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Monday 28 January 1660/61

At the office all the morning; dined at home, and after dinner to Fleet Street, with my sword to Mr. Brigden (lately made Captain of the Auxiliaries) to be refreshed, and with him to an ale-house, where I met Mr. Davenport; and after some talk of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw’s bodies being taken out of their graves to-day,1 I went to Mr. Crew’s and thence to the Theatre, where I saw again “The Lost Lady,” which do now please me better than before; and here I sitting behind in a dark place, a lady spit backward upon me by a mistake, not seeing me, but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all. Thence to Mr. Crew’s, and there met Mr. Moore, who came lately to me, and went with me to my father’s, and with him to Standing’s, whither came to us Dr. Fairbrother, who I took and my father to the Bear and gave a pint of sack and a pint of claret.

He do still continue his expressions of respect and love to me, and tells me my brother John will make a good scholar. Thence to see the Doctor at his lodging at Mr. Holden’s, where I bought a hat, cost me 35s. So home by moonshine, and by the way was overtaken by the Comptroller’s coach, and so home to his house with him. So home and to bed. This noon I had my press set up in my chamber for papers to be put in.

  1. “The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, and Thomas Pride, were dug up out of their graves to be hanged at Tyburn, and buried under the gallows. Cromwell’s vault having been opened, the people crowded very much to see him.”—Rugge’s Diurnal.

Tuesday 29 January 1660/61Sunday 27 January 1660/61

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Parliament on this day

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  • “A lady spit backward upon me by a mistake, not seeing me, but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all.”

    Well, this certainly gets my vote for the funniest line in the diary to date.

  • “a lady spit …upon me…..I was not trouble at it at all” I wonder if he is into spanking as well!

  • One of the (several) funny things about the line is that the event was considered significant enough to write down in his diary several hours later. If this accidentally happened to me, I probably would have forgotten all about it after 15 minutes. But apparently it made a bigger impression on Pepys. Yes, it’s evidence of his careful observation. But there seems to be something deeper as well that makes it also worth his further consideration.

  • If said expectorator had been ill-favored, squint-eyed, with a liverish cast to the countenance … wot then?

  • Cromwell - leader of the faction who had Charles I tried and executed.

    Henry Ireton - the #2 after Cromwell

    John Bradshaw - judge who presided over the trial of charles I

    Thomas Pride - the minor officer who forced the less radical members of Parliament out so that the remaining ‘rump’ could go forward with plans to try the king.

  • The Lost Lady

    Disagreeable things do tend to happen to Sam at this play: caught by his own clerks on the 19th, when they were in a better seat than his own, and now actually spat upon. However nice it might have been to make the lady’s acquaintance, maybe it’s time for him to find another play and cut his losses.

  • L&M has a couple of differences in the text for today

    “to an ale-house, where I met Mr. Davenport”: Sam apparently wrote the name as Damport rather than Davenport, although L&M do think he refers to John Davenport of Brampton, Hunts. He only shows up in the diary this year before stepping back into the mists of history.

    More significantly, Mr. Moore actually “came lately to towne” rather than “to me”. “Lately” is also a longhand correction over shorthand “yesterday”. Mr. Moore was last seen on 4 Jan., and in the last 3 weeks perhaps he has been travelling on business for Montagu.

  • how important would the hanging of criminals’ corpes be in the eyes of all the people of London at this time, I wonder? was it but a legal requirement justifiable by law or something every citizen would have bayed for out of a sense of vendetta?

