Thursday 6 November 1662

At the office forenoon and afternoon till late at night, very busy answering my Lord Treasurer’s letter, and my mind troubled till we come to some end with Sir J. Minnes about our lodgings, and so home. And after some pleasant discourse and supper to bed, and in my dream much troubled by being with Will. Swan, a great fanatic, my old acquaintance, and, methought, taken and led up with him for a plotter, all our discourse being at present about the late plots.


11 Annotations

First Reading

Terry F  •  Link

"my Lord Treasurer’s letter"

L&M note on 11 December referreing to "our great letter, so long in doing, to my Lord Treasurer": "This was a statement of account, dated this day, relating to a parliamentary grant of 29 January 1662 for wages, paid and payable, for the period 19 March-10 September. The grant had amounted to £417,220 and the expenditure to £142,446....It had been in preparation since 6 November. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Australian Susan  •  Link

Paranoia enters Sam's dreams. The knock on the door, the locking up in the Tower, no information, dis-information. Sam is uneasy - he knows that people have been locked up for no reason. Difficult times. But it gets much worse. [ post Diary]. Starnge he should have a dream now, when he does not seem to have anything in today's entry to prompt such nocturnal disturbances. I imagine Sam jerking awake, sitting up cluthing the sheets, sweating, his breathing short and then looking around at the quiet room, Beth soundly asleep and breathihg deeply beside him and just the usual noises of the house: someone coughing maybe, the rustle of mice behind the plaster, dog moving about downstairs. He settles back down and snuggles up to Beth. All is well.

Terry F  •  Link

"Will. Swan, a great fanatic, my old acquaintance"

Swan was a “fanatic” in that on 22 June, he had voiced a radically nonconformist view, claiming that "he and his company are the true spirit of the nation, and the greater part of the nation too, who will have liberty of conscience in spite of this ‘Act of Uniformity,’ or they will die; and if they may not preach abroad, they will preach in their own houses.” At the present time, men like him, e.g., Quakers, were being imprisoned as plotters.

CGS  •  Link

"Act of Uniformity:" Not only they did lose their income from the parishioners but were banned from associating or sleeping within 7 miles of the place that they be ejected from. Many of the latter historical worthies came from these dissenters, they could not rely on others for their lives so were forced to use the ingenuity of their brain, rather than follow the safe pathway.

CGS  •  Link

" ... Will. Swan, a great fanatic..." 'ind sight be great,now reading the Xrefs on Swan.'tis a great topic.
At this time inspite of the gross differences, many were able to keep a head on their shoulders.. Laws were put thru to prevent adverse words being printed but the under ground press staid alive.
[just read somewhere that a pamplet at this time frame, be written, never noted but turned up just a few years ago, found in an attic, about this dissention.]

Terry F  •  Link

On 22 June Swan also praised Sir Harry Vane

"He told me that certainly Sir H. Vane must be gone to Heaven, for he died as much a martyr and saint as ever man did; and that the King hath lost more by that man’s death, than he will get again a good while. At all which I know not what to think; but, I confess, I do think that the Bishops will never be able to carry it so high as they do."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Recall that Pepys himself was deeply impressed by what he was told about the Vane's speech before he was executed.
---
It is not too far a stretch, methinks, to hear an echo of Will Swan's views a bit over a century later in the words of the American from Virginia, James Madison: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Also there's that disturbing bit a few days ago about poor Spong with his unfortunate Fifth Monarchy connections naming him and Sandwich before the Council as well known to him. I'm not surprised that's been twisting in Sam's subconscious the last week.

"Citizen Pepys, aristocrat and oppressor of the People, the Republic sentences you..."

"Comrade Pepys, you confess to being a member of the Bulgarin-Rykov-Trotsky wrecking circle and plotting the death of our beloved Kirov?"

"Mr. Pepys, are you now or have you ever been...?"

Some things don't change, sadly...

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

And Pepys has been spending of late an inordinate amount of time in the dark parts of the Tower along with the memories of those clapped up in dungeons for plots, both real and imagined: nightmare material indeed!

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

BTW There was no "Bulgarin": it was Bukharin and Rykov, together with ex NKVD chief Yagoda, so-called "Trotskite-Rightist-Deviationists", tried and executed in 1938, together with perhaps hundreds of thousands of others.

Christopher  •  Link

I don't recall Sam ever documenting a dream until now. Am I mistaken?

Michaela  •  Link

11 months earlier Sam mentioned a disturbing dream about his wife falling off a horse and breaking her leg.

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