I agree, MartinVT. Now that I have sorted out yesterday's narrative better, I now see Roger Cuttance's response differently. Which doesn't mean he wasn't a bit flustered by Lady Sandwich and her party of 8 arriving on his turf unannounced! But I'm sure he could have handled it had Pepys not shown up.
Thank you, RM, for mentioning Shooters Hill, near Greenwich. It was notorious for highwaymen, as Pepys will observe in this coming April. That's probably why the Countess did not advertise her status. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Celia Fiennes, who in 1697 proceeded out of London along the Dover Road, wrote in her diary of stopping at "Shuttershill, on top of which hill you see a vast prospect ...some lands clothed with trees, others with grass and flowers, gardens, orchards, with all sorts of herbage and tillage, with severall little towns all by the river, Erith, Leigh, Woolwich etc., quite up to London, Greenwich, Deptford, Black Wall, the Thames twisting and turning it self up and down bearing severall vessells and men of warre on it ..."
On 11 April 1661, diarist Samuel Pepys mentions passing under "the man that hangs upon Shooter's Hill and a filthy sight it was to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones." (presumably a highwayman hanged and left to rot as a warning to other criminals - at 'Gibbet Field', now part of the local golf course).
"As an aside on nightdress, I think it was Tomalin who wrote the Sam had probably never seen his wife, Elizabeth, naked."
Where did Tomalin or whoever get that idea? Look at John Donne’s poetry, written 60 odd years before Pepys Diary. For an example, we might consider his elegy “To His Mistress Going to Bed.” There, Donne directs his lover in the art of the strip tease, verbally peeling off her clothes and drawing her into the bed where he lies, waiting.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals, As when from flowery meads the hill’s shadow steals. Off with that wiry coronet and shew The hairy diadem which on you doth grow: Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed. … To teach thee, I am naked first; why then, What needst thou have more covering than a man?
@@@
A 2023 book, "Sex Lives" by Joseph Gamble, draws from literature, art, and personal testimonies from 16th- and 17th-century Europe to uncover how early moderns learned to have sex. Gamble contends that in the early modern period, everyone from pornographers to Shakespeare recognized that sex requires knowledge of both logistics (how to do it) and affect (how to feel about it). And knowledge takes practice.
Gamble explores how sex organized and permeated everyday life and experiences of gender and race in early modernity. He shows how affects around sex structure the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, revealing the role of sexual feeling and sexual racism in early modern English drama. https://www.pennpress.org/9781512…
As we will discover, Pepys was in need of some lessons! But I'd bet money he saw all of Elizabeth.
"Six of the Clocke" -- a description of daily life in rural early modern England. From Nicholas Breton's "Fantasticks", 1626.
It is now the sixt houre, the sweet time of the Morning, and the Sunne at euery window calls the Sleepers from their beds: the Marygold beginnes to open her leaues, & the Dew on the ground doth sweeten the Ayre: the Faulconers now meet with many a faire flight, and the Hare and the Hounds haue made the Huntsman good sport: the shoppes in the City begin to shew their wares, and the market people haue taken their places: The Schollers now haue their Fourmes, and whosoeuer cannot say his Lesson, must presently looke for Absolution: The Forester now is drawing home to his Lodge, and if his Deere be gone, hee may draw after cold scent: Now begins the curst Mistresse to put her Girles to their taskes, and a lazy Hylding will doe hurt among good Workers: Now the Mower falles to whetting of his Sythe, and the Beaters of Hempe giue a hoh to euery blow: The Ale Knight is at his Cup ere hee can well see his drinke, and the begger is as nimble toung'd, as if he had beene at it all day: the Fishermen now are at the Craier for their Oysters, and they will neuer lyn crying, while they haue one in their basket: In summe, not to be tedious, I hold it, the Sluggards shame, and the Labourers praise. Farewell.
"... I found my Lady and her daughter Jem., and Mrs. Browne and five servants, ... The sport was how she had intended to have kept herself unknown, and how the Captain (whom she had sent for) of the Charles had forsoothed her, though he knew her well and she him. "
Lady Sandwich's party of 8 were travelling incognito for safety. We know there were many recently-released soldiers and sailors who have not been given their full backpay, and that they were robbing people. Plus the round-up of suspects continued, following the recent Venner's Rising so people were probably on edge and suspicious.
