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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In the "Diary of Samuel Pepys 'Äî Complete 1660 N.S," Pepys offers an unparalleled glimpse into the life and times of 17th-century England, capturing the vibrancy of daily life against a backdrop of political turbulence and social change. Written in a candid, conversational style, the diary reflects Pepys's keen observations, revealing the intricacies of his personal life, professional ambitions, and the cultural milieu of Restoration London. Through entries that display wit and insight, he documents significant events, including the Plague and the Great Fire of London, blending personal narrative with historical documentation in a manner that transcends mere chronicle to become a literary artifact rich in detail and emotional depth. Samuel Pepys, a successful naval administrator and Member of Parliament, wrote his diary between 1660 and 1669, a tumultuous period following the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Commonwealth. His remarkable ability to intertwine the personal with the political speaks to his educated background and his involvement in key state affairs, which informed his perspectives on the changing tides of power, society, and culture during the Restoration. For readers seeking an authentic and engaging account of a pivotal era in British history, Pepys's diary remains indispensable. Its blend of historical narrative, vivid detail, and introspective reflection makes it not only a historical document but also a compelling literary work that invites readers into the mind of one of England's most astute observers.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1660 N.S
Table of Contents
Introduction
A young civil servant sets down the pulse of a transforming nation day by day, discovering that the story of public change is inseparable from the secrets of a private life.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys endures as a classic because it fuses eyewitness history with an unguarded self-portrait, capturing the Restoration not as a set of proclamations but as lived experience. Few works render the texture of seventeenth-century London with such immediacy: streets, offices, alehouses, and ships form a continuous stage on which policy and appetite, duty and diversion, collide. This volume, covering 1660, shows the diary already operating at full power, balancing civic observation with intimate candor. Its influence stretches across memoir, biography, and historical narrative, shaping what later writers expect a diary to do: to record, to judge, and to reveal without rhetoric.
Samuel Pepys, an English naval administrator born in 1633 and later a Member of Parliament, wrote his diary privately and in shorthand. The entries for 1660 were composed contemporaneously, tracking his work, household, friendships, expenditures, and the unsettled politics of the year. Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1660 N.S presents that inaugural year in a continuous sequence, offering a daily chronicle of practical choices and public events. Pepys did not write for publication; he kept a record for himself. Yet the scope of his attention suggests a purpose beyond mere bookkeeping: to understand how his ambitions, obligations, and pleasures fit within a rapidly changing society.
The year 1660 stands at a hinge in English history, closing the experiment of republican rule and ushering in the Restoration of the monarchy. Offices were reshuffled, allegiances tested, and institutions reconstituted, all under the scrutiny of a population weary of upheaval and hungry for stability. Pepys observes this process from within the machinery of naval administration, assisted by powerful patrons and implicated in the routine decisions that enable state power to function. His vantage point is neither courtly nor purely street-level; it is the desk, the quay, the cabin, and the council anteroom, where paperwork, rumor, and resolve determine the course of events.
A principal source of the diary’s power is its method: short, dated entries that admit every level of detail, from the tally of coins and meals to the naming of ships and superiors. Pepys’s prose is brisk and concrete, attentive to sounds, faces, and the choreography of errands. He makes time visible. The narrative proceeds without foreshadowing or retrospective gloss; the reader experiences uncertainty as he did. This confers unusual credibility on his judgments and deepens the pathos of his missteps. The style creates a kind of early modern interiority, not by abstract meditation but by accumulation of incident, producing a portrait that feels both intimate and public.
Because it unites personal candor with historical proximity, the diary has served generations of historians as a primary window onto Restoration society, and it has also shaped literary expectations of self-writing. Later diarists, journalists, and biographers echo Pepys’s mixture of incident and assessment, his balance of workaday record and reflective aside. Novelists and social historians have mined his pages for the idiom and rhythms of a city rediscovering pleasure while relearning governance. The 1660 volume is foundational in that inheritance: it introduces the voice, habits, and vantage that make the entire diary a touchstone for narratives of modern identity, bureaucracy, and urban life.
This edition presents the complete year 1660 using New Style dating, aligning the calendar with the system adopted in Britain long after Pepys wrote. His original manuscript, kept in shorthand and dated according to the Old Style then in use, was deciphered and first published in the nineteenth century, and has since been issued in increasingly full and accurate forms. The New Style rendering helps modern readers follow the sequence of events as they are now conventionally recorded, without altering the substance of Pepys’s observations. Editorial modernization of dates and occasional spelling assists readability while preserving the diary’s plainspoken energy and its daily cadence.
Pepys’s intention was practical and personal. He tracks hours, payments, favors, and errands; he notes successes and lapses; he records conversations whose consequences may reach far beyond a single day. Such habits suggest a discipline of self-scrutiny and a desire to measure progress within a world governed by patronage, procedure, and chance. Because the diary was not destined for print, it speaks with uncalculated directness. The result is a record that reveals character in motion rather than in retrospect: ambition tempered by caution, curiosity that outruns convention, and a moral sense constantly negotiated in the friction between private interest and public responsibility.
The span of 1660 offers the reader a tour through offices and cabins, countinghouses and taverns, church pews and river stairs. Pepys observes the tides of appointment and dismissal, the protocols of committees, and the etiquettes of approach to power. He watches Londoners return to amusements newly sanctioned, notes the fellows and officers who populate the waterfront, and follows the movement of news through letters and talk. Domestic rhythms frame these public scenes: meals, household purchases, discussions with friends and kin, and the routines of travel by coach or boat. The diary records not abstractions but the concrete means by which a nation is refitted.
