Tuesday 29 May 1660

Annotations

• N Grahamt on Thu 29 May 2003, 11:23pm

  “my Lord made a pretty good measure of it with two sticks”:
  Presumably using the method of similar triangles (geometry) rather than trigonometry, unless he had a set of trig tables in his pocket.
  This level of mathematical knowledge (from a politician!) seems amazing in our age when estimating the height of a cliff would generally involve a GPS receiver and several multi million pound/dollar satellites!

• N Paul Brewster on Thu 29 May 2003, 11:29pm

  but troubles me at the time of pissing
  per L&M; As a curiosity Wheatley’s editor(?) here uses 4 dots to form the elipsis not 3 as elsewhere.

• N Paul Brewster on Thu 29 May 2003, 11:35pm

  Making calculations of this sort was a favourite diversion of Mountagu’s
  per L&M footnote
  “Dugdale give the height of the tower as 260 ft … Evelyn used it as a measure of the height of a precipice in the Alps … The spire, taken down in 1561, had been an additional 274 ft.”

• N Paul Brewster on Thu 29 May 2003, 11:39pm

  Mr. Sheply

• N Glyn on Thu 29 May 2003, 11:56pm

  Paul: old-fashioned editors once used … in the middle of sentences and …. (as here) to show the end of a sentence, i.e. ellipsis (…) plus a full stop/period (.)

  To measure heights you obviously have to be below the object, so they must surely have been riding along the seashore between the cliffs and the sea, which is a nice image. My estimate is that the cliff would have been about the height of a 10-storey building (35 yards = 105 feet). I agree that geometry (similar triangles) was probably the method used - perhaps still taught to boy scouts to measure the height of trees, but I’ve forgotten how to do it.

• N Paul Brewster on Fri 30 May 2003, 12:09am

  we came upon a very high cliff by the sea-side
  L&M asserts that this is Kingsdown near Deal. I think this may be a picture of the place in question:
  http://www.kingsdown.net/images/Kingsdown%206.5.2002%20061.jpg

• N gerry on Fri 30 May 2003, 12:12am

  You can get a rough estimate of height, certainly good enough for their puposes using good old Pythagoras.
  I don’t think I’ve ever heared a hill’s height given in yards before.

• N Susanna on Fri 30 May 2003, 02:56am

  Divers Maidens, etc.

  These maids with their “white waistcoats and crimson petticoats” were probably a part of the celebration that met the King at Blackheath, which included “country swains, in a morris-dance with the old music and pipe.” Charles II, like his grandfather, James I, who had gotten a similar welcome to London in 1603, was apparently much amused. (Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, pp. 223-224)

• N Mary on Fri 30 May 2003, 07:36am

  The king’s birthday

  ref. the comments about delay in the annotations to 27th May, what more propitious day for the king to enter the city of London than his own birthday? This was surely part of the stage-management of the whole event.

  As for hills being measured in yards, people were measured that way too; hence the famous ‘Wanted’ notices for Charles when he was on the run in England after his father’s execution, describing him as ‘a man over two yards high.’

• N helena murphy on Fri 30 May 2003, 12:14pm

  A sound grounding in mathematics was essential for navigation, therefore, Montague’s knowledge is not at all surprising. Mathematics as a subject was then often neglected in schools, and many with seafaring ambitions had themselves taught by private tutors.

• N David A. Smith on Fri 30 May 2003, 03:59pm

  “the King do enter the city of London.”
  Echoing Mary’s point, our age thinks it invented the media event, but clearly we are now seeing the unrolling of a complicated pavane designed to make the King’s re-entry a triumphal coronation. The Restoration is to be won politically, not militarily, and to that end the King must appear regal, and pious, and sober, and beloved. So his entourage builds the suspense and lets the joyful words go before him.

  And Sam is still besotted with his station, and his company, and with being able to hold his own and then some (winning the bet). Remember, he’s only 26, and when Charles I was beheaded, he was a boy.
  

