Saturday 21 April 1660

This day dined Sir John Boys and some other gentlemen formerly great Cavaliers, and among the rest one Mr. Norwood, for whom my Lord give a convoy to carry him to the Brill, but he is certainly going to the King. For my Lord commanded me that I should not enter his name in my book. My Lord do show them and that sort of people great civility. All their discourse and others are of the King’s coming, and we begin to speak of it very freely. And heard how in many churches in London, and upon many signs there, and upon merchants’ ships in the river, they had set up the King’s arms.

In the afternoon the Captain would by all means have me up to his cabin, and there treated me huge nobly, giving me a barrel of pickled oysters, and opened another for me, and a bottle of wine, which was a very great favour.

At night late singing with W. Howe, and under the barber’s hands in the coach. This night there came one with a letter from Mr. Edw. Montagu to my Lord, with command to deliver it to his own hands. I do believe that he do carry some close business on for the King.

This day I had a large letter from Mr. Moore, giving me an account of the present dispute at London that is like to be at the beginning of the Parliament, about the House of Lords, who do resolve to sit with the Commons, as not thinking themselves dissolved yet. Which, whether it be granted or no, or whether they will sit or no, it will bring a great many inconveniences. His letter I keep, it being a very well writ one.

24 Annotations

First Reading

WKW  •  Link

This sentence is less startling once one looks up "coach":

"At night late singing with W. Howe, and under the barber’s hands in the coach."

---that is, apparently after music-making with Will Howe that night, Pepys had a shave in the "captain's stateroom in [a] large ship" ("Shorter Pepys," glossary). No doubt he left off vocalizing for the duration.

vincent  •  Link

"For my Lord commanded me that I should not enter his name in my book". Publick Record? "Shades of a Politician, it seems obviously not to be his Diary(he mentions the name so he does not expect any body to read his private thoughts) that he is keeping, but to a another ledger maybe the daily ledger(Admirals log?) or could it be the ships log ?.

Emilio  •  Link

"they had set up the King’s arms"
A slightly wider focus on events can be found in an L&M footnote:
"The meeting of the new parliament - fixed for 25 April - was now close at hand, and the elections had gone overwhelmingly against the diehard republicans. For the past three weeks or so signs of a jubilant royalism had been openly displayed in London - pictures of the King in the windows of houses, the royal arms in churches and on ships, etc."
And a nice nod of the great letter-writer to a kindred spirit in the last line.

mary  •  Link

Sam's book

We discussed the possible nature of Sam's journal/book after the April 11th entry. Today's entry seems to confirm that he is indeed keeping a day-book that logs all the important political transactions, visitors etc. that involve Mountagu on board the Naseby, just as a good political secretary should.

Paul Brewster  •  Link

The man who wasn't there ... the shadowy Mr. Norwood.
Our link points to Mr Henry Norwood. A footnote for this day in Wheatley: "A Major Norwood had been Governor of Dunkirk; and a person of the same name occurs as one of the esquire of the body at the Coronation of Charles II. Richard Norwood of Danes Court, in the Isle of Thanet" [footnote attributed to Lord Braybrooke] The Wheatley Index contains entries for both Norwood (Mr.) and Norwood (Colonel).

steve h  •  Link

Pickled oysters

"Oysters were still eaten on their own, of course, as an hors d'oeuvre or in the main meal, and since the 17th Century they had routinely been pickled for transport to inland towns or for long voyages. Small fresh oysters were eaten raw; large ones were stewed with herbs and spices, or were roasted or baked in pies."

from the History of Oysters in Britain at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/cla…

We don't see pickled oysters much in the United States these days, though they were popular up through the firat half of the century. Maybe refrigeration did them in. What about England? They sound like they could be pub food.

Glyn  •  Link

I've never seen oysters on sale as pub food, Steve, but you can get other shellfish in pubs. You often see booths outside pubs, soccer grounds and London Street Markets that sell tubs of cockles, mussels, whelks, and jellied eels. And there are people who will bring them around the more traditional pubs selling them with the permission of the pub owner.

