Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com
Annotations
-
Master-Shipwright, Deptford and Woolwich yards, and husband of Ann: http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/1810.php
-
Christopher Pett.
Brother of Peter Pett. The ship-building brothers competed on behalf of the royal brothers. The King on a visit to Deptford pronounced his work (for his brother) as “very pretty”.
By 1663 yacht-building was spreading downwards to the aristocracy, so much so that C. Pett demanded extra gratuity for building pleasure boats, because of all the people he had to entertain. Early owners included Sir W Batten, whose wife was ungratefully sick.
(Summary from King Charles II…Fraser)
-
Erm bearing in mind I’m not sure of this tiny criticism myself but, to my reckoning, the Windsors were not Mount Battens before they changed their name.
The Royal Family changed the name to Windsor from Saxe Coburg around the first world war because of German connotations - they sought to minimise their connection to their relative and adversary Kaiser Willheim.
Lord Mount Batten was a relative of Queen Elizabeth I and the Windsors, as a descendent of Queen Victoria through Princess Alice, and although he’s the uncle of Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband, the royals had been Windsors since 1917. On 17 July, 1917, a royal proclamation by George V provided that all agnatic descendants of Queen Victoria would be members of the House of Windsor with the personal surname of Windsor. The name Windsor has a long association with English royalty through the town of Windsor and Windsor Castle. -
I do beg your pardon, I meant Queen Elizabeth II.
-
We’re off topic here, but…..
The Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family changed its name to Windsor at the time of the First World War.
At the same time Louis of Battenberg anglicised his name to Mountbatten (one word, not two). He was father to Lord Mountbatten of Burma who was, in turn, uncle to Prince Philip of Greece (the present Duke of Edinburgh) who took this same surname at the time of his marriage to the then Princess Elizabeth.
Since 1960 some of the direct descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh have adopted the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. However, the Order in Council that effected this latest change was ambiguously worded and not all the direct descendants either use this double-barrelled name or use it consistently.