Tuesday 2 February 1663/64
Up and to the office, where, though Candlemas day, Mr. Coventry and Sir W. Pen and I all the morning, the others being at a survey at Deptford. At noon by coach to the ’Change with Mr. Coventry, thence to the Coffee-house with Captain Cocke, who discoursed well of the good effects in some kind of a Dutch warr and conquest (which I did not consider before, but the contrary) that is, that the trade of the world is too little for us two, therefore one must down: 2ndly, that though our merchants will not be the better husbands by all this, yet our wool will bear a better price by vaunting of our cloths, and by that our tenants will be better able to pay rents, and our lands will be more worth, and all our owne manufactures, which now the Dutch outvie us in; that he thinks the Dutch are not in so good a condition as heretofore because of want of men always, and now from the warrs against the Turke more than ever.
Then to the ’Change again, and thence off to the Sun Taverne with Sir W. Warren, and with him discoursed long, and had good advice, and hints from him, and among other things he did give me a payre of gloves for my wife wrapt up in paper, which I would not open, feeling it hard; but did tell him that my wife should thank him, and so went on in discourse. When I came home, Lord! in what pain I was to get my wife out of the room without bidding her go, that I might see what these gloves were; and, by and by, she being gone, it proves a payre of white gloves for her and forty pieces in good gold, which did so cheer my heart, that I could eat no victuals almost for dinner for joy to think how God do bless us every day more and more, and more yet I hope he will upon the increase of my duty and endeavours. I was at great losse what to do, whether tell my wife of it or no, which I could hardly forbear, but yet I did and will think of it first before I do, for fear of making her think me to be in a better condition, or in a better way of getting money, than yet I am.
After dinner to the office, where doing infinite of business till past 10 at night to the comfort of my mind, and so home with joy to supper and to bed.
This evening Mr. Hempson came and told me how Sir W, Batten his master will not hear of continuing him in his employment as Clerk of the Survey at Chatham, from whence of a sudden he has removed him without any new or extraordinary cause, and I believe (as he himself do in part write, and J. Norman do confess) for nothing but for that he was twice with me the other day and did not wait upon him. So much he fears me and all that have to do with me. Of this more in the Mem. Book of my office upon this day, there I shall find it.
26 Annotations
First Reading
Eric Walla • Link
Oooh, Mister Pepys! And we thought you were already rolling in it! Keep this up a short while longer and you'll top that all-important £1000 figure. Then it'll be, "Oath? What oath?"
Michael Robinson • Link
the trade of the world is too little for us two
Good solid mercantilist and rentier sentiments here. The classic English exposition, though written earlier, is:-
Englands Treasure by Forraign Trade. or The Ballance of our
Forraign Trade is The Rule of our TreasureWritten by Thomas Mun of Lond. Merchant, and now published for the Common good by his son John Mun of Bearsted in the County of
Kent, Esquire.
London: Printed by J.G. for Thomas Clark, and are to be sold at his Shop at the South entrance of the Royal Exchange, 1664
http://www.ecn.bris.ac.uk/het/mun…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merc…
cumgranosalis • Link
Oh! wot a luverly lead in:"... in what pain I was to get my wife out of the room without bidding her go. ... ..."
cumgranosalis • Link
Twas for Bess? "...a payre of white gloves for her and forty pieces in good gold, which did so cheer my heart..."
forty pieces worth minimum of 10 shillings, if they be angels or ducats but a guess be, these be newly struck guineas all nice an shiney like , worth all of 50 Quid.
5 years passed, that would keep Sam out of 'ock for two years.
In Dollar land 40 ozs of troy gold be 26,000 Dollars or
2 years earnings for thems that pick up household trash, but if these coins be found now and put up for marlet then .... the 'hym marl li ars' be not hi enough.
Michael Robinson • Link
Cabaret Time ...
For money makes the world go around, the world go around,
the world go around.
Money makes the world go around,
the clinking, clanking sound
of Money, money, money, money,
Money, money, money, money,
Get a little, get a little,
Money, money, money, money,
Mark, a yen, a buck or a pound,
That clinking, clanking clunking sound
is all that makes the world go round,
It makes the world go round.
http://www.ocap.ca/songs/moneymon…
List of songs about money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List…
Xjy • Link
"forty pieces in good gold, which did so cheer my heart, that I could eat no victuals almost for dinner for joy to think how God do bless us every day more and more"
Golden fist in a soft white glove... This is a very telling illustration of "the furies of private interest" (Marx) at work.
Smile up to his ears, lips drooling, eyes glinting, hands rubbing away... And no daughter competing with his ducats - just the old lady...
