Monday 5 March 1659/60

Early in the morning Mr. Hill comes to string my theorbo, which we were about till past ten o’clock, with a great deal of pleasure. Then to Westminster, where I met with Mr. Sheply and Mr. Pinkney at Will’s, who took me by water to Billingsgate, at the Salutation Tavern, whither by-and-by, Mr. Talbot and Adams came, and bring a great [deal of] good meat, a ham of bacon, &c. Here we staid and drank till Mr. Adams began to be overcome. Then we parted, and so to Westminster by water, only seeing Mr. Pinkney at his own house, where he shewed me how he had alway kept the Lion and Unicorn, in the back of his chimney, bright, in expectation of the King’s coming again. At home I found Mr. Hunt, who told me how the Parliament had voted that the Covenant be printed and hung in churches again.

Great hopes of the King’s coming again.

To bed.

56 Annotations

First Reading

Hhomeboy  •  Link

Re: Parliamentary Presbyterians and the Covenant (from the 6th edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia):

...The National Covenant of 1638 aimed to unite the Scots in opposition to the episcopal innovations of King Charles I and William Laud, especially the adaptation for Scottish use of the English Book of Common Prayer.

The Covenanters successfully resisted the king’s armies in the Bishops’ Wars (1639-40). In the English civil war they supported the parliamentary party only after the English Parliament had accepted (1643) the Solemn League and Covenant, which provided for the eventual establishment of a Presbyterian state church in England and Ireland as well as in Scotland.

After the first civil war, however, the Independents in the English army secured control of affairs and prevented implementation of the Covenant. The Scots, therefore, concluded the agreement known as the “Engagement” with Charles I, by which the king agreed to establish Presbyterianism in England if restored to the throne. As a result, the Covenanters fought for Charles I in the second civil war (1648) and, after his execution (1649), they fought for Charles II, who also subscribed (1650) to the Solemn League and Covenant.

They were subdued, however, by Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Scotland (1650-51).

After the Restoration (1660), Charles II resumed his father’s effort to impose episcopacy in Scotland. The Covenanters were subjected to alternate attempts to conciliate them and to hunt them down. The result was a series of new compacts of resistance among them and new attempts to suppress them.

Hhomeboy  •  Link

Sam has had enough exposure to Crew and Gen. Montagu--ie. as opposed to Manchester--to anticipate that whereas parliament may have authorized the re-proclamation of the "solemn covenant," the Stuart King, upon his return, will wish to reassert his "divine" perogative to rule absolutely over an organized, Anglican Church led by a royally sanctioned English episcopacy.

Historical background to the Covenanting wars:

1637: Charles I tries to make Church of Scotland more like Churchof England
1638: Resistance of Scots nobles: signing of “National Covenant”; abolition of episcopacy (i.e. of bishops and archbishops, meaning the Kirk is now governed by a Presbyterian system).
1643: “Solemn League and Covenant” commits Scottish forces to Parliamentary side in civil war, in return for promise to establish Presbyterianism in England as well.
1650: After execution of Charles I in London, Scottish parliament changes sides: his son is crowned Charles II at Scone in return for signing the 1643 Covenant. Cromwell defeats Scottish army at Dunbar: his army occupies the country until the collapse of his Protectorate.
1660-1” Charles II, on the restoration of the monarchy, does NOT turn the Church of England into a Presbyterian one as the Covenant committed him to do; instead, he annuls all laws passed since 1633, hence bishops are back even in Scotland; thus begins the purges of ministers who do not accept state patronage.

This period is dominated by the polarisation of Covenanters—those from all ranks who do not accept the right of the state to determine matters of church government—and the (royal) Privy Council, responsible for carrying through Charles’s laws.

Martin K. Foys  •  Link

"Great hopes of the King’s coming again.”

If Sam has been for the king all along, I think this is the first time he explicitly writes his own personal sentiments down.

