Monday 18 June 1660

Annotations

• N Paul Brewster on Wed 18 Jun 2003, 11:24pm

  where at Trinity House we had great entertainment.
  L&M point out that this was “Trinity Monday when the corporation met to elect its officers for the year.

• N JonTom Kittredge on Wed 18 Jun 2003, 11:51pm

  Lonely all Night
  We come now apparently to the end of the period (mentioned in annotations for June 9th) when Pepys didn’t write out his entries in detail and included only rough notes. Now that he is writing more fully, he mentions Mrs. Pepys and how much he misses her. Perhaps it’s her very absence, i.e.feeling at loose ends, that leads him to resume his diary more fully.

  The speculation on the cause of his lack of mention of his wife in the preceding entries reminds me that it is always iffy to argue from absence of evidence when it comes to history, where our evidence is always incomplete. Perhaps Mr Pepys has indeed been peeved at, or even indifferent to, Mrs Pepys since he returned from sea, and only today discovered what she means to him. Who knows? In my experience, though, people have a way not behaving as we think they should. I wouldn’t be too certain of a conclusion like “if he really loved his wife, he would have mentioned her.”

• N Nix on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 12:26am

  “This day they made an end of the twenty men to be excepted from pardon to their estates.”

  Can anyone parse this? I understand that the general pardon is exempting 20 men — but what does he mean, they “made an end” of them? And what does “to their estates” mean in this context?

  ***

  Samuel’s condescension toward his brother-in-law is interesting, considering how recently he came to his own good fortune through the good offices of a relative. Of course, Balty is a mere in-law, not blood — and French, to boot!

• N Roger Miller on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 12:59am

  This is a page about the numbers involved at various stages in the trial and execution of Charles I: http://www.axtellfamily.org/axfamous/regicide/RegicideNumber.htm

  Here is a description of a pardon given to Montagu’s brother-in-law Sir Gilbert Pickering.

  http://www.pitts.emory.edu/Archives/text/mss109.html

  Montagu ‘influenced Pickering’s removal from the list of Cromwellian supporters who would be punished by the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion (1660)’

• N Pauline on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 01:10am

  Perhaps it

• N vincent on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 03:21am

  What we do not put down, is usually the obvious standard day to day routine, to the chronicier: It is so difficult to recognise that the Reader may not have the same set of experinces and could be interested in how we sipped the soup? (fingers or spoon or straight from the saucer).What is standard faire to “ME ” should be the same for thou, n’est pas: why is it? you do not read my mind ?
  Balty, The way I sense it, is one of those brats that expects all and gives nowt: ‘Tis the story of many brothers in laws of literature:

• N Paul Chapin on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 03:28am

  that may not stain his family …
  Are we to interpret this as written, meaning (I suppose) something like a blot on the escutcheon, or is this an alternate or archaic (or just misspelled) form of “sustain”, which would seem to make more sense in the context? Does anyone know, or have access to a relevant reference?

• N Alan Bedford on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 03:41am

  “…that may not stain his family …” i.e., that would not reflect badly on his family’s social position. Balty appears to be looking for a prestigious position at a time when he should be willing to take pretty much anything he can get; as Sam says, “God help him, he wants bread.”

• N chip on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 03:42am

  Yes Pauline, I buy into your idea. Of course he’s been with her, that explains the curtness of the entry the night he got back and the use of the rough script these last weeks. He’s been making up for time lost….it is a pleasure to get to know Sam. Thanks to all you annotators who make the detective work so much easier.

• N Mary on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 06:33am

  …. that may not stain his family

  L&M Companion has a long entry on Balty (too long to quote here) which chooses Ollard’s description of him as ‘an absurd, posturing, melodramatic egotist’ as its keynote quotation. The St. Michels had no social (or financial) position in England, but claimed descent from (minor) French nobility and plainly felt that more was due to them than they ever achieved

• N Matthew on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 01:51pm

  “A place for a gentleman”
  It may be worth mentioning that the term “gentleman” had a more restricted meaning in those days. A full history of the word (up to 1911) is given at:
  http://1911encyclopedia.org/G/GE/GENTLEMAN.htm

• N Jenny Doughty on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 02:56pm

  ‘I perceive he stands upon a place for a gentleman, that may not stain his family when, God help him, he wants bread.’ I read this as Balty insisting on a place suitable for what he perceives his position in the world to be (a ‘gentleman’) when as Sam sees it he should be willing to take anything he can get in order to have money with which to support himself. I’ve known some young adults like this…

• N tamara on Thu 19 Jun 2003, 03:44pm

  I’m reading Claire Tomalin’s biography and her very first mention of Sam’s brother-in-law Balthasar (Balty) says that “he had been reared to give himself the airs of a gentleman, with no resources to back them.” So far (I’m still in the years before Sam starts keeping the diary) Balty sounds like a ne’er-do-well pain in the ass. Although apparently his parents were probably partly responsible for this—they seem charming but impractical and were evidently always broke and on the move.

• N Yonmei on Fri 20 Jun 2003, 07:53am

  Remember that “gentleman” was a precise and restrictive caste in those days. Being a gentleman meant potential access to far greater rewards. Taking a job that was below-caste, while not as damaging for a man as it would be for a woman, was still a serious point. It’s not like today when having done a stint of minimum-wage labour would hardly reflect badly on you in later life: in Pepys’ time, it was something that potentially could even be blackmail material, assuming that Balty rose later on: for possible consequences, don’t think McDonalds: think rather of a young person refusing to work as a prostitute, in a country where it’s perfectly legal to do so, even though s/he needs the money, on the grounds that such work is degrading.