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Samuel Pepys
*** Shopping-Tip: Samuel Pepys
image:Samuel_Pepys.jpg thumbnail|right|Samuel Pepys
'''Samuel Pepys''',
Fellow of the Royal Society FRS (
23 February 1633 –
26 May 1703) was an
English people English Navy Board naval administrator and
Member of Parliament. Although he had no maritime experience, he rose by hard work and his talent for administration to be the Chief Secretary to the
Admiralty under
James II of England King James II. He was one of the first to apply methodical research and careful record keeping to the business of government, and his influence was important in the early development of the
Civil service of the United Kingdom British Civil Service.
He is most famous for the detailed private
diary that he kept during 1660–1669, which was published after his death. The diary is one of the most important
primary sources for the
English Restoration period. It provides a fascinating combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the
Great Plague of London and the
Great Fire of London.
His surname is usually
International Phonetic Alphabet pronounced {{IPA|/piË?ps/}} (the same as the English word ''peeps'').
Chronology
Pepys was born in
London in 1633, the son of John Pepys, a tailor, and Margaret (''née'' Kite), sister of a
Whitechapel butcher. His father's
Cousin chart first cousin,
Richard Pepys, was elected
Member of Parliament M.P. for
Sudbury, Suffolk Sudbury in 1640, and appointed
Baron of the Exchequer on
May 30,
1654, and
Chief Justice of Ireland, on
September 25,
1655. Educated at
St Paul's School, London, circa 1646 – 1650, Samuel Pepys attended the execution of
Charles I of England Charles I, in 1649. In 1651, he entered
Magdalene College, Cambridge, taking his
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1654. Some time later that year, or in early 1655, he entered the
household of another of his father's cousins,
Sir Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich Edward Montagu who would later be made 1st
Earl of Sandwich. In the same year, he married Elisabeth Marchant de St Michel, a descendant of
France French Huguenot immigrants, first in a religious ceremony, on
October 10,
1655, and later in a civil ceremony, on
December 1,
1655, at
St Margaret's, Westminster, religious ceremonies being not then legally recognised under the
English Interregnum Interregnum; the couple celebrated the anniversary of the former date.
On
January 1,
1660, Pepys began to keep a diary. In April and May of the same year, he accompanied Montagu's fleet to
Holland to bring
Charles II of England Charles II back from exile. At the end of June, he was appointed
Clerk of the Acts to the
Navy Board. He spent the next few years learning the business of naval administration, and gradually became an important and influential member of the establishment.
He lived, worked, and wrote his diary through a number of significant historical events, among them the
Second Dutch War (1665–1667), the
Great Plague of London of 1665, and the
Great Fire of London (1666). On several occasions in 1667 and 1668, he appeared before a
select committee of Parliament to defend the record of the Navy Board and to argue for sufficient funds to maintain the fleet.
Throughout the period of the diary, his health, particularly his eyesight, suffered from the long hours he worked. At the end of May 1669, he reluctantly concluded that, for the sake of his eyes, he should completely stop writing and, from then on, only dictate to his clerks, which meant that he could no longer keep his diary.
He and his wife took a holiday to
France and the
Low Countries in June–October 1669; but, on their return, Elisabeth fell ill, and died on
November 10,
1669. Pepys erected a monument to her in the church of
St_Olave_Hart_Street St Olave's, Hart Street, in London.
In 1673, he was promoted to Secretary to the
Admiralty Commission and elected
Member of Parliament M.P. for
Castle Rising,
Norfolk. In 1676, he was elected as Master of
Trinity House. At the beginning of 1679, was elected M.P. for
Harwich. By May of that year, he was under attack from his political enemies. He resigned as Secretary to the Admiralty, and was imprisoned in the
Tower of London on suspicion of treasonable correspondence with
France. He was released in July; but proceedings against him were not dropped until June 1680.
In 1683, he was sent to
Tangier to assist
George Legge, 1st Baron Dartmouth Lord Dartmouth with the evacuation of the British colony. After six months' service, he travelled back through Spain, returning to England on
March 30,
1684. In June 1684, once more in favour, he was appointed King's Secretary for the affairs of the
Admiralty, a post that he retained after the death of Charles II (February 1685) and the accession of
James II of England James II. From 1685 to 1688, he was active not only as Secretary for the Admiralty, but also as M.P. for
Harwich. He was a loyal supporter of James II. When James fled the country at the end of 1688, Pepys's career also came to an end. In January 1689, he was defeated in the parliamentary election at Harwich; in February, one week after the accession of
William and Mary, he resigned his secretaryship.
