Sunday 17 March 1666/67

(Lord’s day). Up betime with my wife, and by coach with Sir W. Pen and Sir Thomas Allen to White Hall, there my wife and I the first time that ever we went to my Lady Jemimah’s chamber at Sir Edward Carteret’s lodgings. I confess I have been much to blame and much ashamed of our not visiting her sooner, but better now than never. Here we took her before she was up, which I was sorry for, so only saw her, and away to chapel, leaving further visit till after sermon. I put my wife into the pew below, but it was pretty to see, myself being but in a plain band, and every way else ordinary, how the verger took me for her man, I think, and I was fain to tell him she was a kinswoman of my Lord Sandwich’s, he saying that none under knights-baronets’ ladies are to go into that pew. So she being there, I to the Duke of York’s lodging, where in his dressing-chamber he talking of his journey to-morrow or next day to Harwich, to prepare some fortifications there; so that we are wholly upon the defensive part this year, only we have some expectations that we may by our squadrons annoy them in their trade by the North of Scotland and to the Westward. Here Sir W. Pen did show the Duke of York a letter of Hogg’s about a prize he drove in within the Sound at Plymouth, where the Vice-Admiral claims her. Sir W. Pen would have me speak to the latter, which I did, and I think without any offence, but afterwards I was sorry for it, and Sir W. Pen did plainly say that he had no mind to speak to the Duke of York about it, so that he put me upon it, but it shall be, the last time that I will do such another thing, though I think no manner of hurt done by it to me at all.

That done I to walk in the Parke, where to the Queene’s Chapel, and there heard a fryer preach with his cord about his middle, in Portuguese, something I could understand, showing that God did respect the meek and humble, as well as the high and rich. He was full of action, but very decent and good, I thought, and his manner of delivery very good. Then I went back to White Hall, and there up to the closet, and spoke with several people till sermon was ended, which was preached by the Bishop of Hereford, an old good man, that they say made an excellent sermon. He was by birth a Catholique, and a great gallant, having 1500l. per annum, patrimony, and is a Knight Barronet; was turned from his persuasion by the late Archbishop Laud. He and the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Ward, are the two Bishops that the King do say he cannot have bad sermons from. Here I met with Sir H. Cholmly, who tells me, that undoubtedly my Lord Bellasses do go no more to Tangier, and that he do believe he do stand in a likely way to go Governor; though he says, and showed me, a young silly Lord, one Lord Allington, who hath offered a great sum of money to go, and will put hard for it, he having a fine lady, and a great man would be glad to have him out of the way.

After Chapel I down and took out my wife from the pew, where she was talking with a lady whom I knew not till I was gone. It was Mrs. Ashfield of Brampton, who had with much civility been, it seems, at our house to see her. I am sorry I did not show her any more respect.

With my wife to Sir G. Carteret’s, where we dined and mightily made of, and most extraordinary people they are to continue friendship with for goodness, virtue, and nobleness and interest. After dinner he and I alone awhile and did joy ourselves in my Lord Sandwich’s being out of the way all this time. He concurs that we are in a way of ruin by thus being forced to keep only small squadrons out, but do tell me that it was not choice, but only force, that we could not keep out the whole fleete. He tells me that the King is very kind to my Lord Sandwich, and did himself observe to him (Sir G. Carteret), how those very people, meaning the Prince and Duke of Albemarle, are punished in the same kind as they did seek to abuse my Lord Sandwich. Thence away, and got a hackney coach and carried my wife home, and there only drank, and myself back again to my Lord Treasurer’s, where the King, Duke of York, and Sir G. Carteret and Lord Arlington were and none else, so I staid not, but to White Hall, and there meeting nobody I would speak with, walked into the Park and took two or three turns all alone, and then took coach and home, where I find Mercer, who I was glad to see, but durst [not] shew so, my wife being displeased with her, and indeed I fear she is grown a very gossip. I to my chamber, and there fitted my arguments which I had promised Mr. Gawden in his behalf in some pretences to allowance of the King, and then to supper, and so to my chamber a little again, and then to bed. Duke of Buckingham not heard of yet.

29 Annotations

First Reading

cape henry  •  Link

"...how the verger took me for her man..." This is a wonderful, hilarious scene to contemplate: the Great Bureaucrat Samuel Pepys being mistaken for his wife's servant by a church verger.Apparently he refrained from making a scene in order to secure Elizabeth her "pretty" seat.Gallant.

cum salis grano  •  Link

purchasing a great income,RTI be how much, certainly grater than 10 PA. may be like a modern banker 1000% ?

"...who hath offered a great sum of money to go,.."
Was the way to invest, buy a living.

