Saturday 20 July 1661
Up to Huntingdon this morning to Sir Robert Bernard, with whom I met Jaspar Trice. So Sir Robert caused us to sit down together and began discourse very fairly between us, so I drew out the Will and show it him, and [he] spoke between us as well as I could desire, but could come to no issue till Tom Trice comes. Then Sir Robert and I fell to talk about the money due to us upon surrender from Piggott, 164l., which he tells me will go with debts to the heir at law, which breaks my heart on the other side.
Here I staid and dined with Sir Robert Bernard and his lady, my Lady Digby, a very good woman.
After dinner I went into the town and spent the afternoon, sometimes with Mr. Phillips, sometimes with Dr. Symcottes, Mr. Vinter, Robert Ethell, and many more friends, and at last Mr. Davenport, Phillips, Jaspar Trice, myself and others at Mother ——- over against the Crown we sat and drank ale and were very merry till 9 at night, and so broke up. I walked home, and there found Tom Trice come, and he and my father gone to Goody Gorum’s, where I found them and Jaspar Trice got before me, and Mr. Greene, and there had some calm discourse, but came to no issue, and so parted. So home and to bed, being now pretty well again of my left hand, which lately was stung and very much swelled.
30 Annotations
First Reading
A. De Araujo • Link
"which lately was stung and very much swelled" Yes Sam, there are all kinds of wasps,"yellow jackets" etc in the country so you have to be careful; in the future carry an epi pen with you in case you have an allergic reaction!...
Pedro. • Link
"drank ale and were very merry till 9 at night, and so broke up. I walked home,"
At the moment in the UK it is dark at 10.00pm (BST), and Sam would be on GMT?, and therefore dark at 9.00pm. I reckon he has about a half hours walk, so lets hope the ale was not too strong and that there is a brave moonshine. We want our entry tomorrow!
Pedro. • Link
Link Boy.
Obviously we know that Sam gets home safely, but in the city of London, he hires a link boy in the hours of darkness. Could we assume that the link boys added security that would not be needed in the countryside?
language hat • Link
Mother -
Can anyone interpret this? (In a 17th-century context, that is…)
vicente • Link
Mother --- amongst us lesser folk, usually indicated a house of less than sterling standards but was popular with the male of the species. Of course words do mean different things in the different generations. Take cheese, it has another meaning besides the curd separated from Whey with salt added and left to age in ones cave.
vicente • Link
If one peers at the map, surrounding Pepyse estate, there are many footpaths [to be seen even now that were in vogue then [they quite common ye know]]that inter connect between the various lands, easily used by the uninitiated as they are rather well worn by the pedestrian traffic[there be only shanks ponies available for the lesser folk, no penny fathings available yet] and if he use a local nag rather than hoofing it , the nag would most likely know the way in the heavy mists], even on the dark nights as the starlight of the country side is rather delicious[as long there is no mists ousing from the local river or a thunder cloud to make a mess of the fresh 'ay that has been cut] unlike now, with the intrusion of the village and town lights that spoil the walk under the milky way. I as very young tike would follow the tracks to my out of the way place of residence, rather than take the civilized route which would easily double the fatigue of my young legs.
P.S. mother blahs were most popular in most large villages or towns , never on the offical map, just word to the asking.
Pauline • Link
"...which breaks my heart on the other side..."
Do you think this means that dealing with the Trice brothers and their bereaved mom is one sad difficulty and now he finds that "heir-at-law" rights will present a second set of difficulties with his Uncle Thomas? That Uncle Robert's will has stirred up trouble on two fronts?
I think this must be quite common. An "Uncle Robert" who brandishes his will and talks of the inheritor and the inheritance until it becomes something quite big and important. Then he dies and it is discovered that the paperwork is a mess and there are serious other legal rights that haven't been carefully put aside. Sam is appearing tenacious at this point. And glad that the discourse is calm.
Roger Arbor • Link
"Much swelled"... nice to have something in common with SP today. My left arm is 'much swelled' too... and from the same cause.
Pauline • Link
"Much swelled”
Me too, Roger; up my shirt while I was weeding. And even more my brother who stuck his nose among the Yellow Jackets and came away with swollen eyes—a handsome visage indeed. Time and again Sam is doing what we are doing. In this case there is a seasonal connection.
