In October 1668 Pepys buys some "hangings" -- presumably tapestries -- as part of the gentrification of their home, from an upholsterer, which leads me to think they were second hand. The Upper Sort who would own tapestries had been hard hit by the Great Fire, taxation, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, etc., so selling off excess belongings would be happening in 1668: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
L&M: The prices both of this [hanging] ... suggest that they were either second-hand or imitation tapestries made of painter or stained cloth. The 'Acts of the Apostles' was a favorite design, based on cartoons by Raphael and manufactured at the Mortlake tapestry works (with which both Sir Sackville and Sir Richard Crow were connected, 1661-7): Whinney and Miller, pp. 126-7, 129-30. https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
An example of what L&M have in mind is this Mortlake Tapestry 1636-38 from King Charles’ set of 'Acts of The Apostles' 'Elymas struck by Blindness' in the Second State Diningroom: https://www.boughtonhouse.co.uk/b…
By the time the tapestries weere installed in the middle of November, 1668, Pepys' justified pride in his acquisitions was tinged by being in the middle of Elizabeth's great betrayal: "This night the upholsters did finish the hanging of my best chamber, but my sorrow and trouble is so great about this business, that it puts me out of all joy in looking upon it or minding how it was." https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
I'm almost moved to feeling sorry for him ... almost.
"... and not one good suit of hangings in all the house, but all most ancient things, such as I would not give the hanging-up of in my house; ..."
Hangings generally referred to tapestries, and rich people frequently travelled with their tapestries as they were expensive, beautiful, unbreakable, stopped drafts, and made their next stop feel like home. They also took their beds and chests of clothes.
It's quite likely the owners left these old tapestries behind when they left. Maybe they were hanging in difficult places to reach? Anyways, Pepys, you should be so lucky as to have them hanging in your house!
After the Restoration, the finest new tapestries come from Paris:
"In 1662 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's minister of finance, took over the Gobelins manufactory on behalf of the Crown; its official title became Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne (Royal Factory of Furniture to the Crown). The first director, Charles Le Brun, orchestrated numerous craftsmen, including tapestry weavers, painters, bronze-workers, furniture-makers, and gold- and silversmiths, who supplied objects exclusively for [Louis XIV]'s palaces or as royal gifts. ...
"The tapestries woven at the Gobelins were the finest of any produced in Europe in the 1600s and 1700s. Cartoons were ordered from leading painters such as Le Brun, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Charles Coypel, and François Boucher. Skilled weavers were paid according to the difficulty of the work; those entrusted with heads and flesh tones received the highest wages.
"During the reign of Louis XIV, tapestries celebrated the glory of the Sun King, ..."
The Bodleian Library has three splendid 16th-17th century tapestries showing counties of England. For 200 years the Bodleian never displayed any of the tapestry maps because it didn't have a big enough spare wall.
They came out of storage when the Weston Library building opened in 2015, creating the first proper exhibition space for one of them. All three have been magnificently restored in partnership with the National Trust’s conservation experts. Gentle washing in Belgium brought out astonishingly beautiful colors, suggesting they could never have been exposed to daylight for long.
Damage from creasing suggests that the tapestries were folded for long periods. And straight-edged gaps show where sections were deliberately cut out to use in upholstery — a chunk of Gloucestershire reportedly ended up as a fire screen.
Oxfordshire, although damaged, includes a magnificent beast representing the figure that is cut into the turf in the Vale of the White Horse, and London is shown with the Tower of London, a solitary bridge and the tall spire of Old St. Paul’s 70 years before its destruction in the Great Fire. Oxford itself is praised in a florid text panel for its “sixeteene colledges and eyght halles”.
Perhaps we should knock on the doors of all the grand country houses and ask if, by any chance, they have an old cushion cover densely woven with villages, church towers, orchards and deer parks? The Bodleian would love to get them back. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2…
Charles II never reopened the Mortlake tapestry factory, but the continued influx of skilled European workers, coupled with Charles' desire to make his reign as artistically glorious as his father's meant that the work moved to Soho and Clerkenwell and later to Hatton Garden.
This entire post is a SPOILER about things that take place after the Diary:
The largest tapestry on display at the Royal Museums Greenwich illustrates the May 1672 battle off the coast of Southwold Bay, Suffolk. It is taken from a series of sketches made by a Dutch artist, Willem Van de Velde the Elder, who took up a position in a small boat in order to bear witness to the carnage.