Sam's cost him 100 pound per annum but yield an excellent dividend.

cum salis grano  •  Link

Josselyn doth indicate how hard it is to get a living from the land, Jack Frost and allies keep the weary farmer on his toes.

Jesse  •  Link

"...the verger took me for her man..."

At first I took man=husband and the verger was challenging Elizabeth's status. Man[servant] makes more sense and perhaps the verger was just curious who Pepys' 'mistress' was. Now, would "kinswoman" of a lord take precedence over the "lady" (=wife?) of a knight?

cum salis grano  •  Link

the verger : the rod carrier or or a man of the garden or as now takes the plate around, verging.

verger1
A garden or orchard; a pleasure-garden.
verger2
1. An official who carries a rod or similar symbol of office before the dignitaries of a cathedral, church, or university (or before justices).
c1402
1607 COWELL Interpr., Vergers..be such as cary white wands before the Iustices of either banke, &c...; otherwise called Porters of the verge.
1616 B. JONSON Devil an Ass IV. iv, I must walk With the French sticke, like an old Vierger, for you.
1688 R. HOLME Armoury III. 197/1 The Verger [of the Cathedral Church] is a Man in a Gown..whose Office it is to conduct the Reader to his place [etc.].

b. One whose duty it is to take care of the interior of a church, and to act as attendant.
1707

verger3
A rod carried as a symbol of office; = VERGE n.1 4a.

1547 in Strype Eccl. Mem. (1721) II. App. A. 10 Then came the sergeant of the vestry with his verger, and after him the cros, with the children [etc.]. 1647

to verge v2
1. intr. Of the sun: To descend toward the horizon; to sink, or begin to do so. Also transf.
1610

2. To move in a certain direction (esp. downwards); also, to extend or stretch.

a1661 FULLER Worthies, Somerset (1662) 32 Henceforward the Sun of the Kings cause declined, verging more and more Westward, till at last it set in Cornwal.


verge, v.3
intr. To act as a verger; to be a verger. Hence {sm}verging vbl. n.
1900 W. HOW Lighter Moments 54 He werges up one side of the church and I werges up the other.
1926 Punch 13 Oct. 400/2, I verges up the centre aisle; he verges up the sides.

1927 H. V. MORTON In Search of England i. 14 The profession of verging appears to induce mousey manners.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

I'm curious about Bess' time at Whitehall chapel as well as her guest. Our girl must have been surrounded by ladies of "proper rank", yet she apparently carried it off. (In your face, Mr. Stevenson.) And if the verger would only allow ladies of certain rank into the pew, how did Mrs. Ashfield, a mere Bramptonite, manage entry? If Bess insisted on it, she must have done the "kinswoman of Lord Sandwich, knights-baronet's lady" pretty well. Clearly her dress was at least adequate.

***
"He was full of action, but very decent and good, I thought, and his manner of delivery very good."

Sam at his best, tolerancewise.

***
"Then I went back to White Hall, and there up to the closet, and spoke with several people till sermon was ended, which was preached by the Bishop of Hereford, an old good man, that they say made an excellent sermon."

But no need to go and hear it...

Hmmn, what kind of sermon could always suit Charles?

***
Mercer seems to keep coming by despite Bess' showing displeasure with her earlier? I can't believe our hot-tempered lady is that good at concealing her feelings. Perhaps Mercer enjoys tweaking her former employer by dropping by? Or maybe the Pepys' is just the happening place in London on a 60's Sunday evening?

Or just a wild passion for a bug-eyed little charmer who shares her love of music and admired her breasts?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Ormond to Clarendon
Written from: Dublin
Date: 17 March 1667

... "Upon occasion of the misfortune befallen the Duke of Buckingham ... it is considered & hoped that if the King shall admit of any mediation in behalf of that Duke my son [Earl of Arran] may, more properly than any man I can think of, be allowed to do it, and that if the offence shall prove capital, and be so pursued and punished in the end, he may then, in behalf of his wife [Lady Mary Stuart, daughter of James, fourth Duke of Lenox & first Duke of Richmond; niece of George, Duke of Buckingham], humbly put his Majesty in mind of her innocence, and of the merit of her father & of his family."

"No man can be a better judge ... or director in the conduct of such an affair, nor can I doubt that as you retain much kindness for the memory of the late Duke of Richmond, so you will be not the less willing to let his daughter find the effects of it, for the family she is come into, and to which she is, in her single person, as great a blessing as could be wished from any of her sex." ...

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/s…

Australian Susan  •  Link

"..Clearly her dress was at least adequate...." She's just been to Unthanke's the tailor's - maybe to collect a new gown?