Hhomeboy  •  Link

Re: Text...scroll down part way until you reach the following text:

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT,
for reformation and defence of religion, the honour and happiness of the King, and the peace and safety of the three kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland; agreed upon by Commissioners from the Parliament and Assembly of Divines in England, with Commissioners of the Convention of Estates and General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and by both Houses of Parliament, and the Assembly of Divines in England, and taken and subscribed by them anno 1643; and thereafter, by the said authority, taken and subscribed by all ranks in Scotland and England the same year; and ratified by act of the Parliament of Scotland anno 1644. (And again renewed in Scotland, with an acknowledgement of sins and engagements to duties, by all ranks, anno 1648, and by Parliament, 1649; and taken and subscribed by King Charles II., at Spey, June 23, 1650; and at Scoon, January 1, 1651.)

http://www.covenanter.org/Westmin…

michael f vincent  •  Link

M/gen Lambert went to the Tower this day, no mention by SP who did mention the said gentleman on march 2 that he should appear in person before the Council.

wiggy  •  Link

the lion and the unicorn

This would have been a cast iron fireback emblazoned with the royal crest of the former King Charles. I found a reproduction here: http://www.brassgallery.com/produ…
The usage of 'bright' is interesting - you could brush off the cinders and clinker, but it wouldn't have been something you could polish....

Nix  •  Link

Thanks for the posts on the Covenant and the various political switchbacks that surrounded it -- For an American, this is important historical context for our constitutional provision, a century later, prohibiting the establishment of a state religion.

M.Stolzenbach  •  Link

Pepys swigs away and seldom seems to feel the worse for it - the other day, he wrote business letters after drinking all that "strong water" - but here poor Mr. Adams is "overcome" (one can picture it).

I wonder if the "Salutation Tavern" has a name going back to the old religion - when men would have honored the "Salutation" of the Angel to Mary. Of course the Anglicans still kept the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25. But the Puritans would not, I suppose.

Has anyone counted up how many musical instruments Pepys owns?

steve h  •  Link

Presbyterianism : some background

Presbyterianism is a Scottish (and English) version of Calvinist Protestantism. Parallel churches in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are called "reformed". Presbyterianism was a somewhat newly organized religion, with its Scottish foundations in the middle of the 16th century (John Knox) and its leading theological documents being the "Westminster Confession of Faith" of 1646 and "Catechisms" of 1647.
It's interesting that Presbyterian views of church government sites between the episcopalism of the Roman Catholics and Church of England and the congregationalism of radical Puritans, who saw every congregation as an independent unit (hence the New England “Congregationalists”).
Presbyterians favor church government by representative assemblies called presbyteries, or councils of elders. For this they found justification in Christian scripture.
“On the one hand, it [Presbyterianism} declares against hierarchical government, holding that all clergymen are peers one of another and that church authority is vested not in individuals but in representative bodies composed of lay (ruling) elders and duly ordained (ruling and teaching elders). On the other hand, Presbyterianism is opposed to Congregational independency and asserts the lawful authority of the larger church. The constitutions of most of the churches provide for four grades of administrative courts: the Session, which governs the congregation; the Presbytery, which governs a number of congregations within a limited territory; the Synod, which governs the congregations within a larger territory; and the General Assembly, which is the highest court.”
quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/1…

No offense meant to Presbyterians who should feel free to correct this, and sorry for the Catholic source. I just thought some background would help keep these three Protestant movements distinct, and the source of their disagreements.

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

Whose "Great hopes of the King's coming again"?

Re: Martin's comment above, I didn't read this phrase as expressing Sam's hopes, but rather as expressing the general feeling among the people around him and in the city. Sam hasn't been shy in the past about ascribing certain annoyances, joys or other feelings to himself, so the lack of "I have" at the beginning of this sentence leads me to believe that it's a description of general sentiment, not a personal one.

Thanks to Hhomeboy and Steve H for the background info, as Nix says, this helps further understanding on a variety of levels...

mary house  •  Link

Sam is always traveling thorough the city by water. What type of boat or water taxi were used at that time?

Mary  •  Link

River travel

According to Picard, the most frequently used form of transport was a shallow-draught skiff, sculled either by a single oarsman or by a pair of oars. There could be a 'tilt' (a sort of canvas hood) at the passenger's end of the vessel, to offer some protection from the weather. When speed was essential or the tide running against, then the pair of oars would be preferred.

There were also heavier wherries and galleys in use, powered be several oarsmen; these were largely used for longer journeys up and down stream than the about-town 'taxi' trips.

Keith Wright  •  Link

Pepys's musical instruments: viol, theorbo, and flageolet he owned, for sure, thus far; he could play violin and lute and will be learning the recorder later on in the Diary; he sang as a bass, could tune a keyboard instrument, and "also became the owner of the King's whistling starling," which apparently made him think of taking whistling lessons, no less.
---Reconstituted from Richard Luckett's superb 24-page essay on "Music" in Latham's Companion (pp. 258-82). Highly recommended.

