Thursday 23 August 1660

By water to Doctors’ Commons to Dr. Walker, to give him my Lord’s papers to view over concerning his being empowered to be Vice-Admiral under the Duke of York. There meeting with Mr. Pinkney, he and I to a morning draft, and thence by water to White Hall, to the Parliament House, where I spoke with Colonel Birch, and so to the Admiralty chamber, where we and Mr. Coventry had a meeting about several businesses. Amongst others, it was moved that Phineas Pett (kinsman to the Commissioner) of Chatham, should be suspended his employment till he had answered some articles put in against him, as that he should formerly say that the King was a bastard and his mother a whore.

Hence to Westminster Hall, where I met with my father Bowyer, and Mr. Spicer, and them I took to the Leg in King Street, and did give them a dish or two of meat, and so away to the Privy Seal, where, the King being out of town, we have had nothing to do these two days. To Westminster Hall, where I met with W. Symons, T. Doling, and Mr. Booth, and with them to the Dogg, where we eat a musk melon (the first that I have eat this year), and were very merry with W. Symons, calling him Mr. Dean, because of the Dean’s lands that his uncle had left him, which are like to be lost all.

Hence home by water, and very late at night writing letters to my Lord to Hinchinbroke, and also to the Vice-Admiral in the Downs, and so to bed.

15 Annotations

First Reading

vincent  •  Link

"Serious offense" muri, audient?"...Amongst others, it was moved that Phineas Pett (kinsman to the Commissioner) of Chatham, should be suspended his employment till he had answered some articles put in against him, as that he should formerly say that the King was a bastard and his mother a whore..."
So, not everybody is enamoured with the new regime.

chip  •  Link

L&M note that Doctors' Commons (near St. Paul's) housed the society of lawyers practising civil (Roman) law in the court of Admiralty (where Dr. Walter Walker was an advocate) and in the ecclesiastical courts. Next note mentions that Phineas Pett had been confirmed as Assistant Master-Shipwright, Chatham, on June 11, but was dismissed on 15 October. The Pett family (so numerous and powerful in naval affairs and so fond of office) attracted many enemies. Then about the Privy Seal, warrants were made out only on the authority of the 'King's bills' issued, under the sign manual, from the signet office. Finally Symons received the lands from his uncle, Henry Scobell, late Clerk of Parliament and registrar of the commission for the sale of the lands of deans and chapters. Symons had inherited two manors, confiscated from the Dean and chapter of St. Paul's. All such lands were now restored. Incidentally, L&M spell it Muske millon.

Nix  •  Link

What a busy day -- I count nine stops, and ten people encountered.

And thanks to Samuel (and Phil Gyford), Phineas Pett has achieved a curious kind of immortality: his name flashed around the world three-and-a-half centuries later for calling the king a bastard.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"my father Bowyer,"

Note the way Pepys frames his relation to a man (met professionally) in whose paternal country custody he entrusted Elizabeth while he was in Holland -- though her own parents live (in unfortunate quarters) in London.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"So away to the Privy Seal, where, the King being out of town, we have had nothing to do these two days."

L&M: Privy Seal warrants were made out only on the authority of 'King's bills' issued, under the sign manual of the Signet Office. Cf. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

John Evelyn's Diary – he and Mary Browne Evelyn live at Saye's Court, Deptford.

http://brittlebooks.library.illin…

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23 August, 1660.
Came Duke Hamilton, Lord Lothian, and several Scottish Lords, to see my garden.

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John Evelyn’s garden was famous: He purchased Sayes Court, Deptford, in 1653 from his father-in-law, and laid out gardens, walks, groves, enclosures, and plantations, which afterwards became famous for their beauty. When he took over the place it was nothing but an open field of 100 acres, with scarcely a hedge in it. Pepys will visit and admire those hedges in October 1665. In the 1690’s Tzar Peter of Russia found pleasure in wrecking them. For more links and details, see all of the annotations at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

Duke of Hamilton: Lord William Douglas was created Earl of Selkirk in 1646, at the age of 11. He supported the Royalist cause in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and was fined £,1000, under the terms of the Commonwealth's Act of Pardon and Grace to the People of Scotland. On 29 April, 1656, Selkirk married Anne Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton. He was created Duke of Hamilton in 1660 on the petition of his wife, the suo jure Duchess of Hamilton, receiving also several of the other Hamilton peerages for life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil…

William Carr/Kerr, 1st Earl of Lothian (1605 – October 1675)
Sounds like an unpleasant Covenanter to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil…

Third Reading

LKvM  •  Link

The "morning draft"
If you tap on that phrase, you will get an explanation that people didn't actually have breakfast in Pepys's time, they just had a "morning draft."
Okay, but what is it? We know it's not tea, coffee, or orange juice, so is it small beer?
The Pilgrims are said to have had beer for (or at) breakfast, so that's my guess.