Wonder what present he'll have for Ms Lane next time he needs to soften his sole...
Robert Gertz • Link
"...Captain Cocke, who discoursed well of the good effects in some kind of a Dutch warr and conquest (which I did not consider before, but the contrary..."
Best to actually do the 'conquest', Cap't before beginning the victory parade. Though I've no doubt you'll shock and awe them.
Robert Gertz • Link
"...that he thinks the Dutch are not in so good a condition as heretofore because of want of men always, and now from the warrs against the Turke more than ever."
Right, lets stab our fellow Christians in the back while they're busy defending against the common enemy.
Pedro • Link
"forty pieces in good gold, which did
so cheer my heart,"
I wonder how Sam would feel if it were thirty pieces of silver?
Robert Gertz • Link
"...whether tell my wife of it or no, which I could hardly forbear..."
Generous impulse...Though mixed with vanity,certainly ("look what I did, Bess")...Stifled...
Bad decision, Sam.
Say, since you're so eager to show off your fortune why not show the pieces to Coventry? He'd surely be impressed...
"Bess?...Bess, look here!"
"Sam'l? Where did all this come from?"
"I've sold myself for 40 gold pieces to Sir William Warren, Bess! Isn't it simply wonderful?!"
Pedro • Link
"Right, lets stab our fellow Christians in the back."
This seems to suggest that it is just not cricket for us wicked English to take advantage of a fellow Christian. But are not Catholics Christian as well? Have not the Dutch stabbed the Portuguese in the back and pinched all their trade?
History seems full of people stabbing other people in the back. The Spaniards and the Portuguese and others have stabbed many natives, and the Dutch East India Company has many skeletons in its cupboard.
This problem is about trade and money. English envy against Dutch greed, and when two of the Deadly Sins meet then all Hell could break loose!
language hat • Link
forty pieces
The Companion glossary says the piece was a coin worth 20 shillings (later 22).
Robert Gertz • Link
Not cricket for anyone, Pedro...That everyone, including my own dear leader (lets destroy their country then make huge profits rebuilding it), does it doesn't make it right. My main interest was that our boy didn't seem to find anything odd about attacking a fellow Christian nation when it's been weakened holding off a common foe. Especially a nation that's been kind both to England's religious refugees and its exiled king.
As for Dutch foreign policy or treatment of natives it's been no less vicious. It just would be nice to find Sam or others having reservations about an attack based on no cause other than to raise the price of wool and grab someone else's trade.
ruizhe • Link
Common enemy? I doubt that many Englishmen would have been uphappier if Rome had been taken over and ruled by Musselmen than Papists at that time.
Sam's just thinking like a modern geopoliticist. Did the (overwhelmingly Christian) members of NATO allow religion to factor in when they decided to support the Bosnian Muslims and Muslim Kosovars against the Christian Serbs back in the day?
Stab away, I say! Stab! Stab! Stab! (though where would the Dutch be engaging the Turke?)
Gerry • Link
You can hardly blame the English for disliking Catholics, it is less than a hundred years since the papal bull regnans in excesis had effectively said it was no sin to assassinate Elizabeth 1.
Robert Gertz • Link
"Did the (overwhelmingly Christian) members of NATO allow religion to factor in when they decided to support the Bosnian Muslims and Muslim Kosovars against the Christian Serbs back in the day?"
Seeing as there was little to gain by supporting the Bosnians, most folks like to feel it symbolized an advance in political relations...Supporting the ethnically cleansed against the cleansers however too late in the day it was. In Sam's day religion would have played a bigger role and he's indicated some fear of the Turk as the "enemy superpower" threatening all in past entries. His father-in-law, a staunch Protestant, has supposedly gone off to join the common fight...And earn some means of living, of course.
Robert Gertz • Link
Interesting to speculate if the Dutch had been victorious and driven the English out of India... Holland probably would have fallen prey to a France even more eager to have her and with England so weakened overseas (no Indian army) France would have perhaps become the dominant superpower...
But then if Stilicho hadn't pulled the legions off the Rhine we might all be speaking Latin, so God knows...
cumgranosalis • Link
War has no conscience:
e.g. Christmas Day 1914, the men in the trenches played soccer and prayed to-gether in no mans land, fully concious of God be on their side, inspite or was it despite for this respite in war of the HAVES needing to satisfy the insultsthat they suffered.
The olde saying [ wonder how old that be] all is fare[sic] in love and war.
Pedro • Link
Meanwhile back in the Seventeenth Century.
