Monday 16 February 1662/63

Up and by coach with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes to White Hall, and, after we had done our usual business with the Duke, to my Lord Sandwich and by his desire to Sir W. Wheeler, who was brought down in a sedan chair from his chamber, being lame of the gout, to borrow 1000l. of him for my Lord’s occasions, but he gave me a very kind denial that he could not, but if any body else would, he would be bond with my Lord for it. So to Westminster Hall, and there find great expectation what the Parliament will do, when they come two days hence to sit again, in matters of religion. The great question is, whether the Presbyters will be contented to have the Papists have the same liberty of conscience with them, or no, or rather be denied it themselves: and the Papists, I hear, are very busy designing how to make the Presbyters consent to take their liberty, and to let them have the same with them, which some are apt to think they will.

It seems a priest was taken in his vests officiating somewhere in Holborn the other day, and was committed by Secretary Morris, according to law; and they say the Bishop of London did give him thanks for it.

Thence to my Lord Crew’s and dined there, there being much company, and the above-said matter is now the present publique discourse.

Thence about several businesses to Mr. Phillips my attorney, to stop all proceedings at law, and so to the Temple, where at the Solicitor General’s I found Mr. Cholmely and Creed reading to him the agreement for him to put into form about the contract for the Mole at Tangier, which is done at 13s. the Cubical yard, though upon my conscience not one of the Committee, besides the parties concerned, do understand what they do therein, whether they give too much or too little.

Thence with Mr. Creed to see Mr. Moore, who continues sick still, within doors, and here I staid a good while after him talking of all the things either business or no that came into my mind, and so home and to see Sir W. Pen, and sat and played at cards with him, his daughter, and Mrs. Rooth, and so to my office a while, and then home and to bed.

21 Annotations

First Reading

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

"though upon my conscience not one of the Committee, besides the parties concerned, do understand what they do therein, whether they give too much or too little."

An opportunity for "the parties concerned" to turn a bit of profit, methinks ... does Samuel count himself among them? I remember him expressing confusion about the affair, I think.

Also -- interesting to see how self-interest can lead to religious "tolerance." Whatever works, I suppose!

A. Hamilton  •  Link

interesting to see how self-interest can lead to religious “tolerance.”

That is indeed the way our own religious tolerance developed over the next century -- an invisible hand, as it were, guiding us there. The "deed of gift," to paraphrase R. Frost, was the many deeds of war during the Enlish civil war and the yielding to force without war of the
"Glorious Revolution."

Terry F  •  Link

Cui bono? — who benefits? is the motto of another day.

A. Hamilton  •  Link

Mrs. Rooth

Sam took his troubles down to Madame Rooth, you know, that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth ....

in Aqua Scripto  •  Link

A nice monday night, better than sitting around a box with heathern images, drinking strong ale and quarter backing the weekend events like "wot was that pulpit thumper saying"
. see http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

in Aqua Scripto  •  Link

Was this family business or naval?"...Thence about several businesses to Mr. Phillips my attorney, to stop all proceedings at law..."

A. Hamilton  •  Link

Was this family business or naval?

Family, I think, Phillips being a country lawyer from Brampton. Pepys found him not up to the challenge posed by his relatives, with whom he has now settled.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

gerry  •  Link

No indication, A Hamilton, of Sam's true feelings for Madame Rooth, or if he needs a love potion of any number.

Pedro  •  Link

Bad news for the Queene

Speaking of the difficulty in managing the payment of the English troops and the refusal of the Portuguese to negotiate with the Spanish, in the middle of February 63 Fanshawe wrote to Charles from Lisbon…

"When the bullets and shells fly around the ears of the Portuguese, it cannot be in the hands of your Majesty to protect them against themselves and much less against the Spaniard."

(Don’t think this is a spoiler as far as Sam is concerned)…

In April Clarendon replied in a long letter to Fanshawe...

"My Lord, we do not have the money to send boats or troops for ventures, no one can imagine that the burden of the Portuguese war can be supported by the weak shoulders of the English Crown...with enough difficulty we can send from time to time boats to assist this Kingdom, but if there will not be more care in the payment of the rest of the dowry, the King will have difficulty with good will, or rather, the capacity to continue those expenses."

Casimiro in his Biography of Catherine adds that according to Clarendon, if Portugal could not rapidly satisfy the interests of England the Alliance would be broken.

Terry F  •  Link

"The great question is, whether the Presbyters will be contented to have the Papists have the same liberty of conscience with them, or no...."

