On the phanaticks, their more or less overt huddlings and the nervousness all this ferment currently inspires, we had seen on November 27 this letter from a Mr. Ralph Grey, of Newcastle, to "Henry Brabant" (State Papers at https://play.google.com/books/rea…): "I entreat you to buy me a sword to walk in town with, for if the fanatics hold on, it will not be safe to be without one. They are mighty high since you went to London, and had a fast last Wednesday", at which "upwards of 500 were present".
Additional problem to always keep in mind, in any case, while in the city bustle (for instance, if you're a government official with a pretty new coach): "persons marched off to them who have received the Sacrament according to the Church of England", and perhaps they had more than Bibles in their hands. Mr. Grey, however, isn't just any bystander: In 1667 he was the sheriff of Newcastle, and Brabant was its mayor (list at https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/site…. You'd think an ex-sheriff would have or could buy his own sword, though).
Earlier in the day, as Sam sat down to "The Unfortunate Lovers", Billy the coachman was joining the brasero set outside the theater where the other coachmen were stamping their feet and passing 'round the sack bottle against the cold. They whistle appreciatively at his beautiful green livery and toast it as the unwitting homage it seems to mother Ireland.
"So who's the new master?" "Any fun?" "Any scandal already?"
"Hey guys, I just got there. Some quill-pusher. Dull as a lead guinea. He tiptoes around his wife. Works in the Navy Office on Seething".
The words "Navy Office" bring a torrent of well-wishing and inquiries. "He can get that paper they give you to not get pressed? He can get my uncle's pension paid? He can get me to Virginia? You got a pass to enter the yards?" &c., &c.
In comes waltzing the smiling, affable man from the Benevolent Society for Coachmen's Needs. As always, he has a flask of much better sack, and in his faint Dutch accent offers "a good barber for your tooth-ache, a Hindoo balm for your bottom-sores, a free loan for your old Ma, your letters writ'n and sent to Kilkenny, a nice girl for your solace", in return for "jolly anecdotes, worthless discarded papers, a few seconds' perusal of house keys", &c., &c. Billy takes a swig of the free booze, wishes him good evening like the others, and nods to himself, pensively.
Meanwhile, Sam wallows in self-satisfaction, the new coach smell, and Bess' lovingly arranged floral cushions. His own coach! His own bloody coach! He can go anywhere (well, almost, a stern mental image of My Wife corrects him). He can make it turn left, or turn right, at will (hmm, but not here of course, have to follow the ruts). He can, er, stretch his legs like this!
The coach enters one of the newly finished, straightened and paved sections of Fleet Street. Sam thumps the roof with his cane (no gentleman without a cane, if only as an ostensible roof-thumper). "Coachman! Faster! Let's make my baby's wheels throw sparks!"
Up above, bundled against the bitter cold in his leprechaun suit, the coachman does what he can and cracks his whip for effect. "Aye, m'lord. But, not with these horses, b'yer leave, m'lord, as we discussed".
The coach plods along. A cat, snoozing in the middle of the street, eyes its approach, licks a paw, stretches, and dodders away, sticking its tongue at the horses. A hackney zooms past, spraying mud, its daredevil driver yelling "Make way!" Soon the Pepyses are back in the twisting, muddy, rubble-strewn labyrinth that surrounds Seething Lane. The horses, smelling their new home, crawl slightly faster.
Today the Treasury commissioners signed off on no less than twenty two warrants for Dennis Gauden, awarding him a total of £12,000 for victualling (record at http://british-history.ac.uk/cal-…). Serious moolah, and perhaps a nick-of-time result of Sam's hard work yesterday.
If so, the bureaucracy moved unusually fast, but 'twas about time, as we find, in a letter from Chatham to the Navy Coms, some Evidence that victualling was becoming a problem area indeed: Of the crew kept on the freshly docked Golden Hand, it is written: "Pray order the victualling of the 20 men, and fish instead of oatmeal, as the men would not eat it" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…). Yes, the ship is docked, but they're not going to work very hard on a lunch of oatmeal. And, the ship being docked, they don't have to eat the menu and can walk off the H.M.S. Oatmeal anytime.
Sam is thus an important cog in the fast-complicating geopolitics of Barbary. Still, couldn't this have waited until the next regular meeting with the duke? Did he need to be rushed with the news just now, while unfolding his dinner napkin?
Sam, having whispered his Important Secret News to His Royal Highness in full view of the entire Court, has made his Intricate Bows, brushed the Persian carpets with his hat and left. The duke chuckles and leans toward the King: "Hey, gossip-master, didn't Pepys just act a bit showy just now? Any idea why?"
"Hmpf?" the King says, around a mouthful of pheasant. "Hmm, the man just got his own wheels", he adds, after a glance at the "Daily List of New Coaches" which Williamson just placed in front of him. "He's coach-drunk".
"Oooh, he's not going to think he's one of Us, is he?", the Queen asks. "Send him the taxman if so!"
"We do that when they also start to put diamonds on their wives, dearie", the King says, stuffing some pineapple in the Queen's mouth. "Don't worry".
