Thursday 23 January 1667/68

At the Office all the morning; and at noon find the Bishop of Lincolne come to dine with us; and after him comes Mr. Brisband; and there mighty good company. But the Bishop a very extraordinary good-natured man, and one that is mightily pleased, as well as I am, that I live so near Bugden, the seat of his bishopricke, where he is like to reside: and, indeed, I am glad of it. In discourse, we think ourselves safe for this year, by this league with Holland, which pleases every body, and, they say, vexes France; insomuch that D’Estrades; the French Embassador in Holland, when he heard it, told the States that he would have them not forget that his master is at the head of 100,000 men, and is but 28 years old; which was a great speech. The Bishop tells me he thinks that the great business of Toleration will not, notwithstanding this talk, be carried this Parliament; nor for the King’s taking away the Deans’ and Chapters’ lands to supply his wants, they signifying little to him, if he had them, for his present service. He gone, I mightily pleased with his kindness, I to the office, where busy till night, and then to Mrs. Turner’s, where my wife, and Deb., and I, and Batelier spent the night, and supped, and played at cards, and very merry, and so I home to bed. She is either a very prodigal woman, or richer than she would be thought, by her buying of the best things, and laying out much money in new-fashioned pewter; and, among other things, a new-fashioned case for a pair of snuffers, which is very pretty; but I could never have guessed what it was for, had I not seen the snuffers in it.

25 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

The Royal Society today at Arundel House — from the Hooke Folio Online

Ian: 23: 1667/8. Operator to hasten Thermometer for the Queen) Dr Pope Round bone.) Colepresse box of 64 sort of mineralls & description. delieuerd to curator) Sr Theo Deuax soapy clay from Mr Walsh in Worstersheer.

Ld Barkly said ships were going for India and moued for querys to be sent. It was orderd that the querys for india & such others as Dr. Pope & mr Hooke should adde thereto should be giuen to Ld Barkly.

(Dr. Lower opend horses eyes to shew the cause of the frequent blindnesse in horses proceeding from spongy excressense growing out of the vuea of a horses Eye)

Mr. Hooke made an Expt. to discouer whether a piece of steel first counterpoised to Exact
68
exact [sic] scales and then toucht by a vigorous magnet doe thereby acquire any sensible in crease of Weight. the Event was that it did not, the same proposed an Expt. to discouer whether any substance could be made heauier then gold. orderd that tryall should be made before the Society the next day. The same was orderd to take care that expt. about shining wood and fish be made the next day both in the compressing in Rarifying engine. Operator

The Curator desird to bring in the Descriptions of his Cider Engine & clockwork. and micrometer

Also of circulating blood. Dr. Lower of tying Iugular.

http://webapps.qmul.ac.uk/cell/Ho…

cum salis grano  •  Link

Cider Engine: Oh how that has changed, the crushing of cider apples. ?a version of water pump ?

Paul Chapin  •  Link

There are several stable (non-radioactive) metals heavier than gold, of which platinum is the most familiar (others are osmium, iridium, and tungsten). Platinum was used by pre-Columbian natives in South America, and the first known European report of it is from 1557. However, it did not become widely known in Europe until the mid 18th century. William Brownrigg presented a detailed report on it to the Royal Society in 1750.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plat…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Mr. Hooke's experiments with a "cider engine" end thus in 1671:

He produced three several new contrivances of cider-presses for both breaking and squeezing the apples and pears with ease and expedition. The one was with two pinions turning upon one another. The other he represented in a crooked line, having a kind of a mill-box and a roller at the bottom, and by its motion breaking, squeezing, and throwing out the fruit. The third was with four cylinders turning one another, the apples coming between on two fides, and going out on the two cross-fides. He was desired to bring in a description of these engines in writing, to be entered in the Register-Book. http://is.gd/XOAW0u

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Keeping up with the Turners, eh Sam? I assume this means we'll be seeing a snuffer case purchase soon?

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...this league with Holland, which pleases every body..."

"Especially me..." Pett notes, reading the London Gazette. "Uh, does this mean I can go home, now?"

***
"But, Sam'l? If everyone is overjoyed to be in alliance with the Dutch, why did we go to war in the first place? Was it not a total waste of lives of brave men, the ruin of their families, and the treasure of two nations?"

"Bess, questions such as these are why only men can understand and be entrusted with high politics."

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"D'Estrades, it cannot be..."

"I fear it is, Sire. Holland has leagued with England."

"Alas...Ladies..." Mistress chorus joins in...

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by...
That I'd invade England through Holland...

I dreamed our love would never die...
I dreamed DeWitt would be fulfillin'....

