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

prosecute his chariot-wheels, watches, and glasses during the recess.” At the meeting of March 14th, “The President inquiring into the employments in which the members of the Society had been engaged during their long recess, several of those who were present gave some account thereof, viz., Dr. Wilkins and Mr. Hooke, of the business of the chariots, viz., that after great variety of trials they conceived that they brought it to a good issue, the defects found since the chariot came to London being thought easy to remedy,” etc. (Birch’s History of the Royal Society, vol. ii, p. 66). ↩

On the site of the Mansion House. ↩

John Baber, M.D., Physician in Ordinary to the king, who knighted him March 19th, 1660. He died 1703⁠–⁠4, aged seventy-nine. ↩

The jewels were stolen from the Dutch Vice-Admiral. See ante, November 16th. ↩

Dr. Robert Hooke. See note 2429. ↩

Sir George Ent, M.D., F.R.S. (1604⁠–⁠1689), President of the College of Physicians, 1670⁠–⁠75, 1682⁠–⁠1684. He was knighted by Charles II in 1665, in the Harveian Museum, immediately after the delivery of his Anatomy Lectures. His last publication was entitled Animadversiones in Malachiæ Thrustoni, M.D. Diatribam de Respirationis usu primario, London, 1672, 8vo. (Munk’s Roll of the College of Physicians, vol. i, p. 223). Died 1689. ↩

Christopher Merrett, M.D. (1614⁠–⁠1695). ↩

From the Domestic State Papers in the Public Record Office, London. Page 327, Entry Book No. 105 of the Protector Oliver’s Council of State.

Ordered by the Council, Thursday, August 7th, 1656, “That passes be graunted to goe beyond ye Seas to ye p’sons following, vizt To John Pepys and his man wth necessaryes for Holland, being on the desire of Mr Samll Pepys.”

Probably this was a later journey of Pepys’ father to Holland, as Pepys says here he was a little boy then. —⁠M. B. ↩

Rumball is mentioned on several occasions in the Diary. OnOctober 29th, 1660 (vol. i, p. 270), Pepys praises his claret, and on December 8th, 1661 (vol. ii, p. 151), a great christening of Rumball’s child (Charles) is mentioned. Since these passages were printed the editor has been obligingly informed as to this worthy by Sir Horace Rumbold, Bart., G.C.M.G., H.B.M. Minister at the Hague. The forms Rumball and Rumbell given by Pepys are corruptions of the correct name, which was Rumbold. William Rumbold entered the office of the Great Wardrobe in 1629, attended Charles I all through the Civil War till Naseby, where he was engaged, together with his father, Thomas Rumbold, afterwards taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces, and during the period of the Commonwealth he rendered considerable service to the royal cause. He acted as Secretary to the Secret Council which was kept up in England by Charles II during his exile, and among the Clarendon Papers at Oxford there are numerous letters from him written to the king, Lord Chancellor Hyde, Ormonde, and others. At the Restoration he became Comptroller of the Great Wardrobe and Surveyor-General of the Customs. He died May 27th, 1667, at his house at Parson’s Green, Fulham, where he is buried in the chancel of All Saints’ Church with his wife Mary, daughter of William Barclay, Esquire of the Body to Charles I. This distinguished royalist was an ancestor of Sir Horace Rumbold, who has contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Notes on the History of the Family of Rumbold in the Seventeenth Century (N.S., vol. vi, p. 145). Sir Horace mentions the Colonel Henry Norwood referred to in the text as one of those friends who spoke of William Rumbold with great affection. ↩

The following summary of the deaths from the plague of 1665, in the parish of St. Olave’s, Hart Street, was extracted from the register by the Rev. C. Murray, and printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine, October, 1845: In July, 4; August, 22; September, 63; October, 54; November, 18; December, 5. Of these, there were buried in the churchyard, 98; in the new churchyard, 42; in vaults, 12; in the church, 7; in the chancel, 1. Buried, places of interment not specified, 166. Total, 326. No wonder that Pepys felt nervous on first entering the church after the sickness abated. —⁠B. ↩

Clarendon House. See note 2433. ↩

The dredger was probably the drageoir of France; in low Latin, dragerium, or drageria, in which comfits (dragées) were kept. Roquefort says, “The ladies wore a little spice-box, in shape like a watch, to carry dragées, and it was called a drageoir.” The custom continued certainly till the middle of the last century. Old Palsgrave, in his Eclaircissement de la Langue Françayse, gives “dradge” as spice, rendering it by the French word dragée. Chaucer says, of his Doctor of Physic,

“Full ready hadde he his Apothecaries
To send him dragges, and his lattuaries.”

The word sometimes may have signified the pounded condiments in which our forefathers delighted. It is worth notice, that “dragge” was applied to a grain in the eastern counties, though not exclusively there, appearing to denote mixed grain. Bishop Kennett tells us that “dredge mault is mault made up of oats, mixed with barley, of which they make an excellent, freshe, quiete sort of drinke, in Staffordshire.” The dredger is still commonly used in our kitchen. —⁠B. ↩

Philip IV, who died September 17th, 1665. ↩

It was proclaimed by the Herald-at-Arms, and two of his brethren. His Majesty’s Sergeants-at-Arms, with other usual officers (with his Majesty’s trumpeters attending), before his royal palace at