Oh, and Allin's victualling. That other admiral is presently on a mission to clean up the western Med a bit of all those Barbary pyrates, who molest good Christian vessels and, incidentally, serve as one of the Sultan's levers should he need to send anyone messages on, for instance, not interfering with his besieging of the Venetians at Candia. It's a sensitive job, and how embarrassing if the pyrates, or the restless natives on the coast, should get Allin's biscuits and leave him stranded.
On November 28, the duke of York's secretary Matthew Wren had forwarded to Sam a dispatch from Allin, with a cover letter nothing that "though dated from Tangiers, it is manifest that it was from Algiers, so it is 50 days old" (note to Allin: please date your letters, dealing with these huge distances is already complicated enough). "Considering how many more [days] it must be before any letter will reach Leghorn [Livorno, west coast of Italy]", Wren (or maybe Allin) "fears he will be past that place before orders about his victualling can come thither". So there's a bit of suspense, given that drawing and sending the letters of credit also take time. Wren suggests "to give Sir Thos. Allin the whole credit he desires at Cadiz", with the funds arranged there to be made good for purchases at Leghorn. Got all that?
Allin's situation is not helped, at this time, by the fairly furious and successful campaign being waged along the Barbary coast by a certain Taffaletta, sultan of Morocco (by his real name Al-Rashid ibn Sharif, as per https://dbpedia.org/page/Al-Rashi…), about whom dispatches have of late taken more and more space in the Gazette. Thus in No. 315 we read that on September 29 Allin "arrived before Algier, where he has made a new peace with the people", but in the next paragraph also how "Taffaletta (...) ha[s] by his Conquests taken on him not only the Title of King, but Emperour of Barbary". In No. 311 we had seen a breathless dispatch from October 14 on how "Taffalette (...) having now taken (...) the fourth part [a quarter] of Barbary, made himself sole Emperour of Fesse [Fez] and Morocco, killed the King of Morocco (...) and reduced the whole Country to his obedience".
So Cadiz, just across the Straits, is a much healthier place where to send money or victuall the fleet, and since Taffaletta is starting to worry the Spaniards enough (the Gazette also tells us) for them to raise new troops, Allin should also be quite welcome there.
The morning's business perhaps also had something to do with a letter which Gauden's partner Admiral Sir William Penn had sent on November 30 to the Commissioners [State Papers, 249 No. 189], suggesting they "should appoint a person to examine and cast up the papers and accounts that have not passed your view". Though Penn silkily assures them "doubt[ing] not that all faithfulness and diligence has been used", he sighs that errors may well creep in given the accounts' "variety and intricacy", and has noted in passing that "many" of the victualler's accounts "were never produced but at this juncture of time". Hence, in all likelihood, a bit of a scramble to check if there's any major time-bomb, as Gauden's contract and all things Gauden are about to receive more senior attention than usual. The Attorney General at this time is Thomas Povey, whose record (at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) as not terribly competent, bent on formalities and not hugely friendly to Sam, suggest it's best indeed not to give him anything unseemly to trip upon in Gauden's contract or accounts.
Gawden had written to Sam yesterday from the Victualling Office, to "entreat you to look over the memorial that you took when the draft of the contract was before the Treasury Commissioners, and corrected and amended with the consent of all sides. I think the point as to necessary money in the fair draft does not concur with what was agreed on; I wish the paper enclosed to be considered and agreed on against Monday, as the Attorney-General cannot draw the contract until that be done" [State Paper, 250 No. 9, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…]. It does look complicated enough to take up the whole morning; Sam may want to enable the "track changes" function in Word.
Green and red livery? There has to be a reason. We turned to "Green: The History of a Color", the highly recommended study by French historian Michel Pastoureau, and found little encouragement there: Since the Middle Ages poor color green, its pigment unstable and often toxic, was that of weird errant knights, fickle youth (which we're not anymore, right Mr. Pepys?) and other fey creatures. With red, of the hunt - something alien to Sam. More recently, green has become the color of money (and so perhaps of budget managers), and moneylenders have adopted green hats and tableclothes, but as of the late 17C it's also shunned by sailors (it attracts lightning) and in the theater (brings bad luck).
Pastoureau quotes a 16C heraldry guru who advises against red-and-green, "a livery most common" despite the negative associations, "and most ugly" - perhaps, if the fashion mob wouldn't have the green stuff, the rest of us would since it was cheaper? It may also have been easier to spot in the riot of colors that was swingin' London (just check out a few official portraits, not much puritan black and no prohibition on bright colors there), making it easier to find the coach in the Westminster parking lot. The coat of arms adopted in 1660 by My Lord Sandwich (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear…) happens to have quite a bit of green and red in it, too.
Maybe Sam hasn't read Pastoureau's book (published in 2000) and, having a green bed and a green dining room, just thinks it's pretty, the color of Brampton fields, sea-green, &c. Let him figure out later why the captains (and, hmm, the actresses maybe) cross themselves before boarding his coach.
The cover letter to a spy's report, apparently from St. Malo, is written today by Capt. Anthony Deane in Portsmouth for John Williamson (and preserved, of course, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…). It informs us of King Louis' giant naval fleet will soon be ready for whatever, and that "he pays all workmen every 15 days, and therefore is well served".
