Tuesday 20 September 1664
Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, at noon to the ’Change, and there met by appointment with Captain Poyntz, who hath some place, or title to a place, belonging to gameing, and so I discoursed with him about the business of our improving of the Lotterys, to the King’s benefit, and that of the Fishery, and had some light from him in the business, and shall, he says, have more in writing from him. So home to dinner and then abroad to the Fishing Committee at Fishmongers’ Hall, and there sat and did some business considerable, and so up and home, and there late at my office doing much business, and I find with great delight that I am come to my good temper of business again. God continue me in it. So home to supper, it being washing day, and to bed.
25 Annotations
First Reading
Australian Susan • Link
Quite surprising he got proper dinner at home on washing day - must have been some really good household organising going on. (and it must have been a proper dinner or we would have heard about it)
Hmm. Improving the Lotteries for the benefit of Government. Maybe also a teeny-weeny bit will come Sam's way as well? And today, he has decided to give up the vacillating Jane it seems and stick to business and home. Wonder how long that will last!
cape henry • Link
"...and had some light from him in the business..." One of Pepys' most admirable traits is his willingness listen to the ideas of others and to evaluate them in a generally fair-minded way. On the other hand, I suspect that A. Susan is right about the possibility of a background motive in this instance.
Terry F • Link
"Hmm. Improving the Lotteries for the benefit of Government. Maybe also a teeny-weeny bit will come Sam's way as well?"
Probably not, Aussie Sue: this is for King and creds, not cash.
The first discussion of the lotteries for fund-raising was at the first action-meeting of the the Fishery Committee a week ago (13 September)
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… "a Committee for the Fishery,[formed 8 days prior, 5 September] the Duke of Yorke...was made Secretary [and] I was willing to be [a member], because I would have my hand in the business, to understand it and be known in doing something in it; " http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
jeannine • Link
From Sam to Lord Sandwich (from "Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys" edited by Tanner)
20 September, 1664
The wind continuing for some days N.E., has hindered our Guinny ships from falling down, which (had the Dutch fleet been ready) might have been of sound advantage to them, but they are not nor like to be (as 'tis said) in some days. 'Tis discoursed also as if they were now less keep upon 't than they were, and talk of new treaties, nay, wagers I heard offered this day upon the 'Change that no Dutch fleet shall attempt to pass the Channel this 3 weeks (meaning towards Guinny), the ground of which presumption I understand not, but do wish (as well prepared as we would have our ships and stores thought to be ) that a tolerable offer of accommodation from the Dutch be the worst news we hear of these 12 months......
Terry F • Link
Well, of course, rereading, "I would have my hand in the business" might have more than one meaning; but with the Duke close at hand, I doubt SP will be raking it in off the top.
Robert Gertz • Link
Creed who follows none.
Christmas whose girth fits him.
Bland who maintains countenance.
Batten who is rather too open in solicting merchants' favors.
Pierce the surgeon.
Hewer who never will.
Sandwich the hero.
Hunt who Sam always seems to find.
Greatorex, king of inventors.
Maes who probably won't.
Wight whose soul is anything but.
Hayter whose faith is a loving one.
Lane whose path is well-trod.
Birch whose heart is as strong.
A Penn who favors the sword.
Another Penn who will find the other alternative mightier.
Vane who was not...Nor did his noble soul shift with the changing winds.
Bagwell who, well...
And now Poyntz who has charge of gaming.
All brought to us by Pepys who's always watching.
Michael Robinson • Link
"...had some light from him in the business, and shall, he says, he says, have more in writing from him."
Well Poyntz appears to have put pen to paper, albeit late, if the dating of this Mss in the British Library is correct.
Poyntz (John). Capt. Proposals for developing fisheries [1677?].Eg. 3352 f.43
[ LEEDS PAPERS. Vols. XXVIII, XXIX (ff. 171, 212). Correspondence and papers of the lst Duke of Leeds relating to the revenue, including customs and excise; Vol. XXVIII, 1663-Mar. 1676; Vol. XXIX, Apr. 1676-1690, n.d.]