Hhomeboy  •  Link

M.F. Vincent re: Lambert...

Here's an excerpt about Lambert from the people background section on this site:

"The Commons cashiered Lambert, Desborough, and other officers, October 12th, 1659, but Lambert retaliated by thrusting out the Commons, and set out to meet Monk. His men fell away from him, and he was sent to the Tower, March 3rd, 1660, but escaped."

I shan't give away when Lambert made off from the confines of the Tower but he was not without sympathizers, who, for obvious reasons, would not have wanted to see Lambert in irons at the time of Charles Stuart jr.'s triumphant return...

BTW, one wants to treat dates from this period with as much as 10 days leeway.

For a more comprehensive bio sketch of Lambert, who was a talented soldier with Machiavellian ambitions (always a dangerous combination to one's enemies, who, in Lambert's case, were legion), see:

http://www.skyhook.co.uk/civwar/b…

As for why Pepys did not note Lambert's conveyance to the Tower on this day or on March 3rd, one should recall he had already noted having passed by on the street a recetly released Tower guest, Sir George Booth, whom Gen. Lambert had taken prisoner the previous summer; also, in his political reportage of March 2nd, Pepys had speculated in the same breath on the likely reappearance in Parliament of another Lambert nemesis, Haselrigge, and Lambert's self-deluded prospective evening appearance before the council, the outcome of which was predictable --given that Lambert had dissolved the Rump Parliament at sword-point a few months previously, as Cromwell had once had done in 1653.

Not only was Lambert a skilled and prolific plotter of varying and flexible allegianc-s but he had once been second-in command of the Roundheads and was later the active proponent of perhaps the most reviled form of English gov't ever attempted since the Proclamation of the Magna Carta--the so-called 'dictatorship of the Major generals'.

When one contemplates Lambert's eventual sorry fate, perhaps it would have been best had he never escaped the clutches of the Tower's keepers!

N.B. From the March 2nd and other entries, I think it is fairly obvious Pepys is writing a 'balanced' dramatic narrative for posterity. He is not only seeking to maintain a nuanced, sympathetic profile as a purportedly objective journalistic observer, our Sam is also a character in his own story and must therefore be mindful of not seeming omniscient...which often means he chooses to conceal both knowledge of coming events and his own role in aiding those who are shaping said events....it's all part of the trustworthy, everyman-like character Pepys has assigned himself and assumed for his anticipated readership.

As with all actors, Sam will regularly slip into or out of character (depending on a reader's point-of-view) via various asides or randomly recorded, revealing personal thoughts....leaving us to puzzle as to who the 'real' Pepys was.

Nigel Pond  •  Link

Re River Travel: The last vestiges of the transportation of people by boat along the Thames in Pepys's time can be found today in the venerable "Thames Watermen": see http://av.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=… for details.

helena murphy  •  Link

In 1639 the Covenanters made Alexander leslie, a professional soldier, commander in chief of their army against Charles I in the First Bishops'War. Both armies met near Duns Law five miles from berwick where the royalist army was camped. The king, instead of attacking opened negotiations resulting in the Scots winning a great bloodless strategic victory. However, Covenanter support was by no means uniform throughout Scotland.There were those who did not want Presbyterian control of the Scottish church and state. In may 1639 the Gordan clans rose out against the Covenanters ,routed their army in the "Trot of Turriff " and occupied Aberdeen for the Marquis of Huntley and the king. This was in fact the first military encounter of significance of what was to become the civil war which would engulf all the three Stuart kingdoms. In June 18th The Pacification of Berwick was signed in which Charles agreed that ecclesiastical matters in Scotland should be determined in assemblies of the Kirk, and civil matters settled in their parliaments.The treaty was so worded that the king would decide when these assemblies and parliaments would meet. The Covenanters rightly did not trust Charles, for at the same time he was negotiating with Randall Macdonnell,Earl of Antrim to invade western Scotland from Ulster.

Alan Bedford  •  Link

The description of Presbyterianism that Steve H furnished is close, but the term "administrative court" is inaccurate. Although these bodies can act as administrative courts, at least here in North America they are elected representative governing bodies, i.e., the congregation elects the members of the Session, the Session elects delegate(s) to the Presbytery and so forth. The individual congregations have quite a bit of latitude in self-governance.

Thanks to Hhomeboy for the links to historical Presbyterianism!

Jim  •  Link

Description of Presbyterianism...
Hhomeboy and Alan have provided good descriptions of Presbyterianism.

