San Diego Sarah

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San Diego Sarah has posted 8,953 annotations/comments since 6 August 2015.

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Third Reading

About Friday 14 June 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Now the Coronation is over, the House of Commons is protecting English jobs:
"Bonelace, &c.
Ordered, That a Bill prohibiting the Importation of Bonelace, Imbroidery, and Needle-work, be read the First time To-morrow Morning."

About John Dryden

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The link for the Life of John Dryden goes nowhere these days. But here's Gilfillan's original book instead:

THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN.
With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes
BY THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK. EDINBURGH
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/e…

About Tuesday 1 December 1663

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

On this day, in St. Swithin's, London, with the consent of Sir Robert Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire (who settled £60 a-year on his daughter) an unhappy union took place. Lady Elizabeth Howard had none of the qualities to command John Dryden's respect or regard, and is described as a woman of violent temper and weak understanding.

But Lady Elizabeth's meager dowry meant that Dryden didn't starve -- always motivation to write more.

For more information, see
THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN.
With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes
BY THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK. EDINBURGH
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/e…
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

About Northampton

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

But Rainsford was promoted to the bench in Nov. 1663, so followed another disputed election.
Sir John Bernard, one of Hatton’s supporters, stood against the Anglican controversialist, Sir Henry Yelverton.
The new mayor was in Bernard’s interest, and the Christmas alms were distributed accordingly.
Both spent lavishly, but Bernard had a majority of 30 on the poll.

On Yelverton’s petition, the House awarded the franchise to the inhabitant householders not in receipt of alms.
An attempt by the mayor to avenge his defeat by expelling Yelverton’s supporters from the corporation was frustrated by Rainsford, who procured a direct letter from Charles II.

In 1665 Dudley’s henchman, Alderman Friend of the Black Boy coffee-house, overreached himself; information was laid that he had encouraged the fanatics and publicly scorned Charles II’s letter of recommendation for a new steward of the town.
He was bound over to good behavior; and in the same year his patron was removed from the commission of the peace, probably through Lord Montagu’s influence.

A period of calm followed, not broken even by the 1670 by-election.
When Hatton succeeded to the peerage, the Duke of Ormonde wrote to Rainsford in favor of ‘Mr. George Digby’ (probably a mistake for Francis, the younger brother of John Digby), ‘who is of extraordinary parts, and those always rightly applied’.
But this commendation could not outweigh the predilection of the constituency for local men.
The Langham interest was probably at the disposal of the moderate Lord Ibrackan, and there was the prospect of another contest with Sir William Fermor, a Cavalier’s son. ...

FROM
https://www.historyofparliamenton…

About Northampton

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

PART 3:

It was almost a year before the next by-election was held, during which the defences of Northampton were slighted, and the corporation purged, losing 46 of its members.
The dissenting interest was so far disheartened by these measures that Langham did not stand again, but determined to ‘baffle’ Dudley by setting up a moderate Royalist against him.
His third choice, Christopher Hatton, accepted, and the ‘secluded members of the corporation’ promised their support. He was ‘recommended by the Duke of York and several other noble persons’, while Lord Montagu of Boughton gave him cautious encouragement: ‘If Sir James can put over most of his voices to you, I suppose you may carry it, if the mayor deal fairly with you, who some think will do anything that Sir William will have him’.

Harvey was active on Hatton’s behalf, although the candidate feared that this might prejudice his chances, but Rainsford declared himself pre-engaged for Dudley.

On 9 Feb. 1663 Salathiel Lovell, Hatton’s election agent, wrote to him:
“Sir William Dudley, coming to the town on Wednesday night last, made it his work Thursday and Friday with six or seven of his new advanced creatures to go from inn to inn and from one alehouse to another, and send for men, and court some with flattering promises and pints of wine, and some with pipes and pots of ale, and others with ranting and threatening language.”
Hatton’s supporters withdrew from the town hall when it became clear that the mayor intended to return Dudley on the corporation franchise, and polled over 400 for their man at the market cross.
The mayor ‘armed 38 desperate persons with halberds, who, he said, would fight to the last man’, and ordered them to ‘strike down Hatton men’.
Dudley was duly returned, but the House ruled against the corporation franchise and unseated him in favor of Hatton.

In July 1663 a new charter was issued, reducing the quorum ‘because refractory aldermen do not attend’ and requiring royal approval for the recorder and town clerk.

But Rainsford was promoted to the bench in Nov. 1663, so followed another disputed election.

