Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  8. Diary, 29 Sept., 10 Nov. 1661.

  9. For Coventry replacing Blackborne, G. Ε. Aylmer, The State’s Servants: The Civil Service of the English Republic (1973), p. 266.

  10. Evelyn called him wise and witty in his Diary for 1659; H. C. Foxcroft (The Life and Letters of Sir George Sovile, First Marquis of Halifax, vol. I, p. 29) says he headed the procession: Clarendon said he was void of religion; he was called ‘Will the Wit’ in hostile references by Andrew Marvell in his The Last Instructions to a Painter (1667), line 228; other information from the DNB.

  11. Diary, 16 Mar. and 31 Dec. 1662.

  12. Coventry to Pepys, 21 Apr. 1665, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 458.

  13. For the gift of the pen, Diary, 5 Aug. 1663. For Pepys singing to Coventry on the barge, Diary, 16 Apr. 1661. For the boat trip in which Coventry shielded Pepys from the sun and told him his rules in life, Diary, 8 Aug. 1662. Dines with Pepys at home, 18 Dec. 1662. For the Hayter affair, Diary, 9, 10, 15 May 1663. For Pepys’s letter to Coventry suggesting afternoon meetings for general discussion, Pepys to Coventry, 22 Aug. 1662, National Maritime Museum, Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, LBK/8. For Penn’s reference to Coventry’s mistress, Diary, 7 Jan. 1664.

  14. Mennes conveyed his enthusiasm for Chaucer (Diary, 14 June 1663), and Pepys later acquired a Caxton edition of The Canterbury Tales and some fragments of Chaucer MS. He encouraged Dryden to make his versions of some of the Tales. See Chapter 25.

  15. Diary, 25 Nov. 1663.

  16. Diary, 3 June 1662.

  17. For Chatham trip, see Diary, 8–11 Apr. 1661; for Portsmouth trip with Elizabeth, see Diary, 1–8 May 1661.

  18. From the ‘Navy White Book’, printed in Samuel Pepys and the Second Dutch War, ed. Robert Latham, transcribed by Charles Knighton and by William Matthews (1995), p. 68. Pepys records putting in ‘My journeys and disbursements expressed in a bill’ on 30 June 1664, and Sir John Mennes urging him to charge more, ‘“For,” says he, “why will you have less than the clerks? And it is too little.” But I would have it go as it was, saying it was as much as it cost me.’ When he walked, it presumably cost him nothing.

  19. Pepys to Pett, June 1665, cited in Arthur Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Man in the Making (1933), pp. 255–6. Pett objected to the board’s failure to look at other suppliers of masts, and Bryant praises Pepys for his tremendous putting down of Pett, although he elsewhere acknowledges that Pepys accepted bribes from Warren.

  20. Pepys notes the arrival of the duke’s ‘Instructions’ at the office, 5 Feb. 1662. They were based on earlier ‘Instructions’ of 1640.

  21. See J. D. Davies, Gentlemen and Tarpaulins (1991), p. 15, and David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II (1955), p. 260.

  22. The figure of 157 ships at the time of the Restoration is Pepys’s own, given in a speech to parliament in 1675. Some of these were not in active service but laid up in dock, without officers or crew and stripped of rigging, guns and perhaps even masts: information from Professor Bernard Capp in private communication. He points out that the fleet the Navy Board actually had to deal with in 1660 was of 84 ships in service, with 25 waiting to be paid off; the others were laid up.

  23. Diary, 30 Sept. 1661.

  24. Something like £40,000 today, although all such equivalents are very approximate.

  25. Diary, 2, 3 Mar. 1662. For the amount of his fortune, 30 May 1662.

  26. Diary, 28 June, 1 Sept. 1662.

  27. Diary, 30 Sept. 1662.

  28. Diary, 23 Dec. 1662.

  29. Diary, 14 June 1662. He mentions his letter to Lord Sandwich, who was at Hinchingbrooke seeing to his building works, but it has not survived. Samuel Morland, Pepys’s old tutor, is said to have refused to testify against Vane and burnt some papen in his – possession that might have incriminated him: see Violet Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), p. 237, footnote.

  30. Diary, 22, 27 June 1662, 11 Feb. 1663.

  31. Given in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, centenary edition of 1970, among ‘Dying Sayings’.

  32. See, for example, Bernard Pool, Navy Board Contracts (1966), p. 2.

  33. Diary, 18 June 1664.

  34. Diary, 20 Nov. 1664.

  35. Diary, 1 Aug. 1661, 3 May 1664.

  36. Pepys gives Blackborne’s hostile talk of Penn, including accusations of cowardice, Diary, 9 Nov. 1663, and on 6 Nov. 1665 he gives Carteret’s account of the duke of Albemarle saying Penn was a ‘cowardly rogue’ who had brought ‘roguish fanatic captains into the fleet’, and of Coventry’s defence of Penn. It appears from these two passages that Penn was attacked from both political sides.