I don't know about Scotland, but in the U.S. I think some Congregational style independent thinking has spread to other denominations. The minister of a Presbyterian church (where I was a member and served on Session) once told me that many Presbyterians discovered that they were Congregationalists at heart when they found out that their church needed approval by the Synod to do something like add a new classroom wing to their church building.

M Bobryk  •  Link

"Great hopes ...." It seems to me that Sam has been circumspect about his sympathies so far. If called to account on this entry, he's left himself room to argue that he's describing the "great hopes" of others, not his own. Do we know if Sam in fact had chosen sides by this point, or is he on the fence pending further developments. This would seem a prudent thing to do with the ambivalence displayed by the great Moncke.

Jenny Doughty  •  Link

Hhomeboy writes 'our Sam is also a character in his own story and must therefore be mindful of not seeming omniscient…which often means he chooses to conceal both knowledge of coming events and his own role in aiding those who are shaping said events.’ Hmmm - this to me seems overstated. What suggests he has any more knowledge of coming events than he chooses to write about in the diary, or that he chooses to conceal his own role in aiding the shapers of those events?

john s.  •  Link

Jenny's point raises the question....
Did Sam buy his diary by chance? Was the date he started entering notations arbitrary? Or, if not, just how much could he see/feel was in the offing? In the offing not only for the nation, his Lord, but perhaps himself? Did he know that he was destined to rise in his world, one way or the other, and these events breaking around him would unlock the door to that future? Was it intstinct or sure knowledge imparted to him on an earlier date at Hinchingbrooke by his Lord or someone close to him? Foreknowledge is a very important ingredient in understanding the start and early development of the diaries. Just how much did he know, and when did he know it, i.e. the likely return of the King? His Lord's return to grace and what it would mean for him personally?

Hhomeboy  •  Link

Jenny D...

Many have described Mr. P's unnerring instincts for candour--in his diary.

I beg to differ...I'm not saying he had formed a precise publishing plan circa 1658, consciously conceived to serve to transform him into a cultural icon and the voice and conscience of his age (besides, in my opinion, that honour still belongs to Milton, one of a half dozen greats in English literature).

But I do think it obvious from the sustained efforts at first drafts before a finished entry is concluded--and from a variety of ticks and narrational mannerisms--that Pepys knew already he was writing for an audience and not just for his own circle's entertainment decades hence.

Pepys was an accomplished musician (or at least a versatile amateur); I think he had an artistic temperament and came quite quickly to relish his quotidian performances in the diary. In fact, I would suggest that at least some of his social rounds and calls are made with the express purpose of affording Pepys a steady flow of various & sundry observations for a demanding new master--the diary.

I haven't compiled an evidentiary list of instances which support my allegedly "overstated" assertions but small, subtle habits are the surest signs.

He is also a discrete and very cautious individual who must have been supremely concerned with the possibility that diary entries might reveal serious indiscretions to contemporary readers...hence the coded or Spanish passages for saucy bits and his dissembling--eg. in the March 2 entry one finds the following passage re: goings on at the Presbyterian merchant grandee Crewe's offices:

"Here were a great many come to see him, as Secretary Thurlow who is now by this Parliament chosen again Secretary of State. There were also General Monk

Keith Wright  •  Link

Each Reader Her or His Own Pepys, of course; but perhaps we do him more justice in trying to see him as he was, a person in his own right, rather than refashioning him in our own image.

