Pepys Show: June 1662
Pirates, a scam, maggots, and voyeurism––this one's got it all!
My mind is now in a wonderful condition of quiet and content, more than ever in all my life, since my minding the business of my office, which I have done most constantly; and I find it to be the very effect of my late oaths against wine and plays, which, if God please, I will keep constant in, for now my business is a delight to me, and brings me great credit, and my purse encreases too. — June 28, 1662
This day my wife put on her slasht wastecoate, which is very pretty. — June 2, 16621
The big news in the early part of June 1662 is that Sir Henry Vane, a former governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a Parliamentarian during the English Civil War, has been tried before the King’s Bench and found guilty. It should be noted that the jury was packed with Royalists and he was denied legal representation. As we’ll see, Vane was considered an eloquent man even by his political opponents.
On the domestic front, Pepys is still abstaining from drink and the theatre, seeing no plays this month and mentioning occasions when he turns down a drink, or noticing that he has a clear head, full of business. At one point he does have a glass of mum, which I gather is a sort of weak beer brewed with wheat. The days are long, and Pepys is often up and working before dawn, while on the solstice the entire household is in bed before sunset. Pepys and his neighbour Sir Batten have got permission to add another story to their government-appointed housing, but the renovations are causing a lot of mess. Pepys’ father is also in town, visiting from the Brampton estate acquired by Pepys’ uncle’s will, but hastens back when Pepys’ sister Pall writes that their mother is deathly sick. But Pepys thinks his sister is just causing trouble, and that their mother’s sickness isn’t so great.
Fashion: Home, and observe my man Will to walk with his cloak flung over his shoulder, like a Ruffian, which, whether it was that he might not be seen to walk along with the footboy, I know not, but I was vexed at it; and coming home, and after prayers, I did ask him where he learned that immodest garb, and he answered me that it was not immodest, or some such slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes on the ears, which I never did before, and so was after a little troubled at it. — June 8
A dispute arises at the office on the twelfth. First, though, Pepys gets the board to sign off unanimously on his issuing warrants, “which they did not smell the use I intend to make of it; but it is to plead for my clerks to have their right of giving out all warrants.” I read it as him delegating his authority, and also extending a little patronage network under him. But there’s a question of whether Sir George Carteret is to pay the Victualler or the Exchequer, evidently there’s not money for both, as was often the case with the navy. It ends in anger, with Pepys figuring the King will have to step in. Carteret speaks with Pepys on the matter the next day and explains his position, with Pepys seemingly siding with him.
On the fourteenth, Pepys leaves the office at eleven in the morning to go watch Henry Vane’s execution. Vane made a long speech—Wiki says he sent copies to friends beforehand, Pepys says the sheriff kept interrupting it, trying in vain to grab Vane’s notes—in the end, trumpets are sounded to drown out Vane’s words. The great press of people around the scaffold blocks Pepys’s view, but he later speaks with someone who was closer who says that Vane was decrying the irregular proceedings of his trial, denied protections of the Magna Carta, and that there was also an autobiographical element to the speech, about his choice to leave for North America against his worldly interest so that “he might serve God with more freedom,” until he was called home to serve in the Long Parliament, and that he always followed his conscience. After praying for England and its churches, Vane, “fitted himself for the block, and received the blow. He had a blister, or issue, upon his neck, which he desired them not hurt: he changed not his colour or speech to the last, but died justifying himself and the cause he had stood for; and spoke very confidently of his being presently at the right hand of Christ; and in all, things appeared the most resolved man that ever died in that manner, and showed more of heat than cowardize, but yet with all humility and gravity.”
The next day Pepys reports that, “the courage of Sir H. Vane at his death is talked on every where as a miracle.” He also makes a visit to Peter Lely’s workshop, Lely being a Dutch painter, “where we saw among other rare things, the Duchess of York, her whole body, sitting instate in a chair, in white sattin, and another of the King, that is not finished; most rare things.” Lely promises to show them a portrait of Lady Castlemaine (the King’s mistress) some other time, but for now it’s kept locked up. Afterwards he visits another painter, John Michael Wright, and comments only “but, Lord! the difference that is between their two works.” Aside from Vane’s death, people are also worried about a war with the Spaniard, “for they think he will not brook our having Tangier, Dunkirk, and Jamaica.” When the rumours heat up later in the month, Pepys hopes they’re “but a scarecrow to the world” because “God knows! the King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great difficulty, we neither having money, credit, nor stores.”
At Pope’s Head Alley, Pepys buys “the first thing like a bawble I have bought a good while,” a pair of tweezers—like a protractor, not hygienic, I think, as he plans to use them for a book he’s planning, but I don’t think he ever gets around to writing it.
