Monday 15 February 1663/64

Up, and carrying my wife to my Lord’s lodgings left her, and I to White Hall, to the Duke; where he first put on a periwigg to-day; but methought his hair cut short in order thereto did look very prettily of itself, before he put on his periwigg.1 Thence to his closet and there did our business, and thence Mr. Coventry and I down to his chamber and spent a little time, and so parted, and I took my wife homeward, I stopping at the Coffee-house, and thence a while to the ’Change, where great newes of the arrivall of two rich ships, the Greyhound and another, which they were mightily afeard of, and great insurance given, and so home to dinner, and after an houre with my wife at her globes, I to the office, where very busy till 11 at night, and so home to supper and to bed.

This afternoon Sir Thomas Chamberlin came to the office to me, and showed me several letters from the East Indys, showing the height that the Dutch are come to there, showing scorn to all the English, even in our only Factory there of Surat, beating several men, and hanging the English Standard St. George under the Dutch flagg in scorn; saying, that whatever their masters do or say at home, they will do what they list, and will be masters of all the world there; and have so proclaimed themselves Soveraigne of all the South Seas; which certainly our King cannot endure, if the Parliament will give him money. But I doubt and yet do hope they will not yet, till we are more ready for it.

38 Annotations

First Reading

JohnT  •  Link

So the Duke was the first Whig Royal. I would have thought him a Tory.

Andrew Hamilton  •  Link

methought his hair cut short in order thereto did look very prettily of itself

Careful, Sam. Your Roundhead sympathies are showing.

Clement  •  Link

"I took my wife homeward, I stopping at the Coffee-house, and thence a while to the 'Change...and after an houre with my wife at her globes, I to the office..."
Nicely done, Sam.

"I doubt and yet do hope they will not yet, till we are more ready for it."
Good diplomatic instincts--keep saying "Nice doggy" whilst feeling around for a stick.

Andrew Hamilton  •  Link

which certainly our King cannot endure, if the Parliament will give him money

Our own George II faces this problem.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...and after an houre with my wife at her globes..."

Shouldn't that have been "at her... "

Sam, think of the children. Oh, won't somebody think of the children.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...showing the height that the Dutch are come to there, showing scorn to all the English, even in our only Factory there of Surat, beating several men, and hanging the English Standard St. George under the Dutch flagg in scorn; saying, that whatever their masters do or say at home, they will do what they list, and will be masters of all the world there; and have so proclaimed themselves Soveraigne of all the South Seas..."

Hubris with a capital D...

"Yew Englander dogs...We thumb our noses and throw our shoes at yew!"

"Ummn. Mein Herr Commander? About the Underseaboot fleet that was to back up our verbose claims?"

"Ja? When does our invincible new fleet arrive to make mince of these Englanders?"

"Well...Sir. It seems the inventor's son's claims were a bit...Much. They can't sail. Only...Row. And they sink like lead if they go more than 100 yards."

"Oh."

"They do go a dozen or so feet under water. For a few hours. In a secure and quiet harbor."

Hmmn...

"Perhaps that 'Masters of the South Seas' was a bit...Hasty. Send the manager of that Englander factory a few boxes of the good cigars."

JWB  •  Link

Surat
Town on India's northwestern coast, about 20 miles up the
Tapi River. "Nathaniel's Nutmeg", Giles Milton

JWB  •  Link

More from "Nathaniel's Nutmeg":

"As the factories in the Spice Islands fell into decay, new ones sprang up on the Indian coastline and when Surat officially replaced Bantam as the eastern headquarters of the East India Company ..." This was after the Company reborn with 1657 charter.

JWB  •  Link

Surat 1630 famine

Milton,ibid., quotes one factor: "We hardly could see any living person where heretofore was thousands...women were seen to roast their children (and) men travelling in the waie were laid hold of to be eaten."

cumsalisgrano  •  Link

Tory: An Elizabethan Irish Bandit or Insurgent in Eire, then became synonymous word for creating havoc, by 1680 were stiring up problems against the Duke of Monmouth and stop the peruked be whigged Duke of York in his tracks.
.http://www.historybookshop.com/articles/institution/tory.asp

Pedro  •  Link

"saying, that whatever their masters do or say at home, they will do what they list, and will be masters of all the world there;"

I think this is an example of how the Dutch East India Company's success has created a situation whereby the Company on site is able to carry out its own foreign policy, even if the policy of the Directors back in the United Provinces is to the contrary.

cumsalisgrano  •  Link

This be age when man left the feudal Laud for greener pastures. The common man, he that be without shirt as the Royalist would say, or the rude vulgar people, out this rag tag rose many an Hofficer or General of the sea or land or even rich merchant, Even Pepys would snobbily hint at the lack of table manners that only a landed one knew how to hold a fork.
For those that want to see another slice of the unclean, read " World Turned Upsid Down " by Christopher Hill who be unpopular with the modern Tory or Whig or Leveller.
It appears that many would like to be king of the **** heap, laud of all that he surveys.

serafina  •  Link

Work until 11pm and then home to supper?? The average day does not appear to be structured in the same way as we do today. (Maids getting up at 2 a.m. to start the laundry etc.) I think I would really enjoy my husband arriving home at midnight yelling "What's for dinner"....