Nix  •  Link

"Hmmn, what kind of sermon could always suit Charles?"

A short one.

Kevin Peter  •  Link

“Hmmn, what kind of sermon could always suit Charles?”

...and one that doesn't preach against adultery or coveting your neighbor's wife

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I to the Duke of York’s lodging, where in his dressing-chamber he talking of his journey to-morrow or next day to Harwich, to prepare some fortifications there;"

L&M: On 20-21 March the Duke, with de Gomme, the engineer, was busy at Harwich preparing plans for for the construction of a second fort to secure the harbour.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Here Sir W. Pen did show the Duke of York a letter of Hogg’s about a prize he drove in within the Sound at Plymouth, where the Vice-Admiral claims her."

L&M: Edward Hogg commanded the privateer Flying Greyhound which had been hired to Pepys, Penn and Batten. The prize may possibly have been the Stralsund: cf. CSPD 1666-7, pp. 583, 595. Thee Vice-Admiral was John Fowell. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"[Bishop Henry Croft] and the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Ward, are the two Bishops that the King do say he cannot have bad sermons from."

L&M: Croft (whom the King made Dean of the Capel Royal in February 1668) was an advocate of the new plain style of preaching. (Cf. his Naked Truth, 1675
https://archive.org/details/a5660… ). Seth Ward was one of the ablest of Caroline bishops and a founder of the Royal Society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Sir H. Cholmly...tells me, that undoubtedly my Lord Bellasses do go no more to Tangier, and that he do believe he do stand in a likely way to go Governor; though he says, and showed me, a young silly Lord, one Lord Allington, who hath offered a great sum of money to go, and will put hard for it, he having a fine lady, and a great man would be glad to have him out of the way. "

L&M: Neither Cholmley nor Arlington was appointed; in May 1668 the 1st Earl of Middleton succeeded Belasyse as Governor of Tangier. Arlington was a young army officer; his wife (whose association with this anonymous 'great man' has not been traced elsewhere) was Juliana, daughter of the 3rd Viscount Campden. Arlington's interest was said to depend on the influence of his mother-law, the Countess of Chesterfield: see Sir John Nicholas's letter, 20 March, in BM, Egerton 2539, f. 91r.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

I'm going to have to disagree with L&M based on Alington's House of Commons biography, and the HoC Bio based on Pepys:

"L&M: Neither Cholmley nor Arlington was appointed; ..." It's ALINGTON, not ARlington.
And I hope Pepys didn't spread his opinion of William, 3rd Baron Alington of Killard MP as ‘a young silly lord’ around very far.

They were already acquainted. Alington was the Member of Parliament for Cambridge, and had been appointed to the committee for inspecting the accounts of the navy, ordnance and stores on 24 Sept. 1666.

Alington's second wife was Juliana Noel, daughter of Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Camden. They married in July 1664 when Alington was aged about 30. Juliana will die next 14 Sept. 1667, leaving a daughter (a son died young).

The House of Commons bio has its dates confused, and doesn't mention Alington trying to do the discrete thing Pepys describes: "... and will put hard for it, he having a fine lady, and a great man would be glad to have him out of the way."

Whatever his motivtion for leaving his wiife, Alington had to be satisfied with a temporary commission in the army during the Dutch invasion scare of 1667, and taking holidays in France during the recess.

Alington was on both lists of the court party during the Cabal. This should not be a surprise since he was related by his mother (a Tollemache) to John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale, whose second wife was Elizabeth Murray Tollemache, Countess of Dysart in her own right.

Acccording to the Parliamentary bio., Alington was involved with investigating the Popish Plot.

https://www.historyofparliamenton…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

L&M: "Alington's interest was said to depend on the influence of his mother-in-law, the Countess of Chesterfield"

Alington's first wife was Catherine Stanhope (c. 1633 - 19 Nov. 1662), daughter of Sir Henry, Lord Stanhope, and her mother was our former postmistress, Lady Katherine Wotton Stanhope van der Kerckhove O'Neill, who was made Countess of Chesterfield in her own right by Charles II for her services, mostly to Mary, the Princess Royal in Holland, and who will die in April, 1667.

Alington and Catherine had one daughter, who died before her mother.

Which makes his brother-in-law Philip, Lord Stanhope who was Barbara Villiers Palmer's first lover.

And Alington's sister-in-law was Elizabeth Butler Stanhope, the Duke of York's banished ex-flame, and the daughter of James Butler, Duke of Ormonde.

The Noel family wasn't exactly chopped liver either. Don't get me started!