Several themes organize the 1660 diary. Ambition is one, as Pepys navigates opportunities opened by a shifting regime. Loyalty is another, in its intertwined forms of friendship, kinship, and professional duty. A third is prudence: the daily art of calculating risk, managing appearances, and keeping accounts literal and figurative. The diary also investigates perception itself, showing how partial information and rumor shape action. Underneath runs a meditation on time, as days accumulate into a career and a city regains its habits. The play between interior desire and exterior constraint provides the tension that gives even routine entries an unmistakable vitality.
For contemporary readers, the diary’s relevance lies in its portrait of how institutions actually work and how individuals make meaning inside them. Pepys makes bureaucracy legible without cynicism and ambition visible without romanticizing it. His London is a networked metropolis of waterborne commutes, informal information channels, and overlapping jurisdictions, recognizably modern in its reliance on paperwork and personal ties. The frank registration of costs, pleasures, and fatigue feels current, as does the search for integrity amid pressure and advantage. The book rewards readers interested in history, politics, management, and urban culture, because it treats each not as a theme but as a daily practice.
Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1660 N.S endures because it marries a clear-eyed record of public transition with the unvarnished tempo of a private life. It evokes diligence, appetite, calculation, and wonder, and it binds them to the restoration of a political order. Its pages invite readers into a year when the future seemed both newly open and strictly contingent, asking them to watch how choices harden into circumstances. As an introduction to the larger diary, this volume shows why Pepys remains indispensable: he makes history tangible, character legible, and time audible. To enter his 1660 is to perceive modernity assembling itself day by day.
Synopsis
Samuel Pepys’s diary for 1660 opens in London under the Commonwealth, with the author employed as a clerk to George Downing in the Exchequer and living in Axe Yard with his wife, Elizabeth. He balances office duties with careful attention to personal finances, resolving to live frugally while noting every expense. The entries record churchgoing, visits among kin, music, and frequent journeys by boat along the Thames. News and rumor about Parliament and the army mingle with household concerns. Pepys’s association with Edward Montagu grows in importance, positioning him for change as the city waits on uncertain politics and the future of the government.
In February and March, Pepys observes the swift turn of events as General Monck enters London and influences the restoration of previously excluded members of Parliament. He records soldiers in the streets, shifting loyalties in the City, and public signs of a changing regime. Work continues at the office, but conversations center on settlement and the prospect of a free Parliament. Pepys’s patron Montagu navigates the moment, and Pepys notes the practical implications for his own employment. The diary maintains a steady rhythm of daily tasks and modest amusements while tracking official proclamations, sermons, and civic ceremonies that foreshadow an approaching political resolution.
With spring, naval affairs come to the fore. Montagu receives command at sea, and Pepys joins him as secretary, attending to letters, bills, and stores. The fleet prepares at the yards of Deptford and Chatham, and Pepys details victualling, pay arrears, and the condition of ships. Once aboard the flagship Naseby, he records routines of shipboard life and the steady exchange of correspondence. The fleet sails to the Dutch coast as the Declaration of Breda is circulated, promising settlement and clemency. Pepys’s entries register the growing expectation of a restored monarchy and the administrative work needed to support the fleet’s mission.
In May, the naval mission culminates. Ceremonies mark the renaming of the Naseby to Royal Charles as the fleet receives the King and his brothers. Pepys describes formal receptions, coastal weather, and attention to provisions and order. The return to England is punctuated by crowds, bells, and bonfires, with a triumphal landing at Dover and a grand entry into London on the twenty-ninth. Pepys notes gratuities and official thanks distributed to leaders and crews, while opportunities open for capable administrators. The diary records the shift from negotiation to celebration as royal government resumes its forms and the city embraces its returning sovereign.
Early summer brings institutional reorganization. Parliament and council refashion offices, and the Navy Board is reconstituted under the restored crown. Pepys is appointed Clerk of the Acts, moves from Axe Yard to lodgings at the Navy Office in Seething Lane, and begins regular collaboration with Sir George Carteret, Sir William Batten, and Sir William Penn. He learns procedures for warrants, contracts, and audits while visiting the dockyards and attending meetings at Whitehall. The Duke of York emerges as the authority in maritime affairs. Pepys continues counting his income and gifts, intent on propriety, as he adapts his daily routine to expanded responsibilities.
As his position stabilizes, domestic arrangements take shape. Pepys furnishes the Seething Lane household, hires and manages servants, and balances hospitality with thrift. He visits family, including tradesmen relations, and cultivates useful connections among merchants and suppliers. Books, instruments, and small luxuries enter cautiously, with frequent resolutions to economy. Religious observance remains regular, framing weeks of office work and city errands. Pepys notes dinners, music, and neighborhood gossip, recording expenses and small quarrels alongside reconciliations. The diary keeps a close ledger of time and money, setting work discipline against sociable evenings, and measuring progress toward solvency after earlier debts and uncertainties.
Late summer and autumn emphasize routine and settlement. Pepys travels to Deptford and Woolwich to examine stores, hears petitions from seamen and widows, and grapples with lingering arrears. He reports on prize goods, supply contracts, and the laying up of ships. In Westminster, the Convention Parliament advances an indemnity with exceptions, and the trials and punishments of regicides follow; Pepys notes the official proceedings and public crowds. Montagu is elevated as Earl of Sandwich, reinforcing the patronage network that supports Pepys’s work. The diary presents the new order taking hold, with careful attention to paperwork, signatures, and the practicalities of paying the fleet.