A Royal declaration of "tolerance", that was under Sam's diary's radar, is coming to a head: "Under the influence of [Sir Henry] Bennett, [Baron Arlington,] who became Secretary of State in October, 1662, and of [George Digby,] the Earl of Bristol, who assumed the leadership of the English Catholics, Charles issued on December 26, 1662, a declaration announcing his intention of exempting from the penal ties of the Act of Uniformity peaceable persons whose conscientious scruples prevented them from conforming. Parliament was invited to pass an Act which would enable him to exercise 'with a more universal satisfaction' his inherent dispensing power. 'I am in my nature,' Charles told Parliament when it next met, 'an enemy to all severity for religion and conscience, how mistaken soever it be, when it extends to capital and sanguinary punishments.' Lord Robartes brought in an 'Act concerning his Majesty's power in ecclesiastical affairs,' which would enable the King by the issue of letters-patent to grant dispensations from the Act of Uniformity and from other laws requiring oaths and subscriptions of the same kind (February 23, 1663). It was read twice in the House of Lords, but met with great opposition. While Lord Ashley spoke strongly in its favour, Clarendon was vehement against it. The Lords limited the operation of the Bill to Protestant Nonconformists ; the Commons protested against it, declaring that it would 'establish schism by law.' Both Houses together presented a petition for the enforcement of the laws against the Catholics, and the Bill was consequently dropped."
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/…

slangist  •  Link

"exempting from the penal ties of the Act of Uniformity"
would this be the origin of that measure described by the oxford historians sellar and yeatman as "the occasional conformity act, like the speed limit"?

celtcahill  •  Link

A Hamilton

Apparently the rest of these folks are not old enough to catch your reference and I did not want you to feel alone....

Australian Susan  •  Link

"played at cards"

Anyone know what kind of card games they would have played? For money?

in Aqua Scripto  •  Link

Cards the be Mostly at the Pens and family Played 11 times with his "not" friend the ADM. Once with Batten. 3 times with the Wrights, it be a game of Gleek; Once down at Portsmouth and once the girls played cards in Bess's boudoir. No clue to type of game.
Once he used the word Card as :"...he showing me his great card of the body of musique, which he cries up for a rare thing,..."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Second Reading

StanB  •  Link

Possibly one of the games played
Ombre (pronounced "omber", rarely "umber") is the English version of the French game l'Hombre, itself equivalent to the Spanish game once known as Hombre. Hombre is the Spanish for "man" and denotes the highest bidder or lone player. Towards the end of the seventeenth century l'Hombre/Ombre became the greatest card game of the western world. It remained so until well into the nineteenth, when in England it found itself whittled away by Whist and ultimately buried by Bridge. It survived longer in Germany, as Lomber, and to this day is still played in Denmark as l'Hombre. The greatness of the game lies first and foremost in its introduction of the then novel concept of bidding to name a trump suit, in contrast to the age-old custom of turning the last card for trump and having to abide by it.

Ombre was once thought to have entered England with the return of king and cavaliers from foreign parts in 1660. So thought the antiquary Daines Barrington1 on the grounds that it was probably introduced by Catherine of Bragança, whom Charles II married in 1662, "as [court poet Edmund] Waller hath a poem On a card torn at Ombre by the Queen". But a political tract of 1660 metaphorically entitled The Royal Game of Ombre 2 presupposes that it must have been well enough known by then for its allusions to be recognised. And in 1662 an account of "The Noble Spanish Games of l'Ombre" appears in the second edition of John Cotgrave's Wits Interprter, later plagiarised in Cotton's Compleat Gamester of 1674.

Chris Squire UK  •  Link

OED has:

‘ombre, n.1 < French hombre (1657) . .
1. A trick-taking card game for three people using forty cards . . the eights, nines, and tens are discarded from an ordinary pack of 52 cards . . It was the first card game to use the idea of an auction, where players bid for the right to nominate a trump suit.
1661 E. Gower Let. 26 Jan. in 5th Rep. Royal Comm. Hist. MSS (1876) 202/1 To play at Hombre, the new game at cards now in fashion at court.
1662 J. Cotgrave Wits Interpreter (ed. 2) 353 L'Ombre is a Spanish Game at Cards, wherein he who undertakes to play it saith Jo soy L'Ombre, i.e. I am the man; for so the word L'Ombre signifieth.
1691 G. Etherege Let. to E. of M. in Hist. Adolphus 72 Such ropes of Pearl her Arms incumber, She scarce can deal the Cards at Omber . . ‘

Banned for 15 years by the Commonwealth, no doubt, and perhaps rare before that but known by name to a wider circle.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Coming home I brought Mr. Pickering as far as the Temple, who tells me the story is very true of a child being dropped at the ball at Court; and that the King had it in his closett a week after, and did dissect it; and making great sport of it, said that in his opinion it must have been a month and three hours old; and that, whatever others think, he hath the greatest loss (it being a boy, as he says), that hath lost a subject by the business."

L&M: The ball was possibly that described at 31 December 1662: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
For two similar births, see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
For the King's laboratory 'under his closet', see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

Third Reading

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