Lawrence  •  Link

"Where great newes of the arrival of two ships, the Greyhound and another"
The other ship was the Concord; both were merchantmen of the Levant Company. The Greyhound cargo was valued by Customs House at £150,000:L&M

Pedro  •  Link

"and have so proclaimed themselves Soveraigne of all the South Seas;"

I cannot find the source at the moment, but this proclamation is a dig at the English and Mare Clausum (1635) by John Selden, which endeavoured to prove that the sea was practically as capable of appropriation as territory, as opposed to the Mare Liberum proposed by the Dutchman Grotius (1609).

(L&M)...How seriously the Stuarts took these pretensions may be inferred by the naming of the greatest warship built in 1637, the pride of the Royal Navy, the Sovereign of the Seas (Royal Sovereign in 1660).

Pedro  •  Link

Surat.

The Dutch also founded a factory.
In 1664 the Maratha leader Shivaji sacked and looted Surat. When Shivaji arrived at Surat he demanded tribute from the Mughal commander and the small army stationed with him for port security. The tribute was refused and so after Shivaji took the city, he put it to sack. Surat was under sack for nearly 3 weeks, in which the Maratha army looted all possible wealth from Mughal & Portuguese trading centers. All this loot was successfully transported to Maharashtra before the Mughal Empire at Delhi was alerted. This wealth later was used for development & strengthening the Maratha Empire.

The only exception to the looting was the British factory, a fortified warehouse-counting house-hostel, which was successfully defended by Sir George Oxenden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surat

ruizhe  •  Link

The difference in attitude between the Dutch in the Netherlands and the VOC may have to do with their relative strength. In northern Europe, the 4 Dutch admiralties knew that, with many more merchant ships that could be attacked and a heavily urban population that depended on foreign shipments of wheat to not starve (thus being susceptible to blockade), yet a fraction of England's population and, more importantly, a navy who's best warships could not match up with the best English warships (the biggest 9 of which were virtually unsinkable by the cannon of that time), a war can only be detrimental. In the Indies and India, however, the VOC most likely has the East India Company outgunned by several times.

Pedro  •  Link

Choice between war and peace.

From The Dutch Seaborne Empire by Boxer...

"An example of how the acquisition of a colonial empire complicated the choice between war and peace for the United Provinces is seen from relations with Portugal in the 30 years after Portugal declared independence from Spain in 1640.

The Stadtholder and the States-General were both prepared to co-operate with a knew ally who would create a major diversion from the front in Flanders. Some of the Amsterdam merchants welcomed the prospect of increased trade with Portugal itself, particularly the salt so valuable for pickling herrings. Not so for the directors of the VOC and WIC, who considered that it would be more profitable to continue their conquests at the expense of the Portuguese in the clonial world...

The Heeren XVII urged that if the States-General insisted on a truce with the Portuguese Crown in Europe, the East Indies should be explicitly or implicitly exempted.."

Pedro  •  Link

"and showed me several letters from the East Indys, showing the height that the Dutch are come to there, showing scorn to all the English, even in our only Factory there of Surat,"

Could Sam, when he says the East Indys here, be refering to the East of the Indys? On the west coast of India the East India Company seem to have factories at Hugli and Madras.

Australian Susan  •  Link

Yes, Pedro - this does seem to imply that Sam means the Indian coast, not islands in what is now Indonesia (Java, Sumatra, Borneo etc) which are what is more usually called the East Indies at this time and later. I wonder if this is a transcription error for East of India? Could someone with L&M check?

Lawrence  •  Link

The annotation for this part about Surat
per L&m.
There is no reference to this incident at Surat in Sir W. Foster's Engl. factories in India, 1661-64, which is based on the records both of Surat and of the Dutch E. India Company. Surat was the principal centre of English trade in India (Pepys's "East Indys"). The Dutch had recently taken control of the Cochin coast, and had by this time completely diplaced the Portuguese as the dominant power of the Indian Ocean. Chamberlian was Governor of the E. India Company.

Paul Chapin  •  Link

A wild guess -
Maybe Sam got confused between Surat and Sumatra?

