Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
[This entry is missing from the Project Gutenberg transcript, so the following is from the Latham & Matthews edition. P.G.]
At home all the morning, putting some of my goods in order in my house; and after dinner, the like in the afternoon. And in the evening to my office, and there till 11 a-clock at night upon my Lord Treasurer’s letter again, and so home to bed.
Thursday 20 November 1662Tuesday 18 November 1662
All day “putting some of my goods in order in my house”
This records a day that surely all of this community have experienced, most of us more than once, when we’ve moved: putting our stuff in the places we chose; then, upon second thought, making small changes to our immediate satisfaction. While involved in that, there is no time to fret or worry about matters of long-term import — perhaps why God is said in Genesis to have created a flawed experiment: indeed, on such days we are performing a theogony: bringing order out of chaos.
“…putting some of my goods in order in my house…” no blasphemy , that pot be where?
Sundays are Wednesdays now …
This is precisely what I did in our garage all day yesterday: put things in order. It’s good not to have two church attendances to make, with their “dull, lazy sermons.”
“putting some of my goods in order in my house”
Aha! Has a good night’s sleep (and mayhaps a little tryst with the wife) managed to assuage our hero’s “troubled mind” of yesterday? Are the linen, the copper, the pot, the bedstead, and other household stuff now “my goods”?
Tangier
On 27 October Lord Peterborough sent a letter to “My Lord” Sandwich from Tangier:
After mention of various previous despatches, by different channels, the writer says that hardships and the ordinary effects of climate have greatly reduced the English forces. The number of runaways, too, has been so large & the result so prejudicial that to prevent greater evils Lord Peterborough has found it his duty to put some attempted fugitives to death.
——-
Today Nathaniel Luke comments on the issue, in a letter to Sandwich:
Written from: Tangier
Date: 19 November 1662
The severe example set by Lord Peterborough, and the bad usage known to have been met with at the hands of the Moors by many of the English fugitives, have checked the attempts to escape from the Garrison at Tangier. Peace has been concluded with Tunis upon the same Articles in those made with Algiers.
Source:
Bodleian Library
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/projects/carte/carte.html