Keeping the Sandwich party unknown probably means they left the best coach with the Sandwich coat-of-arms on the doors and the best set of horses at Whitehall, and Lady Sandwich told everyone to wear travelling clothes and to leave unnecessary finery at home.
Capt. Roger Cuttance knows Lady Sandwich and the family well; he pretended not to in order to protect her and the party's identity, so they won't be taken advantage of by the innkeeper and/or the motley crew of ne'er-do-wells hanging out in the bar.
Normally the nobility arranged ahead of time to stay with other well-to-do families, not at the local pub. This indicates to me that Lady Sandwich fled from Whitehall, as arrangements for better, secure housing like that had not been made.
I now realize that Charles II is home (don't know about James -- Pepys and Slingsby reported to Coventry this morning, and James isn't mentioned today or yesterday -- perhaps he stayed with Minette and the Queen Mother?); so the A Team of guards presumably are back in town.
I wonder what caused Lady Sandwich to decide to run now?
Cardinal Mazarin died on March 9, 1661. The dramatic change came on March 10: Louis XIV informed his astonished ministers that he intended to assume all responsibility for ruling the kingdom. This had not occurred since the reign of Henry IV.
It cannot be overemphasized that Louis XIV’s action was not in accordance with tradition; his concept of a dictatorship by divine right was his own. In genuine faith, Louis viewed himself as God’s representative on earth and considered all disobedience and rebellion to be sinful. From this conviction he gained not only a dangerous feeling of infallibility but also considerable serenity and moderation. https://www.britannica.com/biogra…
Rembrandt Van Rijn, fleeing from a messy love life and bankruptcy, arrived in the Humber port oF Hull in 1661, staying for a year.
Some critics claim that Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo might have been painted by Rembrandt during his time in Yorkshire. Simon Green, head of Museums and Galleries in Hull said that whilst it was impossible to make claims that any particular paintings were completed there, he welcomed the association with the artist. “It is nice to know that we can connect him to the city …” he said. …
Far from being isolated from the rest of the world, Hull had been at the center of links to the North European continent for centuries. The Dutch links can also be seen in the city’s architecture and Hull would have been an obvious destination for the great artist. “Travel in that period was not what it is today – it was exceptional but travel across the North Sea from the Low Countries to Hull would have been less exceptional. Many people would have been doing it; families would have had links and sailors would have had connections as a matter of routine,” said Mr. Green.
It is believed Rembrandt had a studio at the High Street during his stay in Hull, where it is claimed he completed a number of paintings and drawings of local notables. A fire at Maister House in 1743 is thought to have destroyed much of the work he completed as well as taking the lives of 3 women and a child.
At least one East Riding family is known to have owned 2 portraits by Rembrandt although their whereabouts are not now known. The artist died in Amsterdam in 1669.
I wonder if Charles II knew this? Should have put him to work! "Pepys and the Night Watch" has a nice ring to it, even if he did decline to ride during the Venner Uprising.
L&M: An East Indiaman, to be distinguished from the royal ship of the same name. The symbol of the oak tree (associated with royalty for many centuries) had now been given new vitality by Charles II's hiding in the Boscobel oak after the second battle of Worcester, 1651.
L&M: Cables and cordage generally were made from hemp which was spun into yarn, laid in tar and then twisted into rope. Long ropeyards were required for the last process. The yarn was made pliable by exposure for about two days to slow heat over a charcoal fire in a stove-house.
"The Red Ensign or "Red Duster" is the civil ensign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is one of the British ensigns, and it is used either plain or defaced with either a badge or a charge, mostly in the right half.
"It is the flag flown by British merchant or passenger ships since 1707. Prior to 1707, an English red ensign and a Scottish red ensign were flown by the English Royal Navy and the Royal Scots Navy, respectively. The precise date of the first appearance of these earlier red ensigns is not known, but surviving payment receipts indicate that the English navy was paying to have such flags sewn in the 1620s.
