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

de Medina Sidonia and widow of Juan IV. The Court wore the deepest mourning on this occasion. The ladies were directed to wear their hair plain, and to appear without spots on their faces, the disfiguring fashion of patching having just been introduced. —⁠Strickland’s Queens of England, vol. viii, p. 362 ↩

Thomas Allen, M.D. (see note 1974). ↩

Jermyn Street and St. Alban’s Market, which was afterwards called St. James’s Market.

“A large place with a commodious Market House in the midst, filled with Butchers’ shambles, besides the Stalls in the Marketplace for country Butchers, Higglers, and the like; being a market now (1720) grown to great account, and much resorted unto, as being well served with good provisions.”

Strype, b. vi, p. 83

↩

Among the Rawlinson MSS. is a memorandum of this loan of £1,900, dated April 3rd, 1666. ↩

Pepys did not finish his setting of Ben Jonson’s song,

“It is decreed⁠—nor shall thy fate, O Rome!
Resist my vow, though hills were set on hills,”

until November 11th, 1666. The original is preserved in the Pepysian Library. ↩

Parliament was summoned to meet on the 23rd April. ↩

Sir E. Walker, Garter King at Arms, in 1644 gave a grant of arms gratis to Thomas Chiffinch, one of the pages of his Majesty’s Bedchamber, Keeper of his private Closet, and Comptroller of the Excise. His brother William (whose daughter Barbara married Edward Villiers, first Earl of Jersey) appears to have succeeded to the two first-named appointments, and became a great favourite with the king, whom he survived. He died April 6th, 1666, and was buried on the 10th in Westminster Abbey. There is a portrait of William Chiffinch at Gorhambury. —⁠B. ↩

Richard Sterne, Bishop of Carlisle, elected Archbishop of York, 1664. Died June 18th, 1683. ↩

Richard Cromwell subsequently returned to England, and resided in strict privacy at Cheshunt for some years before his death in 1712. ↩

This picture was bought by Mr. Peter Cunningham at the sale of the Pepys-Cockerell collection in 1848, in the catalogue of which it was described as “Portrait of a Musician,” and was exhibited at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, 1857. It was purchased by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in 1866. Pepys is represented in a gown “which I hired to be drawn in; a morning gowne,” and holding in his left hand a piece of music, his own composition, with the words, “Beauty retire.” An etching from this picture is given as the frontispiece to the first volume of this work (see post, 13th inst., where we are informed that the landscape background was painted out by Pepys’s wish). There is a similar picture belonging to Mr. Hawes, of Kensington, which Mr. George Scharf, C.B., the Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery, thinks is either a replica or a good old copy. ↩

John Creed was selected as a member of council at this meeting. ↩

Margaret Lowther subsequently married John Holmes, afterwards knighted. —⁠B. ↩

This report of her death was not true (see March 7th, 1666⁠–⁠67). —⁠M. B. ↩

These portraits of the Admirals by Sir Peter Lely are at present at Greenwich Hospital. They were exhibited at the Naval Exhibition, 1891. Pepys does not mention Sir John Lawson. ↩

The columna rostrata erected in the Forum to C. Duilius, who obtained a triumph for the first naval victory over the Carthaginians, B.C. 261. Part of the column was discovered in the ruins of the Forum near the Arch of Septimius, and transferred to the Capitol. —⁠B. ↩

This is the first mention of Pepys’s buying prints. —⁠B. ↩

A rupture. ↩

Stangate. ↩

A cant expression for tight shoes. ↩

In the Strand the mansion stood where Beaufort Buildings are now; it was rented by Lord Clarendon while his house was building. ↩

For the making books of accounts for pursers see March 2nd, 1665⁠–⁠66. ↩

Sir Thomas Ridley, a native of Ely. He was a Master in Chancery, and author of A View of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Law, published at Oxford in 1607, and frequently reprinted. He died 1626. —⁠M. B. ↩

Hatcham, near New Cross, on the Deptford Road. ↩

This book, which has frequently been reprinted, was written by Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, for the amusement of his mistress, Madame de Montglas, and consists of sketches of the chief ladies of the court, in which he libelled friends and foes alike. These circulated in manuscript, and were printed at Liège in 1665. Louis XIV was so much annoyed with the book that he sent the author to the Bastille for over a year. ↩

John Downing. ↩

See April 5th, 1666. ↩

Sir Walter Scott observes, in his Life of Dryden, that the romances of Calprenede and Scuderi, those ponderous and unmerciful folios, now consigned to oblivion, were, in their day, not only universally read and admired, but supposed to furnish the most perfect models of gallantry and heroism. Dr. Johnson read them all. “I have,” says Mrs. Chapone, “and yet I am still alive, dragged through Le Grand Cyrus, in twelve huge volumes; Cleopatra, in eight or ten; Ibrahim, Clelie, and some others, whose names, as well as all the rest of them, I have forgotten” (Letters to Mrs. Carter). No wonder that Pepys sat on thorns,