I read somewhere (Tomalin’s biography?) that Pepys tends to lash out more at his servants whenever there’s an execution, and that seems to hold true this month. On the twenty-first, Pepys speaks with the Lieutenant of the Tower and asks how Vane died (remember, Pepys’s view was blocked) and Pepys is told Vane, “died in a passion; but all confess with so much courage as never man died.” Then at home his wife and maids complain about Wayneman’s behaviour, namely: drinking all the whey, “pulling a pink” (??), and leaving a candlestick on the ground (fire hazard!). Wayneman is whipped until Pepys himself is tired, but the boy doesn’t confess until Pepys makes him remove his frock to whip him on his shirt, closer to the skin. Pepys’ comment: “I confess it is one of the greatest wonders that ever I met with that such a little boy as he could possibly be able to suffer half so much as he did to maintain a lie. I think I must be forced to put him away. So to bed, with my arm very weary.”
Pepys is also quarrelling with his colleague and neighbour Sir William Pen, possibly because of the Victualler/Exchequer argument earlier in them month at which both were present, those there’s been some ongoing tension these last few months as well. When they meet in the garden, Pepys and his wife try to take no notice of him, but Pen seems to be the bigger man, as a few days later Pen says he’s getting ready to go to Ireland (he’s governor of Kinsale) and wants to do a favour for Sam’s Irish cousin, and to share a meal with Sam before leaving. “I did give a cold consent, for my heart cannot love or have a good opinion of him since his last playing the knave with me, but he took no notice of our difference at all, nor I to him, and so parted.” They take up the invitation at the end of the month, and Pepys comments of Pen, “he do much fawn upon me, and I perceive would not fall out with me, and his daughter mighty officious to my wife, but I shall never be deceived again by him, but do hate him and his traitorous tricks with all my heart.” It’s a rare case of Pepys not being able to realize that he’s acting like a dickhead.
Court Gossip: This day I am told of a Portugall lady, at Hampton Court, that hath dropped a child already since the Queen’s coming, but the king would not have them searched whose it is; and so it is not commonly known yet. — June 22
Naval gossip: After dinner comes Sir J. Minnes and some captains with him, who had been at a Councill of Warr to-day, who tell us they have acquitted Captain Hall, who was accused of cowardice in letting of old Winter, the Argier pyrate, go away from him with a prize or two; and also Captain Diamond of the murder laid to him of a man that he had struck, but he lived many months after, till being drunk, he fell into the hold, and there broke his jaw and died, but they say there are such bawdy articles against him as never were heard of one, that he should upon his knees drink the King and Queenes health at Lisbon, wishing that the King’s pintle were in the Queenes cunt up to her heart, that it might cry “Knack, knock” again. — June 27
Pepys runs into Will Swan, a Fanatique (ie nonconformist/puritan) sympathizer, who warns Pepys that he “pit(ies) my Lord Sandwich and me that we should be given up to the wickedness of the world; and that a fall is coming upon us all… He told me that certainly Sir H. Vane must be gone to Heaven, for he died as much a martyr and saint as ever man did; and that the King hath lost more by that man’s death, than he will get again a good while.” This sort of talk worries Pepys, and it’s a clear sign that the strife which tore the country apart really hasn’t gone away, it’s just been tamped down.
Pepys ends the month with some of the bizarre horniness his diaries are so well known for. The entry is worth quoting in full:
Up betimes, and to my office, where I found Griffen’s girl making it clean, but, God forgive me! what a mind I had to her, but did not meddle with her. She being gone, I fell upon boring holes for me to see from my closet into the great office, without going forth, wherein I please myself much.
Maybe there’s something I’m missing, but it really does read to me like something out of an 80s teen sex comedy.
Food: took Commissioner Pett home to dinner with me, where my stomach was turned when my sturgeon came to table, upon which I saw very many little worms creeping, which I suppose was through the staleness of the pickle. — June 26
Medicine: Mr. Holliard had been with my wife to-day, and cured her of her pain in her ear by taking out a most prodigious quantity of hard wax that had hardened itself in the bottom of the ear, of which I am very glad. — June 27
Scams: This day a genteel woman came to me, claiming kindred of me, as she had once done before, and borrowed 10s. of me, promising to repay it at night, but I hear nothing of her. I shall trust her no more. — June 28
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I happened to read an article about slashing recently while searching for something else. It’s a look that always catches my eye, but not knowing much about fashion I didn’t realize there was a term for it, so I’ve always just thought of it as the Nute Gunray look, although looking it up now on Wookiepedia it appears to be Nute’s Neimoidian buddy Rune Haako who wears slashed sleeves onboard the Trade Federation ship in Star Wars: Episode One.