How Do You Know That Samuel Pepys Did Not Intend His Diary to Be Read by Anyone Else?
Samuel Pepys began his diary on 1 Jan 1660, adding entries until 1669, when the fear that writing in dim light was making him bullheaded brought those entries to an stop. His fears were unfounded, simply mysteriously he never returned to writing his personal diary. A naval administrator who rose to become chief secretary of the Admiralty commission, Pepys helped to bring an important new professionalism to the Royal Navy. Just y'all might not know…
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Samuel Pepys kissed a dead queen
Pepys never once mentions his wife'due south birthday in his diary, simply oftentimes mentions his own. No cake or candles for Pepys though; on his birthday in 1669 he took his wife and servants to Westminster Abbey to testify them the tombs. The open coffin of Catherine de Valois (queen to Henry Five) was attainable to the public "past particular favour", and Pepys was able to view the mummified remains.
Queen Catherine's torso had been languishing there since the fourth dimension of Henry Vii, when the Lady Chapel – where she was buried – was demolished. It has been suggested that Henry ordered her memorial to be destroyed in club to distance himself from his beginnings [Henry VII's father, Edmund, was the eldest son of a possibly illegitimate wedlock between Catherine de Valois and her keeper of the wardrobe, Owen Tudor].
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Pepys tells us: "I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen, and that this was my nativity-mean solar day, 36 years old, that I did first kiss a Queen." This behaviour might seem odd to usa today, merely kissing a relic was in the 17th century usually a sign of reverence – though Pepys does seem to have done information technology with surprising enthusiasm.
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Samuel Pepys loved the play Macbeth
Pepys was a great theatre-goer, simply he was not overly impressed by the talents of renowned 16th- and 17th-century playwright William Shakespeare. Pepys was quick to dismiss one of Shakespeare's nigh enduringly pop plays, writing in his diary: "SawMidsummer Night'southward Dream [originally performed 1595–96] which I have never seen before, nor shall always again, for it is the nigh insipid, ridiculous play that I e'er saw in my life."
Pepys also chosen Twelfth Night (1602) a "giddy play and not relating at all to the name or day" and said of Henry 8 (1613): "Though I went with resolution to like it, is and then simple a thing made up of a bully many patches… in that location is zilch in the globe good or well done."
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The only one of Shakespeare's plays Pepys seems to have enjoyed wasMacbeth (1606), which he called "a most excellent play in all respects, particularly divertissement". Pepys loved information technology so much he saw information technology 9 times and wrote: "It is one of the best plays for a phase, and variety of dancing and musique, that e'er I saw."
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Pepys rescued a cheese from the Great Burn
Information technology is September 1666, and Pepys is in a panic. The disaster after known equally the Peachy Fire is consuming London at an alarming rate. Terrified that he might accept to abandon his most valuable possessions to the flames, he dashes exterior and digs a hole. There he inters his precious hoard, which includes not but his gold and his papers, but also a large wheel of Parmesan cheese.
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We might retrieve this a strange matter to do, but to Pepys the cheese was an investment. Cheeses such as these, which could weigh upwardly to 200lbs, were used as diplomatic gifts; for example, in 1556 Pope Paul IV made gifts of "eight great Parmesan cheeses" to Queen Mary.
A rare and expensive import from Italy, Parmesan was used sparingly and increased in value as it aged. Pepys' cheese would have been too valuable to lose.
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He was the victim of a vendetta
In 1679 Pepys was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. The charges included piracy and treason. Information technology was alleged that, as an official in charge of navy stores, he plundered goods from ships captured from the Dutch. As bizarre a notion 'Pepys the pirate' might seem, his diary revealed the offset charge to be truthful.
Past law, captured enemy goods belonged to the Crown. However, Pepys' individual diary reveals that a few goods had indeed found their way into his own coffers, every bit 'perks of the task', just at that place was not plenty evidence to convict him.
A more damaging rumour was that Pepys had sold state secrets to the French. In guild to defend himself against the accuse of treason, which was punishable by being "hanged, drawn and quartered", Pepys sought to trace the source of the rumour. The search led him dorsum to his time as a Justice of the Peace in 1678, when he had crossed one of the about cunning tricksters of the 17th century, Colonel John Scott.
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In 1678, Scott had been in exile trying to escape the law, having get a suspect in the murder of a London magistrate, Edmund Godfrey. Upon a search of Scott's lodgings, secret papers were found, some written in Pepys' own hand, detailing the strength of the English navy. Suspecting Scott to be a spy, Pepys ordered his arrest if he ever over again set pes on English language soil. Scott never forgave him and began a vendetta confronting Pepys which included imitation accusations of treason.
