The Diary by Samuel Pepys (children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

Sir Christopher Wren was long preserved in the museum of the Royal Society (Grew’s Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society, p. 364). Evelyn was shown “a pretty terrella described with all ye circles and skewing all ye magnetic deviations” (Diary, July 3rd, 1655). ↩

“Naturally grown timber or bars of iron bent to a right angle or to fit the surfaces and to secure bodies firmly together as hanging knees secure the deck beams to the sides.”

Smyth’s Sailor’s Word-Book

There are several kinds of knees. ↩

Pepys’s prescription for the colic:

“Balsom of Sulphur, 3 or 4 drops in a spoonfull of Syrrup of Colts foote, not eating or drinking two hours before or after.

“The making of this Balsom:

“⅔ds of fine Oyle, and ⅓d of fine Brimstone, sett 13 or 14 houres upon ye fire, simpring till a thicke Stuffe lyes at ye Bottome, and ye Balsom at ye topp. Take this off etc.

“Sir Rob. Parkhurst for ye Collique.”

—⁠M. B. ↩

Lord Braybrooke added (sic) after the words “Queen Elizabeth,” and it is not easy to know what Pepys meant. A reference to the Church History does not throw any light upon the matter. ↩

The Mr. Smith here referred to would appear to be Thomas Smith, who was Secretary of the Admiralty in 1638, about which time Sir George Carteret (then Captain Carteret) held the office of Comptroller of the Navy. ↩

Sir Charles Berkeley, mentioned before, created Lord Berkeley of Rathdown and Viscount Fitzharding in Ireland, 1663, second son to Sir Charles Berkeley of Bruton, co. Somerset; created an English peer by the titles of Lord Botetourt of Langport and Earl of Falmouth, March 6th, 1665. Killed in the great sea-fight, June 3rd, 1665. ↩

One of the clerks of the Privy Council, and secretary to the Marquis of Ormond. He was created Viscount Lanesborough. —⁠B. ↩

This is probably an allusion to the practice of not reporting the deaths of soldiers, that the officers might continue to draw their pay. —⁠B. ↩

Lord Sandwich’s housekeeper appears to have been married to a cook, but we do not know his name, as his wife is always described as “Mrs. Sarah.” ↩

“The condition of the Queen is much worse, and the physicians give us but little hopes of her recovery; by the next you will hear that she is either in a fair way to it, or dead. Tomorrow is a very critical day with her⁠—God’s will be done. The King coming to see her the [this] morning, she told him she willingly left all the world but him, which hath very much afflicted his Majesty, and all the court with him.”

Lord Arlington to the Duke of Buckingham, Whitehall, October 17th, 1663 (Brown’s Miscellanea Aulica, p. 306)

—⁠B. ↩

Sir William Compton (1625⁠–⁠1663) was knighted at Oxford, December 12th, 1643. He was called by Cromwell “the sober young man and the godly cavalier.” After the Restoration he was M.P. for Cambridge (1661), and appointed Master of the Ordnance. He died in Drury Lane, suddenly, as stated in the text, and was buried at Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire. ↩

“I have heard they put on the queen’s head when shee was sick, a nightcap of some sort of precious relick to recover her, and gave her extreme unction; and that my Lord Aubignie told her she must impute her recoverie to these. Shee answered not, but rather to the prayers of her husband.”

Ward’s Diary, p. 98

↩

“The queen was given over by her physicians,⁠ ⁠… , and the good nature of the king was much affected with the situation in which he saw! a princess whom, though he did not love her, yet he greatly esteemed. She loved him tenderly, and thinking that it was the last time she should ever speak to him, she told him ‘That the concern he showed for her death was enough to make her quit life with regret; but that not possessing charms sufficient to merit his tenderness, she had at least the consolation in dying to give place to a consort who might be more worthy, of it and to whom heaven, perhaps, might grant a blessing that had been refused to her.’ At these words she bathed his hands with some tears which he thought would be her last; he mingled his own with hers, and without supposing she would take him at his word, he conjured her to live for his sake.”

Grammont Memoirs, chap. vii

↩

This may be the Coffee House in Exchange Alley, which had for a sign, Morat the Great, or The Great Turk, where coffee was sold in berry, in powder, and pounded in a mortar. There is a token of the house, see Boyne’s Tokens, ed. Williamson, vol. i, p. 592. ↩

Sir John Robinson. ↩

The grief of Charles at the Queen’s dangerous condition was thus noticed by Waller:

“when no healing art prevail’d,
When cordials and elixirs fail’d,
On your pale cheek he dropt the shower,
Reviv’d you like a dying flower.”

—⁠B. ↩

“Philip Harman, of St. Michael, Cornhill, gent., bachelor, about 27, and Mary Bromfeild, of St. Sepulchre, London, spinster, about 20, consent of parents⁠—at Little St. Bartholomew, London, 21 Oct., 1663”

Chester’s London Marriage Licences, ed. Foster, 1887, col. 627

↩

Sir Francis Prujean, M.D., President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1650⁠–⁠54; Treasurer, 1655⁠–⁠63. He was born in Essex, and educated at Caius College, Cambridge; knighted April 1st, 1661, and died June 23rd, 1666. Vertue (according to Walpole) had seen a print of “Opinion sitting on a tree,” thus inscribed: “Viro clariss. Dno Francisco Prujeano Medico, omnium bonarum artium et elegantiarum