Cum grano salis • Link
"Fishery,[formed 8 days prior, 5 September] the Duke of Yorke...was made Secretary [and] I was willing to be [a member], because I would have my hand in the business, to understand it and be known in doing something in it; "
"I dothe think he rit wot he ment."
Hand OED:
b. Part or share in the doing of something: esp. in phrase, to have a hand in.
1597 SHAKES
Michael Robinson • Link
"... with the Duke close at hand, I doubt SP will be raking it in off the top."
'Profit,' we know now that this includes pecuniary gain, was on SP's mind from his first mention of the Tangier Committee of the Privy Council:-
" ... my Lord has put me into Commission with himself and many noblemen and others for Tangier, which, if it be, is not only great honour, but may be of profit too,..."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
though the Duke himself was a member:-
"... and so to the Council Chamber, where there met the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Duke of Albemarle, my Lord Sandwich, Sir Wm. Compton, Mr. Coventry, Sir J. Minnes, Sir R. Ford, Sir W. Rider, myself, and Captain Cuttance, as Commissioners for Tangier."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
With the Fishery:-
"we fell to name a Committee, whereof I was willing to be one, because I would have my hand in the business, to understand it and be known in doing something in it;"
'
SP joining the working committee and having a hand in decisions would certainly be known to those who make gifts to acquire influence and express their appreciation of favorable results in a tangible form.
Robert Gertz • Link
Always seemed to me that Napoleon got it wrong-it's not with baubles that men are governed but with "grease". And to be fair, in an age like Sam's with no provided, built-in perks like pensions and health and life insurance, what can a man do for his family and old age but seek a little extra where he can so long as it does no real damage? Coventry can take the moral high ground now but he's already raked in his fees and is more or less secure. The problem of course being that such corruption becomes insidious and progressive...Not only does it take a strong soul to stop at the point of one's absolute need and refuse more but one becomes blind to its corrosive effect on judgement and performance.
Pedro • Link
Beachy Head is a well known location for suicide attempts.
http://www.solarnavigator.net/geo…
Xjy • Link
Lotteries, monopolies and graft are an old combination. Over a century later, the great Swedish poet and troubadour C M Bellman got a sinecure with the state lottery under Gustav III (the one they shot at a Ballo in Maschera) to help keep the wolf from the door. Free money was the perfect thing for rulers to have monopoly control over and then be "generous" with.
Since Sam came into daily contact with the royals he has been in the swim. The first couple of years with the Navy Board were spent adjusting and groping his way, but with the basics in place (nice clothes, fine house, right contacts, good daily routine, business priorities) he's been shuttling between the City and Westminster with the best of them, and sucking his drop or two of the blood circulating in the body politic. Not bad for an obscure burgher who lucked out by having a brilliant admiral as relative and patron.
What we miss in our daily dose is the phenomenal speed of Sam's rise given his cautious and anally retentive character. Perhaps it's a bit like the opening up of the world of higher education to the lower middle classes and the labour aristocracy in the 1960s and 1970s. The turmoil of ww2 and the new welfare state made it so irresistible that it seemed like a force of nature at work. Same but on an even more dramatic scale with the English Revolution, Commonwealth and Restoration. A new world was being made and Sam was riding the crest of the wave (albeit hanging on to Sandwich's coattails).
language hat • Link
Excellent perspective, Xjy!
Robert Gertz • Link
Similiar effect in US post WWII with Roosevelt's GI Bill of Rights allowing college ed to many lower middle and working class veterans who never looked back, transforming society. I'd said it's likely the wider horizons made possible the success of the civil rights movement as well. For Sam's era thought the window must have been quite narrow.
