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

was far from creditable (see Lister’s Life of Clarendon, ii 68⁠–⁠79) ↩

The word chouse appears to have been introduced into the language at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1609, a Chiaus sent by Sir Robert Shirley, from Constantinople to London, had chiaused (or choused) the Turkish and Persian merchants out of £4,000, before the arrival of his employer, and had decamped. The affair was quite recent in 1610, when Jonson’s Alchemist appeared, in which it is alluded to:

D. What do you think of me? That I am a Chiaus? Face What’s that? D. The Turk was here. As one would say, do you think I am a Turk. Alch., i 2

(Nares’s Glossary.) ↩

James Ley, third Earl of Marlborough, admiral in the East Indies, and commissioner to receive Bombay from the Portuguese. He was killed in the great sea-fight with the Dutch, June 3rd, 1665. ↩

These letters about the Brampton estate are preserved in the Bodleian Library (Rawlinson MSS. A. 191). ↩

The king said to la belle Stuart, who resisted all his importunities, that he hoped he should live to see her “ugly and willing” (Lord Dartmouth’s note to Burnet’s Own Time, vol. i, p. 436, ed. 1823). ↩

Henry Slingsby was Deputy Master of the Mint, but according to Ruding, the Controller during the reign of Charles II was James Hoare. Ruding does not mention anyone of the name of Howard as holding that office. ↩

Professor W. C. Roberts-Austen, C.B., F.R.S., chemist to the Royal Mint, refers to Pepys’s Diary and to Blondeau’s machine in his Cantor Lectures on Alloys Used for Coinage, printed in the Journal of the Society of Arts (vol. xxxii). He writes, “The hammer was still retained for coining in the Mint in the Tower of London, but the question of the adoption of the screw-press by the Moneyers appears to have been revived in 1649, when the Council of State had it represented to them that the coins of the Government might be more perfectly and beautifully done, and made equal to any coins in Europe. It was proposed to send to France for Peter Blondeau, who had invented and improved a machine and method for making all coins ‘with the most beautiful polish and equality on the edge, or with any proper inscription or graining.’ He came on the 3rd of September, and although a Committee of the Mint reported in favour of his method of coining, the Company of Moneyers, who appear to have boasted of the success of their predecessors in opposing the introduction of the mill and screw-press in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, prevented the introduction of the machinery, and consequently he did not produce pattern pieces until 1653.⁠ ⁠… It is certain that Blondeau did not invent, but only improved the method of coining by the screw-press, and I believe his improvements related chiefly to a method for ‘rounding the pieces before they are sized, and in making the edges of the moneys with letters and graining,’ which he undertook to reveal to the king. Special stress is laid on the engines wherewith the rims were marked, ‘which might be kept secret among few men.’ I cannot find that there is any record in the Paris mint of Blondeau’s employment there, and the only reference to his invention in the Mint records of this country refers to the ‘collars,’ or perforated discs of metal surrounding the ‘blank’ while it was struck into a coin. There is, however, in the British Museum a MS. believed to be in Blondeau’s hand, in which he claims his process, ‘as a new invention, to make a handsome coyne, than can be found in all the world besides, viz., that shall not only be stamped on both flat sides, but shall even be marked with letters on the thickness of the brim.’ The letters were raised. The press Blondeau used was, I believe, the ordinary screw-press, and I suppose that the presses drawn in Akerman’s well-known plate of the coining-room of the Mint in the Tower, published in 1803 [Microcosm of London, vol. ii, p. 202], if not actually the same machines, were similar to those erected in 1661⁠–⁠62 by Sir William Parkhurst and Sir Anthony St. Leger, wardens of the Mint, at a cost of £1,400, Professor Roberts-Austen shows that Benvenuto Cellini used a similar press to that attributed to Blondeau, and he gives an illustration of this in his lecture (p. 810). In a letter to the editor the professor writes: “Pepys’s account of the operations of coining, and especially of assaying gold and silver, is very interesting and singularly accurate considering that he could not have had technical knowledge of the subject.” ↩

The Commonwealth coins (stamped with the cross and harp, and the inscription, “The Commonwealth of England”) were called in by proclamation, September, 1660, and when brought to the Mint an equal amount of lawful money was allowed for them, weight for weight, deducting only for the coinage (Ruding’s Annals of the Coinage, 18 19, vol. iii, p. 293). The harp was taken out of the naval flags in May, 1660. ↩

In the minutes of the Royal Society is the following entry: “June 11, 1662. Dr. Pett’s brother showed a draught of the pleasure boat which he intended to make for the king” (Birch’s History of the Royal Society, vol. i, p. 85). Peter Pett had already built a yacht for the king at Deptford. ↩

This book was Playford’s Music’s Recreation on the Lyra Viol, Containing 100 Ayres, Corants and Sarabands for the Lone Lyra Viol, with Instructions for Beginners, printed 1656. This title is given in a catalogue of Playford’s publications at