Monday 22 October 1666

Up, and by coach to Westminster Hall, there thinking to have met Betty Michell, who I heard yesterday staid all night at her father’s, but she was gone. So I staid a little and then down to the bridge by water, and there overtook her and her father. So saluted her and walked over London Bridge with them and there parted, the weather being very foul, and so to the Tower by water, and so home, where I find Mr. Caesar playing the treble to my boy upon the Theorbo, the first time I heard him, which pleases me mightily. After dinner I carried him and my wife towards Westminster, by coach, myself ’lighting at the Temple, and there, being a little too soon, walked in the Temple Church, looking with pleasure on the monuments and epitaphs, and then to my Lord Belasses, where Creed and Povy by appointment met to discourse of some of their Tangier accounts between my Lord and Vernatty, who will prove a very knave. That being done I away with Povy to White Hall, and thence I to Unthanke’s, and there take up my wife, and so home, it being very foule and darke. Being there come, I to the settling of some of my money matters in my chests, and evening some accounts, which I was at late, to my extraordinary content, and especially to see all things hit so even and right and with an apparent profit and advantage since my last accounting, but how much I cannot particularly yet come to adjudge.


7 Annotations

First Reading

Glyn  •  Link

If you click on the link for Vernatty, it seems that he took flight at some point, though the details appear unclear. So Pepys seems to have been a good judge of character.

"and there, being a little too soon, walked in the Temple Church, looking with pleasure on the monuments and epitaphs"

Robert Gertz - this is absolutely not an excuse to involve Sam in the Da Vinci Code, show mercy and let the man retain some dignity!

It's odd for Pepys not to know his current worth to the exact pound, but there have been exceptional circumstances.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Would I do that...

He'd clearly be more of an Illuminati...

Or, if we want to leave fiction...An agent of the Spirituality, assuming any survived the crackdown in the 16th century.

Michael Robinson  •  Link

"... not an excuse to involve Sam in the Da Vinci Code, show mercy and let the man retain some dignity!"

The Interactive Dan Brown Sequel Generator - Plug in a city and a sect, and our computer will do the rest.
http://www.slate.com/id/2228327/

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"...there thinking to have met Betty Michell, who I heard yesterday staid all night at her father’s, but she was gone. So I staid a little and then down to the bridge by water, and there overtook her and her father..."

Another episode of "Samuel Pepys, serial stalker..."

"Why, Mrs Mitchell? Mr. Howlett? Fancy the luck of meeting you here...Boatman, pull over."

We just pulled away...Haven't gone twenty yards...The waterman eyes Pepys, then the lovely Betty.

Right, another one...

Wonder if Sidney will win his bet.

"Dear Betty, let me join you two... That's all, sir."
Sam leaves boat in haste, dismissing waterman who happily pockets slight overpayment, shoving off.

Yep, another Betty...That's fourpence I owes you, Sid...

***

"Well...?" Howlett eyes Betty who shakes head while waving to the departing...Though thanks to luck, not yet departed, Sam.

"Didn't have the manuscript on him, father."

"You're sure?"

"Father...It was Mr. Pepys. Believe me he didn't leave any distance between us when you weren't looking."

"I'm going to enjoy dumping his twisted corpse into the Thames."

"Patience, Father, patience. We must recover the manuscript with the secret list of surviving descendants of the Spirituality. The Pope will not tolerate failure, you know."

"I suppose..."

"But you're a good dad to want to garrot the man for me..." Betty pats his shoulder. "Though I would prefer to do the honors meself."

"My dear girl." Beaming look. "Still, we've little time...If his wife the Spirituality's agent should catch on to us..." Howlett notes nervously.

"Then it shall Elisabeth vs Elisabeth...And we'll see." Betty notes, grim look utterly devoid of the innocent beam to Sam a few moments ago. "After all, Father...Who taught me?" Grim smile returned by Howlett.

(It's all Glyn's fault, you know...)

