Thursday 14 January 1663/64

Up and to the office, where all the morning, and at noon all of us, viz., Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Batten at one end, and Mr. Coventry, Sir J. Minnes and I (in the middle at the other end, being taught how to sit there all three by my sitting so much the backwarder) at the other end, to Sir G. Carteret’s, and there dined well. Here I saw Mr. Scott, the bastard that married his youngest daughter. Much pleasant talk at table, and then up and to the office, where we sat long upon our design of dividing the Controller’s work into some of the rest of our hands for the better doing of it, but he would not yield to it, though the simple man knows in his heart that he do not do one part of it. So he taking upon him to do it all we rose, I vexed at the heart to see the King’s service run after this manner, but it cannot be helped.

Thence to the Old James to the reference about Mr. Bland’s business. Sir W. Rider being now added to us, and I believe we shall soon come to some determination in it. So home and to my office, did business, and then up to Sir W. Pen and did express my trouble about this day’s business, he not being there, and plainly told him what I thought of it, and though I know him a false fellow yet I adventured, as I have done often, to tell him clearly my opinion of Sir W. Batten and his design in this business, which is very bad.

Hence home, and after a lecture to my wife in her globes, to prayers and to bed.

24 Annotations

First Reading

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

re: "in the middle at the other end, being taught how to sit there all three by my sitting so much the backwarder"

I presume this has to do with coach-seating arrangements, but I'm having a hard time parsing this sentence nonetheless ... help, please!

Michael Robinson  •  Link

at one end, and ... at the other end,

Could he be talking about a boat -- reading backwater for "backwarder" -- Carteret and Batten at the prow and Coventry, Pepys & Minnes at the stern, Pepys (a small man) sitting alone in the far rear against the backboard? If it is a barge, or galy, the oarsmen would be in the center between the groups of passengers.

MissAnn  •  Link

Well boys, I'm having trouble with: "I saw Mr. Scott, the bastard that married his youngest daughter". What could this mean? Was is Scott's daughter that he married? OR, was it Carteret's?

jeannine  •  Link

From "All For the King" by Balleine
Miss Ann this should answer your question
"Evelyn again gives the date: '1663, July 16. Sir George Carteret has married his daughter Carolina to Sir Thomas Scott of Scott's Hall, Kent. The gent. is thought to be the son of Prince Rupert'. Scott's mother had been Prince Rupert's mistress, had had lived apart from her husband for 12 years before the baby was born. Her husband had repudiated the child, 'pleading it was unlawfully got, but, said Pepys, ' a little while before his death he did own the child and left him his estate. So Sir George Carteret struck up of a sudden match with him for his little daughter" (p. 139)

MissAnn  •  Link

Ah, thank you Jeannine, that clears it up, the "bastard" wasn't a derogatory remark but a statement of fact.

Bryan M  •  Link

re: "in the middle at the other end, being taught how to sit there all three by my sitting so much the backwarder"

Todd , how about this? We were shown how the three of us could fit in the space normally occuppied by two by my sitting further back in the seat than Coventry and Minnes.

Carteret's house is at Whitehall (see the 8 September 1662 entry) so it could be either a boat or coach. Does the reference to the ends suggest a boat?

A. De Araujo  •  Link

"by my sitting so much the backwarder"
Whatever it is ,methinks Sam is sitting with his back towards the coachman or skipper.

Terry  •  Link

"by my sitting so much the backwarder"
Imagine 3 men sitting on a bench. If the middle one sits further back then the width of his legs occupies the space where his butt would have been. For men of normal build this would take up less space. I think this is the meaning here - whether it's a coach or a boat.

jeannine  •  Link

Ebay alert-Charles & Catherine coin
not related to today's entry but interesting to this time (and not for sale by me!)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.…

(I never know where to paste these things when they come up as they come and go so quickly but I think that a few of our general readership may have interest. From time to time I get an email from a happy winner).

Ruben  •  Link

Thank you Jeannine!
I saved the pictures in my hard disk.
It would have been nice to have some Pepys graphics placed somewhere for all to see.

alaB  •  Link

"Hence home, and after a lecture to my wife in her globes"..who was no doubt also wearing her equatorial belt in case Uncle Wight should drop-in!

Glyn  •  Link

What on earth are these lectures about and why are they taking so long? "Here's a globe, it's spherical." seems to cover it.

Is he lecturing poor Bess on world geography or is it three-dimensional navigation?

By the way, Bess - point out to him that there can be 270 degrees in a triangle using a globe. (North Pole to Equator, go around to the other side, Equator to North Pole - all angles = 90 degrees.)

Mary  •  Link

"a lecture ... in her globes"

If these globes are both terrestrial and astronomical, there will be plenty of material for lectures.

Ruben  •  Link

"a lecture ... in her globes"

a dark winter night. Sitting near the fire makes half of Besses face warm, the other half cold. The few candles on the table give enough ligth to see some if not all the details on the Globes.
Now Samuel Pepys gives an introductory speech about the significance of the Antipodes and tries to explain the unexplainable (yet): how come people do not fall from the other side of the Globe?

