Sunday 28 June 1668
(Lord’s day). Up, and to church, and then home to dinner, where Betty Turner, Mercer, and Captain Deane, and after dinner to sing, Mr. Pelling coming. Then, they gone, Deane and I all the afternoon till night to talk of navy matters and ships with great pleasure, and so at night, he gone, I to supper, Pelling coming again and singing a while, then to bed.
Much talk of the French setting out their fleete afresh; but I hear nothing that our King is alarmed at it, at all, but rather making his fleete less.
10 Annotations
First Reading
JWB • Link
"...nothing that our king is alarmed at it..."
Mahan:
"The policy of the English people, though not of their king, turned toward the Dutch. In the increased greatness of Louis they saw danger to all Europe; to themselves more especially if, by a settled preponderance on the continent, his hands were free to develop his sea power. "Flanders once in the power of Louis XIV.," wrote the [140]English ambassador Temple, "the Dutch feel that their country will be only a maritime province of France;" and sharing that opinion, "he advocated the policy of resistance to the latter country, whose domination in the Low Countries he considered as a threatened subjection of all Europe. He never ceased to represent to his government how dangerous to England would be the conquest of the sea provinces by France, and he urgently pointed out the need of a prompt understanding with the Dutch. 'This would be the best revenge,' said he, 'for the trick France has played us in involving us in the last war with the United Provinces.'"
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13…
Terry Foreman • Link
"Much talk of the French setting out their fleete afresh"
L&M note Sir Thomas Allin records having heard of a squadron of French warships sighted off Usbant three nights earlier. The French in fact did nothing in European waters this year except post a fleet from time to time off their west coast in early summer.
Terry Foreman • Link
The many titles by which men weer called, some legit
So, now Anthony Dean, Master Shipwright, is "Captain Deane"....
In a decade both friends will be promoted (or at least it's on the Internets); and we find in A LIST of the House of Commons, in King Charles IId's Third Parliament, which met March 6, 1678. "Harwich, Sir Anthony Dean, Sir Thomas Pepys" http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
Robert Gertz • Link
Paris...
"Rule Franconia...Franconia rules the waves...So long as dear ole Charlie's subsidy is being paid."
Thumbs up to crowd of courtiers...
"Bravo, Sire!" "C'est magnifique! Vive le roi!"
"Ah, oui..." hand wave...
"The brain of a king should a thing remarkable..."
Courtiers bow...
"Succeed where a less fantasic man would fail...?"
Courtiers eye each other...
"But where in Europe is there in Europe a king...So extraordinare?"
Hear, hear...
"But non...Here, here..." Louis points to chest.
"C'est moi...C'est moi, c'est moi...I humbly propose. Louis is far too noble to lie. The cleverest schemer in Europe today...C'est moi, c'est moi, tis I."
"Now you may talk of the brilliant DeWitt, the saviour of Holland-land...But Louis had been in charge of that war...all Europe would be Netherlands." Dances past cheering courtiers...
"C'est moi, c'est moi, Machiavelli must sit in awe of my French strategy. And the English they all will one day throw fits, when they see how I play Charlie."
Second Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Much talk of the French setting out their fleete afresh"
Any alarm delivered to Whitehall would have to be done by a man on a horse, because the beacon system was not being maintained.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
San Diego Sarah • Link
'Charles II: June 1668', in Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles II, 1667-8, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1893), pp. 418-468. British History Online
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
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June 28. 1668
Sir Wm. Coventry to Sam. Pepys.
There will be 10,000/., if not 12,000/., this week for paying men off in the yards.
It will have two desirable effects to pay off the foreigners at Chatham and Portsmouth;
one that it will stop the greatest and justest clamours of those who are remote from their dwellings, and have the least credit;
the other that those who are inhabitants will be afraid of being discharged whilst hoping for the money, because then they must go from home to seek work, and perhaps not find it.
In Deptford and Woolwich this method will not have the same force, because the river Thames will be their home to furnish them work.
I beg a despatch for Alderman Backwell for the Tangiers money;
we are beholden to him for this money, ''for he is the frankest of the money men,'' and such is our misery that we must reckon it a kindness to be trusted, though we pay for it.
[1-¼ pages. S.P. Dom., Car. II. 242, No. 58.]
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June 28. 1668
Dean.
Lord Fanshaw to Williamson.
