Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  17. See pp. 353–4 in vol. V, part 2, covering modern MSS in the Catalogue of the Pepys Library, ed. Charles Knighton (1981), for MS 1490 concerning St Michel’s appointment as commissioner of navy for Deptford and Woolwich yards (19 Apr. 1686) and his being given the Treasurer’s House at Deptford, obliging a Mrs Gunman to leave. The house was the one in which Carteret had entertained Lady Sandwich and Pepys when his son married Jemima Montagu in the summer of 1665, and also where Pepys had attended a party at which the duke and duchess of York, Lady Castlemaine and the maids of honour played party games, sitting on the carpet because there were no chairs and being very witty in ‘I love my love with an A because he is so and so; and I hate him with an A because of this and that’, Diary, 4 Mar. 1669.

  18. Pepys to Balthasar St Michel, 11 Dec. 1686, The Letters of Samuel Pepys and His Family Circle, ed. H. T. Heath (1955), pp. 205–6.

  19. Letters from John Jackson (24 Feb. 1687) and Sam Jackson (at sea, 20 July 1688) in ibid., pp. 210, 173–4.

  20. John Creed to Pepys, Feb. 1687, Bodleian Library, A 189, fol. 98.

  21. He died 23 June 1686 at Tunbridge Wells, where he had gone saying, ‘If the waters do not cure me, the earth must.’ His dying was, according to his nephew, ‘as regular and exemplary as his living; he had his senses to the last moment’. H. C. Foxcroft, The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, First Marquis of Halifax (1898), vol. I, p. 465.

  22. Pepys knew Barbara as pretty Bab when she stayed at Seething Lane in 1669 and joined in dancing, sightseeing to Bedlam, theatre parties and outings with Elizabeth, a few years before her marriage to Gale. One of her sons was Pepys’s godson and the eldest, another Roger, became an antiquarian and a friend, so that he knew four generations of the family.

  23. The Petty Papers, ed. Marquess of Lansdowne (1927), vol. II, p. 36. Other information from DNB, article by Irvine Masson and A. J. Youngson in The Royal Society: Its Origins and Founders, ed. Sir Henry Hartley (1960), and Life of Sir William Petty by Lord Edward Fitzmaurice (1895).

  24. Petty regarding his daughter Anne to Sir Robert Southwell, 4 Dec. 1685, Lord Edward Fitzmaurice, Life of Sir William Petty, p. 297. His advice to Penn, The Petty Papers, ed. Marquess of Lansdowne, vol. I, pp. 95–114.

  25. The Petty Papers, ed. Marquess of Lansdowne, vol. I, p. 267.

  26. Lord Edward Fitzmaurice, Life of Sir William Petty, p. 155.

  27. Essay on God from MS copy made for Pepys of Petty’s letter to earl of Anglesey of Apr. 1675, among Pepys’s papers in the Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 185, fol. 219. Petty’s will dated 2 May 1685, printed in Lord Edward Fitzmaurice, Life of Sir William Petty, p. 324.

  28. William of Orange was a Stuart through his mother, Mary, daughter of Charles I and sister of Charles II and James II. He was also married to a Stuart, James II’s elder daughter by his first wife, Anne Hyde, another Mary, brought up as a Protestant at the insistence of Charles II. Her claim to the throne was good as long as James II did not have a son, which is why the birth of his son in June 1688 was a crucial factor in the opposition to him, and why William took seriously allegations that the baby was not the child of James and his queen but had been smuggled in.

  29. 29 Sept. 1688, British Library, Egerton MSS, 2621.

  30. Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 186, fol. 470.

  31. Henry Sheeres to Lord Dartmouth, 24 Nov. 1688, text given in Arthur Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Saviour of the Navy (1938), p. 323.

  32. J. R. Tanner, Mr Pepys: An Introduction to the Diary, together with a Sketch of His Later Life (1925), p. 246, footnote, states that James II wrote a letter on 17 Nov. 1688 recommending the lords commissioners of the Treasury to pay the sum of £28,007.2s. 1¼d. owing to Pepys, as agreed by Charles II on 2 Mar. 1679. This is the amount given in Pepys’s will as still owing. The letter does not, however, specify a sum, and Tanner appears to have incorporated the sum from his knowledge of Pepys’s will.

