On This Day 350 Years Ago

..London diarist..

7th April 1661


To White Hall, and there I met with Dr. Fuller of Twickenham, newly come from Ireland; and took him to my Lord's, where he and I dined; and he did give my Lord and me a good account of the condition of Ireland and how it come to pass, through the joyning of the Fanatiques and the Presbyterians, that the latter and the former are in their declaration put together under the names of Fanatiques.

...good to see that some things haven't changed much..

On This Day 342 Years Ago..

...London diarist..

Wednesday 12th December, 1668

 I hear this day that there is fallen down a new house not quite finished in Lumbard-Street, and that there have been several so, they making use of bad mortar and bricks; but no hurt yet, as God hath ordered it. This day was brought home my pair of black coach-horses the first I ever was master of, a fine pair.

...it's snakes and ladders then!

On This Day 350 Years Ago..

...London diarist..

Monday, 5th November 1660...

At the office at night, to make up an account of what the debts of nineteen of the twenty-five ships that should have been paid off, is increased since the adjournment of the Parliament, they being to sit again to-morrow. This 5th day of November is observed exceeding well in the City; and at night great bonfires and fireworks.

...evidently the ghastly and triumphalist tradition had already set in a little over 50 years after the events...

On This Day 346 Years Ago ...

..London Diarist...

19th August 1664

The news of the Emperour's [sic] victory over the Turkes [sic] is by some doubted, but by most confessed to be very small (though great) of what was talked, which was 80,000 men to be killed and taken of the Turke's side.

The battle to which Pepys is referring must be the Battle of Saint Gotthard which had taken place nearly three weeks earlier on 1 August, near the modern day Hungary-Austria border. The scrap was  between Leopold I, the Habsburg emperor of Austria, and the Ottoman empire, under whose control much of Hungary had come since the previous century. The Ottomans had taken Transylvania and Leopold essentially wanted to take it back, in the process recruiting various Protestant north German allies. Despite being outnumbered about 3 to 1 the Austrian forces under Montecuccoli were triumphant and, whilst not inflicting the damages which Pepys himself had doubted, took between 16-22,000 casualties. The Ottomans were inexperienced in fighting modern, disciplined ranks of musket-bearing soldiers and a failure to adapt to this was eventually their undoing in south-eastern Europe. A 20 year truce was signed and, whilst Hungary was not liberated from the Ottomans immediately, that process started from around 1683. So there you go.

On This Day 344 Years Ago...

28th June 1666

..Strange to hear my Lord Lauderdale say himself that he had rather hear a cat mew than the best musique in the world; and the better the musique, the more sick it makes him; and that of all instruments, he hates the lute most, and next to that, the baggpipe..

Kind of the inverse of the PMC really, we'd rather hear the best 'musique' in the world rather than a cat mew, but we instead hear the latter all the time courtesy of the PMC's resident cat, Shackleton, and all too little lute and bagpipe music..

On This Day 341 Years Ago

..the last entry, 31 May 1669 ..

And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my Journall [sic], I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear...And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepares me!

Well, maybe our eyes are almost undone every time we take up the laptop, so who knows if there will ever be any more entries. There again Pepys lived for another 34 years, dying at Clapham (in the Seventeenth Century that was nothing like as ignominious as it would be in the Twenty-first) having served as President of the Royal Society, and imprisoned on suspicions (never proven) of Jacobitism, though he was good mates with the former James II. He never went blind.

On This Day 350 Years Ago...

28th April 1660

This morning sending a packet by Mr. Dunne to London. In the afternoon I played at ninepins with Mr Pickering, I and Mr Pett against him and Ted Osgood, and won a crown apiece of him. He had not money enough to pay me. After supper my Lord (Montague, Earl of Sandwich -ed.) exceeding merry, and he and I and W. Howe to sing, and so to bed.

...much the same as our day at the PMC really; minus the playing ninepins on a packet ship..or the gambling...or the making merry or the singing.

On This Day 344 Years Ago

21st March 1666...

Sir Robert Long told us of the plenty of partridges in France, where he says the King of France and his company killed with their guns, in the plain de Versailles, 300 and odd partridges at one bout. With Sir W. Warren, who tells me that at the Committee of the Lords for the prizes to-day, there passed very high words between my Lord Ashly and Sir W. Coventry, about our business of the prize ships. And that my Lord Ashly did snuff and talk as high as him, as he used to do to any ordinary man. And that Sir W. Coventry did take it very quietly, but yet for all did speak his mind soberly and with reason, and went away, saying that he had done his duty therein.

On This Day 350 Years Ago...Pepys' Diary

 13 February 1660...in the weeks leading up to the restoration...

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albermarle was a very shrewd character who had been a royalist general in the civil war but later manged to be the governor general of Scotland under Oliver Cromwell. By this time he had led an unopposed army down to London in support of the Parliament (which had been in disarray since Oliver Cromwell's death a couple of years before) and like every true political survivor/collaborator, keeping his true political colours very close to his chest. The ensuing parliament was strongly royalist in its nature and led to the restoration of Charles II as King.


This day Monk (sp.) was invited to White Hall to dinner by my Lords; not seeming willing, he would not come. I went to Mr Fage from my father's, who had been this afternoon with Monk, who did promise to live and die with the City, and for the honour of the city; and indeed the City is very open-handed to the soldiers, that they are most of them drunk all day, and had money given them.

