cgs on 21 Jun 2009  •  Link

veddy interesting item
"...about the letter of credit he did give my Lord Belassis..."
So popular for business transactions up to the 1970's, a common way of getting goods to other banking zones.

cgs on 22 Jun 2009  •  Link

c. letter of credit: a document recommending the bearer to confidence; = letter of credence.
[See also 10b.]
1582 LICHEFIELD tr. Castanheda's Conq. E. Ind. 2a, Hee gaue them a Letter of credite. 1632 J. HAYWARD tr. Biondi's Eromena 137 He despatch'd him away in a frigat with letters of credit.

Robert Gertz on 22 Jun 2009  •  Link

"(while at supper comes young Michell, whose wife I love, little Betty Howlet, to get my favour about a ticket, and I am glad of this occasion of obliging him and give occasion of his coming to me, for I must be better acquainted with him and her)..."

Spoiler...

Step two in Sam's perfect seduction plan...

Maybe he could get Halys to draw cartoons like Stanley Ford's in "How to Murder Your Wife".

Run, Betty...Run! "Uncle" Sam's intentions are not honorable.

Terry Foreman on 22 Jun 2009  •  Link

"whereby several circumstances I find Sir W. Coventry and the Duke of Albemarle do not agree as they used to do"

Confirming what Sir G. Carteret told him the day before yesterday, that there had been "some high words between the Generall and Sir W. Coventry." http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Perhaps their disagreement over how the Four Days Battle was conducted is infecting other issues?

Nix on 23 Jun 2009  •  Link

"Sir W. Coventry and the Duke of Albemarle do not agree as they used to do; Sir W. Coventry commending Aylett (in some reproach to the Duke), whom the Duke hath put out for want of courage; and found fault with Steward, whom the Duke keeps in, though as much in fault as any commander in the fleete." --

"Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." -- John F. Kennedy

Australian Susan on 24 Jun 2009  •  Link

Nice one, Nix!

Terry Foreman on 21 Nov 2015  •  Link

"At noon home to dinner, my father, sister, and wife dining at Sarah Giles’s, poor woman, where I should have been, but my pride would not suffer me."

She was, like the Joyces. a poor relation of Pepys's mother, She and her husband Thomas lived in St Giles, Cripplegate. She was illiterate, and attested her will (1670) with a mark. (L&M footnote)

Then -- stark contrast -- after dinner at home Pepys goes to "to Mr. Debasty’s to speake with [the goldsmith-banker] Sir Robert Viner, a fine house and a great many fine ladies. He used me mighty civilly. My business was to set the matter right about the letter of credit he did give my Lord Belassis, that I may take up the tallys lodged with Viner for his security in the answering of my Lord’s bills, which we did set right very well, and Sir Robert Viner went home with me and did give me the 5000l. tallys presently. Here at Mr. Debasty’s I saw, in a gold frame, a picture of a Fluter playing on his flute which, for a good while, I took for paynting, but at last observed it a piece of tapestry, and is the finest that ever I saw in my life for figures, and good natural colours, and a very fine thing it is indeed."

Terry Foreman on 21 Nov 2015  •  Link

"while at supper comes young Michell, whose wife I love, little Betty Howlet, to get my favour about a ticket."

L&M: Tavern keepers such as Mitchell were often used by sailors to cash thei pay-tickets.

Terry Foreman on 2 Jan 2019  •  Link

"the City have voted to lend the King 100,000l.; which, if soon paid (as he says he believes it will), will be a greater service than I did ever expect at this time from the City. "

A loan was voted, nem con., to be raised on the credit of the Additional Aid. The last instalment was paid in early September. Clarendon was accompanied by Southampton, the Lord Treasurer, among others. (Per L&M note)

Gerald Berg on 22 Jun 2019  •  Link

What we need is fan fiction from the perspective of Sam's predations.
Michell goes to Sam with a tars ticket looking to be cashed. Does Sam see this as enough of a favour that Betty should be generous towards himself in that special way? Does Michell realize this is part of the calculation?
This must happen everywhere all the time. How can any man feel sure which kid is their own? Everyone at the table must be aware that this sort of thing happens. Are they aware they are watching it presently in action?

San Diego Sarah on 22 Jun 2019  •  Link

"How can any man feel sure which kid is their own?"

Before DNA testing, no one could. That's why children legally belonged to the husband, even if they were out of town and/or paternity was impossible to establish.