Pedro  •  Link

"showing the height that the Dutch are come"

A couple of examples in Africa in 1663 from The African Slave Trade by Davidson...

Rivalry was the great driving force. "The Dutch," writes an English agent at the famous trading point of Cormantin on the Gold Coast in 1663, "give daily great presents to the King of Futton and the cabesheers [the African chief's trading agents] to exclude their honours [the English Royal African Company] from the trade, and to the King of Fantyn and his cabesheers, to make war on the English castle of Cormantin, saying that if they could but get that place never Englishman more should have trading upon that coast. . . ."

In the same year another English agent, Captain Stokes (the one that appears in the Diary?), at Ardra in modern Dahomey, is complaining: "The Dutch told the King of Ardra that they had conquered the Portugals, the potentest nation that ever was in those countries, and turned out the Dane and Swede, and in a short time should do the same to the English, and by these discourses hindered the Company's factors from
trade. . . ."

Pedro  •  Link

On this day 15th February I664

The King agrees to the Duke's choice of Sir Thomas Modyford, for the commission as Governor of Jamaica. He also approves Albemarle's nomination for Lieutenant-Governor of Colonel Edward Morgan, the Royalist brother of Major-General Sir Thomas Morgan who had been Governor of Jersey and uncle to Harry Morgan now away on a buccaneering expedition.

Colonel Edward Morgan's appointment was perhaps more significant of the Government's forthcoming policy towards Holland than an example of Albemarle's or the King's rewarding a faithful Royalist who had spent years in exile. Colonel Morgan spoke excellent Dutch and, with the drift towards war, the Dutch working from their bases at Curacão and St. Eustatius (Statia) would be far tougher opponents in the West Indies than the Spanish. The lieutenant-governor's job was likely to be a fighting one.

(Summary from Pope's biography of Harry Morgan)

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Tory

The word "Tory" derives from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe; modern Irish tóraí: outlaw, robber or brigand, from the Irish word tóir, meaning "pursuit", since outlaws were "pursued men". It was originally used to refer to an Irish outlaw and later applied to Confederates or Royalists in arms.[6] The term was thus originally a term of abuse, "an Irish rebel", before being adopted as a political label in the same way as Whig.

Towards the end of Charles II's reign (1660–85) there was some debate about whether or not his brother, James, Duke of York, should be allowed to succeed to the throne. 'Whigs', originally a reference to Scottish cattle-drivers (stereotypically radical anti-Catholic Covenanters), was the abusive term directed at those who wanted to exclude James on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. Those who were not prepared to exclude James were labelled 'Abhorrers' and later 'Tories'. Titus Oates applied the term "Tory", which then signified an Irish robber, to those who would not believe in his Popish plot, and the name gradually became extended to all who were supposed to have sympathy with the Catholic Duke of York.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... they will do what they list, and will be masters of all the world there; and have so proclaimed themselves Soveraigne of all the South Seas; which certainly our King cannot endure, if the Parliament will give him money. But I doubt and yet do hope they will not yet, till we are more ready for it."

Pepys, events are not waiting for you to be ready. And the coffers are empty. Better figure it out by yourself.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"There is no reference to this incident at Surat in Sir W. Foster's Engl. factories in India, 1661-64, which is based on the records both of Surat and of the Dutch E. India Company."

Pepys entry was confused by me with the annotations about the subsequent attack: "... In 1664 the Maratha leader Shivaji sacked and looted Surat. When Shivaji arrived at Surat he demanded tribute from the Mughal commander and the small army stationed with him for port security. The tribute was refused and so after Shivaji took the city, he put it to sack."

I think the Dutch were being disrespectful at the end of 1663. A letter was written and sent to Chamberlyn. It takes about 2 months to reach London. In the meantime in 1664 the attack happens, and overshadows the Dutch disrespect, which is why it didn't make it into the history books.

In a few weeks Pepys and we will probably hear about the Shavaji attack.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

At this time in south Asia, European traders (Portuguese, Dutch, English) are playing a minor role on the fringes of the greater conflict of which Pedro and San Diegi Sarah have reminded us between the Muslim Mughals and Hindu Maratha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mug…

Shivaji, an Indian warrior king carved out an enclave that formed the genesis of the Maratha Empire. The 1664 attack on Surat, a wealthy Mughal trading centre, was both retaliatory and to replenish his now-depleted treasury. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi…

Shivaji's major dealings with the English come in 1670 after the diary's terminus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi…

Now online is Sir W. Foster's THE ENGLISH FACTORIES IN INDIA, 1661-64
https://archive.org/stream/englis…

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

'Whig' originated as an abbreviation of 'Whiggamore': thus both historical English party political labels originated as terms of abuse directed against poor rebels.

