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

Downes wrote: “The Tragedy of Macbeth, alter’d by Sir William Davenant; being drest in all it’s finery, as new clothes, new scenes, machines as flyings for the Witches; with all the singing and dancing in it. The first compos’d by Mr. Lock, the other by Mr. Channell and Mr. Joseph Preist; it being all excellently perform’d, being in the nature of an opera, it recompenc’d double the expense; it proves still a lasting play.” ↩

The death of Mr. Hollworthy is recorded on November 10th, 1665. ↩

A form once so commonly used for asparagus that it has found its way into dictionaries. ↩

Sir George Viner in 1665 succeeded his father. Sir Thomas, who had been Lord Mayor in 1653, and created a baronet in 1660. Sir George died in 1673. His wife was Abigail, daughter of Sir John Lawrence, Lord Mayor in 1665. —⁠B. ↩

Hackney was long famous for its boarding schools. ↩

Clarendon House, Piccadilly. See note 2433 and note 2434. ↩

Among the State Papers is a document dated July 8th, 1667, in which we read: “At Breda, the business is so far advanced that the English have relinquished their pretensions to the ships Henry Bonaventure and Good Hope. The matter sticks only at Poleron; the States have resolved not to part with it, though the English should have a right to it” (Calendar, 1667, p. 278). ↩

Clerk of the Council. ↩

Wooly. ↩

See November 15th, 1666. ↩

See November 8th, 1664. ↩

William Legge, eldest son of Edward Legge, sometime Vice-President of Munster, born 1609(?). He served under Maurice of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus, and held the rank of colonel in the Royalist army. He closely attached himself to Prince Rupert, and was an active agent in affecting the reconciliation between that prince and his uncle Charles I. Colonel Legge distinguished himself in several actions, and was wounded and taken prisoner at the battle of Worcester; it was said that he would have “been executed if his wife had not contrived his escape from Coventry gaol in her own clothes.” He was Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles I, and also to Charles II; he held the offices of Master of the Armories and Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance. He refused honours (a knighthood from Charles I and an earldom from Charles II), but his eldest son George was created Baron Dartmouth in 1682. He died October 13th, 1672, at his house in the Minories, and was buried in Trinity Church, Minories, where there is a monument to his memory. A portrait of Colonel Legge, by Huysman, is in the possession of the Earl of Dartmouth. There is an excellent life of Legge, by Mr. C. H. Firth, in the Dictionary of National Biography. ↩

Charles I and Henrietta Maria. ↩

Eleanor, daughter of Robert Needham, Viscount Kilmurrey, and widow of Peter Warburton, became in 1644 the second wife of John Byron, first Lord Byron. Died 1663. —⁠B. ↩

All these assertions respecting the King of France must be received cautiously. Pepys was very ignorant of foreign matters, and very credulous. —⁠B. ↩

Louis made his own bastards dukes and princes, and legitimatized them as much as he could, connecting them also by marriage with the real blood-royal. —⁠B. ↩

Louise Françoise de la Baume le Blanc de la Vallière had four children by Louis XIV, of whom only two survived-Marie Anne Bourbon, called Mademoiselle de Blois, born in 1666, afterwards married to the Prince de Conti, and the Comte de Vermandois, born in 1667. In that year (the very year in which Evelyn was giving this account to Pepys), the Duchy of Vaujour and two baronies were created in favour of La Vallière, and her daughter, who, in the deed of creation, was legitimatized, and styled princess. —⁠B. ↩

Even at a much later time Mrs. Godolphin well resolved “not to talk foolishly to men, more especially the King,”⁠—“be sure never to talk to the King” (Life, by Evelyn). These expressions speak volumes as to Charles’s character. —⁠B. ↩

Evelyn evidently believed the Duchess of Richmond to be innocent; and his testimony, coupled with her own declaration, ought to weigh down all the scandal which Pepys reports from other sources. —⁠B. ↩

Which she returned to the king. —⁠B. ↩

This lady’s name nowhere appears. She was the wife of the Hon. Walter Stewart, third son of Walter, first Lord Blantyre. The Duchess of Richmond, Frances Theresa, was her elder daughter. The younger, Sophia, married the Hon. Henry Bulkeley, master of the household to Charles II and James II. —⁠B. ↩

Cobham Hall, in Kent, after the attainder of Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, was granted by James I to Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Lennox, and his brother George, Lord Aubigney, from whom it descended to Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, in 1660. This duke dying, s. p., in 1672, when ambassador to Denmark, the estates, together with the English barony of Clifton, passed, through his sister. Lady Catherine O’Brien, to the ancestor of the Earl of Darnley, the present possessor. Lady Catherine O’Brien married Sir Joseph Williamson, who repurchased the Cobham estates, when sold, and preserved them to the family. —⁠B. ↩

Sir Thomas Clifford was the eldest son of Hugh Clifford, of Ugbrook, near Exeter, where he was born, August 1st, 1630. He attached himself to Lord Arlington, and acted