England (pre-1707)
"Small vexillological symbol or pictogram in black and white showing the different uses of the flagThe English Red Ensign as it appeared in the 17th century "Prior to the reorganisation of the Royal Navy in 1864, the plain red ensign had been the ensign of one of three squadrons of the Royal Navy, the Red Squadron, as early as 1558. By 1620, the plain red ensign started to appear with the Cross of St George in the upper-left canton.
"The Colony of Massachusetts used the red ensign from its founding; after a sermon by Roger Williams in 1636, equating crosses with the papacy, Governor Endicott ordered the St. George cross removed from the flag. The Great and General Court of the colony found that Endicott had "exceeded the lymits of his calling", and yet left the flag without its cross for a number of decades afterward.
"In 1674, a Royal Proclamation of King Charles II (1630–1685, reigned 1660–1685) confirmed that the Red Ensign was the appropriate flag to be worn by English merchant ships. The wording of the 1674 proclamation indicates that the flag was customarily being used by English merchantmen before that date. At this time, the ensign displayed the Cross of St. George in the canton. This changed in 1864, when an order in council provided that the Red Ensign was allocated to merchantmen. ..."
Urine is also known as urea and saltpetre, and as such it is a valuable commodity, traded globally today.
cumsalisgrano on 9 Mar 2007 tells us: Urine, a controversial subject: OED: There be a urine-monger , like fish-monger, a trader in urine, a possible reason, was it for the makers of gun powder? or the sellers of homeopathic medicines, which there are some practicing today:
then 1625 HART Anat. Ur. I. iv. 38 Who told these *vrine~mongers that the wombe daunced attendance on the bladder?
now: "... The Medical Proof For almost the entire course of the 20th century, unknown to the public, doctors and medical researchers have been proving in both laboratory and clinical testing that our own urine is an enormous source of vital nutrients, vitamins, hormones, enzymes and critical antibodies that cannot be duplicated or derived from any other source......" https://www.shirleys-wellness-caf…
@@@
Saltpetre is one of 3 basic ingredients for gunpowder. England never organized her production of saltpetre (unlike the rest of Europe), which caused King Charles considerable difficulty during the Civil Wars as the 3 major production centers of gunpowder were under Parliamentary control: London, Hull and Portsmouth.
An interesting book on the subject is Saltpetre: The Mother of Gunpowder -- by David Cressy -- Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN: 9780199695751; 256pp.
In Chapter seven, ‘Saltpeter for a global power’, he documents a change of focus from the activities of the English saltpetremen to that of importing using the East India Company.
Whereas King Charles in the 1630s was struggling to achieve a target of 288 tons of saltpetre a year, imports from India topped 1,000 tons during various years of the reign of Charles II.
The volume of saltpetre supplies available to later Stuart monarchs surpassed that from all previous conflicts.
The more things change, the more they stay the same!
A company in Vermont promotes the use of urine to fertalize vegetables. What a revolutionary idea! For homes using septic tanks, the bathrooms come with divided toilets (front and back, each having a seperate flushing system), and the waste is funnelled into seperate tanks. https://richearthinstitute.org/
So what other things was Pepys doing that would improve our lives now? Gong farmers and night soil men knew all about this. Not everything went out of the window all the time.
OOOOppps -- Mrs. Margaret Pepys wasn't a French immigrant.
Wheatley goes so far as to say: "Being a handsome man with courtly manners, Mons. St. Michel gained the affections of the daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill (lately left a widow by an Irish squire), who married him against the wishes of her family, and, with £1,500 which they raised, the newly-married couple started for France, in the hope of recovering, if possible, some part of the family estates. "Unhappily, they were taken prisoners at sea, with all their goods, by the Dunkirkers, and when released they settled at Bideford, in Devonshire. Here, or near by, Elizabeth and Balthasar and the rest of the family were born."
Wheatley cites no documentation showing Margaret to be a Kingsmill daughter. L&M and Phil have her maiden name as being Kite, which means she was a relative of the Kingsmills on the female side, OR she was Margaret Kingsmill Kite Pepys. Sadly the Cromwellians didn't enforce parish registries -- probably every man who could write was fighting? -- so tracking things like this is at best hard, often impossible.
