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AND THE

WORLD HE LIVED IN.

BY

HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A.

“His Diary is like a good sirloin, which requires only to be basted with its own drippings.”—Athenæum, 1848, page 551.

Second Edition.

LONDON:

BICKERS AND SON, 1, LEICESTER SQUARE.

1880.

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CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

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PREFACE

[v]

PREFACE.

This little book does not need any long Preface, as the title sufficiently explains the object aimed at. Although the various subjects referred to in the “Diary” are annotated in the different editions, there is in none of these any complete analysis of the entire work or of the incidents of Pepys’s life.

I have endeavoured in the following pages to draw together some of the most interesting incidents of the “Diary” relating both to Pepys’s life and to the manners of his time, and also to illustrate them from other sources. I have used the best edition of the “Diary,” by the Rev. Mynors Bright; but in order that this book may form a companion to all editions I have referred[vi] to the date of the entries rather than to the volume and page. It must therefore be understood that the passages referred to when not met with in the other editions will be found among the hitherto unpublished matter of that of Mr. Bright. It has been my endeavour to illustrate the contents of this entertaining work more completely than has previously been attempted, and several of the circumstances of Pepys’s life are here brought prominently forward for the first time. I may add that the whole of the present volume was printed off before the appearance of the excellent article in the July number of the “Edinburgh Review” (1880), as otherwise it might be supposed that certain points had been suggested by that article. I have, however, availed myself of its pages to make a correction of a small matter in the Index.

Mr. T. C. Noble has kindly sent me, since the completion of this book, a copy of Pepys’s original marriage certificate from the Registers of St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and I therefore insert it here to complete the account in Chapter I. [vii]“Samuell Peps of this parish Gent & Elizabeth De Snt Michell of Martins in the ffeilds Spinster. Published October 19th, 22nd, 29th [1655] and were married by Richard Sherwyn Esqr one of the Justices of the Peace of the Cittie and Lyberties of Westmr December 1st. (Signed) Ri. Sherwyn.”

The pronunciation of Pepys’s name has long been a disputed point, but although the most usual form at the present day is Peps, there can be little doubt that in his own time the name was pronounced as if written Peeps. The reasons for this opinion are: (1) that the name was sometimes so spelt phonetically by some of his contemporaries, as in the Coffee-house paper quoted in the “Diary” (ed. Mynors Bright, vol. vi. p. 292): “On Tuesday last Mr. Peeps went to Windsor,” &c.; (2) that this pronunciation is still the received one at Magdalene College, Cambridge; and (3) that the present bearers of the name so pronounce it.

In conclusion, it is my pleasing duty to express here my best thanks to those friends who have kindly assisted me in my work. Chief among these are Professor Newton, F.R.S., who, as Fellow of Magdalene College, facilitated my inquiries respecting the Pepysian Library, Mr. Pattrick, Senior Fellow and President of the College, Mr. Pepys Cockerell, Mr. George Scharf, F.S.A., Mr. Richard B. Prosser, of the Patent Office, who communicated the documents[viii] relating to Mrs. Pepys’s father, and Colonel Pasley, whose List of the Secretaries of the Admiralty, &c., in the Appendix will be found of great value, not merely in illustrating Pepys’s life, but as a real addition to our information respecting the history of the Navy.

H. B. W.

5, Minford Gardens, W.,
September, 1880.

P.S. Since the first publication of this book I have received an interesting letter from Mr. Walter Courtenay Pepys, a member of the Cottenham branch of the Pepys family, who, while agreeing with the statement above as to the Diarist’s pronunciation, reminds me that his branch have pronounced the name as “Pep-pis” for at least one hundred years. In favour of this pronunciation Mr. Pepys adds that the French branch, which is now settled at La Rochelle, but came from Languedoc and originally from Italy (where the name exists as “Peppi”), now spell the name [ix]“Pepy.”

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CONTENTS.

CONTENTS.

			PAGE
Preface			v
Chap.	I.	Pepys before the Diary	1
″	II.	Pepys in the Diary	16
″	III.	Pepys after the Diary	46
″	IV.	Tangier	63
″	V.	Pepys’s Books and Collections	77
″	VI.	London	100
″	VII.	Pepys’s Relations, Friends, and Acquaintances	116
″	VIII.	The Navy	128
″	IX.	The Court	159
″	X.	Public Characters	183
″	XI.	Manners	199
″	XII.	Amusements	217
″	XIII.	Conclusion	232
Appendix	I.	Portraits of Pepys	237
″	II.	Schemes of Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel (Mrs. Pepys’s Father)	241
″	III.	Pepys’s Manuscripts at Oxford	251
″	IV.	Musical Instruments	252
″	V.	Pepys’s Correspondents	254
″	VI.	List of Secretaries of the Admiralty, Clerks of the Acts, &c., drawn up by Colonel Pasley, R.E.	266
″	VII.	Plays which Pepys saw acted	289
Index			297

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CHAPTER I.

[1]

SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE WORLD HE LIVED IN.

CHAPTER I.

PEPYS BEFORE THE DIARY.

“He was a pollard man, without the top (i. e. the reason as the source of ideas, or immediate yet not sensuous truths, having their evidence in themselves; or the imagination or idealizing power, by symbols mediating between the reason and the understanding), but on this account more broadly and luxuriantly branching out from the upper trunk.”—Coleridge’s MS. note in his copy of the “Diary” (Notes and Queries, 1st S. vol. vi. p. 215).

Samuel Pepys was the first of a well-established stock to make a name in the outer world, but since his time the family can boast of having had amongst its members a Court physician, a bishop, and a lord chancellor.

The earliest recorded Pepys was named Thomas, and appears, on the authority of the Court Rolls of the manor of Pelhams, in Cottenham,[2] to have been bailiff of the Abbot of Crowland’s lands in Cambridgeshire, in the early part of the reign of Henry VI.[1] From that time the family flourished, and there seems to be some reason for believing that certain members enriched themselves with the spoils of the abbey lands in the time of Henry VIII.

Before the Diarist became known, one of the most distinguished members of the family was Richard Pepys, created Lord Chief Justice of Ireland by Charles I. When the King was executed, Richard resigned his office; but he enjoyed the favour of Cromwell, and resumed the place. As he did not die until 1678, it is strange that there should be no allusion to him in the “Diary.”

The branch from which Samuel was descended had not much money; and his father, being a younger son, came to London and became a tailor. This descent in the social scale has caused much misapprehension, and his enemies did not forget to taunt him on his connection with tailoring; but it is a well-accredited axiom that trade does not injure gentry. Some remarks of Pepys himself upon his family have been greatly misunderstood. Referring to the non-appearance of any account of the Pepyses in Fuller’s “Worthies,” he writes:—“But I believe, indeed, our family were never considerable.”[2] Dr. Doran paraphrased this into: [3]“Let others say of his family what they might: he, for his own part, did not believe that it was of anything like gentle descent.”[3] This is a pure blunder, for Pepys merely meant that none of the family had made much mark; and he would have been very indignant had any one told him that they were not gentle.

Samuel, the fifth child of John and Margaret Pepys, was born on February 23rd, 1632, either at Brampton, a village near Huntingdon, or in London. There is something to be said in favour of each supposition, but, as the registers of Brampton church do not commence until the year 1654,[4] the question cannot now be definitely settled. We have Pepys’s own authority for the statement that his father and mother were married at Newington, in Surrey, on October 15th, 1626.[5] The register of marriages of St. Mary, Newington, has been searched, but the name of Pepys occurs neither in the years 1625, 1626, nor in 1627,[6] and Mrs. John Pepys’s maiden name is still unknown. In early youth, Samuel went to a school at Huntingdon, as appears by a passage in the “Diary” (March 15th, 1659–60), where he writes: “I met Tom Alcock, one that went to school with me at Huntingdon, but I had not seen him this sixteen years.” He seems to have spent his youth pretty equally between town and country, for on one occasion, when he was walking over the fields to Kingsland, he remembered[4] the time when, as a boy, he lived there, and “used to shoot with my bow and arrow in these fields.”[7] When he left Huntingdon he entered St. Paul’s School, and remained there until he had reached the age of seventeen. In after life, on the occasion of an official visit to Mercers’ Hall, he remembered the time when he was a petitioner for his exhibition.[8] He was a stout Roundhead in his boyish days, and this fact was remarked upon, to his great chagrin, in after years, by his friend and schoolfellow Mr. Christmas. He went to see the execution of Charles I. at Whitehall, and made himself conspicuous by saying on his return that, were he to preach upon the event of the day, he should select as his text the verse: “The memory of the wicked shall rot.” He was in some fear that Mr. Christmas might remember this also, but he was happy to find that that gentleman had left school before the incident occurred.[9] Pepys always took a lively interest in the welfare of his school, to which references are frequently made in the “Diary.”

In 1650, his name occurs as a sizar on the boards of Trinity College, Cambridge; but before going to reside at the University, on March 5, 1650–51,[10] he was entered at Magdalene College, having probably been led to make the change by the greater inducements held out to him by the latter college. Here he was elected[5] into one of Mr. Spendluffe’s scholarships in the following month; and two years later, on October 14, 1653, he was preferred to one on Dr. John Smith’s foundation. His father was at this time described as a citizen of London.

Little is known of Samuel’s academic career, during which he does not appear to have gained much distinction; and remarks in various parts of the “Diary” show that his conduct was not such as became a Puritan. The College books can be brought as a witness against him, for we learn from that source that, on October 21st, 1653, “Peapys and Hind were solemnly admonished ... for having been scandalously over-served with drink the night before.” Still, we must not jump to the conclusion that his time was entirely wasted, for he evidently carried into his busy life a good stock of classical learning. It was while he was at the University that he made the acquaintance of the learned Selden, from whom he borrowed the collection of ballads which formed the basis of the famous Pepysian collection. He relates that, while at Cambridge, he wrote a romance entitled, “Love a Cheate,” which he tore up on the 30th of January, 1663–64. This work of destruction must have been performed with some feelings of regret, for he tells us that he rather liked the tale, and wondered that he had ever been able to write so well. His previous literary performances had consisted in the concocting of some anagrams upon Mrs. Elizabeth Whittle, afterwards the wife of Sir Stephen Fox.[11] It is not recorded at what[6] time Pepys left college, but it must have been either in 1654 or 1655. He was made Master of Arts by proxy, in June, 1660, the grace being passed on the 26th of that month.

On the 1st of December, 1655,[12] when he was still without any settled means of support, Pepys married Elizabeth St. Michel, a beautiful and portionless girl of fifteen. Although there is extant a letter from Balthasar St. Michel to Pepys (dated from Deal, February 8th, 1673–74), in which the history of Mrs. Pepys’s family is set forth, Lord Braybrooke was contented with the information on her monument, and merely added that she was educated in a convent, which in point of fact she was not. The letter alluded to was printed as far back as the year 1841,[13] and yet I cannot find that the history contained in it has ever been used by the biographers of Pepys. What is even more remarkable than Lord Braybrooke’s silence respecting it, is the fact that the Rev. John Smith, who published the letter, overlooked it when he wrote his introduction. Mons. St. Michel was of a good family in Anjou, but having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, when in the German service, his father disinherited him, and he was left penniless. He came over to England in the retinue of Henrietta Maria, on her marriage with Charles I., as one of her Majesty’s gentleman carvers; but the Queen dismissed[7] him on finding out that he was a Protestant, and did not go to mass. Being a handsome man with courtly manners, he gained the affections of the daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmall (lately left a widow by an Irish squire), who married him against the wishes of her family, and, with £1,500 which they raised, the newly-married couple started for France, in the hope of recovering, if possible, some part of the family estates. Unhappily, they were taken prisoners at sea, with all their goods, by the Dunkirkers, and when released they settled at Bideford, in Devonshire. Here, or near by, Elizabeth and Balthasar and the rest of the family were born.

In course of time they all went to France, and the father, in command of a company of foot, assisted at the taking of Dunkirk. He occupied his time with propositions of perpetual motion and other visionary schemes, and consequently brought himself and all dependent upon him to the brink of poverty. While he was away from Paris, some devout Roman Catholics persuaded Madame St. Michel to place her daughter in the nunnery of the Ursulines. The father was enraged at this action, but managed to get Elizabeth out of the nunnery after she had been there twelve days. Thinking that France was a dangerous place to live in, he hurried his family back to England, and shortly afterwards Elizabeth married Pepys. Her father was greatly pleased that she had become the wife of a true Protestant; and she herself said to him, kissing his eyes, [8]“Dear father, though in my tender years I was by my low fortune in this world deluded to popery by the fond dictates thereof, I have now (joined with my riper years, which give me more understanding) a man to my husband too wise, and one too religious in the Protestant religion, to suffer my thoughts to bend that way any more.”

There are several references in the “Diary” to Mrs. Pepys’s father and mother, who seem never to have risen out of the state of poverty into which they had sunk. On May 2, 1662, Mons. St. Michel took out a patent, in concert with Sir John Collidon and Sir Edward Ford,[14] for the purpose of curing smoky chimneys; but this scheme could not have been very successful, as a few months afterwards he was preparing to go to Germany in order to fight against the Turks.[15] Pepys gave him some work to do in 1666, and Mrs. Pepys carried the account-books that he was to rule; but such jobs as these must have given him but a sorry living, and in the following year he again proposed to go abroad. Pepys sent him three jacobuses in gold to help him on his journey.[16] We hear nothing more of either father or mother, with the exception of an allusion to their pleasure at seeing the prosperous state of their daughter[17]—a prosperity in which they certainly did not share.

This account of Mrs. Pepys’s parentage has led us away from the early days of Pepys, when, with improvident passion, he married his young[9] wife; and we will therefore return to the year 1655. Early marriages were then far from uncommon, and Mrs. Pepys’s beauty was considered as forming a very valid excuse for the improvidence of the match. There seems to be some reason for believing that she was of a dark complexion, for her husband on one occasion was mad with her for dressing herself according to the fashion in fair hair.[18] Sir Edward Montagu, who was Pepys’s first cousin one remove (Samuel’s grandfather and Sir Edward’s mother being brother and sister), gave a helping hand to the imprudent couple, and allowed them to live in his house. The Diarist alludes to this time, when, some years afterwards, he writes of how his wife “used to make coal fires, and wash” his “foul clothes with her own hand,” in their little room at Lord Sandwich’s.[19]

Samuel does not appear to have lived with his father after he had grown up, and as old John Pepys was not a very thriving tradesman, it seems likely that Montagu had previously assisted his young kinsman. Indeed, it was probably under his patronage that Samuel went to the University.

The Diarist seems to have held some official position in the year 1656, because on Thursday, August 7th, a pass was granted “to John Pepys and his man with necessaries for Holland, being on the desire of Mr. Samll. Pepys.”[20] John Pepys had probably long been in the habit of going[10] backwards and forwards to Holland, for Samuel writes (January 24th, 1665–66): “We went through Horslydowne, where I never was since a little boy, that I went to enquire after my father, whom we did give over for lost coming from Holland.” Whether these journeys were undertaken in the way of business, or whether they had any connection with Montagu’s affairs, we cannot now tell. That Samuel acted as a sort of agent for Montagu, we have evidence; and among the Rawlinson Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library is a memorandum of the payment to him on General Montagu’s part for the ransom of the Marquis of Baydez (22nd January, 1656–57).

On March 26th, 1658, he underwent an operation for the stone, a disease that seems to have been inherited. The operation was successfully performed, and ever after he made a practice of celebrating the anniversary of this important event in his life with thanksgiving.

In 1659 he accompanied Sir Edward Montagu in the “Naseby,” when that admiral made his expedition to the Sound; and he was very surprised to learn afterwards how negotiations had been carried on of which at the time he was quite ignorant. This is not the place for a history of the various stages that led to the Restoration, but a passing allusion to one of these may be allowed here, as the particulars are given in the “Diary.” When Sir Edward Montagu left England for the Sound, he said to the Protector Richard, on parting with him, that [11]“he should rejoice more to see him in his grave at his return home, than that he should give way to such things as were then in hatching, and afterwards did ruin him.”[21] Finding the condition of affairs in England hopeless, Montagu took advantage of this expedition to correspond with Charles II.; but he had to be careful and secret, for his fellow-plenipotentiary, Algernon Sidney, who suspected him, was an enemy.[22] Pepys’s remark on finding out what had been going on under his nose was, “I do from this raise an opinion of him, to be one of the most secret men in the world, which I was not so convinced of before.”[23]

On Pepys’s return to England he was employed in the office of Mr., afterwards Sir George, Downing, as a clerk of the Exchequer connected with the pay of the army, and soon afterwards commenced to keep the “Diary” which we now possess.

The account of the incidents of Pepys’s early life must be more or less fragmentary, as they can be obtained merely from occasional allusions; and it is only in the next chapter, in which we see Pepys in the “Diary,” that we can obtain any full idea of the man as painted by himself. Before passing on to this part of our subject, it will be well to set down a few notes on the “Diary” as a book. The book has thrown such a flood of light upon the history and manners of the middle of the seventeenth century, that we are apt to forget the fact that before the year 1825 the world knew nothing of this man of gossip. Yet so ungrateful are we to our benefactors, that the publication of the[12] “Diary” did an immense injury to the writer’s reputation. Previously he was known as a staid, trustworthy, and conscientious man of business; as a patron of science and literature, and as a President of the Royal Society. Jeremy Collier says, he was “a philosopher of the severest morality.” Since 1825 we have been too apt to forget the excellence of his official life, and to think of him only as a busybody and a quidnunc.

When Pepys’s library was presented to Magdalene College, Cambridge, by his nephew, John Jackson, in 1724, there were, among the other treasures, six small volumes of closely-written MS. in shorthand (upwards of three thousand pages in all), which attracted little or no notice until after the publication of Evelyn’s “Diary.” Then it was that the Hon. and Rev. George Neville, Master of the College, drew them out of their obscurity, and submitted them to his kinsman, the well-known statesman, Lord Grenville, who had as a law student practised shorthand. Lord Grenville deciphered a few of the pages, and drew up an alphabet and list of arbitrary signs. These were handed to John Smith, an undergraduate of St. John’s College, who undertook to decipher the whole. He commenced his labours in the spring of 1819, and completed them in April, 1822—having thus worked for nearly three years, usually for twelve and fourteen hours a day.[24] What was remarkable[13] in all this was, that in the Pepysian library there rested a little volume which contained the account of Charles II.’s escape after the battle of Worcester, taken down in shorthand by Pepys from the King’s dictation, and written out by himself in long-hand. Here, therefore, was the key that would have unlocked the “Diary” quite overlooked. Lord Braybrooke made the statement that the cipher used by Pepys “greatly resembled that known by the name of Rich’s system;” but this was misleading, as the system really adopted was the earlier one of Thomas Shelton. Mr. J. E. Bailey, F.S.A., communicated a very valuable paper, “On the Cipher of Pepys’s Diary,” to the Manchester Literary Club in 1876, in which he gave particulars of the various old systems of shorthand, and expressed the opinion that Pepys made himself familiar with Shelton’s “Tachygraphy”[25] while a student at Cambridge. The earliest edition of Rich’s “Pen’s Dexterity” was published in 1654, while in 1642 Shelton could refer to twenty years’ experience as a shorthand-writer. When the Rev. Mynors Bright was about to decipher the [14]“Diary” afresh, he consulted Shelton’s book, a copy of which, with other works on shorthand, is preserved in the Pepysian Library. Mr. Bright informs us that, “When Pepys wished to keep anything particularly concealed, he wrote his cipher generally in French, sometimes in Latin, or Greek, or Spanish. This gave me a great deal of trouble. Afterwards he changed his plan and put in dummy letters. I was quite puzzled at this, and was nearly giving up in despair the hope of finding out his device, but at last, by rejecting every other letter, I made out the words. It would have been better for Pepys’s credit if these passages could not have been deciphered, as all of them are quite unfit for publication.”

Pepys was a great lover of shorthand, and he was always ready to invent a character, as it was then called, for a friend. He used the art in drafting his public and private letters; and although he was forced to discontinue his “Diary” in 1669, on account of the weakness of his eyesight, he continued its use throughout his life.

We learn from the “Diary” itself some particulars of how it was written. The incidents of each day were dotted down in short, and then the writer shut himself up in his office to fill up all the details. Sometimes he was in arrear: thus we read, on January 1st, 1662–63, “So to my office to set down these two or three days’ journal;” on September 24th, 1665, “Then I in the cabin to writing down my journal for these last seven days to my great content;” and on November 10th, 1665, [15]“Up and entered all my journal since the 28th of October, having every day’s passage well in my head, though it troubles me to remember it.”

Lord Braybrooke, who first introduced the “Diary” to the public, had no very accurate notions of the duties of an editor; and he treated his manuscript in a very unsatisfactory manner. Large portions were omitted without explanation, and apparently without reason; and although much was added to succeeding editions, still the reader might well say—

The third edition, published in 1848, contained a large mass of restored passages, amounting, it is said, to not less than one-fourth of the entire work. Some fresh notes were added to the fourth edition, published in 1854; but no alteration of the text was made beyond “the correction of a few verbal errors and corrupt passages hitherto overlooked.” Subsequent editions have been mere reprints of these. In 1875 appeared the first volume of the Rev. Mynors Bright’s entirely new edition, with about one-third of matter never yet published, all of which was of the true Pepysian flavour. Here was a treat for the lovers of the “Diary” which they little expected.

Having traced the particulars of Pepys’s life to the year 1659, and described the way in which the “Diary” was written, and the means by which it first saw the light, I will now pass on to notice, in the next chapter, the chief personal incidents recorded in the book itself.

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CHAPTER II.

[16]

CHAPTER II.

PEPYS IN THE “DIARY.”

“An exact Diary is a window into his heart that maketh it: and therefore pity it is that any should look therein but either the friends of the party or such ingenuous foes as will not, especially in things doubtful, make conjectural comments to his disgrace.”—Prynne’s Remarks on Abp. Laud.

