Tuesday 28 August 1660

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• - Laura Brown on Thu 28 Aug 2003, 11:20pm. Flag this

  ‘Some scale in music’

  What instrument was Mrs Pepys learning, I wonder?

• - Tim Bray on Thu 28 Aug 2003, 11:49pm. Flag this

  I wonder what the work is at the Privy Seal of which there is much some days, little others?

• - melinda trapelo on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 01:48am

  “Some scale in music”
  I think she’s learning what we would now call “Music Theory;” how to read music and how to sing from printed music by applying knowledge of the intervals, &c.

• - chip on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 02:32am. Flag this

  L&M have skill in Musique, not scale. It is possible they are singing, but I think I remember Pepys getting his lute back recently. Perhaps he is playing the scales to limber up his rusty fingers and she starts to hum along. Adrian Scroope was one of the regicides say L&M. The Commons. on 9 June and 13 August, had allowed him the benefit of the Act, since he had surrendered; but the Lords had voted otherwise, and on this day the lower house concurred. It was the large number of debates about the application of the bill to particular cases which had delayed its passage. Pepys gets another 80L. He is well above is 3 quid daily. Yet he still worries about the half crown stolen.

• - Graups on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 02:48am. Flag this

  A thief in the house? I think I would worry if I were bringing in large amounts of money into my house, where I was afraid that someone was stealing froom me.

• - Paul Brewster on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 02:58am. Flag this

  my poor mother had these two days been very ill
  L&M substitute “these” for “then”. It seems to sound less forced. The shorthand would have been quite different with “these” as a sans-serif “P” and “then” as a left angle bracket (<).

• - S. Spoelstra on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 10:13am. Flag this

  On Colonel Scroope

  “At the Restoration, the House of Commons voted to pardon him under the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, but the House of Lords demanded that he be brought to trial. He was condemned to death when Richard Browne, a former Major-General, testified that Scroope had justified Charles I’s execution to him even after Charles II’s return.”

  ( http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/regicides4.htm )

• - Paul Brewster on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 02:25pm. Flag this

  I wonder what the work is at the Privy Seal of which there is much some days, little others?
  This quote from the diary, “so away to the Privy Seale, where, the King being out of Towne, we have had nothing to do these two days”, on 23rd August 1660 may help answer the question. L&M footnote the entry as “Privy Seal warrants were made out only on the authority of ‘King’s bills’ issued, under the sign manual, from the Signet Office.” We’ll hear more about this on the 27th of November when SP will write “This day I do also hear that the Queen’s going to France is stopt, which do like, me well, because then the King will be in town the next month, which is my month again at the Privy Seal.” The OED defines the “sign-manual” as “An autograph signature (esp. that of the sovereign) serving to authenticate a document.”
  So I think that at least a part of the problem is the age-old situation: if the boss is out of town …
  

• - Peter on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 07:41pm. Flag this

  I very nearly missed the significance of today’s half crown by not clicking on the link to “his son” and finding out that the stolen half crown was vouchsafed to Sam to pass on to none other than Elizier Jenkins, “Ely” from yesterday’s entry.

  When I read yesterday’s entry, I found Sam’s act of kindness to Ely quite touching. Sam presents it as a reaction to Ely being about to cry when he finds there is no job for him there with Sam. However, this now suggests other things were going on. Ely turned up and Sam presumably went to look for the letter and half crown that Mr Jenkins had given him last week and obviously could not find it. I am now left wondering if this is the real reason why Sam gave him the half crown. The fact that Sam makes amends in his way shows that he will do the right thing, but somehow it is just a bit less ‘saintly’ than it comes across in yesterday’s entry. Maybe I’m reading the situation wrongly, but I find this fascinating. As it is, poor young Ely should, in theory, have walked off with a full 5 bob, instead of which he only has half of that amount. How did Ely answer, I wonder, when his dad asked him if Mr Pepys had passed on the half crown he left with him? In any event, yesterday’s and today’s half crowns have to be connected because they both relate to Ely, but I wonder why Sam doesn’t make the connection a bit more explicit.
  

• - David A. Smith on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 08:46pm. Flag this

  “half a crown in it to send to his son”
  Peter, you’re definitely on to something: Sam went looking for the letter and either could not find it, or more damning, found it and that it referenced a half-crown that was, in fact, missing. (Perhaps ‘my boy Will’ was illiterate and didn’t realize that his theft would be discovered.) So Sam makes good, feeling guilty on two levels: not only can’t he offer a job, but he barely dodged failing a trust by allowing the half-crown to be filched. (In both cases it was half a crown: 2/6.) Now Sam is troubled to discover that he is mortally sure Will is a thief. I expect Will to disappear shortly and Sam to second-guess himself afterwards.

• - vincent on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 10:01pm. Flag this

  2/6 sounds now so small but back in the fifties one could get 10 ice creams or 10 bars of Cadbury’s milk chocolate bar (Walls or joe Lyons) or 3 seats at the movies and and a Ice cream or go deluxe and have a deluxe seat at the Flicks, or at the local have 3pts black and tans or a small whiskey. Oh! well sweet memories

• - Brian G McMullen on Fri 29 Aug 2003, 10:32pm. Flag this

  I find today’s half-crown comment in dispute with yesterday’s comment. Could this be due to SP writing the diary out of chronological order? Could it be that yesterday’s comment was in ‘real time’ and that today’s comment was ‘fill in’ a few days hence? Oh, well, I’ll need to wait until tomorrow for a better sense of today!

• - Pauline on Sat 30 Aug 2003, 02:43am

  Was Sam cooly passing along Ely’s dad’s half-crown and intending to repay himself with the half-crown Ely’s dad had sent Ely? Is there a parallel between Will’s putative illiteracy and therefore not knowing that the letter said something like “herein do lie one half-crown” and Sam’s putative intention to get Ely to think the half-crown was from him and that Ely’s father would never say “did you get the half-crown I sent you via Sam, son?”

  For me the latter cancels out the former.

• - vincent on Mon 1 Sep 2003, 08:06pm. Flag this

  “To bed, a little troubled that I fear my boy Will1 is a thief and has stole some money of mine, particularly a letter that Mr. Jenkins did leave the last week with me with half a crown in it to send to his son.”

  then from diary Monday 9 January 1659/60
  “…For these two or three days I have been much troubled with thoughts how to get money to pay them that I have borrowed money of, by reason of my money being in my uncle’s hands….”
  …?…?