Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  During this anxious period, Pepys heard that the duke of York’s secretary, Matthew Wren, had been wounded in the battle, and he wrote to Coventry asking him to support his application to take over Wren’s job. In terms of career, Pepys was right to seize the moment, and Coventry was the man he felt he could rely on. If Pepys hesitated at all out of respect and grief for his old Lord, lost somewhere at sea, and well aware that Sandwich regarded Coventry as his enemy, his hesitation was shortlived. He delivered his letter to Coventry in person on 3 June, spent the evening with him, got his promise to speak for him and went home happy. Early next morning a note arrived from Coventry withdrawing his support on the grounds that his nephew Henry Savile wanted the job. Both Coventry and Pepys knew that his abilities were greater than Savile’s, but Pepys was not part of the charmed circle of the aristocracy, and even Coventry was not prepared to back him against one of his own family. Savile got the job: it was a cruel lesson.

  Sandwich’s body was found in the sea off Harwich on 10 June, by sailors dragging for lost anchors. He was still wearing his Garter ribbon, jewel and star. Lady Sandwich was given the news at Hinchingbrooke. After this Pepys spent five days with the fleet, an unusual move for him, which he may have combined with a visit to Hinchingbrooke to pay her his respects. He did not forget to do his bit for his own family, pressing the duke to make Balty’s position at Deal permanent.53

  The king ordered a state funeral for Sandwich, and on 3 July his embalmed body was borne along the Thames at the head of a procession of barges draped in black and carrying most of the leading men of the state – women did not attend such occasions. The guns fired from the Tower and Whitehall, and drums and trumpets added their solemn noise. From Westminster stairs the mourners followed the body on foot into the abbey, to be buried in Henry VII’s chapel, where Albemarle already lay: so the two men chiefly responsible for restoring Charles to his throne were placed beside one another. Pepys had charge of one of the great banners displaying the dead man’s arms, carried alongside the coffin and then laid over his resting place.54

  Sandwich was only forty-six. Pepys was thirty-nine; it no longer seemed such a gap as it had been when he was a poor boy and his cousin a statesman and soldier. While there had been no total breach between the two men, they had been on cooler terms with the passing of the years. Gratitude can grow irksome, and there were reasons for resentment on both sides. Sandwich did not mention Pepys in his will, and Pepys may have felt liberated as well as bereaved. Yet he owed Sandwich too much, and their lives had been too closely linked, for him not to feel the shock of the loss of the man who had dominated his youth and given him his chance in life. Sandwich bequeathed the Manor of Brampton to his Lady, which suggests she felt an attachment to the place; but as dowager she had to leave Hinchingbrooke, which had been her home for nearly thirty years. Since she had lost her two eldest daughters, she took herself to live close to her third daughter, Anne, who had just married Sir Richard Edgcumbe and gone to live on his estate on the River Tamar, in Cornwall.55 It is unlikely she and Pepys met again. In his will, Sandwich spoke of her as ‘my dear and loving wife (to whom I cannot express kindness enough)’, spelling out at the end his love and respect for the patience, innocence and loyalty of the woman he had married when they were both seventeen.56 She was no Lucy Hutchinson or Anne Fanshawe, and never thought of putting down any account of her life – her few letters show she was barely literate – so that hers remains a sadly untold story.57 Bred in a family of the puritan gentry, bride of one of the youngest officers in the parliamentarian army, she had known Charles I, Cromwell and Charles II, presided over a great country house, borne ten children and conducted herself with exemplary discretion throughout civil wars and many changes of government; supported her husband through danger and long periods of separation, as well as ennoblement and favour at a court that had nothing to offer a woman of her breeding and character. She lived only two years after her husband’s death. The warmth of Pepys’s admiration and his unwavering affection for her in the Diary make up a rare tribute, and, although her name appears no more among his papers, he took the trouble to visit her daughter Anne in Cornwall, where Lady Sandwich had ended her days, as he sailed for Tangier in 1683. Whether he stood beside her grave then or not, he cannot have failed to think of her.58

  There were two more deaths in Pepys’s family circle in 1672. In August his father-in-law, Alexandre de St Michel, died in Deal, where he and his wife were living with their son. It made little difference to Pepys, who continued to be the chief support of all the remaining St Michels, including another nephew and godson, ‘Litell Samuell’. In September uncle Wight, who had once hoped to impregnate Elizabeth on Pepys’s behalf, also died, leaving no living children and no will. Some good came of this to Pepys’s father, who was able to make a successful claim on part of the estate.

