The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete E-Book

Samuel Pepys

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The Diary of Samuel Pepys '— Complete is a remarkable primary source reflecting daily life in 17th-century England, marked by a captivating blend of personal anecdotes and historical observances. Pepys' writing style is characterized by its candidness, wit, and meticulous detail, offering readers an intimate glimpse into the societal changes, political intrigues, and cultural dynamics of his time. The diary, dating from 1660 to 1669, serves not only as a vivid chronicle of Pepys' own experiences but also as a compelling artifact that captures significant events, including the Great Fire of London and the Anglo-Dutch Wars. Samuel Pepys, a successful naval administrator and a prominent figure in the Restoration period, was deeply embedded in the political and social fabric of his time. His unique perspective as an insider to the events of the day provides a context that enhances the authenticity of the diary. Pepys' background in the burgeoning naval architecture and his keen interest in science and the arts profoundly influenced his observations, making the diary an essential historical reference. This comprehensive edition of Pepys' diary is essential for historians, scholars, and general readers alike, offering unparalleled insights into a transformative period in English history. Each entry resonates with the immediacy of human experience, making it not just a historical document but also an enduring literary work that invites reflection on the complexities of life, ambition, and the passage of time. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.

Leseprobe

Samuel Pepys

The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete

Enriched edition. A Peek into Restoration England: Candid Observations of a 17th-Century Englishman

In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience.

Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Selene Dorswell

Edited and published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4057664171177

Table of Contents

Introduction

Author Biography

Historical Context

Synopsis

The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete

Analysis

Reflection

Memorable Quotes

Notes

Introduction

Table of Contents

This collection presents the full, continuous text of The Diary of Samuel Pepys, arranged in the calendar sequence in which Pepys wrote it, from the opening months of 1659–1660 through the conclusion in 1669. Its aim is to provide an unbroken reading experience of one of the most celebrated personal records in English letters, preserving the day-by-day texture and cumulative force of Pepys’s observations. The monthly divisions reflect the diarist’s original chronology, including dual-year notations consistent with seventeenth-century Old Style dating, and the prefatory materials frame the whole as a coherent, authoritative account of a remarkable decade in London life.

Spanning the years of the Restoration, the diary follows Pepys’s public responsibilities and private routines in parallel. Readers encounter his working days at the Navy Office, his domestic arrangements, his social engagements, and his movements through the streets, churches, markets, and playhouses of the city. The entries register the rhythms of a professional administrator’s life alongside the unpredictable pressures of a capital undergoing rapid change. Without interrupting the diarist’s voice, the collection’s scope permits a view of both the intimate and the institutional, showing how personal experience and national affairs intersect across a sequence of ordinary and extraordinary days.

The materials gathered here are a personal diary and the editorial apparatus necessary to understand it. The body of the work consists of dated daily entries written as a private journal. The accompanying prefaces and the survey of previous editions introduce the text’s transmission and publication context, guiding readers through matters such as dating conventions and the history of how the diary came to be read. There are no novels, plays, poems, or separate essays within; rather, the integrity of the diary as a single sustained narrative is preserved, supplemented only by contextual notes that clarify its form and lineage.

The purpose of presenting the diary complete is twofold: to preserve Pepys’s voice as it unfolds in real time, and to convey the chronological discipline that gives his record its power. The organization by month enables readers to follow the diarist’s habits, concerns, and surroundings with minimal mediation, so that the pace of his life becomes part of the reading experience. Pepys ceased regular entries in 1669, after which the journal concludes. Within those bounds, this edition provides the fullest available continuity of his testimony, allowing the diary to function simultaneously as literature, documentation, and self-portrait.

A unifying theme is the diarist’s relentless attention to the texture of lived experience. Pepys measures his days by work accomplished, money spent, people met, and sights seen, revealing how practical calculations and social obligations shape a life. He is drawn to theater and music, attentive to news and rumor, and deeply interested in systems—of administration, commerce, and conduct. The interplay of discipline and appetite, ambition and anxiety, duty and diversion, gives the diary its distinctive energy. Across months and years, recurring motifs—industry, thrift, entertainment, friendship, and reputation—bind the entries into a coherent portrait of character and era.

Stylistically, the diary is marked by immediacy, candor, and an eye for concrete detail. Pepys often records events in a brisk, present-tense manner that conveys urgency and presence. He wrote his journal in shorthand and occasionally employed foreign words or coded phrases for privacy, yet the prevailing effect in translation and transcription is of plain, vivid prose. Lists, sums, and quick judgments sit beside descriptions of weather, streets, and performances, yielding a mixture of ledger, notebook, and narrative. The voice is practical and curious, with a capacity for self-scrutiny that deepens as the record accumulates.

