Samuel 1633-1703 Pepys

Nobody indeed was better acquainted with the defects of the Office, for in 1668 he drew up for the Duke of York two papers of inquiry and rebuke, "The Duke's Reflections on the several Members of the Navy Board's Duty" and "The Duke's answer to their several excuses." (See Pepysian mss. at Magdalene, No. 2242 and Harleian mss. 8003.) In 1668 he went for a fortnight's tour in the west of England, and in 1669 he and his wife travelled in Holland and France. His success in addressing Parliament gave him the ambition to become a member of the House of Commons. He stood for Aldeburgh, but the death of his wife, on Nov. to, 1669, prevented him from conducting his canvass in person, and he was not elected. In 1673 he was, however, returned for Castle Rising. The validity of his election was questioned by his opponent, Mr. Offley, and the committee of privileges decided against him, but the prorogation of the House prevented further action.

The no-popery agitation was now growing in strength. The Duke of York was driven from office by the Test Act, and Pepys was accused of "popery," partly on the ground that he was said to keep a crucifix and altar in his house, partly because he was accused of having converted his wife to Roman Catholicism, but the charges broke down on examination. In 1673 Pepys was transferred by the King from the navy office to the secretaryship of the admiralty. In 1679 he was member for Harwich, and in the height of the Popish Plot mania he was accused, manifestly because he was a trusted servant to the Duke of York, of betray ing naval secrets to the French. He resigned office on May 21, 1679, and on the following day he was committed to the Tower, but he was released on bail on July 9, and in the following Feb ruary the charges against him were finally dropped.

In October 168o he was with the king at Newmarket, and took down the narrative of his escape after the battle of Wor cester. In 1676 Pepys had been appointed a governor of Christ's Hospital and was elected Master of the Trinity House, and in 1677 he became Master of the Clothworkers Company. A pro posal to make him Provost of King's College, Cambridge, in 1681, came to nothing. In 1682 he accompanied the Duke of York to Scotland, and in 1683-84 he was engaged in arranging for the evacuation of Tangier. He visited the place and kept a diary of his voyage, and of a subsequent tour in Spain. In 1684 he was elected president of the Royal Society.

When the Admiralty Commission of 1679 was dissolved in 1684, Pepys was restored to the secretaryship of the admiralty, and he retained the office when James II. ascended the throne. His chief work during this period was the establishment of the Special Commission of 1686 "for the recovery of the navy," by which its impaired efficiency was entirely restored. In 1685 he again sat in Parliament as member for Harwich, and in the same year he was for a second time Master of the Trinity House. The Revolution of 1688 ended his official career. He was dismissed on March 9, 1689, and spent the rest of his life in retirement, and, except for two brief imprisonments in 1689 and in 1690 "on suspicion of being affected to King James," in peace. He died at his friend William Hewer's house in Clapham on May 26, 1703, in the 71st year of his age.

His last years were passed in correspondence with his friends, who included Evelyn and Dryden, or in arranging his valuable library. This was left on his death to his nephew, John Jackson, son of his sister Paulina, and in 1724, by the terms of his will, was transferred to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where it is still preserved.

The Diary.

Such was the outward and visible life of Samuel Pepys, public servant, whose diligence was rewarded by success. The other Pepys, whom Sir Walter Scott called "that curious fellow," was revealed in 1825, when his secret diary was partly published. The first entry was made on Jan. t, 166o, the last on May 31, 1669, when the increasing weakness of his eyes, which had given him trouble since 1663, compelled him to cease writing in the conditions he imposed upon himself. If there is in all the literature of the world a book which can be called "unique" with strict propriety, it is this. Confessions, diaries, journals, autobiographies abound, but such a revelation of a man's self has not been discovered. The diary is a thing apart by virtue of three qualities which are rarely found in perfection when separate and nowhere else in combination. It was secret ; it was full; and it was honest. That Pepys meant it for his own eye alone is clear. He wrote it in Shelton's system of tachygraphy, published in 1641, which he complicated by using foreign lan guages or by varieties of his own invention whenever he had to record the passages least fit to be seen by his servants, or by "all the world." Relying on this cypher, he put down whatever he saw, heard, felt or imagined, every motion of his mind, every action of his body, and he noted all this, not as he desired it to appear to others, but as it was to his seeing.

The result is "a human document" of amazing vitality. The style is as peculiar as the matter—colloquial, garrulous, racy from simplicity of language, and full of the unconscious humour which is never absent from a truthful account of the workings of nature in the average man. To his credit must be put the facts that he knew the animalism and the vice of the Restoration period to be what they were; that he had a real love of music, and gave help to musicians, Cesare Morelli, for instance; that though he made money out of his places he never allowed bad work to be done for the navy if he could help it; that he was a hard worker; and that he had a capacity for acts of kindness and generosity.

The diary, written in shorthand in 6 volumes, was included among his books at Magdalene. On the publication of Evelyn's diary in 1818, the then master of Magdalene, the Hon. and Rev. George Neville, decided to publish Pepys's. The library contained both the short and the longhand copy of Pepys's account of King Charles's adventures, but its contents were so little known by the curators that this key was overlooked. The ms. was deciphered between 1819 and 1822, by John Smith, afterwards rector of Baldock in Hertfordshire. The first and partial edition, edited by Richard Griffin Neville, third Lord Braybrooke, appeared in 1825. It attracted great attention, and was reviewed by Sir Walter Scott in the Quarterly for January 1826. A second edition followed in 1828. A third and enlarged edition appeared in 1848 49, and a fourth in 1854. A still fuller edition was published in 1875-79 by Dr. Mynors Bright. Finally, in 1893-99 Dr. H. B. Wheatley printed the whole of the diary with the exception of a few unprintable passages. Pepys's only known publication in his life was the Memoires of the Royal Navy (169o).