Copy to Sam, the paymasters and beancounters, and to Treasury and select MPs. Such punctuality may not be universal even in France, for we seem to recall a Gazette notice of French troops left unpaid and abandoned in Flanders, where they rioted and plundered. But we phant'sy an arms control treaty, wherein the Parties agree to all be as slow-paying as the slowest.
"Whore!" How original. But, again, how commonplace a profession on Whetstone's Park, home to the new employer procured for Ms Willett's, at least until he decided to move, with his chest of drawers, to more reputable quarters (safer, too, should the next Bawdy House riot have taken aim at his lodgings; briefing at https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…). Coincidence?
The new Treasurers record in their minutes (preserved at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) that, on the occasion of their "being also the first time" assembled with the Duke, they passed a "Money warrant for 3,449L 8s. 10d to Mr. Pepys for Tangier in full for the quarter ended the 4th inst[ant]". This would be the balance of the budget on which Sam had got an advance last Friday (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…). One more reason to whistle a happy tune on the way to your peaceful home...
Westminster, early morning: James, duke of York, sips his chocolate by his favorite fireplace. An usher discreetly introduces Navy comptroller Vice Admiral Sir John Mennes, intelligencer Sir Joseph Williamson, and Sir Stephen Fox, army paymaster and recipient of vast budgets for "secret services". Williamson tenders a thin file.
"The Pepys file", the duke guesses. "Thankfully not so thick".
"Indeed, your grace", Williamson says. "But we were right to worry that the fracas lately issuing from Pepys House could deserve the Crown's attention. 'Twas a woman, of course. Your grace knows our Clerk of the Acts..."
"A most devoted servant of his Majestie", York says with a wink and a nod.
"In this case, his errands around London grew so frantic yesterday, and took him to parts so disreputable and so thick with our Agents, that my man needed but two hours to figure his interest: The maid of one Doctor Allbon..."
"Known to you?" York asks.
"A poor, broken fellow", Fox supplies. "But the name is Scot, of course".
"Scotland?" York's mind veers to a thousand theories of sedition and Conspiracies.
"Our trusted Clerk and repository of every Naval secret was also tailed by two Dutch agents and one French, so discreet was he", Williamson says. "Mr. Pepys cares for his appearance, so as things stand, the potential for blackmail..."
"Should, for instance, this broke Scot doctor realize what he's got on his doorstep..."
"Yes, yes, I see", York says.
"We can neutralize some of the key characters", Fox suggests eagerly.
A shrug of ducal shoulders... but without the raised eyebrows that would mean assent, to Fox's slight dismay. York instead asks for notepaper and a quill, scribbles a few words, folds and seals the note. "I have a better idea. Mr Mennes?" The admiral wakes up with a jolt, "ha! Your R'yal 'ness?"
"Pray have this note delivered by a trusted hand to Mrs. Pepys' personal and private attention. Let us lance the boil while it is still small."
"Use Sam's factotum", Williamson adds - with Mennes it never hurts to give precise instructions. "What's his name, Brewer?"
"Hewer", Mennes recalls. "Yes, he'll be perfect. I'll do this right away, while Mr Pepys is at the Office."
From a pocket the duke of York fishes out a fat, freshly-minted gold coin, hands it to Mennes. "Leave that with the boy for his discretion and service to England. Good. So, gentlemen, chill weather, what? An early winter, I say. Chocolate, anyone?"
Sam, on intelligence that the Target is in somewhere about Lincoln's Inn Fields (mapped at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…), paces the Strand (https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) in hope of seeing Her at a window. Scant hope indeed, though there is a thin section of the Strand where, perhaps maybe, one could sight the back windows of some building that could be described as "on Lincoln's Inn Fields". Another sign of the patient not being completely rational at this point, though still rational enough not to go 'round the Fields instead, which could have improved the odds but for the Fields apparently being a good place to get mugged by vagrants.
Apart from that, for any problem in London, trust to your wily, all-knowing porter... special rates for gentlemen seeking to (har har) pass a note to a gentlelady to ask how she is. Discretion guaranteed, even for those customers well known around the village that is Whitehall. Why, if Sam had tried the next porter down, he'd have run into this new fellow, one Fygaro, who knows just how to get a note inside the Doctor's house, and could have slipped Sam inside, perhaps dressed as a soldier with papers to claim he's billetted there. Can fix your wig, too.
Whetstone's Park! The very name makes the skin crawl under the rich brocade of our waistcoat. Illegally developed over 30 years ago by a Mr Whetstone but never torn down despite orders, it now festers and hobbles in the twilight zone as "a centre of vice and gambling", as http://www.shadyoldlady.com/locat… puts it - referencing a text at https://www.british-history.ac.uk… dated from 1878, by which time it had degenerated to "an almost untenanted row (...) now chiefly turned into stables". In the 1720s London geographer John Strypes (quoted at https://gutenberg.org/files/21411…) will remember it as "once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants." As of 1668 it courses between Holborn, lately noted for its badwy houses when they were torn down in the eponymous riots of March 1667, and St. Giles, a slightly better neighborhood but still home to a hospital for the poor (need we say more). Just to the south are Lincoln's Inn Fields, "head-quarters of beggars by day and of robbers at night ", on which our 1878 history heaps more fetid-slum descriptions.