If you are interested in the causes of the coming Anglo-Dutch war I think you have to look back to before the First Dutch War (1652-1654). Antonia Fraser in her book King Charles II says...
"...in the middle of the seventeenth century the English glared across the Channel at their Dutch neighbours as a dog surveys a rival dog across the way, And like quarrelling dogs, the two countries could not resist from time to time having a go at each other."
At the start of today's annotations Michael alerts to...
"Forraign Trade is The Rule of our Treasure Written by Thomas Mun", published in 1664, although he died in 1641.
http://www.ecn.bris.ac.uk/het/mun…
"More might be written of these Nethelanders pride and
ambitious endeavours, whereby they hope in time to grow mighty,
if they be not prevented, and much more may be said of their
cruel and unjust violence used (expecially to their best friends,
the English) in matters of bloud, trade, and other profits, where
they have had advantages and power to perform it:"
This gives an idea of the English thinking on trade and how the Dutch are perceived. Whether right or wrong this feeling has festered, and one of them wants to be top dog.
Pedro • Link
"the Dutch are not in so good a condition as heretofore because of want of men always, and now from the warrs against the Turke more than ever."
Perhaps the Dutch had sent forces to help the Austrians...
1663-1664 Imperial War against Turks
Following unrest in Transylvania, the Ottoman Empire declared war on the Emperor; Ottoman forces took Neuhäusel fortress Sept. 26th. The invaders were supported by the Hungarian nobility and by the French. A Reichstag was convened at Regensburg, which was not dissolved until 1806 (EVERLASTING REICHSTAG).Brandenburg, Saxony, Bavaria, and the (French-orchestrated) Confederation of the Rhine sent troop contingents to support the Emperor. On August 1st 1664, the Imperial troops under RAIMUND VON MONTECUCCOLI decisively defeated the Ottomans at St. Gotthard on the Raab; on August 10th 1664 peace was signed at Varvar. The treaty was not favourable for Austria, as French diplomacy was undermining Imperial unity.
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/military…
cumgranosalis • Link
How quickly one forgets being impecunious.
Samuell read thy Diary, to the time thee is looking in they pocket that be under thy tunic to come up with funds to pay thy tab at the coffee house.
"...to-morrow I must pay all the money that I have, at which I was put to a great loss how I should get money to make up my cash, and so went to bed in great trouble...."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive…
Coffee houses did more than wet ones whistle, The caffeine and sugar helped to change the world along with all the strange fruits and spices, in activating discourse and discussing the latest blurbs on life, there be no divertions of the modern era to blunt arguing the pros and cons of flat earth et al, and the meaning of the anima.
Pedro • Link
John Evelyn's resevations concerning the forthcoming war.
Evelyn had wrote the following probably about the middle of 1664, as skirmishes in various parts of the world were taking place and he, like many others, saw the inevitability of declared war.
(From John Evelyn, Living for Ingenuity, by Gillian Darley.)
Evelyn had grave misgivings about war with the Dutch a nation that he particularly admired. As usual at times of stress he composed a prayer.
"Lord I have long desired of thee that thou would choose my Employment, furnish out my person and render me useful in something that might please thee." He asked for Divine blessing with his responsibilities in "this unhappy war with our neighbours" and hoped to carry out his duties "with integrity, as to his Majesties trust, and with Charity and Tenderness as to thine; that having obtained the grace and the anyways helpful to those in distress, I be remembered for Good."
Finally he prayed for the victims and relatives and, above all, an end to the war.
Michiel van der Leeuw • Link
"the Dutch are not in so good a condition as heretofore because of want of men always, and now from the warrs against the Turke more than ever."
I don't think this actually means that the Dutch were busy fighting the Turks -they didn't- but that lots of German mercenary troops were involved in Turkish war. The Dutch army was highly dependent on german mercenary regiments, so when there are less troops available, the Dutch will be weakened.
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
"the trade of the world is too little for us two"
It was a common idea that the total amount of trade in the world was a fixed quantity. (L&M footnote)
Whether that's mercantilism you can judge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mer…
Terry Foreman • Link
"Mr. Hempson came and told me how Sir W, Batten his master will not hear of continuing him in his employment as Clerk of the Survey at Chatham, from whence of a sudden he has removed him without any new or extraordinary cause"
According to Commissioner Pett, Hempson was dismissed because of his repeated absences: CSPD 1663-4, p. 449. (L&M footnote)
Terry Foreman • Link
"Of this more in the Mem. Book of my office upon this day, there I shall find it."
? Navy White Book, p. 11 (or later copied into it: see
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… (Per L&M footnote)