Saturday 9 January 1668/69
Up, and at the office all the morning, and at noon, my Lord Brouncker, Mr. Wren, Joseph Williamson, and Captain Cocke, dined with me; and, being newly sat down, comes in, by invitation of Williamson’s, the Lieutenant of the Tower, and he brings in with him young Mr. Whore, whose father, of the Tower, I know. — And here I had a neat dinner, and all in so good manner and fashion, and with so good company, and everything to my mind, as I never had more in my life — the company being to my heart’s content, and they all well pleased. So continued, looking over my books and closet till the evening, and so I to the Office and did a good deal of business, and so home to supper and to bed with my mind mightily pleased with this day’s management, as one of the days of my life of fullest content.
6 Annotations
First Reading
Robert Gertz • Link
Congenial guests, good food, neat and pleasant accomodations, beautiful, intelligent, and tolerant wife willing to overlook stupid, stupid indiscretion...Life doesn't get better in any era...
Chris Squire • Link
Re: the Lieutenant - a talking bragging bufflehead:
‘bufflehead, n. Etym: < buffle n.. .
1. A fool, blockhead, stupid fellow.
1659 Lady Alimony i. ii. sig. A3, What a drolling bufflehead is this.
1694 L. Echard tr. Plautus Comedies 48 What makes ye stare so, Bufflehead? . . ’
‘† ˈbuffle, n. Etym: < vulgar Latin *būfalus (= Latin būbalus ): see buffalo n.1
1. a. A buffalo; = buffalo n.1 1a, 1b.
. . 1623 tr. A. Favyn Theater of Honour ii. xiii. 223 A mouing Chariot, drawne by Oxen or Buffells.
. . 2. A fool; = bufflehead n. 1.
1655 tr. C. Sorel Comical Hist. Francion iv. 22 He said to the three buffles who stood with their hats in their hands, Tell me, you Waggs, etc.’ [OED]
Terry Foreman • Link
Though Pepys does not say so expressly, this dinner may have been planned in part as an introduction into serious discourse of James Hoare (jun., Joint-Comptroller of the Mint) at Brouncker's behest.
All the gentlemen at this banquet -- except Mr. Robinson, the one who invited him, his landlord, as it were, the Mint being located in the Tower -- and James Hoare, sen. -- are Fellows of the Royal Society.
James Hoare, esq, the younger, will be "proposed candidate by the president at a Royal Society meeting on the 14th and will be elected a Fellow the 21st instant.
See *The history of the Royal Society of London* , by Thomas Birch Volume 2, pp. 338, 340. http://goo.gl/yaZRa
Terry Foreman • Link
The president of the Royal Society is William Brouncker (2nd Viscount Brouncker)
A. De Araujo • Link
Captain Cocke, Mr.Whore OMG
pepfie • Link
Some more collected opinions on Sir John Robinson, Bart., His Majesty’s Lieutenant of the Tower of London
I am resolved to shun too great fellowship with him
no man almost in the City cares a turd for him, nor hath he brains to outwit any ordinary tradesman
a very great noble dinner, as this Mayor is good for nothing else
the loggerhead knows nothing almost that is sense
continues still the same foole he was
heavy-headed coxcombe
a mean man of understanding and dispatch of any publique business
a strange, conceited, vain man he is
still a vain, prating, boasting man