Keith Knight

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Keith Knight has posted six annotations/comments since 19 May 2023.

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Third Reading

About Friday 8 February 1660/61

Keith Knight  •  Link

The reparations to slave owners made by the British government (mentioned by Sarah on 1 Nov 2020) was the subject of an eye-opening BBC documentary, Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners, in 2015 written and presented by historian David Olusoga.

An early version of the Civil Service created what was reckoned to be the first paper form, which claimants had to fill in with details of all their slaves - gender, age, location, whether they had children etc. Each characteristic was assigned a value and the total to be paid out was not subject to appeal. The claimants had to turn up on an appointed day in Old Jewry in the City of London to get their money (Olusoga paints a vivid picture of the street scene).

In practice, many slave owners were now widows who had been left them in their husbands' will. The owners were all over the UK (UCL has built a map from the paperwork). Aristocrats were treated the same as commoners in the process.

The bail-out was unsurpassed until the bank-bailout of 2008. Much of the compensation was then invested in the big scheme of the day, the building of the West Coast railway mainline from London to the NW of England and Glasgow.

About Sunday 9 December 1660

Keith Knight  •  Link

Re the comments on Essex back in 2003, Ralph Josselin was the vicar of Earls Colne, which is north of Braintree and quite some distance from London. It is still pretty rural (I was up that way a couple of months ago).

It's feasible therefore that the weather there could be quite different to London.

About Sunday 21 October 1660

Keith Knight  •  Link

The regicides escaped to New England, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, are now the subjects of a good novel by Robert Harris, 'Act of Oblivion'.

About Thursday 11 October 1660

Keith Knight  •  Link

The Pillars of Hercules remains a pub name in London. There is one near Holborn and another in Greek St, Soho, although annoyingly that has been renamed Bar Hercules.

About Friday 18 May 1660

Keith Knight  •  Link

So, Pepys visited Delft at the same time that Vermeer was painting ‘View of Delft’. He would have been physically so close to Vermeer.