Monday 16 December 1667

Up, and to several places, to pay what I owed. Among others, to my mercer, to pay for my fine camlott cloak, which costs me, the very stuff, almost 6l.; and also a velvet coat — the outside cost me above 8l.. And so to Westminster, where I find the House mighty busy upon a petition against my Lord Gerard, which lays heavy things to his charge, of his abusing the King in his Guards; and very hot the House is upon it. I away home to dinner alone with wife and girle, and so to the office, where mighty busy to my great content late, and then home to supper, talk with my wife, and to bed. It was doubtful to-day whether the House should be adjourned to-morrow or no.


18 Annotations

First Reading

Robert Gertz  •  Link

"Camlott?"

"Camlott."

"You know it gives a person pause."

"But Bess, it's camlott. Camlott." shakes fabric swatch at her.

"Sam'l? Aren't there legal laws?"

"No, but the wearer may never lie upon a hillside. By 9pm the stains won't disappear. But in short there's simply not...A finer, dearer cloth...For happily ever aftering in than..."

"I'm sold. Willet, go tell Unthankes...To make mine...Camlott."

"Uh...Bess? I didn't mean..."

"Run, girl!! Run! Run, girl!!"

Christopher Squire  •  Link

‘Camlott . .The ultimate origin is obscure; at the earliest known date the word was associated (by Europeans) with camel, as if stuff made of camel's hair; but there is reason to think it was originally the Arabic khamlat . . the Jrnl. Officiel of 1874, p. 3220/1, says camelot is so called from the Arabic seil el kemel, the Angora goat . .

a. A name originally applied to some beautiful and costly eastern fabric, afterwards to imitations and substitutes the nature of which has changed many times over. ‘A kind of stuff originally made by a mixture of silk and camel's hair; it is now made with wool and silk’ (Johnson). ‘A light stuff, formerly much used for female apparel, made of long wool, hard spun, sometimes mixed in the loom with cotton or linen yarn’ (Ure). It is uncertain whether it was ever made of camel's hair; but in the 16th and 17th c. it was made of the hair of the Angora goat.

According to S. W. Beck, Draper's Dict., ‘In [the] production [of camlets], the changes have been rung with all materials in nearly every possible combination; sometimes of wool, sometimes of silk, sometimes of hair, sometimes of hair with wool or silk, at others of silk and wool warp and hair woof‥Those of our day have had cotton and linen introduced into their composition. They have been made plain and twilled, of single warp and weft, of double warp, and sometimes with double weft also’.

c1400    Epiph. in W. B. D. D. Turnbull Visions of Tundale (1843) 114   Wer ther of gold any clothes fownde‥Or was ther any chamlyt or satyn.
. . 1725    D. Defoe Compl. Eng. Tradesman I. xxiii. 403   Her Riding-hood, of English Worsted-Camblet, made at Norwich . . ‘ [OED]

cum salis grano  •  Link

"...the outside cost me above 8l..." or 8 gold coins or 10,000 quid in paper.

nutin" has changed, a good Taylor still charges the same 8 coins gold to have a quality hand fitted outer wear..

cum salis grano  •  Link

his first at
"...This night my new camelott riding coat.."

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

"... put on my riding cloth suit, and a camelott coat new, which pleases me well enough. ..."

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

I put on my new silke camelott sute
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

Interesting for the purists, was it or was it not hair of dromedary,...
Or was named for the dun colour, So many things hide behind a name, calicut e.g...

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Everyone is covering his, mmm, tail in the Medway's aftermath

Fortifying Sheernesse.

The Lord Ancram reports from his Royal Highness the Duke of Yorke, an Answer in Writing to the Desire of this House: Which he read; and delivered in at the Clerk's Table: Which is as followeth; viz.

"Being desired by the House of Commons to let them know what Orders I gave for the fortifying of Sheernesse; and to whom, and when; I am very ready to give them what Satisfaction I can; though it be but little I am able to say to them on this Subject."

"I waited on his Majesty, when he went to Sheernesse, at the latter End of February last; and I . . . present, when his Majesty caused the Fort to be marked out; and, also, when he gave Order to the Commissioners of the Ordnance to go in hand with the Building of it: But, it not being in my Province to give Orders on Shore, neither the Commissioners of the Ordnance, nor any body else, did ever receive Orders from me for doing that Work. It's very true, that knowing the Importance of that Place for the securing of his Majesty's Navy, I did presently after his Majesty's Return from thence to London, recommend to the Commissioners of the Ordnance, the going in hand with the Battery upon the Point at Sheernesse."

"James."

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…

Tom  •  Link

The reason Sam is paying now is because 25th December is one of the 'quarter days' when bills owed have to be made good.

cum salis grano  •  Link

Camelott" silk not velvet could be black,, very noble, rich??????
Pepys descriptions:
bought velvett for a coate, and camelott for a cloake
my fine camlott cloak
new silke camelott suit
camelott for a cloake
one of my new silk suits, the plain one, but very rich camelott and noble
new black silke camelott suit
see past entries.

Fern  •  Link

The account with the mercer is just the start. Next stop, the tailor.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"And so to Westminster, where I find the House mighty busy upon a petition against my Lord Gerard, which lays heavy things to his charge, of his abusing the King in his Guards; and very hot the House is upon it."

The House of Lords Journal today

L. Gerrard versus Carr, for a scandalous Paper.

The House taking Notice of a scandalous printed Paper, published in the Name of William Carr Gentleman, a Prisoner in The King's Bench Prison, against the Lord Gerrard of Brandon, a Peer of this Realm:

It is ORDERED, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, That the Marshal of the said Prison of The King's Bench, or his Deputy, shall bring the said William Carr to the Bar of this House, To-morrow Morning, at Ten of the Clock: And this shall be a sufficient Warrant on that Behalf.
Carr to be brought to the Bar.

