Thursday 23 June 1664

Annotations

• N Terry F on Sat 23 Jun 2007, 10:50pm

  A day of toting up debt — Pepys’s bond, Sandwich’s security (it’s term time, sc., lawyers are at work).

• N Robert Gertz on Sun 24 Jun 2007, 01:26am

  “I pray God gets me well rid of his Lordship as to his debt, and I care not.” Poor Sam, torn between his disgust at Sandwich’s foolishly chasing after the Stuart court lifestyle (and potentially at his expense) and his sense of obligation and gratitude toward the cousin who gave him his chance.

  Given his strenuous efforts to curb his pleasure-seeking side as well as his hard work to earn the cash, one can understand his repressed anger but Sam never had to sign off on the show trials and executions of old friends and comrades to make his peace with the new regime. Moorings of loyalty, religion, and political beliefs broken, Montagu is clearly drifting off into very dark and uncharted territory. Hopefully the coming war may give him something useful to do to snap himself out of it.

• N Patricia on Sun 24 Jun 2007, 01:31am

  Pity Sam couldn’t have heeded Shakespeare’s famous lines: “Neither a borrower nor a lender (nor security for a bond) be”, but he owed Sandwich so much gratitude that he could scarcely refuse him. And who was to know My Lord would become so spendthrift?

• N Robert Gertz on Sun 24 Jun 2007, 01:31am

  …And of course every day in London passing along Sandwich is likely to see the rotting, severed head of his mentor and hero, Cromwell, staring at him. Does it haunt him all the way to Chelsea? In the midst of every wild late night card game with Castlemaine and the favorites? No wonder he runs from poor Jem who must remind him in all her innocence of everything he’s betrayed.

• N Robert Gertz on Sun 24 Jun 2007, 01:34am

  …And yet, Shakespeare was a lender, quite a successful one by all accounts. Though I think he would have found some excuse for turning milord down, at least for such a sum.

• N Robert Gertz on Sun 24 Jun 2007, 01:53am

  “Sir?”

  “Ah, Hewer. How did you find my Lady Jemina?”

  “Um…Well, sir…Not as well as I might have hoped. You see, sir…”

  “Not well? Was my Lord with her? You didn’t broach the delicate subject I entrusted to you too harshly did you, Hewer?”

  “Never quite had a chance to, sir. Mr. Pepys, my Lord Sandwich has…Fled, sir.”

  “Fled? To Chelsea?”

  “England, sir.”

  “England? Fled? Oh, my…My pounds?”

  “With him, sir. And, sir…”

  “With him…And that slut Becke?! My 700Ls and the 1000 I’m liable for?”

  “Ummn…Not with the Becke girl, sir. Mr. Pepys, I’m afraid my Lord Sandwich took Mrs. Pepys with him to France.”

  “Mrs…My wife?! My pounds?! My wife?! My pounds?! Wait! Hewer, get me my bond for my Lord…The one we spilled wine over, not the fair copy.”

  “You mean the one with the…Silly clause you and my Lord put in as a joke, sir?”

  “That one…”

  ***
  Three months later…Lord Sandwich has returned, easily pardoned by Charles…Though not by all.

  “Pepys? You’re not really serious about this?” York eyes him.

  “He has spit upon my house, shamed me, your Grace and your Grace has promised me…Justice. Sandwich being after all the last powerful Cromwellian left. And I will have my bond.”

  “Yes, but…Two pounds of flesh, Pepys? That’s even more than Shakespeare’s fellow wanted.”

  “Your Grace…Hath not a tailor’s son…”

  “Yes, yes…I get it, Pepys.”

• N JWB on Sun 24 Jun 2007, 04:13pm

  Pepys, Thomas (a, cousin, “The Executor”)

  Pauline wrote:
  “He lent money to Mountagu in 1658”
  http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/2541.php

  Sam looking for consolation &/or insight as to how to be repaid.