Monday 7 January 1660/61


Home, it being a clear moonshine and after 12 o’clock at night. Being come home we found that my people had been very merry, and my wife tells me afterwards that she had heard that they had got young Davis and some other neighbours with them to be merry, but no harm.

40 Annotations

Alan Bedford  •  Link

"The Silent Woman" is a classic farce by Ben Jonson.

Here's a short summary from the web site of the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington, D.C., which produced the play in early 2003: "The Silent Woman is the story of Morose, an old bachelor with a severe aversion to noise, who marries a "silent woman" to deny his nephew a substantial inheritance. When the "quiet" lady turns out to be anything but, the stage is set for boisterous antics. With biting wit and sharp satire, Jonson considers what it means to be a man, to be a woman and indeed to be human, but without a voice. "

A. De Araujo  •  Link

"The fanatiques,who had been up and killed six or seven men......and after a good supper,we had an excellent cake"
when it is not the Terrorists it is the Fanatiques;what is a peaceful soul to do?well I guess eat cake and get fat.

dirk  •  Link

"an excellent cake, where the mark for the Queen was cut"

This is clearly a "Twelfth Night" custom. Can anybody describe in detail how it worked?

J. Bailey  •  Link

Also, what would this "cake" have been made of? Any recipes for 17th Century cake? Or any other sweets that might be eaten for such an occasion? (I am assuming this cake was somewhat sweet, perhaps with dried fruit?)

dirk  •  Link

the cake

In the meantime I found the answer to my own question. I should have looked at the diary entry for friday 6 January 1659/60...

vincent  •  Link

note : all the cozens have got to-gether again.

David A. Smith  •  Link

"strictly examined, more than in the worst of times"
Is it my imagination, or does Sam shrug this off a little lightly, even to his diary?
A half-dozen people killed by 'sleeper' agents, 40,000 (!) people up in arms (Sam's London is not that large a town in our terms), torchlight search-and-seizures, and Sam can chatter brightly about plays and cutting Twelfth Night cakes? But he begins and ends (almost) with the uprising, and do we catch a whiff of rising-young-man's bravado?

vincent  •  Link

searched for pamplets and weapons I do believe. It is illuminating that not all citizens are enraputured with the new scheme of things.

vincent  •  Link

The Silent Woman: Mentioned earlier : caused a little scandal Wednesday 6 June 1660 then SP missed it again, tues 4th dec. [at the play house]
read the whole piece or see your local theatre listing.…
a snippet
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
Epicoene, or the Silent Woman: Still to be neat, still to be drest
With such we mingle neither brains nor breasts;
Our wishes, like to those make public feasts,

Yet, if those cunning palates hither come,
They shall find guests' entreaty, and good room;
And though all relish not, sure there will be some,

Who wrote that piece, could so have wrote a play,
But that he knew this was the better way.

For, to present all custard, or all tart,
And have no other meats, to bear a part.
ACT 1, EPICOENE by Ben Jonson

vincent  •  Link

more from other diaries.

Evelyn January
"...6 ... This night was a bloudy Insurrection of some fift-monarchy Enthusiasts, suppressd, & next day examin'd at Council; where the wretchedly abused people could say nothing to extenuate their madnesse, & unwarantable zeale:
I was now chosen (& nominated by his Majestie for one of that Council) by Suffrage of the rest of the Members, a Fellow of the Philosophic Society, now meeting at Gressham Coll: where was an assembly of divers learned Gent: It being the first meeting since the returne of his Majestie in Lond: but begun some years before at Oxford, & interruptedly here in Lond: during the Rebellion: This morning was another rising of the Phanatics in which some were slaine: his Majestie being absent; til the 10th…”
Josselyn Rev Ralph
“Jan: 6: God good to me and mine in manifold outward mercies for which my soul praises him, this lords day morning a troop of horse marched by. gods worship is nothing with them I fear, lord settle truth and peace in this nation. god was good to me in the word, though my heart very dead and unprepared to meet with and follow him, the lord accept me and do me good. my dear wife ill with a pain in her side, which put me in fear, but I hope in god its only a wind that troubles her to quicken us in the sense of our weakness.”

Roger Arbor  •  Link

The Fanatiques or more properly the Fifth-monarchy men... a useful discussion at:…

The was Venner's second attempt at bringing the Kingdom of Christ by force. He had even tried a similiar rebellion 4 years earlier against Cromwell. It must be remembered that radical religious Dissenters of all kinds were regarded with considerable suspicion. The same is true in our day, but our recourse is to apathy.

Interesting dramatisation at present on BBC Radio 4 of 'Pilgrim's Progress', still the best way into the mindset of mid 17th Century dissenters.

n.b. Venner was notorious because he did not write the history! (IMO)

PHE  •  Link

Law & Order
Clearly, with the type of drama described here, its the army that enforces law & order. But who enforced daily law & order, given there wasn't a formal police force? Who controlled and arrested petty thieves, house-breakers, muggers, etc? (I can't see anything in the reference section).