Historically, the diary is indispensable for its firsthand perspective on Restoration London. It encompasses the return of the monarchy in 1660, the routines and crises of naval administration, and the civic and social fabric of the metropolis. Within these years, Pepys bears witness to major public events, including epidemic disease, urban disaster, and war, while also capturing their aftermath in daily practices and policy. The value lies not only in dramatic moments but in the administrative notes, street-level observations, and personal reactions that document how public affairs were experienced and understood by an informed, engaged participant.

Equally significant is the diary’s record of everyday life. Pepys describes clothing, food, housing, transport, and the rituals of business and leisure with a steady curiosity that illuminates seventeenth-century material culture. Visits to shops and markets, evenings at playhouses, churchgoing, and meals at home or tavern reveal a city of transactions and sociability. The continual balancing of household accounts and professional obligations shows how personal economy, domestic management, and public service overlapped. This granular attention to routine—what was bought, seen, heard, and felt—turns the diary into an unmatched source for habits, tastes, and the mechanics of urban living.

Across the full span, Pepys’s self-portrait is complex and often self-questioning. He records aspirations and anxieties, satisfactions and regrets, with a frankness that makes the diary psychologically engaging as well as historically rich. The tensions of advancement, loyalty, and conscience are recurrent, as are reflections on health, time, and reputation. Without imposing a retrospective narrative, the entries trace the formation of a public servant’s character in a demanding milieu. The result is a study in motivation and restraint: the ethical calculations of a man managing relationships, responsibilities, and desires within a world where opportunity and risk are constantly entwined.

The monthly architecture of this edition enhances the diary’s cumulative effect. Seasonal patterns, fiscal cycles, and ceremonial calendars become visible as readers move through months that often carry dual-year dates, a reflection of contemporary Old Style chronology. This structure encourages longitudinal reading—tracking shifting priorities, persistent habits, and recurring pressures—while preserving the day-to-day cadence. The arrangement makes it possible to observe how small adjustments build into significant changes and how routine sustains life amid disruption. By following the diarist’s own temporal framework, the collection invites immersion in a lived present that gradually reveals larger arcs.

The prefatory materials and the section on previous editions orient readers to the diary’s textual history and reception. They outline how the journal, originally written for private use, became a foundational document for literary and historical study, and they clarify conventions that can otherwise obstruct comprehension, such as dating, orthography, and the relation between shorthand manuscripts and printed texts. This apparatus does not compete with the diary’s voice; it equips readers to engage it confidently, to understand its editorial lineage, and to appreciate why completeness and chronology matter for interpreting a work that is both personal record and public resource.

Taken together, the parts collected here form a complete, coherent witness to a decisive decade, delivered in the unforced order of daily writing. The diary is significant because it marries observation with participation, detail with perspective, and private curiosity with public service. As literature, it offers character, scene, and rhythm; as evidence, it offers dates, decisions, and contexts. The ambition of this edition is simple: to present Pepys’s full testimony in a way that is accessible, reliable, and faithful to his method, so that readers may inhabit his time and better see how a life and a city were lived.

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator whose writings provide the most vivid first-hand account of Restoration London. Best known for his Diary, kept through the 1660s, he also rose to senior office in the Royal Navy’s civil administration and helped professionalize its management. His observations encompass the Restoration of the monarchy, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Great Plague, and the Great Fire, combining administrative insight with the texture of everyday urban life. Beyond letters and policy papers, his legacy includes leadership in a learned society and a carefully curated personal library, central to studies of seventeenth-century politics, culture, and bureaucracy.

Pepys grew up in London and received a classical education at St Paul’s School before studying at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he completed degrees in the mid-seventeenth century. University training grounded him in history, rhetoric, and scripture, and he absorbed the era’s humanist habits of note-taking and self-examination that later shaped his Diary. Early employment in government offices introduced him to the routines of accounts and correspondence. Through the patronage of a prominent naval commander, he entered public service attached to maritime affairs, gaining exposure to fleet administration and court politics. A painful bladder-stone operation in the late 1650s, which he later commemorated annually, sharpened his sense of mortality and observation.

With the Restoration, Pepys became Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, a role that demanded constant attention to shipbuilding, victualling, wages, and contracts. He built a reputation for meticulous record-keeping and for pushing reforms that emphasized order, transparency, and professional standards. Working closely with the Duke of York, he navigated wartime shortages and bureaucratic rivalry during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. His office diaries, memoranda, and correspondence show a civil servant learning to tame a sprawling institution, advancing audits, standardized procedures, and clearer lines of responsibility. The experience honed administrative skills that would underpin his later service as Secretary to the Admiralty and as an adviser on naval policy.