On the 1st of January, 1659–60, Samuel Pepys (then in his twenty-seventh year) commenced to write his famous “Diary.” If, as seems more than probable, he had previously kept a journal of some kind, all traces of it are now lost; and our earliest glimpses of the circumstances of his life are to be obtained only from the “Diary,” which is by far the most remarkable book of its kind in existence. Other men have written diaries and confessions, but they have been intended either for the public or at least for a small circle of friends to see. This “Diary” was only intended for the writer’s eye. He wrote it in secret, and when he unguardedly told Sir William Coventry in the Tower that he[17] kept a diary, he was sorry for his indiscretion immediately afterwards. Pepys has been likened to the barber of King Midas, who relieved his mind by communicating to a bundle of reeds the fact that his master had the ears of an ass; and assuredly no other writer has so unreservedly stripped his soul bare. It is, therefore, only fair to bear in mind what is said in the motto at the head of this chapter, and not to forget that very few could bear the accusing witness of such a truthful record of thoughts as well as actions as is here. The “Diary” extends over nearly ten eventful years in the history of England, and contains a voluminous record of both public and private events. The fascination of Pepys’s garrulity is so great, that most of those who have written about him have found it difficult to restrain their praise within bounds. A writer in the “Athenæum” (apparently the late Peter Cunningham) was quite carried away by his subject when he wrote—“He has the minuteness of Dee and Ashmole without their tediousness, the playfulness of Swift in his best moments without his prejudice and his party feelings, and a charm over Byron and Scott, and, indeed, above all other memorialists that we can call to mind, in that his Diary was kept without the slightest view to publication.”[26]

I will now first note some of the chief circumstances of Pepys’s life during the period covered by the “Diary,” and then say something about his character as it is painted by himself.

When we are first introduced to Pepys he is[18] living in Axe Yard, Westminster, with very small means of support, but making so good a show that he is esteemed rich. His family consists of himself, his wife, and servant Jane. During the frosty weather they have not a coal in the house, and he is forced to dine at his father’s, or make himself as comfortable as he can up in the garret. That the larder is not very plentifully supplied is seen by the fact that, on the 1st of February, he and his wife dine on pease pudding, and on nothing else. At one time he has not money enough in the house to pay the rent, but soon afterwards he finds himself worth £40 which he did not expect, and is therefore afraid that he must have forgotten something. On the 16th of January, Mr. Downing (in whose office he then was) asked our Diarist, in a half-hearted way, whether he would go to Holland, and gave him the impression that his services could be dispensed with. At this time political affairs were in the greatest confusion, and no one knew what opinions to hold with profit to himself. Thus, William Symons said that “he had made shift to keep in, in good esteem and employment through eight governments in one year, and then failed unhappy in the ninth, viz., that of the King’s coming in.”[27]

As in times of anarchy every one wishes to talk, the Rota, or Coffee Club founded by James Harrington, the author of “Oceana,” was found to be a congenial resort by those who wished to express their opinions on passing events. The principle of the club was political, and the plan[19] formed there for the government of the country was, that every official should be chosen by ballot. Every year a third part of the House of Commons were to “rote out by ballot,” and no magistrate was to continue in his position more than three years. Other than politicians attended the meetings, and many distinguished men, such as Dr. Petty, Dr. Croon, Sir William Poultney, and Cyriack Skinner, were to be found in the evening at the Turk’s Head, in the New Palace Yard. The room was usually as full as it would hold, and Aubrey gives it as his opinion that the arguments heard in Parliament were flat as compared with those delivered at the Rota Club. The object of worship was the ballot-box, and the company sat round an oval table, which had a passage in the middle for Miles, the landlord, to deliver his coffee. Pepys paid his eighteen-pence on becoming a member of the club, on the 9th of January, 1659–60, and he frequently attended after this. If the following can be considered as a good illustration of proceedings, there must have been considerable divergence in the opinions of the members:—[20]“I went to the Coffee Club and heard very good discourse; it was in answer to Mr. Harrington’s answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government, and so it was no wonder that the balance of property was in one hand, and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war; but it was carried by ballot, that it was a steady government; so to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another.”[28] On the 20th of February, Pepys writes: “After a small debate upon the question whether learned or unlearned subjects are best, the club broke up very poorly, and I do not think they will meet any more.” After the Restoration Harrington was put in the Tower, and then removed to Portsea Castle. His imprisonment turned him mad, so that he fancied his perspiration turned sometimes to flies and sometimes to bees, but all his hallucinations were inoffensive. One of the first steps taken by Monk towards obtaining a free Parliament was the admission of the secluded members who had been previously purged out. Pepys describes the marching-in of these men on the 21st of February, and specially notices Prynne’s “old basket-hilt sword.” The editors of the “Diary” might have illustrated this by an amusing passage from Aubrey’s “Lives.” It appears that as the members were going to the House, Prynne’s long rusty sword “ran between Sir William Waller’s short legs, and threw him down;” which caused laughter, as Aubrey takes care to add. About this time Pepys seems to have discerned the signs of the times, for we find him, on a visit to Audley End, drinking the health of the King down in a cellar.[29] Sir Edward Montagu now comes to the front, and is intent upon benefiting his kinsman. Pepys hopes to be made Clerk of the Peace for Westminster, but finds the place already promised to another. Montagu offers him the post of Secretary to the Generals at Sea, which he joyfully accepts;[21] and he receives his warrant on the 22nd of March. The following day sees the party on board the “Swiftsure” at Longreach, where Pepys receives a letter directed to “S. P., Esq.,” and this superscription seems to have delighted him greatly, for he says, “of which God knows I was not a little proud.” On the 30th inst. Montagu and his people went on board the “Naseby,” which was the ship in which he had gone to the Sound in the previous year. They remain for a time in the neighbourhood of Deal, and on the 3rd of May the King’s declaration and letter to the two generals is received by Montagu, who dictates to Pepys the words in which he wishes the vote in favour of the King to be couched. The captains all came on board the “Naseby,” and Pepys read the letter and declaration to them; and while they were discoursing on the subject he pretended to be drawing up the form of vote, which Montagu had already settled. When the resolution was read, it passed at once; and the seamen all cried out, “God bless King Charles!” a cry that was echoed by the whole fleet. A little piece of Pepys’s vanity (and perhaps shrewdness also) here peeps out, for he tells us that he signed all the copies of the vote of the Council of War, so that if it should by chance get into print his name might be attached to it.[30] The English fleet lies off the Dutch coast about the middle of May, and our Diarist avails himself of the opportunity to visit the Hague and some of the chief towns of Holland. The Dukes of York and Gloucester came on board the “Naseby” on the[22] 22nd inst., and the King followed them on the following day, when the opportunity of his visit was taken to change the objectionable names of the ships. The “Naseby” became the “Charles,” the “Richard” the “James,” the “Speaker” the “Mary,” and the “Lambert” the “Henrietta.”

Pepys takes the opportunity, when the Duke of York is on board, to bespeak his favour; and is overjoyed at the Duke calling him Pepys. On the 25th the King lands at Dover, and is received by Monk. Pepys tells how the mayor presented the King with a handsome Bible, which he received, and told the people that “it was the thing he loved above all things in the world!”

The 5th of June was Pepys’s last day on board, and he was awoke about three o’clock in the morning by the pouring into his mouth of the water with which the people above were washing the deck; and he was forced to rise and sleep leaning on the table. He returned to shore better off than he had originally left it, as he took care to make use of his opportunities by getting men made captains, and by obtaining gratuities for the favours. Fortune continued to smile upon him, for he had not been many days back in London when Sir Edward Montagu, now a Knight of the Garter, and in high favour with the King, obtained for him the promise of the place of Clerk of the Acts. On the[23] 28th of June he clears himself of his old office under Sir George Downing, and is glad to part from this stingy fellow, as he calls him. On the following day he gets his warrant, but is much cast down when he learns that his predecessor, Mr. Barlow, is still alive, and coming up to town to look after the place. General Monk’s wife wishes the clerkship to be given to Mr. Turner, of the Navy Office; but Montagu’s influence secures it for Pepys. Turner then offers to give Pepys £150 to be joined with him in the patent, but this is refused. Pepys is kept in a great state of excitement respecting Barlow for a time. He hears that he is a sickly man, and on July 17th he agrees to give him £100 a year out of his raised salary. This payment continued until February, 1664–65, when Barlow died. Pepys’s remarks on the death are particularly characteristic: “For which God knows my heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, by whose death he gets £100 per annum, he being a worthy honest man; but when I come to consider the providence of God by this means unexpectedly to give me £100 a year more in my estate, I have cause to bless God, and do it from the bottom of my heart.”[32]

[24]

Now, our Diarist has become a man of importance, as one of the principal Officers of the Navy, and Montagu consequently asks him to dinner for the first time.[33] Yet he has not much faith in his power to keep the place; and when a Mr. Man offers him £1,000 for it, his mouth waters, and he would gladly take the money if his patron would agree.[34] On the 23rd of July he takes the oaths as a Clerk of the Privy Seal, which he does not expect to be a very profitable office; but he soon finds himself making about £3 a day,[35] in addition to his regular salary at the Navy Office. Being settled at his house in Seething Lane, attached to the office, he is glad to get his little house in Axe Yard off his hands, which he does on the 17th of September, receiving £41 for his interest in it. About this time he is sworn as a justice of the peace, and he is “mightily pleased” at the honour, although he confesses that he is wholly ignorant of the duties.[36]

There were great doings at the coronation of Charles II. in the following year, and the “Diary” is full of particulars respecting it. Pepys and a party went to a shop in Cornhill to see the procession when the King passed from the Tower to Whitehall, and while they waited they partook of “wine and good cake.”[37]

[25]

On the next day Pepys gets into Westminster Abbey to see the coronation, and sits patiently in a scaffold from a little after four until eleven. Afterwards he goes into Westminster Hall, sees the banquet, and returns home to bed with the feeling that he will “never see the like again in this world.” Next morning he wakes with his “head in a sad taking through the last night’s drink.”[38]

Sometimes the Clerk of the Acts has a great deal of business to get through, and he always sticks to his work manfully. By going to the office early and staying late he was often able to spare the afternoons for the theatre. Day after day he gets up and is at his desk at four o’clock in the morning;[39] but this hard work is varied by some idle days. On June the 5th the Officers of the Navy play at bowls and drink and talk. Pepys takes his flageolet, and plays upon the leads. Sir William Penn comes out in his shirt-sleeves, and there is more drinking and talking, the result of which is, that Pepys goes to bed nearly fuddled, and wakes up the next morning with an aching head.

A very important event in the life of the Diarist occurred in the following month. His uncle, Robert Pepys, dies, and a small property at Brampton, worth about £80 per annum,[40] comes into the possession of old John Pepys, not, however, without some litigation on the part of some members of the family. As his father has no money, Samuel takes all the business affairs into his own hands, and seems to consider the property as his own. When he[26] learns the news, on the 6th of July, 1661, he posts down to Brampton, leaving London between eleven and twelve o’clock in the morning, and arriving there about nine o’clock at night. When he gets to his uncle’s house he is very uncomfortable, from the badness of the food and drink, and the biting of the gnats; but although he is nearly out of his wits, he appears contented, so as not to trouble his father. He has much work of arrangement to get through, and he remains nearly sixteen days away from London. When he returns he gives out among his most distinguished friends and acquaintances that he has had an estate of £200 a year in land left him, beside money, “because he would put an esteem upon himself.”[41]

Pepys acknowledged to two weaknesses, of which he tried to cure himself by means of vows—not, however, with a very successful result. The first weakness was a too great addiction to the bottle, and the second a too frequent attendance at theatres. On July 26th, 1661, we find him making this confession: “Having the beginning of this week made a vow to myself to drink no wine this week (finding it unfit me to look after business), and this day breaking of it against my will, I am much troubled for it; but I hope God will forgive me!” On Michaelmas Day, 1661, he took so much wine that he “was even almost foxed,” so that he “durst not read prayers for fear of being perceived by my servants in what case I was.” Next year, on the same day, he finds that his [27]“oaths for drinking of wine and going to plays are out,” and so he resolves to take some liberty, “and then fall to them again.” On December 30th, 1662, we find him writing: “After dinner drinking five or six glasses of wine, which liberty I now take till I begin my oathe again.”[42]

On October 29th, 1663, he drinks some hippocras, which consists of wine mixed with sugar and spices, under the belief that he is not breaking his vow, because it is “only a mixed compound drink, and not any wine.” Sir Walter Scott likened this piece of casuistry to that of Fielding’s Newgate chaplain, who preferred punch to wine because the former was a liquor nowhere spoken against in Scripture.

It is necessary now to return to the date at which we broke off to follow our hero’s vows. He sums up his blessings on February 23rd, 1661–62, in these words: “I am 29 years of age, and in very good health, and like to live and get an estate; and if I have a heart to be contented, I think I may reckon myself as happy a man as any is in the world, for which God be praised.” Yet, on the next day, he is troubled to part with £5 for five weeks’ music-lessons; and soon afterwards he complains at his father spending £100 a year.[43] Although he was of a saving turn, he could clearly see that it was wise to spend money while he could enjoy the results of his spending, and alludes to this on two[28] separate occasions. On May 20th, 1662, he writes: “But though I am much against too much spending, yet I do think it best to enjoy some degree of pleasure now that we have health, money, and opportunity, rather than to leave pleasures to old age or poverty when we cannot have them so properly.” Four years after this we find the same idea in other words: “The truth is I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it with any pleasure.”[44]

About this time Pepys is sworn a younger brother of the Trinity House, is made a burgess of Portsmouth, is troubled with a lawsuit by one Field, signs warrants as a justice of the peace, and is appointed one of the Commissioners for the Affairs of Tangier. This business with Field, which was connected with the office, gives him much annoyance. At one time he is in fear of being taken by the bailiffs,[45] and at another he is in such terror that the falling of something behind a door makes him start with fright.[46]

About the middle of the year 1662 he engages the services of Mr. Cooper, mate of the “Royal George,” of whom he intends to learn mathematics; but his early attempts do not appear to have been very ambitious, for he begins by[29] learning the multiplication-table. In the following year, he and Mrs. Pepys learn to dance, and he thinks he shall be able to manage the coranto well enough. He grudges the cost, however, particularly as he is forced by his oath to give half as much more to the poor.[47]

The mixture of extravagance and frugality that is constantly exhibited in the “Diary” is most amusing, particularly in the case of clothes. Thus, when he hears that the Queen is ill, he stops the making of his velvet cloak until he sees whether she lives or dies.[48] In spite of this forethought, he finds, on casting up his accounts, that he spent £55 on his own clothes, although, as a set-off against this large sum, Mrs. Pepys’s clothes only cost £12. This love of fine clothes is continually peeping out, and it has been suggested that he inherited it with the tailor blood of his father. A better reason, however, may be found in the fact that at one time he was very poor, and “forced to sneak like a beggar” for want of clothes; so that, now he is in funds, he tries to make up for his former deficiency, and resolves to dress himself handsomely.[49]

A few years after this he expresses himself as ashamed of the shabbiness of his clothes, when he wished to speak to the King but did not like to do so, because his linen was dirty and his clothes mean.[50]

At the end of the year 1663, Pepys performed a duty in a way that did him great credit. Sir Edward Montagu, now Earl of Sandwich, is[30] taken ill, and, on his recovery, he goes for change of air to Chelsea. After a time it gets abroad that he dotes upon one of the daughters of his landlady, and neglects his duties. On the 9th of September, 1663, Mr. Pickering tells Pepys of all this, and we therefore read in the “Diary:” “I am ashamed to see my lord so grossly play the fool, to the flinging-off of all honour, friends, servants, and everything and person that is good, with his carrying her abroad and playing on his lute under her window, and forty other poor sordid things, which I am grieved to hear.” Pepys determines to be silent, as he learns that the Earl will not bear any allusion to his doings. Still his mind continually reverts to the matter, and in the end he decides to write a letter of counsel to his patron.[51] When this is sent, he continues for some time to be anxious as to the manner in which the Earl is likely to receive it. Nothing is, of course, said when the two meet, and there is for a time a coldness between them; but at last they return to their old relations with each other, and Lord Sandwich, having left Chelsea, is seen in the world again.

Pepys’s habit of sitting up late, reading and writing by candlelight, begins to tell upon his eyesight; and in January, 1663–64, he finds it fail him for the first time. In October, 1664, he consults the celebrated Mr. Cocker as to the best glass to save his eyes at night; but they continue to trouble him, and he proposes to get[31] some green spectacles.[52] How the eyesight got weaker, so that the “Diary” had to be discontinued, we all know to our great loss.

On one occasion Mr. Coventry talks with Pepys on the need for a history of the navy of England, and then suggests that he should write a history of the late Dutch war. Pepys likes the idea, as he thinks it agrees with his genius, and would recommend him much to the authorities;[53] but he succeeded in doing this without writing the history. On the 10th of March, 1663–64, he was appointed one of the assistants of the Corporation of the Royal Fishery, of which the Duke of York was the Governor; his commission as Treasurer of the Tangier Committee is signed on the 18th of April, 1665; and in October of the same year he obtains the appointment of Surveyor-General of the Victualling Office. Besides these tangible proofs of his success in life were the expressions of esteem made use of in respect to him by men in authority. The Duke of York told him that he highly valued his services,[54] and the Duke of Albemarle said that he was the right hand of the navy.[55]

Pepys quite deserved these words of praise, and moreover continued to deserve them, for during the whole period of the Dutch war he did his best to provide what was required for the navy, and while the plague was devastating London he alone remained at his post. His straightforward common-sense shows out strongly during the course of the Great Fire. From the[32] 2nd of September, 1666—when the servants wake him to tell of the burning which they saw in the city—to the 7th, when he visits the ruins, we have a lively picture of the whole scene in the pages of the “Diary.” On the Sunday Pepys goes to Whitehall, and tells the King and the Duke of York of what he had seen. He says that unless his Majesty will command houses to be pulled down, nothing can stop the fire. On hearing which, the King instructs him to go to the Lord Mayor, and command him to pull down houses in every direction. Sir Thomas Bludworth, the Lord Mayor, seems to have been but a poor creature; and when he heard the King’s message, “he cried like a fainting woman, ‘Lord! what can I do? I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses, but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.’” On the 4th inst. there seemed to be little hope of saving the Navy Office, unless some extraordinary means were taken with that object. Pepys therefore suggested that the workmen from Woolwich and Deptford Dockyards should be sent for to pull down the houses round them. Sir William Penn went to see after the men, and Pepys wrote to Sir William Coventry for the Duke of York’s permission. In the letter he remarks that the fire is very near them, both on the Tower Street and Fenchurch sides; and that unless houses are pulled down, there are little hopes of their escape. The next day Penn sends up the men, who help greatly in the blowing-up of houses; and to this action Pepys mainly attributes the stoppage of the fire. He[33] then goes up to the top of Barking church, and there he saw “the saddest sight of desolation”—“everywhere great fires, oil-cellars, and brimstone and other things burning.” He then walks through the town, the hot ground almost burning his feet, till he comes to Moorfields, which he finds full of people, “the poor wretches carrying their goods there, and everybody keeping his goods together by themselves.”

During the period of fright, when he expected the office to be destroyed, he sent off his money, plate, and best things to Sir W. Rider, at Bethnal Green, and then he and Penn dug a hole in the garden, in which they put their wine and Parmezan cheese. On the 10th of September, Sir W. Rider lets it be known that, as the town is full of the report respecting the wealth in his house, he will be glad if his friends will provide for the safety of their property elsewhere.

About the time of the Great Fire, Pepys had saved a large sum of money, and was making a good income; so we find his thoughts running on the advantage of keeping a private coach, as he is ashamed to be seen in a hackney coach.[56] It was not, however, until more than a year after this that he actually bought his carriage, and we find that he spent £53 on the coach,[57] and £50 on a fine pair of black horses.[58] He was very proud of the appearance of his carriage, but his enemies made some capital out of the proceeding, and protested that he throve on the distresses of others.

[34]

In these days of banks and other means for the deposit of money, it is not easy to realize the difficulties of men who possessed money in the seventeenth century. Pepys sent some down to Brampton to be buried, but his wife and father did the business entrusted to them so badly that he was quite wild and uneasy with fears that it might be found by others.[59] Therefore, at the first opportunity, he goes down himself to see after his treasure; and the description of the hunt after it is certainly one of the most entertaining passages in the “Diary.”[60] He and his father and wife go out into the garden with a dark lantern, and grope about a long time before they come on the trace. Then they find that the bags are rotten, and gold and notes are all spread about and covered with dirt, the latter being scarcely distinguishable. Then there is a gathering of it up to be washed, and in the end not much is lost, although throughout the proceedings Pepys is in dread that the neighbours will see and hear what is going on.

We now come to the consideration of one of the most important incidents in the life of the Diarist—that is, his great speech at the Bar of the House of Commons. When peace was concluded with the Dutch, and the people had time to think over the disgrace which this country had suffered by the presence of De Ruyter’s fleet in the Medway, they naturally looked round for someone to punish. It was the same feeling, only in a much intensified degree, which found expression at the time of[35] the Crimean war in the cry, “Whom shall we hang?” A Parliamentary Committee was appointed in October, 1667, to inquire into everything relating to this business, at Chatham. Pepys is warned to prepare himself, as there is a desire to lay the blame upon the Commissioners of the Navy, and a resolution “to lay the fault heavy somewhere, and to punish it.”[61] He therefore gives as clear a statement as possible, and satisfies the Committee for a time; but for months afterwards he is continually being summoned to answer some charge, so that he is mad to “become the hackney of this Office in perpetual trouble and vexation, that need it least.”[62] Then breaks out a storm in the House of Commons against the Principal Officers of the Navy, and some members demand that they be put out of their places. The result is, that they are ordered to be heard in their own defence at the Bar of the House. The whole labour of defence falls upon Pepys, and he sets to work with a will to collect his evidence, and to display it in the most satisfactory manner. He is somewhat annoyed that the other officers can do little to help him; but he is proud that they, in spite of themselves, must rely upon him. The eventful day (5th March, 1667–68) at last arrives, and, having first fortified himself with half a pint of mulled sack and a dram of brandy, our Diarist stands at the Bar with his fellow-officers. But here we must use his own words, for it would be presumptuous to paraphrase the vivid account he himself gives:—“After[36] the Speaker had told us the dissatisfaction of the House, and read the Report of the Committee, I began our defence most acceptably and smoothly, and continued at it without any hesitation or loss, but with full scope, and all my reason free about me, as if it had been at my own table, from that time (about twelve o’clock) till past three in the afternoon; and so ended without any interruption from the Speaker; but we withdrew. And there all my Fellow-officers and all the world that was within hearing, did congratulate me, and cry up my speech as the best thing they ever heard; and my Fellow-officers were overjoyed in it.” The orator was congratulated on every side, and the flattery he received is set down in the “Diary” in all good faith. Sir William Coventry addresses him the next day with the words, “Good morrow, Mr. Pepys, that must be Speaker of the Parliament-house;” and the Solicitor-General protests that he spoke the best of any man in England. One man says that he would go twenty miles to hear such another speech; and another, although he had sat six-and-twenty years in Parliament, had never heard anything like it before; and there is much more to the same effect.