  Among Tanner’s papers is a copy of the letter in a modern hand. This is now in Arthur Bryant’s archives (N 10, Box 1, enveloped marked 1688). Below the text is added: ‘Docketed Nov. 17, 1688. His Majesty’s Confirmation & Recommendation of the Arreas [sic] due to Mr Pepys upon his Service in the Navy & Adm/lty & as Trea/r for Tangier to the Lords Comm/rs of the Trea/ry. (This letter, which is framed & was shown at a meeting of the S.P. Club, belongs to Lieut. Col. Frederick Pepys Cockerell, OBE, MC, 36 Kensington Square. He let me have a copy and said I could make what use I liked of it. The signature only appears to be written by the King.)’ On his death, Tanner’s papers went to Bryant, who gave the text in his The Saviour of the Navy, p. 312. He noted that Frederick Pepys Cockerell (born in 1876) was dead by the time he published this volume in 1938.

  The records of the Samuel Pepys Club show that Frederick Pepys Cockerell brought the original letter to the club on 11 Dec. 1923. In Feb. 1925 he presented a facsimile of the letter to the National Portrait Gallery, along with a reproduction of the portrait of Pepys used on the cover of this book. Both appear to have remained in the family since Pepys’s death. Frederick Pepys Cockerell put other facsimiles on the market with reproductions of the portrait and advertised them in the Burlington Magazine for Jan. 1924, which stated that the originals were in his possession. This explains why there are so many facsimiles about.

  The original was purchased – presumably after the death of Frederick Pepys Cockerell – by the collector André de Coppet, and at his death sold through Sotheby’s (sale of 14 Mar. 1955) to Denys Bower, who kept it with other Stuart memorabilia at Chiddingstone Castle in Kent. Bower died in 1977. His collection remains at Chiddingstone, but the letter is not at present on display.

  33. Pepys to the mayor, Captain Thomas Langley, and Corporation of Harwich, 27 Nov. 1688, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 179, fol. 264.

  34. J. P. Kenyon, Stuart England (1978), pp. 248–53.

  35. Compare 11 Dec. 1688, ‘the mobile got together and attacked Popish chapels’, Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State of Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (1857).

  36. William to Admiral Herbert from Windsor, 16 Dec. 1688, ‘ j’ai des assurances de la Flotte d’Angleterre qu’elle se soumet a mes ordres’. British Library, Egerton MSS, 2621, fol. 81.

  37. Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 179, fol. 39.

  38. Pepys to Captain Thomas Langley, 1 Jan. 1689, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 179, fol. 142.

  39. Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 179, fols. 218, 223, filed by Pepys as ‘Harwich Papers between SP & that Corporation… approaching election Jan. 22 1688/9 ’ .

  25. The Jacobite

  1. Roger Pepys died at Impington on 4 Oct. 1688. His will is dated 31 Aug. 1688 and was proved 13 Oct. Information from Sheila Russell.

  2. Pepys to Dryden, 14 July 1699, Letters and the Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth (1932), p. 281. The Fables, published in 1700, became Dryden’s most popular work. The prefatory note to my nineteenth-century edition reads, ‘The “Character of a Good Parson”, one of the most delightful sketches in our language, was recommended to Dryden for refacimento by Pepys, the diarist, who was one of his intimate friends, and who to much simplicity of character seems to have united a good critical judgment, as well as a good business capacity.’

  3. 30 Dec. 1689, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 170, fol. 180, among what Pepys labelled ‘Promiscuous Papers Current’.

  4. Anthony Deane to Pepys, 29 Oct. 1689, Pepys to Anthony Deane, 23 Nov. 1689, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, pp. 211–12. I have omitted Pepys’s parenthesis about the felicities of the next world, ‘which yet I bless God I am not without care for’.

  5. 11 Apr. 1693 Pepys learnt that £69.10s. 1 d. had been given to Sam Jackson out of the Brampton rents. He promised repayment, and on 24 June Matthews, Pepys’s cousin, the Jackson boys’ one-time teacher and now agent for Brampton, sent £10 on behalf of Sam to Pepys, who was delighted and forgave the rest of the debt (Sotheby’s Sale Cat
alogue, 1931, p. 23). But by Apr. 1702 Pepys was complaining to Matthews about Sam again.

  6. Letters from Thomas Shadwell to John Jackson during his Grand Tour at the end of the decade refer to ‘an enemy, female’ of JJ, and to his ‘evil genius’, and the ‘Lady at London’ whom he is not eager to see, all of which appear to mean Mary: they are printed in Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys 1679–1703, ed. J. R. Tanner (1926), 15 Mar. 1700, vol. I, p. 295, 20 May, 2 June 1700, vol. I, pp. 343, 349, 8 July 1700, vol. II, p. 10. By JJ’s own account Pepys urged them to be friends on his deathbed, which suggests they were not.