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

This morning I have amused myself by looking into Juliana Noel, Lady Alington's 19 brothers and sisters. I posted them to her encyclopedia page. Her father must have spent a lot of energy lining up such adventageous matches for so many children.

Pepys obviously didn't know that the silly young lord's eldest brother-in-law by this marriage, Edward Noel MP, was married to Lady Elizabeth Wriothesley, daughter and coheir of my Lord Treasurer, Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton.

Instead Pepys is worried about not showing enough respect to Mrs. Ashfield of Brampton.
(I wonder if this gave him a chuckle in review many years later.)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The Salty One evidently believed that Mary "Mal" Villiers Stuart Howard, Duchess of Richmond was the poet known as Ephelia.

The argument for and against this is summarized in
http://www.ephelia.com/textual_li…

What is missed in most of Mal Villiers' biographies is included in this interesting version. Some highlights, edited for length and clarity:

Dueling was not foreign to Mary Villiers' life. Her father, brother, and second and third husbands were capable duelists. Her third husband, Colonel 'Tom' Howard and her brother, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, were fatal duelists, who fought their romantic rivals to the death.

From childhood, Mary Villiers was raised in a world of glamorous, charismatic men. The tradition of her fighting a duel accords with her temperament, her delight in male masquerade, and the heavy masculinity of her upbringing.

When she (as the "brisk and jolly Richmond") and Prince Rupert, her ardent suitor in the 1640s, are accused by Puritan propagandists in A Parliament of Ladies (1647) of frequently "beating up of Quarters and other unlawful sports" at the home of Catherine Howard, Lady d'Aubigny (AKA Kate), in Covent Garden, we are not particularly given a sexual reference, but rather a reference to what Mary and Rupert did together: they enjoyed the practice of such "unlawful sports" as dueling, shooting, and probably gambling. Mary had a fencing-master nonpareil in Rupert, known as the sad "Phylocles" in Mary's clever alchemical poem on friendship between the sexes.

For more on the vogue of fencing and dueling among gentlewomen of the Restoration court, see Allan Fea's chapter on the captivating bisexual adventuress and short-lived mistress of Charles II, in 1675, Hortense de Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin, whose skill in fencing was matched by her expertise as a shootist and gambler; Charles called this dark beauty the finest woman he had ever met (Some Beauties of the Seventeenth Century [1906], 1-26; Hutton 336-337).

Sir Kenelm Digby's Honour Maintained (London, 1641) tells us noblemen at the Stuart court flaunted their reputation as duelists, regardless of the Crown's serious legislation and fines against public dueling.

Scholars should investigate 17th Century noblewomen's participation in fencing and dueling. The playful vogue in male masquerade (transvestism) which caught the fancy of a few sporting women at Charles II's court, dueling and fencing must have appealed to certain vivacious women.

Allan Fea and also Winifred (Gardner), Baroness Burghclere, have identified two such women who favored these amusements: Hortense (Mancini), Duchess of Mazarin and Mary Villiers Stuart, Duchess of Richmond (pseud., 'Ephelia').

###

Most biographies of Mary Villiers Stuart Howard, Duchess of Richmond agree that in the spring of 1667 she was living in France, attending Queen Mother Henrietta Maria, but came back to London to support her brother.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

I finally read A parliament of ladies with their lawes newly enacted.

Henry Neville explores secual liberation of ladies:

The chiefe Heads of the Ladies Lawes.
FIrst, that instead of allowing men two wives, women, especially the stronger and greater vessell, should have two or three husbands.

That women might vex, perplex, and any way torment their husbands.

That women may twang it as well as their husbands.

That women may feast, banquet and gossip, when & where they please.

Likewise it is thought fit and convenient by us▪ that all rich and stale Batchelors doe forthwith marry poore Widdowes that have no meanes to live on, and so become Fathers the first day.

Item, That it is thought 〈◊〉, that rich widdowes shall marry Gen∣tlemens youngest sons that have no means to maintaine themselves.
Item, It is concluded and fully agreed upon, that all women shall have their husbands Tenants at wil•; and that▪ they shall doe them Knights service, and have their homage paid before every Sun-rising, or at every weekes end, or at utmost betweene the quarters, not a day longer to be defer'd, unlesse it be in the Dogs dayes.
Item, Let our husbands remember, though it be a tricke of them to forsake our beds in the Dogs dayes, yet let them take notice their is no dogs nights, and that it was at the first but a tricke of their owne in∣vention to save their labour and money too: which act wee disallow of for ever.
Item, That no Yeoman or Husbandmen shall keep, or suffer to bee kept in their house, Barne, or Stable, any Cocke or Cockes▪ that will not tread his Hens: especially, when the Hens thrust their heads under the Cockes necke, &c.
Item, That that man which promises a pretty Maid a good turn▪ and doth not perform it in 3. months, shall lose his what do you call them.
Item, That if any Iesuite returne into our Land againe, being once banished, that he shall be gelt or libb'd, to avoid jealousies of our hus∣bands.
FINIS.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

I also just struggled through it, and found it hilarious. The last item about Jesuit priests comes from nowhere, and left me gobsmacked.

