Friday 30 November 1660

Annotations

• N Alan Bedford on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 12:42am

  Sam seems concerned that Holland’s scheme will cost him and the Principal Officers some power and/or money. Anyone have any specific insight into Holland’s proposal?

• N john lauer on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 02:44am

  It will be covered on the 3rd and 4th.

• N David A. Smith on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 12:21pm

  “interest to all men … at eight per cent., for so long as they are unpaid”
  Welcome to deficit spending; the government is recapitalizing a liability into a loan, being sold by the government as a scrip for a debt. The rate is (intentionally) exorbitant (for the times) and is intended to assuage the army and also to get a lot of soldiers happily to sign up for it. I expect most of them will grab it and ease the government’s cash flow problem. Clever Charles II!

• N Harry on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 12:22pm

  I DO feel perplexed by the way SP handles his verbs:

  Sir G. Carteret DID give us an account…
  Mr. Holland DO intend to prevail…
  whereby he DO think…

  However:
  I CAUSED one of them and some wine to be brought to the inner room in the office….
  So we SAT till noon…
  At home I SENT for Mr. Hater, and BROKE the other barrel with him, and DID afterwards sit down

  Can anyone explain this to me? What would induce SP to insert a DO (or DID, but not a DOES!), or leave it out? Was it common usage at the time, and when DID the practice cease? Remnants have survived to this day. DID people speak this way, or was it restricted to written English? I DO find it very puzzling, DOn’t you agree?

• N Mary on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 02:30pm

  DO as an auxiliary verb

  Between about 1500 and 1700 it became very common to use ‘do’ as a periphrastic, auxiliary verb in indicative tenses. It gave no additional meaning to the verb: ‘He did say’ was the simple equivalent of ‘He said’. Language has its fashions, and this was one of them.

  The variation between ‘do’, ‘doth’ and ‘does’ reflects changes in use over time. In the 16th century, all three forms might be found in fairly general use; in the course of the 17th Century ‘doth’ started to disappear, being supplanted by the northern English form ‘does’. The ‘do’ form of the 3rd person singular retreated to south-western dialectal areas, where it can still be found. I have also heard it amongst older speakers in East Anglia.

  Pepys was writing at a time when these changes were gradually taking place and he would have heard all three forms used, but has apparently not adopted the northern ‘does’ himself in all cases.

  ‘Do/doth/does’ are used in the present tense and ‘did’ in the preterite, of course.

• N A. De Araujo on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 06:35pm

  “Clever Charles II” Was this deficit spending generalized? followed by inflation? any concise economic history of this period?

• N Martin King on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 06:59pm

  Up until about 5 years ago I was living in South Wales where “do” was still used as an auxiliary verb including using it with the verb “to do”! For example “That’s what I do do”

• N Harry on Mon 1 Dec 2003, 08:22pm

  DO as an auxiliary verb

  Thank you Mary and Martin, that was most helpful. As I live in Paris I have noted the difficulty that some Frenchmen have with the survival of certain uses of “do” as an auxiliary verb(which, I believe, are not found in any other language), such as for interrogations (“how do you make this machine work?”) and negatives (“I don’t have a clue”). Try explaining to them what “how do you do?” is all about.

• N dirk on Tue 2 Dec 2003, 03:47am

  DO as an auxiliary verb

  The only language I know of (if I remember correctly) that consistently uses the equivalent of “to do” as an auxiliary verb with all other verbs and in all tenses is Basque - a language which has no obvious relationship with any other roman or germanic language.

  In English this would lead to sentences like: “And he HAVING DONE going I DID go up and DID sit till twelve at night again to DO make an end of my Lord