Tuesday 12 November 1661

At the office all the morning. Dined at home alone. So abroad with Sir W. Pen. My wife and I to “Bartholomew Fayre,” with puppets which I had seen once before, and the play without puppets often, but though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet I do not like the puppets at all, but think it to be a lessening to it. Thence to the Greyhound in Fleet Street, and there drank some raspberry sack and eat some sasages, and so home very merry.

This day Holmes come to town; and we do expect hourly to hear what usage he hath from the Duke and the King about this late business of letting the Swedish Embassador go by him without striking his flag.1


18 Annotations

First Reading

vicente  •  Link

"striking his flag:"
modern meaning:I." In international law, striking the colors indicates surrender.".
http://www.history.navy.mil/trivi…
more trivia from tarpaulins inheritors:

dirk  •  Link

"striking the flag"

This has nothing to do with surrender, it's all about the "right of salute": the visitor strikes the flag for the host. This was by no means an international rule at the time, but Britain had been enforcing it for some time in its territorial waters. (In May 1652 the refusal of the Dutch admiral Tromp to strike his flag resulted in a naval battle between the Dutch and the British ships of admiral Blake! This led to the first Anglo-Dutch war. Only with the Peace of Westminster in 1654 would the Dutch eventually comply with this British request.)

A. De Araujo  •  Link

"first Anglo-Dutch war"
as an unintended consequence it lead to the defeat of the Dutch in the northeast of Brazil; the jews,allied with the Dutch fled to Aruba, New Amsterdan and Rhode Island(Touro Synagogue)

dirk  •  Link

sa(u)sages

"The Gentlewoman's Companion: or, A Guide to the Female Sex" (1675), in the chapter "A Bill of Fare of Suitable Meat for every Month in the Year", suggests the following menu choices (containing both *marrow-bones* and *sausages*) for the month of December - well November is close enough I think!

1. Stew'd broth of Mutton and Marrow-bones.
2. Lambs-head and White-broth.
3. A Chine of Beef roasted.
4. Mince-Pyes.
5. A roast Turky stuck with Cloves.
6. Two Capons, one larded.

Second Course.

1. A young Lamb or Kid.
2. Two brace of Partridg.
3. Ballonia Sausages, Anchovees, Mushrooms, Caviare, and pickled Oysters, in a Dish together.
4. A Quince-Pye.
5. Half a dozen of Woodcocks.

http://chaucer.library.emory.edu/…
(yes, this is a single link)

vicente  •  Link

great find

Pedro.  •  Link

the Swedish Embassador

This chap, on his entrance to London, caused the fray between the French and the Spanish on 30th of September.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
Holmes is imprisoned for two months. "A minor incident with the Swedish Ambassador plus a taste for flamboyant dress earned him the disfavour in the diaries of Pepys who had a ‘natural fear of being challanged’ by Holmes."
From David's annotation..Holmes family page with portrait of Sir Robert Holmes:
http://www.a-court.fsnet.co.uk/d2…

vicente  •  Link

Man of superior Position requires Obeyance even if he is an AH [another Human] "This has nothing to do with surrender, it's all about the "right of salute": the visitor strikes the flag for the host.”
No it’s not just about the right of salute, it is about giving of submission to the Alpha being, ‘sumtimes’ called etiquette or manners.
Might is right, is the basis of a nod of a noodle to out right supplicating [ prostration ]spread eagled in the mud. As noted in note 1 [one] Kapitan lost his job and 2 months in the nick, and right old chewing out.{bin there done that, did not get the nick, just a posting to the worse outpost[ala beau geste?] in the former British Middle East command. i.e a failure to move right hand, palm outwards,fingers straight,elbow in line with shoulder, to ones Cap in a timely manner to a Gentleman in Blazer of Heton] for letting the man not giving his dues.
Failing to Respect ones Superiors[betters] in the past has led to wars, beatings,deaths et al..
remember the Levellers and comrades.

dirk  •  Link

"right of salute"

The British were very obstinate on this: they insisted on never striking their flag, not even in a foreign port. They even expected the others to strike theirs in such a case. To them the flag of the UK was absolutely superior to any other, even when on foreign soil on friendly terms. Excessive national pride? Probably, but as some would argue, it's what made Britain great. Others of course would call this pathological obstinacy (-:

By the way, this "striking the flag" as a required salute is not done any more nowadays: although "saluting" the other party is still customary among warships and when entering another nation's ports.

vicente  •  Link

"The British were very obstinate on this" yep its their jute blood.

Australian Susan  •  Link

"Raspberry sack"
This sounds rather nasty. Sherrylike wine with raspberry juice? Or like raspberry vinegar?
I wonder why he doesn't like the puppet play in BF? I have only ever read the play, not seen it performed, but the puppet show is an integral part of the play it seems to me. So why does Sam think it is better without it? Makes the play too long? (it is long).

Glyn  •  Link

It's simply restating a scientific fact. If 2 + 2 = 4 in England, then 2 + 2 = 4 in France; if a Frenchman is a foreigner in England, then he is also a foreigner in France. Obviously. The French understand this, but pretend not to just to annoy.

Grahamt  •  Link

Sasages vs sausages:
This is a good clue to how pronunciation has changed since Pepys' day.
By the way, Ballonia Sausages - in the menu above - later became Boloney sausages (a very cheap sausage from Bologna in Italy) that even later came to mean obfuscating nonsense, as in "it's a load of boloney"

language hat  •  Link

"This is a good clue to how pronunciation has changed since Pepys' day.”

Not really; it’s just an indication of how unstable spelling was back then. The word was probably pronounced more or less the same way then as now, but check out the OED’s list of spellings (numbers indicate centuries):

5 sawsyge, 6 sawsege, -cedge, sausige, saucege, saussege, 6-7 sausedge, 7 sausidge, sausege, sauceidge, sawcege, -sidge, -sadge, -sedge, saussage, saucige, sossage, 7-8 sawsage, saucidge, (7, 9 vulgar sassage, 9 vulgar sossige), 6- sausage;

Grahamt  •  Link

sasages vs sausages (pt 2)
No doubt Language Hat is correct:
but the diary was written in shorthand, not spelled out. maybe Wheatley, the Victorian transcriber, put his own spin on it. Can someone with the Latham and Matthews say how they transcribed it? I was just assuming this was another example of "the Great Vowel Shift" and it had been transcribed phonetically. Who can say categorically that "au" was pronounced "o" and not "a" in the 17th century? (Note that in the south-west of England, it is pronounced sass-edge)

Mary  •  Link

L&M reads "sasages"

The whole question of the monophthongisation of Middle English 'au' is very complicated (see Dobson: English Pronunciation 1500-1700 Vol 2, pp.783 onwards). Contemporary grammarians differed amongst themselves in their interpretation of the resulting vowel-sound. Best general assumption (i.e. when not taking place within special consonantal circumstances) is a very back-pronounced, open 'a' sound ..... so open that a few grammarians describe it as 'o'. Rhyme evidence would be useful, but none of the poets seems to have felt the need to rhyme 'sausage' with anything!

Second Reading

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

The Swedish Ambassador was a distant relative of the astronomer Tycho Brahe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahe

Re "boloney": in Austrian German, one may dismiss something trivial as "es ist mir Wurst". (It's sausage to me!)

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"This day Holmes come to town; and we do expect hourly to hear what usage he hath from the Duke and the King about this late business of letting the Swedish Embassador go by him without striking his flag."

L&M: Sailing for Sweden, the ambassador (Nils Nilsson Brahe) had refused to lower his flag on meeting the Royal Charles in the mouth of the Thames. Capt. Robert Holmes had fired three shots to make the Swedes heave to, but they had escaped under cover of night while Holmes was waiting for confirmation of the ambassador's story that he had acted with Charles the II's express permission. Holmes was examined by the Council on the 27th of November, deprived of his command and committed to the Tower. He was pardoned and released a few days later. See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

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