Sunday 18 August 1661

Annotations

• N A. De Araujo on Wed 18 Aug 2004, 11:13pm

  “great variety of fowl” I wonder what that coul be? Peacocks, guinea hens?

• N Australian Susan on Wed 18 Aug 2004, 11:58pm

  “great variety of fowl”
  Maybe the pelicans have arrived (gift from Russian ambassador to Charles II.) See
  http://www.angelfire.com/in/uktravelinfo/stjames.html

• N Australian Susan on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 12:00am

  Richard Hooker
  See http://justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/hooker/

• N RexLeo on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 01:36am

  “so I went to la belle Pierce and sat with her”

  Does “so” in this context relate to the modern usage of “then” rather than “therefore”?

• N dirk on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 01:42am

  Evelyn’s diary 18 August:

  “… This afternoone as I was at church and Dr. Burgh going into the Pulpet, I was called out, one of my horses having struck my Coach-man so as he remain’d as dead for a while; I caus’d him to be let bloud, & laying a Cere-cloth to his brest (much brused) & so after a weeke he recovered:”

  Sounds like a good idea to bleed a man under the circumstances… Must have been a strong man to survive!
  

• N A. Hamilton on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 03:14am

  “which I shall read with great pains and love for his sake”

  Gorgeous as Hooker is, you probably need some such motive to keep going in the “Laws.” See our earlier discussions of Hooker.

• N Australian Susan on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 04:18am

  Sam and Hooker.
  On June 29th, he talked of buying the book. Did he mention this in front of Moore, thus prompting the gift? Hooker profoundly influenced the present structure of the entire Anglican Communion and in his own time, moulded the Church of England, *but* the “Laws” *is* hardgoing. It will be interesting to see if Sam keeps up the reading!

• N vicente on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 04:30am

  Laws may be good, but the binding it be better, will show off his growing collection of knowledge.[wish I could be a maudlin and take a peep at this collection in the original].

• N Mary on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 07:42am

  “a great variety of fowl”

  Birdcage Walk in the park is not called Birdcage Walk for nothing. Charles enlarged (possibly founded) quite a collection of interesting and exotic birds, to begin with mostly waterfowl but later fancy, caged birds. Some of these exotics were presented by the East India Company. Parrots and cassowaries were lodged in the ‘poultry-house’in 1661.

• N Australian Susan on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 09:41am

  Cassowaries??
  Australia was barely known to Europe at this time. Cassowaries are notoriously shy, wary and solitary creatures (but vicious if cornered - they can disembowel). Outside tropical Queensland, they are found in PNG, Irian Jaya and a few other Indonesian islands - remote and inaccessible. I find it very hard to believe that anyone had in the 17th century not only captured cassowaries (which are over 6 foot high), but also successfully brought them back alive to Europe.
  On the other hand, maybe that is why there are so few of them now…..They all ended up in European zoos??

• N Mary on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 11:40am

  Cassowaries.

  I agree, they sound unlikely, but L&M footnote mentions them, referring to Sir William Foster’s “John Company” pp89-90 for the history of this avian collection.

  Earliest citation of the name in OED is dated 1611, so these birds must have been known to at least some Englishmen for 50 years at the date of Pepys’s writing.

• N Australian Susan on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 01:22pm

  Cassowaries.
  Whoever captured them must have got them from Indonesian islands - PNG and Irian Jaya were hardly explored before the 19th century. Shunned because of rumours about cannibalism. I know the CSIRO wildlife officer who did the main research on cassowaries in Tropical Queensland - he nearly died because of the conditons and this was the 1980’s! What an amazing feat to bring these birds back so far. Bet it wasn’t appreciated and I bet we don’t even know who it was, but I really appreciate them in retrospect and i am sure Sam would have loved to have heard the tale - just the sort of thing to appeal to his curiosity.

• N Australian Susan on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 01:47pm

  Further information on cassowaries
  have now discovered that, although the cassowary is now more numerous in Qld than in the islands to the north, up until the start of the 20th century, the cassowaries in Qld were thought to be a southern extension away from the main east indian islands population of the bird, so it looks like there would have been many more on the islands in the 17th century for people to capture. The birds obviously almost went the way of the Dodo, but for their vicousness and the isolation of the Australian birds. Sorry, getting off-topic. Will shut up now.
  

