Thursday 27 April 1665
Up, and to my office, where all the morning. At noon Creed dined with me; and, after dinner, walked in the garden, he telling me that my Lord Treasurer now begins to be scrupulous, and will know what becomes of the 26,000l. saved by my Lord Peterborough, before he parts with any more money, which puts us into new doubts, and me into a great fear, that all my cake will be doe still.1 But I am well prepared for it to bear it, being not clear whether it will be more for my profit to have it, or go without it, as my profits of the Navy are likely now to be.
All the afternoon till late hard at the office. Then to supper and to bed.
This night William Hewer is returned from Harwich, where he hath been paying off of some ships this fortnight, and went to sea a good way with the fleete, which was 96 in company then, men of warr, besides some come in, and following them since, which makes now above 100, whom God bless!
22 Annotations
First Reading
Robert Gertz • Link
"...my Lord Treasurer now begins to be scrupulous, and will know what becomes of the 26,000l. saved by my Lord Peterborough, before he parts with any more money, which puts us into new doubts, and me into a great fear, that all my cake will be doe still."
Why Samuel...One might almost suspect you were considering "saving" a few thousand pounds yourself.
"There 'tis my Lord Treasurer...25,000..." (26,000. Sam hisses) "As I said, 26,000Ls...Rescued by my prudent care." Peterborough, beaming, though a bit stiffly.
Hmmn...Lord Treasurer eyes the pile on to which Peterborough has just somewhat reluctantly tossed a last stack of notes.
"Very well, release the new funds."
Ah, smell that rising cake...
"I do get it all back, right?" Peterborough hisses.
"Stages, my Lord...Prudent, unobtrusive...Stages." Sam returns. "See here..." hands Peterborough his copy of Aubry, bookmarked.
Hmmn..."Chapter Seventy-Two...'Avoiding the Tower by Restricting Greed'. 'Friend Reader, as I have said many times...In Chapters one, two, three, four, sixteen, twenty, twenty-five, and so on...Greed is good. However...'"
***
"...which was 96 in company then, men of warr, besides some come in, and following them since, which makes now above 100, whom God bless!"
Play that Imperial March...Must have been quite a sight.
Robert Gertz • Link
Still no word of Balty...Is our heroic brother-in-law facing a gruesome battlefield death in Germany? Outwitting the Sultan's best agents for Christendom? Defying the Dutch for adopted Mother England? Or chasing girls in Dover?
Terry Foreman • Link
SAMUEL PEPYS TO JOHN EVELYN (1)
Sick men set ashore in Ireland
Mr Evelin
[Navy Office]
27 April 1665 (2)
Sir,
From a letter this day come to my hand from a Shipp of ours (the little Guift) (3) that in a Conflict with a Hollander on the Irish Coast (wherein shoe though much over matched hath acquitted her selfe very well) hath had severall Men wounded, who are putt on shoare for care at Galloway, give me leave to aske you whether any Provision for sick and wounded men is made in Ireland, not with respect to theis Men only, but to the future ocasions in Generall which wee may Probably have of useing it there. You will Pardon this enquiry from one that hath soe little Right to offer you trouble as
Your humble servant
S:P
Source: NMM Letter-Book 8, 199 (copy in P’s hand). Used by permission of the National Maritime Museum. This is the earliest letter in the sequence of correspondence which could be located, and was oddly omitted by Tanner (1929; it perhaps went unnoticed because E’s name is tucked tightly into the bottom left corner of the page). It is implicit, though, from the content of this letter that P had some personal knowledge of E. P had certainly witnessed and recorded E’s paper on bread-making at the Royal Society on the preceding 1 March (diary) but does not mention E by name. Prior to that both had recorded their presence (diaries) at the launching of the double-bottomed Experiment at Deptford on 22 December 1664.
It may also be noted that Evelyn, Clifford, Reymes, and Doyly signed a document dated 24 November 1664 addressed to the Commissioners of the Navy, in which they requested details of ships at sea to restrict claims for relief of the sick and wounded to those ‘as shall really suffer in His Majesties service’. The document was endorsed by P (Sotheby’s Catalogue for 24 July 1995, Lot 488).
2 MS: ‘27 Aprill 1665’ in lower left margin. P was at the Navy Office all day (diary).
3 Sic. This is almost certainly the Gift, also known as the Gift Minor [ http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo… ]. It was a 16-gun vessel, originally the Spanish Bon Jesus, captured in 1658 and sold in 1667. Its name distinguished it from the Gift Major, a 40-gun French ship captured in 1652 (Colledge 1987).
http://www.romanbritain.freeserve…
Todd Bernhardt • Link
I always find the spelling differences between the Dairy and Sam's formal writing interesting ...
