Thursday 14 December 1665

Up, and to the office a while with my Lord Bruncker, where we directed Sir W. Warren in the business of the insurance as I desired, and ended some other businesses of his, and so at noon I to London, but the ’Change was done before I got thither, so I to the Pope’s Head Taverne, and there find Mr. Gawden and Captain Beckford and Nick Osborne going to dinner, and I dined with them and very exceeding merry we were as I had [not] been a great while, and dinner being done I to the East India House and there had an assignment on Mr. Temple for the 2,000l. of Cocke’s, which joyed my heart; so, having seen my wife in the way, I home by water and to write my letters and then home to bed.


12 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"with my Lord Bruncker, where we directed Sir W. Warren in the business of the insurance as I desired"

L&M reveal that tomorrow, 15 December, Pepys and Brouncker will lay out £500 in insurance on the Gothenburg fleet.

gingerd  •  Link

"Nick Osborne going to dinner..."
I don't recall Sam using Christian names very often.

Dudley  •  Link

Pope's Head Ally is across the street from the Royal Exchange it connects Cornhill with Lombard St, a lot closer than Chancery Lane.

cgs  •  Link

old nick, been on good terms, has been on first name basis since the 60's, neither lesser nor better.
I being of the class ancient cannot remember the christian names of the period, but doth remember "nick" names .

Jesse  •  Link

'Sam [rarely] using Christian names' ... 'neither lesser nor better'

Might this be evidence that Pepys is in somewhat of a unique, something of a nascent middle, social class enabled by the opportunities provided by the transition to a more organized, administrative type of government? [/awful syntax]

cgs  •  Link

‘neither lesser nor better’
A lesser gets the title of "hey you" or an nice expletive or even the the family name on a good day.
A better gets the well larded, "your eminence" or other such title, letting the recipient know thee know he be higher up in the food chain.
One must know thy place in the pecking order, unless thee be a Quaker that does not quake at the sight of laudly one, even if he does doff his tittver , there be a cap to hide his tonsure.

An equal would get the use of his Christian name or pet moniker, a rare privilege, only a handful got that personnel, unlike the modern comradeship of the equality driven democratic society that leads the world.

Of course one can use over ripe sulphated eggs to express thy non acceptance of a better or by sending thy shoes as gift through the air.

Phil Gyford  •  Link

Dudley: You're right about the location of the Pope's Head. I linked to the wrong one in this and several previous diary entries -- I've corrected them all now.

Second Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"I dined with them and very exceeding merry we were as I had [not] been a great while"

Pepys must be drinking way too much, and forgetting all the parties and dinners he has been very merry at for the last two or three months.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The importance of coal from Newcastle to the people of London, over 250 years:

https://englandsnortheast.co.uk/C…

But let us also remember the intrepid sailors who not only braved winter storms to keep people warm, but also had to contend with pirates who wanted to steal that 'Black Gold' ... and the press gangs who knew these were skilled sailors and tried to capture them.

'Twas a hard life back then, and Geordies were as tough as they came.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Geordie

Geordie is a nickname for a person from the Tyneside area of North East England, and the accent used by its inhabitants. The term is also used to refer to anyone from North East England.

---
The word "Geordie" can refer to a supporter of Newcastle United. The Geordie Schooner glass was traditionally used to serve Newcastle Brown Ale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo…

(A Yankee, I had to look it up.)

Terry Foreman  •  Link

When referring to the people, as opposed to the dialect, dictionary definitions of a Geordie typically refer to a native or inhabitant of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, or its environs, an area that encompasses Blyth, Ashington, North Tyneside, Newcastle, South Tyneside and Gateshead. This area has a combined population of around 700,000, based on 2011 census-data.

The term itself, according to Brockett, originated from all the North East coal mines. The catchment area for the term "Geordie" can include Northumberland and County Durham or be confined to an area as small as the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and the metropolitan boroughs of Tyneside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Ah, Terry, I'm sorry I have misled you ... Geordie isn't a term that arrives for a couple of hundred years. I think the people's hardiness and character might be the same, but the nickname is not of Pepys' times.

L&M Companion tells us that Capt. George Cocke (1617-1676) was a native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (which played an important part in trade to Scandinavia) which accounts for him being a Baltic merchant.

In Pepys' time, Newcastle-on-Tyne was the third wealthiest city in England, after London and Bristol. It had about 10,000 inhabitants and exported about 400,000 tons of coal a year. The first railway lines in the world were about to be put into those mines, with pit ponies pulling the carts.

Which is why Lawson (a Yorkshireman) at the beginning of the Diary is anchored in the Thames, keeping the coal away from London, putting pressure on the Rump Parliament to submit to Monck. And why Evelyn wrote his book about air pollution and trees. London burned a lot of coal.

Log in to post an annotation.

If you don't have an account, then register here.