CHESHIRE-L Archives
Archiver > CHESHIRE > 2010-03 > 1269270251
From: judy olsen <>
Subject: Re: [CHS] Pemberton's Huff
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:04:11 +0000
References: <A53A544E-6D8B-4F90-B3B3-E45F9AE1827E@pembertonfamily.com><BE6AA343-1771-41A1-8CC9-CA18DD2D9920@tesco.net><23CE3D3A-099C-43FD-B695-6AD5BF5618C7@pembertonfamily.com><4DB97A23-1147-41F0-911E-4F5EB03EA964@tesco.net><60bd368f1003220754j2ff3a86dv15c74bafd8fd8b13@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <60bd368f1003220754j2ff3a86dv15c74bafd8fd8b13@mail.gmail.com>
Spot on for time, but not sure how far Admiralty involved - might be
mentioned as coffee house gossip?
Ah - and remember his parmesan in the garden? Bet he ate olives too.
J
On 22 Mar 2010, at 14:54, David Mills wrote:
> Would this be around the time that Pepys was involved in the
> Admiralty?
> Off I go to my copy and to the Biography!
>
> David
>
> On 22 March 2010 13:38, judy olsen <> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jackson
>>
>> Here is a working hypothesis for you.
>>
>> The rhyme sounds authentic the way it scans and the riddle it sets. I
>> don't have a problem with the olives but at first I was worried about
>> 'commodities rough'. This sounded too modern. I looked it up in the
>> big dictionary and drew a tentative conclusion (I'll skip the detail)
>> that it referred to accommodation in the Civil War - the king in the
>> oak tree etc.
>>
>> Then I realised that of course the word order was down to the poetry
>> and reversed the words. "Rough commodities". This "may" be the clue
>> to the whole thing.
>>
>> "Rough commodities" was/is a shipping term. If you google "rough
>> commodities" charles 11" the top hit is a summary of the Navigation
>> Acts passed by Charles 11 and then up to 1696 (so William & Mary). I
>> don't have the time or brains at the moment to go through it in
>> detail but go to the bottom of page 3 and you'll find reference to
>> New England merchants shipping in rough commodities. My initial
>> reading is that they were bringing rough commodities from America and
>> discharging them at British ports but then re-exporting them, and
>> somewhere along the line bringing in imports of greater value from
>> Spain. These merchants asked for - and got - some sort of concession
>> from the king as to the bonds they were supposed to lodge against
>> their cargoes.
>>
>> So my theory is that whether or not a Pemberton was one of the
>> merchants who actually applied to the King for the concession, the
>> family was involved somehow in the shipping trade. The change in the
>> navigation acts allowed them to prosper by bringing rough commodities
>> across the atlantic (possibly salt cod) and importing luxury Spanish
>> goods (eg olives) to Britain.
>>
>> The idea that the king ordered the notice on the gate is perhaps an
>> embellishment. It may not have been on the actual gatepost ( as we
>> think of them) either. Finally, I wonder whether the sign was in
>> Cheshire, or placed on the family house in the US. It could be that
>> when someone added the detail that the king ordered it, the story was
>> then relocated to Cheshire to fit in with that. Alternatively, we
>> could be looking at the next Pemberton down the list, the father of
>> George bn 1660.
>>
>> Hope these ideas help and are not a monster red herring.
>>
>>
>> Judy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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