So, a fit address for a low-lying "poor broken fellow" (a.k.a. a "wretch"), a proper circle of Hell in which to send your rival, and, while he's no stranger to the better parts of Holborn, hardly the place where an upright Pepys should walk about - unless blinded by Love, with his wig discreetly tucked away.
And so the past week's entries, nearly 3,000 words of detailed happenings in chronological order and full, rigorous, high-resolution self-examination of Sam's inner mood and feelings, were all written in one go and today, after the fact, and without skimping on the first days in the series. Mr Pepys should consider writing novels, he has it in himself. Also we trust he felt better after putting all this turmoil on paper; he should consider inventing psychotherapy.
We note also that a lot of this private writing was done in the Office. Mr Pepys spending hours hunched on his little private black book, writing things in cypher... How would it look like to a suspicious eye? He wasn't the only gentleman keeping a diary, but still. He must have put the "Do not disturb" sign on the door.
The Diary makes it look like Sam "staid" at the Treasury for political tourism, but their minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…) record that he did have business there, which came last and concerned the cutback, already discussed a couple of days ago in a letter from Steven Fox (see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) to the budget for the garrison at Tangiers. "Mr. Pepys' warrant for the quarter ending November last is to be divided, and a warrant made at present for 10,000L. on the Customs. The remainder to be suspended till it has been adjusted to what time Tangier is to have only 55,500L. per an[num]". Fox was also there.
The minutes devote a full 381 words to my Lord Gerard vs. the town of Newcastle, and (likely to the commission reporter's relief) make no allusion to the political mud-slinging to which my lord resorted, and which seems to have got most of Sam's attention. They do make the town's case look better, describing (in their words, paraphrased) my lord as an absentee landlord that was all squeeze and no investment, and his defense as all foot-stamping that only the King could judge his case. It's easy to see how it could have gone downhill from there. Clearly it was quite a melee, and one imagine Sam almost forgetting why he was there, until the exhausted commissioners saw him, the last petitioner left in the back of the room -- now almost empty, strewn with papers and a forgotten wig -- and ticked off that last agenda item before going to lunch.
The costs of Tangier however are on more than a few minds today, since Denis Gauden, at the Victualling Office, also wrote to the Navy Commissioners to complain of being allocated just £8 per man-day for ships at Tangiers; "I intreat you to (...) consider the difference between victualling at Tangier and in England" (State Papers, https://play.google.com/books/rea…).
We encourage the Royal Society's noble fellows, instead of giggling at Mr. Hooke's expt. on testicles, to pay attention to Sig. Donato Rosetti, one of the great, lately ignored, thinkers of the Age, like Galileo in some trouble with the (popish) (ignoble) Inquisition, and who thought "That there is noe ether". The Curator henceforth to be more precise on the titles of books.
Today we had another revelation from espying one of two letters written to Mr. Pepys, found in the State Papers. The first, from John Tinker in Portsmouth, is nothing special and relates how the boatswain of the ship Adventure embezzled sails and cables taken from a French prize (bad!) and, more remarkably, that the ship's gunner is said to have also sold two of the guns (really!)
The other letter is from Edward Byland in Woolwich, who wants Sam to look to various supplies and maintenance for Woolwich, and whose summary concludes: "Wants the plumber to mend the pump, the yard being without water".
Perhaps this shows the depth of our aristocratic inattention to such trifles, but we didn't know that in 1668 England (or anywhere else, really) has plumbers - not in the sense of a tradesman working with lead [latin plumbum], a species surely found all over the rooftops and the occasional drainpipe and which would go back to Antiquity, but here as someone to fix the pump, clearly not made of lead. We note however that it takes connections and a letter to the government to get one, and that Sam had a list of good ones. No wonder he's so popular.
The Treasury's minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…), while not recording all these staff changes, mention today that "Sir Ste. Fox is to see Mr. Pepys' warrant (for 17,500L. for Tangier for the quarter ended the 4th inst.) to say if he have any exceptions to it and to examine when the reduction [of the garrison] of Tangier is to begin".
Sandwich on his inspection there had heard many complaints of the military lording it over Tangiers' civilians and merchants like it owned the place, and downsizing the garrison had been part of his recommendations, which are perhaps making their way after all. If so, Sam could be making some enemies, as Sandwich's man and if his fingerprints are on the downsize.
Separately the minutes also note that "Mr. Montague moves for a fund for money for plate for him. The Privy Council to be moved concerning the plate for Ambassadors". Could this be about My Lord Sandwich, an Ambassador currently in some need of plate? But surely they wouldn't write of him as just "Mr. Montague"?
For the record the State Papers today contain a somewhat interesting letter, to Sam from John Tinker in Portsmouth, on his efforts to get two ropemakers to rat on the usual thieveries and frauds in the yard. One, a Mr. Tong, does so only because "the goods embezzled are sold at a cheaper rate" than his own. Just deal with it, John, OK? Mr Pepys is busy.
Comments
Second Reading
About Saturday 5 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
On the phanaticks, their more or less overt huddlings and the nervousness all this ferment currently inspires, we had seen on November 27 this letter from a Mr. Ralph Grey, of Newcastle, to "Henry Brabant" (State Papers at https://play.google.com/books/rea…): "I entreat you to buy me a sword to walk in town with, for if the fanatics hold on, it will not be safe to be without one. They are mighty high since you went to London, and had a fast last Wednesday", at which "upwards of 500 were present".