This House taking Notice of a scandalous printed Paper published in the Name of William Carr Gentleman, against the Lord Gerard of Brandon, a Peer of this Realm, and dispersed by Grace the Wife of the said William Carr:

It is ORDERED, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, That the said Grace the Wife of the said Will'm Carr be, and is hereby, required to appear at the Bar of this House, To-morrow at Ten of the Clock in the Forenoon.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Cf. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… William Carr, clerk to Gerard's troop of Life Guards, had petitioned the Commons accusing Gerard of embezzling £2000 p.a. during the past six years at the expense of his troopers' wages. He also complained that Gerard's agents had entered Carr's house in his absence and destroyed some of his papers, and terrified his wife and children. The House refused to commit the petition on the 17th because it had been printed before being presented.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
(Carr, now cast into the King's Bench prison, pleaded that this had been done in error and without his authority.)
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

On the 18th the Lords sentenced Carr to the pillory and a fine of £1000 and to imprisonment at this King's pleasure on the ground that his petition had been offensive to both King and Lords in referring to the Commons as the only protection of the subject's rights.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…

Gerard was later bought out of his command by the King and forced to pay back his gains.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1… (Per lengthy L&M footnote)

James Morgan  •  Link

It's sad to read of Carr's imprisonment. Whistleblowers have hard times in these days too.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"The account with the mercer is just the start. Next stop, the tailor."

And don't forget the bill at Mr. Unthanks ... Elizabeth and Deb practically took root there before Elizabeth got the runs. Maybe Pepys can demand/negotiate a discount, claiming she caught the bug there?

Eric the Bish  •  Link

In Cochin. in 1997, I found a tailor who would make up for me an embroidered cummerbund. I was taken aback when I thought our business was finished, but he held out his hands and asked me where the cloth was. That’s what comes from not understanding that a tailor is not necessarily his/her own mercer. Another benefit of reading this diary.

JayW  •  Link

Off topic for today’s entry but the Daily Telegraph of 17 December 2020 has the obituary of Richard Luckett, for 30 years Samuel Pepys’s Librarian at Magdalene College, Cambridge. It has some details of Samuel ‘s bequest.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

And Magdalene College posted their own notice about the passing of Dr. Richard Luckett, from which I excerpted this:

"As Pepys Librarian -- a post he held for 30 years until his retirement in 2012 -- he continued the work of his predecessor Robert Latham in overseeing a multi-volume catalogue of the Library; and he contributed to a ground-breaking edition of, and companion to, Samuel Pepys’s Diary, especially in regard to Pepys’s musical interests. He saw through the press a number of facsimiles which brought the collection to a wider public."
https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/dr-ric…

Dr. Robert Latham was the L in L&M, which accounts for our treating their annotations with due reverence.

JayW  •  Link

Extract from Daily Telegraph (1):

Richard Luckett,who has died aged 75, was for 30 years Samuel Pepys’s Librarian at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

The diarist and eyewitness to the Great Fire of London is famous for chronicling the life of a young man all about town between 1660 and 1669. Less well-known is the Mr Pepys, MP, of later years, who served as Secretary to the Admiralty and President of the Royal Society, and who as a collector assembled 3,000 volumes of printed books and manuscripts, intended as a conspectus of human knowledge.
Before he died in 1703, Pepys directed that his Library, including the six shorthand volumes of diary, go to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Arranged by height in his 12 glass-fronted bookcases, it was to live in a building to be renamed the Bibliotheca Pepysiana, and was to be a time-capsule. And so it remains.
Luckett was the ideal Pepys Librarian (1982-2012). No one could better have matched Pepys’s interests in the Royal Navy (Drake’s personal almanac and an illustrated survey of his fleet are in the Library), music, street ballads, scientific history (Newton’s own copy of Principia Mathematica), architecture, mechanical trades, engravings … More than a curator, Luckett came to embody the Library.
His passing claim to have “read it” – all – was disingenuous (surely not the bilingual dictionaries?), but he will never have a rival.

He oversaw the completion of the multi-volume published catalogue (1978-94) and contributed hundreds of pages to the Companion volume of the great Latham-Matthews edition of Pepys’s Diary (1970-83). His essay on music was later boiled down for Radio 4 under the improbable rubric “What would have been on Samuel Pepys’s iPod?”

JayW  •  Link

Extract from Daily Telegraph (2):

Because Pepys designed a library of 3,000 books, with none added and none taken away (under pain of its transfer to Trinity), Luckett could not make suitable additions as he found them, even if they were books Pepys was known once to have read.

However, he intended parts of his own collection to form an annexe of suitable materials, including, for instance, his dozens of 17th-century musical scores and a contemporary manuscript of Purcell’s 1692 Ode to St Cecilia.

For years, Luckett helped the art dealer Neil Clayton to identify the subjects of portraits. One day Clayton invited him to look at a large canvas of a well-satisfied, profusely wigged gentleman leaning on his desk.

The view behind him of the Naval Yard at Harwich, where Pepys was MP, and a book from Pepys’s Library confirmed the resemblance. Luckett promptly acquired the picture for a fraction of its value and hung it in the Library. And so it remains – an addition, but not a book and so, he declared, not in breach of the rules.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Thanks JayW, I don't have a subscription and was pleased to read more details.

I wonder if the previous owners of the Pepys Harwich portrait know the sold at a fraction of it's value????

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