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San Diego Sarah has posted 8,791 annotations/comments since 6 August 2015.

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Second Reading

About Wednesday 17 June 1668

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Harry R ... I found our encyclopedia entry for these entrepreneurial early morning entertainers:

Waits or waites were British town pipers. From medieval times up to the beginning of the 19th century, every British town and city of any note had a band of waites.
Also see https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

About Wednesday 15 October 1662

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

'... musique (with a bandore for the base) did give me a levett ...'

I don't think Pepys and Hewer were travelling with musical instruments, or performing a levett in their room at the crack of dawn. I think this was the wake up call delivered by the innkeeper using local musicians, for a tip.

Our encyclopedia has the correct name for these groups:

Waits or waites were British town pipers. From medieval times up to the beginning of the 19th century, every British town and city of any note had a band of waites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wai…
Also see https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

Early morning entrepreneurs.

About Tuesday 9 September 1662

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... and then to bed, but could hardly sleep at night."

Pepys should take advice from Martin Luther, who wrote, in the 1540s, of his strategies to ward off the devil: “Almost every night when I wake up … I instantly chase him away with a fart.”

You've done your neighbor wrong; now fix it. After all, so far as we can tell, the Navy pays for the work.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas…

About Saturday 30 January 1668/69

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"ticea: If I'm reading this correctly, Sam and his friends haven't keeping the fast for Charlie I..."

Pepys went to church on a Saturday ... that's unusual.

He didn't go to work ... that's unusual. But a Fast Day is also a holiday for the clerks and cook and maids. And there were no manditory summonses to Committee hearings.

We have no idea what they ate, but it would have been something simple like cold cuts and leftovers rather than their usual fare.

What more does Ticia want? There was no "fast police" enforcing Court-ordered self-denial, with the army breaking down the doors to check on adherance. This wasn't Puritan England in the 1640s.
I'm sure Charles II and the Court ate as well as usual, but not with the complexity they usually enjoyed. They always "wasted" a lot, because that was served to the staff of hundreds downstairs. Therefore excess was not waste.

About Friday 29 January 1668/69

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"She is old, but hath, I believe, been a pretty comely woman."

And she thought, "What a pompous little twerp. I suppose he looked OK before he developed that paunch."

About Friday 29 January 1668/69

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... my wife to make an end of Boyle’s Book of Formes, ..."

I bet Elizabeth really enjoyed reading this best seller. Of course, just being around Pepys would be an education all in itself.

About Thursday 28 January 1668/69

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Apparently not ... first of all, it was broken in the middle of the Christmas / New Year's holidays which ends on Jan 6. Workers valued their time off.

The dealership probably had to take the door apart to insert the glass in its leather straps, and then rebuild the door, and reupholster it. Did theyn use the same leather, or have to find a match to the rest of the coach?

Plus the glass was probably a custom order from who knows where, and you can't give a large sheet of glass to a rider on a fast horse. It must be transported carefully in a waggon, which could get mired in mud in the winter. If I were the supplier, I'd send three pieces seperately, just in case.

Still, a month is a long time.

About Halfway House

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

I wonder if “The Glorious Battle of the Fifth of June”, is really a picture that now resides in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich which is called "Lord Howe's action, or the Glorious First of June", and it is magnificent.
No normal roadside Inn could afford such a commission -- which may account for why none of the websites I have scanned mention it hanging at The Halfway House.
https://www.historytoday.com/arch…

Any other contenders?

About Wednesday 25 July 1660

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Annesley underwent Presbyterian ordination on 18 December 1644, having possibly already received Episcopal ordination, and became chaplain to Adm. Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick aboard the Globe.

On 26 July 1648 Rev. Annesley preached the fast sermon before the House of Commons, and around this time Oxford gave him an honorary doctorate. He was also sailing with Warwick in action against the royalist navy.

In 1657 Rev. Annesley was nominated by Oliver Cromwell as lecturer of St. Paul's, and in 1658 was presented by Richard Cromwell to the vicarage of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

He was presented again there after the Restoration, but was ejected after the Act of Uniformity 1662. SO THAT GIVES US AN IDEA OF WHEN THE THIRD DOCUMENT ABOVE WAS WRITTEN.

