Monday 23 December 1661

Early up and by coach (before daylight) to the Wardrobe, and took up Mr. Moore, and he and I to Chelsy to my Lord Privy Seal, and there sealed some things, he being to go out of town for all Christmas to-morrow. So back again to Westminster, and from thence by water to the Treasury Office, where I found Sir W. Pen paying off the Sophia and Griffen, and there I staid with him till noon, and having sent for some collar of beef and a mince pie, we eat and drank, and so I left him there and to my brother’s by appointment to meet Prior, but he came not, so I went and saw Mrs. Turner who continues weak, and by and by word was brought me that Prior’s man was come to Tom’s, and so I went and told out 128l. which I am to receive of him, but Prior not coming I went away and left the money by his desire with my brother all night, and they to come to me to-morrow morning. So I took coach, and lighting at my bookseller’s in Paul’s Churchyard, I met with Mr. Crumlum and the second master of Paul’s School, and thence I took them to the Starr, and there we sat and talked, and I had great pleasure in their company, and very glad I was of meeting him so accidentally, I having omitted too long to go to see him. Here in discourse of books I did offer to give the school what books he would choose of 5l. So we parted, and I home, and to Mr. Selden, and then to bed.

24 Annotations

First Reading

vicenzo  •  Link

ah! ha! that great feeling, over showing the one that ye were 'frit' and now that ye be a man of the up and coming mob. No good going back and be asked "have ye lived up to ye potential me ladd" and not having that extra cash for endowing " x " to the old masters.

dirk  •  Link

"and so I went and told out 128£ which I am to receive of him”

Can somebody clarify why Sam would be counting out £128 (a gigantic sum of money by the way!) - if he was to receive it??? Or am I missing something here?

judyb  •  Link

Sam hasn't given us his customary accounting of his total worth lately. Perhaps he will do this at the new year.

I agree that this sum is probably an amount Sam is receiving for title to the house referred to previously.

Do I remember correctly that Sam also gets some outside fees for his Privy Seal duties? Since he has done some work with that he probably has a little extra cash on hand.

What, no gifts for Elizabeth? When did gift giving at Christmas become common?

Mary  •  Link

The telling out of £128.

This sum appears to refer to the house/houses that Prior wished to purchase from the Brampton estate. I suspect that, by ‘told out’, Pepys means that he gave a detailed accounting of the transaction and the sums owed; some sort of paper that could be agreed by both parties to the transaction.

Peter  •  Link

If I kept a diary, my entry for yesterday would have begun "Early up and by car (before daylight) to Hammersmith..." Plus ca change.

Saul Pfeffer  •  Link

The telling out of the 128L
I think he means actually counting out of money or what does the following mean : "but Prior not coming I went away and left the money by his desire with my brother all night, and they to come to me to" The all night bit seems to indicate his anxiety about leaving such a large amount with his bro.

vicenzo  •  Link

reading and rereading: I doth think the money is deposited with the brother. The amount that is required for purchase. Sam counts it and it is all there i.e. 'told' now Sam has to supply the correct papers to finalise the deal. Remember these be notes; not a comlete story [A-Z] of the situation, just enough to remember whats what.

language hat  •  Link

"When did gift giving at Christmas become common?"

Not until much later. At this time it was essentially a bacchanalian period in which the usual rules were reversed (which is why it was banned in New England for some time); a more or less contemporary account says:

"[T]he Feast of Christ's Nativity is spent in Reveling, Dicing, Carding, Masking, and in all Licentious Liberty ... by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Reveling ..."

gerry  •  Link

As Peter said above, Plus ca change...

Bradford  •  Link

Saul is correct about "telling," "telling out," or "telling over": it means to count out or reckon up (Large Glossary, L&M Companion). I do believe the expression of "telling out" money---a deliberate and careful counting-out---occurs in Dickens, and probably later. God bless us, every one!

dirk  •  Link

Rev. Josselin's diary (22 & 23 Dec.)

Dec: 22. God good to us in outward mercies, my wife if breeding fears miscarrying(,) the lord look after her. Sam: Burton whose wife a great professor but now both quakers, only he not through paced as she. died, taken on Monday past with an apoplexy, the lord awaken that senseless generation to see his hand and pity and help us all for thy name sake.

23. at night my wife miscarried, of a false conception, a mercy to be free of it, and I trust god will preserve my dear ones life. the conception was real, god raise her up again.

Source:
http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/earl…

[Re the Reverend's wife's fears cfr. the entry for 8 December 1661.]

dirk  •  Link

Christmas gifts

In some cases Christmas gifts were expected though...

"I stayed in our house in Portugal Row, and at Christmas I received the New Year's gifts belonging to his places, which is the custom, of two tuns of wine at the Custom-house, for Master of Requests, and fifteen ounces of gilt plate at the Jewel-house, as Secretary of the Latin Tongue.

At the latter end of Christmas my husband returned from Lisbon, and was very well received by the King"

Source:
Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe, Ambassador from Charles II to the courts of Portufal & Madrid.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/ete…

dirk  •  Link

Lady Fanshawe's memoirs

The passage quoted above refers to this Xmas 1661.

Rex Gordon  •  Link

Re: telling out money ...

Hence our contemporary term, "bank teller", surviving through the centuries.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

" paying off the Sophia and Griffen" -- each of which, note L&M, was owed over a year's pay.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Mr. Crumlum and the second master of Paul’s School", i.e., note L&M, Samuel Cromleholme, High Master, and Nathaniel Bull, Surmaster, of St Paul's; the former was a considerable collector of books.