I do not find that Pepys ever distinguished himself by another speech, although he sat for several years in the House of Commons; and there is therefore reason to doubt his oratorical powers. In fact, it is easy to explain the secret of his success, for he was speaking on a subject that he thoroughly understood to an audience that understood it but imperfectly. Still we[37] must give Pepys due credit for his achievement. He had a bad case, and yet he seems to have converted his audience. It was here that his clear-headedness and remarkable powers of arrangement were brought into play, and having at the same time his whole soul in the matter, he easily carried his hearers with him.

The praises he received raised up a strong desire in his breast to become a Parliament-man. He hints at this design on the 5th of December, 1668, and again, on the 19th of February, 1668–69, he opens the matter to his friend, Sir William Coventry, who likes the idea mightily, and promises to speak about it to the Duke of York. A few more months, and his eyes—which already, as we have seen, had given him trouble—become so much worse that he begins to think seriously of taking rest. On the 16th of May, 1669, he draws up a rough copy of a petition to the Duke of York for leave of absence for three or four months. A few days after, the Duke takes him to the King, who expresses his great concern at the state of his eyes, and gives him the leave he desires.[63] On the 31st of May, 1669, the pen that has written so[38] much to amuse us is put to the paper for the last time; and the “Diary” ends with these words of deep but subdued feeling:—“And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my Journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore whatever comes of it I must forbear; and therefore resolve, from this time forward to have it kept by my people in longhand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or if there be any thing, which cannot be much, now my amours are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand. And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go in to my grave: for which and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!” The “Diary” is one of the most curious of psychological studies, and surely no other man has so relentlessly laid bare his secret motives. When he does a good action from a good motive, he cannot forbear to add a dirty little motive as well. There is no posing for effect, such as the writers of confessions adopt, and herein consists the chief charm of the book.

I cannot pretend to draw the character of the Diarist, for he has done that himself in his own vivid manner; but a few of his leading characteristics may be set down here. Two of the most[39] prominent of these characteristics are his money-grubbing and his love of women.

1. Money-grubbing. His paramount anxiety is to get money, and we find him constantly making up his accounts in order to see how much better off he is this month than he was in the last. He takes care that no opportunity of money-getting shall be allowed to slip, and he certainly succeeds in his endeavours; for whereas, at the opening of the “Diary,” he is only worth about £40, he makes £3,560 in the year 1665, while his salary as Clerk of the Acts remains at £350. In the following year he only made £2,986.[64]

The same prudent habits that made Pepys so careful in casting up his accounts induced him to[40] make a new will as changes were required. On the 17th of March, 1659–60, he bequeathed all that he possessed (but this was not very much at that time) to his wife, with his French books, the other books being left to his brother John. Another will was made on August 10th, 1665, because the town was so unhealthy “that a man cannot depend upon living two days.” We have fuller particulars of the will of May 27th, 1666, by which Pall Pepys, the Diarist’s sister, was to have £500, his father £2,000, and his wife the rest of his estate—“but to have £2,500 secured to her though by deducting out of what I have given my father and sister.” Another will was prepared in the following year, by which Pepys left all he possessed to be equally divided between his wife and father.[65]

2. Admiration for women. Some of the oddest passages in the “Diary” grew out of this trait in Pepys’s character; and one can only marvel that he thought it well to set down such passages on paper. When he came to Gravesend, after Charles II.’s landing, he kissed “a good handsome wench,” because she was the first he had seen for a great while;[66] and, at another time, the widow of a naval officer came to see him, apparently on business, when he had “a kiss or two of her, and a most modest woman she is.”[67] His gallantry was so great as even to cause him to kiss the mouth of Katherine of Valois, whose body was exposed at Westminster Abbey. He seems to have performed this act[41] with great content, for he notes particularly that on his birthday, February 23rd, 1668–69 (being then thirty-six years of age), he “did first kiss a queen.” Although he was always ready to kiss the ladies he met, his admiration was often quite disinterested; this was peculiarly the case with regard to the two Court beauties, the Duchess of Richmond and the Countess of Castlemaine, to neither of whom, apparently, he ever spoke. There is an odd little entry which he made on the 9th of September, 1668, that well illustrates this feeling of his. The Duke of Richmond wanted to consult Pepys about his yacht, and sent for him to his lodgings in Whitehall. Pepys hoped to have seen the Duchess, but found that she was in the country; so he adds, “I shall make much of this acquaintance, that I may live to see his lady near.” But the Clerk of the Acts’ chief admiration was lavished upon the worthless Countess of Castlemaine. He is always delighted when he can get a glimpse of her; and he usually finds the play to be insipid if she does not grace the theatre with her presence. Even the sight of her clothes gives him pleasure, for he tells us that one day, in passing the Privy Garden at Whitehall, he saw her smocks and linen petticoats hanging out to dry, and it did him good to look upon them.[68]

Pepys was a pretty regular attendant at church, and he seems to have enjoyed a good sermon; but his chief delight was to look about for pretty women: thus, on the 26th of May, 1667, he went (alone, by-the-bye) to St. Margaret’s[42] Church, Westminster, and there, he says, “Did entertain myself with my perspective glass up and down the church, by which I had the great pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and what with that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done.”

Our hero was very fond of pretty Betty Michell, and would take some trouble to get a sight of her; and there is a most ludicrous passage in the “Diary” in which he describes a mistake he made once at church. He went again to St. Margaret’s, in hopes of seeing Betty, and stayed for an hour in the crowd, thinking she was there “by the end of a nose” that he saw; but at last, to his great disgust, the head turned towards him, and it was only her mother; he naturally adds, “which vexed me.”[69] Although he gave his wife much cause to be jealous, he was inclined, without any cause, to be jealous of her; and, from his own account, he seems often to have treated her in a very boorish manner. One would have liked to have read the lady’s account of the constant little squabbles which occurred; but Pepys was not of the same opinion, for on one occasion, when he found a paper which his wife had written on the “disagreeables” of her life, he burnt it, in spite of her remonstrances.[70]

Pepys’s nature was singularly contradictory, and in summing up the chief points of his character, we can do little more than make a catalogue of his various qualities, giving the bad ones first, and[43] then enumerating the good ones as a set-off. Thus, he was unfaithful to his wife, and a coward, yet he knew his faults, and could try to amend them. He was vain, ignorant, credulous, and superstitious; yet he had scholarly tastes, and his orderly and business habits were so marked that they alone would point to him as a man out of the common run. He was mean, and yet he was also generous. This seems a harsh verdict, but it can easily be proved to be true, and we will proceed to notice the several points seriatim.

As to his unfaithfulness, his own description of his conduct towards several women makes it probable; but, in the instance of Deb Willett, there can be no doubt. This episode, which occurred in October and November, 1668, is by far the most painful one in the “Diary.”[71] Pepys appears to have been infatuated, and, in spite of his struggles, he fell. He repented, and prayed fervently in his chamber that he might not fall again. He resolved not to give any new occasion for his wife’s jealousy, and he found great peace in his mind by reason of this resolution.[72]

He was a coward, for on one occasion he was so angry with the cookmaid that he kicked her. He was not sorry for doing this, but he was vexed that Sir William Penn’s footboy saw him, and would probably tell the family.[73]

His vanity may be taken for granted, as every line of the “Diary” shows it. He was ignorant[44] of history, for he expected to find an account of England’s dominion on the sea in “Domesday Book.”[74] As to his credulity, he appears to have believed everything that was told him, however absurd. His superstition is shown in his belief in charms and in most of the popular delusions of his time; and also by his subterfuges, as when he opens a letter, and does not look at it until the money has fallen out, so that he may be able to say that he saw no money in the paper, if he should be questioned about it.[75]

He was mean, for he grudges money for his wife, while he spends liberally on himself; he is stingy to his father, and dislikes lending money to the benefactor from whom all his prosperity originally came. Yet he could be singularly generous at times. He gave £600 to his sister Paulina as her marriage portion;[76] and, after quarrelling with his wife because she had spent twenty-five shillings on a pair of earrings without his leave,[77] he pays £80 for a necklace which he presents her with.[78] Of his scholarly tastes and business habits we shall have an opportunity of saying somewhat further on.

Perhaps, on the whole, the most remarkable characteristic of the man was his total want[45] of the imaginative faculty. Here was one who had been well educated, and had kept up his learning through life; who had an artistic taste, and was a thorough musician; who could not so much as understand true wit or the higher poetry. “Midsummer Night’s Dream” was insipid and ridiculous to him,[79] and he found “Hudibras” so silly that he was ashamed of it.[80]

I must leave my readers to answer the question why it is that, in spite of all that has been said, Pepys can stand the ordeal through which we have passed him; and why it is that, with all his faults, we cannot put his book down without some sort of affection for the man?

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CHAPTER III.

[46]

CHAPTER III.

PEPYS AFTER THE “DIARY.”

“Truly may it be said that this was a greater and more grievous loss to the mind’s eye of his posterity, than to the bodily organs of Pepys himself. It makes me restless and discontented to think what a Diary, equal in minuteness and truth of portraiture to the preceding, from 1669 to 1688 or 1690, would have been for the true causes, process, and character of the Revolution.”—Coleridge’s MS. note in his copy of the “Diary” (“Notes and Queries,” 1st S. vol. vi. p. 215).

We have seen in the previous chapter how Pepys wrote the last line of his “Diary” on the 31st of May, 1669; and how, by the physical defect which had then increased to alarming proportions, we have suffered what Coleridge calls “this grievous loss.” In treating of Pepys’s life after the “Diary,” we at once find the difference between dealing with a few isolated facts and condensing from the living record of the man’s own life. Moreover, Pepys as painted by his friends and as painted by himself, appears like two different men. The question is—would[47] the highly-respected Secretary of the Admiralty and the dignified President of the Royal Society have proved himself of the same nature as was the officious Clerk of the Acts if the “Diary” had been continued for some twenty or more years? or did time and domestic affliction mellow and settle the somewhat turbulent affections of the Diarist? There seems to be some reason for taking the latter view, and it is probable that, when he attained a more mature age, the dross of meanness was refined away, leaving the native ore of generosity pure and undefiled. When Pepys had obtained his leave of absence, he set out on a tour through France and Holland, accompanied by his wife. He carried with him on his journey the love which he always evinced for the occupation of his life, and he attempted to improve his knowledge of nautical affairs, making at the time collections respecting the French and Dutch navies. Some months after his return he spoke of his journey as having been “full of health and content,” but no sooner had they returned to London than his wife became seriously ill with a fever. The disease took a fatal turn, and on the 10th of November, 1669, Elizabeth Pepys died, at the early age of twenty-nine years, to the great grief of her husband. She died at their house in Crutched Friars, and was buried in St. Olave’s Church, where Pepys erected a tablet to her memory.

Mrs. Pepys occupies so prominent a position in the “Diary,” and her husband, in spite of his faults, was so truly fond of her, that we must believe her death gave him a shock from which[48] he would be long in recovering. He had no child nor near connection to be with him, and therefore, after this sad event, the whole current of his home life must have been changed.

In this same year, 1669, Sir Robert Brooke, member of Parliament for the borough of Aldborough, in Suffolk, died, and Pepys came forward as a candidate to fill his place. The Duke of York was favourable, and used all his influence to obtain the return of the Clerk of the Acts, but without success. When the election came on, Pepys was in distress, and his loss prevented him from taking part in the proceedings; so that, in spite of all that friends could do for him, he was defeated, and John Bence was elected on the 9th of November. In the following year he quarrelled with Sir James Barkman Leyenburg, the Swedish Resident in this country, and a duel between them was only prevented by an order from the King, given in a letter from Matthew Wren to Pepys, commanding him not to send or receive a challenge. This incident is not easy to be understood, as from what we know of Pepys he was not a man who would be very wishful to rush into a hostile encounter. Lord Braybrooke suggests that, as Leyenburg married the widow of Sir William Batten, the quarrel may have related to some money which was owed to Pepys by Batten, and for which the widow was liable; but this suggestion can only be taken for what it is worth.

We do not know the exact date of Pepys’s appointment to the Secretaryship of the Admiralty, but in a document found among his manuscripts,[49] and dated November 3, 1672, he is described as holding that office.[81] When he was thus raised in his official position he was able to obtain his old place of Clerk of the Acts for his own clerk, Thomas Hayter, and his brother, John Pepys, who held it jointly. The latter does not appear to have done much credit to Samuel. He took holy orders in 1666,[82] and was appointed clerk to the Trinity House in 1670. When he died, in 1677, he was in debt £300 to the corporation, which Samuel had to pay.

Pepys’s kind patron and kinsman the Earl of Sandwich died heroically in the naval action in Solebay, and on June 24, 1672, his funeral was performed with some pomp. There were eleven earls among the mourners, and Pepys, as the first among “the six Bannerrolles,” walked in the procession. This same year there was some talk of the elevation to the peerage of Sir Robert Paston, M. P. for Castle Rising, and the Duke of York at once thought of Pepys as a candidate for his seat. The influence of Lord Howard, who had done what he could at Aldborough, was pre-eminent at Castle Rising; and James at once spoke to him to obtain his interest. Lord Howard was, however, in somewhat of a fix, for according to a letter which Thomas Povey wrote Pepys on August 31st, 1672, [50]“he stands engaged to the King for Sir Francis North, to the Duchess of Cleveland for Sir John Trevor, her counsel and feoffee, and to the Duke for” Pepys. Time, however, got the peer out of his dilemma. First of all, Sir Robert Stewart, a Master of Chancery and the other member for the borough, died, and Trevor was elected in his place; then North was put in for King’s Lynn; and lastly, when Paston was created Viscount Yarmouth, Pepys was chosen to succeed him, on the 4th of November, 1673. Mr. Offley, his unsuccessful opponent, petitioned against the return, and the Committee of Privilege determined the election to be void; but Parliament being prorogued shortly afterwards, before any decision had been come to by the House, Pepys was permitted to retain his seat. The journals of the House[83] contain a full account of the proceedings, which chiefly consisted of evidence respecting a frivolous charge made against Pepys. It was reported that a person of quality (who turned out to be Lord Shaftesbury) had seen an altar with a crucifix upon it in his house. When called upon, Shaftesbury denied that he had ever seen “an altar in Mr. Pepys’s house or lodgings; as to the crucifix,” he said he had “some imperfect memory of seeing somewhat which he conceived to be a crucifix.”[84] Pepys stood up in his place and flatly denied “that he had ever had any altar, or crucifix, or the image or picture of any saint whatsoever in his home from the top to the bottom of it.”[85] He further explained what might have given cause for the aspersion. [51]“Because he could not go much abroad, he has made his home as pleasant to himself as he could, embellishing it with painting. He has a small table in his closet, with a Bible and Common Prayer-book upon it, and ‘The Whole Duty of Man,’ a bason and an ewer, and his wife’s picture over it, done by Lombard. This is the whole thing talked of for an altar.”[86]

It appears from the endorsement of a letter from Balthasar St. Michel to Pepys, to which allusion has already been made, that the latter was actually charged with having turned Mrs. Pepys from a Protestant to a Roman Catholic. Pepys therefore obtained from her brother an account of the fortunes of their family, which shows the utter absurdity of any such imputations.[87] He was always a true Protestant, although there is some reason for believing that Mrs. Pepys was a Catholic at heart.[88] On the passing of the Test Act, in 1673, the Duke of York resigned all his employments; and the Admiralty being put in commission, Pepys, as secretary, was brought in immediate correspondence with Charles II.

In 1677[89] he was elected Master of the Clothworkers’ Company, when he presented a richly-chased silver cup, which is still used at their dinners. He was not long allowed to remain in peace, for the charge of popery, which was first made in 1673, was frequently repeated,[52] and in 1679 he was accused, on the depositions of Colonel John Scott, of betraying the navy, by sending secret particulars to the French Government; and also of a design to dethrone the King and extirpate the Protestant religion. He and Sir Anthony Deane were committed to the Tower under the Speaker’s warrant on May 22nd, and Pepys’s place at the Admiralty was filled up by the appointment of Thomas Hayter. When the two prisoners were brought to the bar of the King’s Bench on the 2nd of June, the Attorney-General refused bail; but subsequently they were allowed to find security for £30,000. At length, after several months of delay, it was found that Colonel Scott refused to acknowledge to the truth of the original deposition; and the prisoners were relieved from their bail on February 12th, 1679–80. Scott turned out to be a blackguard. He is said to have cheated the States of Holland out of £7,000, in consequence of which he was hanged in effigy at the Hague, in 1672; and in 1681 he fled from England to escape from the law, as he had been found guilty of wilful murder for killing a coachman. James, a butler, previously in Pepys’s service, confessed on his deathbed, in 1680, that he had trumped up the whole story relating to his former master’s change of religion at the instigation of Mr. Harbord, M.P. for Launceston, a leading enemy of Pepys.[90]

Evelyn visited Pepys in the Tower, and expressed his belief in the unjustness of the charge. While he was in custody Pepys kept[53] up a correspondence with the Duke of York, who was then abroad, and he received an application from a Mr. D’Oyly for a loan of £50; but he was obliged to answer that he himself had been forced to borrow £100 from friends, to pay his fees and defray his expenses while in durance. It is impossible not to respect Pepys for his conduct towards James when the Royal Duke was in disgrace. He certainly made enemies by his action, and one of these was Andrew Marvell, who is reputed to have published a “Black Book” entitled, “A List of the principal labourers in the great design of Popery and arbitrary Power,” which contains the following vituperative entry: “Castle Rising—Samuel Pepys Esquire, once a taylor, then a serving man to Lord Sandwich, now Secretary to the Admiralty, got by passes and other illegal wages £40,000.” We know these assertions to be untrue, but they probably did the victim as much harm as if they had been true.

Pepys was chosen by the electors of Harwich as their member in the short Parliament that sat from March to July, 1679, his colleague being Sir Anthony Deane; but both members were superseded in the next Parliament, that met on the 17th of October, 1679.

In 1680 Pepys attended on Charles II. at Newmarket, and there he took down, from the King’s own mouth, the narrative of his escape after the Battle of Worcester, which now remains in the Pepysian Library, both in shorthand and longhand.

Sir Thomas Page, the Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, died in August, 1681; and[54] S. Maryon, a Fellow of Clare, wrote at once, suggesting that Pepys was a fit and proper person for the post, and urging him to apply to the King for it. Pepys replied that he believed Colonel Legge (afterwards Lord Dartmouth) wanted to get the office for an old tutor. Although he pretended unfitness, he evidently liked the idea; and in a letter to Legge, while recommending an early application for the tutor, he expresses himself as willing to take the Provostship if the tutor cannot get it. He also promises, if he should be chosen, to give the whole profit of the first year, and at least half of that of each succeeding year, to “be dedicated to the general and public use of the college.”[91] In the end Dr. John Copleston was appointed to the post.

In May, 1682, Pepys accompanied the Duke of York to Scotland, and narrowly escaped shipwreck by the way. Before letters could arrive in London to tell of his safety, the news came of the wreck of the “Gloucester” (the Duke’s ship), and of the loss of many lives. His friends’ anxiety was relieved by the arrival of a letter which Pepys wrote from Edinburgh to Hewer on the 8th inst., in which he detailed the particulars of the adventure. The Duke invited him to go on board the “Gloucester,” but he preferred his own yacht, in which he had more room, and in consequence of his resolution he saved himself from the risk of drowning. On the 5th of May, about five in the morning, the frigate struck upon the sand called “The Lemon and the Oar,” about sixteen leagues from the mouth[55] of the Humber, through the carelessness of the pilot, it was said. The Duke and his party were all asleep at the time, and after they were awoke it is supposed that they remained so long on board in the hope of saving the ship, that more men were drowned than otherwise need have been. It is said that the sinking sailors gave a loud huzza for the Duke, although they perhaps owed their deaths to an error of judgment on his part. Pepys writes that, had the said wreck occurred two hours earlier, and the accompanying yachts been at the distance they had previously been, not a soul would have escaped. Pepys on his arrival in Edinburgh was allowed by the Duke to attend one or two of the councils, and he was greatly struck with the union of absoluteness and gentleness by which James maintained his authority. He then made a tour through some of the Scottish towns with Colonel Legge, being most pleased with the “beauty and trade” of Glasgow. The people were not to his liking, for he writes to Hewer: “The truth is, there is so universal a rooted nastiness hangs about the person of every Scot (man and woman) that renders the finest show they can make nauseous, even among those of the first quality.”[92]

The time was now coming when Pepys was to be again employed officially, and on July 30, 1683, he left London for Portsmouth, in order to join his old friend Colonel Legge (now Lord Dartmouth) in his expedition to Tangier for the purpose of demolishing that place. Pepys kept a journal of his proceedings, which is now[56] in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and has been printed by the Rev. John Smith in his “Life, Journals, &c., of Pepys.” As the next chapter is devoted particularly to Tangier, it is not necessary to do more here than remark that, although this journal is of considerable interest, it falls very far short of the naïveté and charm of the original “Diary.” On March 29th, 1684, Lord Dartmouth and his party (including Pepys) arrived in the English Channel.

