Diary, Apr/May 1661 | Page 6

I find that I begin to know
now how to receive so much reverence, which at the beginning I could
not tell how to do. Sir William and I by coach to the dock and there
viewed all the storehouses and the old goods that are this day to be sold,
which was great pleasure to me, and so back again by coach home,
where we had a good dinner, and among other strangers that come,
there was Mr. Hempson and his wife, a pretty woman, and speaks Latin;
Mr. Allen and two daughters of his, both very tall and the youngest
very handsome, so much as I could not forbear to love her exceedingly,
having, among other things, the best hand that ever I saw. After dinner,

we went to fit books and things (Tom Hater being this morning come to
us) for the sale, by an inch of candle, and very good sport we and the
ladies that stood by had, to see the people bid. Among other things sold
there was all the State's arms, which Sir W. Batten bought; intending to
set up some of the images in his garden, and the rest to burn on the
Coronacion night. The sale being done, the ladies and I and Captain
Pett and Mr. Castle took barge and down we went to see the Sovereign,
which we did, taking great pleasure therein, singing all the way, and,
among other pleasures, I put my Lady, Mrs. Turner, Mrs. Hempson,
and the two Mrs. Allens into the lanthorn and I went in and kissed them,
demanding it as a fee due to a principall officer, with all which we were
exceeding merry, and drunk some bottles of wine and neat's tongue, &c.
Then back again home and so supped, and after much mirth to bed.

10th. In the morning to see the Dockhouses. First, Mr. Pett's, the
builder, and there was very kindly received, and among other things he
did offer my Lady Batten a parrot, the best I ever saw, that knew Mingo
so soon as it saw him, having been bred formerly in the house with
them; but for talking and singing I never heard the like. My Lady did
accept of it: Then to see Commissioner Pett's house, he and his family
being absent, and here I wondered how my Lady Batten walked up and
down with envious looks to see how neat and rich everything is (and
indeed both the house and garden is most handsome), saying that she
would get it, for it belonged formerly to the Surveyor of the Navy.
Then on board the Prince, now in the dock, and indeed it has one and
no more rich cabins for carved work, but no gold in her. After that back
home, and there eat a little dinner. Then to Rochester, and there saw the
Cathedrall, which is now fitting for use, and the organ then a-tuning.
Then away thence, observing the great doors of the church, which, they
say, was covered with the skins of the Danes,
[Traditions similar to that at Rochester, here alluded to, are to be found
in other places in England. Sir Harry Englefield, in a communication
made to the Society of Antiquaries, July 2nd, 1789, called attention to
the curious popular tale preserved in the village of Hadstock, Essex,
that the door of the church had been covered with the skin of a Danish
pirate, who had plundered the church. At Worcester, likewise, it was
asserted that the north doors of the cathedral had been covered with the

skin of a person who had sacrilegiously robbed the high altar. The date
of these doors appears to be the latter part of the fourteenth century, the
north porch having been built about 1385. Dart, in his "History of the
Abbey Church of St. Peter's, Westminster," 1723 (vol. i., book ii., p.
64), relates a like tradition then preserved in reference to a door, one of
three which closed off a chamber from the south transept--namely, a
certain building once known as the Chapel of Henry VIII., and used as
a "Revestry." This chamber, he states, "is inclosed with three doors, the
inner cancellated, the middle, which is very thick, lined with skins like
parchment, and driven full of nails. These skins, they by tradition tell
us, were some skins of the Danes, tann'd and given here as a memorial
of our delivery from them." Portions of this supposed human skin were
examined under the microscope by the late Mr. John Quekett of the
Hunterian Museum, who ascertained, beyond question, that in each of
the cases the skin was human. From a communication by the late Mr.
Albert Way, F.S.A., to the late Lord Braybrooke.]
and also had much mirth at a