From May to July 1689, and again in June 1690, he was imprisoned on suspicion of
Jacobitism; but no charges were ever successfully brought against him. After his release, he retired from public life, aged 57. Ten years later, in 1701, he moved out of London, to a house at
Clapham, in the country, where he lived until his death, on
May 26,
1703. He had no children, but bequeathed his estate to his nephew, John Jackson.
Interests and achievements
As well as being one of the most important civil servants of his age, Pepys was a widely cultivated man, taking a learned interest in books, music, the theatre, and science. He served on a great many committees and public bodies.
* He was M.P. for
Castle Rising,
Norfolk, and for
Harwich. Although also elected M.P. for
Sandwich, he immediately withdrew when his election was contested. Most of these constituencies had connections with his relative
Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich Sir Edward Montagu.
* Also through Montagu, he was involved in the administration of the short-lived
Tangier Garrison British colony at Tangier. He was appointed to the Tangier Committee in 1662, when the colony was first founded, and became Treasurer in 1665. He resigned in 1679, but, in 1683, went out as secretary to Lord Dartmouth's expedition to evacuate and abandon the colony.
Image:NewtonsPrincipia.jpg thumb|right|250px|The first edition of [[Isaac Newton|Newton's ''Principia'', bearing Pepys' name.]]
* He was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1665 and served as its President from
December 1,
1684, to
November 30,
1686. The frontispiece of
Isaac Newton's ''
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Principia Mathematica'' was published in this period and, as a result, bears Pepys' name.
* He was admitted as a Younger Brother of
Trinity House in 1662, and as an Elder Brother in 1672. He served as Master from
May 22,
1676, to
August 26,
1689.
* In 1673 he was involved with the establishment of the Royal Mathematical School at
Christ's Hospital which was to train 40 boys in navigation for the benefit of the Royal Navy and the Britsh merchant navy. In 1675 he was appointed as a Governor of Christ's Hospital and for many years he took a close interest in its affairs. Among his papers are two detailed memoranda on the administration of the school. In 1699 after the successful conclusion of a seven year campaign to get the master of the Mathematical School replaced by a man who knew more about the sea, he was rewarded for his service as a Governor by being made a
Freedom of the City freeman of the City of London.
His contemporary and great friend
John Evelyn remembered him as "universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things". Pepys's character is encapsulated in his Latin motto ''mens cujusque is est quisque'', which can be translated as "Each man's mind is who he is" or, more poetically, "The mind is the man".
The Pepys Library
Pepys was a lifelong
bibliophile and carefully nurtured his large collection of books, manuscripts, and prints. At his death, there were more than 3,000 volumes, including the diary, all carefully catalogued and indexed; they form one of the most important surviving 17th century private
library libraries. There are remarkable holdings of
incunabula, manuscripts, and printed
ballads. Pepys made detailed provisions in his will for the preservation of his book collection; and, when his nephew and heir, John Jackson, died, in 1723, it was transferred, intact, to the
Pepys Library, at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where it can still be seen. The bequest included all the original book cases and his elaborate instructions that "the placing as to heighth be strictly reviewed and, where found requiring it, more nicely adjusted".
The Diary
Among the most important items in the Library are the original bound manuscripts of Pepys's diary. Although it is clear from the content that they were written as a purely personal record of his life and not for publication, there are indications that Pepys actively took steps to preserve them. Apart from the fact that he wrote his diary out in fair copy from rough notes, he also had the loose pages bound into six volumes, and catalogued them in his library with all his other books, and must have known that eventually someone would find them interesting.
The diary was written in one of the many standard forms of
shorthand used in Pepys's time; but, by the time at which the college took an interest in the diary, it was thought to be
cipher ciphered. The Reverend
John Smith was engaged to transcribe the diaries into plain English; and he laboured at this task for three years, from 1819 to 1822, apparently unaware that a key to the shorthand system was stored in Pepys's library a few shelves above the diary volumes. Smith's transcription (which is also kept in the
Pepys Library) was the basis for the first published edition of the diary, released in two volumes in 1825.
[http://www.pepys.info A second transcription], done with the benefit of the key, but often less accurately, was completed in 1875 by
Mynors Bright, and published in 1875–1879.
Henry Wheatley, drawing on both his predecessors, produced a new edition in 1893–1899, revised in 1926, with extensive notes and an index. The complete and definitive edition, edited and transcribed by
Robert Latham (editor) Robert Latham and
William Matthews (editor) William Matthews, was published in nine volumes, along with separate Companion and Index volumes, over the years 1970–1983. Various single-volume abridgements of this text are also available.