  A further break with the past came in January 1673. The Navy Board minute book for 30 January gives its own account: ‘Yesterday between 3 and 4 a Clock in the morning happened in my Lord Brouncker’s lodging at the Navy Office in Seething Lane an unhappy fire, which in six hours time Laid in ashes the said office, with Severall of the houses about it.’59 Abigail Williams, Lord Brouncker’s mistress, was credited with starting the blaze in her closet. Pepys had time to save his books, including the six volumes of his Diary, otherwise very little. His house and more than twenty others round about were entirely destroyed as well as the offices. The nightmares he had suffered after the great fire had come true, and the house into which he had put so much of himself and that enshrined the memory of his years with Elizabeth was gone as though it had never been. Financially, he lost only the contents, since it belonged to the crown, and the crown was obliged to rehouse him; but for a man who set so much store by the choice and placing of his possessions, and who cared about the shape and meaning of life, it must have acted as an after-shock to the loss of his wife. His goods, his clothes, his pictures, his living habits and arrangements and all the rest of his physical connections with the past were gone.

  21. Public and Private Life

  Pepys went into lodgings. ‘Fusty lodgings’, according to Sarah Houblon, but he had not much choice after the fire. The Navy Office had to be kept running. They continued to deal with their business, three times a week at 8 a.m., now on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, without a break, re-establishing themselves in Mark Lane, a block west of the old site; and his lodgings were close by, provided by the crown.1 Here he lived out the rest of 1673; and in the course of the year good fortune returned to him. In June he was appointed secretary to the Admiralty Board, and by January 1674 he achieved his ambition to enter parliament, taking his seat in the House of Commons alongside his old masters William Coventry and George Downing. In that same month he moved, after thirteen years in the City returning to the west end of his youth. He did not take a house this time but moved into the new Admiralty headquarters, Derby House, between Whitehall and Westminster, installing himself and his servants in airy rooms above the offices. He had become, in modern terms, a flat dweller, enjoying a view over the river for the first time. His salary and fees were increased, and, as he went up the ladder, he took his own people with him. Will Hewer now became chief clerk to the Admiralty, and within a year he took a lease on a very large new house in a smart terrace, York Buildings in Buckingham Street, which ran from the Strand down to a terrace walk over the river and the water gate built for the newly demolished York House.2 Tom Hayter and John Pepys were given Pepys’s old job as clerk of the acts to share between them, and Pepys also saw to the advancement of his brother-in-law St Michel, Tom Edwards and Richard Gibson.3 Coventry sent congratulations on the secretaryship and, with a neat touch of flattery, asked Pepys to exert his powers of patronage to find a purser’s job for the brother of one of his servants.4

  Whatever Pepys’s private opinion of the king, he owed all his advancement to royal favour. Charles and his parliament were on bad terms. The country was edgy and suspicious
of the intentions of the royal family, fearing it was moving towards despotism and Catholicism under the influence of the French. Anti-Catholic feeling became so strong that a Test Act was passed in the spring of 1673, obliging all office holders to affirm their loyalty to the Church of England. It was now generally known that James, duke of York, had converted to Catholicism, as had the duchess before her death in 1671. Like Pepys, James had just lost his wife, and he was preparing to marry again, a Catholic-born princess of fifteen who could be expected to bring him sons. Since the king had no legitimate children, the prospect of a Catholic inheritance to the crown loomed, unacceptably. Charles seems to have had little faith, and, if he had Catholic leanings, he was prepared to dissemble rather than lose his crown, and he avoided confrontation even when exasperated by his parliaments, so that when his brother refused to conform, or even to pretend to conform, as the Test Act required, he accepted that James must lose his office as lord high admiral. This was when he promoted Pepys to the new post of secretary to the Admiralty.