Mary K  •  Link

"he being to go out of town for all Christmas"

This presumably means for the whole 12 days from Christmas Day itself to 6th January.

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

So Pepys enjoyed some mince pie today. As we've discussed, Charles II made them "legal" again -- but strangely they had been legal in the American until 1659, which was when they became illegal there:

On May 11, 1659, the Massachusetts Puritans banned Christmas and ordered anyone caught celebrating to pay a fine of 5 shillings. That meant no mincemeat pie during what used to be the Yuletide season.

Of all the ways to celebrate Christmas, mincemeat pie held a special place. Myth and superstition had grown up around the holiday treat, and the Puritans would have none of it. They called the mincemeat pie “idolatrie in a crust.”

Mincemeat pie also carried political overtones in a time of deep partisan animosity. Eating mincemeat pie during the holidays showed you sided with the monarchy rather than the Puritan recusants.

Why was mincemeat pie so controversial?

The Puritans hated Christmas. In the 17th century the holiday bore little resemblance to the cozy family celebration of today. It was more like Saturnalia, when Romans indulged in revelry, boozing, gambling and letting their libidos go. Sweet meat pies were essential part of Saturnalia.

At Christmastime in England, young men continued the Saturnalia tradition. They roamed the streets, barged into homes and demanded booze, money and figgy pudding. They also did that in colonial New England.

In Boston, Increase Mather denounced Christmas celebrants as “consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in Mad Mirth.”

Highlights from
https://newenglandhistoricalsocie…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

From Sandwich's log, at anchor in Tangier Bay:

December 23, Monday.
The Yarmouth came in again with the merchants from Gibraltar.
The Martin sent to Cadiz.
This day Sir John Lawson sailed from Malaga for Algiers with Mr. Browne.

Copied from
The Journal of Edward Mountagu,
First Earl of Sandwich
Admiral and General-at-Sea 1659 - 1665

Edited by RC Anderson
Printed for the Navy Records Society
MDCCCCXXIX

Section III - Mediterranean 1661/62

@@@

The Yarmouth
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Gibraltar
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The Martin frigate
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Cadiz, Spain
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Vice Adm. Sir John Lawson
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Malaga, Spain
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Algiers
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Mr, Browne, the English Consul to Algiers -- still a lost soul to the Google librarian

Stephane Chenard  •  Link

This being Christmaseve, we were moved by the sad case of "Mr, Browne, the English Consul to Algiers -- still a lost soul to the Google librarian", and endeavour'd to persuade Mr Google, calling upon our fond memories of frolicking together, and old favours ow'd us, and (but only briefly) some red-hot pincers, to cough out what he knows.

Out came his given name: "Robert Browne, Consul, 1655-1663", from a diplomatic list at https://en.algeriagate.info/2023/…. Followed a graphic description from "Bargrave's catalogue: Rara, Antiqua, et Numismata Bargraviana" at https://drc.usask.ca/projects/ark…, by John Bargrave, a clergyman and Evelyn acquaintance who was there when Browne negotiated slave releases with "Shaban Agaà il Grand d' Algeers". Bargrave was there because this was effected "with hierarchical and cathedral money". He says the consul "had formerly lived long among them [the Algerine], and had their Lingua Franca perfectly". Would that be the case of all ambassadors.

But we disgress. For, lo! Bargrave then says "we were no sooner gone but they [the treacherous Orientals] seized on all he [Browne] had, shaved his head, and made him a slave, where he helped to draw timber and stones to a fortification, receiving so many blows a day with a bull’s nerve, until he was beaten to death, and his body cast out upon a dunghill".

So poor Mr Browne is deddd?? Oh no! And we hardly knew him.

And we still do, it seems, because while Bargrave says this happened at the end of a mission he undertook in 1662, another source says Browne "d. 1663, of plague" ("List of British Consular Officials in the Ottoman Empire and its former territories, from the sixteenth century to about 1860", https://www.levantineheritage.com…, at page 46). That source itself relies upon Alfred Cecil Wood's "History of the Levant Company" (London, 1935), snippets of which are available at https://books.google.fr/books/abo…; in fact it seems to mention Robert Browne only once, noting that he probably made £400 a year, but nothing at all about his death, of plague or otherwise.

OK, so this report of being "d. of plague" looks a bit dodgy. Makes the slave-on-dungheap story more credible. And, 'tis to be suppos'd that, with precise enough timing, you can both have plague and be beaten to death.

Stephane Chenard  •  Link

But, if Browne was in the timber-drawing trade in 1663, what to make of footnote 2 to this dispatch from Alvise Sagredo, Venetian Ambassador in France, sent in December 1663 and available at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…, which reports on the duke of York discussing "one flag ship [that] had been taken" by the Barbarians; for footnote 2, added by the dispatch's University of London compilers, identifies the ship as "apparently the Henry (...) reported by Consul Browne to have been brought, into Algiers on 16 September". And the footnote goes on to cite "Browne's despatch of 29 Sept., 1603. S.P. Foreign Spain, Vol. xlv." Aye, 1603! Please say it's a typo (before ye ask, there was no English consul in Algiers in 1603; woe and sobs, we do not have access to the State Papers Foreign for Spain).

So, to recap: Browne's full name was Robert Browne. He was another Cromwell appointee who stayed on. He spoke the Lingua Franca. And in a couple of years, depending on which part of the multiverse our archives come from, he may be a slave on a dunghill, or he may still be sending the Algiers shipping news to London, and perhaps starting to worry about that buboe. And either way, he's no longer a lost soul. Merry Christmas.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Masterful, Stephane! You have earned a Very Merry yourself. Help yourself to an extra mince pie.

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