Shortly after this, Charles II. made some further alterations at the Admiralty, and appointed Pepys to his old place of Secretary, possession of which he kept until the Revolution, when friends of the banished prince were not likely to be in favour. This same year he was elected President of the Royal Society, an office which he held for two years, apparently with credit to himself and general satisfaction to the Fellows. He certainly was not a scientific man, but at that period most of the subjects discussed could be understood by an intelligent man; and Pepys had a sincere love for curious learning which made him peculiarly fitted to act the part of an imitation Mecænas. In 1685 Charles II. died, and James came to the throne. We have already seen how Pepys was a spectator at Charles’s coronation, now he was to take the position of an actor. We find that he marched in the procession at James’s coronation, immediately behind the King’s canopy, as one of the sixteen barons of the Cinque Ports. A Parliament was summoned to meet on the 19th of May, and Pepys was elected both by the burgesses[57] of Harwich and by those of Sandwich. He chose to serve for Harwich, and Sir Philip Parker, Bart., was elected to fill his place at Sandwich. This Parliament was dissolved by proclamation, July 2nd, 1687, and on August 24th, the King declared in Council that another Parliament should be summoned for November 27th, 1688, the writs to bear date September 5th; but they were recalled on news being received of the Prince of Orange’s design. On December 10th, James ordered those writs which had not been sent out to be burned; and the same night, on his going away from Whitehall, he threw the Great Seal into the water. The Rev. Alexander Mills, a friend of Pepys, wrote to him from Sandwich in July, 1687, after the news of the dissolution had arrived, to say that he thought that Pepys might again be chosen if he felt inclined to stand for the town. In the next few months a great change had come over public affairs, and when the Convention Parliament was called together in January and February, 1689–90, Pepys found no place in it. In 1688 he had some correspondence with the Mayor of Harwich respecting the removal of the Custom-house from Ipswich to Harwich, and his chances of election seemed good at that time; but a few months changed all that, and the corporation did not care to be represented by an official of the late King: so when the election came on, someone called out in the street, “No Tower men, no men out of the Tower!” His public career was closed soon after this, for an order was made out by the Commissioners of the Admiralty on the 9th of[58] March, 1688–89, commanding him to give up his books, &c., to Phineas Bowles, the newly-appointed Secretary of the Admiralty. He still retained hopes of a return to public life, and on the 8th of February, 1689–90, he wrote to the proud Sir Edward Seymour for “his interest anywhere, by which I might compass an election” for the new Parliament.[93] What Seymour’s answer was we do not know, but we do know that a few months afterwards (June, 1690) Pepys was committed to the Gate-house at Westminster, upon pretence of his being affected to King James; but he was soon permitted to return to his own home on account of ill-health. On this occasion four stanch friends—Sir Peter Palavicini, Mr. James Houblon, Mr. Blackburne, and Mr. Martin—were bail for him. Soon after, he published his “Memoirs of the Navy,” to show what he had done for its improvement and government, but although he was on all sides looked up to as the greatest authority on naval affairs, he continued, even in 1692, to apprehend some fresh persecution.

Pepys had never been a healthy man, and as years began to tell upon him he suffered much. One day, when he was at Tangier, he was frightened by the old swimming in the head coming over him, and this made him melancholy.[94] In December, 1686, he was again troubled with pain night and day, caused by the complaint for which he was successfully operated upon before the “Diary” commences. In a letter to his[59] brother-in-law, St. Michel, he expresses the opinion that a general decay of his stomach and system will soon bring his life to an end; but he had several years still to live.

About this time Pepys secured the services of a Mrs. Fane as his housekeeper, and of her he wrote, in 1689: “I do not believe that a more knowing, faithful, or vigilant person, or a stricter keeper at home (which is to me a great addition)—a person more useful in sickness as well as health, than Mrs. Fane is, can anywhere be found. As such I esteem and love her with all my heart, and should ever desire to keep her acquaintance, friendship, and neighbourhood.” But—and this is a very important reservation—Mrs. Fane had a very disagreeable temper, as her victim goes on to say: “She hath a height of spirit, captiousness of humour, and bitterness and noise of tongue, that of all womankind I have hitherto had to do withal, do render her conversation and comportment as a servant most insupportable.”[95] He parted with her once, but Mrs. Skinner prevailed upon him to receive her again. At last, after forbearance for three years and a-half, she was obliged to leave finally. Mr. James Houblon pleaded for her, but when he heard the above explanation, he was unable to say more.

In 1700, Pepys removed from York Buildings to what his friend Evelyn calls his “Paradisian Clapham.” Here he lived with his old clerk and friend, William Hewer, but his infirmities kept him constantly in the house.

[60]

The eminent Dr. John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford, was highly esteemed by Pepys, who had known him for many years as one of the most distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society. In 1701, therefore, the Diarist matured a scheme which did him the greatest credit. He sent Sir Godfrey Kneller down to Oxford to paint the old man’s portrait; and, when it was finished, he presented the picture to the University of Oxford, and received in exchange a Latin diploma thanking him in gorgeous language for his munificence. Pepys explained to Kneller that it had long been his wish to provide from the painter’s hands a means of “immortalizing the memory of the person—for his fame can never die—of that great man and my most honoured friend, Dr. Wallis, to be lodged as an humble present of mine, though a Cambridge man, to my dear aunt, the University of Oxford.”

So much for the donor. The painter, on his part, was proud of his work, and assured Pepys that he had never done a better picture, if so good a one, in his life before.

In the following year all was over with both Wallis and Pepys. On the 26th of May, 1703, Samuel Pepys, after long-continued suffering, breathed his last, in the presence of the learned Dr. George Hickes, the non-juring Dean of Worcester, who writes as follows of the death-bed: [61]“The greatness of his behaviour, in his long and sharp tryall before his death, was in every respect answerable to his great life; and I believe no man ever went out of this world with greater contempt of it, or a more lively faith in every thing that was revealed of the world to come. I administered the Holy Sacrament twice in his illnesse to him, and had administered it a third time but for a sudden fit of illness that happened at the appointed time of administering of it. Twice I gave him the absolution of the church, which he desired, and received with all reverence and comfort, and I never attended any sick or dying person that dyed with so much Christian greatnesse of mind, or a more lively sense of immortality, or so much fortitude and patience, in so long and sharp a tryall, or greater resignation to the Will which he most devoutly acknowledged to be the wisdom of God: and I doubt not but he is now a very blessed spirit, according to his motto, mens cujusque is est quisque.”

It was found necessary to have a post-mortem examination of his body, when a nest of seven stones, weighing about four and a-half ounces, was found in the left kidney, which was entirely ulcerated. His constitution generally, however, appears to have been strong. The body was brought from Clapham, and buried in St. Olave’s Church, Crutched Friars, on the 5th of June, at nine o’clock in the evening, in a vault close by the monument erected to Mrs. Pepys.

John Jackson, Pepys’s nephew, sent a suit of mourning to Evelyn, and expressed his sorrow that distance and his correspondent’s health would prevent him from assisting at the holding-up of the pall.

It appears from a list printed at the end of[62] Pepys’s correspondence, that mourning was given to forty persons, and that forty-five rings at 20s., sixty-two at 15s., and sixteen at 10s. were distributed to relations, godchildren, servants, and friends; also to representatives of the Royal Society, of the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, of the Admiralty, and of the Navy Office. The bulk of the property was bequeathed to John Jackson, the son of Mrs. Jackson, the Pall Pepys of the “Diary;” but the money which was left was much less than might have been expected. In spite of all his public services, which were universally acknowledged, he received neither pension nor remuneration of any kind after his enforced retirement at the Revolution. Public men in those days, without private property, must have starved if they had not taken fees, for the King had no idea of wasting his money by paying salaries. At the time of Pepys’s death there was a balance of £28,007 2s. 1¼d. due to him from the Crown, and the original vouchers still remain an heirloom in the family.

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CHAPTER IV.

[63]

CHAPTER IV.

TANGIER.

Pepys was so intimately connected with the government of Tangier during the twenty-two years it remained in the possession of the English, that it seems necessary, in a memoir of him, to give some account of the history of the place during that period.

Tangier is a seaport, on a small bay or inlet of the Straits of Gibraltar, which affords the only good harbour for shipping on the sea-board of Morocco, an extent of coast of about 900 miles. The town was early coveted by the Portuguese, and in 1437 their army attacked it, but were defeated beneath the walls. On this occasion Dom Fernando, the King’s brother, was left behind as a hostage. A treaty of peace[64] was concluded, but the stipulations not being executed, the Moors threw Dom Fernando into prison, where he died. The prince’s body was treated with insult, and hung up by the heels over the city walls. A few years later this unworthy conduct was revenged, for in 1463, the Portuguese being successful in battle, Alonzo V. took the town from the Moors. For two centuries the Portuguese kept possession, but about the period of our Restoration they found the place somewhat of an encumbrance, and were anxious to obtain a desirable alliance against their enemies the Spaniards, by transferring it to another power. In November, 1660, Thomas Maynard, British Consul at Lisbon, writing to Sir Edward Nicholas, says, that the King of Portugal would part with Tangier to England on reasonable terms.[96]

Shortly afterwards the Portuguese ambassador in London proposed the Infanta Katharine, daughter of that Duke of Braganza who became King of Portugal as Joam IV., as a wife for Charles II., offering at the same time a portion of half a million pounds sterling (“almost double what any King [of England] had ever received in money by any marriage”),[97] and in addition a grant of a free trade in Brazil and the East Indies, and the possession of Tangier and the Island of Bombay. The ambassador observed that these two places “might reasonably be valued above the portion in money.”[98] It was supposed that the possession of Tangier would[65] be of infinite benefit to England and a security to her trade, and the Earl of Sandwich and Sir John Lawson were consulted respecting the proposed acquisition. Lord Sandwich said that if the town were walled and fortified with brass, it would yet repay the cost, but he only knew it from the sea. Lawson had been in it, and said that it was a place of that importance, that if it were in the hands of Hollanders they would quickly make a mole, which could easily be done. Then ships would ride securely in all weathers, and we could keep the place against the world, and give the law to the trade of the Mediterranean.[99] The Portuguese were delighted at the prospect of a marriage between the Infanta and Charles, and after a few hitches the treaty was concluded, but some murmurs were heard against the delivery of Tangier into the hands of heretics. Dom Fernando de Menezes, the Governor, entreated the Queen Regent to spare him the grief of handing over the city to the enemies of the Catholic faith. He was given to understand that, if he obeyed instructions, a marquisate would be conferred upon him, but if he continued to resist he would be dismissed. Upon this, Dom Fernando threw up his command.

Lord Sandwich was instructed to take possession of Tangier, and then convey the Infanta and her portion to England. Although the Queen Regent sent a governor whom she had chosen as one devoted to her interest, and sure to obey her commands, yet Clarendon affirms[66] that he went to his government with a contrary resolution.[100] This resolution, however, was frustrated by the action of the Moors. A few days only before Lord Sandwich arrived, the Governor marched out of the town with all the horse and half the foot of the garrison, and fell into an ambush. The whole party were cut off, and the Governor and many of his chief men were killed. The town was so weak that, when Lord Sandwich arrived at this conjuncture, he was hailed as a deliverer from the Moors. He conveyed the remainder of the garrison into Portugal, and Henry, second Earl of Peterborough, with the English garrison, entered the town on the 30th of January, 1662, as the first Governor from England.

Now began a system of mismanagement worthy of the disorganized condition of public affairs. A commission was appointed for the purpose of carrying on the government of Tangier in London, and constant meetings were held. None of the commissioners knew anything of the place, and they were quite at the mercy of the governors and deputy-governors who were sent out. Pepys was placed upon the commission by the influence of Lord Sandwich, and John Creed was appointed secretary.[101] Thomas Povey, the treasurer, got his accounts into so great a muddle, that he thought it wise to surrender his office to Pepys, on condition of receiving half the profits, which he did on[67] March 20, 1664–65. This treasurership and the contract for victualling the garrison of Tangier were sources of considerable profit to our Diarist. At one of the earliest meetings of the committee, the project of forming a mole or breakwater was entertained. A contract for the work to be done at 13s. the cubical yard was accepted, although, as Pepys writes, none of the committee knew whether they gave too much or too little (February 16, 1662–63); and he signed the contract with very ill will on that score (March 30, 1663). When the accounts were looked into on April 3, 1663, it was found that the charge for one year’s work would be as much as £13,000. Two years after this, the committee agreed to pay 4s. a yard more, and the whole amount spent upon the mole was found to be £36,000 (March 30, 1665). The wind and sea exerted a very destructive influence over this structure, although it was very strongly built, and Colonel Norwood reported in 1668 that a breach had been made in the mole which would cost a considerable sum to repair. As Norwood was an enemy of a friend of his, Pepys at once jumps to the conclusion that he must be a bad man (February 22, 1668–69). The second Earl of Carnarvon said that wood was an excrescence of the earth, provided by God for the payment of debts, and Sir W. Coventry, in a conversation with Pepys, applied this saying to Tangier and its governors. It is not always safe to take for granted all that our Diarist says against the persons he writes about, but there must have been some[68] truth in the indictment he drew up against all those who undertook the government of Tangier. When Lord Peterborough received the place from the Portuguese, a book was given to him which contained a secret account of all the conduit-heads and heads of watercourses in and about the town. This book was always given from one governor to another, but was not to be looked at by anyone else. When Lord Peterborough left, he took the book away with him, and on being asked for it always answered that he had mislaid it and could not recover it. Colonel Kirke told Pepys in 1683 that the supply of water was greatly reduced by the want of this information.[102] In 1666 Pepys had applied the adjective “ignoble” to Lord Peterborough’s name, on account of his lordship’s conduct in regard to money matters. On December 15, 1662, Andrew Lord Rutherford and Earl of Teviot, Governor of Dunkirk until its surrender to the French, was appointed Governor of Tangier in succession to Lord Peterborough, who was recalled. He was a brave but rash man, and made a practice of going out of the town into the country without taking proper precautions. In May, 1664, he was surveying his lines after an attack by the Moors, when he and nineteen officers were killed by a party of the enemy in ambush. Pepys called him a cunning man, and said that had he lived he would have undone the place; but in 1683, Dr. Lawrence told Pepys that his[69] death was a great misfortune, for he took every opportunity of making the place great, but without neglecting himself.[103] John Lord Bellassis was the next governor, and he was said to be corrupt in his command.

The deputy-governors were no better than their superiors. Of Colonel Fitzgerald, Pepys writes, on October 20th, 1664, he is “a man of no honour nor presence, nor little honesty, and endeavours to raise the Irish and suppress the English interest there, and offend every body.” Certainly, when he sees him on August 7th, 1668, he is pleased with him and his discourse. Pepys’s opinion of Colonel Norwood we have already seen; but none of the governors rose to the height of villany exhibited by Colonel Kirke, whose name is condemned to everlasting infamy in the pages of Macaulay.

The further history of Tangier, previous to its final destruction, can be put into a few words. In January, 1668–69, Lord Sandwich proposed that a paymaster should be appointed at Tangier, and suggested Sir Charles Harbord for the post; but the Duke of York said that nothing could be done without Pepys’s consent, in case the arrangement should injure him in his office of treasurer. Our Diarist was much pleased at this instance of the kindness of the Duke, and of the whole committee towards him.[104]

Henry Sheres, who accompanied Lord Sandwich to Spain, and afterwards became a great[70] friend of Pepys, was paid £100, on January 18th, 1668–69, for drawing a plate of the Tangier fortifications. In the same year (1669), the great engraver, Hollar, was sent to Tangier by the King to take views of the town and fortifications. Some of these he afterwards engraved, and the original drawings are in the British Museum.

In 1673 a new commission was appointed, and Pepys and Povey were among the commissioners.[105] Two years afterwards the vessel in which Henry Teonge was chaplain anchored in Tangier Bay; and in the “Diary” which he left behind him he gives a description of the town as it appeared to him. The mole was not then finished, and he found the old high walls much decayed in places. He mentions “a pitiful palizado, not so good as an old park pale (for you may anywhere almost thrust it down with your foot);” but in this palisade were twelve forts, well supplied with good guns.

In 1680, Tangier was besieged by the Emperor of Morocco, and Charles II. applied to Parliament for money, so that the place might be properly defended. The House of Commons expressed their dislike of the management of the garrison, which they suspected to be a nursery for a Popish army. Sir William Jones said: “Tangier may be of great importance to trade, but I am afraid hath not been so managed as to be any security to the Protestant religion;” and William Harbord, M.P. for Thetford, added:[71] “When we are assured we shall have a good Protestant governor and garrison in Tangier, I shall heartily give my vote for money for it.”[106]

A most unworthy action was at this time perpetrated by the Government. Not having the support of Parliament, they were unable to defend the place with an adequate force; and they chose the one man in England whose brilliant career rivals those of the grand worthies of Elizabeth’s reign to fight a losing game.

The Earl of Ossory, son of the Duke of Ormond, was appointed Governor and General of the Forces; but, before he could embark, he fell ill from brooding over the treatment he had received, and soon after died. Lord Sunderland said in council that “Tangier must necessarily be lost; but that it was fit Lord Ossory should be sent, that they might give some account of it to the world.”

The Earl left his wife at their daughter’s house, and came up to London. Here he made a confidant of John Evelyn, who records in his “Diary” his opinion of the transaction. It was not only [72]“an hazardous adventure, but, in most men’s opinion, an impossibility, seeing there was not to be above 3 or 400 horse, and 4000 foot for the garrison and all, both to defend the town, form a camp, repulse the enemy, and fortify what ground they should get in. This touch’d my Lord deeply that he should be so little consider’d as to put him on a business in which he should probably not only lose his reputation, but be charged with all the miscarriages and ill success.”[107] It was on this man that Ormond pronounced the beautiful eulogy, “I would not exchange my dead son for any living son in Christendom!”

In August, 1683, Lord Dartmouth was constituted Captain-General of his Majesty’s Forces in Africa, and Governor of Tangier, being sent with a fleet of about twenty sail to demolish and blow up the works, destroy the harbour, and bring home the garrison; but his instructions were secret. Pepys received the King’s command to accompany Lord Dartmouth, but without being informed of the object of the expedition. In a letter to Evelyn, Pepys tells him, “What our work is I am not solicitous to learn nor forward to make griefs at, it being handled by our masters as a secret.” When they get to sea, Lord Dartmouth tells Pepys the object of the voyage, which the latter says he never suspected, having written the contrary to Mr. Houblon.[108] On September 17th they landed at Tangier, having been about a month on their voyage. All the doings on board ship, and the business transacted on shore, are related with all Pepys’s vivid power of description in his “Tangier Journal.” The writer, however, has become more sedate, and only once “the old man” appears, when he remarks on the pleasure he had in “again seeing fine Mrs. Kirke,”[109] the wife of the Governor. We are told that “the tyranny and vice of Kirke is stupendous,”[110] and the [73]“Journal” is full of the various instances of his enormities. Macaulay, however, with that power of characterization which he so eminently possessed, has compressed them all into his picture of the leader of “Kirke’s lambs.”

Pepys was now for the first time in the town with the government of which he had been so long connected, and he was astonished at its uselessness. Day by day he finds out new disadvantages; and he says that the King was kept in ignorance of them, in order that successive governors might reap the benefits of their position. He complains that even Mr. Sheres was silent for his own profit, as he might have made known the evils of the place ten years before.[111]

In a letter to Mr. Houblon, he gives his opinion that “at no time there needed any more than the walking once round it by daylight to convince any man (no better-sighted than I) of the impossibility of our ever making it, under our circumstances of government, either tenable by, or useful to, the crown of England.” He adds: “Therefore it seems to me a matter much more unaccountable how the King was led to the reception, and, afterwards, to so long and chargeable a maintaining, than, at this day, to the deserting and extinguishing it.”[112]

On the other side Mr. Charles Russell wrote to Pepys from Cadiz, deprecating the destruction of Tangier, and pointing out the advantages of possessing it.[113] Sheres also showed Pepys a paper containing the ordinary objections made[74] against the mole, “improved the most he could, to justify the King’s destroying it,” and added that he could answer them all.[114]

When the work of destruction was begun, it was found that the masonry had been so well constructed that it formed a protection as strong as solid rock. The mining was undertaken piecemeal, and it took six months to blow up the whole structure. The rubbish of the mole and the walls was thrown into the harbour, so as to choke it up completely. Still the ruined mole stands, and on one side the accumulated sand has formed a dangerous reef.

On the 5th of March, 1683–84, Lord Dartmouth and Pepys sailed out of Tangier Bay, and abandoned the place to the Moors. Shortly afterwards the Emperor of Morocco (Muly Ismael) wrote to Captain Cloudesley Shovel: “God be praised! you have quitted Tangier, and left it to us to whom it did belong. From henceforward we shall manure it, for it is the best part of our dominions. As for the captives, you may do with them as you please, heaving them into the sea, or destroying them otherways.” To which Shovel replied: [75]“If they are to be disowned because they are poor, the Lord help them! Your Majesty tells us we may throw them overboard if we please. All this we very well know; but we are Christians, and they bear the form of men, which is reason enough for us not to do it. As to Tangier, our master kept it twenty-one years; and, in spite of all your force, he could, if he had pleased, have continued it to the world’s end; for he levelled your walls, filled up your harbour, and demolished your houses, in the face of your Alcade and his army; and when he had done, he left your barren country without the loss of a man, for your own people to starve in.”[115]

According to Pepys’s account Tangier was a sink of corruption, and England was well rid of the encumbrance. He describes the inhabitants as given up to all kinds of vice, “swearing, cursing and drinking,” the women being as bad as the men; and he says that a certain captain belonging to the Ordnance told him that “he was quite ashamed of what he had heard in their houses; worse a thousand times than in the worst place in London he was ever in.” Dr. Balaam, a former Recorder, had so poor an opinion of the people of the place, that he left his estate to a servant, with the caution that if he married a woman of Tangier, or one that ever had been there, he should lose it all.[116]

Yet Tangier was positively outdone in iniquity by Bombay, which Sir John Wyborne calls “a cursed place.”[117] These were the two acquisitions so highly rated when Charles II. married the Infanta of Portugal.

In spite of all disadvantages, one of the greatest being that ships of any size are forced to lie out far from shore, Tangier is still a place of some importance as the port of North Morocco. The description of the town given by Sir Joseph[76] Hooker[118] answers in most particulars to that written by Teonge two centuries before. It stands on the western side of a shallow bay, on rocky ground that rises steeply from the shore, and the cubical blocks of whitewashed masonry, with scarcely an opening to represent a window, which rise one above the other on the steep slope of a recess in the hills, give the place a singular appearance from the sea. On the summit of the hill is a massive gaunt castle of forbidding aspect, and the zigzag walls which encompass the city on all sides are pierced by three gates which are closed at nightfall.

