Sunday 9 November 1662
(Lord’s day). Lay alone a good while, my mind busy about pleading to-morrow to the Duke if there shall be occasion for this chamber that I lie in against Sir J., Minnes. Then up, and after being ready walked to my brother’s, where my wife is, calling at many churches, and then to the Temple, hearing a bit there too, and observing that in the streets and churches the Sunday is kept in appearance as well as I have known it at any time. Then to dinner to my brother’s, only he and my wife, and after dinner to see Mr. Moore, who is pretty well, and he and I to St. Gregory’s, where I escaped a great fall down the staires of the gallery: so into a pew there and heard Dr. Ball make a very good sermon, though short of what I expected, as for the most part it do fall out. So home with Mr. Moore to his chamber, and after a little talk I walked home to my house and staid at Sir W. Batten’s. Till late at night with him and Sir J. Minnes, with whom we did abundance of most excellent discourse of former passages of sea commanders and officers of the navy, and so home and to bed, with my mind well at ease but only as to my chamber, which I fear to lose.
21 Annotations
First Reading
Linda F • Link
Must admire Sam, waking from and falling to sleep obsessed with Sir J. Minnes's designs on Sam's chamber; yet when opportunity offers genuinely enjoying "excellent discourse" with Sir John and Sir W. Batten.
Bradford • Link
Can this repetition be a stab at a pun?
"to St. Gregory’s, where I escaped a great *fall* down the staires of the gallery: so into a pew there and heard Dr. Ball make a very good sermon, though short of what I expected, as for the most part it do *fall* out."
Talk about l'esprit de l'escalier.
And am I alone in thinking that the matter of the possible loss of "this chamber I lie in [to] Sir J. Minnes" has become Sam's King Charles's Head?
Glyn • Link
When Pepys talks about pleading tomorrow to the Duke, I think he’s using the word in the legal sense of pleading a case. I’m not a lawyer but think that this is now more an American legal usage than a British one, but I could be wrong about that. If you have a copy of Microsoft Word you’ll see that it has in its list of template documents a “Pleading Wizard”, which probably is not as interesting as it sounds.
Glyn • Link
Linda F - Probably most people enjoyed talking to Minnes when he was in the right mood, because the background info says that he was a witty conversationalist, and Pepys always seems to enjoy hearing tales of the navy.
I do wonder if Minnes and Batten were talking about Cromwellian sea captains as well as Royalist ones, and their battles against foreign navies. I imagine Minnes and Batten had a lot of entertaining stories for the young landlubber.
Nix • Link
Pleading to the Duke --
I think he is using it as we now would use the term "arguing" rather than in a sense like "imploring". I don't think it is quite in the sense of a formal legal proceeding, but I agree that it does not include the element of pathos we include in conversational use of the term.
dirk • Link
Rev. Josselin vs Conformity - cont'd...
The Rev.'s diary entry for today:
"A warm winter hitherto, but wet one great flood, god good to me and mine in outward mercies, new Ministers this day at Colne Engain. - Mr Symonds and at Cogshall Mr Jessop . both of good report, and now I am left alone of the nonconformists, what god will do with me I know not. I trust he will be a hiding place, and help me that I may work, and not wound my spirit."
CGS • Link
My take for wot it be worth? "...my mind busy about pleading {making an earnest appeal tointercede on my behalf] to-morrow to {with} the Duke ..."
CGS • Link
"...the Sunday is kept in appearance as well as I have known it at any time..." would this mean, very few people out and about, as it be a bit of an overcast and many of the populace, do not wish to atttend a service as they be not a liking the new Parsons?.
Pauline • Link
"...pleading to-morrow to the Duke..."
Tomalin has figured out that "[t]here were no fixed working hours for officers of the Navy Board, although their meetings were held twice weekly at Seething Lane, and they attended the duke of York as lord high admiral in Whitehall once a week on a Monday morning--sometimes they found he had gone hunting instead."
Sam may be obsessing with what he will say if Mennes raises the issue of the chamber for the duke's ajudication.
Tony Eldridge • Link
" a very good sermon.......,as for the most part it do fall out"
Any ideas as to what this means?
Australian Susan • Link
"for the most part it do fall out"
I took this to be - "as they usually seem to be"
Stolzi • Link
“…the Sunday is kept in appearance as well as I have known it at any time…”
People going decorously to Church, no apparent revelry or slackness, - the Restoration need not apologize to the Commonwealth - that's how I read it. But then, after all, Sam has thrown in his lot with the Restoration.
"for the most part it do fall out" - it usually happens that sermons aren't quite as good as you hope they are going to be. Again, that's how I read it.
It's startling, as on other Sundays, to see Sam sampling so many churches of a Sunday morning, treating them the way we do shops in a mall.
Jeannine • Link
"It’s startling, as on other Sundays, to see Sam sampling so many churches of a Sunday morning, treating them the way we do shops in a mall."
