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.]
[Ed. note:.... are used to denote censored passages]
The condition of the State was thus; viz. the Rump, after being disturbed by my Lord Lambert,