P.J.CUTLER.  •  Link

"The Silent Women" reminds me of an Inn in Derbyshire called the "Quiet Woman" where there hangs a sign showing a lady minus her head!

Mary  •  Link

Law and order.

There was indeed no police force. Each parish (i.e. the incumbent together with his churchwardens) appointed constables who had to do their best to maintain law and order on their own patch, assisted by the citizens in general. The numbers of constables in any one parish would depend on its size, density of population etc. They were appointed for a fixed term and usually at a very low rate of pay, so the appointment was generally unpopular, though it seems to have been regarded as a necessary public duty to accept such an appointment. No doubt a constable might hope for something in the way of a reward where property theft was concerned, but it sounds as if this would have been a purely informal arrangement.

The constables could hold alleged wrong-doers in a local lock-up for a short while, if necessary, before bringing them before a magistrate.

Peter  •  Link

I hesitate to bring this up for fear that I have missed something obvious .... but in for a penny, in for a pound etc.

Why is Sam celebrating Twelfth Night on the 7th of January and not the 6th? Certainly last year the cake was eaten on the 6th. Has he got his days mixed up? (For example the footnote says the uprising started on the 6th) Or am I confused?

Phil Rodgers  •  Link

Presumably Twelfth Night is being celebrated on the 7th this year because the 6th was the Lord's Day.

Orrin  •  Link

The other possibility is that the evening of Christmas day is the first night and Boxing Day the first day. So 26 + 12 - 31 = 7th of January for the 12th day after Christmas.

My ha'penny's worth.

Emilio  •  Link

"that long-ago day in 1659/60"

Isn't it nice that now it's been around a full year, this diary suddenly has more sense of a history that we're all taking part in. In a certain way it's come of age, and I say congratulations to Phil and to all of us who have helped it happen. Here's to 8+ more years of the same.

Bardi  •  Link

What are the "Trained-Bands" mentioned?
Are they the constables referred to by M.?

Mary  •  Link

Trained Bands.

These were groups of citizen-soldiery, organised to support the civil authority in times of danger or unrest. They were not noted for good discipline and could not always be counted upon to fight for the 'right' side in cases of serious rioting. Tomalin mentions that in 1667 (not much of a spoiler) the City trained bands were being prepared to fight, should the Dutch make an attampt on London after their raid on the Medway.

Michael  •  Link

The play "The Silent Women" is the story on which Richard Strauss's underrated opera "Die schweigsame Frau" is based. The same basic plot can also be found, to some degree, in Gaetano Donizetti's "Don Pasquale". Sam would have liked that, given his love of music.

Debbie  •  Link

I'm new to the site but did go back to the 2003 Twelfth Night entry and annotations, and did not see this mentioned - Twelfth Night starts the wind up to Mardis Gras in New Orleans. King cakes decorated in green, blue and purple fondant or marzipan are available in many bakeries. Current custom is that the finder of the "bean" must host the next pre-Lent party, of which there will be about one a week until Lent begins.

Nate Oman  •  Link

Law and Order

One interesting issue to think about is the relationship between a relatively underdeveloped police force and the kinds of punishments meted out. 17th century criminal law was quite brutal by today's standards, and it may be that the lack of a police force accounts for part of this.

If criminal law serves as a deterrent to crime by punishing it, then the deterrent value will be a function of the probability of being caught and the severity of the punishment. This is, if you will, the cost of being a criminal. Obviously, a limited police force diminishes the probability of being caught thereby lowering the "cost" of crime. One response is to increase the level of punishment. Thus, we would expect to see the severity of criminal punishments fall as the effectiveness of law enforcement increases, which we more or less see (provided we hold political systems, etc. constant, e.g. the Stasi, NKVD, or Gestapo are not really in the business of law enfocement).

This kind of thinking about crime has been usefully developed in the work of Gary Becker and Richard Posner.

Emilio  •  Link

"the whole City had been in arms, above 40,000"

L&M footnote that "40000" written in the diary (without the comma) is a slip for 4000. Still a sizable number of men, especially since Venner only had about 60 in all with him, but not the bulk of the city's population.

Mike Barnas  •  Link

Law Enforcement, such as it was:
Patrick Pringle in 'Stand and Deliver: Highaymen from Robin Hood to Dick Turpin' devotes several chapters to the struggles of the Fielding brothers, some 80 years on, to get the government to invest in a public police force. In Sam's day, those who had a lot to lose, tended to provide for their own security. In many cases, rough justice was delivered on the spot, since there were no public prosecutors either. Prosecutions could only be brought by individuals or groups with the resources to foot the entire expense!

dirk  •  Link

"the whole City had been in arms, above 40,000"

This figure is indeed unlikely, considering that at the time London had a population of around 300,000 people. Cfr.:
So I take it Emilio is right.

vincent  •  Link

It was known as Venner's Rising (1-4 January 1661). After four days of fighting the rebels were captured, Veneer and the other leaders were executed on 19 Jan. 1661. One hundred Fifth Monarchy Men, and some 4000 Quakers supporters were imprisoned. And with them the Fifth Monarchists movement died.…

Stan  •  Link

Omin, Your arithmetic is incorrect. 26 + 12 gives you the 12 days after Boxing Day i.e. you have excluded Boxing Day! It should be 26 + 11, so we still don't know why Twelfth Night was being celebrated on the 7th.