CGS  •  Link

Today the house of C doth provide incentives to grow weed:
subsidies anyone?
Hemp and Flax.

"Sir John Knight reports from the Committee to which the Bill to encourage the Planting and Sowing of Hemp and Flax was committed, several Amendments to be made to the Bill: Which he read in his Place; and after, delivered the same in at the Clerk's Table.

And the Amendments were twice read; and, upon the Question, severally agreed to.

An Amendment being proposed, to insert "Five Shillings per Acre" instead of "Two Shillings and Sixpence," in the Bill.

The Question being put, To agree to That Amendment;

It passed in the Negative.

Resolved, &c. That the Bill, with the Amendments agreed to, be ingrossed."

Second Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Sir W. Temple to Ormonde
[Sir William Temple is Special Envoy to Brussels
Written from: Brussels
Date: 22 October 1666
Shelfmark: MS. Carte 47, fol(s). 300
Document type: Holograph

The season of action seems to be wholly past, by the returning of the fleets into their ports, and so has made way for that of negotiation ...

The French are grown tame - everywhere but in their Gazettes; and have very calmly given the Marquess here the liberty of raising a new fort upon the frontiers, which [So in MS.] is already in defence, almost in sight of Philipville, which [So in MS.] covers this town, and that whole Frontier, and is [So in MS.] by all allowed to be owing to our war with France - which has plainly broke all their ambitious measures. ...
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/s…

%%%
Former Parliamentarian Sir William Temple was the Envoy to Brussels from 1665 to 1667. He was also Lord Treasurer Thomas Osborne (later the Earl of Danby)'s Brother-in-Law.
Sir William Temple was created 1st Bart. on 31 Jan. 1666. He was strongly pro-Dutch, and was recognized as the principal architect of the Triple Alliance in 1668 (which may explain his words about negotiation and interest in the French).
http://www.historyofparliamentonl…

It's too early for Vauban to be building forts on the French-Flanders border, and he certainly wasn't a Marquess at the time. Perhaps Temple is referring to the French Envoy to Brussels? Any nominations?

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

In November 1654 Dorothy Osborne suffered from a severe attack of smallpox which nearly killed her, and left her permanently scarred.

One month later, on Christmas day, 1654, Dorothy Osborne and William Temple were married before a justice of the peace according to the vows promulgated in the previous year by Barebone's Parliament. The details are recorded in the marriage register in St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London.

Her brother, Henry, continued his opposition to the match by withholding her dowry. They settled that in Chancery.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

Initially Dorothy Osborne Temple and her husband lived with his maternal uncle, Robert Hammond, in Reading, where their first son, John, was born, on 18 December 1655.

In May 1656 they moved to Ireland where they had 8 or possibly 9 children, 6 of whom died in infancy. (In 1679 their 14-year-old daughter Diana died of smallpox, and their son John drowned himself in April 1689.)

Dorothy Osborne and William Temple returned to London in 1663. After the relative penury of the early years of their marriage, they found themselves in much grander surroundings when Temple was made ambassador in the Netherlands in June 1665.

Amb. Sir William Temple was recalled from The Hague in 1670, and Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple returned in September 1671.

With her husband Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple later played a part in arranging the marriage of William III of Orange and the Princess Mary, daughter of James, duke of York, acting as go-between, and remained her confidante until Queen Mary II's death a few months before her own.

The Temples retired to Moor Park, near Farnham, Surrey, an estate bought by Amb. Sir William Temple in 1680.

Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple died at Moor Park on 7 February 1695 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the place marked by a plaque on the wall of the south aisle, and stone set in the floor Her fame was secured by the publication of her letters — first in extracts in Courtenay's biography of her husband in 1836, and then in various editions through the 19th and 20th centuries.

For the whole of Lady Temple's biography, see https://www.oxforddnb.com/display… (You need a subscription)

Log in to post an annotation.

If you don't have an account, then register here.