Samuel Pepys PRS, MP, JP, (/ˈpiːps/;[1] 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration to be the Chief Secretary to theAdmiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II.
His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the earlyprofessionalisation of the Royal Navy.[2]
The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for theEnglish Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London.
On 1 January 1660 (“1 January 1659/1660” in contemporary terms) Pepys began to keep a diary. He recorded his daily life for almost ten years. The women he pursued, his friends, and his dealings are all laid out. His diary reveals his jealousies, insecurities, trivial concerns, and his fractious relationship with his wife. It is an important account of London in the 1660s. The juxtaposition of his commentary on politics and national events, alongside the very personal, can be seen from the beginning. His opening paragraphs, written in January 1660, begin:
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- Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain but upon taking of cold. I lived in Axe yard, having my wife and servant Jane, and no more in family than us three. My wife, after the absence of her terms for seven weeks,[21] gave me hopes of her being with child, but on the last day of the year she hath them again.
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- The condition of the State was thus. Viz. the Rump, after being disturbed by my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The officers of the army all forced to yield. Lawson lie[s] still in the River and Monke is with his army in Scotland. Only my Lord Lambert is not yet come in to the Parliament; nor is it expected that he will, without being forced to it.
The entries from the first few months are filled with news of General George Monck‘s march on London. In April and May of that year – at this time, he was encountering problems with his wife – he accompanied Montagu’s fleet to theNetherlands to bring Charles II back from exile. Montagu was made Earl of Sandwich on 18 June, and the position of Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board was secured by Pepys on 13 July.[8] As secretary to the board, Pepys was entitled to a £350 annual salary plus the various gratuities and benefits – including bribes – that came with the job. He rejected an offer of £1000 for the position from a rival and soon afterwards moved to official accommodation in Seething Lane in the City of London.
Public life
On the Navy Board, Pepys proved to be a more able and efficient worker than colleagues in higher positions. This often annoyed Pepys and provoked much harsh criticism in his diary. Among his colleagues were Admiral Sir William Penn, Sir George Carteret, Sir John Mennes, and Sir William Batten.[8]
Learning arithmetic from a private tutor and using models of ships to make up for his lack of first-hand nautical experience, Pepys came to play a significant role in the board’s activities. In September 1660 he was made a Justice of the Peace, on 15 February 1662 Pepys was admitted as a Younger Brother of Trinity House, and on 30 April he received the freedom of Portsmouth. Through Sandwich, he was involved in the administration of the short-lived English colony at Tangier. He joined the Tangier committee in August 1662 when the colony was first founded and became its treasurer in 1665. In 1663 he independently negotiated a £3,000 contract for Norwegian masts, demonstrating the freedom of action that his superior abilities allowed. He was appointed to a commission of the royal fishery on 8 April 1664.
His job required him to meet many people to dispense money and make contracts. He often laments how he “lost his labour” having gone to some appointment at a coffee house or tavern, to discover that the person he was seeking was not there. These occasions were a constant source of frustration to Pepys.
Major eventsAs well as providing a first-hand account of the Restoration, Pepys’s diary is notable for its detailed accounts of several other major events of the 1660s, along with the lesser known Diary of John Evelyn. In particular it is an invaluable source for the study of the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–7, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London in 1666. In relation to the Plague and Fire, C. S. Knighton has written: “From its reporting of these two disasters to the metropolis in which he thrived, Pepys’s diary has become a national monument.”[22] Again writing about these events, Robert Latham – the editor of the definitive edition of the diary – has remarked: “His descriptions of both – agonisingly vivid – achieve their effect by being something more than superlative reporting; they are written with compassion. As always with Pepys it is people, not literary effects, that matter
econd Anglo-Dutch War
In early 1665 the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War placed great pressure on Pepys. With his colleagues being either engaged elsewhere or incompetent, Pepys had to conduct a great deal of business himself. He excelled under the pressure, which was extremely great due to the complexity and underfunding of the Royal Navy.[8] At the outset he proposed a centralised approach to supplying the fleet. His idea was accepted, and he was made surveyor-general of victualling in October 1665. The position brought a further £300 a year.[8]
About this Second Anglo-Dutch War Pepys wrote: “In all things, in wisdom, courage, force and success, the Dutch have the best of us and do end the war with victory on their side”. And King Charles II said: “Don’t fight the Dutch, imitate them”.