Pepys recorded his daily life for almost ten years in breathtaking honesty; the women he pursued, his friends, 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. Included are his personal account of the
English_Restoration restoration of the monarchy, the
Great Plague of London of 1665, the
Great Fire of London (1666), and the
Raid on the Medway arrival of the Dutch fleet and other events of the
Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667). 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:
: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, gave me hopes of her being with child, but on the last day of the year she hath them again.
:The condition of the State was thus. ''Viz''. the
Rump Parliament Rump, after being disturbed by my
John Lambert (General) 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
George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle 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.
His job required that he meet with many people to dispense monies and make contracts. He often laments over how he "lost his labour" having gone to some appointment at a
coffee house or
tavern, there to discover that the person he was seeking was not within. This was a constant frustration to Pepys.
The diary similarly gives a detailed account of Pepys's personal life. He liked wine and plays, and the company of other people. He also spent a great deal of time evaluating his fortune and his place in the world. He was always curious and often acted on that curiosity, as he acted upon almost all his impulses.
He was passionately interested in music; and he composed, sang, and played, for pleasure. He taught his wife to sing, and paid for dancing lessons for her (although these stopped when he became jealous of the dancing master).
He had a rather
Puritan outlook on life, and periodically would resolve to devote more time to hard work instead of leisure. For example, in his entry for
New Year's Eve, 1661, he writes: "I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine ...". The following months reveal his lapses to the reader; by
February 17, it is recorded, "[H]ere I drank wine upon necessity, being ill for the want of it." His puritanical tendencies did not prevent him from engaging in a number of extra-marital liaisons with various women: these were chronicled in his diary, often in some detail, and generally using a cocktail of languages (English, French and Portuguese) when relating the intimate details. The most dramatic of these encounters was with Deborah Willet, a young woman engaged as a companion for Elizabeth Pepys. On
25 October 1668 Pepys was surprised by his wife whilst embracing Deborah Willet: he writes that his wife "coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also....". Following this event, he was characteristically filled with remorse but (equally characteristically) this did not prevent his continuing to pursue Willet when she had been dismissed from the Pepys household.
Disease of the stone
From a young age, Pepys suffered from
Kidney stone stones in his urinary tract (a condition from which his mother also suffered) and was almost never without pain, as well as other symptoms, including
Hematuria blood in the urine. By the time of his marriage, the condition was very severe and probably had a serious effect on his abililty to engage in sexual intercourse.
In 1657, Pepys took the brave decision to undertake surgery: this cannot have been an easy option, because the operation was known to be especially painful and hazardous. Nevertheless, Pepys consulted
Thomas Hollier, the surgeon; and, on
March 26 1657 (
Old Style and New Style dates old style) / 1658 (
Old Style and New Style dates new style), the operation took place in a bedroom at the house of Pepys's cousin, Jane Turner.
The procedure, described by Pepys as being "cut of the stone", was conducted without the use of
anaesthetics or
antiseptics, and involved restraining the patient with ropes and four strong men; the surgeon then made an incision along the
perineum (between the
scrotum and the
anus), about three
inches (8 cm) long and deep enough to cut into the
bladder. The stone was removed through this opening with pincers, which came from below, and which were assisted, from above, by a tool that had been inserted into the bladder through the
penis. A detailed description of the procedure can be found in Claire Tomalin's biography, referenced below.
Pepys' stone was successfully removed and was described as being the size of a
tennis ball (presumably a
real tennis ball which is slightly smaller than a modern
lawn tennis ball, but still an unusually large stone). However, he made a good recovery and resolved to hold a celebration on every anniversary of the operation. On Monday
March 26 1659 (
Old Style and New Style dates old style) / 1660 (
Old Style and New Style dates new style), he wrote, in his diary,
:This day it is two years since it pleased God that I was cut of the stone at Mrs. Turner's in Salisbury Court. And did resolve while I live to keep it a festival, as I did the last year at my house, and for ever to have Mrs. Turner and her company with me.
However, there were long-term effects from the operation. It has been speculated that the operation may have left him sterile; but there is no direct evidence for this, and he was childless before the operation, too. There are references in the Diary to pains in his bladder, whenever he caught cold; and the wound from the operation seems to have caused him problems in later life. In April 1700, Pepys wrote, to his nephew Jackson,
:It has been my calamity for much the greatest part of this time to have been kept bedrid, under an evil so rarely known as to have had it matter of universal surprise and with little less general opinion of its dangerousness; namely, that the cicatrice of a wound occasioned upon my cutting of the stone, without hearing anything of it in all this time, should[,] after more than 40 years' perfect cure, break out again.
After Pepys' death, the
autopsy post-mortem examination showed that his left kidney was completely ulcerated; seven stones, weighing four and a half ounces, also were found. His bladder was gangrenous, and the old wound was broken open again.
