Sunday 1 October 1665

(Lord’s day). Called up about 4 of the clock and so dressed myself and so on board the Bezan, and there finding all my company asleep I would not wake them, but it beginning to be break of day I did stay upon the decke walking, and then into the Maister’s cabbin and there laid and slept a little, and so at last was waked by Captain Cocke’s calling of me, and so I turned out, and then to chat and talk and laugh, and mighty merry. We spent most of the morning talking and reading of “The Siege of Rhodes,” which is certainly (the more I read it the more I think so) the best poem that ever was wrote. We breakfasted betimes and come to the fleete about two of the clock in the afternoon, having a fine day and a fine winde. My Lord received us mighty kindly, and after discourse with us in general left us to our business, and he to his officers, having called a council of warr, we in the meantime settling of papers with Mr. Pierce and everybody else, and by and by with Captain Cuttance. Anon called down to my Lord, and there with him till supper talking and discourse; among other things, to my great joy, he did assure me that he had wrote to the King and Duke about these prize-goods, and told me that they did approve of what he had done, and that he would owne what he had done, and would have me to tell all the world so, and did, under his hand, give Cocke and me his certificate of our bargains, and giving us full power of disposal of what we have so bought. This do ease my mind of all my fear, and makes my heart lighter by 100l. than it was before. He did discourse to us of the Dutch fleete being abroad, eighty-five of them still, and are now at the Texell, he believes, in expectation of our Eastland ships coming home with masts and hempe, and our loaden Hambrough ships going to Hambrough. He discoursed against them that would have us yield to no conditions but conquest over the Dutch, and seems to believe that the Dutch will call for the protection of the King of France and come under his power, which were to be wished they might be brought to do under ours by fair means, and to that end would have all Dutch men and familys, that would come hither and settled, to be declared denizens; and my Lord did whisper to me alone that things here must break in pieces, nobody minding any thing, but every man his owne business of profit or pleasure, and the King some little designs of his owne, and that certainly the kingdom could not stand in this condition long, which I fear and believe is very true.

So to supper and there my Lord the kindest man to me, before all the table talking of me to my advantage and with tenderness too that it overjoyed me. So after supper Captain Cocke and I and Temple on board the Bezan, and there to cards for a while and then to read again in “Rhodes” and so to sleep. But, Lord! the mirth which it caused me to be waked in the night by their snoaring round about me; I did laugh till I was ready to burst, and waked one of the two companions of Temple, who could not a good while tell where he was that he heard one laugh so, till he recollected himself, and I told him what it was at, and so to sleep again, they still snoaring.

34 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"then to chat and talk and laugh,"

"chat"?!

Pepys has used "chat" in the 21st century sense once before -- 15 December 1662 -- when the entry ended thus:
"So home and with great content to bed, and talk and chat with my wife while I was at supper, to our great pleasure." http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Patricia  •  Link

"makes my heart lighter by 100 l. than it was before."
Don't you love it?! Sam's play on words here (intentional or otherwise) expresses a feeling we all have, even if our money isn't called pounds.

Patricia  •  Link

"the mirth which it caused me to be waked in the night by their snoaring round about me; I did laugh till I was ready to burst" Sam's light heart has made him exceptionally good-humoured, if he can laugh at being waked by snorers!

jeannine  •  Link

"But, Lord! the mirth which it caused me to be waked in the night by their snoaring round about me; I did laugh till I was ready to burst, and waked one of the two companions of Temple, who could not a good while tell where he was that he heard one laugh so, till he recollected himself, and I told him what it was at, and so to sleep again, they still snoaring."

What is it about people who snore--they never believe it when you tell them that they do it. When I was little my grandmother would come to stay and after juggling kids to make space for her, she would sleep in the bed next to mine. She snored so loudly that you could probably hear it a mile away. My older brother, about age 7, told her that she snored and she didn’t believe him. So, he slid a tape recorder under her bed and when she went for her nap she was bagged. He then pulled out the tape recorder and played it and to my mother’s horror he was then bagged! Glad Sam thought it was funny, I loved her, but boy was I miserable!

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Put not your trust in Princes (named Stuart)...

Paul Chapin  •  Link

chat

OED has citations for the verb itself going back to 1440, at that time in a pejorative sense ("to talk idly and foolishly"). In a neutral sense, as Sam uses it ("to talk in a light and informal manner"), the first citation is from 1556.

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"a council of wary"

Obviously a scanning error for "warr," but amusingly apt as it stands.