About Northampton

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

PART 2

At the 1661 general election Rainsford and Norwich stood as court candidates against Sir James Langham and Harvey, ‘persons that have the love and affection of the generality of the sober and discreet party’. Furthermore Langham’s father had been a considerable benefactor to the poor of the borough, and the mayor was a warm partisan who had been outraged by Rainsford’s injunctions for the restoration of the Prayer Book.
The elections committee found that he “used menaces to such as would not give their votes to Mr. Harvey, and had fraudulently, in the morning when the election was, made infants free, to the end they might vote as he pleased; and had caused several persons to be put by that would not vote as he desired; and had released Quakers out of prison, and put halberds in their hands, to keep back and discourage such as would have voted contrary to his intention; and adjourned the taking of the poll into the church; and got upon the communion table, and there behaved himself in a very profane and indecent manner.”

Rainsford withdrew before the poll, and the mayor declared Harvey and Langham elected. But the sheriff (Sir William Dudley) suppressed the return, on the grounds that it was not accompanied by his precept, and forwarded another in favor of Langham and Norwich, not authenticated by the seal of the corporation.

Both mayor and sheriff rushed into print to justify themselves; but Dudley had second thoughts and sent in the other return before Parliament met.
He escaped censure, but the mayor was not so fortunate, although 50 of Harvey’s supporters attended to give evidence that ‘there was no miscarriage of the mayor’s worth speaking of’.
After a week in custody, which cost him over £40 a day, he ‘received a grave reprehension from Mr. Speaker’ upon his knees.
The House agreed by 185 votes to 127 to declare the election void; from the tellers’ names, the division does not seem to have followed political lines.

The lesson was apparently effective, for Rainsford and the Cavalier Sir Charles Compton were returned to fill the vacancies unopposed.
Unfortunately Compton died in a riding accident before the month was out, and the next by-election was contested by Langham and Dudley.
The conflict of two such experienced politicians, with a large and newly-enfranchised electorate virtually guaranteed chaos.
‘Contrary to all expectation’, Langham was elected; but on Dudley’s petition ‘the matter was so intricate that the [elections] committee could not determine what the number was of those who had the right to give voices and were denied the poll’, and accordingly the election was declared void.

About Northampton

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Northampton's elections were notoriously "contested" in the 1660's and 1670's:

Elections Date and Candidates
29 Mar. 1660
RICHARD RAINSFORD I
FRANCIS HARVEY
Sir John Norwich, Bt.
NORWICH vice Harvey, on petition, 21 June 1660
29 Apr. 1661
SIR JAMES LANGHAM
FRANCIS HARVEY
SIR JOHN NORWICH, Bt.
Double return of Harvey and Norwich. HARVEY seated, 22 May 1661
Election declared void, 13 June 1661
4 Nov. 1661
SIR CHARLES COMPTON
RICHARD RAINSFORD I
21 Feb. 1662
SIR JAMES LANGHAM vice Compton, deceased
Sir William Dudley, Bt.
Election declared void, 26 Apr. 1662
9 Mar. 1663
SIR WILLIAM DUDLEY, Bt.
Hon. Christopher Hatton
HATTON vice Dudley, on petition, 9 Apr. 1663
31 Mar. 1664
SIR JOHN BERNARD vice Rainsford, appointed to office
Sir Henry Yelverton, Bt.
YELVERTON vice Bernard, on petition, 26 Apr. 1664
31 Oct. 1670
SIR WILLIAM FERMOR, Bt. vice Hatton, called to the Upper House
HENRY O'BRIEN, Lord Ibrackan vice Yelverton, deceased

Few constituencies had a more turbulent history than Northampton.
This was partly due to the existence of an ‘obstinate and numerous’ body of sectaries in the town, partly to the efforts of the corporation to retain the exclusive franchise which they had arrogated to themselves early in the 16th century.
This body fluctuated somewhat in number, but in 1674 consisted of 13 aldermen, 26 bailiffs and 48 ‘burgesses’.
None of the candidates resided in the borough, but all were landowners in the county, except Sir William Temple and Sir Hugh Cholmley, who were nominees of the Earl of Northampton.

The two Members returned in 1660, although of gentry families, were both lawyers professionally connected with the affairs of the corporation.
Richard Rainsford was an Anglican and a cautious Royalist, but Francis Harvey, the deputy recorder, may have opposed the Restoration.
Sir John Norwich, a Presbyterian Royalist, petitioned against Harvey, claiming a majority of the freemen.
Harvey, seeing no hope of success, tried to have the whole election declared void on the grounds that the precept had not been read, which would have deprived the House of the indispensable services of Rainsford as chairman of the land purchases committee.