Rev. Samuel Annesley preached semi-privately, but his goods were confiscated for keeping a conventicle at a meeting-house in Little St. Helen's. By 1669 he was preaching in Spitalfields to a congregation estimated at 800.

Annesley died on 31 December 1696, his funeral sermon being preached by Rev. Daniel Williams, and Daniel Defoe, a member of his congregation, wrote an elegy on his death.

Annesley had a large family, of whom one daughter, Susanna, became the wife of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, and the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism.

About Wednesday 25 July 1660

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"Your Majesty's petitioner therefore most humbly craves, that seeing this Lord's-day evening lecture was constantly preached before the time of the Long Parliament, and your Majesty's petitioner hath preached it these three last years, that your Majesty would be graciously pleased to continue your petitioner in that employment. And your Majesty's petitioner shall most heartily pray that your Majesty may enjoy a long and happy reign here, and a crown of glory to eternity.

@@@
"Whitehall, July 25, 1660."
"His Majesty's pleasure is, That the petitioner may be continued in the said lecture, but for the salary His Majesty knows nothing of it, nor is obliged to pay it.
"Will. Morice."

@@@

A little later, when the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's were restored to office, they no longer chose that a person of such uncertain principles should retain a place at the cathedral. There is, therefore, a second undated order on the petition, stating that:
"Whereas we did, by our Reference of the 25th of July, in the 12th year of our reign, upon the petition of Dr. Samuel Annesley, continue him, the said Dr. Annesley, as Lecturer at St. Paul's, London, upon the Lord's days in the evening; and whereas we have been since given to understand that the said pretended lecture is a service which was formerly incumbent upon the Dean and Chapter of our said cathedral; — we do hereby signify our Royal pleasure that, — the Dean and Chapter being now settled in our aforesaid cathedral, — the said Dr. Annesley be henceforth discharged from the said pretended lecture, and that the Dean and Chapter take charge thereof, as formerly. "Given, Sue” [stet]

[The 12th year of Charles II's reign was 1662/63]

https://www.google.com/books/edit…

@@@
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam…

Samuel Annesley (c. 1620 – 1696) was a prominent Puritan and nonconformist pastor, best known for the sermons he collected as the series of Morning Exercises in the 1690s.

Samuel Annesley’s father, John Aneley, was a wealthy man, but he died when Samuel was 4 years old. He started to read the bible at an early age.

In 1635, Annesley was admitted to Queen's College, Oxford, and earned his B.A. and M.A.

About Wednesday 25 July 1660

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Dean Samuel Annesley, of Winterborn Whitchurch, Dorset, was John Wesley's maternal grandfather.

He presented this undated petition, which is typical of the special pleading by which those who had accepted place under the Protectorate, often tried to curry favor with the restored Charles II:

"To The King's Most Excellent Majesty.
"The humble petition of Dr. Samuel Annesley, Lecturer at St. Paul's, London, upon Lord's days in the evening,
"Most Humbly Sheweth, That upon your Majesty's petitioner's public detesting the horrid murder of your Royal Father, his refusing the engagemt. & his persuading others against it; his peremptory refusal to send out a horse against your Majesty at Worcester; his sending a man all night above 40 miles (your Majesty's petitioner being accidentally so far from his cure at that time) to seize upon the keys of the church, to prevent one that would, against his consent, have kept the day of thanksgiving for their success at Worcester; and upon his several times saying to some of note in the army, that God would discover Cromwell to be the arrantest hypocrite that ever the Church of Christ was pestered with, for he would pull down others only to make his own way to the throne; — upon these & such other expressions of disliking the powers then uppermost, to whom complaint was made, your Majesty's petitioner was necessitated to quit a parsonage worth between 200 & 300/. per ann., & get into the least parish in London, without any title besides the choice of the people. After your Majesty's petitioner's between 5 and 6 years stay in that small place, a person of honor would have given your petitioner a parsonage constantly famed to be worth 400/. per ann, but Cromwell presented another to it, upon pretence of the patron's being a delinquent. The parishioners soon wearied out Oliver's clerk, and the patron would again have presented your petitioner, whereupon he went to Oliver to desire him (for own him he could not so far as to petition him) to admit the patron's presentation. But your petitioner found that his former actings were remembered, so that Oliver refused him, and again presented another to this parsonage; yet to color his base injustice, the Lord's day lecture at St. Paul's London becoming soon after void, Oliver sent for your petitioner and gave him 120/. per ann. out of the 400/. per ann. formerly settled by Parliament for that and a week-day lecture, and this was all the reparation your Majesty's petitioner received for being prevented of 400?. per arm. which the clerk whom the patron presented, forthwith obtained and at this day enjoyeth.
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About Thursday 28 January 1668/69