Emilio  •  Link

Sam and his diary
I can't help but agree w/ Jenny D. and Keith Wright--this is the long version of the argument.
Hhomeboy I think brings up an excellent point about the skill w/ which our man seems to create an ongoing narrative. I was first knocked out by the week-long sequence of Monk's return to London and the dissolution of the Rump. I even created a digest of this thread, and was very impressed w/ how smoothly it flowed: Beginning w/ a remark about the mysterious drumbeats the night of 5 Feb, to the increasingly forboding sightings of Monk around London, his pulling down of the City walls, culminating in Monk's seemingly miraculous reversal against the Rump the very next day. We've been kept in such tension about the situation that we can almost feel ourselves celebrating with everyone else around the bonfires up and down the streets. And, judging from a condensed version or two of the diaries I've looked at, this is only a prelude to the later drama of the diary.
I also agree that creating these narratives was both deliberate and a great pleasure for Pepys from the very beginning. I say this as I compare his diary with my own - I do well if I sit still to make one entry a week, I think in part because my entries DON'T form an ongoing story to pull me into the writing. Pepys probably took the same pleasure we did in his depictions of events unfolding, which is both why he could do it so well and why he devoted time every day to the hard work of putting one word after another. I can even imagine he looked forward to getting home to pull out the most resonant events to create the condensed story of his day.
Arguing that he enjoyed turning his life into narrative on the page, however, is still a far cry from arguing that he lived to create this narrative or that he had foreknowledge of where the story was going. Those arguments put the cart before the horse. As I see it, he had a good eye for the colorful events of each day, as well as an intuitive grasp of the mood of the those around him each day and what details best captured this mood on paper. I doubt that anyone on 2 Mar., for instance, was absolutely confident that the King would be returning, however, much they hoped for it. It was still less than a month since the City walls had been torn down, after all, and the situation was still quite turbulent.
Likewise, although we know that Sam was a spy of sorts, I can't help think his usefulness would have been compromised if he had thought of himself playing at spies, i.e., deciding he was in touch w/ the "real truth" of what was going on and tailoring his reports to match. I expect he did in the letters what he does in the diary: report on the events he sees and the public mood, and let the story form itself out of those materials. Of course he moved around to keep close tabs on events, both to keep in touch with the common pulse and to report back when events affected his masters; telling the story in his diary benefited from these interests, it didn't drive them.
Thus, I don't at all find it necessary to assume that Sam was simply making his rounds for "a demanding new master--the diary." Our man Sam was too fond of living to go through the motions for the sake of a posterity he saw himself writing for. What would be the appeal of following his life in the diary if he hadn't actually lived it first?

Martin K. Foys  •  Link

for a demanding new master--the diary

Wow. Though I certainly do not deny that as Sam wrote in his diary he was mindful that others might someday read it, the idea that Pepys's day to day activities began to be dictated in part by the fact that he needed to write things down in the diary seems to me more than overstated, and rather, overdetermined and proleptic.

Regarding the idea that "only fools, fanatics and madmen" were in doubt about the Restoration at this point, then there must have been an awful lot of them in England at the time, as historians regularly point out what a time of great political confusion and instability this moment was. Granted, the tide of public sentiment was turning at this point, but the Restoration was by no means a done deal. Even Pepys, commentators regularly point out (at least all the ones I have read) that Sam doesn't appear to know what either of his bosses are up to until well after the process is in motion.

Emilio  •  Link

My apologies to everyone, btw, that the last entry was so long. I wish to God I could have made it shorter.

j.a. gioia  •  Link

a touch of the artist

bravo, homeboy for a nuanced analysis. i certainly agree that sam's gift for musical expression seeped into his designs for the diary. as for motive all i would add is that he began writing a day after his wife miscarried. perhaps the only thing he was sure of in a very uncertain world was that he would not be a father. the diary (and his library which he assembles concurrently and with the same dillegence) then becomes his bequest to posterity. in a sense his children are his readers.

language hat  •  Link

Lengthy comments:
Don't worry, Emilio -- Hhomeboy has already put three dozen paragraphs in this day's annotations alone and doesn't seem likely to apologize. I was under the impression comments were supposed to be short and helpful, not rambling and self-important (Hhomeboy seems to think he's a better stylist than Pepys), but perhaps I'm mistaken. At any rate, I think you're right -- it's absurd to suppose Pepys had any special "foreknowledge" or "lived to create this narrative." He was a busy man who enjoyed keeping a diary and did it supremely well; no supernatural addenda are needed.

Jenny Doughty  •  Link

Thank you, Hhomeboy, for your thoughts. However, I still think Ms Tomalin's assessment fits better with my understanding of Pepys. To give one small example, I would not say that the phrase 'a little put to a stand' means in this context a 'shocked and stunned demeanour'. To me, it means 'slightly taken aback', which is a very different matter.

Although I agree that early novels used devices such as letters, diaries and travellers' tales, Pepys wrote his diary before even Aphra Behn's and Daniel Defoe's novels were written. I think it is a stretch too far to describe him as deliberately employing 'cinematic narrational devices' on an unfolding story in quite the self-conscious manner you seem to suggest, unless I am reading more into what you say than you intended.

However, as Keith Wright suggests above, perhaps 'to each reader his or her own Pepys.'

Hhomeboy  •  Link

Correction; short riposte(s) re: posts:

A sentence about the diary form should have read:

"The diary form is quite unique in that the WRITER is simultaneously lead actor, protagonist and narrator."