On 9 June, 1660, the elections committee rejected Harvey’s contention, and agreed on a freeman franchise.
The corporation, alarmed at this news, resolved to join ‘with any other corporation of the neighborhood’ in defence of the narrow franchise.
This move may have been partially effective, for when the elections committee reported 2 days later, no reference was made to the freemen, although Harvey was duly unseated.

Harvey seems to have been replaced by Rainsford as deputy recorder soon after.

About Thursday 13 June 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The House of Commons hears about the Northampton Election:

"Mr. Serjeant Charleton makes Report from the Committee of Privileges and Elections, touching the Returns made for Sir John Norwich and Sir James Langham by one Indenture, and Sir James Langham and Mr. Francis Harvey by another Indenture, as Burgesses for the Town of Northampton; and the Opinion of the Committee, that, upon the whole Evidence, all the Elections are void.

...

"Ordered, That Mr. Speaker make a Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown, to issue out a Writ for a new Election of Burgesses for the said Town of Northampton.

"And the said Mr. Serjeant Charleton further making Report, from the said Committee of divers Miscarriages by the Mayor of Northampton, touching the said Elections; and, particular, that he had used Menaces to such as would not give their Votes to Mr. Harvey; and had fraudulently, in the Morning when the Election was, made Infants free, to the end they might vote as he pleased; and had caused several Persons to be put by, that would not vote as he desired; and had released Quakers out of Prison, and put Halberts in their Hands, to keep back and discourage such as would have voted contrary to his Intention; and adjourned the taking of the Poll into the Church; and got upon the Communion Table, and there behaved himself in a very profane and indecent Manner; and declared beforehand, that Serjeant Rensford should not be elected, because he had given a Charge for the Book of Common Prayer; and that the said Mayor had other . . . misbehaved himself;

"Ordered, That the Mayor of the Town of Northampton, for his Miscarriages in the Election of Members to serve for that Town, and for his irreverent and rude Carriage in the Church, and at the Communion Table, be committed to the Custody of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House; and that the Serjeant do apprehend and take him into Custody, to answer his said Miscarriages."

"... released Quakers out of Prison, and put Halberts in their Hands, ..." sounds like a really bad idea to me!

For the background on 17th century Northampton Elections, see
https://www.historyofparliamenton…
Although the above Commons account makes the Mayor the leading culpret, his name isn't mentioned in the constitional history -- but whoever he was, his shenanigans along with his colleagues continued for decades.

About Wednesday 12 June 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"A Form of Prayer was published to be used in London on the 12th, and in the country on the 19th of June, being the special days appointed for a general fast to be kept in the respective places for averting those sicknesses and diseases, that dearth and scarcity, which justly may be feared from the late immoderate rain and waters: ..."

This Form of Prayer must have been printed and circulated to every parish. Rev. Ralph doesn't mention it, which may not be significant. He has been mentioning the floods and rain.
I think the Brits should find the service and use it again this year -- the summer weather has yet to appear. Come to that, most of the USA could use it too. Does it cover tornadoes as well as floods?

About Sir Arthur Slingsby

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

L&M Companion: Sir Arthur Slingsby (1623-1666) baronet 1657 [citing Cockayne’s Complete Peerage]. Younger brother of Sir Robert. Active as royalist agent in Interregnum. A younger son of Sir Guildford Slingsby, Comptroller of the Navy, knighted by Charles II, and afterwards created a Baronet at Brussells, 1657, which title has long been extinct. -- Diary and correspondence of Samuel Pepys, the diary deciphered by J. Smith. 1854.

Sir Arthur must have been popular at Court: he was one of Charles II’s doubles partners at tennis, and a lottery organizer.

About Tea

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

This article doesn't say where these English East India Company men were when they drank "cocktails" containing tea [for length I've omitted the non-17th century info.]:

'As early as 1632, traders employed by the British East India Company were drinking a beverage known as “punch.” Considered the first modern mixed drink, punch was likely invented due to the scarcity of wine and beer in English merchant outposts in Asia. Distilled spirits kept better on long voyages and took up less space, but had to be diluted with available ingredients to create something sippable.

With the optional addition of spices, the beverage had 5 ingredients, and one theory states that the word “punch” derives from panch, Hindi for “five,” although it may also have come from “puncheon,” a type of cask in which liquor was stored.

When mariners brought tea punch recipes back to England in the mid-1600s, the beverage became popular among the wealthy financiers of sea voyages and others who could afford its imported ingredients. As these ingredients became more widely accessible, both tea and punch became mainstays.