Bergie  •  Link

Hovering on "cards," late in today's entry, produces "Cartographic Show and Tell." This looks like a mistake. The context is card games, not maps.

Mary  •  Link

"there laid and slept a little"

L&M reading is "there leaned and slept a little" with a gloss that this is an obsolete use of 'to lean' meaning 'to lie'. OED?

GrahamT  •  Link

“a council of wary”
Brings to mind a group of men meeting together, but being very carful about what they say!

GrahamT  •  Link

One error begets another. That should have been careful not carful.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

These days here in Atlanta at least, given the gas shortage, Graham T you are exactly right, we are wary and carful.

A. Hamilton  •  Link

"certainly the kingdom could not stand in this condition long"

A prediction 23 years ahead of its time.

Don McCahill  •  Link

Our world might be a better place if there were more councils of wary and fewer councils of warr.

Adam  •  Link

I love the bit at the end with the snoring.

language hat  •  Link

"when she went for her nap she was bagged. He then pulled out the tape recorder and played it and to my mother’s horror he was then bagged!"

I don't understand what "bagged" means here.

A. De Araujo  •  Link

"Siege of Rhodes"
According to wikipedia, the first english opera; the score has been lost.

JWB  •  Link

Pirates of Bizan

Pierce, Cuttance and Temple-the fat blade.

CGS  •  Link

chat: there be this little bird that would chit chat in the garden bushes long before even Romans gave us a new language, chitting and chatting away, of course it not be big enough to make a good sandwich not even a good pie, so it was allowed to prate away.
thus idle chatter that would disturb the peace.
Also any odds and ends would be called chat or even it could be used for a miserable looking spud not good enough for producing the next generation, common enough use amongst us clod hoppers that used the rooster for waking us..

Chat was also another name for creepies in the hair for young lasses to comb.
So a prick louse may have been known as a prick chat.

Oh! the lessers could always mis-use the lingua franca.

A. Hamilton  •  Link

OED
lean (v 1)

1. a. intr. To recline, lie down, rest. Obs. exc. Sc. in reflexive construction. †Formerly conjugated with the verb to be.
c950 Lindisf. Gosp. Mark ii. 15 Moni¼o bærsuni¼o & synnfullo ætgeadre lini¼iendo weron mið ðone hælende. c1000 Ags. Gosp. John xiii. 23 An þæra leorning-cnihta hlinode on þæs hælendes bearme. c1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 39 Ðe unwreste herde hloneð and slepeð. 1362 Langl. P. Pl. A. ix. 56 Vnder a lynde, vppon a launde leonede I a stounde. c1375 Sc. Leg. Saints xix. (Cristofore) 228 & scantly lenyt don he was, Quhen þe woyce on hym can cry. c1385 Chaucer L.G.W. Prol. 179 Lenynge on myn elbowe and my syde. c1450 Merlin 168 He+yede towarde the loges where as the thre kynges were lenynge. 1486 Bk. St. Albans Fvijb, An haare in her forme shulderyng or leenyng. 1503 Dunbar Thistle & Rose 100 This lady+leit him listly lene vpone hir kne. 1513 Douglas Æneis viii. Prol. 2 As I lenyt in a ley in Lent this last nycht. 1693 Dryden Ovid's Met. i. 1012 She laid her down; and leaning on her knees, Invok'd the cause of all her miseries. 1721 Ramsay Yng. Laird & Edinb. Katy iii, Now and then we'll lean, And sport upo' the velvet fog. 1724 Vision iii, I leint me down to weip. 1871 W. Alexander Johnny Gibb xvi. 114 She ‘lean't her doon’.

I particularly like the alliterative quotes from Langland (Piers Plowman) and Douglas.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

John Evelyn's Diary (in lieu of Dirk's posting it)

1 ... This afternoone as I was at Evening prayer, tidings were brought to me, of my Wifes being brought to bed at Wotton of a Daughter (after 6 sonns) borne this morning 1. Octob: in the same Chamber, I had first tooke breath in, and at the first day of that moneth, in the morning, as I was on the last: 45 yeares before: & about the very same houre, being 1/3 aft[e]r 4: Sonday:
***

Jesse  •  Link

'I don’t understand what “bagged” means here'

Bagged = caught

Jr. caught granny snoring and then Jr. got caught taping granny. http://www.answers.com/topic/bag (see v.tr. #3)

language hat  •  Link

Jesse: Thanks, but I'm not clear if you know and use this idiom or are guessing from context. Because your dictionary cite doesn't support this sense ("To capture or kill as game: bagged six grouse" is not at all the same). I've never heard or seen it used this way (e.g., "Watch out or we'll get bagged!").

