Diary, Jan 1659/60 | Page 4

ideas before making
an entire meal of them. D.W.]

THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS M.A. F.R.S.
CLERK OF THE ACTS AND SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY

TRANSCRIBED FROM THE SHORTHAND MANUSCRIPT IN
THE PEPYSIAN LIBRARY MAGDALENE COLLEGE
CAMBRIDGE BY THE REV. MYNORS BRIGHT M.A. LATE
FELLOW AND PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE
(Unabridged)
WITH LORD BRAYBROOKE'S NOTES
EDITED WITH ADDITIONS BY
HENRY B. WHEATLEY F.S.A.

DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS. JANUARY 1659-1660
[The year did not legally begin in England before the 25th March until
the act for altering the style fixed the 1st of January as the first day of
the year, and previous to 1752 the year extended from March 25th to
the following March 24th. Thus since 1752 we have been in the habit
of putting the two dates for the months of January and February and
March 1 to 24--in all years previous to 1752. Practically, however,
many persons considered the year to commence with January 1st, as it
will be seen Pepys did. The 1st of January was considered as New
Year's day long before Pepys's time. The fiscal year has not been
altered; and the national accounts are still reckoned from old Lady Day,
which falls on the 6th of April.]
Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health,
without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of cold.
[Pepys was successfully cut for the stone on March 26th, 1658. See
March 26th below. Although not suffering from this cause again until
the end of his life, there are frequent references in the Diary to pain
whenever he caught cold. In a letter from Pepys to his nephew Jackson,
April 8th, 1700, there is a reference to the breaking out three years
before his death of the wound caused by the cutting for the stone: "It
has been my calamity for much the greatest part of this time to have
been kept bedrid, under an evil so rarely known as to have had it matter
of universal surprise and with little less general opinion of its
dangerousness; namely, that the cicatrice of a wound occasioned upon
my cutting for the stone, without hearing anything of it in all this time,
should after more than 40 years' perfect cure, break out again." At the
post-mortem examination a nest of seven stones, weighing four and a
half ounces, was found in the left kidney, which was entirely

ulcerated.]
I lived in Axe Yard,
[Pepys's house was on the south side of King Street, Westminster; it is
singular that when he removed to a residence in the city, he should
have settled close to another Axe Yard. Fludyer Street stands on the
site of Axe Yard, which derived its name from a great messuage or
brewhouse on the west side of King Street, called "The Axe," and
referred to in a document of the 23rd of Henry VIII--B.]
having my wife, and servant Jane, and no more in family than us three.
My wife . . . . gave me hopes of her being with child, but on the last
day of the year . . . .[the hope was belied.]
[This is the first of too many censored passages marked by ". . . ."
wherin Mr. Wheatly determines (in this unabridged edition) that some
of the words of Pepy's are too raw for our eyes. D.W.]
The condition of the State was thus; viz. the Rump, after being
disturbed by my Lord Lambert,
[John Lambert, major-general in the Parliamentary army. The title Lord
was not his by right, but it was frequently given to the republican
officers. He was born in 1619, at Calton Hall, in the parish of
Kirkby-in-Malham-Dale, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In 1642 he
was appointed captain of horse under Fairfax, and acted as
major-general to Cromwell in 1650 during the war in Scotland. After
this Parliament conferred on him a grant of lands in Scotland worth
L1000 per annum. He refused to take the oath of allegiance to
Cromwell, for which the Protector deprived him of his commission.
After Cromwell's death he tried to set up a military government. The
Commons cashiered Lambert, Desborough, and other officers, October
12th, 1659, but Lambert retaliated by thrusting out the Commons, and
set out to meet Monk. His men fell away from him, and he was sent to
the Tower, March 3rd, 1660, but escaped. In 1662 he was tried on a
charge of high treason and condemned, but his life was spared. It is
generally stated that he passed the remainder of his life in the island of
Guernsey, but this is proved to be incorrect by a MS. in the Plymouth
Athenaeum, entitled "Plimmouth Memoirs collected by James Yonge,
1684" This will be