I am now settled in Wiltshire,
and were it not for the entertainment received from Sir John Evelyn, (fn. 1) would have to converse with dogs and horses;
I know no man living here besides Sir John.
• 1. Thomas, Viscount Fanshaw married for his second wife Sarah, daughter of Sir John Evelyn, and widow of Sir John Wray.
It will be kindness to let me have the ordinary news once a week;
for the stock of old Cavaliers wish and pray for the prosperity of the King, and would be glad to hear of his happiness;
although we are not fit for anything but ruin,
I wish his Majesty may never find the mischief of it.
Let me know whether Parliament will sit in August, that I may steer my course accordingly.
With note that Lord Fanshaw is at Sir john Evelyn's West Dean, near Salisbury.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 242, No. 65.]
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June 28. 1668
Pembroke.
John Powell to Williamson.
A vessel from Norway, with deals and tar for Waterford, was forced from her anchors, and got with much damage into Pembroke Harbour, where she must be supplied before going out.
The weather has been very foul and uncertain for 8 or 10 days
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 242, No. 66.]
THESE STORMS ARE RUINING A GOOD HARVEST
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sir John Wray, 3rd Bart., MP (1619 - 1664) married firstly Elizabeth D'Ewes, widow of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, by whom he had no issue.
Wray married secondly, in 1661, Sarah Evelyn, daughter of Sir John Evelyn of West Dean, Wiltshire (a cousin of John Evelyn the Diarist) by whom he left a daughter and heiress.
After Wray’s death in 1664, Sarah Evelyn Wray married Thomas Fanshawe, 2nd Viscount Fanshawe of Dromore who, in 1665, inherited his title and the position of King's Remembrancer of the Exchequer.
By her, Thomas, Lord Fanshawe (1632 - 1674) had a son he named Evelyn Fanshawe, who would succeed him as the 3rd Viscount Fanshawe of Dromore after his death in 1674 from apoplexy.
Thomas, Lord Fanshawe was a nephew of Amb. Richard Fanshawe who preceded Sandwich in Spain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tho…
https://www.historyofparliamenton…
San Diego Sarah • Link
'This would be the best revenge,' said he [AMB. WILLIAM TEMPLE], 'for the trick France has played us in involving us in the last war with the United Provinces.'
'The last war' -- the Flanders adventure?
The Triple Alliance wasn't a French trick ... if anything that was an English "trick" pulled on Louis XIV.
The Franco/Spanish treaty? I tried to sort all this out in https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
but I still don't see a French "trick."
James Morgan • Link
The Mahan book goes on to say "These considerations brought the two countries together in that Triple Alliance with Sweden which has been mentioned, and which for a time checked the onward movement of Louis. But the wars between the two sea nations were too recent, the humiliation of England in the Thames too bitter, and the rivalries that still existed too real, too deeply seated in the nature of things, to make that alliance durable. It needed the dangerous power of Louis, and his persistence in a course threatening to both, to weld the union of these natural antagonists. This was not to be done without another bloody encounter." So the trick referred to was presumably something Louis did earlieer to get the British into the war with th Dutch that lead to the disatrous defeats. I don't know enough detail of that war to say what Louis might have done - other than paying off Charles II, but I don't think that was public knowledge.
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thank you James ... agreed on the reading.
So far the only payoff I can think of was the purchase of Dunkirk in 1662 ... humiliating to the English, but legal.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
The big payoffs come after the Diary, until it becomes obvious Charles will never declare himself a Catholic or rule as an Absolute Monarch of a Catholic nation, at which time the French funding switches to James.
L&M 1662 iii.220 note 1: When "Dunkirk ... was sold to the French for 5,000,000 livres by a treaty signed on 7/17 October [1662], a deputation of London merchants went to Whitehall ... to protest that the surrender would make Dunkirk 'the Harbour of all the Privateers', and Charles II therefore asked Louis XIV to issue an edict against the corsairs. ... But the Privateers, based in Dunkirk and thereabouts, inflicted millions of pounds worth of damage on English shipping during the Anglo-French wars of the following 100 years.
From 1656 to 1783 English prize goods totalling almost 6,000,000/. were sold in Dunkirk prize-courts alone. ..."
While this is a dastardly logical outcome to the sale of such a strategic port, I don't think it's the trick referred to ...