I think most of us can agree that Sam, mere months into his great project, is already a virtuoso and is exploring his expanding powers as a diarist.

Like so many male overachievers, Sam is a man of contrasting habits and a compartmentalizer. He has yet to become a man of great administrative or political responsibilities...and is at present a loyal, junior confidant of the coterie that effected the counter-revolution.

It is not for now to speculate as to why Sam eventually quit writing his diary--melancholy, fatigue, alcoholism, heavy responsibilities, his sex life, an inability to wholly prevaricate when commenting on affairs of state in which he is a more of a participant--as opposed to his former status as a well-situated, privileged, minor-figure observer.

If one sees Monck as an equivocating 'weathervane' figure tossed and turned by the prevailing political winds, Montagu/Crewe/Downing/ are the key plotters, who end up carrying Monck with them...the scene depicted at Warwick house marks the beginning of the denouement; Sam, who relishes being at the centre of things, is thereby stunned (and not a little chagrined) at having been caught flat-footed and unawares when the political quicksands shift suddenly and Montagu bolts his Hinchinbrooke stable to rejoin the political arena...think of these days as the closing scenes of a 10-year interregnum in which civil war, violent factionalism, marauding warlords and chaos had become the norm.

Historians taking a cinematic 50 yr. view of the Stuarts and their demise, the religious strife and political vagaries leading to the interregnum and its course are unlikely to pinpoint exact changes which are tangible--reflected instead by our everpresent Hentyesque narrator (as opposed to pamphleteer).

Because Sam is quite capable of not mentioning many of the famousr figures he encounters daily, one must always be sensitive re: meaning and intent--as to why Sam includes certain names or personages when he does--hence my Thurlow deconstruction.

One point I should make about artists--as opposed to say good rhetoricians, political journalists or professional observers of the age (spies and the like)--is that artists always maintain a 'childish' ability to be surprised. So, for instance, Sam, who had not been a regular visitor to his alma mater, was able to instantly detect and then refelct upon a quite recent change in morals and manners at Cambridge.

As annoted above, Diaries become demanding taskmasters. And, as we have seen, Sam himself has a rich vein of hedonism, garrulous conduct and a gregariousness streak in him. I also perceive he is one of those people who is easily bored but almost never is because he can effortless alternate pleasurable pursuits.

But make no mistake--once embarked on his reportorial mission, Sam, who would never bore himself willingly, wants satisfying material for good passages...when he doesn't have it or his leisurely hours are limited, we get very short entries, rather than the reverse--for which we can all be thankful (viz. Evelyn's diaries).

Think of the diary as an excuse or a motivating factor for some of his sorties. Sam knows he has been blessed to live in interesting times and he is determined to make the most of it--just as he is equally determined (but stoic and patient) to become a ranking member of the admiralty realm he had the good fortune to enter due to family ties and his own considerable abilities to render himself useful in a discrete but highly efficacious fashion.

Sam is a main chancer; at this point in his somewhat barren personal/domestic life (when he should have been overwhelmed by parental affections, activities and concerns), he has turned inward and is nurturing a richly detailed and quite elaborate private world as seen through his prism (see Borges' "the Aleph"); when the public realm will call upon him, alas, we shall lose our unique entrée to his times…we are so unusually privileged that Sam’s personal circumstances, predilections and needs coincided with one of the most interesting and seminal decades in 17th century British history.

Phil  •  Link

Email sent to Hhomeboy:
"Hhomeboy, please make your annotations shorter in future. I don't want to restrict yours or anyone's access to posting annotations but I am prepared to do so."

Hhomeboy  •  Link

Message for Phil (who is also using his daily diary annotations sections to post commentary)...

It would be nice if you posted daily diary entries at a set hour.

And, of course, as you are well aware, I have suggested implementing a Pepys forum ASAP; given your somewhat superficial obsessions with length (when instead you should be dedicating yourself to facilitating/ encouraging spirited dialectical topic strings of discussion, impression/erudition), perhaps a forum moderated by those with abiding interests in Pepys would be a good fit for yr. skill set and personal preoccupations.

As you also know, I have offered to create/moderate a forum if you undertake in writing to link to it on all yr. Pepsian pages--for the duration.

Hhomeboy  •  Link

re: Martin K. F's last comments :

Mad dogs und Englishers. wot, wot?

David Bell  •  Link

Sam sometimes writes his diary later, from notes. His Cambridge trip, for instance, as has been already pointed out. And that allows him to give a little more structure to the story.

