Saturday 3 May 1662

Sir W. Pen and I by coach to St. James’s, and there to the Duke’s Chamber, who had been a-hunting this morning and is come back again. Thence to Westminster, where I met Mr. Moore, and hear that Mr. Watkins is suddenly dead since my going. To dinner to my Lady Sandwich, and Sir Thomas Crew’s children coming thither, I took them and all my Ladys to the Tower and showed them the lions1 and all that was to be shown, and so took them to my house, and there made much of them, and so saw them back to my Lady’s. Sir Thomas Crew’s children being as pretty and the best behaved that ever I saw of their age.

Thence, at the goldsmith’s, took my picture in little,2 which is now done, home with me, and pleases me exceedingly and my wife. So to supper and to bed, it being exceeding hot.

26 Annotations

First Reading

Cumgranissalis  •  Link

Are we over our little pet peeve,ist we?

Australian Susan  •  Link

"I took them and all my Lady's"
That's about 12 children if they all went. What a brave man! Just as well they behaved themselves: imagine a mob of badly behaved children running riot near lions and Sam having to explain.....(Anyone else remember "yon lion's e't our Albert and 'im in 'is Sunday clothes too." ??)

Pauline  •  Link

"I took them and all my Lady's"
At this time, Thomas Crew only has 2 or 3 children: Anne and Temperance (and Jack who is reported to have died young, but when?). His was married to his first wife in 1650, so these children are not yet teenagers.

Our Lady has two sons off in France being educated; three daughters old enough to go off in a coach to see the lions: Jemima (c 15), Paulina (c 12), and Anne (c 8); and sons Oliver and John (c 6).

So likely the five girls, and maybe Jack and the twins—for a coach full of eight.

Sam has often entertained Lady Sandwich’s daughters in the past year; I wonder if he would have specified if any of the boys above had been included in today’s outing. Likely just the five girls? I think so.

Pedro  •  Link

Meanwhile in Tangier.

The Queen's were more than welcome by the Portuguese who a fortnight before had suffered a disastrous defeat by the Moors. But the Moors were an enemy to be reckoned with, and on 3rd May British forces suffered heavy casualties when they were ambushed and attacked.

http://www.queensroyalsurreys.org…

Ann  •  Link

OK, I'm confused (proceeding on the adage that there are no stupid questions....) I thought Sam went to Portsmouth to see the queen land? Did I miss something, or just misunderstand....

JonTom Kittredge  •  Link

Awaiting the Queen
Ann, I may be wrong, but my impression that Sam and the rest of the officers went to Portsmouth on Navy business (paying off ships), but they were *hoping* that they would be there for the Queen's arrival, expected any day. Though, if I'm right, they didn't hang around much extra time to catch her. Sam did say that he prolonged his visit a day, but that was to see La Belle Pierce and her friend, not the new Queen!

A. Hamilton  •  Link

showed them the lions

All those children and only one chaperone! Sam was fortunate, as know those who remember the fate of Jim, Who Was Eaten By a Lion, and its moral:
"... [A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse."

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/mi…

language hat  •  Link

"Anyone else remember..."

Susan is referring to this delightful account of the Ramsbottoms' ill-fated trip to Blackpool:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/mi…

*Its* moral is:

"What, waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy lions? Not me!"

Glyn  •  Link

According to Pedro the new queen has been sailing from Lisbon since 15 April (19 days ago). What's she coming in, a rowing boat?

Glyn  •  Link

The Return of Albert

http://wuff.me.uk/monologues/P10.…

Just in case anyone was completely overwhelmed by Albert's tragic end, here's his miraculous escape. These were music hall/vaudeville monologues rather than poems, most famously as declaimed by the English comedian Stanley Holloway ("Brief Encounter", "My Fair Lady").

Pedro  •  Link

The Calendar.
Sorry Glyn and everyone, reading Dirk's background wrongly, I have subtracted 10 days instead of added from the Continental calendar. One of the problems of an Englishman translating from a Portuguese account.

She sailed on the 25th April as the diary goes.

Bradford  •  Link

AND if you follow Nix's link, not only can you learn about The Return of Albert, right after it you also gets a pome about ASPARAGUS! (cf. the butter and eggs and sparagus a few days back in jolly Queenless Portsmouth)

Australian Susan  •  Link

So glad everyone else liked Albert and the Lion. If I ask my husband how a business trip has been, he is wont to answer (in broad Lancashire accent) "There war no wrecks and nobody drownded, in fact nuffin' to laff at at all".
Re Sam having no other help - he probably had his boy with him, but Wayneman would almost certainly have been agog to see the lions too and not much asssistance with excited children. Maybe Lady Jem is old enough to have a lady's maid of her own, or perhaps the Sandwich's "boy" accompanied them.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Sir Thomas Crew's well-behaved children...Benefit of a good Puritan household? After all the Crews produced Tom's sis, our wonderful Lady Jemina Sr.

Wonder if Beth got to go to see the lions and enjoy the kids' antics...A little heartwrenching watching Sam with them, I imagine.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

The Royal Menagerie is first referenced during the reign of Henry III. In 1251, the sheriffs were ordered to pay fourpence a day towards the upkeep for the King's polar bear; the bear attracted a great deal of attention from Londoners when it went fishing in the Thames. In 1254, the sheriffs were ordered to subsidise the construction of an elephant house at the Tower. The exact location of the medieval menagerie is unknown, although the lions were kept in the barbican known as Lion Tower. The royal collection was swelled by diplomatic gifts including three leopards from Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tow…

The history of the Royal Menagerie
http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerofLond…

Louise Hudson  •  Link

"So to supper and to bed, it being exceeding hot."

Probably all of 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bill  •  Link

At the beginning of this diary SP visited the lions, he "went in to see Crowly, who was now grown a very great loon [sic] and very tame." Note the annotations there. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Ivan  •  Link

Today, in order to visit the Tower with so many vulnerable children, Sam would have to fill ,in numerous forms and await police accreditation that he was not and never had been a child molester!! What about those beatings of Wayneman? Oh dear!

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean:

Charles II, whose restoration was celebrated by an unsuccessful expedition against Algiers under Admiral Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich. This was soon followed by another, with a more favorable result, under Admiral Lawson.44

[44] Rapin's History of England, vol. ii. pp. 858, 864.

By a treaty bearing date May 3, 1662, the Algerian 'government' expressly stipulated, "that all subjects of the King of Great Britain, now slaves in Algiers, or any of the territories thereof, be set at liberty, and released, upon paying the price they were first sold for in the market; and for the time to come no subjects of his Majesty shall be bought or sold, or made slaves of, in Algiers or its territories."45

[45] Recueil des Traitez de Paix, tom. iv. p. 43.

Other expeditions and other treaties followed in 1664, 1672, 1682, and 1686 — showing, by their constant recurrence and iteration, the little impression they produced upon the Algerians.46

[46] Recueil des Traitez de Paix, tom. iv. pp. 307, 476, 703, 756.

Insensible to justice and freedom, the Algerians held in slight regard the obligations of fidelity to any stipulations in restraint of robbery and slaveholding.

During a long succession of years, complaints of the sufferings of English captives continued to be made.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35…
Title: White Slavery in the Barbary States
Author: Charles Sumner
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
LONDON: LOW AND COMPANY.
1853.

Third Reading

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