By 1750, the two drinks were consumed widely enough that English physician Thomas Short addressed both in a treatise on the medicinal properties of beverages. Short extolled the virtues of tea, but not punch, writing that adding alcohol to tea “tends to make its Use injurious, where it really would not be.”

Tea punch spread to Britain’s American colonies, ... while the original British punch was often hot, American tea punch could be iced.

Cocktail historian David Wondrich, in his book "Imbibe," lists 1670 to 1850 as the golden years of punch’s popularity.

If you’re hankering to try some tea-based punch yourself, there are numerous historic recipes to choose from, ..." But sadly the recipe he gave was from the 1850's.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti…

About Tuesday 11 June 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

"The Barbary Pirates’ bold raids, sometimes into the English Channel, were alarming, and a chronic problem for English governments: as late as 1687 pirates intercepted 2 mail ships crossing to the Dutch Republic, and 100 passengers were carried off to slavery.

"Such horror stories kept an edge on English fears of what slavery could entail, but debate not only on the reality of slavery, but the reality sustained by the English state, remained a rarity."

Copied from https://thehistoryofparliament.wo…

While this may seem unlikely to us, let us remember that more people are in slavery in the 2022 than were in the 1600s. We dodge responsibility for doing sonething about it by always talking about the horror in an historical sense.
Pepys' crowd loved their cheap sugar, and Charles II successfully cut the price of tobacco from 2d. to 1/4d. per lb. They avoided asking how he did that.
We love our cheap goods and mobile phones. So the Chinese laborers were locked into their factories during COVID ... the Chinese are not governed by our laws, are they.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022….

About Tuesday 11 June 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Slavery" means something different to Pepys than it does to us.

"... it is apparent that the word ‘slavery’ was often used in the cultural context of conflict between elements of the propertied classes. Slavery was often explicitly, and always implicitly, linked with ‘liberty’, its opposite. Liberty, in a society where democracy as a concept had yet to take root, was narrowly defined to mean a range of freedoms, most centrally freedom from arbitrary government.

"‘Slavery’ was in this discourse frequently and freely deployed as a synonym or intensifier of ‘bondage’. It was an idiom that drew heavily on Old Testament examples, with the plight of the Israelites in Egypt, or the fate of Samson among the Philistines, providing typical comparisons readily accessible even to those without literacy skills.

"As the civil wars deepened, ‘slavery’ was used freely and rhetorically, wildly even, by combatants and non-combatants alike, to convey their sense of despair at the country’s ruination.

"Worcestershire supporters of King Charles in Jan. 1644 asserted their eagerness ‘to redeem ourselves from the insolency and slavery, we already in part suffer’; and in turn, the parliamentarians besieging Worcester in 1646, calling on the Worcester mayor to surrender, expressing pity for ‘those who through ignorance are enslaved under your tyranny’.

"Slavery’s antonym, Freedom, underwent a parallel change. As political debate, much in print, and famously in the parliamentarian armies, widened to include those with only modest property or none, attention was given to the birth-right of ‘freeborn Englishmen’.
"Radical activist were buoyed up by the theory that their Anglo-Saxon ancestors had once enjoyed a great range of freedoms, lost after the arrival of William the Conqueror. The ‘Norman Yoke’ had continued to be imposed by William’s successors, the kings of England, and the yoke had continued to be borne by the common people, struggling to assert their identity as freeborn English.

"In this vein, one of the Leveller leaders, William Walwyn, in 1645 published 'England’s Lamentable Slaverie', which exposed Magna Carta as a construct of the Norman oppressors.

"Chattel slavery, as practiced beyond Europe, figured in none of this discourse, although it did appear regularly in parliamentary deliberations in one particular context.
"The Grand Remonstrance to King Charles (1 December 1641) included in its summing-up of the country’s grievances the persistent threat to coastal communities of attacks by pirates from north Africa, especially in the hijacking of ships and detaining their English crews ‘in miserable slavery’, sometimes for ransom.

"Fear of capture by North African pirates was an ever-present anxiety among maritime traders and those who spoke for shipping interests in Parliament. ...

About Monday 10 June 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Early to my Lord’s, who privately told me how the King had made him Embassador in the bringing over the Queen."

My apologies for posting spoilers recently -- who other than Admiral Edward, Earl of Sandwich could be picking up the Infanta Catarina and bringing her home to England? I thought this was a forgone conclusion.

