Tuesday 9 February 1668/69
Up, and all the morning busy at the office, and after dinner abroad with my wife to the King’s playhouse, and there saw “The Island Princesse,” which I like mighty well, as an excellent play: and here we find Kinaston to be well enough to act again, which he do very well, after his beating by Sir Charles Sedley’s appointment; and so thence home, and there to my business at the Office, and after my letters done, then home to supper and to bed, my mind being mightily eased by my having this morning delivered to the Office a letter of advice about our answers to the Commissioners of Accounts, whom we have neglected, and I have done this as a record in my justification hereafter, when it shall come to be examined.
6 Annotations
First Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
Ormond to Ossory
Written from: Whitehall
Date: 9 February 1669
Is confident that the King neither is, nor will be, prevailed on to remove him from the government of Ireland. He shall return to do the King some further service, and to settle his own affairs; hopes, then, to have leave to free himself, without dishonour, from a burden which must needs grow heavier with increasing years. ...
http://www.rsl.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwm…
Terry Foreman • Link
"Kinaston['s]...beating by Sir Charles Sedley’s appointment;"
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Chris Squire • Link
‘appointment, n. Etym: < Old French apointement . .
. . 6. The action of ordaining or directing what is to be done; direction, decree, ordinance, dictation.
. . 1574 A. Golding tr. A. Marlorat Catholike Expos. Reuelation 15 All things are done and disposed by his determination and appoyntment.
. . 1651 J. Saint-Amard tr. F. Micanzio Life Father Paul p. xcvi, in P. Sarpi Hist. Council of Trent (1676) , Making one of his Writers read to him, or write at his appointment . .’ [OED]
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
"my mind being mightily eased by my having this morning delivered to the Office a letter of advice about our answers to the Commissioners of Accounts"
Pepys to the Navy Board, 9 February: copy (in unidentified clerical hand) in NMM LBK/8, pp.572-3 (Printed in Further Corr. pp. 221-2). This was a reply to the enquiries made by the Brooke House Committee almost a year before: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… Pepys began by stating that as the 'daily remembrancer' of the Board, he had kept a journal of its proceedings in the matter of the Committee's enquiries. (It is now PRO, Adm. 106/2886, pt. I.) He enclosed 'an abstract of whatever hitherto has been by them Demanded, and thereto [in] distinct Columnes added a view of what thereof is answered, what not, what the Board has joyntly done preparative to it, and on what hands the delay thereof (for now more than 12 moneths in some perticulers) seemes chargeable'. Later he wrote a long vindication of the office himself (27 November 1669); copy in Hayter's hands, in Rawl. A 457; 73 pp.). (L&M note)
Terry Foreman • Link
"saw “The Island Princesse,” which I like mighty well, as an excellent play: and here we find Kinaston to be well enough to act again,
L&M: According to Genest (i. 93), Kynaston played the King of Tidore) '
Stephane Chenard • Link
Sam is invited today into a sordid little affair that is likely to become the Navy's scandal du jour before long, the State Papers (https://play.google.com/books/rea…) indicate.
On 22 January Roger Baker, purser of the Dartmouth - a busy 5th class workabee frigate which often shows up in reports on convoy and supply missions - wrote to the Commissioners a long and pretty graphic complaint against his captain, Richard Trevanion. Following some unclear muddle (at least as summarized in the Papers) about beer bought on credit, wine issued to the crew for Christmas and an altercation between the two of them, Baker says Trevanion suddenly "gave me 200 blows with his cane, and took me by the hair of my head, intending to dash my brains out (...) he so mangled my face that I fear I shall lose an eye". The 200 blows alone (if we take them literally) must have taken a good 15 minutes at least, but it's not finished: "While I was under the doctor's hands he commanded the boatswain to clap me into the bilboes [leg shackles] atop of the forecastle [the upper deck] where I continued 10 hours, being nailed down with a staple to the davit [a crane often used to suspend the lifeboat]" - sounds dangerous, and wickedly inventive. It gets better: The boatswain gets trashed too for looking like he would help, Trevanion threatens other officers with a council of war or "to have them hanged". So, bad captain; a captain Bligh before the hour. Baker apparently has the letter smuggled out while the madman is on shore.
Letters on 31 January and 2 February then suggest that the Dartmouth, which was to sail to Cadiz and Tangiers on resupply duty, has not; it was wrongly sighted on its way home, and it's unclear where it's been, if anywhere. On 3 February it's in Holehaven, in Essex, so unless it has supernaturall engines we doubt if it went to Tangiers and back. On that day Baker reappears, still locked up in his cabin and reporting that Trevanion has gone rogue, "has not yet rated his men, and God knows when he will" - we're a bit unsure if this is a bureaucratic offense or something worse that could lead to a Bounty situation. The ship, https://threedecks.org informs us, has 110 men on board, who are likely not shrinking lilies themselves but must be more than a bit uneasy about the cap'n by now.
And finally today Baker is writing to Sam, god of the pursers. Apparently some action has been taken, and he offers to "justify on oath the business impeached against my commander", however he "durst[s; dares] not go near the commander, for fear of being murdered". You betcha.
Sam will want the Trevanion file. There's one at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…, which shows him to be on his second command only, and to have lasted less than a year on the first, a 4th class ship called the Marmaduke that was quite a bit larger - so the Dartmouth could have been a demotion already. Hmm.