  37. Evidence for this is found in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series for 1665, where a great many dispatches from Batten in Harwich appear, as does William Coventry’s commendation of Penn’s behaviour in battle, dated 4 June.

  38. For Pepys’s attempts on Pegg, Diary, 28 Nov. 1666, 13 Apr., 23 May 1667, 10 May 1668. For Pegg’s suspected pox, Diary, 15 May, 13 Sept. 1667. Lowther’s cousin, Sir John Lowther, became a commissioner of the Navy Board in 1689, and Pepys corresponded with him in that year asking for assistance on behalf of both his brother-in-law Balthasar St Michel and a cousin Charles Pepys: see The Letters of Samuel Pepys and His Family Circle, ed. H. T. Heath (1955), pp. 225, 227 and 243.

  39. See Diary, 19 Oct. 1665, and Pepys’s letter to Coventry of same date, in which he says the duke of Albemarle has asked him to nominate candidates for the job:

  which I desired a little time to do, being unwilling to make an over-sudden nomination… as the rendering their service useful will principally depend upon his diligence and care that hath the putting together and reporting what rises from the several informations from every port, so I am at the greatest loss whom to pitch upon for that employment.

  The truth is, I know one that if you shall think fit to have it propounded to, I dare go far in assuring you the work shall be done to your mind…

  His employment in another capacity I confess is very full, but half the trouble which this will add will be saved by the ease it will bring him in the many letters, orden, messages, and mental labours he now is exercised with.

  Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys 1662–1679, ed. J. R. Tanner (1929), pp. 63–4.

  40. It was suggested by Sir Robert Slingsby, the first comptroller.

  41. The Diary merely mentions the drawing up of the agreement, 26, 27 Mar. 1665. A copy of the ‘privat pack’ is in the Bodleian, Rawlinson MSS, A 172, fol. 102.

  42. There is more: for example, on 11 Dec. 1665 Gauden allows Pepys £500 on a £4,000 transaction, and a year later, on 10 Dec. 1666, Gauden ‘doth promise me consideration for my Victualling business for this year, and also as Treasurer for Tanger, which I am glad of, but would have been gladder to have just now received’. The first engineer of the Tangier Mole, Sir Hugh Cholmley (at St Paul’s at the same time as Pepys) visited him on 23 Nov. 1665 and offered him £200 a year; on 19 Jan. 1666 he received £100, ‘whereof Povey must have half, wrote Pepys in the Diary, but whether he did is not clear; from Povey’s letters, it would seem not. On 23 May 1666 Lord Belasyse, the governor of Tangier, ‘promised me the same profits Povey was to have had’.

  43. Povey to Pepys, 16 Feb. 1674, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 172, fol. 100.

  44. Povey wrote to Pepys, 8 and 13 Mar. 1674. The words quoted are from 13 Mar., Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 172, fol. 104.

  45. Pepys to Povey, 15 Mar. 1674, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 172, fol. 107.

  46. Povey to Pepys about Tangier profits, 3 Feb. 1685, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 179, fol. 38, and Povey to Anthony Deane, fol. 40, for the words quoted in the text.

  47. Diary, 5 Dec. 1665.

  48. Diary, 18 Oct. 1665.

  49. Diary, 21 Dec. 1665, 4, 25, 27, 30, 31 Mar., 1, 2, 3, 11, 16, 23 Apr., 25, 29 June, 3 July 1666.

  50. Hayter to Pepys, 31 Dec. 1668, and Pepys to the commissioners, 13 Jan. 1669, Further Conespondence of
Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, pp. 207–13.