Wheatley also says Elizabeth was in the Catholic convent for only 12 days, so its influence was only passing. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5…
The Puritan-Royalist divide in the New World was personified by the use -- or non-use -- of periwigs, in the first generation. Apparently looks and fashion were more important to those who could afford them after that: https://newenglandhistoricalsocie…
"Is there any evidence that Elizabeth actually spoke French?"
In Pepys' will signed March 17, 1660, he left all his French language books to Elizabeth. She was born near Bideford, Devonshire, to immigrant French Huguernot parents. If anything, English was her second language, but I think of her as bilingual. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… Elizabeth might have played up the French part these days, as everything French was "fashionable" under the Stuarts: however, everything foreign, especially French, remained very suspect to the average English person. See specifically the second quote from Cosmo's travelogue on the subject: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
"Maybe they had discussed how to split the money before Pepys left?"
They did set this up, and Downing knew about it as of Sept. 9, 1660: "This morning at my Lord’s I had an opportunity to speak with Sir George Downing, who has promised me to give me up my bond, and to pay me for my last quarter while I was at sea, that so I may pay Mr. Moore and Hawly." https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
“and did discourse with him about our assisting the Commissioners in paying off the Fleet, which we think to decline.” The "Commissioners" in this case were Members of Parliament assembled for the sole purpose of paying off the Army and Navy.
Comments
Third Reading
About Thursday 17 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
I agree, MartinVT. Now that I have sorted out yesterday's narrative better, I now see Roger Cuttance's response differently. Which doesn't mean he wasn't a bit flustered by Lady Sandwich and her party of 8 arriving on his turf unannounced! But I'm sure he could have handled it had Pepys not shown up.
About Wednesday 16 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thank you, RM, for mentioning Shooters Hill, near Greenwich. It was notorious for highwaymen, as Pepys will observe in this coming April.
That's probably why the Countess did not advertise her status.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Shooter's Hill, Kent
San Diego Sarah • Link
Celia Fiennes, who in 1697 proceeded out of London along the Dover Road, wrote in her diary of stopping at "Shuttershill, on top of which hill you see a vast prospect ...some lands clothed with trees, others with grass and flowers, gardens, orchards, with all sorts of herbage and tillage, with severall little towns all by the river, Erith, Leigh, Woolwich etc., quite up to London, Greenwich, Deptford, Black Wall, the Thames twisting and turning it self up and down bearing severall vessells and men of warre on it ..."
On 11 April 1661, diarist Samuel Pepys mentions passing under "the man that hangs upon Shooter's Hill and a filthy sight it was to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones." (presumably a highwayman hanged and left to rot as a warning to other criminals - at 'Gibbet Field', now part of the local golf course).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sho…
About Wednesday 16 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
"As an aside on nightdress, I think it was Tomalin who wrote the Sam had probably never seen his wife, Elizabeth, naked."
Where did Tomalin or whoever get that idea?
Look at John Donne’s poetry, written 60 odd years before Pepys Diary.
For an example, we might consider his elegy “To His Mistress Going to Bed.”
There, Donne directs his lover in the art of the strip tease, verbally peeling off her clothes and drawing her into the bed where he lies, waiting.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads the hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and shew
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
…
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
@@@
A 2023 book, "Sex Lives" by Joseph Gamble, draws from literature, art, and personal testimonies from 16th- and 17th-century Europe to uncover how early moderns learned to have sex.
Gamble contends that in the early modern period, everyone from pornographers to Shakespeare recognized that sex requires knowledge of both logistics (how to do it) and affect (how to feel about it). And knowledge takes practice.
Gamble explores how sex organized and permeated everyday life and experiences of gender and race in early modernity. He shows how affects around sex structure the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, revealing the role of sexual feeling and sexual racism in early modern English drama.
https://www.pennpress.org/9781512…
As we will discover, Pepys was in need of some lessons! But I'd bet money he saw all of Elizabeth.
