Where there's a will, there's a relative
Where there's a will, there's a relative
Read to the end for a chicken mournfully contemplating the vegetables it will be cooked with
“To Westminster, where at Mr. Montagu’s chamber I heard a Frenchman play, a friend of Monsieur Eschar’s, upon the guitar, most extreme well, though at the best methinks it is but a bawble.”
July 1661
We last left Samuel Pepys waiting for his uncle Robert to croak. At the beginning of July 1661, Uncle Robert in Brampton is “by fits stupid, and like a man that is drunk, and sometimes speechless” and “continues to have his fits of stupefaction every day for 10 or 12 hours together.” An apothecary tells Pepys it’s a safe bet that if it’s emerods (hemorrhoids), then “bleeding behind by leeches” will cure him, but Pepys wants to stay out of the man’s healthcare, he’s only concerned with his uncle’s estate.
The announcement comes on July 6, and Pepys is quickly off to Brampton. They put the corpse in a coffin near the chimney, but it soon starts to stink, so they put it outside and have men stand watch overnight. Pepys’ aunt—that’s the late Robert’s wife—is “in a most nasty ugly pickle, made me sick to see it”. Well, yeah, how could she not be? Pepys himself admits he’s greedy to see the will.
The funeral and burial are over with fast on the 7th, then the journal is left empty until the 13th.
Inheriting, it turns out is hard work: his Uncle Robert’s papers are “all in confusion, that break(s) my brains to understand them,” Pepys is “much troubled with my aunt’s base, ugly humours,” and his cousin Tom Trice (great name) is contesting the will. There’s also some legal stuff, that Pepys “missed the surrenders of the copyhold land,” I don’t know what that means but it’s more trouble, and all this is just on the 13th.
Pepys wakes early on the 15th and rides from Brampton to Christ College, Cambridge, to discuss matters with his brother John, only to be irked that his brother is still in bed when he gets there. He then makes the rounds and discusses the will with an elderly uncle and another cousin. Then the diary goes blank again until the 19th, when Pepys and his father are out getting a sense of Uncle Robert’s farmland and talking with the bailiff to make sure the tenants get the crop in the ground. “My aunt continuing in her base, hypocritical tricks.”
The next day, one Sir Robert Bernard mediates between Pepys and his cousin Jaspar Trice. Bernard says a certain tranche of money has to go to the heir at law, “which breaks my heart on the other side.” There’s no resolution to the will, but at night the Trices and the Pepys go out for a drink together at Goody Gorum’s (another great name). Goody Gorum, it seems, is a widow who runs an alehouse in Brampton that’s part of Uncle Robert’s estate. But the next day an argument breaks out when the Trices show up with a local lawyer and another guy, all who have claims on the will. It’s like they say: where there's a will, there’s a relative. The only thing everyone can agree is on that they’ll give Uncle Robert’s widow 10L, a very small sum, to fuck off out of the house and not contest the will. It’s a really shitty thing to do!
Speaking of women getting screwed over, on the 23rd Pepys writes, “Troubled to hear how proud and idle Pall is grown, that I am resolved not to keep her.” Remember, Pall is Pepys’ sister who is staying at the Pepys’ household as their servant. He’s clearly thinking of shipping her off to Brampton to live with their parents once they take Uncle Robert’s house, a fate that will come to pass in September. Claire Tomalin has a moving passage in her Pepys biography about Pall getting shipped off to the countryside. She’s a city girl and urban life provides a modicum of freedom for her, and the countryside and her parents’ roof is only going to make life hell for her.
Back in London from his Brampton excursion, Pepys’ wife tells him that someone robbed them of a silver tankard, which Pepys blames on everyone in the house leaving the door open. Will Hewer, their servant (who at one point Pepys will try to convince to marry Pall), also loses his clock to theft, which Pepys admits cheers him up, a little schadenfreude.
Another funny bit is that Pepys can’t help but brag about his inheritance and exaggerate its worth, “because I would put an esteem upon myself”—he hasn’t even secured it yet. But it’s interesting that he's able to own up to it in the diary.
Pepys visits his mother and gets annoyed at the gossiping or “great store of tattle” she’s sharing with his aunt Bell and another older woman. But get this: Pepys mother is doing the same thing, bragging that she’s inherited a ton of money and making plans for it despite not having it to hand yet. Pepys vows to chastise her about it later. Earlier he met with his uncle Wight, who is angry at Pepys’ father, either because he (Wight) wasn’t told about the will, or angry he wasn’t left anything in it—Pepys makes a point of leaving before he can find out.
Then, finally, there is Pepys’ little brother Tom, who Pepys dines with on the 29th. Tom is a Taylor apprenticed to his father, and his prospects aren’t great: he has a speech impediment that holds him back, Claire Tomalin tells us that it deterred a prospective bride. Pepys reports, “I find that unless my father can forbear to make profit of his house in London and leave it to Tom, (Tom) has no mind to set up the trade any where else, and so I know not what to do with him.”
After dinner, Pepys goes to see his mother, where he tells “her how things do fall out short of our expectations, which I did (though it be true) to make her leave off her spending, which I find she is nowadays very free in, building upon what is left to us by my uncle to bear her out in it, which troubles me much.”
Here we are are at the end of the month and Pepys still hasn’t secured the bag. To be honest, I find the whole month more than a little depressing, Pepys jockeying for the inheritance is ugly stuff that doesn’t show him in the best light, determined to get his uncle’s money for himself. There are parts of this where you have to give Pepys credit for owning up to his own base behaviour, but on the whole this is really ugly behaviour, waiting for a relative to die and then trying to crowd out the other possible inheritors, and he mostly doesn’t get how offputting it is.
Plays of note
“The Siege of Rhodes,” seen at Davenant’s Opera on July 2. This is considered the first English opera, performed on a converted real tennis court at Davenant’s home. The music had five composers and the plot is based on the 1522 siege of Rhodes, when the island was besieged by the Ottoman fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent. Pepys reports the performance started late because they were waiting for King Charles II and his aunt Elizabeth Stuart (the Queen of Bohemia aka the Winter Queen). “And by the breaking of a board over our heads, we had a great deal of dust fell into the ladies’ necks and the men’s hair, which made good sport. … well acted, all but the Eunuch, who was so much out that he was hissed off the stage.”
“Claracilla,” seen at King’s House on July 4. Pepys: “well acted. But strange to see this house, that used to be so thronged, now empty since the Opera begun”.
“Brennoralt, or The Discontented Colonel”, seen at King’s House on July 23. “It seemed a good play, but ill acted; only I sat before Mrs. Palmer, the King’s mistress, and filled my eyes with her, which much pleased me.”
Funny names
Pepys’ cousin Charles Glassecocke is sick and John Glassecock is a-dying. Meanwhile Pepys is having a pint with Mr. Whore (“whom I have formerly known”) at the Hercules Pillars. Also the playwright of The Discontented Colonel is Sir John Suckling. LOL.
Pepys in the news
“Boil the Cook”: As a boy Pepys witnessed the beheading of King Charles I for treason, and so he gets a shoutout in this LRB article about the legal history of treason.
“Samuel Pepys: diarist, administrator … budding fashionista”: “New analysis of 17th-century diarist’s French fashion engravings shows he was not only a shrewd political operator but had a keen eye for new trends“. A nice article looking at Pepys’ appreciation of fashion. They dig up a killer line from the diary in which Pepys calls a London fop recently returned from France “an absolute monsieur.”
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