Louise de la Roche, in the Jules Cesar, commanded a small French squadron which had been attacking the lines of communication between Spain and the Netherlands in the Channel.
He had captured a company of English soldiers in Plymouth under the command of Capt. Bevill Skelton destined for the service of Spain, and [de la Roche] was transporting them back to France.
At Torquay de la Roche attacked an Ostend ship (the Sainte Marie) in the harbor itself, and landed an armed party to secure its cargo, which had been hidden in a private house.
Charles Ii made a vigorous protest to Louis XIV about these violations of English soil and waters, and instructed Sir Thomas Allin to intercept de la Roche if he found himself with a superior force.
Allin came up with the French off Spithead on February 25, 1668. After an exchange of civilities, he secured the release of the English troops and the Ostend prize.
See Allin ii, 9-10. CSPD (above) C.H. Hartmann, The King My Brother, pp. 213-214. Bulstrode Papers, i, 26, 27.
L&M was written 100 years ago.
My research ... and we have much more available to us on Google than the good professors could have dreamed of ... indicate Bevill Skelton (1641–1696) and had been a page to Charles II for a year, when he became the Lt. Gov. of Plymouth.
On 27 July 1666 he received the commission of Cornet, to serve with the Earl of Rochester, after Chatham. And on 20 November 1668 he will be promoted to the rank of Captain in the 1st Foot Guards.
William Skelton -- there were a lot of Skeltons. Maybe it was Bevill, maybe it was William. None of the biographies I've found of Bevill mention this escapade. Some of them say it was his father, Sir John, who was the Lt. Gov. of Portsmouth. I think we get the gist of the story; going further is too much work for a character Pepys doesn't even mention.
Stephane, please give us some references for the above ... my French isn't up to many of the Google responses I get.
I suspect the "La Roche ... [who] is the "chef d'escadre des armées navales", is his relative/nephew who was a famous Naval hero during the 18th century.
Do you have an authority for Charles II's pardon?
I'm amazed he doesn't have a Wikipedia page by now.
Sadly Terry's book link goes nowhere useful now ... I'll check and post my L&M entry on this man. Between us we get this man's shenanigans straight. https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
Malta's relationship with England goes back hundreds of years, but Charles II was initially very careless about his relationship with the Island and the Catholic Knights of St. John. His father and his brother were more traditional about such things, but Charles didn't bother to read the memo, and really only interacted with the Knights to please cousin Louis XIV.
By the 1670's, had Pepys continued the Diary, we would have a section for Malta, because Charles tried to adopt the Genoa Galley ship design (with slaves rowing) to fight the Barbary Pirates, and Adm. Narborough needed to use their ports.
Regarding Charles II's Proclamation yesterday and published in the Gazette today:
* That no prizes or prize goods be sold in our harbors, no traffic in pirates' goods allowed, and that no English officer or mariner enter the service of any foreign Prince or State;
I had forgotten that on 17 January, 1667/68 the Venetian Ambassador in Paris reported back to the Doge et al on their request to raise 3,000 troops, 1,500 from both England and Holland. He had approached Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans asking if that would be possible, and St. Albans said he'd ask.
I suspect if Charles can get enough ships afloat, he'll send an English fleet to the Mediterranean to further his own policies with the Barbary pirates; he doesn't want to have to raise money to rescue more English slaves lost because of Venetian misadventures.
While England's attention is on Flanders, in the Mediterranean the Venetians are under attack again by the Barbary pirates/Ottoman empire/Turks.
Jan. 17. 1668 Senato, Secreta. Dispacci, Francia. Venetian Archives.
#268. Marc Antonio Giustinian, Venetian Ambassador in France, to the Doge and Senate. On the commission given him to raise 3,000 troops, English and Dutch.
The Count of San Maldich has offered his assistance to make a levy of 1,500 men in each of these countries if their governments will permit it. I have raised the question with [HENRY JERMYN] Earl of St. Albans, who is going to England, to invite some person of rank to favor the cause of the most serene republic [VENICE]. He seemed ready to oblige and promised to send me word.
The Historic Houses website has a post with photos, showing the cutlery carried by Sir John Fenwick MP (executed for treason 1697). Considering how often Pepys has lunch at an ordinary, his boy must have also carried them for him along with all the paperwork. A very inconvenient system.