LD in Seattle  •  Link

LKvM: I was wondering the same thing. I assumed it is some kind booze, knowing their tendencies on those days...

Charles Miller  •  Link

I wonder if if could be one of a choice depending on taste and availability - chocolate was becoming available in the right places, and warmed milk with nutmeg or honey are also referenced elsewhere in the diary.

David  •  Link

I think SP's morning draft was usually (but not always) alcohol of some sort, he did sometimes take it at home but more often in a pub, he rarely specified what it was but there were times later on when it was spirts.
He rarely mentioned breaking his fast except when he was traveling when he frequently noted it.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"According to Priceonomics, the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day is nothing more than the result of a clever marketing campaign put forth by General Mills in 1944.

"As The Atlantic notes, eating early in the day was shunned by most people throughout the Middle Ages. Italian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas looked upon eating in the morning as a form of gluttony. But that attitude changed when people began working outside of their homes.

"As reported by History Extra, the Tudors were responsible for creating our modern idea of breakfast in the 16th century, and they did so as a side effect of inventing employment.

"BBC News further explains that the Industrial Revolution solidified the idea that breakfast should be consumed since eating early in the day before leaving home helped fuel laborers during their long work days. It makes sense to eat before you leave for work, especially for the type of physical labor many workers did during the Industrial Revolution, ..."

Read More: https://www.tastingtable.com/1096…

"English settlers in the 17th century ate 3 meals a day, as they had in England ... For most people, breakfast consisted of bread, cornmeal mush and milk, or bread and milk together, and tea. Even the gentry might eat modestly in the morning, although they could afford meat or fish...
Dinner, as elsewhere in the colonies, was a midday, through the wealthy were like to do as their peers in England did, and have it mid-afternoon...
new England's gentry had a great variety of food on the table...
An everyday meal might feature only one or two meats with a pudding, tarts, and vegetables...
The different between the more prosperous households and more modest ones might be in the quality and quantity of the meat served...
Supper was a smaller meal, often similar to breakfast: bread, cheese, mush or hasty pudding, or warmed-over meat from the noon meal.
Supper among the gentry was also a sociable meal, and might have warm food, meat or shellfish, such as oysters, in season."
-- Food in Colonial and Federal America, Sandra L. Oliver [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2005(p. 157)

All Pepys mentions is his small beer and liquid breakfasts. No doubt if he was hungry, he grabbed some bread and cheese, or a chicken leg, or whatever was in the cupboard. I don't think he was trying to creating employment for 90 per cent of the Diary.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Amongst others, it was moved that Phineas Pett (kinsman to the Commissioner) of Chatham, should be suspended his employment till he had answered some articles put in against him, as that he should formerly say that the King was a bastard and his mother a whore."

Mr. Pett wasn't alone -- gossip of this nature was going around the kingdom. It was even a concern to the House of Commons. See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... and so to the Admiralty chamber, where we and Mr. Coventry had a meeting about several businesses."

Phineas Pett had been confirmed as Assistant Master-Shipwright, Chatham, on June 11, but was dismissed on 15 October.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

So, although Pepys is ambiguous about who "we" was, I think this was a Navy Board meeting with Coventry in the Admiralty Offices at Whitehall. Probably they had to sort out how things were going to work with Sandwich out of town, and James, Duke of York and Coventry were not up-to-speed on running the vast industrial empire which was the Navy. The Admiralty only met to advise about war and tactics, not employment and victualling issues.
Mr. Pett libelling Charles II and Queen Henrietta Maria was an employment issue. And the fact he was related to Commissioner Pett further muddied the issue.
That Pett didn't get fired until October shows how confused and delicate matters must have been. If they had been clear on who-did-what-and-when, Pett would have been canned in days, not months.
This confirms my impression that Sandwich left rather than make decisions that York should make; if he'd made a call James didn't like he would have been fired or worse and all the honors he'd just received would have evaporated.

No doubt, if there is a need for the Admiral of the Narrow Seas, he'll be back in a heartbeat.

Of course, I may be reading too much into unrelated events.

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