Saturday 16 June 1666

Up betimes and to my office, and there we sat all the morning and dispatched much business, the King, Duke of Yorke, and Sir W. Coventry being gone down to the fleete. At noon home to dinner and then down to Woolwich and Deptford to look after things, my head akeing from the multitude of businesses I had in my head yesterday in settling my accounts. All the way down and up, reading of “The Mayor of Quinborough,” a simple play.

At Deptford, while I am there, comes Mr. Williamson, Sir Arthur Ingram and Jacke Fen, to see the new ships, which they had done, and then I with them home in their boat, and a very fine gentleman Mr. Williamson is.

It seems the Dutch do mightily insult of their victory, and they have great reason.1 Sir William Barkeley was killed before his ship taken; and there he lies dead in a sugar-chest, for every body to see, with his flag standing up by him. And Sir George Ascue is carried up and down the Hague for people to see.

Home to my office, where late, and then to bed.

15 Annotations

First Reading

Australian Susan  •  Link

On the BBC website is a picture of men re-enacting the playing of pell mell in Pall Mall.
Here's the link. There is no explanation as to why they are doing it this week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pic…

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Still no fears directed at what Louis may be planning. One wonders if Sam just doesn't want to start thinking about that or if he has info to calm fears in that direction.

Ric Jerrom  •  Link

A quick glance at the BBC website - thanks, Susan - shows "gentlemen" in 17th.Century costume supposedly playing "paille - maille": their equipment is distinctly that of croquet players, however. Is croquet "pell - mell", anyone?

Ric Jerrom  •  Link

Apparently Pell - Mell was an aristocratic game played on a huge - 1000 yard - pitch: players bashed the ball as far as they could with mallets, but finished with something like a golfer's "spoon" to whack the ball into the air and through a suspended hoop. So more like golf than Croquet: BBC's re - enactors are innaccurate, it seems. Clarity at www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Croque… (There's a hint of a link to Sam, too...)

JWB  •  Link

"Arterial embalming is believed to have been first practiced in the Netherlands in the 17th century by Frederik Ruysch but his liquor balsamicum preservative was kept a secret to the grave and his methods were not widely copied."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emba…

Australian Susan  •  Link

Yes, I was posting in a hurry before work - but I thought that the only accurate thing was the costume, but probably an expert on historical costume would correct me on that! Croquet is not Pell Mell.

cgs  •  Link

Shakespeare's Richard III, 1597

March on! Join bravely, let us to it pell-mell–
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell!(5.3.313-14)

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"At Deptford, while I am there, comes Mr. Williamson, Sir Arthur Ingram and Jacke Fen, to see the new ships, which they had done"

None of those named is a shipbuilder. "The new ships" may include The Greenwich, built by Christopher Pett and launched at Woolwich 9 days ago.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Sir William Barkeley was killed before his ship taken; and there he lies dead in a sugar-chest, for every body to see, with his flag standing up by him."

His body was embalmed by the anatomist Frederik Ruysch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fre… and lay in the Grote Kerk in the Hague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro… . It was brought home and buried in Westminster Abbey in August. London Gazette, 15 July; Gent. Mag., 57 (1757)/214. (Per L&M note)

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... and a very fine gentleman Mr. Williamson is."

Pepys may or may not know that Secretary of State Joseph Williamson is responsible for intelligencing ... if anyone knows where the French fleet is, and what Louis XIV intends for his cousin Charles in this unwelcome conflict, it's that very fine gentleman, Mr. Williamson.

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

And more about that fine Mr. Williamson:

In November 1666, the Irish Protestant conspiritor, Col. Thomas Blood, was on the edges of the failed Pentland Rising in Scotland.

Sojourns in Lancashire and Westmorland followed, but evidently tiring of these rebellious courses Col. Blood and his family returned to London and in 1667 he was almost arrested on several occasions.

Mary Holcroft Blood and her family set up in Shoreditch, while their eldest son, Thomas Jr., was apprenticed to an apothecary in Southwark (later taking to highway robbery under the alias Hunt).

Col. Thomas Blood, using the aliases Doctor Ayliffe and Doctor Allen, practiced as a physician (despite lacking any qualifications) in semi-retirement from conspiracy. But “Dr.” Blood, the conspirator in the 1660s, was not all he seemed. There is evidence that he had contacted the government, and may even have worked for them as a double agent spying on his friends.

The papers of Joseph Williamson, under-secretary and the regime's security chief, appear to place Blood on the side of the regime in 1666, and possibly indicate his involvement in the scheme to capture Col. Edmund Ludlow.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

This ambiguous role explains how Col. Thomas Blood managed to survive unscathed in this period ...

Sadly the Oxford Directory of National Biography requires a subscription
https://www.oxforddnb.com/display…

We'll learn more of Col. Thomas Blood's saga later.

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