Pepys’s Diary, written in a contemporary shorthand from 1660 to 1669, is unmatched for its candid, daily chronicle of work, leisure, and public crisis. He reports theater-going, music-making, meetings with officials, and the pulse of London streets, alongside penetrating accounts of the Plague and the Fire. The journal’s immediacy comes from his method: terse entries written soon after events, cross-checked against papers he managed at the office. He stopped keeping it in the late 1660s, fearing for his eyesight. Not published in his lifetime, it was deciphered and released in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is now a foundational source for historians and general readers.

Curious and sociable, Pepys gravitated to the centers of Restoration culture and science. He joined the Royal Society and later served as its president, authorizing the Society’s imprimatur for Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. His tenure coincided with the appearance of landmark natural philosophy, and he maintained friendships with experimenters, instrument-makers, and mathematicians. A devoted amateur musician, he sang, played, collected instruments, and kept detailed notes on performances and new compositions. He read widely in history, travel, and poetry, and built a collection of prints and maps. This broad cultural engagement suffuses his Diary and informed his approach to evidence, experiment, and practical reform.

After serving in Parliament and holding senior naval office in the 1670s and 1680s, Pepys weathered political turbulence, including investigations that briefly cost him his liberty before he was cleared. Restored to influence, he returned to the Admiralty and undertook special commissions on naval readiness and overseas garrisons. He authored policy tracts, notably his Memoires of the Royal Navy (1690), which distilled experience into proposals for governance, supply, and ship design. Though no longer keeping a Diary, he maintained extensive files and correspondence. His interest in standards extended to examinations for officers and to systematizing records, contributing to a more professionalized naval service.

Pepys spent his later years organizing his papers and library, which he arranged with remarkable care and left to his old college, where it survives as the Pepys Library. He died in the early eighteenth century, remembered in his parish church and by colleagues who valued his administrative acumen. Modern editions of the Diary have transformed understanding of the Restoration era, illuminating everyday life alongside statecraft. Historians mine his notes for granular evidence; readers prize his voice for its immediacy and self-scrutiny. His reputation now rests on a dual achievement: reforming a major institution and recording, with singular frankness, the lived texture of his age.

Historical Context

Table of Contents

Samuel Pepys’s diary, kept daily from January 1660 to May 1669, chronicles the transformation of England from the last months of the Interregnum to the settled Restoration regime of Charles II. Born in London in 1633 and educated at St Paul’s School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys rose from a clerk under Sir George Downing to Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board in 1660. Writing largely at his house beside the Navy Office in Seething Lane, he recorded court and city, dockyard and theatre, in a private shorthand that preserved the textures of Restoration London while mapping the rhythms of maritime administration, commerce, and domestic life.

The earliest entries capture the political disarray that followed Oliver Cromwell’s death (1658) and the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate. General George Monck’s march from Scotland, the reconvening of the Long Parliament, and the Convention Parliament’s reception of Charles II’s Declaration of Breda (April 1660) framed the Restoration. In May 1660 Pepys sailed with his patron Edward Montagu, soon Earl of Sandwich, to bring the King home from the Dutch coast aboard the renamed Royal Charles. These events underpin many diary passages dated “1659–1660” under Old Style reckoning, illuminating the uncertain transition from republican experiment to royal government and the return of ceremonial monarchy.

After the Restoration, the Cavalier Parliament (1661) consolidated authority through statutes that reshaped religion and local governance. The Corporation Act (1661) purified town governments, the Act of Uniformity (1662) restored the Church of England’s liturgy, and subsequent Conventicle and Five Mile Acts pressured Nonconformists. Pepys’s notes of parish life at St Olave’s, Hart Street, and court observances at Whitehall reflect the wider struggle to rebuild ecclesiastical order while preserving political stability. The diary’s rhythm of Sundays, fasts, and civic pageantry registers how Restoration orthodoxy reached from Westminster to the city’s churches, guilds, and households, shaping colleagues, servants, and friends across his pages.

Restored monarchy also meant revived court culture. Charles II’s coronation at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661 reintroduced elaborate ceremonial. The royal marriage to Catherine of Braganza in 1662 bound England to Portugal; her dowry delivered Tangier and Bombay, entangling Pepys’s Navy Board in Mediterranean garrisons and imperial logistics. Familiar names in the diary—Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine; and James, Duke of York as Lord High Admiral—anchor court patronage networks that reached into naval appointments and contracts. Pepys’s fascination with masques, banquets, and royal progresses records not frivolity alone but the political theatre through which the regime sought loyalty and legitimacy.