Surrounding him were hundreds of warships. A Dutch fleet had sailed to engage a combined force of English and French ships, and Van de Velde was there to document the action on behalf of the Dutch.
The engagement became known as the Battle of Solebay. While both sides claimed victory, the outcome remained inconclusive.
The drawings Van de Velde made shaped how the battle was perceived, and eventually Charles II commissioned him to design these tapestries, as Charles and James saw this battle as their own "Armada". I suspect there would have been no tapestries had the English considered the Battle of Solebay as a loss. Van de Velde had to change his perspective on the action to make the designs.
One of these tapestries is now in the collections of Royal Museums Greenwich. Entitled "The Burning of the Royal James at the Battle of Solebay, 28 May 1672," it depicts the climax of the battle: the destruction of the English flagship Royal James and the death of Vice-Admiral Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich.
Much like the outcome of the battle, the tapestry’s history is ambiguous.
For starters, where were they made? One part of the blog suggests: "The weaving of the Solebay tapestries is now thought to have taken place either at Clerkenwell or later at Hatton Garden in the workshops of Francis Poyntz.
"A skilled weaver, Poyntz was a Yeoman Arrarsworker in the Great Wardrobe, a position that involved producing new royal tapestry commissions as well as maintaining the existing tapestries in royal residences and collections.
"Francis Poyntz relied on skilled émigré weavers, many of whom were Catholic and had left the Dutch Commonwealth because of religious and economic turmoil."
Mortlake near Richmond was where the famous Mortlake tapestries were made for Charles I. Cromwell shut down the factory, and Charles II promised to start their manufacture again, but never got around to it.
"A manufactory of fine tapestry (being its first introduction into England) was established here in the year 1619 by Sir Francis Crane, who bought some premises of Mr. Juxon for that purpose. "The King patronized the undertaking, and gave 2,000/. towards it as an encouragement. Francis Cleyne, an ingenious artist, coming to England soon afterwards under the patronage of Sir Robert Anstruther, was employed as a designer, and raised the credit of the manufactures to a very high degree. "The King granted him a pension of 100/. per annum, and made him a free denizen. In the first year of King Charles, Sir Francis Crane, to whom his Majesty owed 6000l. procured a pension of 1,000/. per annum. "After his death, his brother Sir Richard sold the premises to the King. During the civil war they were seized as the property of the crown. In the Survey taken by order of parliament the Tapestryhouse is described as containing one room 82 ft. in length, and 20 in breadth, with 12 looms; another about half as long with 6 looms; and a great room called the limning-room. This manufactory occupied the site of Queen's-head Court. The old house, on the opposite side of the road, was built by Charles I. for the residence of Francis Cleyne. "Gibson, the dwarf, who had been page to a lady at Mortlake, was a scholar of Cleyne. "During the protectorate the Tapestry-house remained in the occupation of John Holliburie, who in the Survey is mentioned as the master workman.
"After the Restoration, Charles II. intended to revive the manufacture, and sent to Verrio to sketch the designs, but his intention was never carried into execution. "In the Survey above the Tapestry-house is valued at 50/. per annum; the painter's house at 9/." https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
Maybe 'work' refers to a day of networking with the "right" people more than "office chores".
Babs and Betty are the pretty daughters of a member of parliament, who is also a distant cousin, whom Pepys seems to be cultivating as a friend these days. A friend, meaning someone of influence who is in your inner circle. The girls will go back to Roger and report endlessly to the Pepys' country friends about how Sam and Elizabeth took them to Court and the girls saw the King and Queen, and their ability to entertain appropriately. Those rumors will spread in the country where people have a great shortage of news.
Not to mention who at Court saw Pepys and his well-dressed, beautiful wife and extended family.
Rest assured Pepys is laying out the big bucks on Elizabeth's wardrobe for a reason, beyond marital harmony. Unthank's was a lady's club, favored by women like Barbara Villiers Palmer, Lady Castlemaine ... Pepys may have mentally turned the expense of the dressmakers into a political ploy; women talk to each other and to their husbands and to their "others".
"Use all called fortune" says Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this might be a good example. Pepys is making his image as an up-and-coming successful, connected courtier with a very presentable family ... someone you want in Parliament, not disgraced for malfeasance in far-off Tangier. A good offense is the best defense.