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Scube, at the end of last month Pepys broke a charriot window. Now it's cold, raining, snowing and blowing (see the daily weather forecast).

I wouldn't be out in a coach with a broken window in this weather. Amongst other things, Elizabeth would get pneumonia, and it would ruin the leather seating. Pepys gave us the estimate for getting it fixed, so it's at the dealers now. You know how long the dealers take, to make sure you value their care and workmanship!
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Wednesday 27 January 1668/69

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Agreed, Gillian ... if the Committee pulls too hard on this thread, Pepys' construction may fall apart and his double-bookkeeping (or whatever he did) revealed.

I still wonder at Pepys taking a couple of the auditors out to lunch and asking for their advice.
Maybe that was designed to indicate an innocent desire to meet current / changing standards by an overwhelmed bureaucrat who may have inadvertently made some trivial allocation errors in the fog of war / pandemic / fire. Should these mistakes be revealed later, the auditors can say "Oh, yes, Pepys realized his errors and we've known about them for ages. We corrected it with this Journal entry in 1669. No worries; nothing to see here. Next ..."

Damn his eyes; I want more details.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Thursday 28 February 1660/61

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

L&M: The Halfway House was a Rotherhithe tavern half way between London Bridge and Deptford.

Good news: I found an article about The Halfway House ... which now looks more modern and is called The George ... it does still exist, with a new facade.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…

I posted this, which passes for "news" for Diary annotators, on the Pepys Diary email discussion group last night, and when I woke up this morning, two had already written to the council to PROTECT THE GEORGE and made a visit, both of which are valuable ways for us to help preserve Pepysian historical sites.

About Halfway House

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Highlights from an article about the woman who had saved the Halfway House, now called the George:

The Halfway House stood in the fields beside the Queen’s Highway to Essex before there were any other buildings nearby, more than 700 years ago.

When Commercial Road was cut through by the East India Company in the early 19th century, the orientation of the building changed and a new stuccoed frontage was added declaring a new name, The George.

The Halfway House was mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in The Reeve’s Tale written in the 1380s when he lived above the gate at Aldgate, and by Samuel Pepys who recorded numerous visits during the 1660s.

A narrow yard called Aylward St. behind the pub, now used as a garden, is all that remains today of the old road which once brought all the trade to The Halfway House.

In the 18th century, the inn became famous for its adjoining botanic garden where exotic plants imported from every corner of the globe through the London Docks were cultivated. John Roque’s map of 1742 shows the garden extending as far as the Ratcliffe Highway.

As further evidence of the drawing power of the The Halfway House, the celebrated maritime painter Robert Dodd was commissioned to paint a canvas of “The Glorious Battle of the Fifth of June” for the dining room, a picture that now resides in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

When you have ascended through all the diverse spaces of The George to reach the attic, you almost expect to look from the dormer windows and see green fields with masts of ships on the river beyond, as you once could.

I was filled with wonder to learn just a few of the secrets of this ancient coaching inn that predates the East End have survived to adorn the East End today, and I know I shall return because there are so many more stories to be uncovered here.

For pictures and the rest of the story, see
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2022…