As winter approaches, the social life of the restored court and capital expands. Pepys begins attending newly licensed playhouses and comments on repertory, staging, and notable actors. He visits musical gatherings and observes fashionable manners. At the Navy Office, paperwork increases, and differences among colleagues occasionally surface over contracts and procedures. Pepys records audiences and briefings connected to the Duke of York, dockyard directives, and repairs to ships returning from service. He keeps his account books current, weighs gifts against duty, and continues the steady rhythm of church, office, and supper, noting how public entertainment and commerce revive under the new regime.
The year closes with restored feast days, formal visits, and exchanges of gifts. Pepys tallies his finances, compares intentions with outcomes, and sets new resolutions for diligence and thrift. He counts the advantages of secure employment and acknowledges obligations to patrons while watching for further changes in policy. The diary ends 1660 by fixing the passage from uncertainty to stability in London’s public and private life. Its central purpose is documentary: to record, day by day, the reestablishment of royal government, the routines of naval administration, and the domestic details through which a civil servant meets a transformed political world.
Historical Context
The diary’s 1660 entries unfold primarily in London and its maritime environs at a moment of constitutional transformation. England was emerging from the Interregnum, and political power shifted rapidly between late 1659 and spring 1660. Samuel Pepys begins the year living at Axe Yard, Westminster, close to Parliament and the centers of administration, and by midyear he relocates to Seething Lane beside the Navy Office. He travels with the fleet in the Downs and across to the Dutch coast, giving the narrative multiple vantage points. Though Pepys wrote in Old Style, the “Complete 1660 N.S.” edition aligns dates to the Gregorian calendar for clarity.
Pepys occupied a crucial, if junior, administrative niche. Connected to his patron Edward Montagu (later Earl of Sandwich), he worked amid the bureaucratic arteries of Whitehall, the Exchequer, and the Navy Board. The Thames and the royal dockyards—Deptford, Woolwich, and Chatham—form the logistical spine of the diary’s world, while the City’s taverns, coffeehouses, and exchanges supply political gossip and commercial intelligence. London’s parishes, churches, and wards reveal the restoration of civic and ecclesiastical routines. The broader setting includes the Dutch Republic, where Charles II and his court-in-exile negotiated a return, allowing Pepys to observe diplomacy literally aboard the king’s future flagship.
The collapse of the Protectorate frames early 1660. After Oliver Cromwell’s death (1658), Richard Cromwell resigned in 1659, and competing bodies—the Rump Parliament, the Committee of Safety, and army grandees—failed to stabilize governance. By December 1659, London’s authority was fragmented; merchants and officials clamored for order. Pepys records the febrile rumor-mill and office maneuvers, reflecting uncertainty within the administrative class. Serving Edward Montagu, he tracked naval dispositions that could determine political outcomes. The diary captures the final exhaustion of republican experiments and a pragmatic elite’s turn toward restoring monarchy as the surest path to revenues, credit, and a settled chain of command.
General George Monck’s intervention proved decisive. Marching from Scotland in January 1660, he entered London on 3 February, bridled army radicalism, and orchestrated the readmission on 21 February of MPs excluded by Pride’s Purge (1648), thereby restoring the full Long Parliament. On 16 March, that Long Parliament dissolved itself, clearing the way for new elections. Pepys, moving among Westminster offices and the City, records the swift normalization of civic life as soldiers gave way to magistrates. The diary mirrors how administrative routines—pay warrants, victualling, securing dockyards—became instruments of political consolidation under Monck’s careful, incremental restoration of parliamentary legitimacy.
April 1660 brought the Convention Parliament and the Declaration of Breda (4 April). The declaration, issued from the Dutch town of Breda, promised a general pardon (with exceptions to be decided by Parliament), liberty to tender consciences, payment of army arrears, and settlement of disputed property. Elections produced a broadly royalist-leaning Parliament receptive to the return of Charles II. Pepys, attached to Montagu’s fleet, notes the circulation of news and expectations at sea and ashore, reflecting the declaration’s rapid spread. The diary suggests how commercial and naval actors weighed those pledges pragmatically, especially assurances of pay and property security that underwrote public credit.
The Restoration’s maritime dimension was pivotal. In April–May 1660, Montagu commanded the Commonwealth flagship Naseby in the Downs, holding a position that could block or enable political settlements. Secret and then open communications ran between the fleet and Charles II at Breda, as naval allegiance tipped toward the monarchy. Ships associated with the republic would be renamed to signal the new order; the Naseby would become the Royal Charles. Pepys details victualling, discipline, and ceremonial preparations, revealing how logistics and symbolism intertwined. His administrative notes show the navy not merely as an arm of war but as the principal stage on which the new regime was publicly affirmed.
The king’s return unfolded with carefully choreographed pageantry. Charles II embarked from Scheveningen and landed at Dover on 25 May 1660, greeted by Monck and crowds, and made his triumphal entry into London on 29 May, his thirtieth birthday. Pepys, with the fleet during these days, records bonfires, bells, and illuminations, along with the practical matters of housing, transport, and reward distribution. The renaming of ships, salutes, and the reintroduction of royal insignia framed a spectacle that restored not only a sovereign but the rituals of authority. Pepys’s entries convey both the exhilaration and the administrative burdens of restart after an 11-year interregnum.