In 1667, with the war lost, Pepys helped to discharge the navy.[8] The Dutch, who had defeated England on open water, now began to threaten the mainland itself. In June 1667 they conducted their Raid on the Medway, broke the defensive chain at Gillingham, and towed away the Royal Charles, one of the Royal Navy’s most important ships. As he had done during the Fire and the Plague, Pepys again removed his wife and his gold from London.[8]While the Dutch raid was a major concern in itself, Pepys was personally placed under a different kind of pressure: the Navy Board, and his role as Clerk of the Acts, came under scrutiny from the public and from Parliament. The war ended in August and on 17 October the House of Commons created a committee of “miscarriages”.[8] On 20 October, a list of ships and commanders at the time of the division of the fleet in 1666 was demanded from Pepys.[8] However, these demands were actually quite desirable for him: tactical and strategic mistakes were not the responsibility of the Navy Board. The Board did face some allegations regarding the Medway raid, but they could exploit the criticism already attracted by the commissioner of Chatham, Peter Pett, to deflect criticism from themselves.[8] The committee accepted this tactic when they reported in February 1668. The Board was, however, criticised for its use of tickets to pay seamen. These tickets could only be exchanged for cash at the Navy’s treasury in London.[8] Pepys made a long speech at the bar of the Commons on 5 March 1668 defending this practice. It was, in the words of C. S. Knighton, a “virtuoso performance”.[8]
The commission was followed by an investigation led by a more powerful authority, the commissioners of accounts. They met at Brooke House, Holborn, and spent two years scrutinising how the war had been financed. In 1669 Pepys had to prepare detailed answers to the committee’s eight “Observations” on the Navy Board’s conduct. In 1670 he was forced to defend his own role. A seaman’s ticket with Pepys’s name on it was produced as incontrovertible evidence of his corrupt dealings but, thanks to the intervention of the king, Pepys emerged from the sustained investigation relatively unscathed
Great Plague
Outbreaks of plague were not particularly unusual events in London: major epidemics had occurred in 1592, 1603, 1625, and 1636.[24] Furthermore, Pepys was not among the group of people who were most at risk: he did not live in cramped housing, he did not routinely mix with the poor, and he was not required to keep his family in London in the event of a crisis.[25] It was not until June that the unusual seriousness of the plague became apparent, so Pepys’s activities in the first five months of the year were not significantly affected by plague.[26] Indeed, Claire Tomalin writes that “the most notable fact about Pepys’s plague year is that to him it was one of the happiest of his life.” In 1665 he worked very hard, but the outcome was that he quadrupled his fortune.[25] On 31 December, in his annual summary, he wrote, “I have never lived so merrily (besides that I never got so much) as I have done this plague time”.[27] Nonetheless, Pepys was certainly concerned about the plague. On 16 August he wrote:
But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and very few upon the ‘Change. Jealous of every door that one sees shut up, lest it should be the plague; and about us two shops in three, if not more, generally shut up.
He also chewed tobacco as a protection against infection, and worried that wig-makers might be using hair from the corpses as a raw material. Furthermore, it was Pepys who suggested that the Navy Office should evacuate to Greenwich, although he did offer to remain in town himself. He would later take great pride in his stoicism.[28] Meanwhile, Elisabeth Pepys was sent to Woolwich.[8] She did not return to Seething Lane until January 1666, and was shocked by the sight of St Olave‘s churchyard, where 300 people had been buried.[29]
Fire of London
In the early hours of 2 September 1666, Pepys was woken by his servant who had spotted a fire in the Billingsgate area. He decided the fire was not particularly serious and returned to bed. Shortly after waking, his servant returned and reported that 300 houses had been destroyed and that London Bridge was threatened. Pepys went to the Tower to get a better view. Without returning home, he took a boat and observed the fire for over an hour. In his diary, Pepys recorded his observations as follows:
I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell’s house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. Having staid, and in an hour’s time seen the fire: rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steele-yard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City; and every thing, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs.————lives, and whereof my old school-fellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top, an there burned till it fell downeeing that the wind was driving the fire westward, he ordered the boat to go to Whitehall and became the first person to inform the king of the fire. According to his entry of 2 September 1666, Pepys recommended to the king that homes in the path of the fire be pulled down in order to stem its progress. Accepting this advice, the king told him to go to the Lord Mayor, Thomas Bloodworth, and tell him to start pulling houses down. Pepys took a coach back as far as St Paul’s Cathedral, before setting off on foot through the burning city. He found the Lord Mayor, who said, “Lord! what can I do? I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.” At noon he returned home and “had an extraordinary good dinner, and as merry, as at this time we could be”, before returning to watch the fire in the city once more. Later, he returned to Whitehall, then met his wife in St. James’s Park. In the evening they watched the fire from the safety of Bankside. Pepys writes that “it made me weep to see it”. Returning home, Pepys met his clerk, Tom Hayter, who had lost everything. Hearing news that the fire was advancing, he started to pack up his possessions by moonlight.
A cart arrived at 4 a.m. on 3 September and Pepys spent much of the day arranging the removal of his possessions. Many of his valuables, including his diary, were sent to a friend from the Navy Office at Bethnal Green.[30] At night he “fed upon the remains of yesterday’s dinner, having no fire nor dishes, nor any opportunity of dressing any thing.” The next day, Pepys continued to arrange the removal of his possessions. By then, he believed that Seething Lane was in grave danger, so he suggested calling men from Deptford to help pull down houses and defend the king’s property.[30] He described the chaos in the city and his curious attempt at saving his own goods:
Sir W. Pen and I to Tower-streete, and there met the fire burning three or four doors beyond Mr. Howell’s, whose goods, poor man, his trayes, and dishes, shovells, &c., were flung all along Tower-street in the kennels, and people working therewith from one end to the other; the fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.Wednesday, 5 September, Pepys – who had taken to sleeping on his office floor – was woken by his wife at 2 a.m. She told him that the fire had almost reached All Hallows-by-the-Tower and that it was at the foot of Seething Lane. He decided to send her and his gold – about £2350 – to Woolwich. In the following days Pepys witnessed looting, disorder, and disruption. On 7 September he went to Paul’s Wharf and saw the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral, of his old school, of his father’s house, and of the house in which he had had his stone removed.[31] Despite all this destruction, Pepys’s house, office, and diary were saved.
My People Uncovered 