Pepys’s career placed him at the heart of Restoration administration. The Navy Board at Seething Lane—where Pepys worked with Sir William Batten, Sir William Penn, Sir John Mennes, and Treasurer Sir George Carteret—managed shipbuilding, stores, and victualling through the dockyards at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Harwich. William Coventry’s discipline from the Duke of York’s office supported reform. The diary’s recurrent inspections, warrants, and committee sessions convey a bureaucracy struggling with paperwork, fraud, and arrears while attempting standardization in contracts and supply. Pepys’s methods—minute memoranda, indexed papers, and relentless follow-up—reflect a broader seventeenth-century move toward professionalized, document-driven governance across state offices.

Financing the monarchy’s ambitions remained precarious. The Restoration settlement relied on customs and excise, supplemented by the Hearth Tax (1662), yet wartime outlays routinely outran revenue. The sale of Dunkirk to France in October 1662 for £320,000 eased pressures but symbolized fiscal constraint. Pepys repeatedly encounters tallies, unpaid bills, and goldsmith-bankers as the Crown juggled short-term credit. Prize goods from captured vessels and economies in stores became vital. Such constraints touch every year of the diary, from peacetime procurement to wartime crisis, revealing a state dependent on City credit, parliamentary grants, and administrative ingenuity to keep fleets victualled and sailors paid.

The Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) dominates Pepys’s middle years. He records the mobilization after maritime tensions over the Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, 1663) and colonial trade. James, Duke of York, commanded at Lowestoft (June 1665); later came the protracted Four Days’ Battle (June 1666), the St James’s Day Fight (July 1666), and Holmes’s Bonfire in the Vlie (August 1666). Strategic strain culminated in the Dutch raid on the Medway (June 1667), a humiliation that spotlighted supply defects and unpaid crews. The Treaty of Breda (July 1667) closed the war, exchanging global footholds and prompting introspection on naval management that Pepys documents with forensic candor.

Public health catastrophe arrived with the Great Plague of London (1665). Pepys’s entries align with Bills of Mortality as weekly burials surged, red crosses marked infected houses, and trade dispersed beyond the city. The court withdrew to Oxford; business shifted to outlying hamlets and riverside yards. Posts, courts, and playhouses shut; quarantine constrained shipping. Pepys’s office navigated these disruptions, keeping victualling and wages moving while colleagues sickened or fled. The diary’s attention to rumor, doctoring, and the uneven enforcement of orders captures how epidemic disease reshaped labor, sociability, and governance, complicating wartime logistics and intensifying moral and religious anxieties within neighborhoods and parishes.

The Great Fire of London (2–6 September 1666) remade the city Pepys inhabited. Beginning in Pudding Lane at Thomas Farriner’s bakery, the conflagration erased around 13,000 houses, old St Paul’s Cathedral, and swathes of the mercantile core. Pepys observed firebreaks, the use of gunpowder, and the flight of valuables by river barge. Afterward, the Fire Court expedited disputes; the Rebuilding Act (1667) mandated brick construction, wider streets, and regulated frontages. Surveyors such as Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke mapped ruins and plans. Across late 1666 and 1667 entries, daily errands, housing, and office routines reflect a city negotiating displacement, construction, and the renewal of urban order.

Pepys’s London thrummed with scientific experiment and print culture. The Royal Society, informally active by 1660 and chartered in 1662, created a milieu for Robert Boyle, Hooke, and Wren to exchange observations; Pepys became a Fellow in 1665 and later its President. He frequented coffeehouses where news, philosophy, and commerce intersected. The government-sponsored London Gazette began in 1665, standardizing official intelligence amid wartime rumor. Networks of stationers, booksellers at St Paul’s Churchyard, and scribal copies sustained rapidly circulating texts. The diary’s notes on books bought, experiments witnessed, and discussions heard show how curiosity and institutional coordination shaped Restoration knowledge-making and its public presentation.

Theatres reopened in 1660 under royal patents to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant, inaugurating the distinctively Restoration stage. Pepys records performances at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane and the Duke’s company, admiring Thomas Betterton and noting Edward Kynaston’s transition from female roles as women first performed on the English stage. He heard new plays by John Dryden and George Etherege and music in court and city venues. These entertainments illuminate broader shifts in manners, fashion, and the commercialization of leisure. The diary’s avid playgoing, music lessons, and collections of instruments demonstrate how cultural consumption intertwined with status, sociability, and urban identity.