Nix  •  Link

For Glyn and our other British friends, fresh oysters are a common appetizer or snack food in the more ambitious U.S. restaurants and taverns (even in the deserts of Arizona!) -- many feature an "oyster bar" with different varieties of oysters and clams on the half shell, typically displayed on ice. Smoked oysters are likewise fairly common (canned in the supermarket), but I've never encountered them pickled.

vk  •  Link

House of Lords

The Independant minority purged the Presbyterians from the Commons in December 1648.

It was not until more than a month later, January 1649, that the Independants (a.k.a. the Rump) got into a disagreement with the House of Lords and decided they had the right to act all by themselves. A couple of months later they abolished the House of Lords.

Since Monck allowed the Presbyterians to return and thus restore the pre-1649 House of Commons, the Lords seem to feel that their abolishment has been negated. When the Commons summoned the upcoming Parliament, however, they did not say anything about the Lords.

Most of the House of Lords joined the King at the beginning of the civil war and have not sat in Westminster since. There were only twelve active Lords when the House was abolished in '49.

Capt.Petrus.S. Dorpmans  •  Link

21st. APR 1660.
"... for whom my Lord gave a convoy to carry him to the Brill..."

Den Briel - Brielle
Gemeente Brielle

Provincie Zuid-Holland
Hoofdplaats Brielle
Oppervlakte
- Land
- Water 31,12 km²
27,49 km²
3,63 km²
Inwoners
Bevolkingsdichtheid 15.931 (1 juni 2007)?
580 inw./km²
Geografische ligging 51°53' NB 4°11' OL
Geografische ligging {{{coordinaten}}}
Belangrijke verkeersaders N15
Station(s) {{{station}}}
Netnummer 0181
Postcodes 3230 - 3235
Officiële website www.brielle.nl
Politiek
Burgemeester (lijst) G.W.M. van Viegen
Bestuur {{{bestuur}}}
Zetels
{{{partijen}}} {{{zetels}}}
Bevolkingspiramide

Brielle , vroeger Den Briel, is een stad en gemeente in de Nederlandse provincie Zuid-Holland gelegen op het eiland Voorne. De gemeente telt 15.931 inwoners (1 juni 2007, bron: CBS) en beslaat 31,32 km² waarvan 3,71 km² wateroppervlak is. Naast de stad Brielle zelf omvat de gemeente ook de dorpen Vierpolders en Zwartewaal. Brielle zelf heeft ruim 9000 inwoners.

Brielle is gelegen aan de Brielse Maas, een afgedamd gedeelte van de Maas dat zich tot belangrijk recreatiegebied ontwikkeld heeft. Het ligt ten oosten van de oude vaargeul Brielse Gat. Tot 1700 werd dit water gebruikt als verbinding naar Rotterdam, daarna trad verzanding op waardoor het Gat minder goed bevaarbaar werd.

cgs  •  Link

coach, n.
[In 16th c. coche, a. F. coche (masc., in 16th c. occas. fem.).
1556....

1. a. A large kind of carriage: in 16th and 17th centuries, .......

1606 DEKKER Sev. Sinnes IV. (Arb.) 31 In euery street, carts and Coaches make such a thundring.

1615 STOW Eng. Chron. Jas. I an. 1605 867/2 In the yeere

1564 Guylliam Boonen, a dutchman, became the Queene's Coachmanne, and was the first that brought the vse of Coaches into England..Lastly, even at this time,

1605, began the ordinary vse of Caroaches.

1621 SIR R. BOYLE in Lismore Papers (1886) II. 20, I..took back the bay gelding..for my coche.
.......

2. Naut. An apartment near the stern of a man of war, usually occupied by the captain.

[ from this date]
1660 PEPYS Diary 3 May, The Commanders all came on board, and the council sat in the coach. Ibid. (1828) I. 94 The King supped alone in the coach.