• N JonTom Kittredge on Fri 30 May 2003, 05:17pm

  St Paul’s, London
  I just realized that the S.P. is referring here, not to the Sir Christopher Wren dome we are so familiar with, but to the tower of old St Paul’s Cathedral, which will be destroyed in the fire in a very few years (oops, spoiler! :-) ).

• N PHE on Fri 30 May 2003, 09:21pm

  3 dots, 4 dots?
  I think I’m relieved Sam never had the opportunity to travel by train.

• N PHE on Fri 30 May 2003, 09:34pm

  Breathtaking
  Although I consider myself a scientist, I have never in my 38 years come across someone, or considered myself, using “two sticks” to measure the height of a cliff or any other high feature (though I never did join the scouts). Looking back 300 years from our age of scientific advancement, I find it breathtaking to see such ingenuity used in such a simple everyday situation. This is an excellent example of how Pepys forces us to reassess our view of our own posistion in historical and human progress.

• N oliverm on Fri 30 May 2003, 09:55pm

  “…my Lord made a pretty good measure of it [the height of the cliff] with two sticks…”

  anyone out there have an idea of how this was done? i don’t imagine they were carrying trig tables around with them in their backpacks!

• N Grahamt on Fri 30 May 2003, 10:06pm

  OK, Here’s how you calculate the height of a cliff using two sticks:
  You can’t use Pythagorus unless you know two of the sides of a triangle: not easy if you are at the bottom of a cliff.
  Take the longer stick, (length a) push into sand some way from bottom of cliff. Take shorter stick, (length b) walk backwards with bottom of stick dragging on sand, sighting along top of stick until top of both sticks align with top of cliff. Measure distance between sticks (x) and between short stick and cliff (y).
  Height of cliff is (y(a-b)/x) + a. In English, difference in length of sticks times distance from cliff, divided by distance between sticks, plus length of short stick. If one stick is one yard, the other two yards and you pace out the distances on the ground, in yards, then you naturally get the cliff height in yards.
  Montague wasn’t a sailor (he had to learn the names of ship parts like SP using models) so it is likely he knew this technque before he became a General at sea.
  You can also do it with one stick, but you get a sandy nose and wet knees!

• N Ed LeZottte on Fri 30 May 2003, 10:33pm

  Refresh my memory — are we talking “The Musgrave Ritual” here?

• N Grahamt on Fri 30 May 2003, 10:40pm

  An Example:
  Stick a = 2 yards (one arm span)
  stick b = one yard (nose to fingertips, half a span)
  stick a is stuck in sand, stick b is moved back and tops all align at 2 yards (paces) from stick a.
  Pacing out, b is 68 paces from bottom of cliff. Height of cliff is thus (68 x (2 - 1)/2) + 1 = (68/2) + 1 = 34 + 1 = 35 yards.

• N Nix on Sat 31 May 2003, 12:09am

  “The Musgrave Ritual” —

  From re-reading it, the method sounds similar but not identical.

  The crux of the story, however, is very fitting for this venue (I won’t be a spoiler, but anyone who is curious can read it yourself).

  
  http://www.bakerstreet221b.de/canon/musg.htm

• N David Bell on Sat 31 May 2003, 09:57am

  If you could get far enough back, you could get a rough measure with one stick.

  Your outstretched arm holding the stick is one measure. You hold the stick so that it has the same effective length, align your fist with the base of the cliff and move back until the upper end of the stick aligns with the top.

  The distance to the foot of the cliff is then the height.

  Using a second stick as the horizontal arm would let you set up a different ratio than a simple 1:1 and so you wouldn’t need so much room at the base of the cliff.

  It may be that Montagu has picked up this sort of measurement, however he actually did it, as a soldier. It’s the sort of thing gunners and engineers need to know how to do.

  It’s useful knowing how long a scaling ladder needs to be.
  

• N Grahamt on Sat 31 May 2003, 04:59pm

  I was hoping somebody would bring up measuring shadows, as in “The Musgrave Ritual” :-)
  There is a very good reason this wouldn’t work with the cliffs of Dover: They are south-facing and in May the sun rises in the south-east, is in the south at midday and sets in the south west, so the cliffs never cast a shadow on the beach. Sherlock Holmes is not as smart as Montague.