Paulina Montagu "who is desperately sick" has just travelled for two days over the awful winter roads to get to London. I wonder why. No doctors near Hinchingbrooke? Was it catching and the Earl decided to sacrifice old Shepley to get her away from the rest of the family? Did she have a fever? ... the trip probably kills her.
And what is Sandwich thinking, sending Paulina to stay with his former mistress? He must have trusted Mrs. Beck's discretion completely. There must have been retainers around Hinchingbrooke where she could have recuperated without endangering her health further with this journey.
Jenny's comment on Pepys not knowing he was spreading his cold virus strikes me as more profound than she knew when she wrote her comment. We are all older and wiser now, aren't we?
Sam, Matt and Mary, Bedlam is in blue in the text. You can click through on it to our Encyclopedia and there's some great information there from 2007 to clarify what this is about.
It tales 10 years plus to rebuild London after the Great Fire; housing is still in short supply.
Presumably Roger Pepys and his new wife are living at his Middle Inn Chambers, and having young Talbot there as well would be crowded. Now Elizabeth and Sam are on good terms again, the girls can have Elizabeth's room. If Pepys returns to the dog house, he can camp in his Cabinet with his books.
I've lost track of their room additions: they may even have a real spare room by now.
Royalty had long used the exchange of portraits to reassure prospective mates of the desireability of the proposed match (didn't work for Charles II who is rumored to have seen Catherine of Braganza for the first time, and said something like, "They want me to marry a bat" because of her Portuguese hairstyle).
Pepys and Povy in Diary times are into buying landscapes and portraits for personal use. But by the end of the century The Portrait will take on a greater significance and importance, which accounts for why Pepys exchanges his likeness with influential friends Evelyn and Hewer ... and probably other "friends" as well.
According to this article, "friends" were the circle of influential and like-minded people you cultivated who could promote and protect you. You didn't necessarily like them, but your families inter-married, and sometimes a circle was so large and wealthy it could sustain a particular portrait painter.
I'm trying to stay away from labeling these circles as Whigs or Torys, but the political divide does come to mind. https://thehistoryofparliament.wo…
“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.” -- Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)
Pepys in his Diary is transparent about most of his motivations, except reason IMHO.
Maybe reasoning is difficult for humans? We think we're reasoning, but most of the time we are desiring and rationalizing? Pepys never tells us why he does something beyond he desires this woman or that book, or he goes to work betimes out of habit. Whether or not to run for Parliament is the first time I see him thinking through a possibility.
Getting married and starting such a large family at 26 was very late for those days. Pepys usually mades unkind comments about spinsters, but not this time.
"... my wife and I to White Hall; and there, by means of Mr. Cooling, did get into the play, the only one we have seen this winter: it was “The Five Hours’ Adventure:” but I sat so far I could not hear well, nor was there any pretty woman that I did see, but my wife, who sat in my Lady Fox’s pew with her."
Am I correct in thinking this is the first time Pepys has ever taken Elizabeth to a social event at Court? He has been so careful to keep her out of sight -- for what reason he has never spelled out beyond his jelousy of anyone in britches within six feet of her. But here she is, and I would say he was proud of how beautiful she is.
I'm glad she's finally out of his closet, so to speak. Not a minute too soon.
Or would she have stopped him from going to a social event if she hadn't been there to chaperone him, albeit from afar? In which case, this was just another self-serving move.
"... to the Temple, and thence to my cozen Turner’s, ..."
Since Salisbury Court burned in the Great Fire, and with it Jane Turner's lovely big house, and since John Turner is thought to have been a member of the Middle Temple (like Roger Pepys), I'm thinking that might be where Jane is now living while in London? Chambers would be cramped if their three children are also there.
Comments
Second Reading
About Thursday 19 November 1668
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Hangings" generally means tapestries, and we now have a page for that:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Tapestry
San Diego Sarah • Link
In October 1668 Pepys buys some "hangings" -- presumably tapestries -- as part of the gentrification of their home, from an upholsterer, which leads me to think they were second hand. The Upper Sort who would own tapestries had been hard hit by the Great Fire, taxation, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, etc., so selling off excess belongings would be happening in 1668:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
L&M: The prices both of this [hanging] ... suggest that they were either second-hand or imitation tapestries made of painter or stained cloth. The 'Acts of the Apostles' was a favorite design, based on cartoons by Raphael and manufactured at the Mortlake tapestry works (with which both Sir Sackville and Sir Richard Crow were connected, 1661-7): Whinney and Miller, pp. 126-7, 129-30.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
An example of what L&M have in mind is this Mortlake Tapestry 1636-38 from King Charles’ set of 'Acts of The Apostles' 'Elymas struck by Blindness' in the Second State Diningroom:
https://www.boughtonhouse.co.uk/b…
Raphael Cartoons
https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections…
By the time the tapestries weere installed in the middle of November, 1668, Pepys' justified pride in his acquisitions was tinged by being in the middle of Elizabeth's great betrayal:
"This night the upholsters did finish the hanging of my best chamber, but my sorrow and trouble is so great about this business, that it puts me out of all joy in looking upon it or minding how it was."
