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

and employed at Windsor, and in erecting stables at Cornbury, and in building Berkeley House, Piccadilly, and Cassiobury (Evelyn’s Diary). He also held a place under Sir John Denham, the Surveyor of the Works, whom he expected to succeed; but the office becoming vacant, by the knight’s death in 1667, was given to Sir Christopher Wren, and May was promised an annuity of £300 out of the Works, to make up for his disappointment. Whatever may have been his professional merits, he is not even named in Horace Walpole’s list of architects; and we know nothing more of his career, except that in 1683 he was busy in building a house at Chiswick for Sir Stephen Fox. Baptist May’s history is soon told: He was born about 1627, and after the Restoration belonged to the Duke of York’s household; but he was promoted by the king to the office of Keeper of the Privy Purse, and became the confidant of Charles’s amours. He was also made a Page of the Bedchamber, which place he lost, having contrived to offend his royal master. In 1689⁠–⁠90 we find him returned at the general election as burgess for Windsor, with Sir Christopher Wren; they were, however, both unseated by petition. Baptist died May 2nd, 1693, and lies buried in St. George’s Chapel, where the slab inscribed to his memory is still to be seen. —⁠B.

Baptist May has been supposed to be the son of Humphry May, who in early life was Vice-Chamberlain to James I. ↩

Sir William Clarke acted as secretary to the Duke of Albemarle. There are several of his letters among the State Papers, which are dated from the Cockpit, Whitehall. He lost his leg in the fight with the Dutch in June, 1666, and died two days after. ↩

See Sir John Denham’s Advice to a Painter concerning the Dutch war in Poems on State Affairs, vol. i, p. 24. —⁠B. ↩

The Earl of Falmouth is better known as Lord FitzHarding. The Duke of Ormonde’s letters to his mother (Lady Thurles) and his sister (the Countess of Clancarty), on the death of Lord Muskerry, are printed in Penn’s Memorials of Sir W. Penn, vol. ii, pp. 338, 339. Richard Boyle was the second son of the Earl of Burlington, and had been Member for Cork in 1661. Clarendon wrote of him: “He was a youth of great hope, who came newly home from travel, where he had spent his time with singular advantage, and took the first opportunity to lose his life in the king’s service. There were many other gentlemen volunteers in the same ship, who had the same fate.” ↩

James Ley, Earl of Marlborough, was captain of the Old James. A letter from him to his friend, Sir Hugh Pollard, written about five weeks before the battle, is printed in Penn’s Memorials of Sir W. Penn (vol. ii, p. 340). Charles Weston, third Earl of Portland, was a volunteer on board Lord Marlborough’s ship. Robert Sansum, commander of the Resolution, was Rear-Admiral of the White. He was captain of the Portsmouth in the fleet at Scheveling attending Charles II on his return to England. Robert Kirby was captain of the Breda. James Ableson was captain of the Guinea. ↩

When Opdam’s ship blew up, a shot from it mortally wounded Sir John Lawson, which is thus alluded to in the Poems on State Affairs, vol. i, p. 28:

“Destiny allowed
Him his revenge, to make his death more proud.
A fatal bullet from his side did range,
And battered Lawson; oh, too dear exchange!
He led our fleet that day too short a space,
But lost his knee: since died, in glorious race:
Lawson, whose valour beyond Fate did go,
And still fights Opdam in the lake below.”

In the same poem, Lord Falmouth’s death is thus noticed:

“Falmouth was there, I know not what to act;
Some say ’twas to grow Duke, too, by contract.
An untaught bullet, in its wanton scope,
Dashes him all to pieces, and his Hope.
Such was his rise, such was his fall, unpraised;
A chance-shot sooner took him than chance raised:
His shattered head the fearless Duke distains,
And gave the last first proof that he had brains.”

—⁠B. ↩

Afterwards Sir Joseph Jordan, commander of the Royal Sovereign, and Vice-Admiral of the Red, 1672. He was knighted on July 1st, 1665. —⁠B. ↩

Captain Sebastian Senten, of the Orange, was attached to the second squadron of the Dutch fleet (see Penn’s Memorials of Sir W. Penn, vol. ii, p. 318). ↩

In the royal charter granted by Charles II in 1680 to William Penn for the government of his American province, to be styled Pennsylvania, special reference is made to “the memory and merits of Sir William Penn in diverse services, and particularly his conduct, courage, and discretion under our dearest brother, James, Duke of York, in that signal battle and victory fought and obtained against the Dutch fleet commanded by Heer van Opdam in 1665” (Penn’s Memorials of Sir W. Penn, vol. ii, p. 359). ↩

Mrs. Ady (Julia Cartwright), in her fascinating life of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, gives an account of the receipt of the news of the great sea-fight in Paris, and quotes a letter of Charles II to his sister, dated, “Whitehall, June 8th, 1665” The first report that reached Paris was that “the Duke of York’s ship had been blown up, and he himself had been drowned.” “The shock was too much for Madame⁠ ⁠… she was seized with convulsions, and became so dangerously ill that Lord Hollis wrote to the king, ‘If things had gone ill at sea I really believe Madame would have died.’ ” Charles