Tuesday 12 June 1666

Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning. At noon to dinner, and then to White Hall in hopes of a meeting of Tangier about Yeabsly’s business, but it could not be obtained, Sir G. Carteret nor Sir W. Coventry being able to be there, which still vexes [me] to see the poor man forced still to attend, as also being desirous to see what my profit is, and get it.

Walking here in the galleries I find the Ladies of Honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like mine, and buttoned their doublets up the breast, with perriwigs and with hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men’s coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever; which was an odde sight, and a sight did not please me. It was Mrs. Wells and another fine lady that I saw thus.

Thence down by water to Deptford, and there late seeing some things dispatched down to the fleete, and so home (thinking indeed to have met with Bagwell, but I did not) to write my letters very late, and so to supper and to bed.

13 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I find the Ladies of Honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like mine, and buttoned their doublets up the breast, with perriwigs and with hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever; which was an odde sight, and a sight did not please me."

Cf. James Durham's Practical Exposition of the Ten Commandments (1665)

"Also interchanging of apparel is condemned; men putting on women's, and women men's clothes, which is unsuitable to that distinction of sexes which the Lord hath made, and is condemned in the word, as a confusion, an absurd, unnatural thing, and an inlet to much wickedness. Whereof the Dutch annotators, as several fathers did long before them, on 1 Cor. 11:14, make men’s nourishing and wearing of long hair to be some degree, it being given to women, not only for an ornament and covering, but also in part for distinction of the female sex from the male."

http://virginiahuguenot.blogspot.…

cgs  •  Link

"...Ladies of Honour..."
such wonderful subject for woman's rights.
Just lacked a good equalizer, Deringer.

Not all 'staid' home for the little man to do the HONORS.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"... I find the Ladies of Honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like mine, and ,buttoned their doublets up the breast, with perriwigs and with hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men’s coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever; which was an odde sight, and a sight did not please me."

"Especially those signs they carried, 'Down with the Profiteering, Lecherous Clerk of the Acts'. Funny that didn't make it into your Diary."

"Bess...The World must never know."

Bradford  •  Link

But two women hardly makes a quorum of cross-dressers. Spoiled the balcony view, did it, those close-buttoned clothes? And a historically informed reading of I Cor. 11:14 would yield a different slant on just what outraged the contemporary social critic.

JWB  •  Link

Exercise in coats & doublets on a mid-June afternoon by infrequently bathed meat eater...have a look into Poucher's perfumes, cosmetics and soaps - Google Books
http://books.google.com/books?id=…

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"in hopes of a meeting of Tangier about Yeabsly’s business, but it could not be obtained, Sir G. Carteret nor Sir W. Coventry being able to be there, which still vexes [me] to see the poor man forced still to attend, as also being desirous to see what my profit is, and get it."

L&M: The accounts of Thomas Yeabsley and his partners for the victualing of Tangier were under scrutiny. Pepys received £300 p.a. from them for his good offices: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... and then to White Hall in hopes of a meeting of Tangier about Yeabsly’s business, but it could not be obtained, Sir G. Carteret nor Sir W. Coventry being able to be there ..."

This means they could not find a voting quorum for the Tangier meeting.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Terry's annotations above on cross-dressing are a treat. BUT the Virginia 1665 link does not now lead to the supporting quote, and Minister James Durham died on Friday, 25 June 1658, aged 36 so I don't know what the 1665 date refers to. If I figure it out, I'll let you know. (One can never find too many quotes on periwigs.)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Terry's link is right. (Carstares sounds like my parents carrying on about mini-skirts.)

The Scottish Covenanter John Carstares wrote in his 1665 preface to the reader he published on James Durham's "Practical Exposition of the Ten Commandments":
“To over-costly, curious, vain and conceity dressing and decking of the body, and setting of the hair now after one mode, now after another. ... and horrid bushes of vanity, as Mr. [Robert] Bolton calls them, and partly by their variously and strangely metamorphosing modes and colours of periwigs) --

"James Durham goes on (quoting Robert Bolton again at one point), pp. 334-337: “and therefore we say that in men and women both, there is condemned by the Lord:
...
2. Strangeness in the ever-changing fashions, and extravagant modes of apparel; while as the Lord by nature has continued the shape of men's bodies to be the same. ... There is a lightness in clothing as to colour, mounting as they call it, etc, and in dressing of the body, which may be seen in these dressings of the hair, powderings, laces, ribbons, points, etc, which are so much in use with gallants of the time; this, especially in women, is insisted on and condemned (Isa. 3:16-17, etc.) Some things indeed there mentioned are not simply unlawful, especially to persons of higher quality, ...

“There is in clothes a base effeminatenesse amongst men (which someway emasculates or un-mans them) who delight in those things which women dote upon, as dressing of hair, powderings, washing, (when exceeded in) rings, jewels, etc, which are spoken of, and reproved in the daughters of Zion (Isa. 3), and so must be much more unsuitable to men. Also interchanging of apparel is condemned; men putting on women's, and women men's clothes, which is unsuitable to that distinction of sexes which the Lord hath made, and is condemned in the word, as a confusion, an absurd, unnatural thing, and an inlet to much wickedness. Whereof the Dutch annotators, as several fathers did long before them, on 1 Cor. 11:14, make men’s nourishing and wearing of long hair to be some degree, it being given to women, not only for an ornament and covering, but also in part for distinction of the female sex from the male.

“... it will not be impertinent to subjoin a strange story, which learned, pious, and grave Mr. Bolton, in his Four Last Things, p. 40, repeats from his author the famous Herculus Saxonia, professor of physic in Padua:

“’The Plica (saith he) is a most loathsome and horrible disease in the hair, ... And at the first spreading of this dreadful disease in Poland, all that did cut off their horrible and snaky hair, lost their eyes, ... And methinks (says Mr. Bolton) our monstrous fashionists, both male and female, the one for nourishing their horrid bushes of vanity, ...’”

I'm not sure who John Carstares is quoting, Bolton or Durham. There's a nod to Pepys from his first church outing with a wig when no one acted like anything was different.

Louise Hudson  •  Link

“. . . Whereof the Dutch annotators, as several fathers did long before them, on 1 Cor. 11:14, make men’s nourishing and wearing of long hair to be some degree, it being given to women, not only for an ornament and covering, but also in part for distinction of the female sex from the male."

Who is it who’s having a problem with the “distinction of the female sex from the male”? Certainly not the women! Isn’t this is one more example of the “superior” sex, expecting the world to conform to male needs and desires—then as now. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Background Lurker  •  Link

Who is it who’s having a problem?
It comes from a higher authority apparently:
"which is unsuitable to that distinction of sexes which the Lord hath made" - Robert Bolton quoted by SDS above.

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