Pepysiana
*
Pepys Island, alleged to be near
South Georgia, was named after him, being first discovered during his tenure at the Admiralty.
* Among his colleagues at the Navy Office was
William Penn (admiral) Admiral Sir William Penn, father of the
William Penn who founded
Pennsylvania, in the
United States of America.
* The
refectory building at the
United Kingdom British Civil Service College has been named in his honour.
*
Composer Robert Steadman set a number of sections from the diary in a thirty-minute work for
narrator,
junior choir, and
small orchestra, entitled ''Pepys' Diary'', which was commissioned by the
City of London Freemen's School.
* There is a
probability problem, called the "Newton–Pepys Problem", that arose out of correspondence between
Isaac Newton Newton and Pepys about whether one was more likely to roll a six with six dice or two sixes with twelve dice. ([http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Newton-PepysProblem.html Eric W. Weisstein. ''Newton-Pepys Problem''. From MathWorld—A Wolfram Web Resource].)
* Pepys appears as a minor character in Neal Stephenson's trilogy
The Baroque Cycle
* In December 2003 a
weblog run by
Phil Gyford that serialises the diary won an award in
The Guardian's Best of British Blogs, in the specialist-blog category. ([http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1108883,00.html Pepys' blog wins an award]).
References
The complete and definitive edition of Pepys's diary by Robert Latham and William Matthews was published by Bell & Hyman, London, in 1970–1983. The Introduction in volume I provides a scholarly but readable account of "The Diarist", "The Diary" ("The Manuscript", "The Shorthand", and "The Text"), "History of Previous Editions", "The Diary as Literature", and "The Diary as History". The Companion provides a long series of detailed essays about Pepys and his world.
* Volume I. Introduction and 1660. ISBN 0713515511.
* Volume II. 1661. ISBN 071351552X.
* Volume III. 1662. ISBN 0713515538.
* Volume IV. 1663. ISBN 0713515546.
* Volume V. 1664. ISBN 0713515554.
* Volume VI. 1665. ISBN 0713515562.
* Volume VII. 1666. ISBN 0713515570.
* Volume VIII. 1667. ISBN 0713515589.
* Volume IX. 1668–9. ISBN 0713515597.
* Volume X. Companion. ISBN 0713519932.
* Volume XI. Index. ISBN 0713519940
There are several detailed studies of Pepys' life available.
Arthur Bryant published his three-volume study in 1933–1938, long before the definitive edition of the diary, but, thanks to Bryant's lively style, it is still of interest. In 1974
Richard Ollard produced a new biography that drew on Latham's and Matthew's work on the text, and benefited from the author's deep knowledge of Restoration politics. The most recent general study is by
Claire Tomalin. Her book won the
Whitbread Book Awards 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year award, and the judges called it a "rich, thoughtful and deeply satisfying" account that "unearth[s] a wealth of material about the uncharted life of Samuel Pepys".
* Arthur Bryant, ''Pepys—The Man in the Making 1663–1669''. ISBN 0586064702.
* Arthur Bryant, ''Pepys—The Years of Peril 1669–1683''. ISBN 0586064710.
* Arthur Bryant, ''Pepys—The Saviour of the Navy 1683–1689''. ISBN 0586064729.
* Richard Ollard, ''Pepys, A Biography''. ISBN 0192814664.
* Claire Tomalin, ''Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self''. ISBN 0670885681.
External links
{{Wikisource author}}
Some of the older editions of the diary are available online.
* {{gutenberg author| id=Samuel+Pepys | name=Samuel Pepys}}
There are also two encyclopedic sites about Pepys based on these free editions
-
Samuel Pepys' diary which provides a daily entry from the diary, as well as detailed background articles, plus annotations from readers.
-
Duncan Grey's pages on Pepys
As well as other sites about Pepys.
-
Pepys library online at Magdalen College, Cambridge, including an essay by
Robert Latham (editor) Robert Latham.
-
The Samuel Pepys Club for those interested in Pepys
See also
*
Samuel Sewall, often called the "American Pepys".
Category:1633 births Pepys, Samuel
Category:1703 deaths Pepys, Samuel
Category:Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge Pepys, Samuel
Category:English book and manuscript collectors Pepys, Samuel
Category:British civil servants Pepys, Samuel
Category:Diarists Pepys, Samuel
Category:English diarists Pepys, Samuel
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Pepys, Samuel
Category:Freemen of the City of London Pepys, Samuel
Category:Presidents of the Royal Society Pepys, Samuel
Category:British MPs Pepys, Samuel
Category:Old Paulines Pepys, Samuel
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