  • “had my press set up”

    This is a sense of the word “press” I hadn’t been aware of, so here’s the definition from the OED and some of the earlier example sentences:

    IV. 15. A large (usually shelved) cupboard, esp. one placed in a recess in the wall, for holding clothes, books, etc.; in Scotland, also for provisions, victuals, plates, dishes, and other table requisites. Cf. clothes-press I. Also attrib.

    c 1386 Chaucer Miller’s T. 26 His presse ycovered with a faldyng reed. 1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. xviii. cv. (1495) gg iv/I Whanne the cloth is to longe in presse & thicke ayre. a 1533 Ld. Berners Huon cxi. 384 There were presses . . in the whiche presses were gownes and robes of fyne golde, and ryche mantelles furryd with sabyls. 1552 in Bury Wills (Camden) 142, I gyve her my newe cubbord with the presse in yt and too great books the Bybyll and the New Testament, with the Booke of the Kings Statuts. 1598 Shaks. Merry W. III. iii. 26 In the house, & in the chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses.

  • 1

  • “the hanging of a criminal’s corpse”

    Usually referred to as “gibbeting” (the word “gibbet”, originally just another word for gallows, came to refer to the custom made steel cage sometimes used for this purpose).

    This “post mortem” punishment was part of the normal procedure for some crimes (i.a. regicide).

    “Prior to 1834, where the courts wished to make a particular example of a criminal they could order the additional punishment of gibbeting. After the hanging the prisoner would be stripped and their body dipped into molten pitch or tar and then, when it had cooled, be placed into an iron cage that surrounded the head, torso and upper legs. The cage was riveted together and then suspended from either the original gallows or a purpose built gibbet. The body was then left as a grim reminder to local people and could stay on the gibbet for a year or so until it rotted away or was eaten by birds etc.”
    From:
    http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/hanging1.html#after

    Some more details on the gibbeting of Cromwell’s body:
    “Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, died in 1658, was embalmed and buried in Westminster Abbey after a lavish funeral. After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, his body was disinterred and taken to Tyburn where it was gibbeted* until sundown. The Public Executioner cut down the body and cut off the head which was then impaled on a 25 foot pole on the roof of Westminster Hall. It remained there for over 24 years until 1685 when it was dislodged during a gale. A soldier found the head and hid it in his chimney. On his deathbed, he bequeathed the relic to his daughter. In 1710 the head appeared in a ‘Freak Show’, described as ‘The Monster’s Head’! For many years the head passed through numerous hands, the value increasing with each transaction until a Dr. Wilkinson bought it.”
    From:
    http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/England-History/BitsandPieces.htm

  • Good job the very pretty lady wasn’t the one-eyed Frenchman he met in a Hansom cab….

  • ‘press’ - what would now be called an airing cupboard was always referred to in our house as the ‘hot press’.

  • Claret
    Interesting reference here. Does the term refer exclusively to red Bourdeaux as it does today? Bourdeaux was certainly a principal supplier of wine to England at the time. (very mild spolier…) Sometime later in the diary, Sam refers to drinking Haut Brion (still an available Bourdeax wine), this being reported as the first ever written reference to a French wine by its chateau. (more comment on wine in background info).

  • “…with my sword to Mr. Brigden … to be refreshed…

    Sam bought his sword from Brigden only ten months ago, on 22nd. March, 1659/60, so how much ‘refreshing’ it would now need I’m not sure. I suspect refreshing means resharpening, perhaps a wise move in light of recent goings-
    on.

  • Does anyone know if spitting was accepted behaviour amongst the gentry? In other words was the “lady” really a lady or was Sam being generous?

  • Press - this word for cupboard is still in fairly common use in some parts of Ireland today.

  • Value of money.
    I was just watching a documentary on the History Channel last night, and the statement was made that at the beginning of the 18th century (40 years after today’s entry). a middle class family could live in London for about £100 per annum

  • Sam’s sword edge. I was reading a novel about Napoleonic cavalry, and the protagonist would wince when swords were drawn from metal scabbards. That metallic shriek you hear as the sword comes out is the edge of the sword being dulled. (This doesn’t apply to wooden or leather scabbards of course, or at least not to the same extent.)

    On the other hand, did Sam ever have it sharpened in the first place?