Mary  •  Link

Twelfth Night celebration.

Phil Rodgers' suggestion seems to have the most merit; the Lord's Day was not deemed a suitable occasion for Twelfth Night revelry (which could be pretty boisterous) and so the party is postponed until the Monday evening. It was not so long ago that Sam showed clear signs of guilt at playing music quietly in his chamber on a Sunday, a much less frivolous activity than merry feasting.

Kevin Sheerstone  •  Link

Twelfth Night.

The Lord's Day explanation seems the most plausible to me, particularly since Sam uses the term 'Twelfth Day', which is unfamiliar to me. Perhaps that term was used only when Twelfth Night fell on a Sunday. Let's wait and see what he calls it in 1667.

Todd Bernhardt  •  Link

Okay, Kevin, I'm going to call you on this in six years! ;-)

Peter  •  Link

Twelfth Night - I tend to agree that Phil Rodgers' explanation is correct. So thank you, Phil, for the answer to my question. My belief that this is correct was re-inforced by the L&M version which shows Sam starting the entry for the 6th as follows :"Lords day. and Twelfeday". This, followed by the phrase he uses in the entry for the 7th ("this day being kept as Twelfeday....") is pretty conclusive.

Also, I'm afraid I couldn't resist taking a peek at 1667...but I won't say anything!

Pauline  •  Link

"..the mark for the Queen was cut, and so there was two queens...."
Have come across the following interpretation: "When the cake was cut the lady who got the pea in her slice would be queen for the night and the gentlemean who got the bean would be king. However, on this occasion the pea [the mark] got cut in half as the cake was cut--so they had to have two queens."

Also: "Seventeenth-century Christmas celebrations centred not on Christmas day but on Twelfth Night (January 6th,unless the 6th fell on a Sunday, when celebrations were held on the 7th)."

From: "Pepys at Table: Seventeenth Century Recipes for the Modern Cook" by Christopher Driver and Michelle-Berriedale-Johnson

Currant Cake recipe included.

Sjoerd  •  Link

Around 12th night there were "Revells" at Lincoln's Inn; this from a site devoted to these:

It's clear that dancing was not the only pastime at Revels. In January of 1661, "According to costome, his Majesty opened the revells of that night, by throwing the dice himselfe in the privy chamber, where was a table set on purpose, and lost his 100£ (the year before, he won 1500£) The ladies also plaid very deepe… Sorry I am that such a wretched costome as play to that excesse should be countenanced in a court which ought to be an example of virtue to the rest of the kingdom”.(12)
(a quote from Evelyn ?)…

Daniel Baker  •  Link

Back on September 9, 1660, Major Hart told Pepys that the Trained Bands were likely to be speedily disbanded. Lucky for the King that this was not done, as they were clearly crucial to stopping Venner and his men. The footnote for that day mentions that when the bands were finally abolished, the bands of the City of London were specially exempted; maybe the London bands' service on this day was the reason for that honour?

Sasha Clarkson  •  Link

"Some reported 4000 Quaker supporters"

Firstly Vincent's web-source says 1000, but even this number is incompatible with the actual numbers later shown to be involved.

Secondly, Quakers were not fifth monarchists, and nor would they have been involved in any armed uprising. Although some early Quakers were ex-Parliamentary soldiers, a defining principle of the movement was (and is) rejection of all violence.

Chris Squire UK  •  Link

OED has :

‘trained, adj. I. In various senses of train v.

1. Having been given sustained instruction and practice in an art, profession, occupation, or procedure; taught to perform, or accustomed to performing, a particular task or function; skilled, proficient.
a. Of people. (a) Mil. Formerly esp. in trained band: = trainband n. (now hist.); †trained soldier: = train soldier n.1 (obs.).
. . 1617 F. Moryson Itinerary ii. 105 To haue six thousand of the trained bands in readines.
. . 1707 J. Chamberlayne Angliæ Notitia (ed. 22) ii. xvi. 217 Of the standing Militia, or Trained-Bands.
. . 1964 C. V. Wedgwood Trial of Charles I (1967) ii. 46 The City Trained Bands—citizen volunteers who formed no part of the Army—had long had the duty of patrolling the approaches to Parliament . . ‘

Consider also:

‘324. The Diverting History of John Gilpin by William Cowper:

JOHN GILPIN was a citizen
Of credit and renown,
A train-band captain eke was he
Of famous London town . . ’

Bill  •  Link

TRAIN-BANDS, TRAINED-BANDS Regiments made up of the Inhabitants of a City, trained up to Arms.

Also posted in the encyclopedia article: Traineband

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"to my cozen Stradwick’s, where...after a good supper, we had an excellent cake,"

L&M note Thomas Strudwick was a provision-dealer -- hence the excellence of the food.

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