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

Fanfaron, French, from fanfare, a sounding of trumpets; hence, a swaggerer, or empty boaster. ↩

Churchyard Alley, Upper Thames Street, close by London Bridge. ↩

Sir George Smith, of St. Bartholomew, by the Exchange. He married Martha, daughter of John Swift, of London, merchant. —⁠B. ↩

James Carcasse (or Carkesse) was one of the four clerks of the Ticket Office, and in a paper of Pepys’s at Magdalene College he is described as the clerk to attend on Sir John Minnes for the signing of tickets. He was dismissed from the office for irregularities, principally through the action of Pepys. He published a quarto volume of poems in 1679, called Lucida Intervalla, the following extract from which, strongly reflecting upon Pepys, has been printed in Notes and Queries (1st series), vol. ii, p. 87:⁠—

“Get thee behind me, then, dumb devil, begone,
The Lord hath Eppthatha said to my tongue.
Him I must praise who open’d hath my lips,
Sent me from Navy to the Ark by Pepys;
By Mr. Pepys, who hath my rival been
For the Duke’s favour, more than years thirteen;
But I excluded, he high and fortunate,
This Secretary I could never mate.
But Clerk of th’ Acts, if I’m a parson, then
I shall prevail, the voice outdoes the pen;
Though in a gown, the challenge I may make,
And wager win, save, if you can, your stake.
To th’ Admiral I all submit, and vail⁠—”

The concluding line cut off and imperfect. ↩

The yard and fortifications of Sheerness were designed and first “staked out” by Sir Bernard de Gomme (see March 24th, 1667). The original plan is in the British Museum. —⁠B. ↩

Queenborough, a parish and town in Kent, in the Isle of Sheppey, two miles south of Sheerness. ↩

Peter Blackborow, or Blackbery, held contracts with the Navy Commissioners for the supply of timber. ↩

This letter of the Duke of Albemarle to the Navy Commissioners is among the State Papers, it orders a supply of provisions to be sent forthwith to the Gunfleet, and thence convoyed to Southwold Bay. “Ammunition is wanted also, and as many men as can be obtained” (Calendar, 1664⁠–⁠65, p. 524). ↩

A news letter of August 19th (Salisbury), gives the following account of this affair:⁠—“The Earl of Sandwich being on the Norway coast, ordered Sir Thomas Teddeman with 20 ships to attack 50 Dutch merchant ships in Bergen harbour; six convoyers had so placed themselves that only four or five of the ships could be reached at once. The Governor of Bergen fired on our ships, and placed 100 pieces of ordnance and two regiments of foot on the rocks to attack them, but they got clear without the loss of a ship, only 500 men killed or wounded, five or six captains among them. The fleet has gone to Sole Bay to repair losses and be ready to encounter the Dutch fleet, which is gone northward” (Calendar of State Papers, 1664⁠–⁠65, pp. 526, 527). Medals were struck in Holland, the inscription in Dutch on one of these is thus translated: “Thus we arrest the pride of the English, who extend their piracy even against their friends, and who insulting the forts of Norway, violate the rights of the harbours of King Frederick; but, for the reward of their audacity, see their vessels destroyed by the balls of the Dutch” (Hawkins’s Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Franks and Grueber, 1885, vol. i, p. 508). Sir Gilbert Talbot’s “True Narrative of the Earl of Sandwich’s Attempt upon Bergen with the English Fleet on the 3rd of August, 1665, and the Cause of his Miscarriage thereupon,” is in the British Museum (Harl. MS., No. 6859). It is printed in Archæologia, vol. xxii, p. 33. The Earl of Rochester also gave an account of the action in a letter to his mother (Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Biography, fourth edition, vol. iv, p. 611). Sir John Denham, in his Advice to a Painter, gives a long satirical account of the affair. A coloured drawing of the attack upon Bergen, on vellum, showing the range of the ships engaged, is in the British Museum. Shortly after the Bergen affair forty of the Dutch merchant vessels, on their way to Holland, fell into the hands of the English, and in Penn’s Memorials of Sir William Penn, vol. ii, p. 364, is a list of the prizes taken on the 3rd and 4th September. The troubles connected with these prizes and the disgrace into which Lord Sandwich fell are fully set forth in subsequent pages of the Diary. Evelyn writes in his Diary (November 27th, 1665): “There was no small suspicion of my Lord Sandwich having permitted diverse commanders who were at ye taking of ye East India prizes to break bulk and take to themselves jewels, silkes, etc., tho’ I believe some whom I could name fill’d their pockets, my Lo. Sandwich himself had the least share. However, he underwent the blame, and it created him enemies, and prepossess’d ye Lo. Generall [Duke of Albemarle], for he spake to me of it with much zeale and concerne, and I believe laid load enough on Lo. Sandwich at Oxford.” ↩

The captains killed in the unfortunate attack upon Bergen were Captain Seale of the Breda, Captain Utber, jun., of the Guernsey, Captain Hayward of the Prudent Mary, Captain Lawson, Coast frigate, Captain Cadman of Hamburg Merchant, Captain Price of the Briar. ↩

This Mr. Windham had entered into a formal engagement with the Earl of Rochester, “not without ceremonies of religion, that if either of them died, he should appear, and give the other notice of