L&M Companion -- Colonel John Birch MP (1619-91) Politician. A self-made Mancunian, originally a carrier. His interests in naval affairs brought him into frequent contact and occasional conflict with Pepys. He had fought for Parliament in the Civil War, and sat for Leominster 1646-60, for Penryn 1661-Jan.79, and for Weobley March 1679-91, serving as a commissioner for paying off the forces 1660-1, as chairman of the Commons' Navy Committee in 1661, and as a member of the Committee on Miscarriages in 1667-8, as well as on numerous committees on financial and commercial maters. He supported the Navy Board against its critics in 1668. In the '60's he accepted office as an Admiralty Commissioner March-July 1660, as Auditor of the Excise 1661-91, and as a member of the Committee for Trade 1688-72.
Happy Anniversary to the Mitchells: Michael Mitchell married Betty Howlett 19 February, 1666. It's been wild ride for them, and I hope to hear they have a healthy baby soon.
Thinking about a cravat made from muslin seemed a bit bulky to me ... until I read this article explaining that an entire garment made from 17th century muslin would fit in a matchbox. (I can hear it now: What's a matchbox?)
The knowledge of how to make this fine cotton fabric was lost after the British government banned it in the 1780's to protect British cotton fabric. The Empire Strikes Again.
Shrove Tuesday is at the start of Lent. It's the day the cooks empty the kitchen of the foods forbidden for the next six weeks. Traditionally masters were encouraged to share the excess with their laborers. Pepys has recently discovered the benefits of breaking bread with his clerks, but not today apparently.
By this time the spirit of egalitarianism implied by the boss feeding a pancake dinner to the workers had taken the next step: The workers were demanding more equality, so the officials started downplaying the idea of pancakes for all. (Very Cromwellians, somehow.) Of course, these cutbacks only increased the ill-will between the classes.
Rioting is a great bother to the authorities ... but, as today, they present an opportunity for people to tag along with the students and apprentices who traditionally attacked the bawdy houses (I'll never understand that!), and so landlords would evict unwelcome tenants, etc. during the chaos. Mayhem is unkind.
And in 1668 there were a lot of unhappy people just waiting for the students and apprentices to riot. I'm surprised Pepys isn't boarding up his office windows.
The Shrove Tuesday traditions go back to early Christianity. And yes, they were using up the food forbidden during Lent, but sharing and generosity were also part of the ethic.
Thomas Tusser, a Tudor poet and gentleman farmer, wrote about Shrove Tuesday as being one of a handful of seasonal feasts ‘belonging’ to the ploughman. He warned that a good housewife should ‘forget not’ to provide the serving men and maids of the farmstead with enough ‘fritters & pancakes … for company [good fellowship’s] sake’.
Thomas Dekker’s late Elizabethan play "The Shoemaker’s Holiday" celebrates Shrove Tuesday as the quintessential holiday of London apprentices, featuring a pancake banquet hosted by the lord mayor. Here the pancake went beyond being an annual treat for the servants, hinting at the greater liberty to which they felt entitled. In one scene an apprentice echoes John Mirk’s biblical analogy:
“Every Shrove Tuesday is our year of Jubilee: and when the pancake bell rings, we are as free as my lord Mayor, we may shut up our shops, and make holiday.”
At the same time as Dekker’s play was written and performed, these Shrove Tuesday privileges were under threat in London. Fearing rowdy crowds, reform-minded authorities ordered householders to ‘suffer not any of their servants or apprentices to wander or go abroad [on] Shrove Tuesday’.
As is often the case, these orders often had the opposite effect.
During the 17th century rioting became an annual Shrove Tuesday tradition, particularly in London. Crowds of craftsmen, servants and apprentices staked their age-old claims to the streets during the holiday, their targets and motives ranging from the eviction of unwanted tenants to political plots against Parliament.
Satirists and pamphleteers seized these extreme demands of Shrove Tuesday liberty with the holiday’s most popular dish.
John Taylor wrote in 1620, with tongue firmly in cheek, of ‘Necromanticke Cookes’ mixing pancakes with ‘tragicall magicall inchantments’, which made people ‘runne starke mad, assembling in routs and throngs numberlesse of ungoverned numbers’.
During the decades that followed, propagandists evoked the Shrove Tuesday pancake as a symbol of plebeian political power. Although these analogies were often humorous, they spoke to genuine fears (sometimes realized) of Shrove Tuesday insurrection.
By the end of the 17th century, Shrove Tuesday rioting had faded as a distinct tradition, but other customs arose which menacingly enforced the privilege of pancakes.