Stolzi-In his book "Samuel Pepys In the Diary" Percival Hunt writes of Sam's family church (St. Olave's) and then has another essay devoted to the 30 or other churches that Sam visits during the life of the diary. There is no actual explanation as to "why" Sam goes to a variety of churches but Hunt does set forth the one consistent theme. "Even when Pepys went to another church, he was not led by change of place into writing vividly of its service. As at St. Olave's his interest came chiefly from the unchurchly. Instinctively, his interest rose at novelty, even trivial novelty....(gives assorted examples)..When all was usual, Pepys, if he wrote anything, catalogued, with no comment or a barren one. His mind set to work when he faced the new;and he was not concerned with judgement of its value." (p. 47)
Perhaps Sam's high level of curiosity and his vigor to take in all of life around him drew him to explore, visit, look for the unique and write about it?
pjk • Link
…sampling so many churches…
One of the fascinations of the diary is trying to recreate-mentally- Sam's world (and world view) but it is quite difficult to imagine a life in which the majority of Sam's information about the world comes directly from people within walking distance. In that environment a couple of talks, per week, by a University educated (a rarity) clergymen might be an intellectual treat.
What were the newspapers like at that time? In a quick seach I find references to censorship and the 1662 Print Act but does anybody on the site know what Sam might have had a chance to read?
CGS • Link
Mercurius Publicus [p79,p81 Restoration London]and London Gazette, are two names of many of the circulating news/broad sheets, many I'm sure were hung on the wall for the populace to read, The tabloids were numerous , that be why they passed laws to prevent differing accounts of the daily affairs, there by some were under cover or out of site of the nosey ones. Sam was able to get his news directly from the horses mouth rather than a day late via other filtered outlets.
Terry F • Link
"Can this repetition [of 'fall'] be a stab at a pun?" and other quesions about Fall.
I missed the allusion to King Charles's Head, Bradford, but did catch a possible pun on the Fall of humankind in Genesis 3 (as Christians see it, Sam being at a[nother] church); and on the season of the year (my yards being spread with leaves newly fallen) -- until I read the Rev. Josselin's reference to "winter."
What season of the year is it called in 1662? And if it is "winter" (with a solstice at its middle, let us suppose), when did it change to "fall" or "autumn"? Was it with England's laggard change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar ca. 1750?
We know these thing have changed, because we know come January we are coming up on 1662/63, in accordance with Aelfric's *De Temporibus Anni* (ca. A.D. 1010): "The Roman people begin their year in the wintertime, in accordance with the custom of the heathens. The Hebrews keep the beginning of their year at the spring equinox. The Greeks begin their year at the solstice, and the Egyptians in the autumn. But the Hebrew people who obeyed God's law began their year most correctly, that is, at the spring equinox on the twelfth kalends of April [21 March], on which day the sun, the moon, all the stars and the seasons of the year were created." http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/a…
Australian Susan • Link
When the New Year began is in a state of flux at this time (Diary time, not 21st c). In a legal sense, the New Year began on April 1st, but some would still hold to Easter being the New Year (this was derived from the Hebrew custom) and Lady Day (March 25th) was the "New Year" for annual leases and rental payments and contracts. January 1st was not the significant day it has become and maybe there were still some who might think November 1st was New year from the pagan practice (pagan practices continued in some parts of the UK until well into the 20th century (see any writings by Prof Anne Ross)). Sam seems to go with April 1st for dating, but then he did begin the Diary on January 1st. Confusing, isn't it?
Bradford • Link
In Emily Dickinson's family, 200 years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, discussion of the quality and technique of the day's sermons was a favorite topic of Sabbath-day discussion.
King Charles's Head: "A phrase applied to an obsession, a fixed fancy. It comes from Mr. Dick, the harmless half-wit in Dickens's 'David Copperfield,' who, whatever he wrote or said, always got round to the subject of King Charles's [the First's] head, about which he was composing a memorial---he could not keep it out of his thoughts."
(Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable)
As for the seasons, the weather won't always obey the calendar: almost mid-November, it is still late summer in the US Mid-South.
Second Reading
Bill • Link
"heard Dr. Ball make a very good sermon ... as for the most part it do fall out"
to fall out, ... reussir [succeed]
---A short dictionary English and French. G. Miège, 1684.
Chris Squire UK • Link
In 1662, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, at this date the leaves would have been off the trees by the end of October and the temperature would have dropped so that it would be the start of winter.
Nowadays climate change has extended autumn so that in London the final leaves will still be falling at the corresponding date, November 21 New Style. This change has occurred during the 40 years I have lived at my present address.
Chris Squire UK • Link
OED has:
‘fall out . . 7. To happen, chance, occur, arise, come to pass. Now chiefly quasi-impers. with subject clause . .
. . 1627 R. Perrot Tithes 51 How often falls it out that a Parishioner..detaines some part or the whole of his tithe.
. . 1688 Lett. conc. Present St. Italy 101 It fell out to be the year of Jubily, 1650 . . ‘