  7. Balthasar de St Michel to Pepys, 28 May 1689, The Letters of Samuel Pepys and His Family Circle, ed. H. T. Heath (1955), pp. 123–4.

  8. Peter Skinner to Pepys, 27 Sept. 1689, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 170, fol. 42, and 8 Nov. 1689, fol – 30·

  9. Letters in Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, show Mrs Fane was discharged in 1687 (p. 180, footnote) and interceded for by Mary; then, she was about to be discharged again in 1689, Pepys to James Houblon, 10 July 1689 (pp. 194–5). But Pepys’s account with Hoare shows payments to Mrs Jane Fane in Dec. 1691.

  10. J. R. Tanner, Mr Pepys: An Introduction to the Diary together with a Sketch of His Later Life (1925), p. 272, from a paper in the Pepys Library, dated 1697, listing his servants.

  11. Sir Francis died 9 Oct. 1690. His will, held in the PRO, was written in 1684, the year of his wife’s death. Julia Shallcross was mistress of Woodhall until her death in 1726, when it went to her sister Isabel Hutchinson, and it seems reasonable to think Mary sometimes stayed with Julia at Woodhall after 1690.

  12. G. M. Trevelyan, Social History of England (1962): ‘For 30 years after the Restoration the profit on the original stock averaged first 20 and later 40 per cent per annum. The market price of £100 stock touched £500 in 1685. ’

  13. For Hickes, J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors (1902), also DNB. For Sheeres, 3 Mar. 1696, Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State of Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (1857), vol. IV, p. 24.

  14. A tribute surely to William Ill’s surveillance system. It looks as though Pepys was questioned about the proposed trip, because James Vernon wrote to Matthew Prior in Paris on 16 Aug. 1698, ‘I hope you will have an eye upon Mr Pepys’s nephew that he doth not go astray. I believe the old gentleman means fairly, and hath sent no underhand compliments to his old master, having professed the contrary; but young men and ladies may sometimes be libertines and forget good advice.’ Information from J. R. Tanner, Mr Pepys: An Introduction to the Diary, p. 270.

  15. Henry Clarendon was the second earl, son of Chancellor Clarendon; he had been arrested and sent to the Tower in 1690 and was not in favour with King William. Clarendon dined with Pepys on 27 Apr. 1694, as Pepys recorded in a note pasted into vol. X of the Sandwich Papers (also no. 138 in naval papers in Pepys Library). George Hickes was known to Pepys from at least the 1680s when he was dean of Worcester.

  16. Thomas Smith to Pepys, 16 Apr. 1702, Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, vol. II, pp. 259–62.

  17. Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State of Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, vol. II, p. 64, says Captain Hatton was arrested 25 Jan. 1690 and discharged 12 Feb. 1692. He was the younger brother of Christopher, first Viscount Hatton, a founder member of the Royal Society. Charles Hatton was born in the mid 1630s and became a close friend to Pepys in the 1690s.

  18. For example, Pepys to John Evelyn, 8 Oct. 1691, Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère (1997).

  19. This is the beginning: “Twas in April 1679, when (my unhappy Master, his then Royal Highness, having but newly been commanded abroad, and my self now shut up in the Tower) His Majesty K. Charles the Second was led to the exchanging the Method wherein the Affairs of his Admiralty had for some years before been manag’d under his own Inspection, for that of a Commission, charg’d with the Execution of the whole Office of his High Admiral.’(In fact it was not in April but in May.)

  At the end he announces his intention of writing more naval history and continues:

  In which consideration I shall (not gladly only, but) thankfully receive Intimation of any Matters herein calling for Amendment; as well-knowing how far from infallible his best endeavours must be, that has to do with a Subject so extensive, various, and complicate, as that of a Navy; and a Navy circumstanc ’ d as this happens to be within the limits of this Chapter.

  But whatever (more or less) I may meet with from better Hands toward the improvement of this Schitz [i.e., sketch]: Somewhat (I trust) of present utility may (even as it is) be hoped for from it, in the som ample, fresh, and costly Experiment (and to England most instructive) which this Paper exhibits, of the Validity of these three Truths in its Sea Oeconomy, viz,

  1. That Integrity, and general (but inpractic ’ d) Knowledge, are not alone sufficient to conduct and support a Navy so, as to prevent its Declension into a State little less unhappy, than the worst that can befall it under the want of both.

  2. – That not much more (neither) is to be depended on, even from Experience alone and Integrity; unaccompany ’ d with Vigour of Application, Assiduity, Affection, Strictness of Discipline, and Method.