Commercial empire frames many entries. The Navigation Acts channeled colonial trade through English ships and ports, linking Thames-side commerce with the Caribbean sugar islands and the East India Company’s Asian ventures. The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, reorganized later as the Royal African Company, figures in the background of maritime finance and supply, as slaving voyages supplied plantations and returned profits to City houses. Tangier, acquired with Catherine of Braganza’s dowry, required a garrison, a mole, and constant victualling, drawing Pepys’s office into Mediterranean convoying and negotiation with Barbary corsairs. Even domestic purchases—such as a camlett cloak—reflect a marketplace fed by global textiles.

Urban life pulses through Pepys’s London: the Royal Exchange’s buzz, Paul’s Walk’s gossip, and river traffic that doubled as highway and workplace. Guilds and livery companies managed craft standards while coffeehouses mediated business and news. Coaches multiplied; bridges and stairs organized movement across the Thames. Household management—servants hired and dismissed, rents bargained, tradesmen paid—mapped the “middling sort’s” aspirations. After the Fire, bricklayers, surveyors, and joiners reconstituted neighborhoods, and civic rituals resumed. Pepys’s errands to Westminster Hall, Whitehall, and the Custom House reveal how administrative, legal, and mercantile geographies overlapped, binding the Navy Office to the city’s economic circulatory system.

Pepys’s diary is itself a product of Restoration information practices. He wrote in Thomas Shelton’s shorthand, interlacing English with Latin, French, and occasional Spanish to veil sensitive subjects, especially sexual encounters and office politics. He indexed volumes, cross-referenced letters, and kept lists of books and accounts, crafting a private archive paralleling official paperwork. Annual commemorations of his 1658 lithotomy by Thomas Hollier—the celebrated “stone day” on 26 March—highlight his attention to bodily health alongside calendars of court term, Parliament, and pay days. The methodical prose, at once intimate and administrative, exemplifies a culture of record-keeping that stabilized memory and managed risk.

From 1667 Pepys’s pages register high politics as the war’s disappointments toppled Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, in November. A looser constellation—later dubbed the Cabal (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley [Shaftesbury], and Lauderdale)—gained influence. Diplomacy produced the Treaty of Breda (1667) and, in 1668, the Triple Alliance with the Dutch and Sweden, recalibrating Europe as Louis XIV expanded in the Spanish Netherlands. Within the Navy, reforms and inquiries probed failures exposed by the Medway raid. Pepys navigated rivalries among commissioners and courtiers while defending procedure and audit. His entries from 1667–1669 reveal a maturing administrative ethos confronting patronage, austerity, and the demands of peace.

The diary survived in six small volumes preserved within Pepys’s magnificent library of books, prints, and maritime manuscripts, bequeathed to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Its shorthand resisted readers until the Reverend John Smith laboriously transcribed it in the early nineteenth century, using a key to Thomas Shelton’s system found in the collection. Lord Braybrooke published a bowdlerized edition in 1825, with expanded editions following. Henry B. Wheatley produced a fuller annotated text in the 1890s. The definitive modern edition by Robert Latham and William Matthews (1970–1983) restored completeness and scholarly apparatus. The “Previous Editions” and “Prefaces” in the Complete collection arise from this editorial history.

Old Style dating underpins the diary’s month headings, hence entries labeled “January 1660–1661,” as the legal year began on 25 March. Pepys concluded the diary in May 1669, citing fear for his eyesight. His wife, Elizabeth St Michel—whom he married in 1655—died in November 1669, closing the domestic world that animates many scenes. Pepys lived on to serve as Secretary to the Admiralty (1673–1679, 1684–1689), was imprisoned during the Popish Plot hysteria, and died in 1703 at the home of his former clerk William Hewer, to be buried at St Olave’s. The diary endures as the most vivid lens on England’s Restoration decade.

Synopsis

Table of Contents

COMPLETE

A full transcription of Samuel Pepys’s diary (1659/60–1669), chronicling Restoration politics, naval administration, and daily life in London through war, plague, and fire.

Prefaces (PREFACE; (SECOND) PREFACE)

Editorial introductions that frame the diary’s historical importance and explain the sources, shorthand transcription, and annotation practices used in this edition.

Previous Editions of the Diary

A survey of earlier printings and abridgments, outlining their editorial choices and omissions and how this edition revises or expands upon them.

Diary 1659–1660

From the collapse of the Protectorate to the Restoration, Pepys serves Edward Montagu, witnesses the return of Charles II, and begins his rise in naval office amid swift political change.

Diary 1661

Covers the consolidation of the restored monarchy, coronation festivities, and Pepys’s growing responsibilities and networks at the Navy Board and in London society.

