Wednesday 27 June 1660

Annotations

• N Eric Walla on Fri 27 Jun 2003, 11:18pm

  Do we have previous dealings …

  … with Mr Symons, the surgeon? I’d love to hear the background history that leads Sam to delight in his suffering.

  I can just see Sam standing in the dark of his chamber letting loose in song! A fine image.

• N Eric Walla on Fri 27 Jun 2003, 11:19pm

  Or does “not a little pleased” mean the opposite of my reading?

• N Tim Bray on Sat 28 Jun 2003, 12:00am

  Did Sam retain his 350l salary, so is this a 10% raise? The footnote leaves me a bit puzzled as to why this was such good news.

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 28 Jun 2003, 02:52am

  he was likely to lose his estate that he had bought
  The L&M footnote gives only the briefest of hints, “The estate had been confiscated from the church.” It then points forward in time (23 August 1660) to another discussion of the loss of a church estate. But in August the diary passage refers to W. Symons and not Mr. Symons, the Chyurgeon. On this date, the footnote discusses W. Symons’s relationship with his uncle, Henry Scobell. Apparently Scobell was responsible for the sale of the land of deans and chapters during the Commonwealth Parliament. In 1660, Scobell died and passed on some of this property to W. Symons and now the restoration was doing its job of restoring the property to its original owner.

  The L&M companion clearly differentiates between Thomas? Symons, the medical man attached to Montagu’s Regiment having their party at the Swan, and Will Symons, the clerk who had the useful uncle. My only conjecture is that although there is no mention in L&M, they’re somehow related and both profited (?) from this same Uncle’s ill-starred position.

  This doesn

• N chip on Sat 28 Jun 2003, 04:16am

  What is also noteworthy is SP’s honesty about his schadenfreude. His noticing the difference in resonance without the bed (and I assume its harmonics sucking mattress) prove that his ears were astute. But did he sing or play his flute?

• N vincent on Sat 28 Jun 2003, 04:29am

  “to lose his estate that he had bought, at which I was not a little pleased” my reading is Symons got the estate for a “song” (left in a will?), he having good connections, and our SP is quite “chuffed ” that he will lose it, whose property was it, before being taken over by the old regime? was really the churches? Or was it the Deans’? Is the Dean, is or was known by SP ? Did SP like this Character? Symons may not be SP’s favourite drinking companion?

• N Paul Chapin on Sat 28 Jun 2003, 05:10am

  Sam’s salary
  Re Tim Bray’s question, I interpret the footnote as follows. The post had a statutory salary established a century earlier, which was way too low by Sam’s time. So they in fact had already told Sam that the salary would be 350l. The 33l+ figure was official but not real.

  If this is right, and Sam knew he would shortly be receiving 350l per annum, it would explain why the offer of 500l to pass up the appointment wouldn’t be all that tempting.

• N Paul Brewster on Sat 28 Jun 2003, 12:59pm

  Sam

• N anthony on Sat 28 Jun 2003, 01:13pm

  Like Eric and Chip, I was amused by Sam’s appreciation of the altered acoustic in his chamber; I recall on the way to Cambridge some months previously he had played his flute in a cellar and remarked on room’s echo. Verily a Stuart Phil Spector …

• N Pauline on Mon 30 Jun 2003, 07:39am

  “So back again, and after a song or two in my chamber in the dark…”
  I am assuming Sam went back to Montagu’s lodgings in Whitehall and up to his old room in the garret. After a song or two, he goes “home” to where the bed now resides.

  So not only revealing about his feeling for music but in that he takes a quiet interlude in these days of rapid advancement and change to go up to the old chamber where he began his career (and his marriage) and plays/sings in the dark.

• N Glyn on Wed 16 Jul 2003, 04:42pm

  The Swan, at Dowgate, a poor house and ill dressed, but very good fish and plenty.

  Sam should have been a restaurant guide - what more would you require in a concise review. Of course, it’s right next to the river, so there would have been fresh fish a plenty.

  The Swan is thought to have been located on the west side of Dowgate Hill and immediately north of the church of St John the Baptist - just south of what is now Cannon Street.

  Like a lot of the places Sam visits, it was a celebrated Elizabethan tavern that was at least 100 years old. At this point in time it was owned by a Thomas Cox, who held it from 1638 to 1661.

  It’s known that he was promoted to Captain, then Major, then to Lieutenant-Colonel during the early years of the Civil War. I presume from this that he had fought on the Parliamentarian side (because London was strongly Parliamentarian), and that he was quite rich (because important officers had to bankroll their own troops).