Todd Bernhardt • Link
"my Lord Treasurer now begins to be scrupulous, and will know what becomes of the 26,000l. saved by my Lord Peterborough, before he parts with any more money"
Could someone please give a quick synopsis of this problem, and why it concerns Sam? Thanks in advance.
Terry Foreman • Link
See gunwale's quotation of L&M in an annotation to January 19 1664-65 when the matter first arose: "The 26,000l was in dispute between Povey as Treasurer of Tangier and Peterborough as Governor (1661-2), and appears to have represented payments made for the garrison." http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Michael Robinson • Link
" ... being not clear whether it will be more for my profit to have it, or go without it, as my profits of the Navy are likely now to be ..."
Chickens heading home to roost balanced against chickens being plucked for the pot.
cgs • Link
Thanks for the info on fate of those got in the way of shot, and the money trail.
andy • Link
Good to see Will Hewer doing well. I'm sure Sam is proud of him.
Pedro • Link
SAMUEL PEPYS TO JOHN EVELYN (1)
Thanks to Terry for the first contact between the Diarists, and shows another side to Sam’s job.
The four Commissioners Evelyn, Clifford, Reymes, and Doyly were appointed for Kent and Sussex, Devon and Cornwall, Hampshire and Dorset, and the Eastern Counties.
Sam highlights the lack of provision for wounded arriving on the Irish coast.
CGS • Link
nitpiking some some obsolete meanings :1. Troubled with doubts or scruples of conscience; over-nice or meticulous in matters of right and wrong. Also (of things, actions, etc.), characterized by such scruples.
1450-1530
b. Prone to hesitate or doubt; distrustful; cautious or meticulous in acting, deciding, etc. Also (of actions, etc.), characterized by doubt or distrust; (of objections) cavilling. Obs.
1559
c. with const.: Loth or reluctant, through scruples, to (do something); doubtful or suspicious of (a person or thing); chary of or in (doing something); anxious or fearful about. Obs.
1608
1662 STILLINGFL. Orig. Sacræ II. ix. §21. 320 The primitive Christians were very scrupulous of calling the Emperours Dominus.
d. absol. (the scrupulous = scrupulous persons.)
1625 B. JONSON Staple of N. III. ii. 118 'Tis the house of fame, Sir, Where both the curious, and the negligent, The scrupulous, and carelesse;..all doe meet. 1690 LOCKE Hum. Und. III. vi. §12 There are some Birds..whose Bloud is cold as Fishes, and their Flesh in taste so near akin, that the Scrupulous are allow'd them on Fish-days.
2. Of a thing: Causing or raising scruples; liable to give offence; meriting scruple or cavil, dubious, doubtful. to make it scrupulous: to scruple, hesitate (to do something). Obs.
a1548
1622 BACON Holy War Misc. Wks. (1629) 117 As the Cause of a Warre ought to be Iust; So the Iustice of that Cause ought to be Euident; Not Obscure, not Scrupulous. 1685 BUNYAN Quest. Seventh-day Sabbath ii. 16 This yet seems to me more scrupulous, because that the punishment due to the breach of the Seventh-day Sabbath was hid from men to the time of Moses
b. Of the nature of a mere scruple. Obs.
1605
3. Careful to follow the dictates of conscience; giving heed to the scruples of conscience so as to avoid doing what is wrong; strict in matters of right and wrong.
A use of sense 1 developed chiefly in contexts with a negative expressed or implied.
1545
4. Of actions, etc.: Rigidly directed by the dictates of conscience; characterized by a strict and minute regard for what is right.
1756
5. Minutely exact or careful (in non-moral matters); strictly attentive even to the smallest details; characterized by punctilious exactness.
1638
6. Wrought or produced with minute care and exactness. Obs.
1634 RAINBOW Labour (1635) 34 If seelings be an ornament, what are scrupulous carvings?
Pedro • Link
Historic Bailey trials go online.
Old Bailey Proceedings site, taking the court coverage from 1674 to 1913.
Crimes detailed include pickpocketing, terrorism, murder and stealing a ship to use in the slave trade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/736…
Andrew Hamilton • Link
a great fear, that all my cake will be doe still
My mother used to sing a nursery song learned from her Dah, as house servants looking after children were called in Charleston, S.C., that went as best as I can remember, "hop scotch did it, the cake's all dough. Never mind the weather if the wind don't blow." I see from Googling the phrase that it seems to come from an 18 century fiddle tune.
Paul Chapin • Link
"I always find the spelling differences between the Diary and Sam’s formal writing interesting"
A delayed response to Todd - correct me if I'm wrong, but I have the impression that Sam's shorthand was not a letter-for-letter cipher, but more of a kind of phonetic syllabary, like 20th century stenographers used to use. If that's the case, then the spelling in the Diary (as we see it) was imposed by Wheatley, which would account for how much closer it seems to be to modern orthography than are the transcriptions from Sam's letters. Of course, that leaves the question of why some archaic spellings persist, such as "warr".