On This Day 350 Years Ago..

24th January 1660

"In the morning to my office, where, after I had drank my morning draft at Will's with Ethelland Mr. Stevens, I went and told part of the excise money till twelve o’clock, and then called on my wife and took her to Mr. Piercest, she in the way being exceedingly troubled with a pair of new pattens, and I vexed to go so slow, it being late. There when we came we found Mrs. Carrick very fine, and one Mr. Lucy , who called one another husband and wife, and after dinner a great deal of mad stir. There was pulling off Mrs. bride’s and Mr. bridegroom’s ribbons; [ie debagged them - ed] with a great deal of fooling among them that I and my wife did not like. Mr. Lucy and several other gentlemen coming in after dinner, swearing and singing as if they were mad, only he singing very handsomely. There came in afterwards Mr. Southerne, clerk to Mr. Blackburne, and with him Lambert, lieutenant of my Lord's ship, and brought with them the declaration that came out to-day from the Parliament, wherein they declare for law and gospel, and for tythes; but I do not find people apt to believe them. After this taking leave I went to my father's to, and my wife staying there, he and I went to speak with Mr. Crumlum (in the meantime, while it was five o’clock, he being in the school, we went to my cozen Tom Pepys' shop, the turner in Paul's Churchyard, and drank with him a pot of ale); he gave my father directions what to do about getting my brother an exhibition, and spoke very well of my brother. Thence back with my father home, where he and I spoke privately in the little room to my sister Pall about stealing of things as my wife’s scissars and my maid's book, at which my father was much troubled. Hence home with my wife and so to Whitehall, where I met with Mr- Hunt and Luellin, and drank with them at Marsh's, and afterwards went up and wrote to my Lord by the post. This day the Parliament gave order that the late Committee of Safety should come before them this day se’nnight, and all their papers, and their model of Government that they had made, to be brought in with them. So home and talked with my wife about our dinner on Thursday".

On This Day 344 Years Ago

...some things are everlasting..
December 25th 1665: "To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to see those poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and woman gazing and smiling at them."

On This Day 341 Years Ago

[...ie 14th December 1668..]

This day I hear, and am glad, that the King hath prorogued the Parliament to October next; and, among other reasons, it will give me time to go to France, I hope.

[..would that it were that modern day monarchs in England would prorogue Parliament, preferably until twentington o'clock on the 33rd May.]

On This Day 349 Years Ago

My wife and I up very early this day, and though the weather was very bad and the wind high, yet my Lady Batten and her maid and we two did go by our barge to Woolwich (my Lady being very fearfull) where we found both Sir Williams and much other company, expecting the weather to be better, that they might go about weighing up the Assurance, which lies there (poor ship, that I have been twice merry in, in Captn. Holland’s time,) under water, only the upper deck may be seen and the masts.

Captain Stoakes is very melancholy, and being in search for some clothes and money of his, which he says he hath lost out of his cabin.

[that would make me pretty melancholy too-ed]

I did the first office of a justice of Peace to examine a seaman thereupon, but could find no reason to commit him.

[not sure what form this examination might take! - ed]

This last tide the Kingsale was also run aboard and lost her mainmast, by another ship, which makes us think it ominous to the Guiny voyage, to have two of her ships spoilt before they go out. After dinner, my Lady being very fearfull she staid and kept my wife there, and I and another gentleman, a friend of Sir W. Pen’s, went back in the barge, very merry by the way, as far as Whitehall in her. To the Privy Seal, where I signed many pardons and some few things else.

From thence Mr. Moore and I into London to a tavern near my house, and there we drank and discoursed of ways how to put out a little money to the best advantage, and at present he has persuaded me to put out 250l. for 50l. per annum for eight years, and I think I shall do it.

[Think I might put out a little money to the best advantage - still it's easy what you can discourse about whilst drinking!!-ed]

Thence home, where I found the wench washing...,

[good stuff..]

..and I up to my study, and there did make up an even 100l., and sealed it to lie by. After that to bed.

[Me too-goodnight, ed.]

On This Day 349 Years Ago...

From the pages of Pepys' diary, 4th December 1660 (Puumaja comments in [ ]).
"This day the Parliament voted that the bodies of Oliver, Ireton, Bradshaw &c, should be taken out of their graves in the Abbey, and drawn to the gallows, and there hanged and buried under it..."
[If I'm not mistaken, Oliver is none other than Oliver Cromwell, former East Anglian MP turned 'Lord Protector' of England, Scotland and Ireland and now somewhat out of favour; Henry Ireton was his son-in-law and a Parliamentary general, John Bradshaw, a judge who presided over the trial of Charles I. This episode concerns the 'execution' and mutilation of their corpses as an act of vengeance.]
"...which (methinks) do trouble me that a man of so great courage as he was, should have that dishonour, though otherwise he might deserve it enough".
[Little bit of politics, I assume Pepys kept his thoughts on this to himself (the diary was encrypted in fact). And people really did say 'methinks'!!!. I can't help thinking what a shame it is such things don't happen any more...digging up the body of out of favour politicians (former PMs spring to mind) and publicly hanging, drawing and quartering it in the middle of Westminster in the rush hour..well, you could charge money for tickets. Better than Simon Cowell anyway..]