  10. Jealousy

  1. Diary, 27 Mar. 1661.

  2. Diary, 10 Apr. 1661.

  3. Diary, 11 Nov. 1661.

  4. Diary, 5 Oct. 1662.

  5. See, for example, 12 Sept. 1662.

  6. Diary, 24 Apr. 1663.

  7. Diary, 26–8 Apr. 1663.

  8. Diary, 15 May 1663.

  9. Diary, 2 and 3 May 1663.

  10. Diary, 4 May 1663.

  11. Diary, 15 May 1663.

  12. He saw Othello with Creed at the Cockpit, Diary, 11 Oct. 1660.

  13. Diary, 20 May 1663.

  14. Diary, 26 May 1663.

  15. Diary, 9 June 1663.

  16. Diary, 15 June 1663.

  17. Diary, 13 July 1663.

  18. Diary, 13 and 15 July 1663.

  19. Diary, 10 Aug. 1663.

  20. Diary, 10 Aug. 1663.

  21. See Diary, 12–25 Aug. 1663.

  22. Diary, 19 Aug. 1663.

  23. For Pepys’s gallant invitation, Diary, 13 Sept. 1663.

  24. Diary, 19 Sept. 1663.

  25. Diary, 9 Sept. 1663.

  26. Diary, 12 Nov. 1663.

  27. Diary, 18 Nov. 1663.

  28. Diary, 22 Nov. 1663.

  29. This was the Hon. James Montagu, the last child in the family; Pepys records his arrival 15 July 1664.

  30. Diary, 30 Dec. 1663.

  31. Diary, 10 Nov. 1668.

  32. Diary, 30 Sept. 1662.

  11. Death and the Plague

  1. For death of Robert Pepys, Diary, 6 July 1661.

  2. The story is found in the Diary in 1662, 3, 22 Oct.

  3. Diary, 27 Oct. 1662.

  4. Diary, 21 Jan. 1668.

  5. Diary, 16, 19 May 1667.

  6. Diary, 19 Oct. 1663.

  7. Diary, 20 Mar. 1660.

  8. Diary, 11 Oct. 1662.

  9. Diary, 14 Sept. 1663.

  10. Diary, 25, 27 Mar. 1667.

  11. Diary, 29 June 1667.

  12. Tom Pepys to Pall Pepys, 16 Jan. 1664, The Letters of Samuel Pepys and His Family Circle, ed. H. T. Heath (1955), p. 6.

  13. For Batten’s clerk’s illness, Diary, 14 July 1667.

  14. Diary, 15 Mar. 1664.

  15. Diary, 18 Mar. 1664.

  16. Diary, 6 Apr., 4, 20, 27 May, 25 Aug. 1664.

  17. Diary, 23 Apr. 1662. The point is made by Christopher Morris in the Companion to the Latham and Matthews edition of the Diary in a fascinating discussion of why the 1665 plague was the last great outbreak in England. He suggests that those susceptible to it may have virtually died out, leaving a population with natural immunity. He also suggests that some people are more attractive to fleas than others, something many have noticed.

  18. Diary, 1 Aug., 8 Sept. 1664.

  19. Diary, 31 Dec. 1664.

  20. Diary, 31 Jan. 1665.

  21. Mrs Pepys arrived 10 May, made many outings with Elizabeth and trips on the water with Pepys and ‘had a mind to stay a little longer’ on 22 June, the day after he saw coaches and wagons full of people leaving from Cripplegate. Like her son, she clearly much preferred town life to the country, even at the risk of the plague. This was her last visit to London.

  22. Diary, 15 Feb. 1665. He met and was impressed by Robert Hooke; he had recently bought his Micrographia.

  23. Diary, 24, 30 Sept. 1665.

  24. Diary, 9, 23 July 1665.

  25. Diary, 12 July 1665.

  26. Diary, 14 July 1665.

  27. Diary, 26 July 1665.

  28. This was probably one of the plague waters made up by the College of Physicians, distillations of plant juices – tormentil, angelica, peony, salvia, pimpernel, scabious, calendula, juniper are all mentioned by Nathaniel Hodges in his Loimologia of 1667, translated 1720 by J. Quincy, pp. 170–215. Hodges thought sack was good, tobacco useless and the wearing of amulets had a purely psychological effect. Like Pepys, he believed that keeping cheerful was important: ‘Fear or Sorrow… prepare the way for the Infection’ (p. 62). He called it the ‘Poors Plague’ because the rich saved themselves by leaving town.

  29. Diary, 31 July 1665.

  30. Diary, 26 July 1665.

  31. See G. R. Balleine, All for the King: The Life Story of Sir George Carteret (1976), p. 162 and genealogy.

  32. Diary, 29 July 1665.

  33. Pepys to William Coventry, 5 Aug. 1665, Further Conespondence of Samuel Pepys 1662–1679, ed. J. R. Tanner (1929), p. 49.

  34. Pepys to William Coventry, 25 Aug. 1665, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, p. 53.

  35. Diary, 30 Aug., 9 Oct. 1665.

  36. Diary, 8 Aug. 1665.

  37. Diary, 28 Aug. 1665.

  38. Diary, 14, 15, 17 Sept. 1666.

  39. Diary, 10 Sept. 1665.

  40. Pepys to Lady Carteret, 4 Sept. 1665, The Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth (1932), p. 25.

  41. Diary, 12 Apr. 1665.

  42. Diary, 4 Nov. 1665; Pepys to Peter Pett, 2 Dec. 1665, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, p. 82.

  43. Diary, 1 June 1665.

  44. Diary, 21 Sept. 1665, 12 Oct. 1666. The girl was Barker, who succeeded Mary Mercer, but, although she sang well, she did not take to life with the Pepyses and they dismissed her.