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CHAPTER V.

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CHAPTER V.

PEPYS’S BOOKS AND COLLECTIONS.

Pepys desired that his name might go down to posterity, but he could little have foreseen the fame that it has attained in the nineteenth century. The mode he took to keep it alive was the bequeathment of his library and collections to a time-honoured foundation; and there is every reason to believe that he would have strongly objected to the publication of his “Diary.” Now that that book has been published, we all see the full-length figure of the man; but his character might also have been read in the Pepysian library at Magdalene College, Cambridge; and this latter exhibition of him has been much longer before the public. Comparatively little interest was, however, taken in it until after the appearance of the deciphered “Diary,” when his name at once sprang into fame.

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The library was left, in the first instance, to the Diarist’s nephew, John Jackson, but with a special proviso that it should on no account be dispersed. Pepys refers in his memorandum to “the infinite pains and time and cost employed in my collecting and reducing the same to the state it now is” in. He is particularly solicitous “for its unalterable preservation and perpetual security against the ordinary fate of such collections, falling into the hands of an incompetent heir and thereby being sold, dissipated or imbezzled.” Jackson was allowed a certain latitude in the disposal of the collections after his death. They were to be placed at one of the Universities, but Cambridge was to be preferred to Oxford. A private college was to be chosen rather than the Public Library, and of colleges Trinity or Magdalene were to be given the preference over the others. Of these two colleges (on the boards of each of which Pepys’s name had been entered), Magdalene, at which he received his education, was to have the preference. The college which did not receive the gift was appointed visitor, and if at the annual inspection any breach of covenant occurred, the library became forfeited to it.

A fair room was to be provided for the library, and no other books were to be added, save those which Jackson might add in distinct presses. The whole was to be called “Bibliotheca Pepysiana,” and the sole power and custody over it was to be vested in the master of the college for the time being.[119]

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Magdalene College was founded by Lord Chancellor Audley, who vested for ever the right of nominating to the mastership in the possessors of Audley End. At the time that Pepys was a student the buildings were far from extensive, and consisted of the first court alone. The foundation of the second court was laid in 1677, and Pepys’s “Correspondence” contains a letter from Dr. Hezekiah Burton, asking for the contribution already promised towards the new buildings; and another from John Maulyverer in 1679, thanking for money lent for the same purpose, and referring to a bond. A fellow-collegian of Pepys was John Peachell, afterwards Vicar of Stanwick, Prebendary of Carlisle, and Master of the College in 1679. He does not appear to have been altogether an estimable man, for in 1677 (May 3) Pepys felt half ashamed to be seen in his company because of his red nose; and according to Lord Dartmouth’s manuscript notes on Bishop Burnet’s “History of his own Time,” there was cause for this rubicundity, as Archbishop Sancroft rebuked him for setting an ill example in the University by drunkenness and other loose behaviour. Dr. Peachell had his good points, however, for in 1687 he was suspended from his mastership and deprived of his vice-chancellorship for refusing to admit Alban Francis, a Benedictine monk, to the degree of Master of Arts without taking the prescribed oaths. It appears from a letter to Pepys that he greatly feared the Earl of Suffolk, who was then owner of Audley End, would be content to have him removed in order to obtain the privilege of nominating[80] a successor, but he was fortunate in being restored to his office in the following year.

Pepys never forgot a friend, and a month before this restoration he induced Lord Dartmouth, on his appointment to the command of the fleet, to ask Peachell to be his chaplain, with authority over all the other chaplains. In 1690 the Master of Magdalene died of starvation brought about by a four days’ fast which he prescribed himself as a penance after the archbishop’s admonition; and when he afterwards tried to eat he could not.

The master at the period of Pepys’s death was Dr. Quadring, and in the college chest are two letters written by Jackson to him to inform him of the will of the deceased respecting the library. It was not, however, until 1724, on the death of Jackson, that the three thousand volumes of which the library consisted were, with the original bookcases, removed to the college, and deposited in the new buildings which Pepys had assisted to build. The old inscription, “Bibliotheca Pepysiana,” which was set up at the time, is still to be seen on the front in the second courtyard.

The library is of the greatest interest, and a mere enumeration of some of the treasures contained in it is enough to whet the appetite of the least ardent among the lovers of old books. To mention first the manuscripts:—there are the various papers collected by Pepys for his proposed “Navalia;” a “vast treasure of papers” lent by Evelyn, but never returned to their owner; seventeen letters from Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn, copied at Rome from the originals[81] in the Vatican, 1682; a collection of papers relating to Charles II.’s escape from Worcester; a journal of the proceedings of the Duke of Monmouth in his invading of England, with the progress and issue of the rebellion attending it, kept by Mr. Edward Dummer, then serving the train of artillery employed by his Majesty for the suppression of the same; and a Survey (made by order of the Admiralty) of buildings and encroachments on the River of Thames, from London Bridge to Cuckold’s Point, 1684–1687. The Maitland MS., which contains an excellent collection of Scottish poetry, and is named after Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, Lord Privy Seal and Judge in the Court of Session (b. 1496, d. 1586), who formed it, is also worthy of special mention. How the two volumes of which it consists came into Pepys’s possession is not recorded. Selections from them were printed by Pinkerton in 1786.

Among the choice articles that should have some notice, however inadequate, are the pocket-book constantly used by Sir Francis Drake, and that of James II., described as follows by Pepys himself:—“My Royal master K. James ye 2d. Pocket Book of Rates and Memorandums during ye whole time of his serving at ye Seas as Lord High Admiral of England, vizt., from May, 1663, to his laying down his commission, May, 1673.” Another great curiosity is the original “Libro de Cargos as to Provisions and Munic̃ons of the Proveedor of the Spanish Armada, 1588,” with a hole right through, for the purpose of hanging it up in the ship.

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Besides all the papers on naval affairs in the Pepysian Library, there is a series of fifty volumes of Pepys’s manuscripts in the Rawlinson Collection in the Bodleian Library. How these papers came into the possession of Rawlinson is not known.

What gives a special interest to the Library is the fact that it still remains in exactly the same condition as Pepys left it, the books being in the original cases, arranged in the order which he had fixed. There are several entries in the “Diary” relating to the arrangement and cataloguing of the books; thus on December 17th, 1666, we read:—“Spent the evening in fitting my books, to have the number set upon each, in order to my having an alphabet of my whole, which will be of great ease to me.” He employs his brother John to write out the catalogue “perfectly alphabeticall,”[120] but he afterwards finishes it off with his own hand.[121] He was very particular as to the books he admitted into his catalogue, so when he bought in the Strand “an idle rogueish French book, ‘L’escholle des filles,’” he resolved, as soon as he had read it, to burn it, “that it might not stand in the list of books nor among them, to disgrace them if it should be found.”[122] He had, at a later time, a similar feeling with regard to Lord Rochester’s poems, and in a letter dated Nov. 2, 1680, he directs Hewer to leave the volume in a drawer, as it is written in a style which he thought unfitted it for mixing with his other books. He[83] adds that as the author (who had just died) was past writing any more poems so bad in one sense, he despaired of any man surviving “to write so good in another.”[123] When I was looking over the Library I made a point of seeing whether this book had found a place at last on the shelves, and I discovered it there; but with sad hypocrisy it stood in false colours, for the lettering on the back was “Rochester’s Life.”

The books were numbered consecutively throughout the Library, and, therefore, when re-arranged, they needed to be all renumbered. All hands were pressed into this service; and we read that on the 15th of February, 1667–68, Pepys himself, his wife, and Deb Willett, were busy until near midnight “titleing” the books for the year, and setting them in order. They all tired their backs, but the work was satisfactory, though, on the whole, not quite so much so as the previous year’s job had been.

On account of this constant changing, each book contains several numbers, sometimes as many as six; and the last, which is the one by which the books are still found, is in red ink.

The books are arranged in eleven curious old mahogany bookcases, which are mentioned in the “Diary,” under date August 24th, 1666, and which gave the Diarist so much pleasure, when they were sent home quite new by Mr. Sympson, the joiner and cabinet-maker. The presses are handsomely carved, and have handles fixed at each end; the doors are formed of little panes of glass; and, in the lower divisions, the glass[84] windows are made to lift up. The books are all arranged in double rows; but, by the ingenious plan of placing small books in front of large ones, the letterings of all can be seen. Some have tickets on the outside, and this practice is mentioned in the “Diary,” where we read: “To my chamber, and there to ticket a good part of my books, in order to the numbering of them for my easy finding them to read as I have occasion.”[124]

The word “arranged” has been several times used in this chapter; but it must not be understood as implying any kind of classification, for the books are merely placed in order of size. This arrangement, however, has been very carefully attended to; and, in one instance, some short volumes have been raised to the required height by the help of wooden stilts, gilt in front.

The classification was to be found in the catalogues; and, as Pepys increased in substance, he employed experts to do this work for him. One of these was Paul Lorrain, the author of several tracts and sermons, who was employed in copying manuscripts, and making catalogues of books and prints. A letter from this man, written on October 12th, 1700, to explain the nature of the work he then had in hand, is printed in the correspondence of Pepys.

There are numerous entries in the “Diary” relating to the binding of certain books; and a single glance at the Library as it now exists would show any one experienced in the matter that Pepys paid great attention to this most important point in the proper preservation of a[85] library. As early as May 15th, 1660, he showed this taste by buying three books solely on account of the binding; and on January 18th, 1664–65, he went to his bookseller to give directions for the new binding of a great many of his old books, in order that his whole studyful should be uniform. Nearly all the books are bound in calf, although some are in morocco and some in vellum.

Pepys came to the resolution in the year 1667 that he would not have any more books than his cases would hold; so when, on the 2nd of February, 1667–68, he found that the number of books had much increased since the previous year, he was forced to weed out several inferior ones to make room for better. He had previously written: “Whereas, before, my delight was in multitude of books, and spending money in that, and buying alway of other things, now that I am become a better husband, and have left off buying, now my delight is in the neatness of everything.”[125] This plan he continued to practise throughout his life, generally to the improvement of the character of his library, but not always so.

When I was allowed the privilege of looking through the Library, I came upon a list of books headed “Deleta, 1700.” The entries in this list are most curious. To each title is added a note, such as these: “Ejected as a duplicate,” “Removed to a juster place,” “To give way to the same reprinted,” “To give way to a fairer edition.”

As the “Diary” is full of notices of books[86] purchased, I felt interested to know which of them had been weeded out after they had been bought, and which had been thought worthy to remain on to the end.

The following is the result of these inquiries in a few instances, chosen from the poets:—On the 8th of July, 1664, Pepys went to his bookseller about some books; from his shop he went on to the binder, to give directions as to the binding of his “Chaucer;” “and thence to the clasp-makers, to have it clasped and bossed.” Reposing in a quiet corner of the Pepysian Library is Speght’s edition of 1602, which is the identical copy referred to, and here, therefore, we have an example of the books that remained. It is in a plain calf cover, unlettered, “full neat enough,” with brass clasp and bosses.

This evident attempt to do honour to the memory of

is an incident of the more interest, in that Chaucer is almost the only great poet that Pepys was able to appreciate. Sir John Minnes, the wit, taught him to love England’s grand old singer. These two men were constantly brought together in the fulfilment of business duties, and Pepys writes “among other things Sir J. Minnes brought many fine expressions of Chaucer, which he doats on mightily.” To this he adds as his own opinion, “and without doubt he is a very fine poet.”[126]

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That this is not a mere passing remark is evident, for on August 10th, 1664, he actually quotes a line from “Troilus and Cressida,” a most unusual practice with this “matter-of-fact” man. He goes to visit the famous Cocker, and has an hour’s talk with him on various matters. “He (Cocker) says that the best light for his life to do a very small thing by (contrary to Chaucer’s words to the Sun, ‘that he should lend his light to them that small seals grave’)[127] it should be by an artificial light of a candle, set to advantage, as he could do it.”

I very much fear that the quotation did not spring up into Pepys’s own mind, but that it was suggested by Cocker, who was “a great admirer, and well read in all our English poets.” More than thirty years after this, Pepys still remained one of Chaucer’s warmest admirers, and we have it on the best authority that we owe Dryden’s modernization of the “Character of a Good Parson” to his recommendation.[128]

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To return, however, to the Pepysian Library. On the 7th of July, 1664 (the day before he went to the binder about Chaucer), Pepys bought “Shakespeare’s Plays.” This probably was the third edition, which had just appeared; though it might have been either the first folio of 1623, or the second folio of 1632; but whichever of these three it happened to be, it was replaced in after years by the fourth folio of 1685, which is now in the collection. Although “Paradise Lost” was first published in 1667, we find no notice either of it or of its author in the “Diary.”

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The Library contains the collected edition, in three folio volumes, of Milton’s Works, published at London by John Toland in 1698, but stated in the title-page to be published at Amsterdam. Pepys probably thought it wise to have nothing to do with any of the publications of so dangerous a man as Milton before the period of the Revolution; and a curious letter from Daniel Skinner to Pepys, dated from Rotterdam, November 19th, 1676, shows that a man might be injured in his public career by the rumour that he had the works of Milton in his possession. Skinner agreed with Daniel Elzevir, the last of that learned race, to print at Amsterdam certain of Milton’s writings which the poet had left to him. In the meantime a surreptitious edition of some State Letters appears, or as Skinner puts it, “creeps out into the world.” When Sir Joseph Williamson, the Secretary of State, is informed of this, and is asked to give a licence for the proposed authentic edition, he replies that “he could countenance nothing of that man’s (Milton) writings.” Upon this, Skinner gives up his scheme, and lends the papers to Williamson, but he gets shabby treatment in return, for on his arrival in Holland he finds that those likely to employ him have been warned against him as a dangerous character.[129]

The last instance of Pepys’s weeding-out process shall be “Hudibras,” and it is the most curious of all. On the 26th of December, 1662, we read in the “Diary:” [90]“To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr. Battersby; and we falling into a discourse of a new book of drollery, in verse, called ‘Hudebras,’ I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple: cost me 2s. 6d. But when I came to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going to the warrs, that I am ashamed of it; and by and by meeting at Mr. Townsend’s at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d.” The book is dated 1663, and could only have been published a few days when Pepys bought and sold it at a loss of one shilling.

Warned by his previous experience, he would not buy the second part when it came out, but borrowed it “to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world cry so mightily up, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty.”[130]

He still remained uneasy, and tried to appreciate the fashionable poem, so that on December 10th, 1663, he thought it well to buy both parts and place them in his library. Twenty years after this he was still doing his best to find “where the wit lies,” for we find by the “Tangier Diary” that he read the first two books on board ship during the voyage out.[131]

The edition of “Hudibras” in the Library is that of 1689, so that the earlier editions must have been exchanged for it.

It does not say much for the literary taste of the man who tried in vain to appreciate “Hudibras,” that he found Cotton’s “Scarronides, or Virgile Travestie,” “extraordinary good.”[132]

The Library contains many very valuable[91] volumes; as, for instance, there are nine Caxtons, and several Wynkyn de Wordes and Pynsons, but the chief interest centres in the various collections.

First and foremost among these are the five folio volumes of old English Ballads, which contain the largest series of broadside ballads ever brought together; the next in size being the well-known Roxburghe Collection, now in the British Museum.

Pepys has written on the title-page of his volumes: “Begun by Mr. Selden: Improved by ye addition of many Pieces elder thereto in Time, and the whole continued down to the year, 1700, When the Form till then peculiar thereto, vizt., of the Black Letter, with Picturs, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside, for that of the White Letter, without Pictures.”

The Ballads are arranged under the following heads:—1. Devotion and Morality. 2. History, true and fabulous. 3. Tragedy, viz. murders, executions, judgements of God. 4. State and Times. 5. Love, pleasant. 6. Love, unfortunate. 7. Marriage, cuckoldry. 8. Sea: love, gallantry, and actions. 9. Drinking and good fellowship. 10. Humorous frolics and mirth. The total number of Ballads is 1800, of which 1376 are in black letter. Besides these there are four little duodecimo volumes, lettered as follows: Vol. 1. Penny Merriments. Vol. 2. Penny Witticisms. Vol. 3. Penny Compliments; and Vol. 4. Penny Godlinesses.

Other collections are lettered “Old Novels,” “Loose Plays,” and “Vulgaria.” There are six[92] folio volumes of tracts on the Popish Plot, four quarto volumes of Sea Tracts, and a collection of News-Pamphlets for six years, that is, from January 1st, 1659–60, to January 1st, 1665–66, the time of the commencement of the Gazettes. Pepys was the first person to collect prints and drawings in illustration of London topography. These he left to his nephew, who added to the collection, and two thick folio volumes therefore came to the College with the other treasures.

Pepys’s collections have a special interest, because he collected his books himself, knew all about them, and registered them with loving care. His various catalogues and indexes are marvels of neatness, and living as he did in a pre-bibliographical age, he deserves the greatest credit for the judgment exercised in their production. In the fifth volume of the little collection of books on Shorthand, there is an index of authors, with dates of publication and references to the volume in which each will be found; and the following, which is the title of one of the appendixes to the catalogue, will show how much labour was willingly expended in the production of these helps to research: “A chronological Deductions of the Variations of Stile (to be collected from ye Alphabet of my books) in ye language of England between ann. 700 & ye attempt last made towards its refinement by Sir Philp Sidney in his ‘Arcadia,’ between 1580 and 1590.”

Neatness and the love of accuracy were ruling passions with Pepys, and when a catalogue was filled up with additional entries he had it re-arranged[93] and copied out. On “A Catalogue and Alphabet to my books of Geography and Hydrography, 1693–95,” is the following memorandum: “Before this Index be transcribed far to collect and alphabet the particulars contained in the List of additional Books inserted at the end, and that being done To incorporate both them and the four particular Indexes preceding into the Principal, and so as to unite the whole.”

This is an interesting list: “Bibliotheca Nautica, 1695. Catalogue of Authors (the perfectest I can arrive at) upon the art and practice of Navigation, with a Chronological Catalogue of the most eminent Mathematicians of this Nation, Antient and Modern, to the year 1673.” Some papers show how all this was arrived at, thus: “Memorandum, to look over ye Epistles and Prefaces to all the Bookes in this Collection, of which I am not maister, and ye other allsoe, and apply what is usefull through ye whole.” Mr. Mount, “son-in-law and successor to the late Mr. Fisher, master of the ancient shopp and our only magazine of English Books of Navigation at the Postern on Tower Hill,” prepared a list, and tried to answer Pepys’s queries. The Diarist was well known to all the booksellers, and he doubtless was a good customer, although he must have troubled them sometimes with his fastidiousness. A note intended for Mr. Mount may be looked upon as a good sample of many more such memorandums, “To get me the ‘Invention of ye Art of Navigation,’ a fair one for ye dirty one I bought of him.”

Robert Scott, the famous bookseller of Little[94] Britain, when sending Pepys four scarce books, the total cost of which was only £1 14s., writes, “But without flattery I love to find a rare book for you.” Herringman, of the “Blue Anchor,” at the New Exchange in the Strand, Joseph Kirton, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, who was ruined by the Fire of London, and Bagford, the title-robber, were some among the booksellers with whom Pepys had dealings.

Pepys was not a producer of marginalia, but some of his books contain an occasional note of interest; thus, in Cotton’s “Compleat Gamester” (1674), “cocking” is described at page 206 as a “game of delight and pleasure,” and Pepys added a manuscript note in the margin, “of barbarity.” Not only does this give us Pepys’s opinion of the sport very pithily, but it also illustrates a passage in the “Diary,” where he describes his visit to the cock-fighting in Shoe Lane, and says he soon had enough of it.[133]

All the books in the Library have a bookplate in the inside cover. These are of different design, two having Pepys’s portrait (one large and the other small), and one having S. P. and two anchors interlaced. Dr. Diamond writes in “Notes and Queries,” that he once met with a large quantity of these bookplates in four varieties. Two were beautifully engraved by Faithorne, as is supposed, and two were by White. Some of them had a rough margin, and others were cut close up to the mantle on the arms.[134]

The motto which Pepys adopted, Mens cujusque is est quisque, was criticized by some of the[95] Admirals in 1690, and the Diarist desired his friend Hewer to point out to them, through Mr. Southerne, that it was a quotation from Cicero’s “Somnium Scipionis,” and that the thought was derived from Plato and wrought upon by St. Paul. The whole passage is, “Tu vero enitere, et sic habeto te non esse mortalem, sed Corpus hoc. Nec enim is est quem forma ista declarat; sed mens cujusque is est quisque, non ea figura quæ digito monstrari potest.”

In concluding this notice of the Pepysian Library, it will be necessary to say a few words about the Musical collections. Pepys was not a mere amateur in music, but understood both theory and practice thoroughly, and he found consolation from it when troubles came upon him.[135] On November 2nd, 1661, he tried “to make a song in praise of a liberal genius,” which he took his own to be, but the result did not prove to his mind; and on March 20th, 1668, he endeavoured to invent “a better theory of music than hath yet been abroad.”

We have references in the “Diary” to four songs which he composed, and a notice of one which he only attempted.[136] On January 30th, 1659–60, he sang Montrose’s verses on the execution of Charles I. beginning,—

which he had set to music. He composed “Gaze not on Swans,” on the 11th of February,[96] 1661–62; but his grand achievement was the setting to music of the song,

from Davenant’s Second Part of “The Siege of Rhodes,” (act iv. sc. 2). Mrs. Knipp sang the song so well that the composer is forced to exclaim, that it seems to be a very fine song, and Captain Downing, “who loves and understands music,” “extols it above everything he had ever heard.”[137] Further evidence of the pride of the composer is seen in the fact that he had his portrait painted with the music of “Beauty retire” in his hand.

On April 6th, 1666, he began “putting notes” to Ben Jonson’s song,

but he did not finish it until November 11th, 1666. He thought himself that it was even better than “Beauty retire,” but the opinion of others is not given.