Pedro  •  Link

Bagged = caught

This is a common expression in angling, for example to bag (catch) a hundredweight of barbel. Sometimes when fishing on light tackle, and hooking a large fish, the expression "this one does'nt want to be bagged" is often used.

jeannine  •  Link

Growing up 'to get 'bagged' meant you 'got caught'. It may not have an entry in any dictionary and perhaps is some sort of local slang, but that was the intent.

CGS  •  Link

Bagged: another couple of farthings worth.
In the days of 'untin' fishin' and ""shoutin'"", we always bagged our game, in other words we shot it and got the dogs to retrieve it and then put it feathers and all, into game keepers sack.

Being a clod hopper most of 'me' mates were always short on words , one word to mean a whole lot of work.

Question of the day be how many did thee bag to-day?
but at school we liked to debag the the prefect and tar and feather him.

dirk  •  Link

From the Carte Papers, Bodleian Library
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/s…

Minutes of a Council of War, held on board the Prince, at the Nore, 1st October 1665

Date: 1 October 1665

Resolve that it is not convenient for H.M's service that the Great Ships should take the sea this winter; that the Hambro' Fleet be not sent away till we be assured that the Dutch are harboured; and that 15 sail of men of war will be enough to go to Norway, to await the Dutch East-India fleet.

Phil Gyford  •  Link

Re Bergie's comment above about the inaccurate 'tool tip' text for the word "cards": Sorry about that -- it's fixed now.

language hat  •  Link

Thanks for the explanation, jeannine!

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"we in the meantime settling of papers with Mr. Pierce and everybody else, and by and by with Captain Cuttance."

L&M: The papers concerned the prize-goods. Andrew Pearse was purser of the Royal Charles.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"my Lord...did assure me that he had wrote to the King and Duke about these prize-goods, and told me that they did approve of what he had done, and that he would owne what he had done, and would have me to tell all the world so, and did, under his hand, give Cocke and me his certificate of our bargains, and giving us full power of disposal of what we have so bought."

L&M: Pepys's certificate (in his own hand; signed by Sandwich, dated this day) is in Rawl. A 174, f. 305r. He had bought 'several parcells of Spices, Silkes and other Goods', and was ti dispose of them as he liked, having paid customs dues. They were worth over £1000. In Carteret's letter of 28 September, which gave Sandwich the authority to sell his share of the goods, he was warned to await the King's warrant, which was not issued until 17 October: Sandwich MSS.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Resolve that it is not convenient for H.M's service that the Great Ships should take the sea this winter; that the Hambro' Fleet be not sent away till we be assured that the Dutch are harbored; and that 15 sail of men of war will be enough to go to Norway, to await the Dutch East-India fleet."
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
"He did discourse to us of the Dutch fleete being abroad, eighty-five of them still, and are now at the Texell, he believes, in expectation of our Eastland ships coming home with masts and hempe, and our loaden Hambrough ships going to Hambrough."

Not convenient for the English fleet to sail -- I'm sure Pepys agreed with that! So only 15 ships are to sail and stop the 85 ship Dutch fleet from capturing the English merchantmen coming from the 'Eastland' with needed masts and hemp. And the merchantmen bound for Hamburg can't sail until it's safe.

L&M Companion -- Capt. George Cocke, 1617-1676. Baltic merchant ... a native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (which played an important part in trade to Scandinavia). He was an influential member of the Eastland Company, dealt extensively in hemp ...

The boys are taking care of each other. And it's a hell of a gamble. I see no alternative.

Meanwhile, in France:

Philip VI, King of Spain died on September 17, 1665. Ignoring the fact that his daughter renounced her claim to the Spanish kingdom (which includes some of the rebellious Netherlands) when she married Louis XIV, Louis finds spurious legal reasons to argue that parts of the Spanish Netherlands should devolve to Queen Marie Therese anyways. Which may account for Pepys/Sandwich's worries: "... and seems to believe that the Dutch will call for the protection of the King of France and come under his power, ..."

And Sandwich thinks "and the King some little designs of his owne," -- implying a side deal with his cousin Louis? Or that Charles wants more than his legal share of the prize goods?

So many tangle webs. No wonder Pepys is pocketing as much money as he can, as fast as he can. Anything could happen. Conspiracy theories reign.

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