Institutional restoration followed hard upon ceremony. The Privy Council was reconstituted; offices suppressed under the republic were revived; and James, Duke of York, assumed the post of Lord High Admiral in 1660, reasserting royal control over the fleet. The Navy Board was re-staffed with experienced figures such as Sir William Batten, Sir William Penn, and Sir George Carteret (Treasurer of the Navy). On 13 July 1660, Pepys was appointed Clerk of the Acts, the Board’s senior secretary, placing him at the administrative nerve center. The diary’s memoranda on contracts, stores, and tickets document a rapid reweaving of command structures essential to England’s maritime state.
The legal linchpin of settlement was the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion (29 August 1660), which pardoned most past offenses while excepting leading regicides for trial. In October 1660, Thomas Harrison, John Cooke, and others were executed, their heads displayed above Westminster Hall. Pepys records the crowds and the moral theater of punishment, noting reactions that mixed relief, curiosity, and unease. The diary’s proximity to Westminster and Whitehall gives immediacy to these proceedings. By charting official clemency alongside exemplary severity, the entries illustrate how the regime balanced reconciliation with retribution to stabilize law and affirm the sanctity of kingship.
Disbandment of the New Model Army and settlement of arrears were urgent tasks through mid-to-late 1660. Parliament and treasury officials sought funds to pay soldiers and restore civilian peace, wary of mutiny and banditry. John Lambert’s last gambit had failed by April 1660, but scattered unrest persisted until pay was issued and commands dissolved. Pepys chronicles the parallel challenge in the navy: unpaid seamen required tickets and complex audits to secure wages. His notes on warrants, victualling, and muster-books expose the fiscal sinews of the Restoration, showing how financial credibility—more than ideology—anchored the acceptance of the new government.
Theatres, long suppressed by Puritan ordinances (from 1642), returned under royal patents in 1660. Letters patent to Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant (August 1660) legitimated two companies, and in December 1660 a woman publicly played Desdemona in Othello in London, a landmark in English performance. Pepys reports attending early Restoration plays in late 1660, noting novelty, music, and staging. His entries tie cultural policy to politics: the stage became a visible emblem of royal indulgence and urban sociability, drawing courtiers, merchants, and officials into shared spaces. The diary captures both the artistic excitement and the social choreography of reopened playhouses.
Ecclesiastical policy in 1660 aimed at a measured reinstallation of the Church of England. The Worcester House Declaration (25 October 1660) promised a moderated episcopacy and review of the liturgy, anticipating discussions later formalized in 1661. Parish worship shifted quickly: prayers for the king resumed, surplices reappeared, and ejected ministers confronted displacement. Pepys’s Sunday routines—hearing sermons, observing church music, and noting clerical appointments—mirror the contested but orderly reconstitution of Anglican rites. The diary reflects how parish life, rather than abstract theology, signaled the Restoration’s progress to ordinary Londoners through revived ceremonies, fasts, and thanksgivings.
London’s civic and commercial rhythms recovered with the court’s return. The Royal Exchange, livery halls, and river quays funneled news and credit; coffeehouses multiplied as hubs of debate and information. Pepys’s meetings over dinners and cups—mixing Navy officers, merchants, and tradesmen—trace the social networks lubricating contracts and careers. He notes prices, shortages, and household management, mapping economic strains after years of war and political churn. The presence of ambassadors, petitioners, and projectors at Whitehall shows a polity open to schemes and patronage. The diary’s granular references to streets, inns, and shops reveal a metropolis stitching itself back together.
Navy administration is a central thread. The dockyards at Deptford, Woolwich, and Chatham, the ropeyards, and storehouses supplied hulls and fleets that projected power and protected trade. Commissioners Sir William Batten and Sir William Penn oversaw operations; Sir George Carteret handled cashflow; Peter Pett supervised construction on the Medway. In 1660 Sir Denis Gauden emerged as principal victualler. Pepys records the transition from wartime improvisation to standardized procedures: contracts let, inventories reconciled, tickets issued, and fraud policed. He also notes the frictions—perquisites, gifts, and factional rivalries—that complicated reform. The diary thereby documents the sinews of a fiscal-military state in embryo.
The international backdrop linked English politics to continental alignments. The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) ended Franco-Spanish war, reshaping European power and encouraging stability favorable to monarchical restoration. Charles II’s exile in France, the Spanish Netherlands, and finally the Dutch Republic culminated in Breda, where the States General facilitated negotiations and embarkation. Pepys, sailing to Scheveningen, provides a civilian’s view of Anglo-Dutch interactions—naval courtesies, port logistics, and elite hospitality—before rivalry reemerged later in the decade. His notes on flags, salutes, and shipboard ceremony illuminate how diplomatic recognition and maritime protocol validated sovereignty at sea, foreshadowing future commercial and naval contests.
Pepys’s 1660 diary functions as a social and political critique by anatomizing power through routine. He exposes the dependency of office on patronage networks, the ambiguity between gratuities and corruption, and the precarious finances that left sailors and clerks waiting on tickets and favor. Observations on regicide trials question the boundary between justice and spectacle, while scenes of soldiers seeking arrears highlight the human cost of state formation. By juxtaposing courtly display with bureaucratic scarcity, the diary implicates the Restoration settlement in reproducing inequalities even as it promises order, revealing the moral compromises underpinning administrative effectiveness.
The entries also probe class and gender dynamics in a newly permissive urban culture. The return of theatre and court festivity restored employment and artistry yet underscored hierarchies of access and taste. Parish changes reveal winners and losers in the religious settlement, with dissenters marginalized despite conciliatory rhetoric. Coffeehouse talk shows political agency expanding among middling sorts, but contracts and offices still cluster near court. Pepys’s frank notes on backstairs deals, social climbing, and everyday extravagance imply a critique of elite consumption amid public debt. His vantage—between household ledger and state ledger—exposes the era’s central paradox: stability purchased by systemic inequity.