It is thought that Whiggamores were originally mare drivers, whose nickname derived from "the cry of Whiggam with which they encouraged their horses".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whi…

As for the historical origin of 'Tory', a friend sent me a postcard once with the definition, reproduced here:
https://twitter.com/SashaClarkson…

"Tory. First quoted in The Irish State Papers, January 24, 1656, as 'tories and other lawless persons', - Irish 'toiridhe', 'tor', 'toruighe', lit. 'a (hostile) pursuer', hence, 'a plunderer'."

Nothing much has changed ;)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Hi Sasha, sadly the twitter link says it doesn't exist for me. Could you share the gist of the postcard with the historic origin of Tory please?

Bill  •  Link

TORY, a Word first used by the Protestants in Ireland to signify those Irish common Robbers and Murderers who stood outlawed for Robbery and Murder; now a Nick name to such as call themselves High Church men, or to the Partisans of the Chevalier de St George.
---An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. N. Bailey, 1724

There is discussion of the word "tory" in the annotations of 25 Nov 1661 http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

StanB  •  Link

"Where great newes of the arrival of two ships, the Greyhound and another"
The other ship was the Concord; both were merchantmen of the Levant Company

The Levant Company, at the time of today's entry the Governor of the company was Sir Andrew Riccard (1604 – 6 September 1672)

Riccard became an Alderman of the City of London and was Sheriff of London in 1651. He was at various times Governor of the East India Company and of the Turkey Company. In 1654 he was elected Member of Parliament for City of London in the First Protectorate Parliament. Following the Restoration, he was knighted by Charles II on 10 July 1660

Riccard died at the age of 68 and a Monument including a full size statue was erected at the church of St Olave's after his death by members of the Turkey Company

His second wife Susanna who survived him was buried 17 Mar 1686 at St Olave's.

I wonder if Sam knew him personally given the St Olave connection i imagine they moved in the same circles

Chris Squire UK  •  Link

‘East Indies, n. n. India and the adjacent regions of South-East Asia. In later use usually: the islands of South-East Asia, esp. the Malay Archipelago.
. . 1602 Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor i. iii. 64 They shall be my East and West Indies, and Ile trade to them both.
1647 A. Cowley Mistresse 19 Mine, mine her faire East Indies were above, Where those Suns rise that cheare the world of Love.
1705 Observator No. 4. 22 His pretending to bring witnesses from the East Indies seem'd liker a fair jank than any proper defence.
…………
Tory, n. and adj. < Anglicized spelling of Irish *tóraidhe
1. a. In the 17th c., one of the dispossessed Irish, who became outlaws, subsisting by plundering and killing the English settlers and soldiers; a bog-trotter, a rapparee; later, often applied to any Irish Papist or Royalist in arms. Obs. exc. Hist.
. . 1657 T. Burton Diary 10 June (1828) II. 210 Major Morgan... We have three beasts to destroy, that lay burdens upon us,—1st, is a public Tory, on whose head we lay 200l., and 40l. upon a private Tory's... 2d. beast, is a priest, on whose head we lay 10l., if he be eminent, more. 3d. beast, the wolf, on whom we lay 5l. a head if a dog; 10l. if a bitch.
. . 1849 Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. ii. 257 The bogs of Ireland..afforded a refuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those who were afterwards known as Whiteboys. These men were then [temp. Chas. II] called Tories.

. . 2. With capital T: A nickname given 1679–80 by the Exclusioners (q.v.) to those who opposed the exclusion of James, Duke of York (a Roman Catholic) from the succession to the Crown.
According to Roger North Examen (1740) ii. v. ⁋9 The Bill of Exclusion ‘led to a common Use of slighting and opprobrious Words; such as Yorkist. That..did not scandalise or reflect enough. Then they came to Tantivy, which implied Riding Post to Rome... Then, observing that the Duke favoured Irish Men, all his Friends, or those accounted such by appearing against the Exclusion, were straight become Irish, and so wild Irish, thence Bogtrotters, and in the Copia of the factious Language, the Word Tory was entertained, which signified the most despicable Savages among the Wild Irish’.

3. a. Hence, from 1689, the name of one of the two great parliamentary and political parties in England, and (at length) in Great Britain.
. . 1755 Johnson Dict. Eng. Lang. Tory. (A cant term, derived, I suppose, from an Irish word signifying a savage.) One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England: opposed to a whig . .

4. a. U.S. Hist. A member of the British party during the Revolutionary period; a loyal colonist . . ‘
(OED)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Careful, Sam. Your Roundhead sympathies are showing."

Turns out we were all wrong. There were people ... thought now to have been [secret?] Royalists ... who wore periwigs during the Interregnum.

https://thehistoryofparliament.wo…

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