About Sunday 7 June 1668
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Six of the Clocke" -- a description of daily life in rural early modern England.
From Nicholas Breton's "Fantasticks", 1626.
It is now the sixt houre, the sweet time of the Morning, and the Sunne at euery window calls the Sleepers from their beds: the Marygold beginnes to open her leaues, & the Dew on the ground doth sweeten the Ayre: the Faulconers now meet with many a faire flight, and the Hare and the Hounds haue made the Huntsman good sport: the shoppes in the City begin to shew their wares, and the market people haue taken their places: The Schollers now haue their Fourmes, and whosoeuer cannot say his Lesson, must presently looke for Absolution: The Forester now is drawing home to his Lodge, and if his Deere be gone, hee may draw after cold scent: Now begins the curst Mistresse to put her Girles to their taskes, and a lazy Hylding will doe hurt among good Workers: Now the Mower falles to whetting of his Sythe, and the Beaters of Hempe giue a hoh to euery blow: The Ale Knight is at his Cup ere hee can well see his drinke, and the begger is as nimble toung'd, as if he had beene at it all day: the Fishermen now are at the Craier for their Oysters, and they will neuer lyn crying, while they haue one in their basket: In summe, not to be tedious, I hold it, the Sluggards shame, and the Labourers praise. Farewell.
About Wednesday 16 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... I found my Lady and her daughter Jem., and Mrs. Browne and five servants, ... The sport was how she had intended to have kept herself unknown, and how the Captain (whom she had sent for) of the Charles had forsoothed her, though he knew her well and she him. "
Lady Sandwich's party of 8 were travelling incognito for safety. We know there were many recently-released soldiers and sailors who have not been given their full backpay, and that they were robbing people. Plus the round-up of suspects continued, following the recent Venner's Rising so people were probably on edge and suspicious.
Keeping the Sandwich party unknown probably means they left the best coach with the Sandwich coat-of-arms on the doors and the best set of horses at Whitehall, and Lady Sandwich told everyone to wear travelling clothes and to leave unnecessary finery at home.
Capt. Roger Cuttance knows Lady Sandwich and the family well; he pretended not to in order to protect her and the party's identity, so they won't be taken advantage of by the innkeeper and/or the motley crew of ne'er-do-wells hanging out in the bar.
Normally the nobility arranged ahead of time to stay with other well-to-do families, not at the local pub. This indicates to me that Lady Sandwich fled from Whitehall, as arrangements for better, secure housing like that had not been made.
I now realize that Charles II is home (don't know about James -- Pepys and Slingsby reported to Coventry this morning, and James isn't mentioned today or yesterday -- perhaps he stayed with Minette and the Queen Mother?); so the A Team of guards presumably are back in town.
I wonder what caused Lady Sandwich to decide to run now?
About Sunday 10 March 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
Meanwhile, in Paris:
Cardinal Mazarin died on March 9, 1661.
The dramatic change came on March 10: Louis XIV informed his astonished ministers that he intended to assume all responsibility for ruling the kingdom. This had not occurred since the reign of Henry IV.
It cannot be overemphasized that Louis XIV’s action was not in accordance with tradition; his concept of a dictatorship by divine right was his own. In genuine faith, Louis viewed himself as God’s representative on earth and considered all disobedience and rebellion to be sinful. From this conviction he gained not only a dangerous feeling of infallibility but also considerable serenity and moderation.
https://www.britannica.com/biogra…
About Hull
San Diego Sarah • Link
Rembrandt Van Rijn, fleeing from a messy love life and bankruptcy, arrived in the Humber port oF Hull in 1661, staying for a year.
Some critics claim that Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo might have been painted by Rembrandt during his time in Yorkshire.
Simon Green, head of Museums and Galleries in Hull said that whilst it was impossible to make claims that any particular paintings were completed there, he welcomed the association with the artist.
“It is nice to know that we can connect him to the city …” he said. …
Far from being isolated from the rest of the world, Hull had been at the center of links to the North European continent for centuries.
The Dutch links can also be seen in the city’s architecture and Hull would have been an obvious destination for the great artist.