Mary • Link
Mother _______
Sounds like another ale-house, in which case Sam and party are moving from one ale-house to another. According to an L&M footnote, Goody Gorham's alehouse was actually owned by Robert Pepys; it was to pass first to Sam's father and then to Sam himself after the death of the tenant.
The running of an ale-house was something of a cottage industry. It offered a source of income to many a widow (NOT necessarily a merry widow)in an age when women were, in general, responsible for home-brewing. In a country-town her skill in brewing might be the only commercial skill that a woman could profitably exploit whilst retaining a measure of independence.
Pedro. • Link
Sounds like another ale-house.
Could be, there is an ale-house in "The Black Country" region of England known as Ma Pardoes
http://www.protzonbeer.com/docume…
JWB • Link
"...which breaks my heart on the other side..."
I read this to be a bit of schadenfreude. Sam & Pop to lose 164L. but also the debts to the heir@law. And it’s been said, who but the Germans would invent such an expression.
vicente • Link
" the dash " is indicative of being victorian editing. Of course houses of Ill Repute were never mentioned, in upscale literature, even now nobody mentions the local meeting places of the lower mind. Mother blahs was a euphenism by the cultured for the activities that went on, but never said openly. Yes ale was served by the local wench. The local beagle would only see the strong water. The more afluent had their pleasure gardens see Liza Picard p 62; p164-166 see page 302 " 'Mother Cresswell'{ a title implying respect}" Of course if you have the looks and money then thee is then a lady and would get a title.
Mary • Link
The dash.
In this case, the dash is an addition by the Victorian editor. The original text, as reproduced in the L&M edition, shows a blank space here. It doesn't seem very likely that Pepys would frequent a house of really ill repute in company with Jasper Trice at this point, given that the two men are likely to find themselves on opposite sides in a law case.
Nix • Link
House of ill repute?
I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if Samuel and the others went to a brothel, even with someone who might be a potential rival in court. I think I've read that they were places of male social and business gathering apart from the venereal commerce. But he's not in London -- would Brampton or Huntingdon (I'm not sure which he is referring to as "town") have been big enough to support a "respectable" whorehouse?
vicente • Link
Oh! yes even a hamlet of 4 pubs and few farms and cottages enjoyed the age old entertainment, there being very little other distraction except the sermons and viewing of the head gear and bustles [framework or padding ... to pad out "la Derriere"] of the Locals. [there was one local known for 1d a time [so it was rumoured][mother penny][twas before the WWII].
Pedro. • Link
"age old entertainment"
Vincente! how come you know so much about this? Not just by googling I'll be bound!
dirk • Link
"schadenfreude ... who but the Germans would invent such an expression"
Well, actually we have the very same word in Dutch: "leedvermaak" = "leed" (suffering, cfr. German "Leid") + "vermaak" (pleasure).
Louis • Link
Mother Blank sounds like Pepys maybe thought the name would come back to him and then he'd fill it in---another drinking establishment. The simplest dullest explanation is the likeliest.
vicente • Link
If ye doth live the village life, ye Know nothing is sacred, kids know, what is up and wots down. The basics of life don't have to be learnt at Tutors elboe. 'Tis all there with window of the world, one goes to the brain washing institutions, to be deprogrammed then learn from Rochester to put it all into verse.
The good stuff is never learnt from reading and watching tele. Seriously much of that, that goes on in the world, is never really recorded, too mundane.
If what is said is said badly and not to the rules of accepted academic level , it is dismissed as irrelevant.
e.g. " buddies and other idiots , I came to inhume the the old codger....." then the speaker is dismissed as a hayseed. Most of those that live, have left not an iota of a mark. Moi, will not get even a line in hatches,matches and dispatches of the freee press.
Bob • Link
I'd agree with Louis. We've seen Pepys leave a blank space before, when he couldn't recall someone's name at the time.
Andrew Hamilton • Link
"which breaks my heart on the other side"
The mower against other claimants to his uncle's land
(With apologies to Andrew Marvell)
My mind was once the true survey
Of all these meadows fresh and gay,
And in the greenness of the grass
Did see its hopes as in a glass;
When TOM TRICE came and he,
What I do to the grass, does to my
thoughts and me.
A. De Araujo • Link
"it is dismissed as irrelevant" You are a wise man dear Vincent!...
