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The house was nought, as old Samuel Pepys would say, only a high stone building, in a block of such; but it is enough to make a house attractive for centuries if a pretty woman once looks out of its latticed windows, as I have no doubt Agnes often did when the duke and his retinue rode by in clanking armor. But there is no lack of reminders of old times.
Under this influence, the only good one in his life, Pepys continued zealous and, for the period, pure in his employment. He would not be "bribed to be unjust," he says, though he was "not so squeamish as to refuse a present after," suppose the king to have received no wrong.
He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles. This brings the excellent Boswell very close to us indeed: he might almost be a member of the Authors' League. "Especially apple pie, bless his heart!" When we said that Boswell was a kind of Pepys, we fell by chance into a happy comparison.
Dined upon one couple of ducks to-day, and after dinner my wife and I by coach to Tom's, and I to the Temple to discourse with my cozen Roger Pepys about my law business, and so back again, it being a monstrous thaw after the long great frost, so that there is no passing but by coach in the streets, and hardly that. Took my wife home, and I to my office.
But my cozen Pepys and I had much discourse alone: and he do bewail the constitution of this House, and says there is a direct caball and faction, as much as is possible between those for and those against the Chancellor, and so in other factions, that there is nothing almost done honestly and with integrity; only some few, he says, there are, that do keep out of all plots and combinations, and when their time comes will speak and see right done, if possible; and that he himself is looked upon to be a man that will be of no faction, and so they do shun to make him; and I am glad of it.
Only a kind of ground- plan remains of the halls where Lindesay and Ruthven browbeat her forlorn Majesty. But you may climb the staircase where Roland Graeme stood sentinel, and feel a touch, of what Pepys felt when he kissed a dead Queen Katherine of Valois.
It was all owing to the marrying proclivities of his uncle Fenner. Bereft of his wife on the last day of August, that easy-going worthy, less than two months later, was discovered by his nephew in an ale-house, "very jolly and youthsome, and as one that I believe will in a little time get him a wife." Pepys' anticipation was speedily realized.
Pepys knew Henry the elder, and refers to him in his Diary; and it may be remarked in passing that those who wish to grow familiar with the atmosphere in which Purcell was brought up, and lived and worked, must go to Pepys, who knew all the musicians of the period, and the life of Church, Court, and theatre. Thomas Purcell, brother of Henry the elder, was also a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.
Several other official men who had been in attendance on the Council were called, and among them Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty; but none of them could remember that anything was said about the delivery.
At noon, the whole Office Brouncker, J. Minnes, T. Middleton, Samuel Pepys, and Captain Cox to dine with the Parish, at the Three Tuns, this day being Ascension-day, where exceeding good discourse among the merchants, and thence back home, and after a little talk with my wife, to my office did a great deal of business, and so with my eyes might weary, and my head full of care how to get my accounts and business settled against my journey, home to supper, and bed.
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