Todd Bernhardt • Link
Wow, interesting point, Paul. I didn't realize this was a possibility -- I assumed the shorthand had a one-to-one correlation with letters or groups of letters.
One thing I wonder, though -- given L&M's extensive research and desire to be true to the Diary in all ways, mightn't they have then rendered the Diary in Sam's "intended" spelling? Could someone with access to L&M tell us if they write at all about the translation process and whether spelling was an issue for them?
Michael Robinson • Link
"Of course, that leaves the question of why some archaic spellings persist, such as “warr”."
" ... if they write at all about the translation process and whether spelling was an issue for them?"
This is a quick selection of the major relevant portions of a lengthy discussion, of 20 p. in L&M vol. i, on various questions about and arising from transcription from shorthand and editing the text for modern printing.
In L&M The shorthand is discussed vol i pp. xlviii - liv, at p li:-
"Its essence is a brief way of representing the letters of the ordinary alphabet. ... the shorthand substitutes a set of brief signs, a few of them cut
down forms of the ordinary letters, but the majority straight lines and simple curves. These symbols serve for constants in all positions and for vowels that occur at the beginning of words. For vowels in the middle or at the end of words two devices employed. A medial vowel is represented by placing the following consonant (disjointed and written small) in five positions above the preceding consonant. The se five positions represent a, e, i, o, u, and these serve for both long and short vowels and also for diphthongs. ..."
and the editorial decisions, liv - lxvii, at p. lvii:
"The problem that presented itself therefore was whether the conventional spelling to be used for the shorthand in this text should be our own or something similar to the spelling used by Pepys and his contemporaries. The possible objection to the first alternative is that it conflicts with our decision to print, so far as the abbreviations allow, Pepys's longhand as he wrote it. It conflicts moreover with our decision to retain Pepys's grammar, to keep his 'you was', 'he begun,' 'ill-written' and so on, rather than to change them to 'you were', 'he began', 'ill-written.' Unless Pepys's grammar and longhand were also modernized, to represent his spelling entirely in modern fashion would obscure a lot of details important to many scholars. To spell in seventeenth-century style (where it can be said to exist0 is, however, not only difficult but leads to scholarly tampering. This is what a previous editor, H. B. Wheatley, tried to do, and the result id a free-hand-antique, in which nothing can be relied upon. The trouble is that seventeenth century spelling was extremely variable and very inconsistent; the same words could be spelled in present-day fashion and also in one often two or three earlier styles. ...
From these considerations, it was decided that the basis of th spelling of the shorthand in this text should be present day British usage. The procedure, although necessary, is not free from defect. Even though Pepys's own variants include almost every modern spelling, uniform spelling is quite alien to his habit; to adopt it entirely would, moreover, be subject to objections we have already mentioned.
it is fortunate, therefore , that a desirable mixture, a moderate kind of seventeenth century inconsistency , can be achieved in a systematic fashion and with sufficient accuracy. This is made possible by the phonetic spelling in Pepys's shorthand. ... Thus the general principle adopted for spelling shorthand forms in this edition was that ordinarily the spelling was to be in present-day British style, but when the shorthand indicated a seventeenth-century variation in spelling, and when that spelling indicated a seventeenth-century pronunciation and a spelling that Pepys himself used, it should be spelled in the appropriate non modern style. This compromise has certain merits. The variant spellings, both of longhand and shorthand words, combine to give the text an appropriate seventeenth-century coloration. And since every one of the variants is authentic, it is to be hoped that the text provides historical linguists with evidence the may need. .... "
Paul Chapin • Link
Michael, thanks very much for providing us that. It's most enlightening.
language hat • Link
Seconded.
Todd Bernhardt • Link
Cubed! :-)
CGS • Link
no hexing, just plain thanks for the insight.
Pedro • Link
Meanwhile about 5 leagues from Texel …
Sandwich says by his reckoning the Fleet is now 5 leagues from Texel and anchored in 16 fathoms.
Allin tells of a handsome gale and being leeward of HRH he endeavoured to get his station on his starboard quarter but the wind southered and HRH tacked. In the afternoon he stood in, and about 7 saw white sandy land and a tower and anchored. The Diamond brought in a dogger, belonging to Antwerp, from Norway with lobsters which was freed after selling part of its fish. He also got 11 puncheons of water of Sir Will Penn.
(Info from the Journals edited by Anderson)
Second Reading
Sasha Clarkson • Link
To me, the most significant part of today's entry is the mention of Will Hewer, indicating his evolution from apprentice to Personal Assistant, on the way to becoming a valued colleague, ally and friend.