• N vincent on Sun 1 Jun 2003, 09:35pm

  “Rule of Thumb” or “eye balling ” Me olde serge did tell me: Make a fist, cock ye thumb up, guestimate the height of sumert likes a man, he be say 6ft(12 1/2 in), it being same size as the nail, then he be 120 yds(144 paces) away, if he be from the top of nail to the first line then he be 60 yds away: and he if be the size of the thumb you fire:
  To calibrate ones nail, you use an ‘apeney (halfpenny = 1”) nail (chewed) =1/2 penny (1/2inch) thumb:from nose to cocked thumb be 30”(1 pace) . Of course this was before the days of slide rules etc. May be some one from the Chelsea remembers the correct rule: sumert like that?

• N Dave on Mon 2 Jun 2003, 06:37pm

  I wander if the Morris Dance called ‘the 29th of May’ from the village of Headington is named after this event?

• N Glyn on Mon 2 Jun 2003, 08:56pm

  What a fascinating idea, that that particular Morris Dance was named after Charles’ birthday, and perhaps danced in front of him. I hope it’s true.

  “For which I did give twenty shillings among them to drink.”

  So suddenly, Samuel Pepys is giving a lot of money away to drunken strangers who he will never meet again. He’d better not let his wife find out: for comparison, 20 shillings would pay their maid’s wages for four whole months.

• N Nix on Mon 2 Jun 2003, 09:40pm

  The 29th of May —

  As we learn in the June 1 entry, Parliament made this a holiday, so it seems likely that the dance is named for the King’s birthday, or for Restoration Day or whatever it might have been called. Presumably the observance will cease 1688.

• N Todd Bernhardt on Mon 2 Jun 2003, 11:54pm

  re: 20 shillings to drink

  Glyn, I can’t say for sure, but I’d wager that the money Sam gives away is probably not his own. Maybe Montagu is so pleased by the firing of guns by the townspeople that he asked Pepys to “give them a little something for their trouble” out of the money they’d brought ashore (which Sam may have been holding) to cover any expenses while there…?

• N Naomi on Tue 3 Jun 2003, 12:20am

  The 29th of May is known as Oak Apple Day in honour of the restoration of Charles II. Details are given at http://englishculture.allinfoabout.com/features/oak-apple.html , although this page incorrectly refers to the day as being Charles’ coronation day rather than the date of his restoration. I knew it as Oak Apple Day when I was growing up in Wiltshire in the 1950s.

• N Nix on Tue 3 Jun 2003, 12:41am

  Thanks for the link, Naomi:

  “The wearing of a sprig of oak on the anniversary of Charles’ crowning showed that a person was loyal to the restored king. Those who refused to wear an oak-sprig were often set upon, and children would challenge others to show their sprig or have their bottoms pinched. Consequently, this day became known as Pinch-Bum-Day. In parts of England where oak-apples are known as shick-shacks, the day is also known as Shick-Shack Day.”

  Pinch-Bum Day. Beautiful.

• N Pauline on Tue 15 Jul 2003, 02:51pm

  The King is 30 years old this day

• N vincent on Sun 14 Mar 2004, 05:24am

  re hash

• N Stephen Middleton on Mon 14 Apr 2008, 10:18am

  GrahamT At the end of May the sun rises closer to NORTH-east not South-east and sets near NORTH-west not South-west. Around mid-winter day the sun would rise near the South-east and set near the South-west. At all times of year the sun is in the South when it reaches its highest point.

• N GrahamT on Tue 15 Apr 2008, 10:51am

  Stephen,
  As the sun is over the Tropic of Cancer in midsummer (and close to it at the end of May) and the Tropic of Capricorn in midwinter, both of which are considerably far south of the most southern part of Britain, it can never appear in the northern sky, whatever time of day.
  Between the Tropics the sun can appear in either the northern or southern skies, but nowhere else. Britain is NOT Tropical!