (1587-1653), of Dover Castle, Kent; later of Camberwell, Surrey.
As a younger son of a Shropshire gentleman, Mainwaring had to make his own way in the world. He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford in July 1602, and he was admitted to the Inner Temple in Nov. 1604.
In June 1611 he obtained the reversion to the captaincy of a castle on the Hampshire coast.
In Oct., lord admiral Nottingham authorized him to suppress the pirates operating in the Bristol Channel.
In 1612 Mainwaring purchased a small ship for £700, as he planned to accompany Sir Thomas Shirley to Persia to fight the Turks, but he was stopped from sailing by the Spanish ambassador, who feared the ships being assembled by Shirley would be used against Spanish interests.
Mainwaring was incensed and, following Shirley’s departure, he fitted out another vessel ostensibly for a trading voyage to West Africa.
Despite providing surety for his good conduct, he left without permission, and began to wreak havoc on Spanish shipping.
Operating out of Mamora (modern-day Mehidia), on the west coast of Morocco, he amassed a private fleet of between 30 or 40 ships, and by the summer of 1613 had collected around £3,500 worth of goods from ships trading to Spain.
He avoided damaging the interests of British subjects, and in the spring of 1614, on learning that he had seized vessels belonging to an Irish merchant, he made full restitution to the man’s factor.
A few months later he arrived off Newfoundland with 8 vessels intending to protect English fishermen from attacks by the king of Spain’s Flemish allies, but the Spanish, taking advantage of his absence, seized Mamora.
On his return to Morocco that autumn, Mainwaring was forced to move his operations to Villafranca, which the duke of Savoy, then at war with Spain, had declared to be a free port.
Despite losing one of his ships to enemy action in January 1615, Mainwaring badly mauled a small squadron of Spanish warships in the following June so the Spaniards fled to Lisbon.
Mainwaring’s victory over the Spanish squadron coincided with the end of Savoy’s brief war with Spain. It also coincided with the opening of informal negotiations between England and Spain for a Spanish Match for Prince Charles.
Sometime over the summer, King James, under pressure from Spain, sent Mainwaring an ultimatum: Provided he returned to England he would be given a free pardon, but if he failed to do so the king would have to dispatch a fleet to the Mediterranean to destroy his squadron.
Not wishing to fight his Englishmen, and no longer welcome in Savoy, Mainwaring sailed his ships to north-west Ireland, from where, in November, he opened negotiations with King James through his friends in England.
By the end of 1615, Mainwaring had presented himself to the Privy Council, and allowed his ships to be impounded at Dover, but his pardon was not sealed until June 1616.
About Tuesday 6 April 1669
San Diego Sarah • Link
Lord Macaulay (Thomas Babington, 1800-1859) observed: "There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the Navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen."
About John Donne
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Picturing Divinity in John Donne's Writings" -- by Kirsten Stirling
192 Pages
23.4 x 15.6 cm
6 colour illus.
A new approach to the visual arts in the work of John Donne
The 5 known portraits of John Donne and the many artworks bequeathed in his will bear witness to his interest in painting. His interest in art is also evident in his writings, with poems and sermons including many references to pictures and engravings, painters and sculptors.
However, Donne never used his familiarity with painterly techniques to produce a simple ekphrasis or description in his writings. This book offers a new approach to Donne's rich and nuanced presentation of the visual arts in his writing, arguing that even his explicit allusions to pictures are less concrete than they may first appear.
Although Donne was familiar with contemporary treatises on art, many of his most compelling references to paintings and painterly techniques come from his reading of theology, including works by Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther.
These previously unidentified sources for Donne's painterly imagery help us to understand how the plastic arts become his tool to reveal the limits of representation, and thus to point beyond the material realm towards the unrepresentable and unknowable divine.
This study provides new insights on some of his best-known poems, both secular and religious, and extends our appreciation of John Donne as an artist constantly exploring the limits of his own practice as a poet - and preacher - as he confronts the relationship between the human and the divine.
On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC.
Paperback
9781843847076
March 2024
£29.99 / $39.95
About William Lawes
San Diego Sarah • Link
Since we don't have a dedicated page for music, I'm going to mention a book here which aims to explain the importance of music to the Early Modern period (as a compliment to Mr. Lawes). After all, music is an expression of mathematics, and many Early Modern mathemeticians were also philosophers. There is a link in our brains connecting these two functions.
"Music, Nature and Divine Knowledge in England, 1650-1750: Between the Rational and the Mystical" -- by Tom Dixon.
Edited by Penelope Gouk, Chloë Dixon and Philippe Sarrasin Robichaud.
During a period of tumultuous change in English political, religious and cultural life, music signified the unspeakable presence of the divine in the world for many.
What was the role of music in the early modern subject's sensory experience of divinity?
While the English intellectuals Peter Sterry (1613-72), Richard Roach (1662-1730), William Stukeley (1687-1765) and David Hartley (1705-57), have not been remembered for their 'musicking', this book explores how the musical reflections of these individuals expressed alternative and often uncustomary conceptions of God, the world, and the human psyche.