One example of the legal confusion this led to is the story of William Knollys, 1st Earl of Banbury, whose wife, Elizabeth Howard, was nearly 40 years his junior. Improbably she was the mother of two sons, Edward (1627–1645) and Nicholas (1631–1674), whose paternity gave rise to much dispute since they resembled her ex-fiance, Edward Vaux, 4th Lord Vaux, in whose house they were born. Neither son was mentioned in the earl's will.

The widowed Countess of Banbury quickly married Lord Vaux after her bereavement.

In 1641 the law courts ruled that Edward Knollys was the 2nd Earl of Banbury, and when he was killed in June 1645 his brother Nicholas Knollys took the title.

In the Convention Parliament of 1660 objection was taken to Nicholas Knollys, 3rd Earl of Banbury sitting in the House of Lords, and in 1661 he was not summoned to parliament; he had not succeeded in obtaining his writ of summons when he died on 14 March 1674.

The 3rd Earl's son, Charles Knollys (1662–1740), had not been summoned to parliament when in 1692 he killed Captain Philip Lawson in a duel. This raised the question of his rank. Was he, or was he not, entitled to trial by the peers?

The House of Lords declared Charles Knollys, 4th Earl of Banbury was not a peer and therefore not so entitled, but the Court of King's Bench released him from prison on the ground that he was the earl of Banbury and not Charles Knollys a commoner.

Nevertheless, the House of Lords refused to move from its position, and William Knollys, Earl of Banbury had not received a writ of summons when he died in April 1740. Successively titular Earls of Banbury have taken no steps to prove their title.

The Lord and Lady Vaux, a star-crossed, middle-aged couple, lived happily ever after, leaving the legal quagmire surrounding the Banbury title to their heirs and generations of students of English Common Law who struggle with the principles of Adulterine Bastardy debated in the Banbury Case. This effected a California paternity case as recently as the 1990's.

A treatise on the Law of Adulterine Bastardy as reported in the Banbury Case, by Sir Harris Nicholas is available as a free Google ebook, courtesy of Standford University School of Law.

No, I haven't looked it up, but would love to hear your analysis if you do.

For more info http://englishhistoryauthors.blog…

San Diego Sarah on 20 Jul 2019  •  Link

"Here at Mr. Debasty’s I saw, in a gold frame, a picture of a Fluter playing on his flute which, for a good while, I took for paynting, but at last observed it a piece of tapestry, and is the finest that ever I saw in my life for figures, and good natural colours, and a very fine thing it is indeed."

The Bodlien Library has three splendid 16th-17th century tapestries showing counties of England. For 200 years the Bodleian never displayed any of the tapestry maps because it didn't have a big enough spare wall. They came out of storage when the Weston Library building opened in 2015, creating the first proper exhibition space for one of them. All three have been magnificently restored in partnership with the National Trust’s conservation experts. Gentle washing in Belgium brought out astonishingly beautiful colors, suggesting they could never have been exposed to daylight for long.

Damage from creasing suggests that the tapestries were folded for long periods. And straight-edged gaps show where sections were deliberately cut out to use in upholstery — a chunk of Gloucestershire reportedly ended up as a fire screen.

Oxfordshire is currently on display and members of the maps department will give a free talk in front of it every weekday morning. There is plenty to say: although damaged, it includes a magnificent beast representing the figure that is cut into the turf in the Vale of the White Horse, and London is shown with the Tower of London, a solitary bridge and the tall spire of Old St. Paul’s 70 years before its destruction in the Great Fire. Oxford itself is praised in a florid text panel for its “sixeteene colledges and eyght halles”.

The fragment of Gloucestershire features in a major free exhibition on maps opening at the Bodleian on 5 July 2019.

Perhaps we should knock on the doors of all the grand country houses and ask if, by any chance, they have an old cushion cover densely woven with villages, church towers, orchards and deer parks.

Talking Maps, until 8 March 2020, Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/n…

San Diego Sarah on 20 Jul 2019  •  Link

Talking about the importance of Letters of Credit in international trade finance, the current Lord Mayor of London is one Thomas Bludworth MP,

Charles II is much indebted to Bludworth, who was one of the members of parliament in 1660 who went to The Hague with a letter from the City of London suggesting he come home -- and provided a letter of credit for the needs of the exiled Court. (With four other merchants, Bludworth produced half of the £50,000 required.)

Thomas Bludworth MP was knighted 16 May 1660 at The Hague, and recommended for the order of the Royal Oak, with an estimated income of £3,000.

And now he is the Lord Mayor, God help them all.