Pedro  •  Link

"What on earth are these lectures about and why are they taking so long?"

Glyn you may be on to something here...

Sam: "Now this is a meridian, a circle that goes from the North Pole all the way round the Earth to the South Pole and back. Look this one goes through London, and we can draw another that goes through Paris, and they both cut the equator."

Bess: "Oh I see, and look that is a triangle."

Sam: "That is very good Bess, you remembered that fellow Euclid I told you about."

Bess: "If I draw a meridian through Bombay I have another triangle, and you said that all the angles add up to 180 degrees, but these are all different."

Sam: "Well, I think its time for bed my dear."

Bess: "Sam, I am beginning to think that Euclid fellow may be wrong, look I can draw two circles with a string and chalk on this globe that are not meridians. In fact they do not follow that 2πr formula you showed me. If we could find a formula for curvature in two dimensions, it could be possible to indicate a similar formula, based in four-dimensional space-time."

Sam: "Snore."

Bradford  •  Link

May as well ask here as elsewhere: what was the educated view of what the stars and constellations in fact were? We know that "star pictures" are woven around the chance position of huge burning spheres of gas as seen only from our viewpoint in the universe, when they are not proximate at all. What did the Royal Society, for instance, think they were seeing Up There?

Perhaps the many mythological figures (Orion, Cassiopeia, Coma Berenices, &c.) could serve as pretexts for relating their tales.

Pedro  •  Link

"May as well ask here as elsewhere: what was the educated view of what the stars and constellations in fact were?"

Bradford, can we wait until the end of this year of 1664? An event will happen which will no doubt cause much discussion by Sam and all, including the Royal Society.

At this point in time maybe, as far as the stars are concerned, many would refer to Aristotle (Sam)...

"and my brother John and I up and I to my musique, and then to discourse with him, and I find him not so thorough a philosopher, at least in Aristotle, as I took him for, he not being able to tell me the definition of final nor which of the 4 Qualitys belonged to each of the 4 Elements."

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Maybe they thought, like Aristotle and Plato, that the universe was a sphere rotated by God as the prime mover. Galileo (1564-1642) had invented the telescope and discovered that many stars were invisible to the naked eye, and thus dismissing Ptolemy's theory of 1022 stars in 48 constellations. But Galileo's works were not accepted by the Catholic Church until at least 1741 and Bruno (1548-1600) had been executed by the Inquisition as a heretic for his view of the Universe being made up of the four elements.

Michael Robinson  •  Link

what was the educated view of what the stars and constellations in fact were?

J. L. Heilbron, The Sun In The Church, Cambridge Mass: Harvard UP, 1999. Its a wonderful history of the interaction between the theoretical and practical answers to the question "how is time measured?" -- specifically determining the date of Easter accurately using the stars -- between circa 1400 and 1750. Its not an easy read, but a very rewarding one and fascinating in showing how the various sophisticated theories of cosmology were adapted to fit the observed "facts." For me, one of the great books I have read in the past ten years.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Diary of Ralph Josselin

14. weather continues close and dull, yet open after great winds this day some rain(.) this day Rebekah was coated, lord clothe us with the garments of thy righteousness in Christ Jesus.

"Rebekah was coated"

The first progression, for both boys and girls, was when they were shortcoated or taken out of the long dresses that came well below the feet that were worn by babies — and which have survived as the modern Christening robe. It was not possible to walk in these, which no doubt dictated the timing of the change. Toddlers' gowns often featured leading strings, which were narrow straps of fabric or ribbon attached at the shoulder and held by an adult while the child was learning to walk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... and then up to Sir W. Pen and did express my trouble about this day’s business, he not being there, and plainly told him what I thought of it, and though I know him a false fellow yet I adventured, as I have done often, to tell him clearly my opinion of Sir W. Batten and his design in this business, which is very bad."

Okay, Pepys is playing Penn against Batten, hoping the inevitable shoot-out will take one or both of them down, leaving him as an innocent bystander.

I read "my trouble about this day’s business" to refer to Carteret's determination to keep all the accounting chores which Pepys [and apparently the rest of the board] no longer think he is capable of handling as they prepare for war.

"Sir W. Batten and his design in this business, which is very bad" makes me think I am wrong and there is some other game afoot which Pepys has not explained today. Possibly Wood and his masts again?

I know, I know, this is another question it is impossible to answer.

Tonyel  •  Link

Sarah, the Comptroller was Minnes who, in Sam's view, was incompetent but would not allow anyone else to take on his duties (often a sign of incompetence in my experience).
Batten was corrupt like many others but appears to have been clumsily corrupt which was more of a sin in those days.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Thank you -- I did get Mennes and Carteret confused. Duh!

Log in to post an annotation.

If you don't have an account, then register here.