Additional problem to always keep in mind, in any case, while in the city bustle (for instance, if you're a government official with a pretty new coach): "persons marched off to them who have received the Sacrament according to the Church of England", and perhaps they had more than Bibles in their hands. Mr. Grey, however, isn't just any bystander: In 1667 he was the sheriff of Newcastle, and Brabant was its mayor (list at https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/site…. You'd think an ex-sheriff would have or could buy his own sword, though).
About Thursday 3 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Earlier in the day, as Sam sat down to "The Unfortunate Lovers", Billy the coachman was joining the brasero set outside the theater where the other coachmen were stamping their feet and passing 'round the sack bottle against the cold. They whistle appreciatively at his beautiful green livery and toast it as the unwitting homage it seems to mother Ireland.
"So who's the new master?" "Any fun?" "Any scandal already?"
"Hey guys, I just got there. Some quill-pusher. Dull as a lead guinea. He tiptoes around his wife. Works in the Navy Office on Seething".
The words "Navy Office" bring a torrent of well-wishing and inquiries. "He can get that paper they give you to not get pressed? He can get my uncle's pension paid? He can get me to Virginia? You got a pass to enter the yards?" &c., &c.
In comes waltzing the smiling, affable man from the Benevolent Society for Coachmen's Needs. As always, he has a flask of much better sack, and in his faint Dutch accent offers "a good barber for your tooth-ache, a Hindoo balm for your bottom-sores, a free loan for your old Ma, your letters writ'n and sent to Kilkenny, a nice girl for your solace", in return for "jolly anecdotes, worthless discarded papers, a few seconds' perusal of house keys", &c., &c. Billy takes a swig of the free booze, wishes him good evening like the others, and nods to himself, pensively.
About Thursday 3 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Meanwhile, Sam wallows in self-satisfaction, the new coach smell, and Bess' lovingly arranged floral cushions. His own coach! His own bloody coach! He can go anywhere (well, almost, a stern mental image of My Wife corrects him). He can make it turn left, or turn right, at will (hmm, but not here of course, have to follow the ruts). He can, er, stretch his legs like this!
The coach enters one of the newly finished, straightened and paved sections of Fleet Street. Sam thumps the roof with his cane (no gentleman without a cane, if only as an ostensible roof-thumper). "Coachman! Faster! Let's make my baby's wheels throw sparks!"
Up above, bundled against the bitter cold in his leprechaun suit, the coachman does what he can and cracks his whip for effect. "Aye, m'lord. But, not with these horses, b'yer leave, m'lord, as we discussed".
The coach plods along. A cat, snoozing in the middle of the street, eyes its approach, licks a paw, stretches, and dodders away, sticking its tongue at the horses. A hackney zooms past, spraying mud, its daredevil driver yelling "Make way!" Soon the Pepyses are back in the twisting, muddy, rubble-strewn labyrinth that surrounds Seething Lane. The horses, smelling their new home, crawl slightly faster.
About Thursday 3 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Today the Treasury commissioners signed off on no less than twenty two warrants for Dennis Gauden, awarding him a total of £12,000 for victualling (record at http://british-history.ac.uk/cal-…). Serious moolah, and perhaps a nick-of-time result of Sam's hard work yesterday.
If so, the bureaucracy moved unusually fast, but 'twas about time, as we find, in a letter from Chatham to the Navy Coms, some Evidence that victualling was becoming a problem area indeed: Of the crew kept on the freshly docked Golden Hand, it is written: "Pray order the victualling of the 20 men, and fish instead of oatmeal, as the men would not eat it" (https://play.google.com/books/rea…). Yes, the ship is docked, but they're not going to work very hard on a lunch of oatmeal. And, the ship being docked, they don't have to eat the menu and can walk off the H.M.S. Oatmeal anytime.
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Sam is thus an important cog in the fast-complicating geopolitics of Barbary. Still, couldn't this have waited until the next regular meeting with the duke? Did he need to be rushed with the news just now, while unfolding his dinner napkin?
Sam, having whispered his Important Secret News to His Royal Highness in full view of the entire Court, has made his Intricate Bows, brushed the Persian carpets with his hat and left. The duke chuckles and leans toward the King: "Hey, gossip-master, didn't Pepys just act a bit showy just now? Any idea why?"
"Hmpf?" the King says, around a mouthful of pheasant. "Hmm, the man just got his own wheels", he adds, after a glance at the "Daily List of New Coaches" which Williamson just placed in front of him. "He's coach-drunk".
"Oooh, he's not going to think he's one of Us, is he?", the Queen asks. "Send him the taxman if so!"
"We do that when they also start to put diamonds on their wives, dearie", the King says, stuffing some pineapple in the Queen's mouth. "Don't worry".
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Oh, and Allin's victualling. That other admiral is presently on a mission to clean up the western Med a bit of all those Barbary pyrates, who molest good Christian vessels and, incidentally, serve as one of the Sultan's levers should he need to send anyone messages on, for instance, not interfering with his besieging of the Venetians at Candia. It's a sensitive job, and how embarrassing if the pyrates, or the restless natives on the coast, should get Allin's biscuits and leave him stranded.