  He replaced the duke with a group of Admiralty commissioners made up of favourite courtiers, strengthened by Prince Rupert, experienced in command at sea, and the earl of Shaftesbury, who was keen on the war against the Dutch. The king himself took the chair. Pepys’s job was purely administrative, and, while he made himself felt in matters of naval discipline, he had no say in policy; but he and his royal patrons believed he might become an influential spokesman for the navy in parliament.5 This was the reason for finding him a safe seat at a by-election. The duke of York still had enough power of patronage to get Pepys nominated and, it was hoped, elected without trouble. As it turned out, his patronage also meant that when Pepys presented himself at Castle Rising in Norfolk in the autumn of 1673 he was accused of being ‘a Bluddy Papist’ and jeered at by the crowd. Shaftesbury, fiercely anti-Catholic – he had personally tried to persuade the duke to return to the Church of England – gave secret support to the rival candidate, and Pepys had to submit testimonials to his own Anglican faith to the voters. He won the election, but the papist mud stuck.6

  As soon as Pepys took his seat in the House of Commons he felt the hostility. First he was attacked on naval matters, which he could deal with well enough, but then came the personal accusations. That Samuel Pepys he was a Catholic. That he had an altar and a crucifix in his house. That he had broken his wife’s heart by trying to convert her to Catholicism, an allegation that must have amused and enraged him privately. Someone remembered him saying that the Anglican religion ‘came out of Henry VIII’s codpiece’.7 The tone and level of the attack was disconcerting, especially for a new MP, unfamiliar with the ways of the House and not yet part of the club. One of his accusers, Sir Robert Thomas, said he was ready to produce witnesses. Coventry, coming to Pepys’s aid, said it would be hard for anyone to defend themselves against the remark about Henry VIII’s codpiece; to him, as to us, it seemed likely enough that Pepys had made the joke, and perfectly ridiculous to raise it against him in the House. Coventry then challenged Thomas to name his witnesses. He was reluctant. The speaker insisted, and Lord Shaftesbury was named. Sensation in the House.

  Shaftesbury, known to the king and his brother as ‘Little Sincerity’ in sardonic reference to his small stature and many changes of allegiance, was a man of ideas, clever, rich from birth, interested in power, popular in parliament and at this point embarked on a campaign to exclude the duke of York from the succession to the throne. Any ammunition that came to hand was useful, and, if he could show that the new secretary to the Admiralty and MP was a covert Catholic, it would serve his purpose well. The fact that he had known Pepys personally for years through Sandwich – whose colleague he had been under Cromwell and through all the changes since – and also through the Tangier Committee did not trouble him. The House appointed a group of MPs to go to him; the earl was not someone you sent for. Pepys, who had until now admired Shaftesbury for his brains and wit, asked to go with them.8 Coventry supported Pepys’s application. Meanwhile a message arrived at the House from Shaftesbury, saying ‘he hath some imperfect memory of seeing somewhat, which he conceived to be a Crucifix… could not remember whether it were painted or carved, or in what manner the Thing was; and, that his Memory was so very imperfect in it, that, if he were upon his Oath, he could give no Testimony’. Face to face with Coventry and Pepys, he decided he had not seen an altar but still thought he had seen a crucifix. As they left, he could not resist teasing his victim: ‘Mr Pepys, the next time we meet, we will remember the Pope!’