In the Pepysian Library is a volume of music, entitled, “Songs and other Compositions, Light, Grave and Sacred, for a single voice adjusted to the particular compass of mine; with a thorough base on ye ghitare, by Cesare Morelli,” which contains, among others, “Beauty retire,” “It is decreed,” and “To be or not to be.” We find in the “Diary” that on November 13th, 1664, Pepys was learning to recite this speech of Hamlet.

[97]

In the present day, when few instruments besides the piano are heard in private houses, it is somewhat surprising to find how many were familiar to our ancestors in the seventeenth century, and a note of some of these will perhaps be thought interesting.

The lute was a favourite instrument when Pepys was young, and a good lutenist was in high esteem among his fellows. Lady Wright’s butler gave Pepys a lesson or two, and in the first two years of the “Diary,” there are several references to the hours the Diarist spent in practising; but for a time he was unable to play, as his lute was in pawn. Various forms of the violin were much used by Pepys, who rose by candlelight on the 3rd of December, 1660, and spent his morning in fiddling, till it was time to go to the office.

He and Mr. Hill were engaged for an hour or two in stringing a theorbo; and, on another occasion, he had it mended at a cost of twenty-six shillings. The flute and flageolet were always handy, as he could put them in his pocket, and use them as occasion required, particularly if he were in the neighbourhood of an echo. He mentions the guitar twice in the “Diary,” but did not play on it, as he thought it a bauble. He afterwards altered his opinion, for he expressly charges Morelli, the arranger of his musical papers, to set a certain French song to the guitar; and, as may be seen above, many others were treated in the same way.[138] He is at one[98] time angry with The. Turner because she will not give him a lesson on the harpsichord; and afterwards he buys a spinet.[139]

I here end the portion of this book which deals with the life of Pepys himself.

The “Correspondence” discovers a more dignified character than the “Diary,” but we cannot say for certain whether, if we had a diary of the later years, we should not read such a confession as this on the 27th of January, 1666–67:—“Went[99] down and sat in a low room (at Sir Philip Warwick’s), reading ‘Erasmus de scribendis epistolis,’ a very good book, especially one letter of advice to a courtier, most true and good, which made me once resolve to tear out the two leaves that it was writ in, but I forbore it.”

---

CHAPTER VI.

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CHAPTER VI.

LONDON.

“I have vow’d to spend all my life in London. People do really live no where else; they breathe and move and have a kind of insipid dull being, but there is no life but in London. I had rather be Countess of Puddle-dock than Queen of Sussex.”—T. Shadwell’s Epsom Wells, 1676.

Having concluded that portion of our subject which relates more particularly to the personal character of Pepys, we now pass on to the general consideration of the component parts of the world he lived in. As Pepys was a thorough Londoner, and as most of the circumstances related in the “Diary” refer to London, I propose to commence with a notice of some parts of the capital at the time of the Restoration.

The almost constant use of the River as a highway is a marked feature of the habits of the time, which is illustrated by the fact that Pepys makes a point of mentioning that he went to a place “by land,” when from some cause or other[101] he did not take a boat; thus, on March 8th, 1659–60, we read, “Home about two o’clock, and took my wife by land to Paternoster Row, to buy some paragon for a petticoat, and so home again.” When Pepys was appointed Clerk of the Acts, and he was settled in his house in Seething Lane, he found that a constant communication was necessary between the Navy Office in the City, and the Admiralty at Whitehall. In his frequent journeys by boat from place to place, he often stopped at Blackfriars, in order to visit Lord Sandwich at the “Wardrobe,” where the royal clothes were kept. Sometimes, when there were shows and pageants on the Thames, it was no easy matter to get a boat, and on the occasion of the Queen’s coming to town from Hampton Court, when her barge was attended by ten thousand barges and boats, Pepys in vain tempted the watermen with a bribe of eight shillings.[140] One of the chief dangers of boat traffic was found in “shooting” London Bridge, and it was generally considered good policy to get out of the boat and pass from side to side on foot instead of going through the arches. One Sunday night,[141] however, our Diarist passed through the “rapids,” and did not like the sensation he experienced. [102]“And so to Whitehall to Sir G. Carteret, and so to the Chappell, where I challenged my pew as Clerke of the Privy Seale, and had it, and then walked home with Mr. Blagrave, to his old house in the Fishyard, and there he had a pretty kinswoman that sings, and we did sing some holy things, and afterwards others came in, and so I left them, and by water through the bridge (which did trouble me) home, and so to bed.” It was not, however, much safer on the bridge than under it, for on one occasion Pepys nearly broke his leg there. He had been in Southwark, spending the evening at the well-known inn, the “Bear at the bridge foot,” and when he wished to get home he could not find his coach, so he was forced to go over the bridge through the darkness and the dirt. His leg fell into a hole, although there was a constable standing by to warn persons away from the dangerous spot. At first he thought his leg was broken, but when he was pulled up he was found not to be much hurt.[142]

One of the advantages which our forefathers possessed over us, was to be found in the nearness of the fields and country lanes to their offices and shops. Pepys often indulged himself in a walk or a romp over the grass, in places that are now covered with bricks. On July 29th, 1669, he writes: “I dined, and in the afternoon, with Dick Vines and his brother Payton, we walked to Lisson-greene and Marybone and back again.” On October 9th, 1660, he says, “I met with Sir W. Pen again, and so with him to Redriffe by water, and from thence walked over the fields to Deptford, the first pleasant walk I have had a great while.” One Sunday he goes to Clerkenwell Church, and walks home across the fields.[143] At another time he takes the air in the fields beyond St. Pancras.[144] There[103] is, however, another side to this pleasing picture; for these places were not always safe, and the pleasure-seekers were sometimes alarmed. One day Pepys and a friend were walking from Chelsea into town, when they were joined by a companion, and we read that, “coming among some trees near the Neate houses he began to whistle, which did give us some suspicion, but it proved that he that answered him was Mr. Marsh (the Lutenist) and his wife, and so we all walked to Westminster together.”[145] In the following year Pepys walked from Woolwich to Rotherhithe on a fine moonshiny night, but he was accompanied by three or four armed men.[146] It gave him much satisfaction to be thought of enough importance to have such an escort provided for him unasked.

So much for the country parts near the town, but the streets appear to have been even less safe after dark. Those who wanted to find their way had to carry links,[147] as those without them fared but badly. The gates of the City were shut at night, but this had the effect of shutting in some of the ill-disposed as well as in shutting out others. Pepys and his party on coming home one night from the play found the gates closed. He goes on to say in the “Diary,” [104]“At Newgate we find them in trouble, some thieves having this night broke open prison. So we through and home; and our coachman was fain to drive hard from two or three fellows which he said were rogues that he met at the end of Blowbladder Street.”[148]

A London mob has never been famed for politeness, and we do not gain a very pleasing view of those in Pepys’s day from some of the entries in the “Diary.” On the 27th of November, 1662, the Russian Ambassador entered the city, and the trained bands, the King’s Life Guards, and wealthy citizens clad in black velvet coats with gold chains were ready to receive him. Pepys did not see the Ambassador in his coach, but he was pleased with the “attendants in their habits and fur caps, very handsome, comely men, and most of them with hawks upon their fists to present to the King.” He adds, however, “But, Lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at everything that looks strange.”

The high road of Newgate Street was formerly crowded in a most inconvenient degree by the shambles of the butchers, and our Diarist once got into trouble while driving past them. The account of this adventure is amusing, from the ease with which he got out of his difficulty. “My coach plucked down two pieces of beef into the dirt, upon which the butchers stopped the horses, and a great rout of people in the street, crying that he had done him 40s. and £5 worth of hurt; but going down I saw that he had little or none; and so I give them a shilling for it, and they were well contented.”[149]

The following is a good sample of the quarrels that were constantly occurring; there being no authority to put a stop to such exhibitions.[105] “Great discourse of the fray yesterday in Moorfields; how the butchers at first did beat the weavers (between whom there hath been ever an old competition for mastery), but at last the weavers rallied and beat them. At first the butchers knocked down all for weavers that had green or blue aprons, till they were fain to pull them off and put them in their breeches. At last the butchers were fain to pull off their sleeves, that they might not be known, and were soundly beaten out of the field, and some deeply wounded and bruised; till at last the weavers went out triumphing, calling £100 for a butcher.”[150] Moorfields, now occupied by Finsbury Square and Circus and the surrounding streets, was at this time one of the chief recreation grounds outside the City walls. It was partly given up to the laundresses and bleachers; and boxers and cudgel-players found in it a congenial sphere for their amusements. On an emergency, the troops were mustered on the fenny ground.

None of Pepys’s days passed without a visit to some tavern, for a morning draught, or a pint of wine after dinner. The notice of these little jovialities has preserved to us the names of several old inns, such as the Star, Half Moon, Harp and Ball, Swan, Bull Head, Plough, Lion, Cock, Greyhound, Globe, Mitre, Cardinal’s Cap, King’s Head, Hercules Pillars, Trumpet, &c. We read in the “Diary,” that on March 6th, 1659–60, there was a friendly meeting at one of these places: [106]“While we were drinking, in comes Mr. Day, a carpenter in Westminster, to tell me that it was Shrove tuesday, and that I must go with him to their yearly club upon this day, which, I confess, I had quite forgot. So I went to the Bell, where were Mr. Eglin, Veezy, Vincent, a butcher, one more, and Mr. Tanner, with whom I played upon a viall and viallin, after dinner, and were very merry, with a special good dinner, a leg of veal and bacon, two capons and fritters, with abundance of wine.” On January 10th, 1659–60, Pepys “drank a pint of wine at the Star, in Cheapside,” and on May 24th, 1662, he took his “morning draft” at the same house. These entries show how rapidly our forefathers went from place to place, and how little they thought of the distance between the City and Westminster; this facility being evidently caused by the water carriage. On a certain day Pepys starts from Axe Yard, drinks his morning draught with a friend, at the Sun, in Chancery Lane, and then goes to Westminster Hall. At noon he visits the Swan, in Fish Street; then goes back to Westminster, looking in at the Coffee Club and the Hall before going home.[151] The Swan, in Old Fish Street, is mentioned in an inquisition held before the mayor and aldermen in 1413, as “The Swan on the Hoop.” The house was destroyed in the Great Fire, but was rebuilt and advertised to be let in the “Spectator” of April 25th, 1712.

King Street, Westminster, was full of inns. Pepys’s favourite haunt was the Leg, where an ordinary was held. On December 6th, 1660, he and Mr. Moore went there, and “dined together on a neat’s tongue and udder.” Again, on April[107] 6th, 1661, “with Mr. Creed and More to the Leg, in the Palace, to dinner, which I gave them, and after dinner I saw the girl of the house, being very pretty, go into a chamber, and I went in after her and kissed her.” Two other King Street taverns were visited by Pepys, in July and August, 1660—viz., the Sun and the Dog. These houses of entertainment are both noted as haunts of Ben Jonson, in Herrick’s Address to the Shade of “Glorious Ben.”

Another Sun, that behind the Exchange, was a famous house frequented by Pepys; it was rebuilt after the Fire by John Wadlow, the host of the Devil Tavern, and son of the more famous Simon Wadlow whom Ben Jonson dubbed “Old Sym, the King of Skinkers.” Pepys often went with his colleagues to the Dolphin, and drank “a great quantity of sack” there. On April 25th, 1661, he “went to an ordinary at the King’s Head, in Tower Street, and there had a dirty dinner.” On June 21st, of the same year, we read, “This morning, going to my father’s, I met him, and so he and I went and drank our morning draft at the Samson, in Paul’s Churchyard.” On October 9th, he went after[108] the theatre “to the Fleece tavern, in Covent Garden, where Luellin, and Blurton, and my old friend, Frank Bagge, was to meet me, and there staid till late, very merry.” This was the chief tavern in Covent Garden, but being the resort of bullies, it obtained a very unenviable notoriety. The Green Dragon, on Lambeth Hill, the Golden Lion, near Charing Cross, the Old Three Tuns at the same place, and the Pope’s Head, in Chancery Lane, are among the other taverns mentioned by Pepys. The Rhenish Wine-house, in the Steelyard, Upper Thames Street, was a favourite resort, and is frequently mentioned by the old dramatists. Pepys went there sometimes, but he more often visited another house so called in Cannon Row. All kinds of drinks were alike agreeable to our Diarist, and he did not even disdain “mum,” a strong beer brewed from wheat, which was once popular and sold at special mum-houses.

These constant visits to taverns were not very conducive to temperate habits of life, and we therefore read much of the midday revellings of the business men. One day, Pepys being a little more sober than Sir W. Penn, has to lead that worthy knight home through the streets, and on another occasion he resolves not to drink any more wine,—a rash vow which he forthwith breaks. Sometimes with amusing casuistry he tries to keep his vow to the letter while he breaks it in the spirit; thus, to allude again to the characteristic entry, on October 29th, 1663, we read, [109]“Went into the Buttery, and there stayed and talked, and then into the Hall again; and there wine was offered, and they drunk, I only drinking some hypocras,[152] which do not break my vow, it being, to the best of my present judgement, only a mixed compound drink, and not any wine. If I am mistaken, God forgive me! but I hope and do think I am not.”

We have seen Pepys dividing his time pretty equally between the City and Westminster, and doing official work in both places. In Westminster Hall he was on friendly terms with all the shopkeepers who formerly kept their little stalls in that place, and most of the watermen at the different stairs, who recognized his genial face, were emulous of the honour of carrying him as a fare. There is an entry in the “Diary” which records a curious custom amongst the stationers of the Hall. Pepys went on January 30th, 1659–60, to “Westminster Hall, where Mrs. Lane and the rest of the maids had their white scarfs, all having been at the burial of a young bookseller.”

Two of the most important events in the history of Old London,—viz., the Plague and the Fire,—are very fully described in the “Diary.”

On the 7th of June, 1665, Pepys for the first time saw two or three houses marked with the red cross, and the words “Lord have mercy upon us” on the doors; and the sight made him feel so ill at ease that he was forced to buy some roll tobacco to smell and chew. Then we read of the rapid increase in the numbers of those struck down; of those buried in the open Tuttle-fields[110] at Westminster; and of the unfriendly feelings that were engendered by fear.

Pepys remained either in town or in its neighbourhood during the whole time of the raging of the pestilence; and on the 4th of September, 1665, he wrote an interesting letter to Lady Carteret, from Woolwich, in which he said: “The absence of the court and emptiness of the city takes away all occasion of news, save only such melancholy stories as would rather sadden than find your ladyship any divertissement in the hearing. I have stayed in the city till above 7,400 died in one week, and of them above 6,000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells; till I could walk Lumber Street and not meet twenty persons from one end to the other, and not fifty upon the Exchange; till whole families, ten and twelve together, have been swept away; till my very physician, Dr. Burnet, who undertook to secure me against any infection, having survived the month of his own house being shut up, died himself of the plague; till the nights, though much lengthened, are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before, people being thereby constrained to borrow daylight for that service; lastly, till I could find neither meat nor drink safe, the butcheries being everywhere visited, my brewer’s house shut up, and my baker, with his whole family, dead of the plague.”

He then relates a romantic incident which had just occurred, and a note of which he also inserted in his “Diary:” [111]“Greenwich begins apace to be sickly; but we are, by the command of the king, taking all the care we can to prevent its growth; and meeting to that purpose yesterday, after sermon with the town officers, many doleful informations were brought us, and, among others, this, which I shall trouble your ladyship with the telling. Complaint was brought us against one in the town for receiving into his house a child brought from an infected house in London. Upon inquiry, we found that it was the child of a very able citizen in Gracious Street, who, having lost already all the rest of his children, and himself and wife being shut up, and in despair of escaping, implored only the liberty of using the means for the saving of this only babe, which, with difficulty, was allowed, and they suffered to deliver it, stripped naked, out at a window, into the arms of a friend, who, shifting into fresh cloathes, conveyed it thus to Greenwich, where, upon this information from Alderman Hooker, we suffer it to remain.”

On the 20th of this same month of September we read in the “Diary:” “But, Lord! what a sad time it is to see no boats upon the River, and grass grows all up and down White Hall court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets.” And on October 16th, Pepys is told that, in Westminster, “there is never a physician, and but one apothecary left,—all being dead.”

In the following January, the question of attending to the overcrowded churchyards had begun to agitate the public mind; and those who lived in their immediate neighbourhood[112] were anxious that they should be covered with lime.[153] Not many months after this the greater portion of the city had become a void.

On the 2nd of September, 1666, Pepys was called up at three o’clock to see a fire; but not thinking much of it, he went to bed again. When, however, he got up, he found that about 300 houses had been burnt in the night. All were now busy in moving their property from place to place; and the women worked as hard as the men in doing what was needed. Some almost incredible instances of meanness are recorded in the “Diary,” respecting those rich men who gave shillings grudgingly to those who saved their all. Alderman Starling, whose house was saved by the Navy Office men, while the next house was burning, gave 2s. 6d. to be divided among thirty of them, and then quarrelled with some that would remove the rubbish out of the way of the fire, on the score that they came to steal. Sir William Coventry told Pepys of another case which occurred in Holborn. An offer was made to one whose house was in great danger, to stop the fire for a sum that came to about 2s. 6d. a man, but he would only give 1s. 6d.[154]

Clothworkers’ Hall burnt for three days and nights, on account of the oil in the cellars; and so intense was the heat caused by extension of the fire over a large space, that the ground of the City continued to smoke even in December.[155]

Moorfields was the chief resort of the houseless[113] Londoners, and soon paved streets and two-storey houses were seen in that swampy place, the City having let the land on leases of seven years.

It was said that this national disaster had been foretold, and the prophecies of Nostrodamus and Mother Shipton were referred to.

Sir Roger L’Estrange, the Licenser of Almanacs, told Sir Edward Walker that most of those that came under his notice foretold the fire, but that he had struck the prophecy out.[156] Lady Carteret told Pepys a curious little fact, which was, that abundance of pieces of burnt papers were driven by the wind as far as Cranborne, in Windsor Forest; “and, among others, she took up one, or had one brought her to see, which was a little bit of paper that had been printed, whereon there remained no more nor less than these words: ‘Time is, it is done.’”[157]

It is well known that the unfortunate Roman Catholics were charged with the crime of having set London on fire, and there appears to have been a very sufficient reason why the people should persist in affirming this fable. The judges determined, in the case of disputed liability between landlord and tenant, that the tenants should bear the loss in all casualties of fire arising in their own houses or in those of their neighbours; but if the fire was caused by an enemy they were not liable. As one poor man was convicted and hanged for the crime, it was held that the landlords must be mulcted.[158][114] Public opinion shifted about in this matter, for we read that on September 16th, 1667, Pepys saw “a printed account of the examinations taken, touching the burning ... showing the plot of the Papists therein, which it seems hath been ordered to be burnt by the hands of the hangman, in Westminster Palace.”[159]

London remained in ruins for many months, and as late as April 23rd, 1668, Pepys describes himself as wearily walking round the walls in order to escape the dangers within. At last new streets of houses arose from the ruins, but, unfortunately, in spite of the proposals of Wren, Hooke, and Evelyn for erecting a handsome and well-arranged city, the old lines were in almost every case retained.

A passage in the “Diary” in which Pepys remarks on the great streets “marked out with piles drove in the ground,” and expresses the opinion that, if ever so built, they will form “a noble sight,” would seem to show that at one time a better plan of building was contemplated.[160]

Had the plan suggested in Parliament by Colonel Birch been carried out, great difficulties would have been avoided. His proposal was, that the whole ground should be sold and placed in trust. Then the trustees were to sell again, with preference to the former owners, by which[115] means a general plan of building might have been adopted; but an unequalled opportunity of making London into a fine city was let slip.[161]

At one time it was supposed that the Fire would cause a westward march of trade, but the City asserted the old supremacy when it was rebuilt.

Soon after the conclusion of the “Diary,” Pepys left the Navy Office, and the latter years of his life were spent partly in York Buildings and partly at Clapham. It was after the Restoration that the West End grew into importance, and the house at the foot of Buckingham Street, from the windows of which Pepys could look out upon the river, was not built when the Diarist was settled in Crutched Friars. It was erected upon part of the site of York House, whose last resident was the worthless Buckingham:—

This house, in which Pepys was pleased to find “the remains of the noble soul of the late Duke of Buckingham appearing, in the door-cases and the windows,”[162] was sold by his son and demolished in 1672.

As Pepys left London so it remained in its chief features for more than one hundred years, and it was not until the beginning of the present century that the vast extension of the town to the north and south began to make itself felt.

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CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VII.

PEPYS’S RELATIONS, FRIENDS, AND ACQUAINTANCES.

“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life he will soon find himself left alone; a man should keep his friendship in constant repair.”—Dr. Johnson.

Family feeling was strong in Pepys, and we therefore find him in constant communication with persons in all degrees of relationship. These relations varied greatly in social position, from the peer to the little shopkeeper. Thus we find that one Pepys was a Lord Chief Justice of Ireland; another a Member of Parliament; another a Doctor of Divinity; another a goldsmith, and another a turner.

In later life, when Pepys had risen greatly in social importance, the relations were not so much associated with, and a more distinguished circle of friends make their appearance. This gradual dropping away of the relations may[117] have been caused by decrease of the family, for the Diarist on one occasion writes: “It is a sad consideration how the Pepys’s decay, and nobody almost that I know in a present way of increasing them.”[163]

The members of Pepys’s immediate family have already been alluded to, and we have seen how his father, John Pepys, the tailor, retired to Brampton in 1661. The old man died in 1680, and desired by his will that all the lands and goods left him by his brother Robert should be delivered up to his eldest son. He also left £5 to the poor of Brampton, and 40s. to the poor of Ellington, and the remainder of his property to be divided amongst his three children—Samuel and John and Paulina Jackson. John, however, died before him.

Of the numerous cousins who figure in the “Diary,” the Turners and the Joyces are the most frequently referred to. Serjeant John Turner and his wife Jane, who lived in Salisbury Court, were not very highly esteemed by Sir William Baker, who called the one a false fellow and the other a false woman, and Pepys does not appear altogether to have disliked hearing him say so.[164]

Their daughter Theophila was, however, a favourite with Pepys, and on March 3, 1662–63, she showed him his name on her breast as her valentine, “which,” he observes, “will cost me 20s.” Four days afterwards he bought her a dozen pairs of white gloves.