From the 18th century into the 20th, ‘Lent-crockers’ went door to door in communities of western England during Shrovetide, chanting demands like the following from mid-19th-century Somerset: ‘Flitter me, flatter me floor, if you don’t give me pancakes, I’ll beat down your door.’
I wonder if there was a Marriage Settlement for this mess created by an unwilling bride to an arranged marriage:
Feb. 1. 1668 WHITEHALL Warrant for a pardon to Anne, daughter of Henry Skelton, alderman of Leeds, because after secretly marrying Thomas Witham, she, in obedience to her father, married Gilbert Cowper; granted on condition of her adhering to the first marriage. [S.P. Dom., Entry Book 28, f. 13.]
I think he'd need at least three sets of these filing "books", one for the Navy Board in his official office across the garden, and two sets for his home office/cabinet: one for Tangier and one for his household/family/personal agreements.
Might they be wire basket containers? Or woven reed baskets? Or open leather pouches? Still hard to imagine how the ladies labelled them.
His beautiful library books are in his home cabinet office, not at the office.
It's hard to imagine life without file folders.
This blog says glue has been around for 4,000 years. Brown glue is made from boiling down animal skins and bones. https://www.oldbrownglue.com/imag…
Comments
Second Reading
About Thursday 28 November 1661
San Diego Sarah • Link
For more about Charles II's relationship with the Knights of Malta, and Malta in general, go to https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Friday 8 February 1660/61
San Diego Sarah • Link
For more about Charles II's relationship with the Knights of Malta, and Malta in general, go to https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Mediterranean (The Straits)
San Diego Sarah • Link
For more about Charles II's relationship with the Knights of Malta, and Malta in general, go to https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Thursday 8 May 1662
San Diego Sarah • Link
For more about Charles II's relationship with the Knights of Malta, and Malta in general, go to https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Monday 14 October 1667
San Diego Sarah • Link
For more about Charles II's relationship with the Knights of Malta, and Malta in general, go to https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Gilles de La Roche-Saint-André
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M on 29 February 1667/68 says:
Louise de la Roche, in the Jules Cesar, commanded a small French squadron which had been attacking the lines of communication between Spain and the Netherlands in the Channel.
He had captured a company of English soldiers in Plymouth under the command of Capt. Bevill Skelton destined for the service of Spain, and [de la Roche] was transporting them back to France.
At Torquay de la Roche attacked an Ostend ship (the Sainte Marie) in the harbor itself, and landed an armed party to secure its cargo, which had been hidden in a private house.
Charles Ii made a vigorous protest to Louis XIV about these violations of English soil and waters, and instructed Sir Thomas Allin to intercept de la Roche if he found himself with a superior force.
Allin came up with the French off Spithead on February 25, 1668. After an exchange of civilities, he secured the release of the English troops and the Ostend prize.
See
Allin ii, 9-10.
CSPD (above)
C.H. Hartmann, The King My Brother, pp. 213-214.
Bulstrode Papers, i, 26, 27.
L&M was written 100 years ago.
My research ... and we have much more available to us on Google than the good professors could have dreamed of ... indicate Bevill Skelton (1641–1696) and had been a page to Charles II for a year, when he became the Lt. Gov. of Plymouth.
On 27 July 1666 he received the commission of Cornet, to serve with the Earl of Rochester, after Chatham. And on 20 November 1668 he will be promoted to the rank of Captain in the 1st Foot Guards.
William Skelton -- there were a lot of Skeltons. Maybe it was Bevill, maybe it was William. None of the biographies I've found of Bevill mention this escapade. Some of them say it was his father, Sir John, who was the Lt. Gov. of Portsmouth. I think we get the gist of the story; going further is too much work for a character Pepys doesn't even mention.
https://armorial.library.utoronto…
https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10…
About Wednesday 19 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
Stephane, please give us some references for the above ... my French isn't up to many of the Google responses I get.
I suspect the "La Roche ... [who] is the "chef d'escadre des armées navales", is his relative/nephew who was a famous Naval hero during the 18th century.
Do you have an authority for Charles II's pardon?
I'm amazed he doesn't have a Wikipedia page by now.
Sadly Terry's book link goes nowhere useful now ... I'll check and post my L&M entry on this man. Between us we get this man's shenanigans straight.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Sir Thomas Allin
San Diego Sarah • Link
Malta's relationship with England goes back hundreds of years, but Charles II was initially very careless about his relationship with the Island and the Catholic Knights of St. John. His father and his brother were more traditional about such things, but Charles didn't bother to read the memo, and really only interacted with the Knights to please cousin Louis XIV.
By the 1670's, had Pepys continued the Diary, we would have a section for Malta, because Charles tried to adopt the Genoa Galley ship design (with slaves rowing) to fight the Barbary Pirates, and Adm. Narborough needed to use their ports.
If you are intrigued by a much bigger picture, here's a chapter which will fill in the blanks:
https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar…
About Saturday 8 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
Regarding Charles II's Proclamation yesterday and published in the Gazette today:
* That no prizes or prize goods be sold in our harbors, no traffic in pirates' goods allowed, and that no English officer or mariner enter the service of any foreign Prince or State;
I had forgotten that on 17 January, 1667/68 the Venetian Ambassador in Paris reported back to the Doge et al on their request to raise 3,000 troops, 1,500 from both England and Holland.
He had approached Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans asking if that would be possible, and St. Albans said he'd ask.
Evidently Charles II's answer was Hell No.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
I suspect if Charles can get enough ships afloat, he'll send an English fleet to the Mediterranean to further his own policies with the Barbary pirates; he doesn't want to have to raise money to rescue more English slaves lost because of Venetian misadventures.
About Friday 17 January 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
While England's attention is on Flanders, in the Mediterranean the Venetians are under attack again by the Barbary pirates/Ottoman empire/Turks.
Jan. 17. 1668
Senato, Secreta.
Dispacci, Francia.
Venetian Archives.
#268.
Marc Antonio Giustinian, Venetian Ambassador in France, to the Doge and Senate.
On the commission given him to raise 3,000 troops, English and Dutch.
The Count of San Maldich has offered his assistance to make a levy of 1,500 men in each of these countries if their governments will permit it.
I have raised the question with [HENRY JERMYN] Earl of St. Albans, who is going to England, to invite some person of rank to favor the cause of the most serene republic [VENICE].
He seemed ready to oblige and promised to send me word.
Paris, 17 January, 1667/68. [M.V.] [Italian.]
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
About Wednesday 22 April 1663
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Historic Houses website has a post with photos, showing the cutlery carried by Sir John Fenwick MP (executed for treason 1697). Considering how often Pepys has lunch at an ordinary, his boy must have also carried them for him along with all the paperwork. A very inconvenient system.
https://www.historichouses.org/re…
About Committee on Miscarriages
San Diego Sarah • Link
L&M Companion -- Colonel John Birch MP (1619-91)
Politician. A self-made Mancunian, originally a carrier.
His interests in naval affairs brought him into frequent contact and occasional conflict with Pepys.
He had fought for Parliament in the Civil War, and sat for Leominster 1646-60, for Penryn 1661-Jan.79, and for Weobley March 1679-91,
serving as a commissioner for paying off the forces 1660-1,
as chairman of the Commons' Navy Committee in 1661,
and as a member of the Committee on Miscarriages in 1667-8,
as well as on numerous committees on financial and commercial maters.
He supported the Navy Board against its critics in 1668.
In the '60's he accepted office as an Admiralty Commissioner March-July 1660, as Auditor of the Excise 1661-91,
and as a member of the Committee for Trade 1688-72.
About Tuesday 18 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
Happy Anniversary to the Mitchells: Michael Mitchell married Betty Howlett 19 February, 1666. It's been wild ride for them, and I hope to hear they have a healthy baby soon.
About Cravats
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thinking about a cravat made from muslin seemed a bit bulky to me ... until I read this article explaining that an entire garment made from 17th century muslin would fit in a matchbox. (I can hear it now: What's a matchbox?)
The knowledge of how to make this fine cotton fabric was lost after the British government banned it in the 1780's to protect British cotton fabric. The Empire Strikes Again.
https://globalvoices.org/2021/01/…
About Tuesday 4 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
Shrove Tuesday is at the start of Lent. It's the day the cooks empty the kitchen of the foods forbidden for the next six weeks. Traditionally masters were encouraged to share the excess with their laborers. Pepys has recently discovered the benefits of breaking bread with his clerks, but not today apparently.
By this time the spirit of egalitarianism implied by the boss feeding a pancake dinner to the workers had taken the next step: The workers were demanding more equality, so the officials started downplaying the idea of pancakes for all. (Very Cromwellians, somehow.) Of course, these cutbacks only increased the ill-will between the classes.
Rioting is a great bother to the authorities ... but, as today, they present an opportunity for people to tag along with the students and apprentices who traditionally attacked the bawdy houses (I'll never understand that!), and so landlords would evict unwelcome tenants, etc. during the chaos. Mayhem is unkind.
And in 1668 there were a lot of unhappy people just waiting for the students and apprentices to riot. I'm surprised Pepys isn't boarding up his office windows.
For more about this misunderstood holy day ...
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Shrove Tuesday
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Shrove Tuesday traditions go back to early Christianity. And yes, they were using up the food forbidden during Lent, but sharing and generosity were also part of the ethic.
Thomas Tusser, a Tudor poet and gentleman farmer, wrote about Shrove Tuesday as being one of a handful of seasonal feasts ‘belonging’ to the ploughman. He warned that a good housewife should ‘forget not’ to provide the serving men and maids of the farmstead with enough ‘fritters & pancakes … for company [good fellowship’s] sake’.
Thomas Dekker’s late Elizabethan play "The Shoemaker’s Holiday" celebrates Shrove Tuesday as the quintessential holiday of London apprentices, featuring a pancake banquet hosted by the lord mayor. Here the pancake went beyond being an annual treat for the servants, hinting at the greater liberty to which they felt entitled. In one scene an apprentice echoes John Mirk’s biblical analogy:
“Every Shrove Tuesday is our year of Jubilee: and when the pancake bell rings, we are as free as my lord Mayor, we may shut up our shops, and make holiday.”
At the same time as Dekker’s play was written and performed, these Shrove Tuesday privileges were under threat in London. Fearing rowdy crowds, reform-minded authorities ordered householders to ‘suffer not any of their servants or apprentices to wander or go abroad [on] Shrove Tuesday’.
As is often the case, these orders often had the opposite effect.
During the 17th century rioting became an annual Shrove Tuesday tradition, particularly in London. Crowds of craftsmen, servants and apprentices staked their age-old claims to the streets during the holiday, their targets and motives ranging from the eviction of unwanted tenants to political plots against Parliament.
Satirists and pamphleteers seized these extreme demands of Shrove Tuesday liberty with the holiday’s most popular dish.
John Taylor wrote in 1620, with tongue firmly in cheek, of ‘Necromanticke Cookes’ mixing pancakes with ‘tragicall magicall inchantments’, which made people ‘runne starke mad, assembling in routs and throngs numberlesse of ungoverned numbers’.
During the decades that followed, propagandists evoked the Shrove Tuesday pancake as a symbol of plebeian political power. Although these analogies were often humorous, they spoke to genuine fears (sometimes realized) of Shrove Tuesday insurrection.
By the end of the 17th century, Shrove Tuesday rioting had faded as a distinct tradition, but other customs arose which menacingly enforced the privilege of pancakes.
From the 18th century into the 20th, ‘Lent-crockers’ went door to door in communities of western England during Shrovetide, chanting demands like the following from mid-19th-century Somerset: ‘Flitter me, flatter me floor, if you don’t give me pancakes, I’ll beat down your door.’
More information is available at
https://www.historytoday.com/arch…
About Monday 17 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
Good catch, Jeremy.
L&M: "... and there did kiss the maid Sarah. At night home, and there up to my wife ..."
About Saturday 15 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
How interesting, Stephane. So that means Pepys' "books" for 1668 could have been labeled pouches? That seems a stretch to me.
Maybe these really were bound books of blank pages in which they logged the daily events, accounts, etc.?
About Monday 10 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
I wonder if there was a Marriage Settlement for this mess created by an unwilling bride to an arranged marriage:
Feb. 1. 1668
WHITEHALL
Warrant for a pardon to Anne, daughter of Henry Skelton, alderman of Leeds,
because after secretly marrying Thomas Witham,
she, in obedience to her father, married Gilbert Cowper;
granted on condition of her adhering to the first marriage.
[S.P. Dom., Entry Book 28, f. 13.]
About Saturday 15 February 1667/68
San Diego Sarah • Link
Stephane, confusingly Pepys has two offices.
I think he'd need at least three sets of these filing "books", one for the Navy Board in his official office across the garden, and two sets for his home office/cabinet: one for Tangier and one for his household/family/personal agreements.
Might they be wire basket containers? Or woven reed baskets? Or open leather pouches? Still hard to imagine how the ladies labelled them.
His beautiful library books are in his home cabinet office, not at the office.
It's hard to imagine life without file folders.
This blog says glue has been around for 4,000 years. Brown glue is made from boiling down animal skins and bones.
https://www.oldbrownglue.com/imag…