Music is always potentially present in their discourse, emerging as a crucial form of mediation between states: exoteric and esoteric, material and spiritual, outer and inner, public and private, rational and mystical.
Dixon shows how Sterry, Roach, Stukeley and Hartley's shared belief in truly universal salvation was articulated through a language of music, implying a feminising influence that set these male individuals apart from contemporaries who often strictly emphasised the rational -- i.e. the supposedly masculine-aspects of religion.
Musical discourse, instead, provided a link to a spiritual plane that brought these intellectuals closer to 'ultimate reality'.
Theirs was a discourse firmly rooted in the real existence of contemporary musical practices, both in terms of the forms and styles implied in the writings under discussion and the physical circumstances in which these musical genres were created and performed.
Through exploring ways in which the idea of music was employed in written transmission of elite ideas, this book challenges conventional classifications of a 17th-century 'Scientific Revolution' and an 18th-century 'Enlightenment', defending an alternative narrative of continuity and change across a number of scholarly disciplines, from 17th-century English intellectual history and theology, to musicology and the social history of music.
Hardcover
9781783277674
May 2023
£85.00 / $125.00
Ebook (EPUB)
9781800109735
May 2023
£24.99 / $29.95
Ebook (EPDF)
9781800109728
May 2023
£24.99 / $29.95
About The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again (Thomas Kyd)
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd
Volume One
Edited by Brian Vickers
Associate editor Darren Freebury-Jones
First, complete, integrated corpus of this major Elizabethan writer and first critical edition of his collected works in over 100 years, with major new discoveries of authorship and attribution.
Thomas Kyd (1558-94) is best known as author of "The Spanish Tragedy", the first revenge play, hugely influential on Shakespeare and other dramatists.
He also wrote another love tragedy, "Soliman and Perseda", and "Cornelia", a classical tragedy translated from the French. This is a small canon for a dramatist described as "industrious".
Kyd worked between 1585 and 1594, when the instability in the London theatre caused by the plague led to companies breaking up and plays being published anonymously. For over a century scholars have been searching for Kyd plays, the most frequently attributed being "Arden of Faversham".
Uniting accepted methods with modern electronic data processing, Brian Vickers has endorsed Kyd's authorship of "Arden" and added two other plays: "King Leir" (Shakespeare's main source), and "Fair Em, a comedy" justifying Jonson's reference to "sporting Kyd".
His research has also identified Kyd as co-author with Nashe of 'harey the vi', which became "1 Henry VI" after Shakespeare adapted it to his "Wars of the Roses" sequence.
The evidence suggests that Kyd and Shakespeare co-authored "Edward III".
'The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd" brings together for the first time his dramas, poetry, translations, and letters in accurate modernized editions, each text edited by one of a team of internationally renowned scholars, accompanied by commentaries, collation notes, and introductions.
Kyd emerges as a pioneering playwright of much greater generic range than has been hitherto recognized. His newly defined canon will stimulate a fresh evaluation of English drama in this crucial period.
Hardcover
9781843846949
March 2024
£120.00 / $180.00
Ebook (EPDF)
9781805432517
March 2024
£55.00 / $80.00
About Oliver Cromwell
San Diego Sarah • Link
Now there's a book tackling one Early Modern theme of Puritanism: militarism.
"A rich analysis of the mindset of Puritans and of their theology which justified military action and acts of killing.
'Godly Violence in the Puritan Atlantic World, 1636–1676: A Study of Military Providentialism' by Matthew Rowley "recounts Puritan struggles for military dominance and for an authoritative interpretation of God's agency in war. It asks: What did Puritans say was God's will in warfare; and how did they claim to know?
"It applies the term 'military providentialism' to this attempt to understand God's will and agency in war; and the term 'godly violence' to an act of killing that was deemed to be both just and holy.
"The book explores these themes by examining Puritan warfare against 4 groups: Native Americans, royalist Episcopalians, Irish Catholics and Scottish Presbyterians.
'Godly Violence in the Puritan Atlantic World, 1636–1676' "employs a wide range of printed and archival sources: sermons, treatises, official documents, newsbooks, letters, diaries, poems and objects related to material culture; and considers private providential interpretations written by obscure individuals alongside published works by more prominent people.
"Overall, the book provides a rich analysis of the mindset which sustained Puritan political theology and military action at the time when Puritans were at the height of their power on both sides of the Atlantic."
Hardcover
9781837650149
February 2024
£80.00 / $115.00
Ebook (EPDF)
9781800108554
February 2024
$29.95 / £24.99
Ebook (EPUB)
9781800108561
February 2024
£24.99 / $29.95
About Tuesday 6 April 1669
San Diego Sarah • Link
Since I mentioned the Divine Right of Kings, this is a good time to mention a book, "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688: Religion, Politics, and Ideas" which discusses many subjects touched on during the last 9 years:
What did people in Restoration England think the correct relationship between church state should be? And how did this thinking evolve?