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
I'm almost moved to feeling sorry for him ... almost.
About Tuesday 8 October 1667
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... and not one good suit of hangings in all the house, but all most ancient things, such as I would not give the hanging-up of in my house; ..."
Hangings generally referred to tapestries, and rich people frequently travelled with their tapestries as they were expensive, beautiful, unbreakable, stopped drafts, and made their next stop feel like home. They also took their beds and chests of clothes.
It's quite likely the owners left these old tapestries behind when they left. Maybe they were hanging in difficult places to reach?
Anyways, Pepys, you should be so lucky as to have them hanging in your house!
Tapestries
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Tapestry
San Diego Sarah • Link
After the Restoration, the finest new tapestries come from Paris:
"In 1662 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's minister of finance, took over the Gobelins manufactory on behalf of the Crown; its official title became Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne (Royal Factory of Furniture to the Crown). The first director, Charles Le Brun, orchestrated numerous craftsmen, including tapestry weavers, painters, bronze-workers, furniture-makers, and gold- and silversmiths, who supplied objects exclusively for [Louis XIV]'s palaces or as royal gifts. ...
"The tapestries woven at the Gobelins were the finest of any produced in Europe in the 1600s and 1700s. Cartoons were ordered from leading painters such as Le Brun, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Charles Coypel, and François Boucher. Skilled weavers were paid according to the difficulty of the work; those entrusted with heads and flesh tones received the highest wages.
"During the reign of Louis XIV, tapestries celebrated the glory of the Sun King, ..."
For more, see:
http://www.getty.edu/art/collecti…
About Tapestry
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Bodleian Library has three splendid 16th-17th century tapestries showing counties of England. For 200 years the Bodleian never displayed any of the tapestry maps because it didn't have a big enough spare wall.
They came out of storage when the Weston Library building opened in 2015, creating the first proper exhibition space for one of them. All three have been magnificently restored in partnership with the National Trust’s conservation experts. Gentle washing in Belgium brought out astonishingly beautiful colors, suggesting they could never have been exposed to daylight for long.
Damage from creasing suggests that the tapestries were folded for long periods. And straight-edged gaps show where sections were deliberately cut out to use in upholstery — a chunk of Gloucestershire reportedly ended up as a fire screen.
Oxfordshire, although damaged, includes a magnificent beast representing the figure that is cut into the turf in the Vale of the White Horse, and London is shown with the Tower of London, a solitary bridge and the tall spire of Old St. Paul’s 70 years before its destruction in the Great Fire. Oxford itself is praised in a florid text panel for its “sixeteene colledges and eyght halles”.
Perhaps we should knock on the doors of all the grand country houses and ask if, by any chance, they have an old cushion cover densely woven with villages, church towers, orchards and deer parks? The Bodleian would love to get them back.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2…
About Tapestry
San Diego Sarah • Link
Charles II never reopened the Mortlake tapestry factory, but the continued influx of skilled European workers, coupled with Charles' desire to make his reign as artistically glorious as his father's meant that the work moved to Soho and Clerkenwell and later to Hatton Garden.
This entire post is a SPOILER about things that take place after the Diary:
The largest tapestry on display at the Royal Museums Greenwich illustrates the May 1672 battle off the coast of Southwold Bay, Suffolk. It is taken from a series of sketches made by a Dutch artist, Willem Van de Velde the Elder, who took up a position in a small boat in order to bear witness to the carnage.
Surrounding him were hundreds of warships. A Dutch fleet had sailed to engage a combined force of English and French ships, and Van de Velde was there to document the action on behalf of the Dutch.
The engagement became known as the Battle of Solebay. While both sides claimed victory, the outcome remained inconclusive.
