Wednesday 22 July 1668

All the morning at the office. Dined at home, and then to White Hall with Symson the joyner, and after attending at the Committee of the Navy about the old business of tickets, where the only expedient they have found is to bind the Commanders and Officers by oaths. The Duke of York told me how the Duke of Buckingham, after the Council the other day, did make mirth at my position, about the sufficiency of present rules in the business of tickets; and here I took occasion to desire a private discourse with the Duke of York, and he granted it to me on Friday next. So to shew Symson the King’s new lodgings for his chimnies, which I desire to have one built in that mode, and so I home, and with little supper, to bed. This day a falling out between my wife and Deb., about a hood lost, which vexed me.

13 Annotations

First Reading

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"Buckingham did diss you on the rules for tickets, Pepys."

"Dissed me, Your Grace?"

"And how..."

"Your Grace, I request private audience in which I shall counter this dissing and tender matter of great and grave import to your Grace's authority...Namely, your Grace, to show therein how you yourself have thus been dissed by His Grace."

"Me?!...Dissed?!!"

"Indeed, your Grace...And most thoroughly. Grant me but leave to show you how so in most full detail."

"Granted, Friday next. Dissed, you say?"

"Most unhappily...I must say so, your Grace."

Second Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

'Charles II: July 1668', in Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles II, 1667-8, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1893), pp. 469-516. https://www.british-history.ac.uk…

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July 22. 1668
Bristol.
Capt. John Wettwang to the Navy Commissioners.

Has pressed all the carpenters, joiners, and smiths about the city, so that the work goes no well.

Advises keeping the Edgar’s guns in the ship that brought them, as all the lighters in the place could not carry them, and to lay them ashore were double charge.

Sir John Knight will pay the men but 7s a week, and they will not work under 9s., and the 100/. will soon be all spent.
Asks for money to man the ship and enter men.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 94.]

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July 22. 1668
The Leopard, Downs.
Capt. Ch. O’Bryen to the Navy Commissioners.

My purser is daily waiting for the order for another month’s victuals for the Ambassador’s retinue.
That is 3 months in all;
is every hour expecting to sail; wants the victuals, purser, and some peas.

I have discharged several men who came out of the Charles, where their tickets should be ordered;
I desire the tickets of those that remain.

I hope Lord Anglesey will make no difficulty to have them paid with the rest of the tickets in the Downs, but I would gladly know it, that I might in time move his Royal Highness in it.
[S. P. Dom., Car. II.243, No. 95.]

Encloses,
Petition of John Aldridge, purser of the Leopard, to the Navy Commissioners,

for an allowance of extra necessary money, as in the time of the late war, not having received any on his bills;
the ship being designed for a voyage to Constantinople, must make extraordinary supplies for so remote a voyage;
the victuallers’ 6s. per man a month will not half reimburse him.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 95i.]

List
of 32 men turned over from the Charles to the Leopard;
also of 15 afterwards discharged from the latter
– 22 July 1668.
[2 pages. S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 95II.]

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July 22. 1668
Deal.
Rich Watts to [Williamson].

No news is stirring;
30 days ago, near Deal a step-aunt beat a child to death;
the coroner sat on it today, and found the child died naturally, “at which all men admire.”
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 97.]

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July 22. 1668
Bristol.
James Baskerville to James Hickes.

Thanks for his kindness the last term.
The King’s ship will be launched on Wednesday.
Several vessels have sailed for the Straits, &c.
Fears his correspondence is not worth a return.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 98.]

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

July 22. 1668
Edinburgh, Letter Office.
Rob Mein to [Williamson].

The Archbishop of St. Andrews was shot at “by some mad inconsidered person,” but the shot only struck the Bishop of Orkney, who was with him, in the arm.

Many person in town are troubled for receiving him and others in the late rebellion;

Rob. Gray and his family are prisoners.
Mrs. Duncan was before the Council all yesterday, and the hangman and boots sent for, but not used, the Lords being unwilling to put the woman to torture.
Welish of Cornlie is suspected of the shot, but not taken.

Archibald, son of James Cuthbertson, governor of Herriott’s Hospital, has run away from his father, out of foolish temper.
If he applies to you, and promises to come home, let him have 10s., and I will repay it.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 99.]

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July 22. 1668
Yarmouth.
Rich. Bower to Williamson.

Several colliers have passed through the road;

two vessels arrived from Rotterdam with merchant goods report that many thousands of arms have been shipped at Holland for Scotland,
and that a Scotch vessel was ready to sail with 5 chests of arms when they came away.

Four vessels have come in with cod fish from the North Seas and Iceland.
[S. P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 100.]

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July 22. 1668
Lyme.
Anth. Thorold to James Hickes.