On November 28, the duke of York's secretary Matthew Wren had forwarded to Sam a dispatch from Allin, with a cover letter nothing that "though dated from Tangiers, it is manifest that it was from Algiers, so it is 50 days old" (note to Allin: please date your letters, dealing with these huge distances is already complicated enough). "Considering how many more [days] it must be before any letter will reach Leghorn [Livorno, west coast of Italy]", Wren (or maybe Allin) "fears he will be past that place before orders about his victualling can come thither". So there's a bit of suspense, given that drawing and sending the letters of credit also take time. Wren suggests "to give Sir Thos. Allin the whole credit he desires at Cadiz", with the funds arranged there to be made good for purchases at Leghorn. Got all that?
Allin's situation is not helped, at this time, by the fairly furious and successful campaign being waged along the Barbary coast by a certain Taffaletta, sultan of Morocco (by his real name Al-Rashid ibn Sharif, as per https://dbpedia.org/page/Al-Rashi…), about whom dispatches have of late taken more and more space in the Gazette. Thus in No. 315 we read that on September 29 Allin "arrived before Algier, where he has made a new peace with the people", but in the next paragraph also how "Taffaletta (...) ha[s] by his Conquests taken on him not only the Title of King, but Emperour of Barbary". In No. 311 we had seen a breathless dispatch from October 14 on how "Taffalette (...) having now taken (...) the fourth part [a quarter] of Barbary, made himself sole Emperour of Fesse [Fez] and Morocco, killed the King of Morocco (...) and reduced the whole Country to his obedience".
So Cadiz, just across the Straits, is a much healthier place where to send money or victuall the fleet, and since Taffaletta is starting to worry the Spaniards enough (the Gazette also tells us) for them to raise new troops, Allin should also be quite welcome there.
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The morning's business perhaps also had something to do with a letter which Gauden's partner Admiral Sir William Penn had sent on November 30 to the Commissioners [State Papers, 249 No. 189], suggesting they "should appoint a person to examine and cast up the papers and accounts that have not passed your view". Though Penn silkily assures them "doubt[ing] not that all faithfulness and diligence has been used", he sighs that errors may well creep in given the accounts' "variety and intricacy", and has noted in passing that "many" of the victualler's accounts "were never produced but at this juncture of time". Hence, in all likelihood, a bit of a scramble to check if there's any major time-bomb, as Gauden's contract and all things Gauden are about to receive more senior attention than usual. The Attorney General at this time is Thomas Povey, whose record (at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) as not terribly competent, bent on formalities and not hugely friendly to Sam, suggest it's best indeed not to give him anything unseemly to trip upon in Gauden's contract or accounts.
About Wednesday 2 December 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Gawden had written to Sam yesterday from the Victualling Office, to "entreat you to look over the memorial that you took when the draft of the contract was before the Treasury Commissioners, and corrected and amended with the consent of all sides. I think the point as to necessary money in the fair draft does not concur with what was agreed on; I wish the paper enclosed to be considered and agreed on against Monday, as the Attorney-General cannot draw the contract until that be done" [State Paper, 250 No. 9, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…]. It does look complicated enough to take up the whole morning; Sam may want to enable the "track changes" function in Word.
About Sunday 22 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Green and red livery? There has to be a reason. We turned to "Green: The History of a Color", the highly recommended study by French historian Michel Pastoureau, and found little encouragement there: Since the Middle Ages poor color green, its pigment unstable and often toxic, was that of weird errant knights, fickle youth (which we're not anymore, right Mr. Pepys?) and other fey creatures. With red, of the hunt - something alien to Sam. More recently, green has become the color of money (and so perhaps of budget managers), and moneylenders have adopted green hats and tableclothes, but as of the late 17C it's also shunned by sailors (it attracts lightning) and in the theater (brings bad luck).
Pastoureau quotes a 16C heraldry guru who advises against red-and-green, "a livery most common" despite the negative associations, "and most ugly" - perhaps, if the fashion mob wouldn't have the green stuff, the rest of us would since it was cheaper? It may also have been easier to spot in the riot of colors that was swingin' London (just check out a few official portraits, not much puritan black and no prohibition on bright colors there), making it easier to find the coach in the Westminster parking lot. The coat of arms adopted in 1660 by My Lord Sandwich (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear…) happens to have quite a bit of green and red in it, too.
Maybe Sam hasn't read Pastoureau's book (published in 2000) and, having a green bed and a green dining room, just thinks it's pretty, the color of Brampton fields, sea-green, &c. Let him figure out later why the captains (and, hmm, the actresses maybe) cross themselves before boarding his coach.
About Saturday 21 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The cover letter to a spy's report, apparently from St. Malo, is written today by Capt. Anthony Deane in Portsmouth for John Williamson (and preserved, of course, at https://play.google.com/books/rea…). It informs us of King Louis' giant naval fleet will soon be ready for whatever, and that "he pays all workmen every 15 days, and therefore is well served".
Copy to Sam, the paymasters and beancounters, and to Treasury and select MPs. Such punctuality may not be universal even in France, for we seem to recall a Gazette notice of French troops left unpaid and abandoned in Flanders, where they rioted and plundered. But we phant'sy an arms control treaty, wherein the Parties agree to all be as slow-paying as the slowest.