The drawings Van de Velde made shaped how the battle was perceived, and eventually Charles II commissioned him to design these tapestries, as Charles and James saw this battle as their own "Armada". I suspect there would have been no tapestries had the English considered the Battle of Solebay as a loss. Van de Velde had to change his perspective on the action to make the designs.
One of these tapestries is now in the collections of Royal Museums Greenwich.
Entitled "The Burning of the Royal James at the Battle of Solebay, 28 May 1672," it depicts the climax of the battle: the destruction of the English flagship Royal James and the death of Vice-Admiral Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich.
Much like the outcome of the battle, the tapestry’s history is ambiguous.
For starters, where were they made? One part of the blog suggests: "The weaving of the Solebay tapestries is now thought to have taken place either at Clerkenwell or later at Hatton Garden in the workshops of Francis Poyntz.
"A skilled weaver, Poyntz was a Yeoman Arrarsworker in the Great Wardrobe, a position that involved producing new royal tapestry commissions as well as maintaining the existing tapestries in royal residences and collections.
"Francis Poyntz relied on skilled émigré weavers, many of whom were Catholic and had left the Dutch Commonwealth because of religious and economic turmoil."
For pictures and more details of its history, poke around here:
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/top…
About Tapestry
San Diego Sarah • Link
Mortlake near Richmond was where the famous Mortlake tapestries were made for Charles I.
Cromwell shut down the factory, and Charles II promised to start their manufacture again, but never got around to it.
"A manufactory of fine tapestry (being its first introduction into England) was established here in the year 1619 by Sir Francis Crane, who bought some premises of Mr. Juxon for that purpose.
"The King patronized the undertaking, and gave 2,000/. towards it as an encouragement. Francis Cleyne, an ingenious artist, coming to England soon afterwards under the patronage of Sir Robert Anstruther, was employed as a designer, and raised the credit of the manufactures to a very high degree.
"The King granted him a pension of 100/. per annum, and made him a free denizen. In the first year of King Charles, Sir Francis Crane, to whom his Majesty owed 6000l. procured a pension of 1,000/. per annum.
"After his death, his brother Sir Richard sold the premises to the King. During the civil war they were seized as the property of the crown. In the Survey taken by order of parliament the Tapestryhouse is described as containing one room 82 ft. in length, and 20 in breadth, with 12 looms; another about half as long with 6 looms; and a great room called the limning-room. This manufactory occupied the site of Queen's-head Court. The old house, on the opposite side of the road, was built by Charles I. for the residence of Francis Cleyne.
"Gibson, the dwarf, who had been page to a lady at Mortlake, was a scholar of Cleyne.
"During the protectorate the Tapestry-house remained in the occupation of John Holliburie, who in the Survey is mentioned as the master workman.
"After the Restoration, Charles II. intended to revive the manufacture, and sent to Verrio to sketch the designs, but his intention was never carried into execution.
"In the Survey above the Tapestry-house is valued at 50/. per annum; the painter's house at 9/."
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
About Tapestry
San Diego Sarah • Link
You can still buy 17th century tapestries. Lots for sale in 2022:
https://www.1stdibs.com/similar/?…
About Monday 22 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
“mightily well pleased with this day’s work”
Maybe 'work' refers to a day of networking with the "right" people more than "office chores".
Babs and Betty are the pretty daughters of a member of parliament, who is also a distant cousin, whom Pepys seems to be cultivating as a friend these days. A friend, meaning someone of influence who is in your inner circle.
The girls will go back to Roger and report endlessly to the Pepys' country friends about how Sam and Elizabeth took them to Court and the girls saw the King and Queen, and their ability to entertain appropriately. Those rumors will spread in the country where people have a great shortage of news.
Not to mention who at Court saw Pepys and his well-dressed, beautiful wife and extended family.
Rest assured Pepys is laying out the big bucks on Elizabeth's wardrobe for a reason, beyond marital harmony. Unthank's was a lady's club, favored by women like Barbara Villiers Palmer, Lady Castlemaine ... Pepys may have mentally turned the expense of the dressmakers into a political ploy; women talk to each other and to their husbands and to their "others".
"Use all called fortune" says Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this might be a good example.
Pepys is making his image as an up-and-coming successful, connected courtier with a very presentable family ... someone you want in Parliament, not disgraced for malfeasance in far-off Tangier.
A good offense is the best defense.