1691 T. H[ALE] Acc. New Invent. 120 Cuddie, Fore-castle, Coaches.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Oysters in the US

One of the most famous landmarks in New York City is "The Oyster Bar, officially the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant, is a seafood restaurant located on the lower level of Grand Central Terminal at 42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue in Manhattan in New York City. It opened along with the terminal itself in 1913 and has been in business ever since, although it closed briefly for renovations following a 1997 fire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyst…

Dick Wilson  •  Link

Regime change is in the wind, and everybody is on the make. People are coming and going from the King, and Sandwich supplies passes and escort. He is very civil to the travelers, for if they are not VIP's now, they may be, soon. They are very civil to him, because he controls travel, now, and who knows what he might control in the future. Pepys is a jolly good fellow, good musician, pleasant companion, likeable. He is honored to be treated as a friend by Captain Cuttance. It is hard to tell how naive Pepys is.

Neil Ferguson  •  Link

Oysters were a staple food for Londoners in Pepys time...
For the advice of mr Forman above oysters are eaten all around the world....usually fresh from the shell and have been so for a long long time ....even before 1913 .

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"This day dined Sir John Boys and some other gentlemen formerly great Cavaliers, and among the rest one Mr. Norwood, for whom my Lord give a convoy to carry him to the Brill, "

L&M: Boys was a leader of the Kent royalists, and had been recently imprisoned for demanding a free parliament (CSPD 1659-60, p. 330); Maj. Henry Norwood was a royalist agent. Both now carried letters from Mountague to the King: CSPClar., iv. 687; cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... Mr. Moore, giving me an account of the present dispute at London that is like to be at the beginning of the Parliament, about the House of Lords, who do resolve to sit with the Commons, as not thinking themselves dissolved yet. Which, whether it be granted or no, or whether they will sit or no, it will bring a great many inconveniences. ..."

The leader of this Puritan Knot was Gen. Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester. On 18 April we read "That the Lords do meet every day at my Lord of Manchester’s, and resolve to sit the first day of the Parliament" and I wondered where that was.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

LKvM  •  Link

I live on the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana (USA) and am horrified at the thought of pickled oysters.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Before the era of fast transport and refrigeration, inland dwellers could still enjoy the taste of oysters when preserved by pickling. Pickled oysters also, according to Rowan Jacobsen, “standard fare in every city on the eastern Seaboard [of the United States] in that heady precanning era when oysters were in demand far and wide.” -- A Geography of Oysters (New York 2007)
They once were ubiquitous on the counters of American bars and British public houses. Like so many other pickles, oysters taste too good this way, particularly paired with beer, to neglect. The recipe: https://www.britishfoodinamerica.…

Apparently pickled oysters were served at James Garfield’s 1881 inaugural dinner. Here's the recipe: https://insaneinthebrine.com/pick…

There are more recipes, just Google "Pickled Oysters"

JB  •  Link

With reference to Terry’s post of 10 years ago, oysters have been very important to the history of NYC, and were ubiquitous in certain decades of the 19th century, to the point where the city was identified with oysters. If I may get personal for a moment, I’ve been eating at the Grand Central Oyster Bar since I was a kid. In a rapidly and constantly evolving place, it still feels like “old” Manhattan.

Stephane Chenard  •  Link

A note: If anybody is fluent in German, and so fluent in German as to decipher this fearsome-looking blackletter font German gazettes are still using (we tried but 'twas not for us), there is a nice collection of South German newspapers from 1660 through 1663 (and far beyond, but those are their Pepys years) that awaits your perusing at https://digipress.digitale-sammlu…. Who knows what's in there.

The Bavarian State Library's newspaper collection at https://digipress.digitale-sammlu… is a treasure trove in itself, but this is the main page for us. There's a few others at https://digipress.digitale-sammlu… and at https://digipress.digitale-sammlu…. All in German, all in blackletter, none of it machine-readable.

Sadly the renowned Dutch gazettes, and the many, many English journals that have cropped up as the Rump got roasted, seem to remain beyond our reach; buried in library stacks, auctioned off, or long gone as wrapping for the day's Baltick mackerels...

Scube  •  Link

Ah yes, JB. The Oyster Bar. It feels as old as the ships in this diary. Nothing like it.

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