The Windsor, arrived from St. Malo with canvas,
reports that 2 French men-of-war, meeting with 3 English merchantmen from Scanderoon in the Straits, commanded them to strike, and on their refusing, fired at them, which was returned, they stoutly defending themselves till the fleet came up and overpowered them, and carried them into Toulon.

The Francis from Morlaix reports that Beaufort with his squadron has put into Rochelle,
and that many of their land forces are disbanded, there being a good understanding between them and Spain.

She met with the Warwick and Sweepstakes,
and the Warwick meeting with a Frenchman, carried him into Plymouth, having had orders to examine all the French that they met in the Channel,
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 101.]

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July 22. 1668
Bath. W. Perwich to [Williamson].
Thanks on half of Lord [Arlington] for letters sent by Mr. Stanney.
I send in reply the draft of Sir D. Harvey’s instructions, and his lordship’s letters to Sir Thos. Modyford and the Earl of Winchelsea.
The packet sent to Sec. Morice is of the papers he sent my lord.
No day is fixed for our returning.

The Duchess of Monmouth is very merry and intends going into the Bath tomorrow.

His lordship forbears writing to the Elector of Brandenbury, supposing he shall see Monsieur Brandt before he goes away.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 107.]

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

July 22. 1668
Whitehall.

Order in Council
adopting the report of the committee appointed to consider the retrenchments of the King’s expenses and issues,
l as subjoined, and requiring the Treasury Commissioners to act upon the same.
With computation of the King’s revenue; viz:
customs, 400,000/.;
excise, 340,000/.;
chimney money, 170,000/.;
smaller branches of revenue, 120,000/.;
total, 1,030,000/.

Proposals for the retrenchment of the several items of household and national expense,
reducing it to 996,475/. 15s. 10d.,
the balance of 33,524/. 4s. 2d.
to be employed in paying pensions to those who had a hand in the King’s escape from Worcester;
to the Coldstreamers;
to those who gave pensions for present or past service
and to those who have grants on a valuable consideration, or for service, or for mere grace.

Also rules for regulating the revenue.

All payments to be made from the Exchequer;
a new establishment of the Household to be made;
the impost of Ambassadors to be as in the late King’s time;
orders to be made for the clothing of the yeomen of the guard;
all who have lodgings out of Court to keep them in repair at their own cost.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 243, No. 102.]

Gerald Berg  •  Link

Rochelle! Still a haven for the English? I thought that was finished in Charles I time.

Matt Newton  •  Link

Hood lost? As in hat/bonnet?

I wonder if we'll hear more of hat-gate?

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"I thought that was finished in Charles I time."

Under Louis XIII (reigned 1610–43), La Rochelle sided with the English, who had invaded the Isle of Ré. The major Huguenot citadel of La Rochelle was attacked by French royal troops in 1627 and Richelieu, the king’s minister, besieged the town and built a vast sea wall to prevent English ships from relieving their allies.
After 15 months’ siege, the town capitulated, three-fourths of its citizens having starved to death.

It slowly recovered its former prosperity but declined once more after 1685, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, depriving French Protestants of religious and civil liberty, led to massive emigration.

https://www.britannica.com/place/…
https://www.britannica.com/place/…

Harbors on busy searoutes and rocky coastlines are hard to kill. It's hard for me to imagine a rebound after 3/4 of the inhabitants were starved to death by their own government, but free available housing and uncontested fishing rights would be hard to ignore for people not immediately involved in such a horror.

Gerald Berg  •  Link

Loss of Rochelle was cited (in their list) as another reason for Chuck to get the great nod.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Sorry, Gerald, I don't know which list you refer to.

Gerald Berg  •  Link

Reasons were needed for removing Charles head. The loss of La Rochelle was on it.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

You may well be right, Gerald. I've spent the morning Googling this, resulting in a post in our encyclopedia under La Rochelle about what happened there in 1628.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

But nowhere did I find a list itemizing King Charles' misdeads. What I did find was:
"There were then enumerated the various battles of the civil war, the attempted use of foreign troops and the renewal of the war in 1648, all the evils resulting being laid at his door. 'Charles Stuart', concluded the charge, was 'guilty of all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, dammages, and mischiefs to this nation, ordered and committed in the said wars, or occasioned thereby.' On behalf of the people of England, consequently, the said Charles Stuart was impeached 'as a tyrant, traytor, murderer and a publick and implacable enemy to the commonwealth of England'."
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpr…

My understanding is that it was his repeated attacks on the people of England, and his use of foreign troops that cost King Charles his head. Hard to think of Rupert and Maurice as foreign troops, but they and their German Protestant friends were -- also Catholic mercenaries volunteered for Charles through Henrietta Maria. The overseas volunteers for Cromwell came from the English Puritan plantations across the Atlantic, and they were still considered to be Englishmen. There were, of course, Scotsmen and Irishmen fighting on both sides ... whether or not Cromwell considered them as foreign I have no idea.

I'd love to see your list if you can find it.

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