  3. – That it was a strenuous Conjunction of all these (and that conjunction only) that within half the Time, and less than half the Charge it cost the Crown in the exposing it, had (at the very instant of its unfortunate Lord ’ s Withdrawing from it) rais ’ d the Navy of England from the lowest state of Impotence, to the most advanced step towards a lasting and solid Prosperity, that (all Circumstances consider ’ d) this Nation had ever seen it at.

  And yet not such; but that (even at this its Zenith) it both did and suffer ’ d sufficient to teach us, that there is Something above both That and Us, that Governs the World.

  To which (Incomprehensible) alone be GLORY .

  20. John Evelyn to Pepys, 11 June 1690, The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère. The letter continues to p. 218, and there is a second letter on 17 June 1690, p. 219, which is roughly the equivalent of a modern pre-publication puff.

  21. J. D. Davies’s ‘Pepys and the Admiralty Commission of 1679–1684 ’ , Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, vol. lxii, 1989, pp. 34–53, makes the case that Pepys had the strongest political motivation for destroying the reputation of the commission and set out to do so; and that truth suffered. For instance, Pepys ignored circumstances when he compared the size of the navy in 1679 (76 ships) with 1684 (24 ships), because in 1679 the country had just mobilized a fleet for an intended war and been unable to pay off the men, lacking the money to do so; while in May 1684 there were in fact 39, not 24, ships in service, and they were the normal summer guard. Davies believes that some of the planking used for the ships built under Pepys’s commission was unfit, and that some of the rotting vessels he found were a result of that unfitness as much as subsequent neglect. He suggests that the 1679 commission did all it could to combat ‘Good Voyages’ and found themselves hampered by the king, as Pepys himself observed in his Tangier notes; that the king in fact intervened arbitrarily in Admiralty affairs whenever he chose – the Admiralty was, for example, left entirely in the dark about the Tangier expedition until it was under way – and left it unsupported to struggle with the economic problems faced in day-to-day running. And so on.

  22. When a life of James II was prepared from James’s own notes by James Stanier Clarke, librarian to the prince regent (and friend of Jane Austen) and published in 1816, Clarke quoted chunks of Mr Secretary Pepys’s account of the qualities needed by Navy Board officials. Clarke says James II approved and associated himself with Pepys’s recommendations. He had of course read them in 1685, but it looks as though a copy of Pepys’s Memoires may have found its way to him in 1690.

  23. David Douglas,
English Scholars (1951 ), p. 258.

  24. Pepys to John Evelyn, 9 Jan. 1692, Pepys to Henry Sheeres, 29 Jan. 1692, Balthasar St Michel to Pepys, 20 Mar. 1692, all in Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. J. R. Tanner, pp. 51–2, 53–4, 55–6.

  Sheeres, like Pepys, was kept under surveillance as a suspected Jacobite and was arrested on 3 Mar. 1696, when there were again fears of an invasion attempt by James from France. Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State of Affairs, vol. IV, p. 24.

  25. Pepys to Thomas Gale, 15 Sept. 1692, Letters and Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth, pp. 230–32. He wrote to John Evelyn the following day, The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère, pp. 235–6.

  26. Diary, 24 June 1666, on hearing of the death of Sir Francis Prujean, one-time president of the Royal College of Physicians.

  27. They were renumbered in 1693. Since they were arranged by size, they were kept in four separate places up to and after this date, and only in 1700, during Pepys’s last supervision of the cataloguing and arrangement, were they put together – see Robert Latham’s introduction to vol. I of the Diary, p. lxviii.

  26. A Journey to be Made

  1. From H. B. Wheatley’s Pepysiana (1899), pp. 45–7, which prints the account of the trial given in the Old Bailey Session Papers for 6–9 Dec. 1693.

  2. Pepys to John Evelyn, 7 Nov. 1694, Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. G. de la Bédoyère (1997). The visit with Lady Sandwich was 30 June 1662, with Charles II and the duke, 26 July 1665.

  3. Pepys outlived Creed, which must have pleased him – Creed died in 1701 and his widow put up a fine memorial stone in Titchmarsh Church, Northants. Secretary’s minutes to Royal Society for 21 Nov. 1694, PP. 11 9, 120.

  4. For advising Mary to ride, Pepys to Hans Sloane, 14 Oct. 1701, ‘ Your Patient is a Cock-horse every day, and I hope will have benefitt by it.’ Letters and the Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth (1932), p. 334. For Pepys’s wish to talk with Sloane, 31 July 1702, p. 348.