Summary: In his day Samuel Pepys was famous as a politician, the great reformer of the Royal Navy and a friend to Charles II and James II; today, he is remembered as England's great diarist.
Dates: Born: February 23, 1633, London
Died May 26, 1703, Clapham, London
Family: Elizabeth Marchant de Saint-Michel, Wife 1655-1669.
Surname Pronounced: Peeps
Died May 26, 1703, Clapham, London
Family: Elizabeth Marchant de Saint-Michel, Wife 1655-1669.
Surname Pronounced: Peeps
Childhood and Youth: Samuel Pepys was born into the family of a London tailor in 1633. After schooling in Huntingdon during the Civil War, Pepys went to St. Paul's School in London and then, thanks to a scholarship, to Magdalene College Cambridge in 1651. He graduated in 1654 and became a secretary of his cousin, Edward Montagu, a Parliamentarian commander and politician with growing royalist sympathies. In 1655 Pepys married Elizabeth Marchant de Saint-Michel, a fifteen-year-old Huguenot refugee from France.
Early Career: In 1659 Pepys became a clerk in the Exchequer under George Downing - shortly after, he began writing his famous diary (discussed here) – but it was as his cousin's secretary that Pepys sailed with the fleet that brought Charles II back to England. It was also thanks to Montagu that Pepys was appointed Clerk of the Acts of the Navy, a post with a fair salary and a residence in the Navy office. For two years Samuel simply enjoyed the lifestyle his appointment brought.
The Navy: In 1662 Pepys, who initially knew nothing of the navy, resolved to pursue his new duty as best he could. There followed a period of intense learning on all aspects of the 'senior service' (shipbuilding, stores, organisation) followed by years of dedicated work. His ability was proved during the Second Dutch War and in 1673 he was appointed Secretary for the Admiralty, the administrative head of the British Navy. He held this post for much of the next fifteen years.
Pepys fought Parliament for money, obtained a commission 'for the Recovery of the Navy' and became First Sea Lord when the Duke of York was barred by Parliament. He doubled the number and strength of England's ships, cut corruption, reformed the structure and discipline of the ranks and established the Royal Navy as the world's greatest armada. Britain had claimed to rule the waves for decades, but Samuel Pepys made the legend real. His legacy would affect Nelson and live on until World War One.
A Full Life: To campaign better for the Navy's interests Samuel Pepys became an MP, first for Castle Rising in 1673 and then for Harwich in 1679; by all accounts he was an effective campaigner for his constituency. Pepys was also involved, in several capacities, in the short-lived Tangiers colony, was president of the Royal Society, acted as master of Trinity House and found time for several extra-marital affairs, although his wife died on November 10 1669. There were no children.
Royalty And Enemies: Pepys' role allowed him to meet and become a trusted servant and confidante of both Charles II and his brother James, who in 1685 became England's last Catholic king. Unfortunately, Pepys' drive to reform and his friendship with both royalty and Catholics created enemies. One of these struck in 1678: Lord Shaftesbury tried to implicate Samuel, first in a murder plot and then in the selling of English secrets to France. Pepys was forced to resign his post and spend time in The Tower of London.
He managed to clear his name and escape execution thanks to a long gap between Parliaments, but Charles II couldn't recall him to government until 1683. Samuel's loyalty to the Stuarts caused problems again in 1689, when James II was deposed in favour of a Protestant monarch. Pepys was too closely associated with James to survive in public life and, after losing Harwich, resigning from the Admiralty and being imprisoned twice for suspected Jacobitism, he retired.
Retirement and Legacy: Pepys was retired in a way many people are employed. He kept up correspondence with many of the great minds and thinkers of the age, collected and catalogued a three thousand volume library which survives intact at Cambridge University and planned to write a history of the English navy. He died, childless, on May 26 1703.
Between 1659 and 1669 this famed naval reformer and suspected Catholic sympathiser kept a diary, a personal account, in shorthand, which only he was ever meant to see. When he died it went to Cambridge with the rest of his papers and was first deciphered in the early nineteenth century. Without this diary, Pepys would have become a minor figure in the grand scheme of British history, but the account has so captured the public imagination and benefited historians that Pepys is famous world over, not for anything to do with ships, but for his private writing.