  • Value of money

  • “… at Mr. Holden

  • Value of money. It changes your life style:this time last year he did plays : but they were cards and his ” flagolotte” now he spends his spare time watching others play. ‘Tis the power of money:”…to the Theatre, where I saw again

  • Claret - “Sometime later in the diary, Sam refers to drinking Haut Brion (still an available Bourdeax wine), this being reported as the first ever written reference to a French wine by its chateau.”

    Bang goes my fancy that “Haut Brion” was simply a Frenchified way of spelling O’Brien, and referred to one of the Wild Geese. I looked up the Chateau site, which relates that
    while visiting the Royal Oak Tavern in London on April 10, 1663 Pepys wrote “There I drank a sort of French wine called Ho-Bryan (sic) which hath a good and most particular taste which I never before encountered…..” (At least Pepys picked up the Irish sounding name.) Alas, the main Irish exodus to France came after the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, and the chateau had been in the hands of the Pontac family since the 16th century at the time Pepys had a swallow.http://haut-brion.com/chb/chbframeset.htm

  • “…a lady spit…” Popular until a fine of five pound sterling was enforced {that could be a weeks wages for the ordinary sort}.
    Re: Index of value. lets Pick an Item of importance then and now. May be a horse vs loaf of bread. Many things that had great value then, now are so common are deemed worthless. A portrait by a great Artist is still a special item. [untouched by mass production][Real estate(land) is still unprintable by governments][no! not the language]

  • Re: Spitting into a dark place …

    … I’m trying to look for clues as to the cost of Sam’s theatre ticket. It would seem to me that the ability to be “sitting behind in a dark place” would be putting him in a box (thus more expensive than before), but on the other hand he may have sat in a dark place so no one else would see him getting by on the cheap! The question about with this interpretation is whether there WERE any out-of-the-way dark places among the lowest cost seats …

    The investigation continues.

  • “if spitting was accepted behaviour?”

    Spitting was certainly accepted behaviour, but spitting on somebody was of course not considered a polite thing to do. There is a cute reference to a historical “spitting problem” on the website of the Church of St Mary, Welshpool:
    “… the gallery was still in situ in 1737 when it ‘was alleged that a great number of the very common sort of people sit in it (under the pretence of psalm singing) who run up and down there; some of them spitting upon the people’s heads below’”
    See:
    http://www.cpat.demon.co.uk/projects/longer/churches/montgom/16973.htm

    Spitting would become an even more serious problem when the use of tobacco (smoking AND chewing!) became more generalised. Sailors reputedly became the worst “spitters”…

  • I don’t think he was in a box. Indoor theatres were lit by candles and the lighting was uneven, so some parts of the audience were darker than others.

  • claret:
    The OED says (or rather said in the late 19th century — note the appalling last phrase!):
    “A name originally given (like F. vin clairet) to wines of yellowish or light red colour, as distinguished alike from ‘red wine’ and ‘white wine’; the contrast with the former ceased about 1600, and it was apparently then used for red wines generally, in which sense it is still, or was recently, dial[ectal]… Now applied to the red wines imported from Bordeaux, generally mixed with Benicarlo or some full-bodied French wine.”

    This was a period of rapid change in the French wine industry; I’ll add some material on this to the wine page:
    http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/309.php

  • Sppiting:
    I remember, in the 1950’ signs asking not to sppit on the floor (in public places). Instead, there were special vessels in a corner.

  • Spitting images:
    Spitting in public was first proscribed in the 1880/90’s when its link with the spread of tuberculosis became known. (1882) I was told in the 1960s at school that it was the primary vector of TB in Victorian times (and probably before) especially in winter. The infected sputum hitting a sub-zero pavement/sidewalk would instantly freeze, preserving the bacteria. It would then be carried indoors on people’s shoes, where the heat of the house would reactivate the bacteria and evaporate the sputum into the atmosphere. Long Victorian/Edwardian dresses would also pick up the sputum as they swept the pavement/sidewalk - nice. TB, or Consumption, seems to be a Victorian, or industrial revolution, disease: rat flea spread plague appears to be more important in the 17th century.

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