HOWEVER it doesn't mention Rupert and Mall having 'a good time' at Kate's, so it's an incorrect citation in the article. Terry, do you know a good way to computer search the 1647 pamphlets to find the right one?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Sr. Kenelme Digbyes honour maintained by a most couragious combat which he fought with the Lord Mount le Ros, who by bale and slanderous words reviled our king : also the true relation how he went to the King of France who
Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665.
Printed at London: for T. B., 1641

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Duel (Lady Mary Villiers's Duel)

An amateur gentlewoman duelist of female romantic rivals is a creature of high color. We observe the combustible personality of Ephelia in her poems to female rivals and to various courtesans, for whom she had a special animus. Addressing her cousin, Barbara Villiers, the King's principal mistress in the early 1660s, for example, Ephelia writes boldly:

Imperious Fool! think not because you're Fair,
That you so much above my Converse are!
........
Since then my Fame's as great as yours is, why
Should you behold me with a Loathing Eye?
If you at me cast a disdainful Eye,
In biting Satyr I will Rage so high,
Thunder shall pleasant be to what I'le write,
And you shall Tremble at my very Sight;
Warn'd by your Danger, none shall dare again,
Provoke my Pen to write in such a strain.
("To A Proud Beauty," Female Poems...by Ephelia, 54-5;
see also"Proud Beauty," Appendix B)
http://www.ephelia.com/duel.htm

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

This is gleaned from an on-line book about George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and other sources:

https://books.google.com/books?pg…

Young and beautiful as she still was, none of her contemporaries anticipated that Mary "Mall" Villiers Herbert Stuart, the widowed Duchess of Richmond would long remain single.

Rumor had betrothed her to Prince Rupert, but the gossips proved as much at fault as when in her infancy they bestowed her on the elder Prince Palatine, Charles Louis.

Twice had Mary Villiers married at her family's bidding. In her choice of a third husband she was entirely swayed by her personal inclination. The bridegroom elect, Thomas Howard, was a younger brother of that stirring politician, the Earl of Carlisle. But while the Earl had been a trusted counsellor of Cromwell, Thomas Howard was body and soul with the Royalist faction — the social conditions at The Hague being far more to his liking than the austere atmosphere of the Protector's Court.

Col. Thomas Howard did not trouble himself with statecraft, but he was noted as an ardent squire of dames. His desperate encounter with Harry Jermyn in 1664, when that young gallant interfered with his courtship of Lady Shrewsbury#, caused no slight stir at the time.

Such a reputation was not alarming to Mary Villiers, who, if tradition is to be believed, had herself fought a duel with a female rival.

1665] LADY ARRAN'S SETTLEMENTS 141

And although the world marvelled in November 1664 that the Dowager-Duchess should bestow herself on so inconsiderable a personage as "northern Tom Howard,'' yet it was evident that they were "the fondest couple that can be. Buckingham was mightily troubled at the match." 1 @

I think we can assume Mall Villiers' duel was in France before 1660, as she was part of Queen Mother Henrietta Maria's court. Her second husband, James Stuart, Duke of Richmond had died at Cobham Hall, Kent on 30 March 1655, He had stayed in England with King Charles, and attended him at the execution and was a pall bearer at his funeral at Windsor the next day. Their son, Esme, died in Paris in the summer of 1660, after which Mary caught up with the rest of the Court. If it had been in Pepys' Diary time, I think he would have recorded the gossip about noble lady duellers.

# Yes, Anna Maria Brudenell Talbot, that Countess of Shrewsbury, destined shortly to be George Villiers' downfall.
1 "Hatton Correspondence" (Camden Soc), vol. i. p. 42. Sir Charles Lyttleton to Lady Hatton, 26 Nov. 1664.
@ https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Vil…

Tonyel  •  Link

A late thought from yesterday's entry where Sam commented on smoke still rising from cellars six months after the Great Fire:
Surely, there must have been many homeless people who might find shelter in abandoned cellars and could light a fire to keep warm?

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

You're right Tonyel ... especially as it was snowing so recently. That melted water would have put fires out, if not rekindled by people.

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