This is a word in which a gentleman was expected to show a certain facility in the arts, and just as we might see Sam exercising his musical talents through the pages of his diary, we may as well remember that in his diary he is exercising a literary talent, and the shorthand system he uses, which he may anticipate as useful later.

He already writes better sentences than that one...

michael f vincent  •  Link

diaries: sp had to put his own thoughts to pen: as a good observer(spy?) must blend,not stand out,be a confidant rather than confident: This is a way to keep "his own self be true" I have no knowledge of the info. that was transmitted to Huntington except it was in code.( may be a historian can find translations of this material) My own observation of the successful person is that they keep their own council while rest of us blab.
He also could kept his thoughts short and tidy. Were euphanisms used in that time period. (language hat?) Sorry my thoughts are poorly explained but?(jack of all trades and the m....)

Laura K  •  Link

Sam as diarist/character

Speaking from my own experience, when one is a writer, it is almost impossible to write without imagining some audience, even when one knows there is none. In my opinion, Sam's lively observations and his writing's wonderful rhythms only means he was a good writer, not that he had turned his life into diary-fodder, or that, at this early date, he imagined his diary being published.

Also: Thank you, Phil, for reigning in the lectures disguised as annotations. I think it's pretty rude of any reader/annotator to ask you to post entries according to a schedule. Most of us are so grateful to you for your efforts, and quite amazed by the work you put into this great site.

Hhomeboy  •  Link

reining/raining/reigning...L.K.

I've made several silly spelling errors as well...hopefully, we'll soon have a forum with correction capabilities for posters.

If you have written diaries--either yr. own or fictional ones--you will know that there is a great difference between a private diary (with a potential audience of a future lover or spouse/children or a few close friends) and a diary being written for posterity's sake.

Had Downing or Montagu or others realized what Sam was writing, he would have not lasted long as a trusted Lieutenant (in the White House, it's assumed half the staffers are keeping notes for a future book).

I believe Sam started out having decided to commit to paper a 'true' and clear-eyed account of his turbulent times. I feel sure he must have imagined himself later in life as a man of letters, so a distinguished and comprehensive diary would have been a great aid for writing memoirs or history.

And of course, later in life, Sam did write about the admiralty, to which he had devoted the greatest part of his life.

Reading Sam's extensive correspondence with Evelyn and others gives one some sense of his concealed ambitions.

Ambitious people go to considerable lengths to produce work which satisfies their own standards; by that measure, you can assume Sam may have used the diary as an excuse to justify much of his meandering and his irrepressible curiosity, although a lot of the socializing is networking and shmoozing.

KVK  •  Link

Hhomeboy, you write:

"It’s interesting that Presbyterian views of church government sites between the episcopalism of the Roman Catholics and Church of England and the congregationalism of radical Puritans,”

The congregationalists (a.k.a. ‘separatists’ and ‘Independents’) weren’t radical puritans. ‘Radical puritans’ were almost always presbyterians. The word puritan, after all, originated to describe those who wanted to ‘purify’ the established church of any residual Romish practices. Congregationalists were those who had decided the church was never going to be completely purged and so turned their backs on it. They wanted to ‘separate’ from the church, and set up their own ‘congregations’ that would be ‘independent’ of it - hence the three most common names for them.

The word ‘puritan’ was a derogatory term used by defenders of the established church to attack its critics. These same defenders would have referred to congregationalists as either ‘Anabaptists’ or ‘Brownists’, not as puritans. Anabaptists and Brownists were both misnomers, and this reflects how obscure congregationalism was until about 1644. They were considered completely beyond the pale by both puritans and conformists, and one of the most serious charges leveled at the Presbyterians was that by destroying the episcopacy they would encourage the ‘Anabaptists and Brownists’.

Regarding the Solemn League and Covenant, it should be pointed out that Charles II took the Covenant 10 years ago solely for the purpose of securing Scots aid against the English Republic. He did not get along with the Scots and in particular developed a hatred for Archibald Jonston, Lord Warriston. There is no reason Charles would be taking the Covenant seriously in 1660. Even many of the English MPs who swore allegiance to it in 1643 thought of it as nothing more than a military alliance with the Scots and never intended to support a National Presbytery.

Hhomeboy  •  Link

KVK: everything you wrote in yr. last post, I agree with....but the quote you attributed to me above is not mine...

