p. 210 Porridge. A contemptuous nickname given by Dissenters to the Book of Common Prayer. On 24 August, 1662, Pepys hears that there has been ‘a disturbance in a church in Friday St.; a great many young [people] knotting together and crying out Porridge often and seditiously in the church, and took the Common Prayer Book, they say, away.’ There is a four leaved pamphlet, 4to 1642, by Gyles Calsine, entitled ‘A Messe of Pottage, very well seasoned and crumb’d with bread of life, and easie to be digested against the contumelious slanderers of the Divine Service, terming it Poridge.’
p. 214. Opinion. Reputation, cf. Shirley, The Gamester (1637), Act i:—’Barnacle. Patience; I mean you have the opinion of a valiant gentleman.’
p. 218 watch her like a Witch. vide Vol I, p. 448, note: Women must be watcht as Witches are.
p. 228 i’ th’ Pit, behind the Scenes. The foremost benches of the pit were a recognized rendezvous for fops and beaux. The tiring rooms of the actors and actresses were also a favourite resort of wits and gallants. Pepys frequently mentions the visits he paid behind the scenes. The Epilogue to The Gentleman Dancing Master (1671) even invites cits behind the scenes:—
You good men o’ th’ Exchange, on whom alone
We must depend when Sparks to sea are gone;
Into the pit already you are come,
‘Tis but a step more to our tiring-room
Where none of us but will be wondrous sweet
Upon an able love of Lombard-Street.
p. 228 flamm’d off. Cheated, cf. Ford and Dekker’s The Witch of Edmonton, ii, II (1621):—’Susan. And then flam me off With an old witch.’
also South’s Sermons (1687):—’A God not to be flammed off with lies.’
p. 209 Lusum. i.e. Lewisham.
p. 230 in ure. In use; practice. cf. John Taylor’s The Pennyles Pilgrimage (4to 1618);—
For in the time that thieving was in ure
The gentle fled to places more secure.