Based on the author, Mark Goldie's published essays, revised and updated with a new overarching introduction, this book explores the debates in Restoration England about 'godly rule', "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688" assesses some of the crucial transitions in English history: how the late Reformation gave way to the early Enlightenment; how Royalism became Toryism and Puritanism became Whiggism; how the power of churchmen was challenged by virulent anticlericalism; how the verities of "divine right" theory revived and collapsed.
"Providing a distinctive account of English thought in the era between the two revolutions of the Stuart century, "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688" discusses the ideological foundations of emerging party politics, and the deep intellectual roots of competing visions for the commonwealth, placing the power of religion, and the taming of religion, squarely alongside constitutional battles within secular politics."
Hardcover
9781783277360
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About Tuesday 12 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
Col. Edward King, a new name for my list of Parliamentary Committeemen responsible for disbanding the Army and the Navy:
On 4 Aug. 1660, Col. Edward King MP reported a bill to set up a disbandment commission.
On 6 Sept. 1660 Col. King MP obtained an order from the House empowering the disbandment commissioners to obtain assistance from the civil authorities, and was nominated to the commission. He was among those ordered to amend the instructions so that the garrisons should be disbanded last, and helped to manage a conference.
On 18 Dec. 1660, Col. King MP objected that the report by John Birch MP on the debts of the army and navy had not been authorized by the committee.
Excerpts from https://www.historyofparliamenton…
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The Commissioners were Members of Parliament assembled for the sole purpose of paying off the Army and Navy in 1661:
This Commission included William Prynne MP
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Col. John Birch MP
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
and the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Browne MP
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
They all had brief experience in dealing with the sailors and paperwork, but have discovered it's not as simple as it appeared when they were just helping.
Now we can add Col. Edward King, MP as a member of the ‘disbandment’ commission https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
William Jessop was added as their clerk -- probably serving an equal to Mr. Hayter -- a step-down for a former Admiralty official (secretary to Warwick 1642-5 and to the Admiralty Committee 1645-53), after which he served the Council of State (as Assistant Clerk in 1653, and Clerk 1654-9, 1659-60). From this Parliamentary Committee's point-of-view, he's an educated person to employ behind the scenes to get The Navy Pay completed.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Col. Edward King
San Diego Sarah • Link
Col. Edward King MP died at Ashby in 1681, the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.
Excerpted from https://www.historyofparliamenton…
About Col. Edward King
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONCLUSION:
On 18 Dec. 1660, Col. King MP objected that the report by John Birch MP on the debts of the army and navy had not been authorized by the committee.
Although generally unsympathetic to royalist claims for compensation, he obtained an order for the sister of Sir Edward Seymour to recover £3,571 sequestrated from the customs farmers in 1644.
Together with William Prynne MP and John Barton MP, Col. King was ordered to bring in a bill to recover £10,000 for charitable purposes from the prize commissioners and maintenance trustees.
He was teller against a proviso to the college leases bill precluding fellows and scholars from claiming restoration to their places.
He considered that compensation for officials of the court of wards should be left entirely to the King, and was named to the committee to consider the Lords’ amendments to the bill.
He was among those ordered to prepare reasons on the bill for confirming marriages.
Assisted by Prynne and Birch, he prepared a bill to recover arrears of excise, and steered it successfully through committee. But this did not prevent him from again taking issue with Birch over his proposal for a general excise on all foreign commodities, which, he again claimed, had not been approved by the committee.
Although resigned to the celebration of Christmas, Col. King MP seconded the unsuccessful motion of Robert Shapcote for a session on [what we call] Boxing Day.
Col. Edward King MP did not stand for re-election in 1661, and was described as ‘a great abettor of sectaries and nonconformists’.
Col. Edward King's arrest by the deputy lieutenants during the 1665 second Anglo-Dutch war was, he asserted, merely an act of personal revenge on the part of Sir Robert Carr.
He was released after 3 months, but in February 1666 he was committed to the Tower for refusing to give security to the deputy lieutenants for his peaceable demeanour, "by entering into a bond for £2,000 ... to appear where he should be directed by the lord lieutenant or any two deputy lieutenants after 20 hours notice in writing left at his house, to discover all plots, conspiracies etc. and to abstain from all conventicles and seditious meetings."
Col. King claimed such conditions were ‘illegal, infamous and servile’.
He bribed his way out of prison, but was defeated by Sir Henry Belasyse in a by-election in 1667, after which Col. King may have moved to London, where 2 of his daughters were living.
In 1670 Col. Edward King was described as appearing ‘daily upon the Exchange, not merely to promote sedition but rebellion and treason also’ in his zeal against the renewal of the Conventicles Act.
When a licence was granted for a Presbyterian meeting at Col. Edward King's house in Ashby in 1672, it was reported that "for many years he has endeavoured to protect those questioned for non-conformity ... in the ecclesiastical court at Lincoln, where at common law he has counselled or set on above 90 actions."