Then I was young and unafraid,
Nations were made and used, then devastated.
There was no ransom to be paid,
Charles' pleas for cash on me were wasted...

But now news comes to me at night...
And its voice is soft as thunder...
Oh, it tears my hopes apart.
And it makes my dreams to wane, wane, wane...

Holland spent a war by my side...
Medway filled my ears with wonder.
They took my innocence in their stride
But they were gone when winter came.

Well, in Spring I'll come to them.
Yes, we will make war years together
Don't say Louis, your dreams they cannot be
That there are storms I cannot weather!

I had a dream my wars would be
A little easier than now we are planning
A war so different now must be.
De Witt has killed the dream I dreamed."

Paul  •  Link

...a new-fashioned case for a pair of snuffers, which is very pretty; but I could never have guessed what it was for, had I not seen the snuffers in it.

We play that game with visitors today, but with the actual candle snuffers. Very few know what they are.

Mary  •  Link

Candle snuffers.

In recent times this term has come to be applied to a cone-shaped instrument that is used to extinguish a candle neatly without the risk of blowing hot wax onto the table, shelf or whatever.

In the 17th century candle snuffers were scissor-like instruments that were used to trim the burnt section of the candle's wick (the snuff) so that the candle could continue to burn with a clean flame. Modern wicks are so made that they tend to curl away from the flame as they burn and so are less likely to cause a dirty, smoky flame.

Pepys refers to a pair of candle snuffers in the same way as we refer to a pair of scissors - one object formed of two blades.

JWB  •  Link

"...a very prodigal woman"
L&M Companion notes Mrs. T recieved 100£ in Mennes' will.

language hat  •  Link

"this league with Holland, which pleases every body"

Isn't it odd that everyone is so happy to have as an ally a country with which they were so recently at war?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Isn’t it odd that everyone is so happy to have as an ally a country with which they were so recently at war?"

Another Greater Enemy produced the same with Germany after WWII.

Michael Robinson  •  Link

" ... a new-fashioned case for a pair of snuffers, which is very pretty; but I could never have guessed what it was for, had I not seen the snuffers in it."

Swift, writing in the persona of an experienced footman, had advice about proper use of snuffers in his 'Advice to Servants.' (c. 1731)

"Snuff the candles at supper as they stand on the table, which is much the securest way ; because, if the burning snuff happens to get out of the snuffers, you have a chance that it may fall into a dish of soup, sack posset, rice milk, or the like, where it will be immediately extinguished with very little stink.

When you have snuffed the candle, always leave the snuffers open, for the snuff will of itself burn away to ashes, and cannot fall out and dirty the table when you snuff the candles again. .."
http://books.google.com/books?id=…

Australian Susan  •  Link

When I first read Northanger Abbey as a young teenager, I was mystified by the scene where Catherine is investigating what she assumes are hidden, personal letters and the texts says she snuffed the candle in preparation for a good read and then JA continues "Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished in one". [Northanger Abbey,Vol 2, Chap. 6] To me a snuffer was an article for putting a candle out (cone or bell-shaped on a handle),so of course snuffing it would put it out! It was a long while before I learnt about the scissor-like wick trimmer which Catherine Morland uses clumsily and in haste to great comic effect.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

" at noon find the Bishop of Lincolne come to dine with us;"

L&M: Pepys's friend, William Fuller, appointed to Lincoln the previous September.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"But the Bishop a very extraordinary good- natured man, and one that is mightily pleased, as well as I am, that I live so near Bugden"

L&M: Buckden, Hunts., the country seat of the bishops, had been used since 1660 as their main residence, the episcopal palace in Lincoln having been destroyed in the Civil War. Fuller soon settled in a house in Lincoln close. VCH, Lincs., i. 69.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"In discourse, we think ourselves safe for this year, by this league with Holland, which pleases every body, and, they say, vexes France; insomuch that D’Estrades; the French Embassador in Holland, when he heard it, told the States that he would have them not forget that his master is at the head of 100,000 men, and is but 28 years old; which was a great speech."

L&M: Louis had already announced to the Dutch that he would shortly attack Flanders. d’Estrades's two despatches of 16/26 January make it clear that he used strong word when shown the Anglo-Dutch treaty by de Witt: Letters and negotiations of the Compte d'Estrades (1711), pp. 509-12. Sir William Temple, English ambassador to the United Provinces, reported to Arlington (14/24 January) that d'Estrades remarked to him that some of the terms of the treaty were not 'very proper to be digested by a king of twenty-nine years old, and at the head of eighty thousand men': Temple, Works (1814), i. 303.