Diary 1662

Charts court marriage politics and imperial initiatives (including Tangier) alongside Pepys’s focus on contracts, finance, household arrangements, and a refining urban routine.

Diary 1663

Records parliamentary scrutiny of naval spending, court factionalism, and the maturation of Pepys’s administrative methods alongside his vigorous cultural pursuits.

Diary 1664

Details mounting Anglo-Dutch tensions, preparations for war, shipbuilding and victualling pressures, and Pepys’s management of procurement and patronage.

Diary 1665

Amid the Second Anglo-Dutch War and the Great Plague, Pepys balances wartime administration with a public health crisis, noting major actions, evacuations, and a transformed cityscape.

Diary 1666

Recounts major naval engagements and offers an eyewitness account of the Great Fire of London, followed by recovery efforts and intensified strains on government and war finance.

Diary 1667

Covers the Dutch raid on the Medway, political fallout and inquiries, ministerial downfalls, and peace negotiations, with Pepys defending the Navy Board’s conduct.

Diary 1668

In precarious peacetime, Pepys faces parliamentary investigations and office reforms while chronicling theater, science, and society, and increasingly remarks on eye trouble.

Diary 1669

Pepys continues official travel and domestic routines but, with worsening eyesight, brings the diary to a close in May after a final sequence of detailed entries.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete

Main Table of Contents

COMPLETE

PREFACE

PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF THE DIARY.

JANUARY 1659-1660

FEBRUARY 1659-1660

MARCH 1659-1660

APRIL 1660

MAY 1660

JUNE 1660

JULY 1660

July 1st. This morning came home my fine Camlett cloak,

AUGUST 1660

SEPTEMBER 1660

OCTOBER 1660

NOVEMBER 1660

DECEMBER 1660

JANUARY 1660-1661

FEBRUARY 1660-61

MARCH 1660-1661

APRIL 1661

MAY 1661

JUNE 1661

JULY 1661

AUGUST 1661

SEPTEMBER 1661

OCTOBER 1661

NOVEMBER 1661

DECEMBER 1661

JANUARY 1661-1662

FEBRUARY 1661-1662

MARCH 1661-1662

APRIL 1662

MAY 1662

JUNE 1662

JULY 1662

AUGUST 1662

SEPTEMBER 1662

OCTOBER 1662

NOVEMBER 1662

DECEMBER 1662

JANUARY 1662-1663

FEBRUARY 1662-1663

MARCH 1662-1663

APRIL 1663

MAY 1663

JUNE 1663

JULY 1663

AUGUST 1663

SEPTEMBER 1663

OCTOBER 1663

NOVEMBER 1663

DECEMBER 1663

JANUARY 1663-1664

FEBRUARY 1663-1664

MARCH 1663-1664

APRIL 1664

MAY 1664

JUNE 1664

JULY 1664

AUGUST 1664

SEPTEMBER 1664

OCTOBER 1664

NOVEMBER 1664

DECEMBER 1664

JANUARY 1664-1665

FEBRUARY 1664-1665

MARCH 1664-1665

APRIL 1665

MAY 1665

JUNE 1665

JULY 1665

AUGUST 1665

SEPTEMBER 1665

OCTOBER 1665

NOVEMBER 1665

DECEMBER 1665

JANUARY 1665-1666

FEBRUARY 1665-1666

MARCH 1665-1666

APRIL 1666

MAY 1666

JUNE 1666

JULY 1666

AUGUST 1666

SEPTEMBER 1666

OCTOBER 1666

NOVEMBER 1666

DECEMBER 1666

JANUARY 1666-1667

FEBRUARY 1666-1667

MARCH 1666-1667

APRIL 1667

MAY 1667

JUNE 1667

JULY 1667

AUGUST 1667

SEPTEMBER 1667

OCTOBER 1667

NOVEMBER 1667

DECEMBER 1667

JANUARY 1667-1668

FEBRUARY 1667-1668

MARCH 1667-1668

APRIL 1668

MAY 1668

JUNE 1668

JULY 1668

AUGUST 1668

SEPTEMBER 1668

OCTOBER 1668

NOVEMBER 1668

DECEMBER 1668

JANUARY 1668-1669

FEBRUARY 1668-1669

MARCH 1668-1669

APRIL 1669

MAY 1669

(SECOND) PREFACE

COMPLETE

Table of Contents

PREFACE

Table of Contents

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, 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 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