Author Biography
Samuel Pepys was a seventeenth-century English diarist and naval administrator whose record of the Restoration era is among the most valuable eyewitness accounts in English literature. Born in London in the early 1630s and active through the reigns of Charles II and James II, he combined a formidable career in government with a private habit of close observation. His diary captures the Restoration court, the rhythm of urban life, and national crises such as the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Anglo-Dutch wars. Alongside his literary legacy, he was a central architect of administrative reform in the Royal Navy.
Pepys was educated in London and at Cambridge, receiving a humanist training that emphasized languages, history, and rhetoric. Early exposure to the city’s churches, schools, and bookstalls fostered a lasting devotion to reading and careful self-scrutiny. He developed strong interests in music and the theater, which later became recurrent subjects in his diary. Technically minded, he adopted contemporary shorthand to compress daily entries and experimented with filing and indexing systems that supported his administrative work. He was attentive to classical models of conduct and to the emerging scientific ethos of observation, which together shaped both his prose style and his methodical approach to public business.
Pepys began his diary in the early 1660s and kept it for nearly a decade. Written in a compact shorthand and sprinkled with foreign phrases, it records daily life, government business, entertainments, and the texture of London streets. He documented the Restoration of the monarchy, naval campaigns, the plague year, and the Great Fire with unusual immediacy. While often candid about personal habits and social encounters, he remained primarily an observer of his city and workplace. He ended the diary in the late 1660s, explaining that worries about his eyesight made the strain of nightly writing imprudent, though he preserved the manuscript with care.
Parallel to his writing, Pepys built an influential career in the Royal Navy’s civil administration. Rising from clerkships to senior office, he became closely associated with the Navy Board and later the Admiralty, where he pressed for professional standards in accounts, supply, ship maintenance, and record-keeping. He worked to strengthen oversight of victualling and stores, advocated merit and training for officers, and helped articulate long-term construction programs that increased the fleet’s capacity in the later 1670s. He also served in Parliament during the 1670s and 1680s, where his interventions typically concerned naval finance and governance, earning a reputation for diligence and practical command of detail.
Pepys’s public service unfolded amid political turbulence. During the anti-Catholic scares of the late 1670s he was briefly imprisoned on suspicions that did not result in conviction; he later returned to office and continued to advise on naval matters. He maintained a professional association with the Duke of York, a relationship grounded in maritime administration. In the mid-1680s he served as President of the Royal Society, reflecting his standing among proponents of empirical inquiry. In that capacity he provided the Society’s imprimatur for Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, signaling institutional endorsement of a landmark in scientific thought. After the Revolution of 1688, he withdrew from government.
Pepys wrote official memoranda and, in the 1690s, published Memoires Relating to the State of the Royal Navy, a reflective survey of policy and practice grounded in his experience. His private diary, however, remained unknown to the public for generations. Deciphered and first published in the nineteenth century, it drew immediate interest for its vivid portrait of Restoration society and governance. Later scholarly editions expanded access and deepened understanding of its context and methodology. Critics and historians have praised its precision of observation, range of subject matter, and unvarnished tone, which together make it indispensable to studies of urban life, theater, administration, and the social history of seventeenth-century England.
In retirement, Pepys devoted himself to organizing his papers and an exceptional private library of books, prints, ballads, and manuscripts. He arranged the collection with systematic care and eventually bequeathed it to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where it remains a resource for scholars. He spent his final years in relative quiet with a long-standing colleague, dying in the early eighteenth century. His legacy has two enduring strands: as a reforming civil servant who helped professionalize the Royal Navy, and as a diarist whose frank, capacious record illuminates a formative period in English history. Today, his work is read for both its human voice and its documentary power.
Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1660 N.S
PREFACE
Although the Diary of Samuel Pepys has been in the hands of the public for nearly seventy years, it has not hitherto appeared in its entirety. In the original edition of 1825 scarcely half of the manuscript was printed. Lord Braybrooke[1] added some passages as the various editions were published, but in the preface to his last edition he wrote: "there appeared indeed no necessity to amplify or in any way to alter the text of the Diary beyond the correction of a few verbal errors and corrupt passages hitherto overlooked."
The public knew nothing as to what was left unprinted, and there was therefore a general feeling of gratification when it was announced some eighteen years ago that a new edition was to be published by the Rev. Mynors Bright, with the addition of new matter equal to a third of the whole. It was understood that at last the Diary was to appear in its entirety, but there was a passage in Mr. Bright's preface which suggested a doubt respecting the necessary completeness. He wrote: "It would have been tedious to the reader if I had copied from the Diary the account of his daily work at the office."
As a matter of fact, Mr. Bright left roughly speaking about one-fifth of the whole Diary still unprinted, although he transcribed the whole, and bequeathed his transcript to Magdalene College.
It has now been decided that the whole of the Diary shall be made public, with the exception of a few passages which cannot possibly be printed. It may be thought by some that these omissions are due to an unnecessary squeamishness, but it is not really so, and readers are therefore asked to have faith in the judgment of the editor. Where any passages have been omitted marks of omission are added[1q], so that in all cases readers will know where anything has been left out.
Lord Braybrooke made the remark in his "Life of Pepys," that "the cipher employed by him[2] greatly resembles that known by the name of 'Rich's system.'" When Mr. Bright came to decipher the MS., he discovered that the shorthand system used by Pepys was an earlier one than Rich's, viz., that of Thomas Shelton, who made his system public in 1620.
