Sunday 13 January 1660/61

Annotations

• N Lawrence on Tue 13 Jan 2004, 11:17pm

  But no sooner in bed but we had an alarm,
  Sam having to be brave yet once again, the year can only get better for him.

• N Emilio on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 02:03am

  “we all went to church”

  The church Sam goes to first today is not St. Olave’s, as he’s currently in Deptford. L&M identify it as St. Nicholas’s. The church that Sam walked in is still there, although it has been refurbished and rebuilt a number of times in the intervening years. Here’s a short history and some links:

  “The ancient parish of St Nicholas, Deptford was divided in 1730 into the parishes of St Nicholas and St Paul. At this date the two parishes were of equal rateable value, but St Paul’s had a far larger area and therefore acquired a much greater population in the 19th century. In 1900 the civil parish of St Paul, Deptford become the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford, whilst the civil parish of St Nicholas, Deptford was included in the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich. Part of the parish of St Paul’s (the western half of the New Cross area) was in Surrey until the County of London was formed in 1889.” (from http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/localStudies/administrativehistory.asp )

  Pictures and detailed chronology: http://kent.lovesguide.com/deptford_st_nicholas.htm

  History of the church bells, which date from 1701: http://www.ringing.freeserve.co.uk/deptford.htm

  It is remarkable that Sam has already paid for a pew here as well as at St. Olave’s, however. Is there perhaps a special pew set aside for the officers of the Navy Office?
  

• N Emilio on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 02:16am

  the King’s yacht, which will be a pretty thing

  L&M note: “Peter Pett’s yacht was the Catherine. For the Dutch yacht (given to the King by the city of Amsterdam and commanded by Jan de Gens), see [15 Aug 1660 entry: http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1660/08/15/index.php#annotations ]. Yachts were a Dutch invention, and at 8 November 1660 Pepys had not believed it possible that the English could build anything comparable.”
  

• N Emilio on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 02:21am

  “Here Commissioner came with his wife”

  The L&M text spells out right away that “Comissioner Pett came… .” Who knows what may have happened to the name in Wheatley’s text.
  

• N dirk on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 03:37am

  the King

• N vincent on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 04:24am

  A figure of speech or written to shock the 21C readers.”…And so I to Mr. Davis

• N Mary on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 10:24am

  Sleeping arrangements.

  We’ve visited this question before and established that it was common, and accepted, that visitors/travellers could find themselves sharing beds, sometimes with total strangers.

• N Todd Bernhardt on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 03:17pm

  re: Sleeping arrangements

  I don’t think Sam and Mr. Davis are sharing a bed … see yesterday’s entry, which shows that Sam is *lodging* “most prince-like” at Mr. Davis’s.

  To answer Emilio’s question about the pew, I had assumed in reading the entry that “the pew belonging to us” is owned by, or was given to, the Navy Office and its representatives, a necessary arrangement given their power and influence in the town. If Sam had bought a pew there, surely he would have mentioned it earlier?

• N Wim van der Meij on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 03:58pm

  There are a few nice pictures here of Dutch yachts (in Dutch ‘Statenjacht’) here: http://www.vaartips.nl/extra/statenjacht.htm .
  They were small rather round boats, with one or two masts; the latter with a sail-plan more or less like the famous Thames Barges

• N vincent on Wed 14 Jan 2004, 07:56pm

  Pew: my guess, as this is a Navy town, the pew is the Navy’s preserve. This town receives many important upper bracket guests, to see Pett’s latest creation.
  Re: sleeping arrangements, I do think they are, as Todd Bernhardt outlined.{ so sorry me mind has to be elevated.}[“…where a good sermon, a fine church, and a great company of handsome women…”]

• N David Quidnunc on Sun 18 Jan 2004, 07:50am

  Weather: dry, warm, windy January

  Not too far away in Essex, the Rev. Ralph Josselin (who farms) records in his diary for this date that “the season is very open, no cold, only divers winds.”

  “Open” according to my Webster’s New World Dictionary can mean “”having relatively little snow or frost; mild [an *open* winter]” (brackets in original).

  http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/earlscolne//diary/70012875.htm

  In Essex, the weather won’t change much in the next week or so, since Josselin writes on 21 January (or is it 28 January? Hard to tell):

  “Weather very dry and warm, things spring already, a time beyond ordinary pleasant. but now a little frost in the nights.”

  http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/earlscolne//diary/70012890.htm

  Although it can rain in one place and not another, even in the same region, Josselin’s description is probably very close to what the weather was like for Pepys in London.