“MERCURIUS POLITICUS REDIVIVUS; or, A Collection of the most materiall occurrances and transactions in Public Affairs since Anno Dni, 1659, untill 28 March, 1672, serving as an annuall diurnall for future satisfaction and information, BY THOMAS RUGGE. Est natura hominum novitatis avida.—Plinius. “This MS. belonged, in 1693, to Thomas Grey, second Earl of Stamford. It has his autograph at the commencement, and on the sides are his arms (four quarterings) in gold. In 1819, it was sold by auction in London, as part of the collection of Thomas Lloyd, Esq. (No. 1465), and was then bought by Thomas Thorpe, bookseller. Whilst Mr. Lloyd was the possessor, the MS. was lent to Dr. Lingard, whose note of thanks to Mr. Lloyd is preserved in the volume. From Thorpe it appears to have passed to Mr. Heber, at the sale of whose MSS. in Feb. 1836, by Mr. Evans, of Pall Mall, it was purchased by the British Museum for L8 8s. “Thomas Rugge was descended from an ancient Norfolk family, and two of his ancestors are described as Aldermen of Norwich. His death has been ascertained to have occurred about 1672; and in the Diary for the preceding year he complains that on account of his declining health, his entries will be but few. Nothing has been traced of his personal circumstances beyond the fact of his having lived for fourteen years in Covent Garden, then a fashionable locality.”

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.

My labours have been much lightened by the kind help which I havereceived from those interested in the subject. Lovers of Pepys arenumerous, and I have found those I have applied to ever willing togive me such information as they possess. It is a singular pleasure,therefore, to have an opportunity of expressing publicly my thanksto these gentlemen, and among them I would especially mention Messrs.Fennell, Danby P. Fry, J. Eliot Hodgkin, Henry Jackson, J. K. Laughton,Julian Marshall, John Biddulph Martin, J. E. Matthew, Philip Norman,Richard B. Prosser, and Hugh Callendar, Fellow of Trinity College,who verified some of the passages in the manuscript. To the Masterand Fellows of Magdalene College, also, I am especially indebted forallowing me to consult the treasures of the Pepysian Library, and moreparticularly my thanks are due to Mr. Arthur G. Peskett, the Librarian. H. B. W.BRAMPTON, OPPIDANS ROAD, LONDON, N.W. February, 1893.

PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF THE DIARY.

Table of Contents

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.

PARTICULARS OF THE LIFE OF SAMUEL PEPYS.

The family of Pepys is one of considerable antiquity in the east of England, and the Hon. Walter Courtenay Pepys

[Mr. W. C. Pepys has paid great attention to the history of his family, and in 1887 he published an interesting work entitled “Genealogy of the Pepys Family, 1273-1887,” London, George Bell and Sons, which contains the fullest pedigrees of the family yet issued.]

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:—

“A Noate written out of an ould Booke of my uncle William Pepys.” “William Pepys, who died at Cottenham, 10 H. 8, was brought up by the Abbat of Crowland, in Huntingdonshire, and he was borne in Dunbar, in Scotland, a gentleman, whom the said Abbat did make his Bayliffe of all his lands in Cambridgeshire, and placed him in Cottenham, which William aforesaid had three sonnes, Thomas, John, and William, to whom Margaret was mother naturallie, all of whom left issue.”

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:—

“The first of the name in 1273 were evidently but small copyholders. Within 150 years (1420) three or four of the name had entered the priesthood, and others had become connected with the monastery of Croyland as bailiffs, &c. In 250 years (1520) there were certainly two families: one at Cottenham, co. Cambridge, and another at Braintree, co. Essex, in comfortable circumstances as yeomen farmers. Within fifty years more (1563), one of the family, Thomas, of Southcreeke, co. Norfolk, had entered the ranks of the gentry sufficiently to have his coat-of-arms recognized by the Herald Cooke, who conducted the Visitation of Norfolk in that year. From that date the majority of the family have been in good circumstances, with perhaps more than the average of its members taking up public positions.”

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:—

“Samuel Pepys of Brampton in Huntingdonshire, Esq., Secretary of the Admiralty to his Matr. King Charles the Second: Descended from ye antient family of Pepys of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire.”

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):—

“In the family of Pepys is illustrated every gradation of legal rank from Reader of an Inn of Court to Lord High Chancellor of England.”