Laura K  •  Link

Hhomeboy:

"If you have written diaries--either yr. own or fictional ones--you will know that there is a great difference between a private diary (with a potential audience of a future lover or spouse/children or a few close friends) and a diary being written for posterity's sake."

I have written them, and I disagree. To me, writing is writing is writing.

Hhomeboy, I find your habit of correcting other people's posts - be it my homophonic spelling error above, or "influence" vs "interest" peddling elsewhere - irritating and completely unnecessary.

I don't need a different forum where I can correct typos. Mistakes happen, and are unimportant in this context.

I'm sure I'm not the only person here who wishes you would back off a bit.

Hhomeboy  •  Link

Well, instead of deferring to someone who writes for the children's version of Sports Illustrated, why don't we consult a real writer...

(To wit) Warren Keith Wright's citation from the esteemed James Fenton from this site's Feb 3 annotations:

“a diary written for posterity (Pepys) may have quite a different quality from a journal designed to be handed down as a family treasure (Evelyn).”

Glyn  •  Link

Travel on water

With regard to Mary's and others' comments about travel on the Thames. It would be both sail and oars, and I'm sure that the river would normally have been packed with boats. It's said that you could practically walk from one riverbank to the other just by stepping across the various boats.

If you've seen the film "Shakespeare in Love" then you'll know what it was like.

But being a bear of very little brain, I've only just realized that the Thames is a tidal river at London. So presumably longer journeys would have been made only going with the tide rather than against it, which is why he sometimes goes downriver to Greenwich or upriver to Westminster at strange times of the day.

Also the sea-going ships would not have been able to go under London Bridge, so would have unloaded there at the latest, which is why the docks and (now London Docklands) are where they stll are.

Glyn  •  Link

to Billingsgate, at the Salutation Tavern

According to "Tavern and Tokens of Pepys' London" by George Berry, the Salutation Tavern was in what is now Lower Monument Street (near the middle). It was an old tavern and a prosperous one - probably the most important one in the area. There was some very bad verse about it in the Elizabethan broadsheet "News from Bartholomew Fair": "There hath been great sale and utterance of wine, / Besides beer and ale and ipocras fine, / In every county, region and nation, / But chiefly in Billingsgate at the Salutation." I don't think that that was written by Shakespeare but he could have drunk there.

By the way, London Bridge has been moved a few times over the years up and down river, although only very slightly so that the roads are largely unaffected. This has occurred when building a new bridge before demolishing the old one.

Terry F  •  Link

"expectation of the King's coming again" had been heightened by prophecy

"In November 1658 the exiled king Charles II was visited by a young man from Amsterdam by the name of Nicolaes Van Rensselaer, who had some good news to tell him: within a year and a half the king would be restored to his father's throne, his restoration being requested by the English people. Furthermore, Van Rensselaer also prophesied that Charles Stuart's, or his son's, reign would be so glorious that under it the conversion of the Jews would take place." "Prophecy and profit: Nicolaes van Rensselaer, Charles II and the conversion of the Jews," by Ernestine G.E. van der Wall
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/…

Second Reading

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

"....many Presbyterians discovered that they were Congregationalists at heart...." - and of course in England and Wales most congregations of the two churches joined together in 1972 to form the United Reformed Church.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

House of Commons Journal - 5 March

In a list of items about Religion there is this:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…

League and Covenant.

Ordered, That the Solemn League and Covenant be printed and published, and setup, and forthwith read in every Church; and also read once every Year, according to former Order of Parliament: And that the said Solemn League and Covenant be also set up in this House

Gillian Bagwell  •  Link

Is there a way to post pictures? I think I have a photo somewhere of just such a lion and unicorn andiron, in the Crown Inn in Cirencester.

Weavethe hawk  •  Link

Can we please loose hhomeboy and his long winded pomposity, please??

Weavethe hawk  •  Link

Oh, I see he's an old boy, thank goodness.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"This would have been a cast iron fireback emblazoned with the royal crest of the former King Charles."

The significance of the rampant lion is pretty obvious, but the meaning of the unicorn is more of a puzzle in the 21st century, especially as we are surrounded by rainbow-colored, fluffy versions of them marketed to the under-6s.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-hunt-…

Third Reading

Carol D  •  Link

The unicorn is the (a?) national animal of Scotland, apparently because James II of Scotland (1430 - 1460) believed in the legend that only a king could keep a unicorn captive. When James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, thereby uniting the two crowns and countries, the new royal coat of arms incorporated the unicorn of Scotland together with the lion of England.

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