Letters and Negotiations of the Count D'Estrades: Ambassador from Lewis XIV . by Godefroi Louis Estrades, pub. 1711
https://archive.org/details/lette…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"The Bishop tells me he thinks that the great business of Toleration will not, notwithstanding this talk, be carried this Parliament; nor for the King’s taking away the Deans’ and Chapters’ lands to supply his wants, they signifying little to him, if he had them, for his present service."

L&M: This was one of Buckingham's hare-brained schemes: cf. Starkey's newsletter 18 January (BM, Add. 36916, f. 58r. An unsuccessful motion to this effect was made in Commons on 7 March: Grey, i. 108. See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

John G  •  Link

I have a candle snuffer of the scissor type with a box structure on one leg and a plate on the other which grips the wick, cuts it, and snuffs it inside the box thus holding any residue without the risk of it falling onto the table or sideboard.

Scube  •  Link

I continue to be impressed by the extraordinary range of friendships enjoyed by Pepys - a relatively young man without noble birth. He must have been considered quite enjoyable company.

john  •  Link

"at noon find the Bishop of Lincolne come to dine with us"
Surely Elizabeth is doing well as his "corporate spouse" as I cannot imagine such dinners arranged without her.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Agreed Scube; Pepys must have been good company. London was a large village, and English society was a large club in those days, and there was no TV at night to lull everyone to sleep with the illusion of having done something. His career depended on knowing what was going on and having the right connections to make things happen.

There were only two universities at the time, Oxford and Cambridge. You went there to make the acquaintance of the men who were going to run the country. You made colleagues for life ... you knew you were the entitled few. His curiosity about how the world worked was challenged in the service of the Navy, and he had no entitlement illusions. He was the right man in the right job.

One thing that has puzzled me about Pepys is how little effort he has made to be friends with his fellow Commissioners, even at Christmas time. I'm glad he has stopped being snide about Adm. Penn since they seem to share a love of the theater (and he has a nice chariot). His lack of letters to the Montagues is shameful. He goes months without seeing the Carterets or the Crews, and he never invites them to lunch.

Now he has decided Creede is untrustworthy, he seems to have no men friends. Maybe William Batelier will become one? We know the Houblon brothers will be in the future, and of course, there's young Hewer in the wings. But he has no BFF to confide in, or go riding or singing with. Where he has a drink depends of how pretty the barmaid is.

His range of friendships is really a range of associates, don't you think? All a bit surfacy. Yes, he is enjoyable -- even stimulating -- company, but no one ever takes him and Elizabeth home to meet mother for the weekend. (What's a weekend, SDS? Maybe that's a sign I am judging by 21st century standards again.)

Stephane Chenard  •  Link

On this day another senior bureaucrat, well known to Sam, writes a chilling official letter.

Sir Ellis Leighton last came across the radar in March. Sam met him when he worked in the prize office and thinks him a wit (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) and "one of the best companions at a meale in the world" (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) He is now the Secretary of the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, and had to answer a petition which representatives from Barbadoes had sent him in September, on how they cannot afford to buy slaves at the company's price, and should be allowed to source them directly from Guiny. In November Sam had already picked up a company response (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) but, whether this still came short or another group had petitioned, Sir Ellis is now picking up his quill again.

He writes, of the Barbadoes planters, that "hitherto [it] has been their practice" to "never pay for the negroes they have". And notes the pernicious effects that making slaves too cheap is having on the company: "And as it was testified they had so great a glut of negroes that they would hardly give them their victuals for their labour, and multitudes died upon the Company's hands". Which was a great bother to manage. The letter is in the State Papers' colonial series (America and West Indies), vol. XXII, No. 1680 [https://www.british-history.ac.uk…]

Our Sam, this generally gentle soul, was supposedly an investor in the CRATA, "from 1663" according to the notice this earns him in a National Portrait Gallery catalog of accomplices to the slave trade (https://www.npg.org.uk/learning/d…) One wonders at the evidence, and that statement, and others like it, are not backed by much sourcing or detail. Anyway, after November 1667 the diary ceases to mention Sir Ellis, the witty conversationalist whose company Sam had enjoyed so much; nor can we find any letter to a Mr. Leighton or (as Sam spelled it) Layton, investment or not. Maybe it's just that they now move in different circles. Perhaps reading the company's brief to parliament on how to fairly price negroes had brought into focus what may have been a bit remote and abstract, and caused a malaise, different-values-at-the-time or not. Or perhaps a coffee-house chat, unreported in the Journall. "Ah, Pepys, you think you have problems at the Navy Office. Let me tell you, I would trade them for the headaches this current glut of negroes is causing me".

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