After he was arrested on the charge, Pepys fix a network of investigations into Scott'due south background, in France, England and Kingdom of the netherlands. Two manuscript volumes survive among Pepys' papers which detail his enquiries. Pepys uncovered that Scott's whole life was a lie, and that Scott was one of the most fraudulent rogues of the 17th century. With the principal accuser discredited, the prosecution case had no basis and petered out.
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He is the get-go to tape drinking an English cup of tea
Pepys' diary contains the earliest known written reference to someone in England drinking a cup of tea. Although a 1664 pecker recently discovered in the West Yorkshire Archives refers to "bottles of china drinkable", the first written report of a cup of tea being offered socially, rather than medicinally, is in Pepys' diary.
In 1660, Pepys was called to a high-level meeting with experts in naval affairs, including Sir William Crossbar, Colonel Slingsby and Sir Richard Ford. "Sir R. Ford talked like a human of great reason and experience," wrote Pepys, "And afterwards did transport for a Cupp of Tee (a China drinkable) of which I never had drank before."
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Tea was imported via Holland in the 17th century, just it was prohibitively expensive. Ale was the national beverage in Pepys' mean solar day, simply that was soon to modify. When Catherine of Braganza, the future married woman of Charles Two, arrived in Portsmouth on 14 May 1662, one of the commencement things she asked for was a cup of tea. A chest of tea was given equally part of her dowry from her father King John IV of Portugal, and although Catherine shortly adopted English language ways, she kept the gustatory modality for tea because it had been easily obtainable and popular in her native state. The habit of drinking tea at the royal court soon spread to aloof circles and from in that location information technology filtered to the moneyed classes and across.
Unlike Catherine of Braganza, however, it seems Pepys did not take to tea – he fabricated no further mention of it in his diary until 7 years later in 1667, when his wife was prescribed information technology as a cure for a common cold.
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He had dozens of mistresses simply no children
Pepys was famous for his roving middle and for his many diplomacy – with his servants and with the wives, daughters and even the mothers of his colleagues. His most enduring affair was with one Mrs Bess Bagwell, who was the wife of a ship's carpenter, William Bagwell of Deptford dockyard. Information technology appears Mr Bagwell was complicit in the thing and used Pepys' interest in his married woman to improve his career prospects by trading her favours for ameliorate positions in the navy. Bess Bagwell'southward story is told in my novel A Plague on Mr Pepys.
Despite being married to Élisabeth de Saint Michel in 1655, Pepys listed in his diary dozens of mistresses including Mrs Lane, Mrs Tooker, Mrs Burrows, Mrs Martin, Mrs Pennington, Betty Mitchell and the actress Elizabeth Knepp. One of Pepys' nearly passionate and poignant liaisons was with Deb Willet, a lady's maid to his wife. Of course the romance couldn't final and Deb was dismissed in disgrace.
Considering Pepys' many affairs, it is surprising and perhaps sad that Pepys had no heir. A possible explanation is that during an operation in 1658 to remove a kidney stone (done at groovy risk and without anaesthetic), something went wrong which subsequently prevented Pepys from ever fathering a child.
In 1674, when he was lodging at Derby Business firm, Westminster, Samuel Pepys kept a lion. It was presented to him as a diplomatic gift by Samuel Martin, the English consul in Algiers, who was married to one of Pepys' old mistresses, Betty Lane. Pepys wrote to Martin to tell him that the lion was "as tame every bit you sent him, and as adept company".
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Pepys also reports an incident in 1661 in which he was summoned to Sir William Batten's house to view a "baboon" which he thought "and so much like a man… I do believe information technology already understands much English; and I am of the mind that it might exist tought (sic) to speak or make signs".
Exotic pets were a condition symbol in Pepys' mean solar day and such animals were often on display to the public at the Belfry of London, arguably England'southward first city zoo. Past 1622 the royal menagerie was home to eagles, pumas, a tiger and a jackal, as well equally lions and leopards, which were considered symbols of kingship. Perhaps when it grew too large for his office, Pepys' lion ended upwards there…
Deborah Swift is the author of Entertaining Mr Pepys (Accent Press, 2019). You can visit Deborah's website here
This article was first published by HistoryExtra in February 2018
Source: https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/samuel-pepys-diary-fire-london-cheese-facts/
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