In his various editions Lord Braybrooke gave a large number of valuable notes, in the collection and arrangement of which he was assisted by the late Mr. John Holmes of the British Museum, and the late Mr. James Yeowell, sometime sub-editor of "Notes and Queries." Where these notes are left unaltered in the present edition the letter "B." has been affixed to them, but in many instances the notes have been altered and added to from later information, and in these cases no mark is affixed. A large number of additional notes are now supplied, but still much has had to be left unexplained. Many persons are mentioned in the Diary who were little known in the outer world, and in some instances it has been impossible to identify them. In other cases, however, it has been possible to throw light upon these persons by reference to different portions of the Diary itself. I would here ask the kind assistance of any reader who is able to illustrate passages that have been left unnoted. I have received much assistance from the various books in which the Diary is quoted. Every writer on the period covered by the Diary has been pleased to illustrate his subject by quotations from Pepys, and from these books it has often been possible to find information which helps to explain difficult passages in the Diary.
Much illustrative matter of value was obtained by Lord Braybrooke from the "Diurnall" of Thomas Rugge, which is preserved in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 10,116, 10,117). The following is the description of this interesting work as given by Lord Braybrooke
Another work I have found of the greatest value is the late Mr. J. E. Doyle's "Official Baronage of England" (1886), which contains a mass of valuable information not easily to be obtained elsewhere. By reference to its pages I have been enabled to correct several erroneous dates in previous notes caused by a very natural confusion of years in the case of the months of January, February, and March, before it was finally fixed that the year should commence in January instead of March. More confusion has probably been introduced into history from this than from any other cause of a like nature. The reference to two years, as in the case of, say, Jan. 5, 1661-62, may appear clumsy, but it is the only safe plan of notation. If one year only is mentioned, the reader is never sure whether or not the correction has been made. It is a matter for sincere regret that the popular support was withheld from Mr. Doyle's important undertaking, so that the author's intention of publishing further volumes, containing the Baronies not dealt with in those already published, was frustrated.
PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF THE DIARY.
I. Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. John Smith, A.B., of St. John's College, Cambridge, from the original Shorthand MS. in the Pepysian Library, and a Selection from his Private Correspondence. Edited by Richard, Lord Braybrooke. In two volumes. London, Henry Colburn... 1825. 4vo.
2. Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S.... Second edition. In five volumes. London, Henry Colburn.... 1828. 8vo.
3. Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; with a Life and Notes by Richard, Lord Braybrooke; the third edition, considerably enlarged. London, Henry Colburn.... 1848-49. 5 vols. sm. 8vo.
4. Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S.... The fourth edition, revised and corrected. In four volumes. London, published for Henry Colburn by his successors, Hurst and Blackett... 1854. 8vo.
The copyright of Lord Braybrooke's edition was purchased by the late Mr. Henry G. Bohn, who added the book to his Historical Library.
5. Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S., from his MS. Cypber in the Pepysian Library, with a Life and Notes by Richard, Lord Braybrooke. Deciphered, with additional notes, by the Rev. Mynors Bright, M.A.... London, Bickers and Son, 1875-79. 6 vols. 8vo.
Nos. 1, 2 and 3 being out of copyright have been reprinted by various publishers.
No. 5 is out of print.
The family of Pepys is one of considerable antiquity in the east of England, and the Hon. Walter Courtenay Pepys
says that the first mention of the name that he has been able to find is in the Hundred Rolls (Edw. I, 1273), where Richard Pepis and John Pepes are registered as holding lands in the county of Cambridge. In the next century the name of William Pepis is found in deeds relating to lands in the parish of Cottenham, co. Cambridge, dated 1329 and 1340 respectively (Cole MSS., British Museum, vol. i., p. 56; vol. xlii., p. 44). According to the Court Roll of the manor of Pelhams, in the parish of Cottenham, Thomas Pepys was "bayliffe of the Abbot of Crowland in 1434," but in spite of these references, as well as others to persons of the same name at Braintree, Essex, Depedale, Norfolk, &c., the first ancestor of the existing branches of the family from whom Mr. Walter Pepys is able to trace an undoubted descent, is "William Pepis the elder, of Cottenham, co. Cambridge," whose will is dated 20th March, 1519.
In 1852 a curious manuscript volume, bound in vellum, and entitled "Liber Talboti Pepys de instrumentis ad Feoda pertinentibus exemplificatis," was discovered in an old chest in the parish church of Bolney, Sussex, by the vicar, the Rev. John Dale, who delivered it to Henry Pepys, Bishop of Worcester, and the book is still in the possession of the family. This volume contains various genealogical entries, and among them are references to the Thomas Pepys of 1434 mentioned above, and to the later William Pepys. The reference to the latter runs thus:—
In illustration of this entry we may refer to the Diary of June 12th, 1667, where it is written that Roger Pepys told Samuel that "we did certainly come out of Scotland with the Abbot of Crowland." The references to various members of the family settled in Cottenham and elsewhere, at an early date already alluded to, seem to show that there is little foundation for this very positive statement.