The Joyces were never much liked by Pepys, but at one time he thought it well to be friends[118] with them, as he writes on the 6th of August, 1663,—“I think it convenient to keep in with the Joyces against a bad day, if I should have occasion to make use of them.” William Joyce was good-natured, but Pepys wearied of his company because he was “an impertinent coxcomb” and too great a talker. As is often the case with our Diarist, he gives a different character of the man on another occasion. He writes, “A cunning, crafty fellow he is, and dangerous to displease, for his tongue spares nobody.”[165]

Anthony Joyce was in business, and on one occasion he supplied Pepys with some tallow, payment for which he was unduly anxious about, so that the purchaser was vexed.[166] Anthony gave over trade in 1664, but was ruined by the Fire; and afterwards kept the “Three Stags” at Holborn Conduit. William was greatly disgusted when his brother became a publican. Pepys says he ranted about it “like a prince, calling him hosteller and his sister hostess.”[167]

In January, 1667–68, Anthony threw himself into a pond at Islington, but being seen by a poor woman, he was got out before life was extinct. “He confessed his doing the thing, being led by the devil; and do declare his reason to be, his trouble in having forgot to serve God as he ought since he came to this new employment.”[168] He died soon after this, and his friends were in great fear that his goods would be seized upon on the ground that he was a suicide. Pepys[119] used all his influence to save the estate, and obtained the King’s promise that it should not be taken from the widow and children. Those who were likely to benefit by the confiscation gave much trouble, and managed to stop the coroner’s verdict for a time. At last, however, the widow’s friends on the jury saved her from further anxiety by giving a verdict that her husband died of a fever. “Some opposition there was, the foreman pressing them to declare the cause of the fever, thinking thereby to obstruct it; but they did adhere to their verdict, and would give no reason.”[169]

Kate Joyce (Anthony’s widow) was a pretty woman, and caused Pepys some trouble. She had many offers of marriage, and after a short period of widowhood she married one Hollingshed, a tobacconist.[170] Pepys was disgusted, and left her to her own devices with the expression, “As she brews let her bake.”

Mrs. Kite, the butcher, was another of Pepys’s aunts whose company he did not greatly appreciate. He was, however, her executor, and at her death he calls her daughter ugly names, thus: “Back again with Peg Kite, who will be I doubt a troublesome carrion to us executors.”[171] A few days after she is called “a slut,”[172] and when she declares her firm intention to marry “the beggarly rogue the weaver,” the executors are “resolved neither to meddle nor make with her.”[173]

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Few of these family connections were left when Pepys himself died, for in the long list of persons to whom rings and mourning were given the following relations only are noticed:—Samuel and John Jackson, sons of Pall Jackson (born Pepys), the two nephews; Balthazar St. Michel, brother-in-law, and his daughter Mary; Roger Pepys, of Impington, Edward Pickering, Tim Turner, the minister of Tooting; Mr. Bellamy, Mr. and Mrs. Mathews, Dr. Montagu, Dean of Durham; and the Earl of Sandwich.

Dr. Daniel Milles, the minister of St. Olave’s, Hart Street, was one of Pepys’s life-long acquaintances—we can hardly call him friend, for the Diarist never seems to have cared much for him. We read how he “nibbled at the Common Prayer,” then how he took to the surplice, and gradually changed from the minister under the Commonwealth to the Church of England rector under Charles. A year or two after he ought to have been accustomed to the Prayer-Book, he made an extraordinary blunder in reading the service. Instead of saying, “We beseech Thee to preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth,” he said: “Preserve to our use our gracious Queen Katherine.”[174] In 1667 he was presented to the rectory of Wanstead, in Essex, and in order to qualify him for holding two livings at the same time, he was made one of the Duke of York’s chaplains.[175]

It is often amusing to notice how frequently Pepys changed his opinion of certain persons: for instance, in 1660, he calls Mr. Milles [121]“a very good minister,”[176] while in 1667 he styles him “a lazy fat priest.”[177]

Two men who occupy a considerable space in the “Diary” are the two clerks, Thomas Hayter and William Hewer. Most of those who were in anyway connected with Pepys were helped on by him in the struggle of life, and his clerks were no exception to this rule. Hayter was appointed Clerk of the Acts in 1674, and Secretary of the Admiralty in 1679; and subsequently Hewer was a Commissioner of the Navy and Treasurer for Tangier. Some of those whose fortunes had been made by Pepys turned out ungrateful when their patron was out of power; but Hewer continued to be a comfort to the old man to the last.

Allusion has already been made to Pepys’s helpers in the arrangement of his books and papers, and therefore much need not be said about them here. While the “Diary” was being written, Pepys obtained help from his wife and brother-in-law and servants; but when he became more opulent he employed educated men to write for him. One of these was Cesare Morelli, an Italian, recommended by Thomas Hill. He arranged Pepys’s musical papers, and in 1681 he acknowledged the receipt of £7, which made a total of £85 17s. 6d. received from Pepys during a period extending from November 4th, 1678, to August 13th, 1681.[178] This friendship, which does Pepys much credit, caused him some trouble, as Morelli was a Roman[122] Catholic, and the zealots falsely affirmed that he was also a priest.

Pepys early made the acquaintance of Dr. Petty, who was a member of the Rota Club; and he frequently mentions him and his double-bottomed boat (named “The Experiment”) in the “Diary.” Many anecdotes are told of Petty by Aubrey—how he was poor at Paris, and lived for a week on three pennyworth of walnuts; how, while teaching anatomy at Oxford, he revived Nan Green after her execution, and how he obtained the Professorship of Music at Gresham College by the interest of Captain John Graunt, author of “Observations on the Bills of Mortality.” At the Restoration Petty was knighted, and made Surveyor-General of Ireland, where he gathered a large fortune. Pepys considered Sir William Petty to be one of the most rational men that he ever heard speak with tongue;[179] and he was also an excellent droll. The latter character was proved when a soldier knight challenged him to fight. He was very short-sighted; and, having the privilege of nominating place and weapon for the duel, he chose a dark cellar for the place, and a great carpenter’s axe for the weapon. This turned the challenge into ridicule, and the duel never came off.

Petty was a prominent Fellow of the Royal Society, and about 1665 he presented a paper on “The Building of Ships,” which the President (Lord Brouncker) took away and kept to himself, according to Aubrey, with the remark, that [123]“’twas too great an arcanum of State to be commonly perused.” Aubrey also relates an excellent story apropos of the Royal Society’s anniversary meeting on St. Andrew’s Day. The relater had remarked that he thought it was not well the Society should have pitched upon the patron of Scotland’s day, as they should have taken St. George or St. Isidore (a philosopher canonized). “No,” said Petty, “I would rather have had it on St. Thomas’s Day, for he would not believe till he had seen and put his fingers into the holes, according to the motto, Nullius in verba.”

Among the City friends of Pepys, the Houblons stand forward very prominently. James Houblon, the father, died in 1682, in his ninetieth year, and was buried in the church of St. Mary Woolnoth, his epitaph being written in Latin by Pepys. His five sons are frequently mentioned in the “Diary,” but James and Wynne were more particularly his friends, and were among those who received mourning rings after his death. In 1690, when Pepys was committed to the Gate-house, and four gentlemen came forward to bail him, James Houblon was one of these four.[180]

Alderman Backwell, the chief goldsmith of his time, had many dealings with Pepys, who went to him at one time to change some Dutch money, and at another to weigh Lord Sandwich’s crusados.[181] Probably our Diarist was rather troublesome[124] at times, for once he bought a pair of candlesticks, which soon afterwards he changed for a cup, and at last he obtained a tankard in place of the cup. In 1665 there was a false report that Backwell was likely to become a bankrupt; but in 1672, on the closing of the Exchequer, the King owed him £293,994 16s. 6d., and he was in consequence ruined by Charles’s dishonest action. On his failure many of his customers’ accounts were taken over by the predecessors of the present firm of Child and Co., the bankers.

We shall have occasion to allude in the next chapter to some of those who were brought in contact with Pepys in the way of business; but it is necessary to say a few words here about two men who were both official acquaintances and personal friends. Sir Anthony Deane was one of the most accomplished shipbuilders of his time, and a valuable public servant, but he did not escape persecution. A joint charge of betraying the secrets of the British navy was made against Pepys and Deane in 1675. In 1668 Deane had held the office of shipwright at Portsmouth, and afterwards he was appointed a Commissioner of the Navy. In 1680 he resigned his post, but in 1681 he again formed one of the new Board appointed by James II., and hoped to help in improving the condition of the navy, which was then in a very reduced state. After the Revolution he sought retirement in Worcestershire, and the two old men corresponded and compared notes on their states of mind. Deane wrote to Pepys: [125]“These are only to let you know I am alive. I have nothing to do but read, walk and prepare for all chances, attending this obliging world. I have the old soldier’s request, a little space between business and the grave, which is very pleasant on many considerations. As most men towards their latter end grow serious, so do I in assuring you that I am,” &c.[182] Pepys replied: “I am alive too, I thank God! and as serious, I fancy, as you can be, and not less alone. Yet I thank God too! I have not within me one of those melancholy misgivings that you seem haunted with. The worse the world uses me, the better I think I am bound to use myself. Nor shall any solicitousness after the felicities of the next world (which yet I bless God! I am not without care for) ever stifle the satisfactions arising from a just confidence of receiving some time or other, even here, the reparation due to such unaccountable usage as I have sustained in this.”[183]

Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Sheres is frequently referred to in the latter pages of the “Diary,” but the friendship which sprang up between him and Pepys dates from a period subsequent to the completion of that work. Sheres accompanied the Earl of Sandwich into Spain, where he acquired that Spanish character which clung to him through life. He returned to England in September, 1667, carrying letters from Lord Sandwich. Pepys found him “a good ingenious man,” and was pleased with his discourse.

In the following month Sheres returned to[126] Spain, being the bearer of a letter from Pepys to Lord Sandwich.[184] Subsequently he was engaged at Tangier, and received £100 for drawing a plate of the fortification, as already related.[185] He was grateful to Pepys for getting him the money, and had a silver candlestick made after a pattern he had seen in Spain, for keeping the light from the eyes, and gave it to the Diarist.[186] On the 5th of April, 1669, he treated the Pepys household, at the Mulberry Garden, to a Spanish olio, a dish of meat and savoury herbs, which they greatly appreciated.

On the death of Sir Jonas Moore, Pepys wrote to Colonel Legge (afterward Lord Dartmouth) a strong letter of recommendation in favour of Sheres, whom he describes “as one of whose loyalty and duty to the King and his Royal Highness and acceptance with them I assure myself; of whose personal esteem and devotion towards you (Col. Legge), of whose uprightness of mind, universality of knowledge in all useful learning particularly mathematics, and of them those parts especially which relate to gunnery and fortification; and lastly, of whose vigorous assiduity and sobriety I dare bind myself in asserting much farther than, on the like occasion, I durst pretend to of any other’s undertaking, or behalf of mine.”[187] Sheres obtained the appointment, and served under Lord Dartmouth at the demolition of Tangier in 1683. He appears to have been knighted in the following year, and [127] to have devoted himself to literature in later life. He translated “Polybius,” and some “Dialogues” of Lucian, and was the author of a pretty song. His name occurs among those who received mourning rings on the occasion of Pepys’s death.

Raleigh said, “There is nothing more becoming any wise man than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art.” If so, it speaks well for Pepys that the names of most of the worthies of his time are to be found amongst his correspondents. Newton and Wallis stand out among the philosophers; the two Gales (Thomas and Roger), Evelyn, and Bishop Gibson among antiquaries and historians; Kneller among artists; and Bishop Compton and Nelson, the author of the “Festivals and Fasts,” among theologians.

The letters of some of these men have been printed in the “Correspondence” appended to the “Diary,” and in Smith’s “Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys;” but many more still remain in manuscript in various collections.

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CHAPTER VIII.

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CHAPTER VIII.

THE NAVY.

Our literature is singularly deficient in accounts of the official history of the navy. There are numerous books containing lives of seamen and the history of naval actions, but little has been written on the management at home. The best account of naval affairs is to be found in the valuable “Tracts” of the stout old sailor Sir William Monson, which are printed in “Churchill’s Voyages.”[188]

Sir William was sent to the Tower in 1616, and his zeal in promoting an inquiry into the state of the navy, contrary to the wishes of the Earl of Nottingham, then Lord High Admiral,[129] is supposed to have been the cause of his trouble.

The establishment of the navy, during a long period of English history, was of a very simple nature. The first admiral by name in England was W. de Leybourne, who was appointed to that office by Edward I., in the year 1286, under the title of “Admiral de la Mer du Roy d’Angleterre,” and the first Lord High Admiral was created by Richard II. about a century afterwards. This word “admiral” was introduced into Europe from the East, and is nothing more than the Arabic amir-al[189] (in which form the article is incorporated with the noun). The intrusive d, however, made its appearance at a very early period. The office of “Clerk of the King’s Ships,” or “of the Navy,” afterwards “Clerk of the Acts of the Navy,” is in all probability a very ancient one, but the first holder of the office whose name Colonel Pasley, R.E.,[190] has met with, is Thomas Roger or Rogiers, who lived in the reigns of Edward IV., Edward V., and Richard III. In the third volume of Pepys’s MS. “Miscellanies” (page 87)[130] is an entry of an order, dated 18th May, 22 Edw. IV. (1482), to the Treasurer and Chamberlain of the Exchequer, to examine and clear the account of “our well beloved Thomas Roger, Esq., Clerk of our Ships.” In Harleian manuscript 433, which is believed to have belonged to Lord Burghley, there is a register of grants passing the Great Seal during the reigns of Edward V. and Richard III., and No. 1690 contains the appointment of “Thomas Rogiers to be clerc of all maner shippes to the King belonging.” It has no date, but is very probably a reappointment by Richard III. on his assumption of the crown.

The navy owes much to Henry VIII., who reconstituted the Admiralty, founded the Trinity House, and established the dockyards at Deptford, Woolwich, and Portsmouth. The origin of the board of “Principal Officers and Commissioners of the Navy,” commonly called in later times “the Navy Board,” dates from his reign. His predecessors had usually themselves managed whatever naval force they possessed, assisted by their Privy Council, and by the officer already alluded to, who was styled “Clerk” or “Keeper” of the King’s ships, but in Henry’s time the rapidly increasing magnitude and importance of the navy rendered a more complete and better organized system of management necessary. To supply this want several new offices were created, and before Henry’s death we find, in addition to the Lord High Admiral and the Clerk of the Ships, a Lieutenant (or Vice-Admiral), a Treasurer, a Comptroller, and a Surveyor of the[131] Navy,[191] as well as a Keeper of the Naval Storehouses at Erith and Deptford.[192] A few years later we meet with a “Master of the Ordnance of the Ships.” This last office, which had been held by Sir William Woodhouse, was granted by Philip and Mary in 1557 to William (afterwards Sir William) Winter in addition to that of Surveyor, to which he had been appointed by Edward VI.[193]

Each of these officers must have received some sort of instructions for his guidance, but no general code of rules for the administration of the navy was framed until after the accession of Elizabeth, who issued, about 1560, a set of regulations for “the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Causes,” with the following preamble:[194]—“Forasmuch[132] as since the erection of the said office by our late dear father Henry VIII., there hath been no certain ordinance established so as every officer in his degree is appointed to his charge: and considering that in these our days our navy is one of the chiefest defences of us and our realm against the malice of any foreign potentate: we have therefore thought good by great advice and deliberation to make certain ordinances and decrees, which our pleasure and express commandment is that all our officers shall on their parts execute and follow as they tender our pleasure, and will answer to the contrary.”

Then follows a list of the several officers at that time forming the Board, viz.:—

1. The Vice-Admiral.
2. The Master of the Ordnance and Surveyor of the Navy: one officer.
3. The Treasurer.
4. The Comptroller.
5. The General Surveyor of the Victuals.
6. The Clerk of the Ships.
7. The Clerk of the Stores.[195]

The officers were to meet at least once a week at the office on Tower Hill, to consult, and take measures for the benefit of the navy, and were further directed to make a monthly report of their proceedings to the Lord Admiral.

The particular instructions which follow are brief, and by no means explicit:—

1. The Master of the Ordnance is to take care to make the wants of his department known to the Lord Admiral in good time, and he is to obtain the signatures of three of his colleagues every quarter to his books and accounts, which are then to be submitted to the Court of Exchequer.

2. The Treasurer is to make no payments except on the warrant of at least two of his colleagues, and his books are to be made up and certified by a similar number of the officers every quarter.

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3. The Surveyor-General of the Victuals is to have his issues warranted, and his accounts certified in the same manner. He is to take care always to have in store a sufficient stock of victuals to supply a thousand men at sea for one month at a fortnight’s notice.

4. The Surveyor, Comptroller, Clerk of the Ships, and Clerk of the Stores are to see the Queen’s ships grounded and trimmed from time to time, and to keep them in such order that upon fourteen days’ warning twelve or sixteen sail may be ready for sea, and the rest soon after. They are to make a monthly report of the state of the ships to the Vice-Admiral and the other officers.

5. The Clerk of the Ships is to provide timber and other materials for building and repairing ships.

6. The Clerk of the Stores is to keep a perfect record of receipts and issues: the latter to be made on the warrant of at least two of the officers.

This most interesting and important document is concluded in the following words:—

“Item, our pleasure and commandment is that all our said officers do agree in one consultation, and all such necessary orders as shall be taken amongst them from time to time to be entered in a ledger book for the whole year, to remain on record.

“The assistants not to be accounted any of our head officers, but yet to travel in our courses when they shall be thereunto commanded or appointed by our Lord Admiral or Vice Admiral, or other our officers.

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“Item, our mind and pleasure is that every of our said officers shall see into their fellows’ offices, to the intent that when God shall dispose His will upon any of them they living may be able, if we prefer any of them, to receive the same.

“These our ordinances to be read once a quarter amongst our officers, so as thereby every of them may the better understand his duty, and to be safely kept in our Consultation house at Tower Hill.”

We will now return to Sir William Monson, who, in his “Naval Tracts,” answers the question what kind of men are to be chosen for the various offices. He suggests that “the Comptroller’s and Clerk’s places be reduced into one, who should be an experienced clerk, long bred in the office.... Provided always, that besides their experience and abilities to perform the active part of His Majesty’s service, these men be of good substance and esteem in their estates.”

Such a rule as this would have excluded Pepys from the service, as he knew nothing of the navy when he was made Clerk of the Acts. He soon, however, made himself master of his business, and at the time of his death he was esteemed the greatest authority on naval affairs. In illustration of Monson’s recommendation, it may be remarked that in 1585 the two offices of Clerk and Comptroller were held by the same man, William Borough.

The salaries received by the various officers are set down by Monson as follows:—

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	£	s.	d.
Treasurer	220	13	4
Comptroller	155	6	8
Surveyor	146	6	8
Clerk	102	3	4	[196]

Although the salary of the Clerk of the Acts is here put at over one hundred pounds, yet the ancient “fee out of the Exchequer,” which was attached to the office, did not amount to more than £33 6s. 8d. per annum, and this sum is specially set forth in Pepys’s patent.

In July, 1660, the salaries of the officers of the navy (with the exception of that of the Treasurer) were advanced, Pepys’s being raised to £350.[197] The salary of the Treasurer remained the same, but this was but a small part of his emoluments, which amounted in all to several thousand pounds a year.[198]

In the Pepysian Library there is preserved the pocket-book of James II., from which I have been allowed to extract the following memorandum of salaries:—

	£	s.	d.
Treasurer of the Navy	220	13	4
Comptroller	500	0	0
[136]Surveyor	490	0	0
Clerk of the Acts	350	0	0
Three Commissioners at £500 and one at	350	0	0
Messenger to the Admiralty	20	0	0

When the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated, in 1628, the office of Lord High Admiral was for the first time put into commission. All the great officers of State were Commissioners, and Edward Nicholas, who had been secretary to Lord Zouch and to the Duke of Buckingham, was appointed Secretary of the Admiralty.

During the Commonwealth both the Admiralty and the Navy Office were administered by bodies of Commissioners. The offices of Comptroller, Surveyor, and Clerk of the Acts were abolished, and although the Treasurer remained, he was not a member of the Navy Board. Robert Blackburne, who was Secretary to most of the Commissions of the Admiralty, entertained Pepys after the Restoration with an account of the doings of the members. He told him that Sir William Penn got promotion by making a pretence of sanctity; and he then mimicked the actions of the Commissioners, who, he affirmed, would ask the admirals and captains respecting certain men, and say with a sigh and a casting up of the eyes, “Such a man fears the Lord;” or, “I hope such a man hath the Spirit of God.”[199]

At the Restoration the Duke of York was[137] appointed Lord High Admiral, and all powers formerly granted to the Admiralty and Navy Board were recalled.[200] By the Duke’s advice a committee was named to consider a plan proposed by himself for the future regulation of the affairs of the navy; and at a court held on July 4th, 1660, three new commissioners (John Lord Berkeley, Sir William Penn, and Peter Pett) were appointed to assist the four principal officers. Pett was to be employed at Chatham dockyard, but the other two had no special duties assigned to them, although their appointment gave them equal power with the original members when they attended at the Board. As there was at this time no half-pay, these appointments were considered as affording a convenient means of granting a comfortable subsistence to an admiral when not at sea. Lord Clarendon strongly disapproved of this innovation, and attributed the idea to Sir William Coventry, who wished[138] to reduce the power and emoluments of the Treasurer.[201]

In January, 1661–62, James Duke of York issued Instructions which were founded on those drawn up by the Earl of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral from 1638 to 1644, and remained in force until the reorganization of the Admiralty at the beginning of the present century.

