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

Papers, 1666⁠–⁠67, p. 256). On the death of Charles II Dryden brought out a piece entitled “Albion and Albanius,” with machinery and decorations by Betterton, and music by Grebus. Mr. Lowe found a dramatic cutting at the Guildhall Library, consisting of verses, each stanza ending with the name of Grabu. Here is one:

“Each actor on the stage his luck bewailing,
Finds that his loss is infallibly true;
Smith, Nokes, and Leigh in a fever with railing
Curse poet, painter, and Monsieur Grabu.”

Lowe’s Life of Betterton, p. 135

See also North’s Memoirs of Music, by Rimbault, p. 110. ↩

Brighthelmstone, or Brighton. ↩

This was Francis Mansell of Ovingdean, and not Nicholas Tettersell, as stated in former editions of the Diary. The former was appointed “Customer Inward” in the port of Southampton, from which he received £60 a year. He petitioned the king about 1661 for rehlief, stating that he “was forced to fly for life, being one of the instruments of his Majesty’s happy escape, and has spent more in solicitation than the £60 per annum he receives from his small office.” After this he was granted a pension of £200, but this was allowed to fall into arrear. Mr. F. E. Sawyer, in his paper on Captain Nicholas Tettersell and the Escape of Charles II (Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. xxxii), says, “As Mansell’s pension was £200 a year, whilst Tettersell’s was only £100, it would appear that the services of the former were considered by the king of more value than those of the latter.” See also Diary, May 23rd, 1660, and note 486. ↩

Anthony Lowther before the marriage. —⁠B. ↩

“Bays, and says, and serges, and several sorts of stufts, which I neither can nor do desire to name, are made in and about Colchester.”

Fuller’s Worthies

—⁠B. ↩

Bois-le-Duc or ’s Hertogenbosch. ↩

Entitled “An Act for Rebuilding the City of London,” 19 Car. II, cap. 3. —⁠B. ↩

See Sir Christopher Wren’s “Proposals for rebuilding the City of London after the great fire, with an engraved Plan of the principal Streets and Public Buildings,” in Elmes’s Memoirs of Sir Christopher Wren, Appendix, p. 61. The originals are in All Souls’ College Library, Oxford. —⁠B. ↩

“One Hubert, a French papist, was seized in Essex, as he was getting out of the way in great confusion. He confessed he had begun the fire, and persisted in his confession to his death, for he was hanged upon no other evidence but that of his own confession. It is true he gave so broken an account of the whole matter that he was thought mad. Yet he was blindfolded, and carried to several places of the city, and then his eyes being opened, he was asked if that was the place, and he being carried to wrong places, after he looked round about for some time, he said that was not the place, but when he was brought to the place where it first broke out, he affirmed that was the true place.”

Burnet’s Own Time, book ii

Archbishop Tillotson, according to Burnet, believed that London was burnt by design. ↩

Brushwood, or faggots used for lighting fires. ↩

By Philip Rotier (see note 1721). ↩

The first fortification at Sheerness was erected by Sir Bernard de Gomme. The original draft is in the British Museum; see note 3303. —⁠B. ↩

Woolwich stones, still collected in that locality, are simply waterworn pebbles of flint, which, when broken with a hammer, exhibit on the smooth surface some resemblance to the human face; and their possessors are thus enabled to trace likenesses of friends, or eminent public characters. The late Mr. Tennant, the geologist, of the Strand, had a collection of such stones. In the British Museum is a nodule of globular or Egyptian jasper, which, in its fracture, bears a striking resemblance to the well-known portrait of Chaucer. It is engraved in Rymsdyk’s Museum Britannicum, tab. xxviii. A flint, showing Mr. Pitt’s face, used once to be exhibited at the meetings of the Pitt Club. —⁠B. ↩

In A Complete List of the Royal Navy in England in 1599 (Archæologia, vol. xiii, p. 30), No. 11 is described as “The Beare, of two sakers, of cast iron,” and No. 12 as “The White Beare, of three cannon, six demi-cannon, seven culverins, seven demi-culverins, two portpeece halls and seven fowler halls, all of brass, with five demi-cannon and three demi-culverins, all of cast iron.” ↩

Cambridgeshire. ↩

Sir George Downing’s mother was Margaret, daughter and coheir of Robert Brett, D.D. His wife, Lady Downing, was Francis, fourth daughter of William Howard, of Naworth, and sister of Charles Howard, the first Earl of Carlisle of that family. —⁠B. ↩

Money paid to men who enlist into the public service; press money. So called because those who receive it are to be prest or ready when called on (Encyclopædic Dictionary). ↩

Bearcroft. See March 3rd. ↩

Anthony Lowther and his wife Margaret Penn. ↩

From Poor Robin’s Almanac for 1757 it appears that, in former times in England, a Welshman was burnt in effigy on this anniversary. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, in his edition of Brand’s Popular Antiquities, adds “The practice to which Pepys refers⁠ ⁠… was very common at one time; and till very lately bakers made gingerbread Welshmen, called taffies, on St. David’s day, which were made to represent a man skewered” (vol. i, pp. 60, 61). ↩

“Her skill