About Sunday 21 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
Paulina Montagu "who is desperately sick" has just travelled for two days over the awful winter roads to get to London. I wonder why. No doctors near Hinchingbrooke? Was it catching and the Earl decided to sacrifice old Shepley to get her away from the rest of the family? Did she have a fever? ... the trip probably kills her.
And what is Sandwich thinking, sending Paulina to stay with his former mistress? He must have trusted Mrs. Beck's discretion completely.
There must have been retainers around Hinchingbrooke where she could have recuperated without endangering her health further with this journey.
About Saturday 20 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
Jenny's comment on Pepys not knowing he was spreading his cold virus strikes me as more profound than she knew when she wrote her comment.
We are all older and wiser now, aren't we?
About Saturday 20 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... and to supper, W. Batelier and W. Hewer with us ..."
We know Elizabeth and Sam are very fond of both of the Williams, but you suppose they might be match-making the Pepys girls???
Nothing comes of it, as we know from their biographies, but I was thinking what fun these dinners must have been for Babs and Betty.
About Friday 19 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
Sam, Matt and Mary, Bedlam is in blue in the text. You can click through on it to our Encyclopedia and there's some great information there from 2007 to clarify what this is about.
About Thursday 18 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
It tales 10 years plus to rebuild London after the Great Fire; housing is still in short supply.
Presumably Roger Pepys and his new wife are living at his Middle Inn Chambers, and having young Talbot there as well would be crowded. Now Elizabeth and Sam are on good terms again, the girls can have Elizabeth's room. If Pepys returns to the dog house, he can camp in his Cabinet with his books.
I've lost track of their room additions: they may even have a real spare room by now.
About Art
San Diego Sarah • Link
Royalty had long used the exchange of portraits to reassure prospective mates of the desireability of the proposed match (didn't work for Charles II who is rumored to have seen Catherine of Braganza for the first time, and said something like, "They want me to marry a bat" because of her Portuguese hairstyle).
Pepys and Povy in Diary times are into buying landscapes and portraits for personal use. But by the end of the century The Portrait will take on a greater significance and importance, which accounts for why Pepys exchanges his likeness with influential friends Evelyn and Hewer ... and probably other "friends" as well.
According to this article, "friends" were the circle of influential and like-minded people you cultivated who could promote and protect you. You didn't necessarily like them, but your families inter-married, and sometimes a circle was so large and wealthy it could sustain a particular portrait painter.
I'm trying to stay away from labeling these circles as Whigs or Torys, but the political divide does come to mind. https://thehistoryofparliament.wo…
About Aristotle
San Diego Sarah • Link
This is as profound as the Seven Deadly Sins:
“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes:
chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.” -- Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)
Pepys in his Diary is transparent about most of his motivations, except reason
IMHO.
Maybe reasoning is difficult for humans?
We think we're reasoning, but most of the time we are desiring and rationalizing?
Pepys never tells us why he does something beyond he desires this woman or that book, or he goes to work betimes out of habit.
Whether or not to run for Parliament is the first time I see him thinking through a possibility.
Food for thought.
About Betty Pepys
San Diego Sarah • Link
So both sisters got married late ... Betty was 29.
About Barbara Pepys
San Diego Sarah • Link
Getting married and starting such a large family at 26 was very late for those days. Pepys usually mades unkind comments about spinsters, but not this time.
About Monday 15 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... my wife and I to White Hall; and there, by means of Mr. Cooling, did get into the play, the only one we have seen this winter: it was “The Five Hours’ Adventure:” but I sat so far I could not hear well, nor was there any pretty woman that I did see, but my wife, who sat in my Lady Fox’s pew with her."
Am I correct in thinking this is the first time Pepys has ever taken Elizabeth to a social event at Court? He has been so careful to keep her out of sight -- for what reason he has never spelled out beyond his jelousy of anyone in britches within six feet of her. But here she is, and I would say he was proud of how beautiful she is.
I'm glad she's finally out of his closet, so to speak. Not a minute too soon.
Or would she have stopped him from going to a social event if she hadn't been there to chaperone him, albeit from afar? In which case, this was just another self-serving move.
About Monday 15 February 1668/69
San Diego Sarah • Link
"... to the Temple, and thence to my cozen Turner’s, ..."
Since Salisbury Court burned in the Great Fire, and with it Jane Turner's lovely big house, and since John Turner is thought to have been a member of the Middle Temple (like Roger Pepys), I'm thinking that might be where Jane is now living while in London? Chambers would be cramped if their three children are also there.