Monday 6 August 1660

Annotations

• N gerry on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 12:46am

  What a thought by Sam b eing a little impatient I have to think this is very much a man/woman thing in that women care whatever is going on but men just want to get the whole thing over. Plus ca change etc.

• N vincent on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 03:10am

  Tea and sympathy: At least He admits to himself that he had unkind thougths. I hope he took a little refreshment up a couple flights of stairs, before he went off (to make more money) to set the Bills straight : It so appears that he actually has two offices to work in, One at Seething lane “the navy” and the other at White Hall; He is a commuter now by “skulls” I guess, from the Tower to Palace. I wonder how long it takes him to traverse that distance.

• N chip on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 03:32am

  It sounds almost as if, if Montagu is in agreement, Pepys will sell the post for that 1000l. This must be when Montagu tells him it is not the salary but the post that is worth something. I wonder what he intends to do with it. Does he have an eye to business? Tailoring like his father? It is refreshing to glimpse Pepys’ honesty, at least with himself. It has happened to me at times. Some people just don’t appreciate infirmities. Elizabeth is probably in great discomfort (and probably privately blaming Pepys for it). And he, impatient for sexual healing….

• N Nix on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 04:18am

  A few months ago Samuel was happily living on L40 a year. If he could get L1,000 for the Clerk of the Acts post, and could invest it at 5%, he would have L50 a year — forever — and still have his Navy post and every other advantage he might accrue. A mighty tempting insurance policy.

• N David Bell on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 07:14am

  I think the question of investing L1000 would have been seen rather differently in those days. There were not the stable, and safe, financial markets in those days, especially not long term.

  What would have have invested in? About all that comes to mind is land, and that isn’t something where you just collect the money as landlord.

  I wonder if Montagu will explain some of this.
  

• N Mary on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 07:15am

  The investment of

• N fimm on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 08:36am

  “….not a little impatient.”
  I wonder if Pepys means he is impatient because he spent time getting her medicines and they don’t seem to be helping? Or is he impatient for her to get better? (As opposed to being impatient with her, if you follow the distinction.)

• N Mary on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 11:44am

  Impatient, OED sense 3
  ‘Uneasy or restless in desire or expectation’ attested from the 16th Century. Perhaps this is what Pepys means, as Fimm suggests.

• N Paul Brewster on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 12:11pm

  Just to clear up some potential confusion (see the Nix note above), his Clerk of the Acts job is his

• N J A Gioia on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 12:52pm

  Cromwell had proved far more tolerant of the Jewish community

  Puritans placed much greater emphasis on study of the Old Testament than did the churches of Rome and England. The pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Mass. dressed much like Hasidic Jews do today, both following the guide set down in Leviticus.

• N David A. Smith on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 02:48pm

  “which made my mouth water”
  I wondered when Mr. Man would resurface! Once again, Pepys is demonstrating his business acumen and his social realpolitik:

  1. If he takes the offer, he can (a) use it to buy property, which will give him a safe income (for no work!), and (b) go find another position, provided he retains Montagu’s favor. He will have been given an intangible asset, flipped it into a huge tangible profit, and be able to do it again. That would be a huge win. My mouth is watering right alongside his ….
  2. BUT Pepys understands that everything he has comes from Montagu, so he will not move without his benefactor’s blessing.
  3. Do we detect in Sam a whiff of suspicion that Mr. Man should be bidding against himself so anxiously? Is Man real? Does he have a hidden agenda? Is there downside for Sam in accepting? If anyone can sniff these out, Montagu can.

  So Sam takes the offer seriously, but before committing himself at all he protects his flank, flatters his patron, and gains valuable insight. Smart.
  

• N Laura Brown on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 07:10pm

  I’m not sure how true it is that ‘At this stage in English history, “investment” … was seen as very much a Jewish industry.’ There were no acknowledged Jews in Britain for nearly four centuries before Pepys’ day. Edward I expelled them in 1290, and Cromwell readmitted them in 1655.

  According to the Jewish Encyclopedia ( http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=895&letter=C ):

  ‘Cromwell favored readmission of the Jews into England, partly in the hope of thereby fulfilling the Messianic prophecy, but mainly because they had aided him as “intelligencers,” and he foresaw that, with their control of the Portuguese and Spanish trade, and their large commercial interests in the Levant, the Hamburg Bank, and the Dutch East and West Indies, they would be of service to him in his expansionist policy, and would bring wealth into the country.’

  I was wondering earlier if this should be in the background info. I don’t know how much contact Pepys had with the Jewish community, though.

• N Grahamt on Thu 7 Aug 2003, 10:17pm

  Re: Jewish Moneylenders:
  desite Laura’s comments about the lack of Jews in England, you only have to go back to Shakespeare and the “Merchant of Venice” or Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta” to see the prejudices current less than a hundred years before Pepys. I think Mary has a point: Usury (moneylending) was not seen as a genteel/gentile profession. This may have coloured Pepys’ (and Sandwich’s) opinions. We will see as the diary unfolds (but as it continues for 9 more years, I can guess that Samuel is not swayed!)

• N Laura Brown on Fri 8 Aug 2003, 12:22am

  I hope it isn’t too pedantic of me to point out that The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta are set in Venice and Malta, not in England.

  In the English imagination, Jews were undoubtedly still associated with moneylending (Jewish moneylenders are mentioned in the Magna Carta, which would have been a further reminder), but this is not the same as saying that moneylending was always associated with Jews.

  It was because moneylending was considered distasteful that the Jews became associated with it, not the other way round. From 1179 the Church forbade Christians to engage in moneylending. Jews were exempt from this law, and had few other ways to make a living.

  In 1275, 15 years before expelling the Jews, Edward I forbade them to engage in moneylending. By this time, according to the BBC History web site, he ‘had developed a new system of banking using Italian cash advances.’ ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/britain/mid_eng_jews.shtml )

  Henry VIII legalised moneylending in 1543 ( http://www.indiana.edu/~econed/pdffiles/fall98/Kish.pdf ), and as the Jews had been expelled, English moneylenders would all have been Gentiles for the next century or so.

• N Eunice Muir on Fri 8 Aug 2003, 12:56am

  Investing in Shipping was quite the thing in Pepy’s day. Although we would now consider it a risky investment, financing a voyage to the East Indies or the Americas was a way to make an investor very rich, provided the ship got back home. At that time they were turning a blind eye to privateers and other such borderline adventurers, as long as the ships brought home the goods.

• N Mary on Fri 8 Aug 2003, 06:13am

  Jews in England

  Whilst perfectly true that there were no acknowledged Jews in England for the four centuries to this date, there were small but significant numbers, especially in the eastern counties, who either concealed their Judaism under a cloak of Christian camouflage or whose presence was winked at because they had scholarly or practical skills (e.g. in medicine)to offer. Those who protested most at their presence were the merchant classes who felt financially threatened by them. (See Ludovici’s History of the Jews in England).

  Money-lending was not considered a ‘respectable’ occupation and it certainly wasn’t risk-free. Hence unlikely on both counts to be considered by Sam as a way of investing his putative