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

Whitehall Palace was situated on low ground, and it was frequently flooded. The allusion to this in Lord Buckhurst’s song is well known. ↩

Dr. Knapp was not a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and he appears to have been a quack and an impostor. ↩

See note, April 6th, 1660 (note 349). ↩

Old style. ↩

The work of Salomon Gesner, entitled, Liber quatuor de Conciliis, was published at Witemberg in 1601 (2 vols. 8vo.). ↩

Cabala: Mysteries of State in Letters of the Great Ministers of King James and King Charles, was first published in 1654, and in 1663 a new edition appeared. ↩

Henry VIII was revived at this time with Betterton as the king and Harris as Wolsey, but Pepys’s description of the play seems to be a very inaccurate one. ↩

Quinsborough is Königsberg. It is most probable that Mr. Harrington had been reading The Travels of Master George Barkely, Merchant of London, as given by Purchas, vol. ii, pp. 625, 627. Königsberg is there spelled Kinninsburge, easily corrupted by Pepys into Quinsborough. The swallow story is found at p. 626: “One here in his net drew up a company or heape of swallows, as big as a bushell, fastened by the leg and bills in one, which being carried to their stoves, quickened, and flew, and coming again suddenly in the cold air, died.” It appears to have been generally believed. In the Advice to a Painter (1667), attributed to Sir John Denham, we find the following lines:

“So swallows, buried in the sea at Spring,
Return to land with Summer in their [on the?] wing.”

—⁠B. ↩

Edward Dering was granted, August, 1660, “the office of King’s merchant in the East, for buying and providing necessaries for apparelling the Navy” (Calendar, Domestic, 1660⁠–⁠61, p. 212). There is evidence among the State Papers of some dissatisfaction with the timber, etc., which he supplied to the Navy, and at this time he appears to have had some stores left on his hands. ↩

The figurehead of the Naseby (afterwards the Charles) was fully described by Evelyn in his Diary on April 9th, 1655: “I went to see ye greate ship newly built by the Usurper Oliver, carrying 96 brasse guns and 1,000 tons burden. In ye prow was Oliver on horseback trampling 6 nations under foote, a Scott, Irishman, Dutchman, Frenchman, Spaniard and English, as was easily made out by their several habits. A Fame held a laurel over his insulting head: ye word, God with us.” ↩

See note 491. ↩

Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of John Walpole of Broomsthorpe. ↩

The three children of John and Anne Pepys, of London and Ashstead, Surrey, were Edward Pepys, of Broomsthorpe, co. Norfolk (born 1617), Elizabeth, married to Thomas Dyke, and Jane, married to Serjeant John Turner. ↩

Sir William Turner was sheriff, 1662, and Lord Mayor, 1668. ↩

There is a farthing token of “Samuell Clever at Cock Pitt Court in Shooe Lane” (Boyne’s Tokens, ed. Williamson, p. 741). This cockpit had been famous long before Pepys’s day. There is an anecdote of Sir Thomas Jermyn (who died in 1644) and his sending a dunghill cock neatly trimmed to this cockpit, which is little to his credit, in Thoms’s Anecdotes and Traditions, 1839 (p. 47). ↩

Mr. W. Barclay Squire, B. A., of the British Museum, has kindly given the editor the following particulars respecting Humphry Madge, who is several times mentioned by Pepys. The earliest note which Mr. Squire has of Madge is in a docquet, 1661, for the allowance of immediate liveries £16 2s. 6d. each, and allowance of the like liveries yearly to Nicholas Lanier, Henry Lawes, Charles Coleman, George Hudson, David Mall, John Hingeston, Humfrey Madge, and William Gregory (State Papers). He appears as a “Musitian in Ordinary” in a list of the household attributed to July, 1663, in Calendar of State Papers (Dom. Ser., Charles II, vol. lxxvi, p. 67), but certainly earlier, as it contains the name of Henry Lawes, who died in October, 1662. Madge’s name also occurs in e.g. 2159 (Brit. Mus.), in a list endorsed, “the orders for the Musitians,” as one of the twenty-four violins under Grebus’s leadership, annexed to the order of the King’s Treasurer of February 21st, 1668⁠–⁠9. ↩

John Owen, who married a daughter of Captain John Alleyn, was Clerk of the Ropeyard at Chatham. Among the State Papers is a letter from him to Pepys, dated December 14th, asking for his warrant (Calendar, Domestic, 1663⁠–⁠64, p. 373). ↩

“Le mariage du Chevalier de Grammont” (says the Count d’Estrades in a letter written to Louis XIV about this time), “et la conversion de Madame de Castlemaine se sont publiez le même jour: et le Roy d’Angleterre estant tant priè par les parents de la Dame d’apporter quelque obstacle à cette action, répondit galamment que pour l’âme des Dames, il ne s’en mêloit point.” —⁠B.

In consequence of the passing of the Test Act in 1673, the Duchess of Cleveland, who was a Roman Catholic, was no longer able to continue as one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber to Queen Catherine. ↩

Rugge adds, that the queen was in the carriage when the battle took place, her coachman striking the first blow; and that the combatants fought a long time, nobody coming to part them. The Exchange was not reopened till the man who injured the royal servant had been given up. —⁠B. ↩