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:

“MY FATHER’S WILL. [Indorsement by S. Pepys.] “Memorandum. That I, John Pepys of Ellington, in the county of Huntingdon, Gent.”, doe declare my mind in the disposall of my worldly goods as followeth: “First, I desire that my lands and goods left mee by my brother, Robert Pepys, deceased, bee delivered up to my eldest son, Samuell Pepys, of London, Esqr., according as is expressed in the last Will of my brother Robert aforesaid. “Secondly, As for what goods I have brought from London, or procured since, and what moneys I shall leave behind me or due to me, I desire may be disposed of as followeth: “Imprimis, I give to the stock of the poore of the parish of Brampton, in which church I desire to be enterred, five pounds. “Item. I give to the Poore of Ellington forty shillings. “Item. I desire that my two grandsons, Samuell and John Jackson, have ten pounds a piece. “Item. I desire that my daughter, Paulina Jackson, may have my largest silver tankerd. “Item. I desire that my son John Pepys may have my gold seale-ring. “Lastly. I desire that the remainder of what I shall leave be equally distributed between my sons Samuel and John Pepys and my daughter Paulina Jackson. “All which I leave to the care of my eldest son Samuel Pepys, to see performed, if he shall think fit. “In witness hereunto I set my hand.”

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.

[October 21st, 1653. “Memorandum: that Peapys and Hind were solemnly admonished by myself and Mr. Hill, for having been scandalously over-served with drink ye night before. This was done in the presence of all the Fellows then resident, in Mr. Hill’s chamber.—JOHN WOOD, Registrar.” (From the Registrar’s-book of Magdalene College.)]

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[3] 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[2] 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.”

[These particulars are obtained from an interesting letter from Balthasar St. Michel to Pepys, dated “Deal, Feb. 8, 1673-4,” and printed in “Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys,” 1841, vol. i., pp. 146-53.]

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:—

“March 29, 1667. 4s. a week which his (Balty St. Michel’s) father receives of the French church is all the subsistence his father and mother have, and about; L20 a year maintains them.”

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,

[The late Mr. T. C. Noble kindly communicated to me a copy of the original marriage certificate, which is as follows: “Samuell Peps of this parish Gent. & Elizabeth De Snt. Michell of Martins in the fields, Spinster. Published October 19tn, 22nd, 29th 1655, and were married by Richard Sherwin Esqr one of the justices of the Peace of the Cittie and Lyberties of Westm. December 1st. (Signed) Ri. Sherwin.”]

but strangely enough Pepys himself supposed his wedding day to have been October 10th. Lord Braybrooke remarks on this,

“It is notorious that the registers in those times were very ill kept, of which we have here a striking instance.... Surely a man who kept a diary could not have made such a blunder.”

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,

“So home to supper, and to bed, it being my wedding night, but how many years I cannot tell; but my wife says ten.”

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.

[“June 10th, 1669. I went this evening to London, to carry Mr. Pepys to my brother Richard, now exceedingly afflicted with the stone, who had been successfully cut, and carried the stone, as big as a tennis ball, to show him and encourage his resolution to go thro’ the operation.”—Evelyn’s Diary.]

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:

“I do from this raise an opinion of him, to be one of the most secret men in the world, which I was not so convinced of before.”

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:—

“For which God knows my heart I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger by whose death he gets L100 per annum, he being a worthy honest man; but when I come to consider the providence of God by this means unexpectedly to give me L100 a year more in my estate, I have cause to bless God, and do it from the bottom of my heart.”

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:—

“I hope enough to justifie soe much freedome with a Prince that is so easie to excuse things well intended as this is “BY “Great Prince, “Thy faithfull subject, “WM. PENN” “London, the 22 of the Mo. called June, 1680.”

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.:—

“Clerk of the Acts, his duty, his necessity and usefulness.”

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:

“CLERKE OF THE ACTS. “The clarke of the Navye’s duty depends principally upon rateing (by the Board’s approbation) of all bills and recording of them, and all orders, contracts & warrants, making up and casting of accompts, framing and writing answers to letters, orders, and commands from the Councell, Lord High Admirall, or Commissioners of the Admiralty, and he ought to be a very able accomptant, well versed in Navall affairs and all inferior officers dutyes. “It hath been objected by some that the Clarke of the Acts ought to be subordinate to the rest of the Commissioners, and not to be joyned in equall power with them, although he was so constituted from the first institution, which hath been an opinion only of some to keep him at a distance, least he might be thought too forward if he had joynt power in discovering or argueing against that which peradventure private interest would have concealed; it is certaine no man sees more of the Navye’s Transactions than himselfe, and possibly may speak as much to the project if required, or else he is a blockhead, and not fitt for that imployment. But why he should not make as able a Commissioner as a Shipp wright lett wise men judge.”

In Pepys’s patent the salary is stated to be L33 6s. 8d., but this was only the ancient “fee out of the Exchequer,” which had been attached to the office for more than a century. Pepys’s salary had been previously fixed at L350 a-year.