  On 10 February Pepys stood up in the House and ‘did heartily and flatly deny, that he had any Altar, or Crucifix, or the Image of a Picture of any Saint whatsoever in his House, from the Top to the Bottom of it’. Coventry pointed out that a great many would be found to be Catholics if ownership of a picture of the crucifixion were taken as evidence. Pepys asked Shaftesbury to see him alone. He refused, and Pepys then wrote inviting him to declare himself unequivocally either for or against having seen a crucifix, and reminding him of their twenty years’ acquaintance.9 It did him no good. He also wrote to St Michel, requesting support for his claim to being a good Anglican; Baity obliged at length, throwing in a paragraph on Elizabeth’s convinced Protestantism for good measure.10 In the House, Sir John Banks, the financier, declared he had known Pepys for years and visited him at home without ever seeing either altar or crucifix or thinking he was a Catholic.

  Pepys then spoke in his own defence. He went back to his Cambridge years and his early service as secretary to Lord Sandwich. He said he had attended church twice every Sunday and taken communion seven or eight times a year, and never in his life been at mass. He spoke of how he had embellished his home with paintings because his work prevented him from going out much; and described the small table in his closet with the Bible and Book of Common Prayer on it, a basin, a cushion and his wife’s picture above – this, he thought, might be the supposed altar. He was angry, frightened and sorry for himself, and he did what Englishmen are not expected to do, showed his feelings.11 More testimony was produced, none of it decisive, and he declared himself ready to submit to the judgement of the House. The debate was adjourned for two weeks. Before they were up, the king prorogued parliament, meaning that its sittings were discontinued, until November. Without this intervention, Pepys would almost certainly have lost his seat. It was the worst start anyone could have had in the House. Royal favour had raised him and at the same time exposed him to entirely unforeseen dangers.

  Did ‘Little Sincerity’ really believe Pepys was a Catholic? Something that suggested a shrine had clearly caught his attention at Seething Lane, possibly the painting of the crucifixion Pepys had bought in the days of the Diary. He may also have heard gossip about Pepys attending mass. We know that what took Pepys to mass was curiosity and a liking for the music, not religious faith; and in private, among equals, Shaftesbury might well have accepted that his interest was aesthetic and anthropological, and nothing to do with religion. He himself, when asked about his religion by a lady, answered that ‘wise men are of but one religion’, and when pressed as to which religion this was, said ‘wise men never tell’; and Bishop Burnet declared that he was ‘a deist at best’ where religion was concerned.12 But even if Shaftesbury’s allegiance to the Church of England was more political than spiritual, he had marked Pepys in his mind as vulnerable to attack and so potentially useful to his cause.

  Curiously, Pepys failed to take warning from the clash with Shaftesbury and parliament. You might have expected him at least to burnish his credentials as a member of the Church of England. Instead he proceeded to send for and install in his house a Roman Catholic musician, Cesare Morelli, recommended to him by a friend in Lisbon.13 Morelli, fluent in Latin and several modern languages, and a fine singer and performer on the lute, had lived in Flanders, Rome and Lisbon, but longed to return to England, which he had once visited. He was to be Pepys’s luxury, someone of his own with whom he could make music whenever he chose;
having abased himself to the House, he became defiant and proud and felt he had a right to this pleasure. He made the arrangement with Morelli in November, about the time parliament met again, and Morelli arrived in the spring of 1675. In the increasingly hysterical anti-Catholic climate he was a risky luxury.

  All the same, Pepys bounced back with characteristic verve after his difficult start in the House. He was always an effective speaker on naval matters and he soon showed himself a brilliant one again, as he had done in 1668. In April 1675 he gave an account of the state of the navy, and in February 1677 made a speech urging that money should be voted for the building of thirty new ships; he succeeded in winning over an initially suspicious House to vote the necessary £600,000.14 It was a triumph but did not prevent him from being regularly sniped at on smaller matters, especially where he was suspected of less than pure financial dealings, over fees received for granting passes to shipowners, for instance. Even without the testimony of the Diary, we can believe that there was still a Pepys who made money on the side, as well as the other Pepys who stunned everyone by his grasp of naval matters and authority of exposition. And even this Pepys could be resented in the House; he was accused of speaking ‘more like an admiral than a secretary’. No doubt he did. The French ambassador reported that he was one of the best speakers in England.15 Few MPs had any knowledge of the navy, and the secretary of the Admiralty had made up his mind to educate them.