The Diary Samuel Pepys (love books to read .TXT) 📖

the road now styled Pall Mall, near St. James’s Square, but at the Restoration when sports came in fashion again the street was so much built over, that it became necessary to find another ground. The Mall in St. James’s Park was then laid out for the purpose. ↩

The Night Walker, or the Little Thief, a comedy by John Fletcher, acted at court in 1633. ↩

The proverb, “A hair of the dog that bit you,” which probably had originally a literal meaning, has long been used to inculcate the advice of the two Sir Williams. ↩

The play is not known otherwise than by this notice. ↩

A plan, with front and side elevations, of the Hill-house as it was in 1698, is in King’s MS. 43. The ground on which it stood is now included in the Marine Barracks. In the Memoirs of English Affairs, Chiefly Naval, from the Year 1660 to 1673, Written by James, Duke of York, there is a letter from James to the principal officers of the Navy (dated May 10th, 1661), in which he recommends that the lease of the Hill-house should be bought by them if it can be obtained at a reasonable rate, as the said house “is very convenient for the service of his Majesty’s Navy.” ↩

Kenrick Edisbury, Surveyer of the Navy, 1632⁠–⁠38. ↩

Rebecca, who married Henry Jowles, of Chatham, in 1662. Her father, John Allen, formerly Clerk of the Rope Yard at Chatham, is sometimes referred to as Mr. and sometimes as Captain Allen. Under the latter title he may be confused with Captain (afterwards Sir Thomas) Allen. ↩

I.e. coats of arms. ↩

Captain Phineas Pett, when in command of the Tiger frigate, was killed in action with a Zealand privateer. This may be the same man. ↩

Sir William Batten’s black servant. ↩

The Prince (originally the Resolution) was a first-rate of eighty guns, built at Woolwich in 1641 by Capt. Phineas Pett, sen. It ran aground on the Galloper Sands, and Avas burnt by the Dutch, 1666. See post, June 7th, 1666. ↩

Traditions similar to that at Rochester, here alluded to, are to be found in other places in England. Sir Harry Englefield, in a communication made to the Society of Antiquaries, July 2nd, 1789, called attention to the curious popular tale preserved in the village of Hadstock, Essex, that the door of the church had been covered with the skin of a Danish pirate, who had plundered the church. At Worcester, likewise, it was asserted that the north doors of the cathedral had been covered with the skin of a person who had sacrilegiously robbed the high altar. The date of these doors appears to be the latter part of the fourteenth century, the north porch having been built about 1385. Dart, in his History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter’s, Westminster, 1723 (vol. i, book ii, p. 64), relates a like tradition then preserved in reference to a door, one of three which closed off a chamber from the south transept⁠—namely, a certain building once known as the Chapel of Henry VIII, and used as a “Revestry.” This chamber, he states, “is enclosed with three doors, the inner cancellated, the middle, which is very thick, lined with skins like parchment, and driven full of nails. These skins, they by tradition tell us, were some skins of the Danes, tann’d and given here as a memorial of our delivery from them.” Portions of this supposed human skin were examined under the microscope by the late Mr. John Quekett of the Hunterian Museum, who ascertained, beyond question, that in each of the cases the skin was human. From a communication by the late Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A., to the late Lord Braybrooke. ↩

John Minnes (Mennes or Mennis), son of Andrew Minnes of Sandwich, born in that town March 1st, 1598, and educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, became afterwards a great traveller and noted seaman. He was knighted by Charles I at Dover in 1641, and in 1642 he was captain of the Rainbow. When the Earl of Warwick was nominated by the Parliament Lord High Admiral he refused to act under him. After the Restoration he was appointed Governor of Dover Castle, and his warrant from the Duke of York to act as Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the Narrow Seas was dated May 18th, 1661. He was Comptroller of the Navy from 1661 till his death in 1671. He is buried in the church of St. Olave, Hart Street, where, in the south aisle, part of a monument to his memory is still to be seen. Wood describes him as an honest and stout man, generous and religious, well skilled in physic and chemistry. He was part-author of Musarum Deliciæ. ↩

Shooter’s Hill, Kent, between the eighth and ninth milestones on the Dover road. It was long a notorious haunt of highwaymen. The custom was to leave the bodies of criminals hanging until the bones fell to the ground. ↩

Rev. John Turner, rector of Eynesbury. ↩

Matthew Wren, Bishop of Hereford, 1634⁠–⁠35; Bishop of Norwich, 1635⁠–⁠38; Bishop of Ely, 1638⁠–⁠67. He died April 24th, 1667, aged eighty-one. See note 562. ↩

Thomas Jacomb, of Burton Lazers, Leicestershire, entered at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1640; but removing to Cambridge on the breaking out of the Rebellion, he obtained a Fellowship at Trinity College, in the place of a royalist ejected, and had the degree of M.A. conferred on him He afterwards became rector of St. Martin’s-infra-Ludgate, in London; and was put out for nonconformity in 1662, being then D.D.