Samuel Pepys' Diary

[removeduser_487563287433]

http://www.pepysdiary.com/

This blog, which has already been running for seven years. Every day an entry from Samuel Pepys' diary is posted - the same date as today. So today's entry is 9th June 1667.

It is an excellent time for you to begin reading this blog as Mr Pepys, who is Clerk of the Acts of the Naval Board at this point in the diary, is about to document one of the most important events in British history over the next week. You will enter the action as Britain is fighting the second Anglo-Dutch War.

If that doesn't float your boat, then you can go back a bit and read his account of The Great Fire of London.

[Yorkshireman]

Interesting stuff, he certainly like's his food, particularly boiled pigeon.

This is a funny entry from 7th Sept 1665, when he visits Sir Robert Viner, a goldsmith banker of Lombard Street,

The window-cases, door-cases, and chimnys of all the house are marble. He showed me a black boy that he had, that died of a consumption, and being dead, he caused him to be dried in an oven, and lies there entire in a box.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1665/09/

He seems to have the dried body of an African boy on display!

[removeduser_487563287433]

Interesting stuff, he certainly like's his food, particularly boiled pigeon.

This is a funny entry from 7th Sept 1665, when he visits Sir Robert Viner, a goldsmith banker of Lombard Street,



http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1665/09/

He seems to have the dried body of an African boy on display!

That's absolutely nothing to his more... uh... amorous adventures...

"... and after supper, to have my head combed by Deb, which occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world; for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl with my hand under her skirts; and indeed, I was with my hand in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it, and the girl also; and I endeavoured to put it off, but my wife was struck mute and grew angry, and as her voice came to her, grew quite out of order; and I do say little"

But that won't appear for another year in the blog. It's a really nice way to read it, day by day. You get a really unique understanding of the diary.

[Elmar]

What a great time to start reading. What an innocuous line:

Being come home I find an order come for the getting some fire-ships presently to annoy the Dutch, who are in the King’s Channel, and expected up higher.

Thanks for that.

[René Artois]

Very interesting, excellent resource sir.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Today is the day of probably the greatest macropolitical importance in the diary, where Pepys reports that "the whole Kingdom is undone". This is the event that came close to making it that it would have been the Dutch, not Britannia that ruled the waves.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

So going home vexed, and to my Lady Baton's, there found a great many women with her, in her chamber merry, my Lady Pen and her daughter amoung others; where my Lady Pen flung me down on the bed, and herself and others, one after the other upon me, and vey merry we were

a true man he was lol

[Elmar]

Him taking a separate coach so as not to be seen accompanying a woman on so dire a day was rather canny.

Hardly a day goes by when Pepys is not merry with someone. The way he tends to phrase it is hilarious. Him getting caught with the maid by his wife is a particular high point.
I don't know about you, but with the standard Pepys is setting I wouldn't mind a return to old fashion morals and values.

[removeduser_4536284751384]

yeah but most people weren't like him

[Lord Tomyris]

Ooh I like this, I've just been quoting Pepys in a university essay I'm writing on Restoration England, including his thoughts on the Raid on the Medway, and his comment that James, Duke of York 'did eye my wife mightily'.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Grim entry today. Pepys receives confirmation that a first rate ship of the line, the Royal Charles, has been captured by the Dutch to use against England as well as a presence of another Dutch fleet at the mouth of the Thames, not far from my home town. He sends his wife and father out of the country with gold, and goes about hiding his other wealth. He writes his will. He relates the panic that the French are preparing to invade.

[Elmar]

Grim entry today. Pepys receives confirmation that a first rate ship of the line, the Royal Charles, has been captured by the Dutch to use against England as well as a presence of another Dutch fleet at the mouth of the Thames, not far from my home town. He sends his wife and father out of the country with gold, and goes about hiding his other wealth. He writes his will. He relates the panic that the French are preparing to invade.

Well, that happens when you start a naval war and stop paying for your navy halfway through. The Dutch on the other hand were reliable in this, and probably employed more Englishmen in their fleet then the English.

As for the fate of the Royal Charles, after it's arrival back in The Netherlands it was a big tourism draw. But it was broken up in 1673, being too big a ship for the Dutch navy who loved humping shallow water to the detriment of their more powerful opponents who risked running aground.

Another noteworthy event was the loss of the 1st rate "Loyal London", which had been completed as recent as 1666, having been paid for the City of London. After being sunk in shallow water by the English and then burned by the Dutch it faced costly repairs. So short after the great expense of building the ship the City of London baulked at the repair costs. Thus once repaired at the expense of the Treasury, Charles named it "London". Ouch!

[removeduser_487563287433]

"We do not hear that the Dutch are come to Gravesend; which is a wonder."

God damnit it's a bloody "wonder" my town's only been destroyed twice with people like you, Pepys.