With regard to the standing of the family, Mr. Walter Pepys writes:—
There is a very general notion that Samuel Pepys was of plebeian birth because his father followed the trade of a tailor, and his own remark, "But I believe indeed our family were never considerable,"—[February 10th, 1661-62.] has been brought forward in corroboration of this view, but nothing can possibly be more erroneous, and there can be no doubt that the Diarist was really proud of his descent. This may be seen from the inscription on one of his book-plates, where he is stated to be:—
Many members of the family have greatly distinguished themselves since the Diarist's day, and of them Mr. Foss wrote ("Judges of England," vol. vi., p. 467):—
The William Pepys of Cottenham who commences the pedigree had three sons and three daughters; from the eldest son (Thomas) descended the first Norfolk branch, from the second son (John Pepys of Southcreeke) descended the second Norfolk branch, and from the third son (William) descended the Impington branch. The latter William had four sons and two daughters; two of these sons were named Thomas, and as they were both living at the same time one was distinguished as "the black" and the other as "the red." Thomas the red had four sons and four daughters. John, born 1601, was the third son, and he became the father of Samuel the Diarist. Little is known of John Pepys, but we learn when the Diary opens that he was settled in London as a tailor. He does not appear to have been a successful man, and his son on August 26th, 1661, found that there was only L45 owing to him, and that he owed about the same sum. He was a citizen of London in 1650, when his son Samuel was admitted to Magdalene College, but at an earlier period he appears to have had business relations with Holland.
In August, 1661, John Pepys retired to a small property at Brampton (worth about L80 per annum), which had been left to him by his eldest brother, Robert Pepys, where he died in 1680.
The following is a copy of John Pepys's will:
His wife Margaret, whose maiden name has not been discovered, died on the 25th March, 1667, also at Brampton. The family of these two consisted of six sons and five daughters: John (born 1632, died 1640), Samuel (born 1633, died 1703), Thomas (born 1634, died 1664), Jacob (born 1637, died young), Robert (born 1638, died young), and John (born 1641, died 1677); Mary (born 1627), Paulina (born 1628), Esther (born 1630), Sarah (born 1635; these four girls all died young), and Paulina (born 1640, died 1680), who married John Jackson of Brampton, and had two sons, Samuel and John. The latter was made his heir by Samuel Pepys.
Samuel Pepys was born on the 23rd February, 1632-3, but the place of birth is not known with certainty. Samuel Knight, D.D., author of the "Life of Colet," who was a connection of the family (having married Hannah Pepys, daughter of Talbot Pepys of Impington), says positively that it was at Brampton. His statement cannot be corroborated by the registers of Brampton church, as these records do not commence until the year 1654.
Samuel's early youth appears to have been spent pretty equally between town and country. When he and his brother Tom were children they lived with a nurse (Goody Lawrence) at Kingsland, and in after life Samuel refers to his habit of shooting with bow and arrow in the fields around that place. He then went to school at Huntingdon, from which he was transferred to St. Paul's School in London. He remained at the latter place until 1650, early in which year his name was entered as a sizar on the boards of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was admitted on the 21st June, but subsequently he transferred his allegiance to Magdalene College, where he was admitted a sizar on the 1st October of this same year. He did not enter into residence until March 5th, 1650-51, but in the following month he was elected to one of Mr. Spendluffe's scholarships, and two years later (October 14th, 1653) he was preferred to one on Dr. John Smith's foundation.
Little or nothing is known of Pepys's career at college, but soon after obtaining the Smith scholarship he got into trouble, and, with a companion, was admonished for being drunk.
His time, however, was not wasted, and there is evidence that he carried into his busy life a fair stock of classical learning and a true love of letters. Throughout his life he looked back with pleasure to the time he spent at the University, and his college was remembered in his will when he bequeathed his valuable library. In this same year, 1653, he graduated B.A. On the 1st of December, 1655, when he was still without any settled means of support, he married Elizabeth St. Michel, a beautiful and portionless girl of fifteen. Her father, Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, was of a good family in Anjou, and son of the High Sheriff of Bauge (in Anjou). Having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, when in the German service, his father disinherited him, and he also lost the reversion of some L20,000 sterling which his uncle, a rich French canon, intended to bequeath to him before he left the Roman Catholic church. He came over to England in the retinue of Henrietta Maria on her marriage with Charles I, but the queen dismissed him on finding that he was a Protestant and did not attend mass. Being a handsome man, with courtly manners, he found favour in the sight of the widow of an Irish squire (daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill), who married him against the wishes of her family. After the marriage, Alexander St. Michel and his wife having raised some fifteen hundred pounds, started, for France in the hope of recovering some part of the family property. They were unfortunate in all their movements, and on their journey to France were taken prisoners by the Dunkirkers, who stripped them of all their property. They now settled at Bideford in Devonshire, and here or near by were born Elizabeth and the rest of the family. At a later period St. Michel served against the Spaniards at the taking of Dunkirk and Arras, and settled at Paris. He was an unfortunate man throughout life, and his son Balthasar says of him: "My father at last grew full of whimsies and propositions of perpetual motion, &c., to kings, princes and others, which soaked his pocket, and brought all our family so low by his not minding anything else, spending all he had got and getting no other employment to bring in more." While he was away from Paris, some "deluding papists" and "pretended devouts" persuaded Madame St. Michel to place her daughter in the nunnery of the Ursulines. When the father heard of this, he hurried back, and managed to get Elizabeth out of the nunnery after she had been there twelve days. Thinking that France was a dangerous place to live in, he removed his family to England, where soon afterwards his daughter was married, although, as Lord Braybrooke remarks, we are not told how she became acquainted with Pepys. St. Michel was greatly pleased that his daughter had become the wife of a true Protestant, and she herself said to him, kissing his eyes: "Dear father, though in my tender years I was by my low fortune in this world deluded to popery, by the fond dictates thereof I have now (joined with my riper years, which give me some understanding) a man to my husband too wise and one too religious to the Protestant religion to suffer my thoughts to bend that way any more."