“Travel in that period was not what it is today – it was exceptional but travel across the North Sea from the Low Countries to Hull would have been less exceptional. Many people would have been doing it; families would have had links and sailors would have had connections as a matter of routine,” said Mr. Green.
It is believed Rembrandt had a studio at the High Street during his stay in Hull, where it is claimed he completed a number of paintings and drawings of local notables. A fire at Maister House in 1743 is thought to have destroyed much of the work he completed as well as taking the lives of 3 women and a child.
At least one East Riding family is known to have owned 2 portraits by Rembrandt although their whereabouts are not now known. The artist died in Amsterdam in 1669.
https://www.independent.co.uk/art…
I wonder if Charles II knew this? Should have put him to work! "Pepys and the Night Watch" has a nice ring to it, even if he did decline to ride during the Venner Uprising.
About Tuesday 15 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
"I perceive none of our officers care much for one another, but I do keep in with them all as much as I can."
Wouldn't you love to know the back story behind that comment!
About Royal Oak
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M: An East Indiaman, to be distinguished from the royal ship of the same name. The symbol of the oak tree (associated with royalty for many centuries) had now been given new vitality by Charles II's hiding in the Boscobel oak after the second battle of Worcester, 1651.
About Ropeyard (Woolwich)
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M: Cables and cordage generally were made from hemp which was spun into yarn, laid in tar and then twisted into rope. Long ropeyards were required for the last process. The yarn was made pliable by exposure for about two days to slow heat over a charcoal fire in a stove-house.
About Sunday 2 November 1662
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thank you for correcting my addled memory, Bryan.
About Monday 14 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
Vincent's link to the history of The Red Duster is long gone.
Try
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red…
"The Red Ensign or "Red Duster" is the civil ensign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is one of the British ensigns, and it is used either plain or defaced with either a badge or a charge, mostly in the right half.
"It is the flag flown by British merchant or passenger ships since 1707. Prior to 1707, an English red ensign and a Scottish red ensign were flown by the English Royal Navy and the Royal Scots Navy, respectively. The precise date of the first appearance of these earlier red ensigns is not known, but surviving payment receipts indicate that the English navy was paying to have such flags sewn in the 1620s.
England (pre-1707)
"Small vexillological symbol or pictogram in black and white showing the different uses of the flagThe English Red Ensign as it appeared in the 17th century
"Prior to the reorganisation of the Royal Navy in 1864, the plain red ensign had been the ensign of one of three squadrons of the Royal Navy, the Red Squadron, as early as 1558.
By 1620, the plain red ensign started to appear with the Cross of St George in the upper-left canton.
"The Colony of Massachusetts used the red ensign from its founding; after a sermon by Roger Williams in 1636, equating crosses with the papacy, Governor Endicott ordered the St. George cross removed from the flag. The Great and General Court of the colony found that Endicott had "exceeded the lymits of his calling", and yet left the flag without its cross for a number of decades afterward.
"In 1674, a Royal Proclamation of King Charles II (1630–1685, reigned 1660–1685) confirmed that the Red Ensign was the appropriate flag to be worn by English merchant ships. The wording of the 1674 proclamation indicates that the flag was customarily being used by English merchantmen before that date. At this time, the ensign displayed the Cross of St. George in the canton. This changed in 1864, when an order in council provided that the Red Ensign was allocated to merchantmen. ..."
About Urine
San Diego Sarah • Link
Urine is also known as urea and saltpetre, and as such it is a valuable commodity, traded globally today.
cumsalisgrano on 9 Mar 2007 tells us:
Urine, a controversial subject:
OED: There be a urine-monger , like fish-monger, a trader in urine, a possible reason, was it for the makers of gun powder? or the sellers of homeopathic medicines, which there are some practicing today:
then 1625 HART Anat. Ur. I. iv. 38 Who told these *vrine~mongers that the wombe daunced attendance on the bladder?
now:
"... The Medical Proof
For almost the entire course of the 20th century, unknown to the public, doctors and medical researchers have been proving in both laboratory and clinical testing that our own urine is an enormous source of vital nutrients, vitamins, hormones, enzymes and critical antibodies that cannot be duplicated or derived from any other source......"
https://www.shirleys-wellness-caf…
@@@
Saltpetre is one of 3 basic ingredients for gunpowder. England never organized her production of saltpetre (unlike the rest of Europe), which caused King Charles considerable difficulty during the Civil Wars as the 3 major production centers of gunpowder were under Parliamentary control: London, Hull and Portsmouth.
An interesting book on the subject is Saltpetre: The Mother of Gunpowder -- by David Cressy -- Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, ISBN: 9780199695751; 256pp.
In Chapter seven, ‘Saltpeter for a global power’, he documents a change of focus from the activities of the English saltpetremen to that of importing using the East India Company.
Whereas King Charles in the 1630s was struggling to achieve a target of 288 tons of saltpetre a year, imports from India topped 1,000 tons during various years of the reign of Charles II.
The volume of saltpetre supplies available to later Stuart monarchs surpassed that from all previous conflicts.
Even this review is interesting: https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
And on the British East India Company's involvement with moving urea around the world
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Urine
San Diego Sarah • Link
The more things change, the more they stay the same!
A company in Vermont promotes the use of urine to fertalize vegetables. What a revolutionary idea! For homes using septic tanks, the bathrooms come with divided toilets (front and back, each having a seperate flushing system), and the waste is funnelled into seperate tanks.
https://richearthinstitute.org/
So what other things was Pepys doing that would improve our lives now? Gong farmers and night soil men knew all about this. Not everything went out of the window all the time.
About Sunday 2 November 1662
San Diego Sarah • Link
OOOOppps -- Mrs. Margaret Pepys wasn't a French immigrant.
Wheatley goes so far as to say: "Being a handsome man with courtly manners, Mons. St. Michel gained the affections of the daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill (lately left a widow by an Irish squire), who married him against the wishes of her family, and, with £1,500 which they raised, the newly-married couple started for France, in the hope of recovering, if possible, some part of the family estates.
"Unhappily, they were taken prisoners at sea, with all their goods, by the Dunkirkers, and when released they settled at Bideford, in Devonshire.
Here, or near by, Elizabeth and Balthasar and the rest of the family were born."
Wheatley cites no documentation showing Margaret to be a Kingsmill daughter. L&M and Phil have her maiden name as being Kite, which means she was a relative of the Kingsmills on the female side, OR she was Margaret Kingsmill Kite Pepys.
Sadly the Cromwellians didn't enforce parish registries -- probably every man who could write was fighting? -- so tracking things like this is at best hard, often impossible.
Wheatley also says Elizabeth was in the Catholic convent for only 12 days, so its influence was only passing.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5…
About Wigs
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Puritan-Royalist divide in the New World was personified by the use -- or non-use -- of periwigs, in the first generation.
Apparently looks and fashion were more important to those who could afford them after that:
https://newenglandhistoricalsocie…
About Sunday 2 November 1662
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Is there any evidence that Elizabeth actually spoke French?"
In Pepys' will signed March 17, 1660, he left all his French language books to Elizabeth. She was born near Bideford, Devonshire, to immigrant French Huguernot parents. If anything, English was her second language, but I think of her as bilingual.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Elizabeth might have played up the French part these days, as everything French was "fashionable" under the Stuarts: however, everything foreign, especially French, remained very suspect to the average English person. See specifically the second quote from Cosmo's travelogue on the subject:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Thursday 10 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Maybe they had discussed how to split the money before Pepys left?"
They did set this up, and Downing knew about it as of Sept. 9, 1660:
"This morning at my Lord’s I had an opportunity to speak with Sir George Downing, who has promised me to give me up my bond, and to pay me for my last quarter while I was at sea, that so I may pay Mr. Moore and Hawly."
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
About Saturday 19 January 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
“and did discourse with him about our assisting the Commissioners in paying off the Fleet, which we think to decline.”
The "Commissioners" in this case were Members of Parliament assembled for the sole purpose of paying off the Army and Navy.
As I recall this Commission included William Prynne MP
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Col. John Birch MP
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
and the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Browne MP
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
All had experience in dealing with the sailors and paperwork.