Croakers Apprentice

Annotations and comments

Croakers Apprentice has posted 16 annotations/comments since 18 January 2023.

The most recent first…

Comments

Third Reading

About Monday 4 February 1660/61

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Dear San Diego Sarah - this site derives much of its magic from the collaboration of 17th Century and 21st Century minds, and so thank you for recruiting the Venetian Ambassador to our number!

“Complaints about this reached the king's ears and to prevent such abuses his Majesty at once issued a severe proclamation forbidding the search of houses under any pretext unless by a written order signed by a member of the privy council or a lord lieutenant and directed to the ordinary constables and other law officers, in accordance with the ancient constitutions of the realm“

It was nice in the quote that you offered from the Ambassador to see King Charles respecting that age-old foundation stone of British & American liberty - “an Englishman’s home is his castle.”

About Monday 31 December 1660

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“My having a book I believe did spoil it a little” - is this the first recorded instance in history of someone regretting having read a ‘spoiler’?

About Saturday 19 May 1660

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Re: the Child. I think this excerpt from Wikipedia explains Pepys’s use of the word for Montagu’s son (think also the poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by Lord Byron…)

“In the Middle Ages, a childe or child (from Old English: Cild "Young Lord") was a nobleman's son who had not yet attained knighthood or had not yet won his spurs“

About Saturday 12 May 1660

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Well, this website is our Time Machine but I didn’t think Sam would actually bump into the Doctor!
(Doctor who? You may well ask…)

About Tuesday 8 May 1660

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Current events in the diary are so closely mirroring current events in our own time at the moment - in terms of excitement around the elevation of King Charles - that I’m fully expecting Sam to attend the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool at the end of the week…Swinging 1660s style, with lots of violas - he does love his Musique!

About Tuesday 1 May 1660

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My eye was caught by the Robert Herrick poem posted by Jenny Doughty back in 2003-

“Each flower has wept, and bowed toward the East
Above an hour since; yet you not dressed”

Were Pepys and his contemporaries pronouncing the direction as “Est”, because that’s the only way it could make a rhyming couplet with “dressed”?

About Monday 26 March 1660

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Thanks Sarah - and yes, Sir Samuel would be a worthy addition to any kingdom’s chivalry.
After all, the pen is mightier than the sword, and S.P’s diary has become not only a justly celebrated piece of literature - but the world’s first blog, which merely had to wait three hundred years for the manufacture of its method of transmission!

About Monday 26 March 1660

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Happy Stone Cutting Day indeed, Alter Kacker et al! Here in the UK we don’t have so many Bank Holidays, so why not make 26 March one - Samuel Pepys’ Day!

About Friday 16 March 1659/60

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In order to draw together the two main strands of these annotations I can’t resist suggesting -

“Exit Tyrannus, pursued by a bear” ?

But on a sober note, it is interesting to reflect that the expunged slogan wasn’t really wrong. Charles I did prove to be the “regum ultimus” of England/GB. Those that sat the throne from 1660 onwards were pantomime kings and Parliament’s victory has lasted to this day.

And for the record, I would rather have a panto king than a puritan dictator!

About Thursday 23 February 1659/60

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Happy birthday Sam!
Although the beauty of this site and the connection it gives us with Pepys’s world and people, is that he isn’t 390 today - he’s still 27 and just for a moment, for all of us, those intervening 363 years aren’t there…

About Monday 30 January 1659/60

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Re: Montrose’s poem in the footnote, the final lines. Fascinating that he rhymes sounds and wounds; how is he pronouncing them - soonds and woonds? Or sownds and wownds?

About Sunday 29 January 1659/60

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Alter, Carol, Sarah - I think that one of the delights of this site is that it is as close to a functioning time machine as we're likely to ever be able to achieve - whether we are skipping across the timestreams to Merry England or the more recent Millennium!

About Tuesday 17 January 1659/60

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I am really enjoying this site. It gives us one of the greatest gifts of history, which is to experience other lives and times, and through our interaction with them, let those people of the past live again. Following a recent post I remarked to my wife "Sam Pepys was kept up half of last night by a barking dog!" He feels in a way like a neighbour or work colleague. Also, reading each entry delivered by daily email 'in real time' makes them so much more vivid and tangible and connected with the weekly rhythms of our own lives.