About Friday 20 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
"Whore!" How original. But, again, how commonplace a profession on Whetstone's Park, home to the new employer procured for Ms Willett's, at least until he decided to move, with his chest of drawers, to more reputable quarters (safer, too, should the next Bawdy House riot have taken aim at his lodgings; briefing at https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…). Coincidence?
About Friday 20 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The new Treasurers record in their minutes (preserved at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…) that, on the occasion of their "being also the first time" assembled with the Duke, they passed a "Money warrant for 3,449L 8s. 10d to Mr. Pepys for Tangier in full for the quarter ended the 4th inst[ant]". This would be the balance of the budget on which Sam had got an advance last Friday (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…). One more reason to whistle a happy tune on the way to your peaceful home...
About Thursday 19 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Westminster, early morning: James, duke of York, sips his chocolate by his favorite fireplace. An usher discreetly introduces Navy comptroller Vice Admiral Sir John Mennes, intelligencer Sir Joseph Williamson, and Sir Stephen Fox, army paymaster and recipient of vast budgets for "secret services". Williamson tenders a thin file.
"The Pepys file", the duke guesses. "Thankfully not so thick".
"Indeed, your grace", Williamson says. "But we were right to worry that the fracas lately issuing from Pepys House could deserve the Crown's attention. 'Twas a woman, of course. Your grace knows our Clerk of the Acts..."
"A most devoted servant of his Majestie", York says with a wink and a nod.
"In this case, his errands around London grew so frantic yesterday, and took him to parts so disreputable and so thick with our Agents, that my man needed but two hours to figure his interest: The maid of one Doctor Allbon..."
"Known to you?" York asks.
"A poor, broken fellow", Fox supplies. "But the name is Scot, of course".
"Scotland?" York's mind veers to a thousand theories of sedition and Conspiracies.
"For the sake of discretion we haven't hauled him in yet but we checked www.ancestry.co.uk and the best matches were at www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collect…", and they're all Scots."
"Our trusted Clerk and repository of every Naval secret was also tailed by two Dutch agents and one French, so discreet was he", Williamson says. "Mr. Pepys cares for his appearance, so as things stand, the potential for blackmail..."
"Should, for instance, this broke Scot doctor realize what he's got on his doorstep..."
"Yes, yes, I see", York says.
"We can neutralize some of the key characters", Fox suggests eagerly.
A shrug of ducal shoulders... but without the raised eyebrows that would mean assent, to Fox's slight dismay. York instead asks for notepaper and a quill, scribbles a few words, folds and seals the note. "I have a better idea. Mr Mennes?" The admiral wakes up with a jolt, "ha! Your R'yal 'ness?"
"Pray have this note delivered by a trusted hand to Mrs. Pepys' personal and private attention. Let us lance the boil while it is still small."
"Use Sam's factotum", Williamson adds - with Mennes it never hurts to give precise instructions. "What's his name, Brewer?"
"Hewer", Mennes recalls. "Yes, he'll be perfect. I'll do this right away, while Mr Pepys is at the Office."
From a pocket the duke of York fishes out a fat, freshly-minted gold coin, hands it to Mennes. "Leave that with the boy for his discretion and service to England. Good. So, gentlemen, chill weather, what? An early winter, I say. Chocolate, anyone?"
About Wednesday 18 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Sam, on intelligence that the Target is in somewhere about Lincoln's Inn Fields (mapped at https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…), paces the Strand (https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…) in hope of seeing Her at a window. Scant hope indeed, though there is a thin section of the Strand where, perhaps maybe, one could sight the back windows of some building that could be described as "on Lincoln's Inn Fields". Another sign of the patient not being completely rational at this point, though still rational enough not to go 'round the Fields instead, which could have improved the odds but for the Fields apparently being a good place to get mugged by vagrants.
Apart from that, for any problem in London, trust to your wily, all-knowing porter... special rates for gentlemen seeking to (har har) pass a note to a gentlelady to ask how she is. Discretion guaranteed, even for those customers well known around the village that is Whitehall. Why, if Sam had tried the next porter down, he'd have run into this new fellow, one Fygaro, who knows just how to get a note inside the Doctor's house, and could have slipped Sam inside, perhaps dressed as a soldier with papers to claim he's billetted there. Can fix your wig, too.
About Monday 16 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
Whetstone's Park! The very name makes the skin crawl under the rich brocade of our waistcoat. Illegally developed over 30 years ago by a Mr Whetstone but never torn down despite orders, it now festers and hobbles in the twilight zone as "a centre of vice and gambling", as http://www.shadyoldlady.com/locat… puts it - referencing a text at https://www.british-history.ac.uk… dated from 1878, by which time it had degenerated to "an almost untenanted row (...) now chiefly turned into stables". In the 1720s London geographer John Strypes (quoted at https://gutenberg.org/files/21411…) will remember it as "once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants." As of 1668 it courses between Holborn, lately noted for its badwy houses when they were torn down in the eponymous riots of March 1667, and St. Giles, a slightly better neighborhood but still home to a hospital for the poor (need we say more). Just to the south are Lincoln's Inn Fields, "head-quarters of beggars by day and of robbers at night ", on which our 1878 history heaps more fetid-slum descriptions.