It is here necessary to stop a moment for the purpose of noticing Pepys’s relation to these Instructions. Before the publication of the “Diary” it was supposed that he was the chief author of the Rules. In the first Report of the Commissioners of Naval Revision (13th June, 1805) it is distinctly stated that he drew them up under the direction of the Duke, and even Lord Braybrooke makes the claim in regard to Pepys’s authorship. This is an error, and Colonel Pasley points out that at the date of the issue of the Regulations Pepys was by no means on intimate terms with James. Even two years later (4th March, 1633–34) he writes, “I never had so much discourse with the Duke before, and till now did ever fear to meet him;” but what really settles the matter is, that under date February 5th, 1661–62, Pepys writes: “Sir G. Carteret, the two Sir Williams, and myself all alone reading of the Duke’s institutions for the settlement of our office, whereof we read as much as concerns our own duties, and left the other officers for another time.” The latter of these important passages was not printed by Lord[139] Braybrooke, and is only to be found in the Rev. Mynors Bright’s transcript.[202]

The Navy Office, as we see from the “Diary,” was by no means a happy family. Each officer was jealous of his fellow, and this jealousy was somewhat fostered by the duties enjoined. Pepys constantly complains of the neglect by his colleagues of their several duties, and when the Duke of York returned from his command at the end of the first great Dutch war, he found the office in the greatest disorder. This caused the preparation of the Diarist’s “great letter” to the Duke, which is referred to in the “Diary,” on November 17th, 1666. A still more important letter, on the same subject, written by Pepys, but purporting to come from the pen of the Duke of York, was not prepared until nearly two years after this.[203] We learn from the “Diary” all the stages of progress of this letter, the effect it produced when read out at the office,[204] and the way in which the officers prepared their answers.[205] In his allusion to this letter, Lord Braybrooke again does some injustice to James, for he writes: “We even find in the ‘Diary,’ as early as 1668, that a long letter of regulation, produced before the Commissioners of the Navy by the Duke of York as his own composition, was entirely written by the Clerk of the Acts.”

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Colonel Pasley very justly observes, in commenting on this view of the Lord High Admiral’s position:—“There is nothing unusual or improper in a minister, or head of a department, employing his subordinates to prepare documents for his signature, and in this particular instance it was evidently of importance that the actual author should remain unknown. Not only was Pepys himself most anxious to avoid being known in the matter, but it is obvious that the authority and effect of the reprimand and warning would have been much lessened, if the other members of the Board had been aware that the Duke had no other knowledge of the abuses of the office than what Pepys told him. It seems from the ‘Diary,’ that about 1668 Pepys first obtained the complete confidence of the Duke—a confidence which he always after retained and never abused. It is evident from numerous remarks in his manuscripts that Pepys had the highest respect for James’s opinion in naval matters. In fact, the mutual respect and friendship of these two men was equally honourable to both, and it is a mistake to endeavour to magnify one at the expense of the other.”

The letter referred to is in the British Museum,[206] and as it is of considerable interest in the life of Pepys, it will be worth while to devote a small space to a few notes on its contents.

James refers to his former letter of January[141] 2nd, 1661, sent with the “Instructions,” as well as to that of March 22nd, 1664, and, after some general remarks, he points out the particular duty of each officer, finishing with remarks on their joint duties as a Board. The letter is drawn up in so orderly a manner, and discovers so thorough a knowledge of the details of the office, that there is little cause for surprise that the officers suspected Pepys to be the author. Article by article of the “Instructions” are set down, and following each of them are remarks on the manner in which it had been carried out. It is very amusing to notice the tact with which our Diarist gets over the difficulty of criticizing his own deeds. The Duke is made to say that although he has inquired as to the execution of the office of Clerk of the Acts, he cannot hear of any particular to charge him with failure in his duty, and as he finds that the Clerk had given diligent attendance, he thinks that the duty must have been done well, particularly during the time of the war, when, in spite of the work being greater, the despatch was praiseworthy. Yet he would not express further satisfaction, but would be willing to receive any information of the Clerk’s failures which otherwise might have escaped his knowledge. The officers were informed that an answer was required from each of them within fourteen days. When these answers were received, Pepys set to work to write a reply for the Duke to acknowledge. Matthew Wren, the Duke’s secretary, smoothed down the language of this letter[207] a[142] little, but it still remained a very stinging reprimand. These two letters form, probably, the most complete instance of a severe “wigging” given by the head of an office to his staff.

We will now return to the consideration of the business management of the navy, and it is necessary for us to bear in mind that the offices of the Admiralty and of the Navy Board were quite distinct in their arrangements. The Navy Board formed the Council of the Lord High Admiral, and the Admiralty was, originally, merely his personal office, the locality of which changed with his own change of residence, or that of his secretary. It was at one time in Whitehall, at another in Cannon Row, Westminster; and when Pepys was secretary, it was attached to his house in York Buildings.

When, however, there was a Board of Admiralty in place of a Lord High Admiral, the Admiralty Office became of more importance, and the Navy Office relatively of less.

According to Pepys, there was some talk of putting the office of Lord High Admiral into commission in the year 1668,[208] but it was not so treated until June, 1673, when the Duke of York laid down all his offices. The Commissioners on this occasion were Prince Rupert, the three great officers of State, three dukes, two secretaries, Sir G. Carteret, and Edward Seymour (afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons); and Pepys was the secretary. Before the commission passed the Great Seal, the King did the business through the medium of Pepys.[209]

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Lords of the Admiralty were occasionally appointed to assist the Lord High Admiral, or to fill his place while he was abroad. Pepys refers to such Lords on November 14th, 1664, and in March of the following year he remarks: “The best piece of news is, that instead of a great many troublesome Lords, the whole business is to be left with the Duke of Albemarle to act as Admiral.”[210]

These lords were not properly commissioners, as a commission was only appointed by the King when the office of Lord High Admiral was vacant, but they formed a deputation or committee appointed by the Admiral to act as his deputies.

Pepys was with the Duke of York previous to the reinstatement of the latter as Lord High Admiral, he returned to the office with his patron, and he continued secretary until the Revolution, when he retired into private life. On the Duke’s accession to the throne a new board was formed and the navy was again raised to a state of efficiency.

Pepys was Clerk of the Acts from 1660 to 1672, that is, during the whole period of the “Diary,” and three years afterwards. He was succeeded by his clerk, Thomas Hayter, and his brother John Pepys, who held the office jointly. As already stated, Pepys was promoted to be Secretary of the Admiralty in 1672, and continued in office until 1679, when he was again succeeded for a time by Hayter. We know comparatively little of him in the higher office, and it is as Clerk of the Acts that he is[144] familiar to us. With regard to this position it is necessary to bear in mind that the “so-called” clerk, as well as being secretary, was also a member of the Board, and one of the “principal officers.” On one occasion Pepys met Sir G. Carteret, Sir J. Minnes, and Sir W. Batten at Whitehall, and when the King spied them out, he cried, “Here is the Navy Office!”[211]

I have already mentioned that the principal officers were superseded during the Commonwealth. Again, in 1686, they were suspended, and the offices were temporarily placed under a body of equal commissioners.

The Navy Office, where Pepys lived during the whole period over which the “Diary” extends, was situated between Crutched Friars and Seething Lane, with an entrance in each of these places. The ground was originally occupied by a chapel and college attached to the church of Allhallows, Barking, but these buildings were pulled down in the year 1548, and the land was used for some years as a garden plot.

In Elizabeth’s reign, when the celebrated Sir William Wynter, Surveyor of Her Majesty’s Ships, brought home from sea much plunder of merchants’ goods, a storehouse of timber and brick was raised on this site for their reception. In course of time the storehouse made way for the Navy Office, a rather extensive building, in which the civil business of the navy was transacted until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. On July 4th, 1660, Pepys went with Commissioner Pett to view the houses, and was very pleased[145] with them, but he feared that the more influential officers would shuffle him out of his rights. Two days afterwards, however, he went with Mr. Coventry and Sir G. Carteret to take possession of the place; still, although his mind was a little cheered, his hopes were not great. On July 9th, he began to sign bills in his office, and on the 18th he records the fact that he dined in his own apartments.

Pepys’s house was a part of the Seething Lane front, and that occupied by Sir William Penn was on the north side of the garden, a house which was afterwards occupied by Lord Brouncker.[212] When the new Somerset House was finished, the Navy Office was removed there, and the old buildings in the city were sold and destroyed.

In course of time the work of the navy could not be properly carried out with the old machinery, and, at last, the Admiralty Office, which had largely grown in importance, swallowed up the Navy Office. By an Act of Parliament, 2 William IV., the principal officers and commissioners of the navy were abolished, as were also the commissioners for victualling the navy; and all power and authority was vested in the Admiralty.

I have attempted to give in a few pages as clear an account as possible of the kind of machinery by which the navy was governed, and I now propose to pass rapidly in review a few of the points raised by Pepys. To do more than glance at some of these would[146] require a volume. The “Diary” is filled with information respecting the office and the petty squabbles of the officers, and we obtain from it a gloomy notion of the condition of the navy. In fact, it would be hardly possible to believe the wretched details if we had them from a less trustworthy authority. The whole system of money-getting was unsatisfactory in the extreme, and the officers of the navy were often expected to perform the task of making bricks without straw. The Treasurer, not being able to get money from the Treasury, floated bills, and these were often in very bad repute. We read in the “Diary,” that on August 31st, 1661, the bills were offered to be sold on the Exchange at 10 per cent. loss; and on April 14th, 1663, things were even worse, for it was reported that they were sold at a reduction of 15 per cent. In December of the latter year Pepys could hardly believe the evidence of his ears when he learned the “extraordinary good news,” that the credit of the office was “as good as any merchant’s upon Change;” but these bright days did not last long. Parliament being very dissatisfied with the way in which the money was spent by the officers of the navy, appointed, a few years afterwards, a commission to look into the accounts. This gave Pepys much trouble, which he did not relish, and we find him busy in making things as pleasant as possible during the latter part of 1666. He was in “mighty fear and trouble” when called before the committee, the members of which appeared to be “in a very ill humour.” Three years after this he drew up[147] a letter to the Commissioners of Accounts on the state of the office, a transcript of which, addressed to “H. R. H. the Lord High Admiral,” and dated January 8th, 1669–70, is now in the library of the British Museum.[213]

One of the most unsatisfactory divisions of the naval accounts related to the pursers. Pepys was early interested in the Victualling Department, out of which he afterwards made much money; and on September 12th, 1662, we find him trying “to understand the method of making up Purser’s Accounts, which is very needful for me and very hard.” On November 22nd, 1665, he remarks that he was pleased to have it demonstrated “that a Purser without professed cheating is a professed loser twice as much as he gets.” Pepys received his appointment of Surveyor-General of the Victualling Office chiefly through the influence of Sir William Coventry, and on January 1st, 1665–6, he addressed a letter and “New Yeares Guift” on the subject of pursers to his distinguished friend. He relates in the “Diary” how he wrote the letter, and how Sir William praised his work to the Duke.[214]

The want of money led to other evils that brought the greatest discredit upon the Navy Office. The tickets that were given to the men in place of money, were received with the greatest disgust, and during the time of the Dutch war the scarcity of sailors was so great[148] that a wholesale system of pressing was resorted to. We learn that on June 30th, 1666, Sir Thomas Bludworth, the Lord Mayor, impressed a large number of persons wholly unfit for sea, and when we are further told that some of them were “people of very good fashion,” it is not surprising that Pepys should call the Mayor “a silly man.”

So great was the disgust of the unpaid men, that during the war with Holland English sailors positively preferred to serve in the ships of the enemies of England rather than fight for their own country, and when the Dutch were in the Medway English voices were heard from Dutch ships.[215]

The seamen were not likely to learn much good from their superiors, for throughout the whole fleet swearing, drinking, and debauchery were rampant.[216]

A great part of the evils arose from the appointment of so-called “gentlemen captains,” men who were unacquainted with maritime affairs, and treated the sailor captains with contempt, calling them tarpaulins, a name which now only remains to us in the reduced form of tar. This evil was well known in the reign of Elizabeth, and was pointed out by Gibson, who wrote memoirs of the expeditions of the navy from 1585 to 1603,[217] and all readers are familiar[149] with Macaulay’s remarks on the same subject. Captain Digby, a son of the Earl of Bristol, and one of these “ornamental officers,” after he had been in the fleet about a year expressed the wish that he might not again see a tarpaulin have the command of a ship.[218] These useless captains, who could make bows, but could not navigate a ship, raised the ire of old Nan Clarges, otherwise Duchess of Albemarle, who “cried out mightily against the having of gentlemen captains with feathers and ribbands, and wished the king would send her husband to sea with the old plain sea captains that he served with formerly, that would make their ships swim with blood, though they could not make legs as captains now-a-days can.”[219]

The common custom of employing indiscriminately land officers as admirals, and naval officers as generals, often led to disasters. There can be no doubt of the bravery of Monk and Rupert, but when on shipboard they made many blunders and endangered the safety of the fleet.

All this confusion caused dire disasters, which culminated in the presence of the hostile Dutch fleet in our rivers; a national disgrace which no Englishman can think of even now without a feeling of shame. While reading the [150]“Diary,” we are overwhelmed with the instances of gross mismanagement in naval affairs. Many of the men whose carelessness helped to increase the amount of rampant blundering were, however, capable of deeds of pluck and bravery. In one of the engagements with the Dutch, Prince Rupert sent his pleasure-boat, the “Fanfan,” with two small guns on board, against the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter. With great daring, the sailors brought their little boat near, and fired at De Ruyter’s vessel for two hours, but at last a ball did them so much damage that the crew were forced to row briskly to save their lives.[220]

Another instance of bravery more deserving of honour is that recorded of Captain Douglas, of the “Royal Oak,” who had received orders to defend his ship at Chatham. This he did with the utmost resolution, but, having had no order to retire, he chose rather to be burnt in his ship than live to be reproached with having deserted his command. It is reported that Sir William Temple expressed the wish that Cowley had celebrated this noble deed before he died.[221]

Pepys tells us that on July 21st, 1668, he went to his “plate-makers,” and spent an hour in contriving some plates for his books of the King’s four yards, and that on the 27th of the same month the four plates came home. They cost him five pounds, and he was in consequence both troubled and pleased.

No account of the state of the navy in Charles[151] II.’s time, however short, would be complete without some notice of the four dockyards (Chatham, Deptford, Portsmouth, and Woolwich), which necessarily occupy a very prominent place in the “Diary.” Chatham yard was founded by Queen Elizabeth, and it remained under the special charge of the Surveyor of the Navy until a Special Commissioner was appointed in 1630. This explains a passage in the “Diary” which has not hitherto been illustrated. When, in April, 1661, Sir William Batten, the Surveyor of the Navy, and Pepys were on a visit to Chatham, they went “to see Commissioner Pett’s house, he and his family being absent, and here I wondered how my Lady Batten walked up and down, with envious looks, to see how neat and rich everything is, saying that she would get it, for it belonged formerly to the Surveyor of the Navy.”[222] The first Commissioner was Phineas Pett, who died in 1647, and was succeeded by his son, Peter Pett, who figures so frequently in the “Diary.” Peter was continued in office at the Restoration, but he was suspended in 1667 in consequence of the success of the Dutch attack upon Chatham. He was sent to the Tower and threatened with impeachment, but, although the threat was not carried out, he was never restored to office. The appointment remained in abeyance for two years after, when, in March, 1669, Captain John Cox, the master[152] attendant at Deptford, was made resident Commissioner at Chatham. In January, 1672, he was appointed flag captain to the Duke of York, in the “Prince,” without vacating his office at Chatham, was knighted in April, and killed at the battle of Solebay in May, all in the same year.

The Hill-house that Pepys visited for the first time on the 8th of April, 1661, is frequently mentioned on subsequent pages of the “Diary.”[223] The “old Edgeborrow,” whose ghost was reported to haunt the place, was Kenrick Edisbury, Surveyor of the Navy from 1632 to 1638. Pepys does not seem quite to have appreciated the story of the ghost which was told him as he went to bed after a merry supper, although he affirms that he was not so much afraid as for mirth’s sake he seemed.[224] In the “Memoirs of English Affairs, chiefly Naval, from the year 1660 to 1673, written by James, Duke of York,” there is a letter from James to the principal officers of the navy (dated May 10th, 1661), in which he recommends that the lease of the Hill-house should be bought by them, if it can be obtained at a reasonable rate, as the said house “is very convenient for the service of his Majesty’s Navy.”[225]

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins advised[153] the establishment of a chest at Chatham for the relief of seamen wounded in their country’s service, and the sailors voluntarily agreed to have certain sums “defalked” out of their wages in order to form this fund. In July, 1662, Pepys was told of the abuse of the funds, and advised to look into the business.[226] At the end of the same year a commission was appointed to inspect the chest,[227] but the commissioners do not seem to have done much good, for in 1667 there was positively no money left to pay the poor sailors what was owed to them.[228] After a time the property became considerable, but unfortunately the abuses grew as well. In 1802 the chest was removed to Greenwich, and in 1817 the stock is said to have amounted to £300,000 consols.

Deptford dockyard was founded about the year 1513. Pepys made occasional visits to it, and on one occasion he and Coventry took the officers (of whose honesty he had not a very high opinion) by surprise. On June 16th, 1662, he mentions going to see “in what forwardness the work is for Sir W. Batten’s house and mine.” He found the house almost ready, but we hear no more of it in the subsequent pages of the “Diary.”

Portsmouth dockyard was established by Henry VIII., but it did not hold a foremost position until, in the reign of William III., Edmund Dummer contrived a simple and ingenious method of pumping water from dry[154] docks below the level of low tide, which enabled Portsmouth for the first time to possess a dry dock capable of taking in a first-rate man-of-war. It was Dummer who also designed and constructed the first docks at Plymouth.[229]

Sir Edward Montague first chose Portsmouth as the place from which to draw his title, but he afterwards gave the preference to Sandwich.

When Pepys visited Portsmouth in May, 1661, he was very pleased with his reception by the officers of the dockyard, who treated him with much respect.

Although the date of the foundation of Woolwich dockyard is not recorded, it is known to have been of considerable importance in Henry VIII.’s reign. It figures very frequently in the “Diary.”[230]

Very soon after Pepys was settled in his office, he thought it advisable to give his attention to the question of the British dominion of the seas,[155] and he made a special study of Selden’s “Mare Clausum.” He intended to write a treatise on the rights of the English flag, and present it to the Duke of York. His reason for doing this was that it promised to be a good way to make himself known.[231] The right of making foreign vessels strike their sails to the English flag had been insisted upon from early times. Selden’s work, in which the case was strongly urged, met therefore with great favour. Charles I. made an order in council that a copy should be kept in the council chest, another in the Court of Exchequer, and a third in the Court of Admiralty. The upholders of this right triumphed when, in the treaty of peace with the Dutch (February 9th, 1674), the States-General confessed that to be a right which before had been styled courtesy, and they agreed that not only separate ships, but whole fleets should strike sails to any fleet or ship carrying the king’s flag.[232] John Evelyn argued strongly in favour of England’s right to the dominion of the sea in his “Navigation and Commerce” (1674), but he privately confessed to Pepys that he did not consider there was any sufficient evidence of the right.[233]

We must now turn our attention to the Diarist’s colleagues at the Navy Office, and it is here very needful to caution the reader against putting implicit faith in all the adverse remarks that fill[156] the “Diary.” It is a curious fact that, with the exception of Sir William Coventry, scarcely any of the officers come off with a good character. Pepys held Coventry in profound respect, and was never prouder than when he received a word of praise from him, and yet we do not obtain a very favourable idea of the secretary to the Duke of York from other writers, and in the pages of Clarendon we are presented with a very adverse character of him.

Those officers with whom Pepys came most in contact were Sir George Carteret, the Treasurer; Sir Robert Slingsby and Sir John Minnes, successive Comptrollers; Sir William Batten and Colonel Thomas Middleton, successive Surveyors; and Sir William Penn and Lord Viscount Brouncker, additional Commissioners.

Pepys did not hold Carteret in much esteem, and we read constant disparaging remarks respecting him, such as that on one occasion he wanted to know what the four letters S. P. Q. R. meant, “which ignorance is not to be borne in a Privy Counsellor,”[234] but after Sir George’s son had married a daughter of Lord Sandwich, and he had thus become a near connection of Pepys’s family, we read of “his pleasant humour,” and are told that he is “a most honest man.” Sir Robert Slingsby died in 1661, and therefore does not occupy a very prominent position in the “Diary,” but Pepys grieved for his loss.

Sir John Minnes was better known as a wit than as a sailor, and it was he who taught Pepys to appreciate Chaucer. He does not, however,[157] come off very handsomely in the “Diary.” Captain Holmes called him “the veriest knave and rogue and coward in the world,”[235] and Sir William Coventry likened him to a lapwing, who was always in a flutter to keep others from the nest.[236] Pepys himself, after a few quarrels, hints pretty plainly that he was an old coxcomb, a mere jester or ballad-monger, and quite unfit for business.

We are told of Sir William Batten’s corruption and underhand dealing,[237] of his knavery,[238] and of his inconsequent action in objecting to lighthouses generally, and then proposing one for Harwich;[239] but Pepys’s two chief enemies were Sir William Penn and Lord Brouncker.

Sir William Penn and Pepys were much thrown together, and were alternately very friendly and very jealous of each other. When Pepys first associated with Penn, he found him sociable but cunning, and ever after the pages of the “Diary” are filled with vituperation respecting this successful admiral. Considering the eminent position of William Penn the son, as a leader among the Quakers, it is curious to note that before the Restoration, and when Monk was coming from the North, it was reported that Penn, the father, had turned Quaker.[240] In May, 1660, Charles II. wrote to Monk: “I have so good an opinion of General Penn, that if you had not recommended him to me I would have taken care of all his interests;”[241] and we cannot[158] doubt that he possessed some eminent qualities of which we learn nothing in the “Diary.”

Lord Brouncker was a good mathematician in his own day, and his name has come down with credit to ours as the first President of the Royal Society, but his portrait as painted by Pepys is far from a pleasing one—let us hope that it was not a true likeness. He was not a rich man, for his mother was a gamester, and his father a land-lacking peer, and he was probably not over particular as to the means he took to obtain money. We may believe this, however, without agreeing with Pepys that he was “a rotten-hearted, false man.”[242] Aubrey says that the following lines were written on his parents:—

These were some of the men who helped to carry on the work of the English navy. It would have been well for the fame of most of them if Pepys had never put pen to paper.

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