household. … Lord Clarendon has given a full account of all
that transpired between himself, the King and the Queen, on this
very unpleasant business (‘Continuation of Life of Clarendon,’ 1759,
ff. 168–178).”—Steinman’s Memoir of Duchess of Cleveland, p. 35.
“The day at length arrived when Lady Castlemaine was to be formally
admitted a Lady of the Bedchamber. The royal warrant, addressed to
the Lord Chamberlain, bears date June 1, 1663, and includes with
that of her ladyship, the names of the Duchess of Buckingham, the
Countesses of Chesterfield and Bath, and the Countess Mareshall. A
separate warrant of the same day directs his lordship to admit the
Countess of Suffolk as Groom of the Stole and first Lady of the
Bedchamber, to which undividable offices she had, with the
additional ones of Mistress of the Robes and Keeper of the Privy
Purse, been nominated by a warrant dated April 2, 1662, wherein the
reception of her oath is expressly deferred until the Queen’s
household shall be established. We here are furnished with the
evidence that Charles would not sign the warrants for the five until
Catherine had withdrawn her objection to his favourite one.”—
Addenda to Steinman’s Memoir of Duchess of Cleveland (privately
printed), 1874, p. i.]
desiring that she might have that favour done her, or that he would send her from whence she come: and that the King was angry and the Queen discontented a whole day and night upon it; but that the King hath promised to have nothing to do with her hereafter. But I cannot believe that the King can fling her off so, he loving her too well: and so I writ this night to my Lady to be my opinion; she calling her my lady, and the lady I admire. Here I find that my Lord hath lost the garden to his lodgings, and that it is turning into a tennis-court. Hence by water to the Wardrobe to see how all do there, and so home to supper and to bed.
27th (Lord’s day). At church alone in the pew in the morning. In the afternoon by water I carried my wife to Westminster, where she went to take leave of her father,
[Mrs. Pepys’s father was Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, a
scion of a good family in Anjou. Having turned Huguenot at the age
of twenty-one, his father disinherited him, and he was left
penniless. He came over in the retinue of Henrietta Maria, on her
marriage with Charles I., as one of her Majesty’s gentlemen carvers,
but the Queen dismissed him on finding out he was a Protestant and
did not go to mass. He described himself as being captain and major
of English troops in Italy and Flanders.—Wheatley’s Pepys and the
World he lived in, pp. 6, 250. He was full of schemes; see
September 22nd, 1663, for account of his patent for curing smoky
chimneys.]
and I to walk in the Park, which is now every day more and more pleasant, by the new works upon it. Here meeting with Laud Crispe, I took him to the farther end, and sat under a tree in a corner, and there sung some songs, he singing well, but no skill, and so would sing false sometimes. Then took leave of him, and found my wife at my Lord’s lodging, and so took her home by water, and to supper in Sir W. Pen’s balcony, and Mrs. Keene with us, and then came my wife’s brother, and then broke up, and to bed.
28th. Up early, and by six o’clock, after my wife was ready, I walked with her to the George, at Holborn Conduit, where the coach stood ready to carry her and her maid to Bugden, but that not being ready, my brother Tom staid with them to see them gone, and so I took a troubled though willing goodbye, because of the bad condition of my house to have a family in it. So I took leave of her and walked to the waterside, and there took boat for the Tower; hearing that the Queen-Mother is come this morning already as high as Woolwich: and that my Lord Sandwich was with her; at which my heart was glad, and I sent the waterman, though yet not very certain of it, to my wife to carry news thereof to my Lady. So to my office all the morning abstracting the Duke’s instructions in the margin thereof. So home all alone to dinner, and then to the office again, and in the evening Cooper comes, and he being gone, to my chamber a little troubled and melancholy, to my lute late, and so to bed, Will lying there at my feet, and the wench in my house in Will’s bed.
29th. Early up, and brought all my money, which is near £300, out of my house into this chamber; and so to the office, and there we sat all the morning, Sir George Carteret and Mr. Coventry being come from sea. This morning among other things I broached the business of our being abused about flags, which I know doth trouble Sir W. Batten, but I care not. At noon being invited I went with Sir George and Mr. Coventry to Sir W. Batten’s to dinner, and there merry, and very friendly to Sir Wm. and he to me, and complies much with me, but I know he envies me, and I do not value him. To the office again, and in the evening walked to Deptford (Cooper with me talking of mathematiques), to send a fellow to prison for cutting of buoy ropes, and to see the difference between the flags sent in now-a-days, and I find the old ones, which were much cheaper, to be wholly as good. So I took one of a sort with me, and Mr. Wayth accompanying of me a good way, talking of the faults of the Navy, I walked to Redriffe back, and so home by water, and after having done, late, at the office, I went to my chamber and to bed.
30th. Up early, and to my office, where Cooper came to me and begun his lecture upon the body of a ship, which my having of a modell in the office is of great use to me, and very pleasant and useful it is. Then by water to White Hall, and there waited upon my Lord Sandwich; and joyed him, at his lodgings, of his safe coming home after all his danger, which he confesses to be very great. And his people do tell me how bravely my Lord did carry himself, while my Lord Crofts did cry; and I perceive it is all the town talk how poorly he carried himself. But the best was of one Mr. Rawlins, a courtier, that was with my Lord; and in the greatest danger cried, “God damn me, my Lord, I won’t give you three-pence for your place now.” But all ends in the honour of the pleasure-boats; which, had they not been very good boats, they could never have endured the sea as they did. Thence with Captain Fletcher, of the Gage, in his ship’s boat with 8 oars (but every ordinary oars outrowed us) to Woolwich, expecting to find Sir W. Batten there upon his survey, but he is not come, and so we got a dish of steaks at the White Hart, while his clarkes and others were feasting of it in the best room of the house, and after dinner playing at shuffleboard,
[The game of shovelboard was played by two players (each provided
with five coins) on a smooth heavy table. On the table were marked
with chalk a series of lines, and the play was to strike the coin on
the edge of the table with the hand so that it rested between these
lines. Shakespeare uses the expression “shove-groat shilling,” as
does Ben Jonson. These shillings were usually smooth and worn for
the convenience of playing. Strutt says (“Sports and Pastimes”), “I
have seen a shovel-board table at a low public house in Benjamin
Street, near Clerkenwell Green, which is about three feet in breadth
and thirty-nine feet two inches in length, and said to be the
longest at this time in London.”]
and when at last they heard I was there, they went about their survey. But God help the King! what surveys, shall be taken after this manner! I after dinner about my business to the Rope-yard, and there staid till night, repeating several trialls of the strength, wayte, waste, and other things of hemp, by which I have furnished myself enough to finish my intended business