About Friday 12 October 1660

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

At his regicide trial on October 12, 1660, Rev. Hugh Peters responded angrily to Dr, William Yonge's testimony. He averred that he had been guided by his concern for 'sound Religion … Learning and Laws … and that the poor might be cared for' (Stephen, 1.155)."

Who was Dr. Yonge? William Yonge, M.D. wrote the earliest biography of Peters "England's Shame, or the unmasking of a politic Atheist, being a full and faithful relation of the life and death of that grand impostor Hugh Peter", 12mo, 1663. "This is a scurrilous collection of fabrications" in the opinion of the ODNB. Yonge had treated Peter for some illness in Wales, and Peter said he was angry at not receiving preferments as a result of this episode.

Info from
https://www.oxforddnb.com/display…

You don't need AI to get lies printed.

About Sunday 2 September 1660

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

On June 18, 1660, the regicide, Rev. Hugh Peter was excepted from the Act of Indemnity and he was apprehended on September 2 at Southwark.

Peters was one of the men from New England who returned home to England to participate in the Civil Wars on the side of Parliament. Downing and Vane were others.
This expression of defiance continued for generations.

In the meantime, to the Tower with him:
"Although technically not a regicide, Peter was exempt from royal pardon and was listed by parliament for revenge to be exacted for his prominent if largely unofficial role. His arrest was ordered on 7 June 1660, and he was caught on 31 August, reportedly betrayed by his servant. His daughter, by then aged 20, visited him daily in prison.
"A committee also visited him to investigate what had become of the contents of St. James's Palace.
"In a petition to the House of Lords Peter argued that due to the illness that kept him away from the execution he had had no hand in the king's death.
"While in prison, he wrote perhaps his best work, "A Dying Fathers Last Legacy to an Onely Child" (1660). It includes an autobiographical statement and denies the charge of sedition. 'Sedition is the heating of mans minds against the present Authority, in that I never was, yet sorry, Authority should have had any thoughts of me, or know so inconsiderable a creature as myself' (p. 111).
https://www.oxforddnb.com/display…

About Hugh Peters

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Hugh Peters was one of the men from New England who returned home to England to participate in the Civil Wars on the side of Parliament. Downing and Vane were others.

This expression of New England's sentiments continued for generations:
In 19th-century New England, defending Hugh Peter became a point of honor. The editor of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register fulminated:

"Mr. Peters perished by the hand of the mercenary murderer, but his memory should be safe in the hands of a faithful historian of New England … The cause of Peters was the cause of New England and he perished for doing more than many others had courage to do."

https://www.oxforddnb.com/display…

About Monday 10 June 1661

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... we lay in Sir R. Slingsby’s lodgings in the dining room there in one green bed, ..."

That nixes my idea that Slingsby had a mansion complete with bowling green/alley.

Beds were portable, so the Slingsby's could have had one stacked away in the attic for use like this -- put your guests in the diningroon.
I've seen an oval 17th century dining table which had a central stand, and the top would pivot so it could be neatly stored by the wall, taking up about a foot of space.
No, my husband wouldn't let me buy it -- our modern dining room was too small to have it opened up.

New theory: Slingsby was looking for larger quarters because of all their guests.

About Mr Mackworth

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Mackworth is an unusual name, but there was one representing Rutland in Parliament under James II.

Thomas Mackworth (1624-94)'s Parliamentary bio MIGHT give us some background on Pepys' Mackworth????:

"Mackworth’s ancestor, who took his name from a village in Derbyshire and sat for that county in 1408 and 1418, acquired Normanton by marriage early in the 15th century, but the family had never previously sat for Rutland.
[THOMAS] Mackworth, a nephew of the Cavalier general, Sir Ralph Hopton, was a Royalist in the Civil War, although still under age. ... One of his brothers was killed in Booth’s Rising, but he [THOMAS] took no known part in royalist conspiracy, although at the Restoration he signed the loyal address from Rutland.

"Mackworth was returned for his county at the first general election of 1679 ..."

Idea from
https://www.historyofparliamenton…

About Lionel Walden

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

Probably Lionel Walden MP and his son lost all their local offices, except those on the Bedford level corporation, after ‘the most miraculous, strange and memorable Revolution; since which there has appeared more violence than respect from the people in power to their memory’. [i.e. Under William and Mary]

A Jacobite sympathizer, Lionel Walden died on 23 Mar. 1698, and was buried at All Saints, Huntingdon.

Lionel Walden married Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Charles Balaam of Elm, Cambs., and had a son and 2 daughters. He was knighted on 29 Jan. 1673.

Excerpted from his Parliamentary bio
https://www.historyofparliamenton…