• N Glyn on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 04:30pm

  …in St. James

• N Brian McMullen on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 05:52pm

  Following up on Edward Storey I found this link:

  http://www.decoymans.co.uk/chapter9/page127.html

  where our man SP gets quoted from this very day!

  “In 1661, observant and quaint old Pepys remarks in his Diary, ‘, To walk in St. James’ Park, and saw a great variety of fowls I never saw before.”

  The link ends with a note from Evelyn’s Diary:

  “But perhaps the best description of the birds in the Park in those days is to be found in Evelyn’s Diary, March 29, 1665. He says, “I went to St. James’ Park, where I saw various animals, and examined the throat of yo ‘Onocratylus,’ or Pelican, a fowle between a Stork and a Swan, a melancholy waterfowl brought from Astracan by the Russian Ambassador;
  it was diverting to see how he would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet … …”

• N Brian McMullen on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 05:53pm

  One more link regarding Birdcage Walk:

  http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/london.gardens/features/dic.htm

• N Australian Susan on Thu 19 Aug 2004, 11:37pm

  “various animals”
  James I had introduced an elephant to St James’s park. Wonder what happened to it??
  Interesting to see Evelyn use the comparison for the pelican of “between a stork and a swan”. Obviously storks were still around in England at that time. Or had he travelled in continental Europe? Pelicans (we have them in Queensland) always look to me as though they are smiling, not “melancholy” at all.

• N vicente on Fri 20 Aug 2004, 03:36am

  There be Bare [****] sorry Bears, bear baiting, bear fights[from J.E] Bear gardens,Dog fighting, Cock Fighting, Bull Baiting [ no! not eating a bull sandwich] full description available 16th June 1670, apes be there too,quote “which had not seene I think in twenty yeares before”:
  Meaning I do take, that it was there for the Hoi Poloi, and the dashing young men, that did like its blood and guts:
  The Faires, the Tower and parks, all had samples of the exotic , a tradition upheld today by the landed ones of the U.K. Many on the list of kings privileges.
  So many Animals mentioned by J.E. in England and over yon straights
  

• N Kevin Sheerstone on Fri 20 Aug 2004, 07:51am

  Re. RexLeo above:

  Yes

• N E on Fri 20 Aug 2004, 01:28pm

  I am worried by the lack of literary background shown by commentators here. I thought everyone knew:

  __If I were a cassowary
  __On the plains of Timbuctoo,
  __I would eat a missionary,
  __Cassock, band, and hymn-book too.

  Just bad geography, or was the name used for other birds too?
  

• N vicente on Fri 20 Aug 2004, 06:34pm

  E: Sammy Wilberforce a bishop none the less did rit this:
  
  Wilberforce, Samuel (1805-73), English Anglican prelate and educator, who helped preserve the Oxford movement, which emphasized the catholic origins…
  

• N vicente on Fri 20 Aug 2004, 06:40pm

  RE: being flightless: the wondering 17th. C sailors did miss one.
  CNN.com - New flightless bird found in Philippines - Aug 17, 2004
  … Science & Space. New flightless bird found in Philippines. A Calayan
  Rail is held after its discovery by Filipino and British wildlife …
  http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/08/17/environment.bird.reut/

  
  

• N language hat on Fri 20 Aug 2004, 09:43pm

  “On the plains of Timbuctoo”

  I think it’s a safe assumption that the author of that ditty was more concerned with rhyme and amusement value than the niceties of biogeography.

• N Pedro. on Sat 28 Aug 2004, 05:59pm

  On this day in Portugal.

  Queen regent, D.Luisa, declares to the Court the marriage between Charles and Catarina, and it is approved by the Council of State.

• N Toby on Wed 3 Oct 2007, 03:59pm

  There’s an older theory that Birdcage Walk is a corruption of ‘Bocage’, a Norman French word meaning hedge, or in this context more likely shrubbery. I have never seen a good source that indicates birds were actually hung in birdcages along the length of the walk. Is it possible the story was created to explain the name, when the true evolution had been largely forgotten?