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
"Then Sir Robert and I fell to talk about the money due to us upon surrender from Piggott, 164l., which he tells me will go with debts to the heir at law,"
L&M: This was a mortgage owed by Richard Pigott of Bramptonto the late Robert Pepys, on the security of his lands and houses in Brampton. Despite the challenge from the heir-at-law(Thomas Pepys), it passed to the executors in the settlement of 14 February 1663: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… But Pigott could not repay it without selling the land, and for this Thomas Pepys's consent was not obtained until July 1663: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
Third Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
"After dinner I went into the town and spent the afternoon, sometimes with Mr. Phillips, sometimes with Dr. Symcottes, Mr. Vinter, Robert Ethell, and many more friends, and at last Mr. Davenport, Phillips, Jaspar Trice, myself and others at Mother ——- over against the Crown we sat and drank ale and were very merry till 9 at night, and so broke up."
Sounds like Pepys was at an impromptu High School reunion. The word had gone around that he was visiting. Lots of "you remember when ..." stories were being told.
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sunset -- Phil has it as 7:49 p.m. -- 19:39 -- which seems awfully early for July.
I checked my google librarian, and it said:
Sunset time: 9:07:35 pm for July 20 ... but I'm still confused about what Pepys thought the date was, and the chart says
July 10 -- 9:17:56 pm
July 30 -- 8:53:32 pm
https://sunrise-sunset.org/gb/lon…
One of these latter 2 times is correct.
Regardless, I think we can assume Pepys was walking home though the fields he knows so well at dusk.
https://sunrise-sunset.org/gb/lon…
Phil Gyford • Link
Note that you're looking at the sunrise/sunset for 2024, and those times are British Summer Time, one hour ahead of UTC/GMT.
As the "About these events" links explains, the sunrise and sunset times is generated by this code, adjusted for the Julian calendar that Pepys uses: https://github.com/hugovk/time-to…
7.49pm is also the time given for this date on https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/u…
The footnote on that table says "All times are local mean solar time for London (UTC -0:01:15 hours). They take into account refraction. Dates are based on the Julian calendar. For years before 1700, the calculated times might be off by many minutes."
And "local mean solar time" is explained on https://www.timeanddate.com/time/…
As we can see it's a complicated subject, and there's no unambiguous answer to what a particular time "is" all those centuries ago.
Stephane Chenard • Link
Now we're wondering how many of us are fiddling with time converters right now. Sam, like all god-fearing denizens of the 17C, must indeed be on solar time. Plugging 8:53pm into a solar-time calculator, such as https://koch-tcm.ch/en/uhrzeit-so…, along with the longitude of Brampton and the Gregorian date of 30 July, and taking into account that 8:53 is sunset in a London that lives in a GMT+1 timezone and is on daylight saving time... shows that the Sun itself thinks it's really setting at 6:35 pm.
But wait! What doth matters when one is setting through the fields, to some vaguely familiar destination and after a day's drinking, is the astronomical twilight, the most uncompromising of several variants thereof and the time when the Sun is really, truly down, and the horizon becomes invisible, and the stars come out in splendor, and the church's spire is invisible too, and so is that ditch down there, and that forgotten rake, and... aww, ouch, ahh! And that, according to https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@…, will happen in Brampton on July 30 at 12 minutes past midnight, modern UK time (but refraction taken into account!) or 9:54 pm solar time. Which leaves Sam time for at least another one at Goody Gorum's.
One variable that escapes us, is the quality of Sam's night-vision. The diary will supply evidence that it's pretty good, and has plenty of training in the obscure, winding lanes of thoroughly unlit London nights, link-boys or not. But we encourage anyone to talk a walk in the countryside at the dead of night (away from them electrickall Lamps of course), and find for themselves that, unless under a forest canopy, the sky is never so dark or your instincts so deeply buried as to make careful walking impossible.
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thank you both for such learned anaysis of the problem I created. How could I forget the summer time adjustment -- and overlooked that Pepys was drunkenly negotiating those fields. DDdduhhh!
RLB • Link
Given the size, and at that time rural setting, of Huntingdon, I would be surprised if Mother ——'s house were an actual, organised brothel. I don't think they'd go there in a party like that, either. Two boys together, maybe, but a crowd of at least six men together? Not discreet. Not when you've just been discussing an inheritance.
More likely, I think, is that it was a public house of ill repute - and that repute for being somewhat more rough than the average and not having the best of ale, and *possibly* a, let's call her in the good tradition of The Eye of Argon, "complying wench". But not a brothel in the true meaning of that word.