So, a fit address for a low-lying "poor broken fellow" (a.k.a. a "wretch"), a proper circle of Hell in which to send your rival, and, while he's no stranger to the better parts of Holborn, hardly the place where an upright Pepys should walk about - unless blinded by Love, with his wig discreetly tucked away.
About Sunday 15 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
And so the past week's entries, nearly 3,000 words of detailed happenings in chronological order and full, rigorous, high-resolution self-examination of Sam's inner mood and feelings, were all written in one go and today, after the fact, and without skimping on the first days in the series. Mr Pepys should consider writing novels, he has it in himself. Also we trust he felt better after putting all this turmoil on paper; he should consider inventing psychotherapy.
We note also that a lot of this private writing was done in the Office. Mr Pepys spending hours hunched on his little private black book, writing things in cypher... How would it look like to a suspicious eye? He wasn't the only gentleman keeping a diary, but still. He must have put the "Do not disturb" sign on the door.
About Friday 13 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The Diary makes it look like Sam "staid" at the Treasury for political tourism, but their minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…) record that he did have business there, which came last and concerned the cutback, already discussed a couple of days ago in a letter from Steven Fox (see https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…) to the budget for the garrison at Tangiers. "Mr. Pepys' warrant for the quarter ending November last is to be divided, and a warrant made at present for 10,000L. on the Customs. The remainder to be suspended till it has been adjusted to what time Tangier is to have only 55,500L. per an[num]". Fox was also there.
The minutes devote a full 381 words to my Lord Gerard vs. the town of Newcastle, and (likely to the commission reporter's relief) make no allusion to the political mud-slinging to which my lord resorted, and which seems to have got most of Sam's attention. They do make the town's case look better, describing (in their words, paraphrased) my lord as an absentee landlord that was all squeeze and no investment, and his defense as all foot-stamping that only the King could judge his case. It's easy to see how it could have gone downhill from there. Clearly it was quite a melee, and one imagine Sam almost forgetting why he was there, until the exhausted commissioners saw him, the last petitioner left in the back of the room -- now almost empty, strewn with papers and a forgotten wig -- and ticked off that last agenda item before going to lunch.
The costs of Tangier however are on more than a few minds today, since Denis Gauden, at the Victualling Office, also wrote to the Navy Commissioners to complain of being allocated just £8 per man-day for ships at Tangiers; "I intreat you to (...) consider the difference between victualling at Tangier and in England" (State Papers, https://play.google.com/books/rea…).
About Thursday 12 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
We encourage the Royal Society's noble fellows, instead of giggling at Mr. Hooke's expt. on testicles, to pay attention to Sig. Donato Rosetti, one of the great, lately ignored, thinkers of the Age, like Galileo in some trouble with the (popish) (ignoble) Inquisition, and who thought "That there is noe ether". The Curator henceforth to be more precise on the titles of books.
Today we had another revelation from espying one of two letters written to Mr. Pepys, found in the State Papers. The first, from John Tinker in Portsmouth, is nothing special and relates how the boatswain of the ship Adventure embezzled sails and cables taken from a French prize (bad!) and, more remarkably, that the ship's gunner is said to have also sold two of the guns (really!)
The other letter is from Edward Byland in Woolwich, who wants Sam to look to various supplies and maintenance for Woolwich, and whose summary concludes: "Wants the plumber to mend the pump, the yard being without water".
Perhaps this shows the depth of our aristocratic inattention to such trifles, but we didn't know that in 1668 England (or anywhere else, really) has plumbers - not in the sense of a tradesman working with lead [latin plumbum], a species surely found all over the rooftops and the occasional drainpipe and which would go back to Antiquity, but here as someone to fix the pump, clearly not made of lead. We note however that it takes connections and a letter to the government to get one, and that Sam had a list of good ones. No wonder he's so popular.
About Wednesday 11 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
The Treasury's minutes (at www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-tre…), while not recording all these staff changes, mention today that "Sir Ste. Fox is to see Mr. Pepys' warrant (for 17,500L. for Tangier for the quarter ended the 4th inst.) to say if he have any exceptions to it and to examine when the reduction [of the garrison] of Tangier is to begin".
Sandwich on his inspection there had heard many complaints of the military lording it over Tangiers' civilians and merchants like it owned the place, and downsizing the garrison had been part of his recommendations, which are perhaps making their way after all. If so, Sam could be making some enemies, as Sandwich's man and if his fingerprints are on the downsize.
Separately the minutes also note that "Mr. Montague moves for a fund for money for plate for him. The Privy Council to be moved concerning the plate for Ambassadors". Could this be about My Lord Sandwich, an Ambassador currently in some need of plate? But surely they wouldn't write of him as just "Mr. Montague"?
About Sunday 8 November 1668
Stephane Chenard • Link
For the record the State Papers today contain a somewhat interesting letter, to Sam from John Tinker in Portsmouth, on his efforts to get two ropemakers to rat on the usual thieveries and frauds in the yard. One, a Mr. Tong, does so only because "the goods embezzled are sold at a cheaper rate" than his own. Just deal with it, John, OK? Mr Pepys is busy.