I subscribe to Samuel Pepys’ diary. Every evening I get an installment that corresponds to the same day and date that he wrote, 353 years ago. And every once in awhile he writes an entry that is really notable. Such as this one from last Saturday. Each of the three paragraphs from this date is enlightening:
This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar in lieu of one which Sir W. Batten had stopped up, and going down into my cellar to look I stepped into a great heap of turds by which I found that Mr. Turner’s house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which do trouble me, but I shall have it helped.
To orient you a little: this is London, 1660, eleven years after King Charles I was executed, and two years after Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, has died, and the royalists are now back in power. Young Samuel, having helped reinstate Charles II to the throne, has a new job at the Navy Office, and they have promised him a new house. So he and his wife, Elizabeth, have just moved into a Navy-owned building and are busily renovating. Sadly, their neighbor, Mr. Turner, has not been as vigilant as he ought to have been about getting his cesspit emptied regularly.
And the next paragraph in this entry:
To my Lord’s by land, calling at several places about business, where I dined with my Lord and Lady; when he was very merry, and did talk very high how he would have a French cook, and a master of his horse, and his lady and child to wear black patches; which methought was strange, but he is become a perfect courtier; and, among other things, my Lady saying that she could get a good merchant for her daughter Jem., he answered, that he would rather see her with a pedlar’s pack at her back, so she married a gentleman, than she should marry a citizen.
Lots of stuff going on here, but what most jumped out at me was his boss and benefactor, the Earl of Sandwich, who is feeling flush and wants to deck out his wife and child with black patches, a very popular fad during the seventeenth century. I blogged about these before. And finally:
This afternoon, going through London, and calling at Crowe’s the upholster’s, in Saint Bartholomew’s, I saw the limbs of some of our new traitors set upon Aldersgate, which was a sad sight to see; and a bloody week this and the last have been, there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered. Home, and after writing a letter to my uncle by the post, I went to bed.
Yicch, imagine. The “new traitors” he’s referring to are men who supported Cromwell and who probably had a direct hand in Charles I’s execution, who have been tried, condemned, and executed. As was common for people executed for treason, their heads and limbs were displayed around town. What a sight to behold on the way to your upholsterer’s shop.
See how cool this is? You, too, can subscribe to Sam’s diary by visiting this link. Just click on the line that says “Receive diary entries by email daily.” You’re welcome.