  45. Diary, 12 Dec. 1663.

  46. Diary, 29 Dec. 1663.

  47. The £50 bill of exchange was given on 1 Jan. 1664. Luellin took Elizabeth to the theatre 8 Mar. 1664, and dined several times with the Pepyses around this time and in 1665. On 17 Feb. 1665, for example, Pepys came home and found Luellin with Elizabeth, provoking his jealousy.

  48. Diary, 30 Sept. 1665.

  49. Diary, 4 Feb. 1666, and Latham’s footnote.

  50. Diary, 13 Jan. 1666.

  51. When Daniel Defoe, who was five or six in 1665, published his Journal of the Plague Year in 1722, it was meant as a warning of what might happen again.

  12. War

  1. Diary, 28 June 1662, ‘Great talk there is of a fear of a war with the Duch… but I hope it is but a scarecrow to the world, to let them see that we can be ready for them; though God knows, the King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great difficulty, we neither having money, credit nor stores.’

  2. See Henry Lyons, The Royal Society 1660–1940 (1944), pp. 81, 105.

  3. He was given a ‘neager-boy’ by Lieutenant John Howe of the Phoenix in 1675 (Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 185, fols. 66, 70), probably the same one he sold in June 1680 (Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 181, fol. 317). On 11 Sept. 1688 Pepys also asked Captain Stanley of the Foresight to sell his slave Sambo in the plantations, saying he was ‘dangerous to be longer continued in a sober family’ and beyond reform. Arthur Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Saviour of the Navy (1938), p. 270. For Pepys’s observation of Sandwich’s present of slave children, see Diary, 30 May 1662.

  4. Ronald Hutton, Restoration (1985), p. 221.

  5. Esther St Michel was living on the Essex coast and saw much of the Dutch action. Her remarks to Pepys are recorded in the Diary, 17 July 1667.

  6. Pepys to William Coventry, 20 May 1665, Further Conespondence of Samuel Pepys 1662–1679, ed. J. R. Tanner (1929), p. 45.

  7. Diary, 22 May 1665.

  8. William Coventry to Pepys, 21 Apr. 1665, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 458.

  9. William Coventry to Lord Arlington, 24 May 1665, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1664–5, p. 382.

  10. Rupert’s complaints are recorded in Milward’s parliamentary diary, 31 Oct. 1667, Diary of John Milward from September 1666 to May 1668, ed. Caroline Robbins (1938), and in his and Albemarle’s Letter Book, 9 Aug. 1667, etc., The Rupert and Monck Letter Book 1666, ed. J. R. Powell and E. K. Timings (1969).

  11. Dryden wrote, ‘the noise of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city, so that all men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of the event which we knew was then deciding, everyone went foll
owing the sound as his fancy led him; and, leaving the town almost empty, some took towards the Park, some across the River, others down it, all seeking the noise in the depth of silence’. Essay of Dramatic Poesy, cited in David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II (1955), p. 288.

  12. John Beresford, The Godfather of Downing Street: Sir George Downing 1623–1684 (1925), pp. 192–3.

  13. Diary, 10 Sept. 1665.

  14. The second diary, transcribed from Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 299V., r., is printed as Appendix IV to Edwin Chappell’s edition of The Tangier Papers of Samuel Pepys (1935), pp. 335–7.

  15. Sandwich’s authorization for Pepys, 1 Oct. 1665, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 305.

  16. Pepys to Lord Sandwich, 12 Oct. 1665, from Erith, National Maritime Museum, Sandwich Journal, vol. I, X98/065, fol. 63.

  17. For Albemarle’s letter of 19 Sept. 1665 to Lord Sandwich, Bodleian Library, Carte MSS, 75, fol. 363. For Carteret’s letter of 28 Sept., National Maritime Museum, Sandwich Journal, vol. I, fol. 51. For Coventry’s letter of 3. Oct., National Maritime Museum, Sandwich Journal, vol. I, fol. 54. Pepys reports Albemarle’s remark about embezzlement in a letter of 25 Nov., National Maritime Museum, Sandwich Journal, vol. I, fol. 109.

  18. Lord Sandwich to Pepys, 14 Oct. 1665, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 303.

  19. Diary, 19 Oct. 1665, and Pepys to Coventry, Further Conespondence of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, pp. 63–4.

  20. Pepys to duke of York, 25 Oct. 1665, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, p. 65. Pepys to Albemarle, 28 Oct. 1665, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, pp. 67–8. Pepys talks to Lord Sandwich about Coventry, Diary, 25 Oct. 1665. Pepys said in a statement dated 12 Feb. 1668 that he ended up with nothing but one Indian gown for his wife and a nest of small Indian boxes worth £6 (Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 174, fol. 301).

  21. Pepys to Peter Pett, 2 Dec. 1665, Further Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, p. 82.