Robert Gertz • Link
Similiar effect in US post WWII with Roosevelt's GI Bill of Rights allowing college ed to many lower middle and working class veterans who never looked back, transforming society. I'd said it's likely the wider horizons made possible the success of the civil rights movement as well. For Sam's era though the window must have been quite narrow.
Robert Gertz • Link
Similiar effect in US post WWII with Roosevelt's GI Bill of Rights allowing college ed to many lower middle and working class veterans who never looked back, transforming society. I'd said it's likely the wider horizons made possible the success of the civil rights movement as well. For Sam's era though the window must have been quite narrow.
Terry F • Link
Robert, also to be recalled is that those "lower middle and working class veterans who never looked back" -- Uncle Sam's (Edward Mountagu's) favored nephews (Samuel Pepys) -- were white. http://www.nber.org/digest/dec02/…
Also thanks for a list of Wills who won't.
Michael, good evidence SP doesn't take it off the top; the Duke does.
Robert Gertz • Link
Not quite all, but largely white, Terry-as your reference notes, there were gains among blacks outside the South (and I would argue small gains in the South) which was after all a segregated society and at the time deliberately hindered educational gains for minorities. But my point is the opening of the doors for those men and women gave them new perspectives and perhaps just that minimum of greater experience and understanding that made some difference when decisions had to be made. I know that realizing he'd been able to move a bit out of the narrow life he would have been trapped in largely thanks to the bill and his travels as a soldier affected my own father's pov-he couldn't accept his father's notions on race or class after that.
Terry F • Link
Robert, Good points and lessons for a great many. My reaction's from recent reading about systemic bias and violent racism in Southern California that escaped me while I, an inveterate newspaper reader even then, was in elementary school in the late 1940s-early 50s. But I'm off-topic even metaphorically.
Robert Gertz • Link
As am I...The Roosevelt GI Bill being too fascinating a piece of social legislation for me to pass by...But to get back to Sam's progress...It's long interested me to think what might have happened to a Sam without Sandwich. I suppose the easy answer is-Samuel and Thomas Pepys, fine Tailors to Gentlemen, though Sam might possibly have found his way to a career like Creed's though sheer energy and talent. Judging from Tomalin and others, he seems to have had a helping hand from Montagu very early but just how much does he owe cousin Ed for the chance at a decent education as well as his later career?
Robert Gertz • Link
Sam without Sandwich: He would have had no hero.
Yes, I know...But some one was sure to do it.
Australian Susan • Link
Sam's education
He went to an excellent London day school (and his patronage and encouragement of schools for boys in later life shows he valued education of boys)and possibly Huntingdon Grammar too - which led him to Cambridge. It was because he was able and educated that he came to the serious attention of his well-connected cousin (and then possibly nearly ruined it by what on the surface seems to have been an ill-judged and hasty marriage) - so it is somewhat chicken and egg. I think Sam would have got on somehow, somewhere and made a mark - his natural talents are obvious.
Second Reading
Gerald Berg • Link
So Pedro, by using the phrase "attempt suicide" are you saying people survive the fall or just standing there qualifies as an attempt? I wonder also, how many hundreds of feet the cliffs at Beachy Head have receded due to erosion since Pepy's day?
San Diego Sarah • Link
I just noticed this in a time-line: On this day on the other side of The Pond:
Maryland passes 1st anti-amalgamation law to stop intermarriage of English women and black men.
Did they pass laws about something that wasn't happening?
Terry Foreman • Link
anti-miscegenation law
The first laws criminalizing marriage and sex between whites and blacks were enacted in the colonial era in the English colonies of Virginia and Maryland, which depended economically on unpaid labor such as slavery.
At first, in the 1660s, the first laws in Virginia and Maryland regulating marriage between whites and blacks only pertained to the marriages of whites with black (and mulatto) slaves and indentured servants. In 1664, Maryland enacted a law which criminalized such marriages—the 1681 marriage of Irish-born Nell Butler to an African slave was an early example of the application of this law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant…
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro…