Monday 21 April 1662
This morning I attempted to persuade my wife in bed to go to Brampton this week, but she would not, which troubles me, and seeing that I could keep it no longer from her, I told her that I was resolved to go to Portsmouth to-morrow. Sir W. Batten goes to Chatham to-day, and will be back again to come for Portsmouth after us on Thursday next.
I went to Westminster and several places about business. Then at noon dined with my Lord Crew; and after dinner went up to Sir Thos. Crew’s chamber, who is still ill. He tells me how my Lady Duchess of Richmond and Castlemaine had a falling out the other day; and she calls the latter Jane Shore, and did hope to see her come to the same end that she did.
Coming down again to my Lord, he told me that news was come that the Queen is landed; at which I took leave, and by coach hurried to White Hall, the bells ringing in several places; but I found there no such matter, nor anything like it. So I went by appointment to Anthony Joyce’s, where I sat with his wife and Mall Joyce an hour or two, and so her husband not being at home, away I went and in Cheapside spied him and took him into the coach. Home, and there I found my Lady Jemimah, and Anne, and Madamoiselle come to see my wife, whom I left, and to talk with Joyce about a project I have of his and my joyning, to get some money for my brother Tom and his kinswoman to help forward with her portion if they should marry. I mean in buying of tallow of him at a low rate for the King, and Tom should have the profit; but he tells me the profit will be considerable, at which I was troubled, but I have agreed with him to serve some in my absence.
He went away, and then came Mr. Moore and sat late with me talking about business, and so went away and I to bed.
23 Annotations
First Reading
Australian Susan • Link
Sam is careful to spend the entire day away from the house, having made his announcement about Portsmouth! But he doesn't seem to be making any arrangements about the trip for him or Elizabeth. Curious?
Hugh • Link
Can someone please clarify why he was reluctant to let his wife to learn of the trip? Is the Queens arrival secret? Is it just a boys week away?
Cumgranissalis • Link
One reason could be that it was a good Opportunity to cosy up to the Power structure, and be noticed, another there maybe no other scheduled females on the coach. The third, it be spring and the Birds and the Flora be in full bloom.
A. Hamilton • Link
I mean in buying of tallow of him at a low rate for the King, and Tom should have the profit; but he tells me the profit will be considerable, at which I was troubled, but I have agreed with him to serve some in my absence.
Anyone able to elucidate? Seems to me that
Sam is proposing to place a Navy order for tallow with the detestable Joyce at a price he considers low in relation to other offers, provided cousin Joyce gives the profits to his kinswoman as her dowry for marrying Sam's brother. Then Sam is troubled to learn that the profit is large even at the low rate he proposes. Then he agrees with Joyce "to serve some in my absence." Here the meaning gets away from me. Could it be to issue a request for tallow before he goes to Portsmouth? Any other suggestions? In any event, this is self-dealing of the first order, albeit done to help Tom and his prospective bride, not Sam or Anthony Joyce.
Australian Susan • Link
The reference to Jane Shore is intersting: one wonders quite what the D of R was getting at. It was obviously meant to be an insult, yet the popular memory of JS was rather more in favour of her than otherwise. She was, however, accused of witchcraft. Maybe this is how the D of R is trying to get at her rival: witchcraft was still held to be a heinous act, which led to death.Mud sticks. Maybe the D of R hoped to fling enough to damage My Lady Castlemaine's character.
Australian Susan • Link
Jane Shore, by the way, died in poverty.
With the tallow deal: I concluded that Sam was anxious he might get into trouble if the 'take' on the deal was seen to be *too* large - it seems to be all right by the norms of the time to make some tidy sum for one's own pocket, but making a really hefty amount could lead to investigation and trouble. Anyone else have other ideas?
JWB • Link
"...but he tells me the profit will be considerable,"
I think we've lost a "not" between will and be.
Paul Chapin • Link
the profit will not be considerable?
I disagree with JWB's interpretation, on grounds of diction. I don't think that's a phrase Sam would use. Sam's style in the negative would be to say something like "the profit will not be much." But Mary or someone else with L&M can quickly set us straight on the correct text.
David Ross McIrvine • Link
"Jane Shore, by the way, died in poverty."
Plausible, also, that Her Grace meant simply that she hoped Lady Castlemaine would have to do public penance and take the blame, as Jane did.
Mary • Link
"the profit will/will not be considerable.
Sorry,Paul, the L&M edition reads, "will not be considerable", which makes good sense. There is no editorial note to the effect that the "not" has been supplied by the editor, so we must assume that it appeared in the original manuscript and was omitted in this earlier edition.
Mary • Link
"to serve some in in my absence"
Sam is instructing Joyce to supply (serve in) a quantity of tallow whilst he is away on the Portsmouth business trip. This will presumably be at the normal market rate as far as Navy accounts are concerned. Sam and Joyce will then 'adjust' the difference between market rate and Old Pal's Act rate between themselves, the allegedly inconsiderable profit to go to brother Tom. There doesn't seem to be very much to recommend the arrangement as a whole to Joyce. Perhaps it means that he will gain a previously closed business opportunity as a future supplier to the Navy. I don't think that we have seen anything hitherto that would indicate that he is so keen for his sister to marry Tom that he is prepared to lose business profit in the interest of furthering the match.
Britney Spears • Link
Jane Shore
I think he just means that she'll fall out of favor and be publicly disgraced.
BradW • Link
On Jane Shore
I agree that wishing Jane's fate on Lady Castlemain was meant as a curse. I think JS's story is all the more poignant for her being almost universally admired as a younger woman as clever, pleasant, and a positive help to those around her; yet once out of favor, she was a paraiah and died in poverty. A cruel end to wish on anyone.
Seems to me the stifled hopes and ambitions of even priviledged women in Sam's time led such ladies to follow the fates of successful courtesans with envy and spite, and to revel in their downfall for decades and (in this case) centuries. Being good seemingly won women so little, and being bad could sometimes make them influential and famous. I hope times have changed.
Rex Gordon • Link
More on Shore ...
Popular legend had it that not only did she die in poverty, but her corpse was cast on a dunghill. (The Dowager Duchess' insult was meant to sting.) According to L&M, Sam had a biography of Jane Shore in his library; I believe it's still at Cambridge.
David A. Smith • Link
"seeing that I could keep it no longer from her"
I suggested a couple of days ago that meeting the Queen is an honor, Sam knows Elizabeth can't go (but would wish to), was hoping to be able not to have to rub her nose in the distinction ... and now can't.
Nix • Link
The merriest harlot in the realm --
The recent Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a wonderful profile of Jane (whose actual name was Elizabeth):
"The main source for her relationship with Edward IV is Thomas More, who is responsible (in his History of Richard III) for the story that Edward claimed to have three concubines: the merriest, the wiliest, and the holiest harlot in his realm.
A. De Araujo • Link
"Duchess of Richmond"
I googled it and it seems that she was the descendent of a Villiers who was a "favourite" of James I,so she was probably related to Lady Castlemaine's husband.Sexual Politics aint new you know!
Robert Gertz • Link
"Naught to do with Mistress Shore?!" Shakespeare's Dick III's line just before he settles accounts with the hapless Hastings, like Edward IV a 'friend' of Ms. Shore. Interesting that she remained such an object of fascination despite having a less glamourous (and recent) career than say, Anne Boleyn.
Second Reading
Chris Squire UK • Link
’. . [Jane] Shore . . was the merriest; in More's words:
‘a proper wit had she, & could both rede wel & write, mery in company, redy & quick of aunswer, neither mute nor ful of bable, sometime taunting without displesure & not without disport . . For many he had, but her he loved, whose favour to saithe trouth … she never abused to any mans hurt, but to many a mans comfort. … And finally in many weighty sutes, she stode many men in gret stede, either for none, or very smal rewardes, & those rather gay then rich: either for that she was content with the dede selfe well done, or for that she delited to be suid unto, & to show what she was able to do wyth the king … ’‘
[DNB]
San Diego Sarah • Link
'"Duchess of Richmond"
I googled it and it seems that she was the descendent of a Villiers who was a "favourite" of James I,so she was probably related to Lady Castlemaine's husband.Sexual Politics aint new you know!'
Good try, A. De Araujo, but no where near right:
Mary "Mal" Villiers Herbert Stuart, Dowager Duchess of Richmond was the daughter of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (a favorite of both Kings James I and Charles I). She is therefore sister of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (a favorite of Charles II). She married at 13; was widowed at 15; and then married James Stuart, Duke of Richmond who died in 1655. At this point she has not remarried.
Barbara Villiers Palmer (BVP) was the granddaughter and namesake of another troublemaker: Barbara St.John Villiers (one of six St.John sisters, who married advantageously in the early 1600s).
Barbara St.John Villiers married Sir Edward Villiers, the older brother of George, 1st Duke.
They had a son, William Villiers, 2nd Lord Grandison (the title came from her childless uncle, Oliver St.John, Viscount Grandison of Limerick). William married and had a daughter, BV.
William died early in the Civil War, and BV's mother remarried and sent BV away, so her childhood is not well recorded. She learned early on that money and connections were important, and that she was on her own financially.
in 1659/60 BV was married off to a nice Royalist Roman Catholic, Mr. Palmer.
That makes the Dowager Duchess of Richmond the aunt once removed to BVP.
(There are two very influential women who are the Duchesses of Richmond running around Charles II's court. This is the old one. More on the young one later.)
If you'd like to see the poem Mary "Mal" Villiers Herbert Stuart, Dowager Duchess of Richmond wrote about her upstart niece, see
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…
For a short book paper about BVP's life, see
My Lady Castlemaine, Being a Life of Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine,
afterwards Duchess of Cleveland -- By Philip IV Sergeant, B.J.,
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO, PATERNOSTER R0W 1912
https://archive.org/stream/mylady…
(Later in the Diary you will see a complaint that I use women's whole names. In so doing I hope people like A. De Araujo find it easier to sort out family relationships. Women lose their identities when they get married; get married three times like the Dowager Duchess, and that's a loss of history. Men don't have that problem.)
San Diego Sarah • Link
And if you would like to read a book about the troublemaker, Barbara St.John Villiers, and her five St.John sisters, based on the memoirs of Lucy Apsley Hutchinson (wife of the regicide John Hutchinson MP, and daughter of the sister Lucy St.John Apsley -- making LAH the sister of Allan Apsley MP who you will meet in this Diary, plus another cousin of all these Villiers) I recommend
The Lady of the Tower
by Elizabeth St.John (yes a g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-niece herself)
It will help you figure out the family connections, and make you wonder afresh why on earth Charles II paid any mind to George 2, or had anything to do with BVP. They were clearly fruit of the poisoned tree (that's an American legal term, which explains itself)
Terry Foreman • Link
'He tells me how my Lady Duchess of Richmond and Castlemaine had a falling out the other day; and she calls the latter Jane Shore"
L&M: Jane Shore (who died c. 1527) was Edward IV's mistress. Popular legend had it that she died in poverty, and that her body was cast on a dunghill: see esp. Deloney's ballad: Percy, Reliques (ed. H. B. Wheatley), ii. 263-73. Lady Castlemaine was often compared to her. One evening in 1664 she was accosted by 'trois gentils-hommes . . . masquez qui luy firent la plus forte et rude reprimande que l'on se puisse imaginer, jusque à luy dire que la quatrièsme maîstresse d'Edouard estoit morte sur un fumier, mesprisée et abandonnée de tout le monde': de Cominges to de Lionne, 22 September/2 October 1664; PRO, PRO 31/3/113, ff. 324-5. Cf. A dialogue between the D[uchess] of C[leveland] and the D[uchess] of P[ortsmouth] at their meeting . . . with the ghost of Jane Shore (1682). Pepys retained in his library a biogtaphy of her: The history of Mrs. Jane Shore (n.d.): PL 362 (ii).
Terry Foreman • Link
"I mean in buying of tallow of him at a low rate for the King, and Tom should have the profit; but he tells me the profit will be considerable, at which I was troubled, but I have agreed with him to serve some in my absence."
L&M: See https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/… and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…