Pepys (pron. Peeps or Peppis), Samuel

Pepys (pron. Peeps or Peppis), Samuel (1633–1703), son of John Pepys, a London tailor, entered the household of Sir Edward Montagu (afterwards first earl of Sandwich) in 1656; his subsequent successful career was largely due to Montagu's patronage. His famous Diary opens on 1 Jan. 1660, when Pepys was living in Axe Yard, Westminster, and was very poor. Soon after this he was appointed ‘clerk of the King's ships’ and clerk of the privy seal. In 1665 he became surveyor-general of the victualling office. Owing to an unfounded fear of failing eyesight he closed his diary on 31 May 1669, and in the same year his wife died. In 1672 he was appointed secretary to the Admiralty. In 1679 he was committed to the Tower for a short time on a charge of complicity in the ‘Popish Plot’ and deprived of his office. In 1683 he was sent to Tangier with Lord Dartmouth and wrote an interesting diary while there. In 1684 he was reappointed, and laboured hard to provide the country with an efficient fleet. At the revolution he was deprived of his appointment and afterwards lived in retirement. His Diary remained in cipher (a system of shorthand) at Magdalene College, Cambridge, until 1825, when it was deciphered by John Smith and edited by Lord Braybrooke. On his death his friend Evelyn remembered Pepys as ‘a very worthy, industrious and curious person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy…universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, skilled in music, a very great cherisher of learned men’. (See also Restoration.)