Alexander St. Michel kept up his character for fecklessness through life, and took out patents for curing smoking chimneys, purifying water, and moulding bricks. In 1667 he petitioned the king, asserting that he had discovered King Solomon's gold and silver mines, and the Diary of the same date contains a curious commentary upon these visions of wealth:—
As already noted, Pepys was married on December 1st, 1655. This date is given on the authority of the Registers of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster,
but strangely enough Pepys himself supposed his wedding day to have been October 10th. Lord Braybrooke remarks on this,
What is even more strange than Pepys's conviction that he was married on October 10th is Mrs. Pepys's agreement with him: On October 10th, 1666, we read,
Here Mrs. Pepys was wrong, as it was eleven years; so she may have been wrong in the day also. In spite of the high authority of Mr. and Mrs. Pepys on a question so interesting to them both, we must accept the register as conclusive on this point until further evidence of its incorrectness is forthcoming.
Sir Edward Montage (afterwards Earl of Sandwich), who was Pepys's first cousin one remove (Pepys's grandfather and Montage's mother being brother and sister), was a true friend to his poor kinsman, and he at once held out a helping hand to the imprudent couple, allowing them to live in his house. John Pepys does not appear to have been in sufficiently good circumstances to pay for the education of his son, and it seems probable that Samuel went to the university under his influential cousin's patronage. At all events he owed his success in life primarily to Montage, to whom he appears to have acted as a sort of agent.
On March 26th, 1658, he underwent a successful operation for the stone, and we find him celebrating each anniversary of this important event of his life with thanksgiving. He went through life with little trouble on this score, but when he died at the age of seventy a nest of seven stones was found in his left kidney.
In June, 1659, Pepys accompanied Sir Edward Montage in the "Naseby," when the Admiral of the Baltic Fleet and Algernon Sidney went to the Sound as joint commissioners. It was then that Montage corresponded with Charles II., but he had to be very secret in his movements on account of the suspicions of Sidney. Pepys knew nothing of what was going on, as he confesses in the Diary:
On Pepys's return to England he obtained an appointment in the office of Mr., afterwards Sir George Downing, who was one of the Four Tellers of the Receipt of the Exchequer. He was clerk to Downing when he commenced his diary on January 1st, 1660, and then lived in Axe Yard, close by King Street, Westminster, a place on the site of which was built Fludyer Street. This, too, was swept away for the Government offices in 1864-65. His salary was L50 a year. Downing invited Pepys to accompany him to Holland, but he does not appear to have been very pressing, and a few days later in this same January he got him appointed one of the Clerks of the Council, but the recipient of the favour does not appear to have been very grateful. A great change was now about to take place in Pepys's fortunes, for in the following March he was made secretary to Sir Edward Montage in his expedition to bring about the Restoration of Charles II., and on the 23rd he went on board the "Swiftsure" with Montage. On the 30th they transferred themselves to the "Naseby." Owing to this appointment of Pepys we have in the Diary a very full account of the daily movements of the fleet until, events having followed their natural course, Montage had the honour of bringing Charles II. to Dover, where the King was received with great rejoicing. Several of the ships in the fleet had names which were obnoxious to Royalists, and on the 23rd May the King came on board the "Naseby" and altered there—the "Naseby" to the "Charles," the "Richard" to the "Royal James," the "Speaker" to the "Mary," the "Winsby" to the "Happy Return," the "Wakefield" to the "Richmond," the "Lambert" to the "Henrietta," the "Cheriton" to the "Speedwell," and the "Bradford" to the "Success." This portion of the Diary is of particular interest, and the various excursions in Holland which the Diarist made are described in a very amusing manner.
When Montagu and Pepys had both returned to London, the former told the latter that he had obtained the promise of the office of Clerk of the Acts for him. Many difficulties occurred before Pepys actually secured the place, so that at times he was inclined to accept the offers which were made to him to give it up. General Monk was anxious to get the office for Mr. Turner, who was Chief Clerk in the Navy Office, but in the end Montagu's influence secured it for Pepys. Then Thomas Barlow, who had been appointed Clerk of the Acts in 1638, turned up, and appeared likely to become disagreeable. Pepys bought him off with an annuity of too, which he did not have to pay for any length of time, as Barlow died in February, 1664-65. It is not in human nature to be greatly grieved at the death of one to whom you have to pay an annuity, and Pepys expresses his feelings in a very naive manner:—
This office was one of considerable importance, for not only was the holder the secretary or registrar of the Navy Board, but he was also one of the principal officers of the navy, and, as member of the board, of equal rank with the other commissioners. This office Pepys held during the whole period of the Diary, and we find him constantly fighting for his position, as some of the other members wished to reduce his rank merely to that of secretary. In his contention Pepys appears to have been in the right, and a valuable MS. volume in the Pepysian library contains an extract from the Old Instructions of about 1649, in which this very point is argued out. The volume appears to have been made up by William Penn the Quaker, from a collection of manuscripts on the affairs of the navy found in his father's, "Sir William Penn's closet." It was presented to Charles II., with a dedication ending thus:—
It does not appear how the volume came into Pepys's possession. It may have been given him by the king, or he may have taken it as a perquisite of his office. The book has an index, which was evidently added by Pepys; in this are these entries, which show his appreciation of the contents of the MS.:—
The following description of the duty of the Clerk of the Acts shows the importance of the office, and the statement that if the clerk is not fitted to act as a commissioner he is a blockhead and unfit for his employment is particularly racy, and not quite the form of expression one would expect to find in an official document:
