Roger Pepys

“ Here I met with my cozen Roger Pepys, and walked a good while with him, and among other discourse as a secret he hath committed to nobody but myself, and he tells me that his sister Claxton now resolving to give over the keeping of his house at Impington, he thinks it fit to marry again, and would have me, by the help of my uncle Wight or others, to look him out a widow between thirty and forty years old, without children, and with a fortune, which he will answer in any degree with a joynture fit for her fortune. A woman sober, and no high-flyer, as he calls it. ”

“ Dined upon one couple of ducks to-day, and after dinner my wife and I by coach to Tom’s, and I to the Temple to discourse with my cozen Roger Pepys about my law business, and so back again, it being a monstrous thaw after the long great frost, so that there is no passing but by coach in the streets, and hardly that. Took my wife home, and I to my office. Find myself pretty well but fearful of cold, and so to my office, where late upon business; Mr. Bland sitting with me, talking of my Lord Windsor’s being come home from Jamaica, unlooked-for ”

“ This day I was told by Mr. Wren, that Captain Cox, Master-Attendant at Deptford, is to be one of us very soon, he and Tippets being to take their turns for Chatham and Portsmouth, which choice I like well enough; and Captain Annesley is to come in his room at Deptford. This morning also, going to visit Roger Pepys, at the potticary's in King's Street, he tells me that Roger is gone to his wife's, so that they have been married, as he tells me, ever since the middle of last week: it was his design, upon good reasons, to make no noise of it ”

“ Dined with Mr. Luellin and Salisbury at a cook's shop. Home, and staid all the afternoon with my wife till after sermon. There till Mr. Fairebrother came to call us out to my father's to supper. He told me how he had perfectly procured me to be made Master in Arts by proxy, which did somewhat please me, though I remember my cousin Roger Pepys was the other day persuading me from it. While we were at supper came Win. Howe to supper to us, and after supper went home to bed.
9th. All the morning at Sir G. Palmer's advising about getting my bill drawn. ”

“ So that I fear my wife and I may have some falling out about it, or at least my father and I, but I shall endeavour to salve up all as well as I can, or send for her out of the country before the time intended, which I would be loth to do. In the evening by water to my coz. Roger Pepys' chamber, where he was not come, but I found Dr. John newly come to town, and is well again after his sickness; but, Lord! what a simple man he is as to any public matter of state, and talks so sillily to his brother Dr. Tom. ”

“ The. shewed me my name upon her breast as her Valentine, which will cost me 20s. After dinner I took them down into the wine-cellar, and broached my tierce of claret for them. Towards the evening we parted, and I to the office awhile, and then home to supper and to bed, the sooner having taken some cold yesterday upon the water, which brings me my usual pain. This afternoon Roger Pepys tells me, that for certain the King is for all this very highly incensed at the Parliament's late opposing the Indulgence; which I am sorry for, and fear it will breed great discontent. ”

“ My cozen Roger was so sensible of our coming to agreement that he could not forbear weeping, and, indeed, though it is very hard, yet I am glad to my heart that we are like to end our trouble. So we parted for to-night, and I to my Lord Sandwich and there staid, there being a Committee to sit upon the contract for the Mole, which I dare say none of us that were there understood, but yet they agreed of things as Mr. Cholmely and Sir J. Lawson demanded, who are the undertakers, and so I left them to go on to agree, for I understood it not. ”

“ Home to dinner, which was very good, and then to church again, and so home and to walk up and down and so to supper, and after supper to talk about publique matters, wherein Roger Pepys— (who I find a very sober man, and one whom I do now honour more than ever before for this discourse sake only) told me how basely things have been carried in Parliament by the young men, that did labour to oppose all things that were moved by serious men. ”

“ Here, after some talk, and Creed's telling us that he is upon taking the next house to his present lodgings, which is next to that that my cozen Tom Pepys once lived in, in Newport Street, in Covent Garden; and is in a good place, and then, I suppose, he will keep his coach. So, setting Roger down at the Temple, who tells me that he is now concluded in all matters with his widow, we home, and there hired my wife to make an end of Boyle's Book of Formes, to-night and to-morrow; and so fell to read and sup, and then to bed. ”

“ Busy all the morning, settling things against my going out of towne this night. After dinner, late took horse, having sent for Lashmore to go with me, and so he and I rode to Dagenhams in the dark. There find the whole family well. It was my Lord Crew's desire that I should come, and chiefly to discourse with me of Lord Sandwich's matters; and therein to persuade, what I had done already, that my Lord should sue out a pardon for his business of the prizes, as also for Bergen, and all he hath done this year past, before he begins his Embassy to Spayne. ”

“ Only I hear how nurse's husband has spoken strangely of my Lady Batten how she was such a man's whore, who indeed is known to leave her her estate, which we would fain have reconciled to-day, but could not and indeed I do believe that the story is true. Back again at night home.
2d. At the office all the morning. At noon Dr. Thos. Pepys dined with me, and after dinner my brother Tom came to me and then I made myself ready to get a-horseback for Cambridge. So I set out and rode to Ware, this night, in the way having much discourse with a fellmonger,— [A dealer in hides.] ”

“ The ‘Diary’ shows that Pepys was a very keen man of business, careful in money matters, sufficiently honourable in his own conduct, and objecting strongly to corruption in others; a shrewd observer of boundless curiosity, and, though anything but romantic, capable of taking a very lively interest in the art and literature of the day. ”

“ This morning Sir W. Batten, Pen, and myself, went to church to the churchwardens, to demand a pew, which at present could not be given us, but we are resolved to have one built. So we staid and heard Mr. Mills;' a very, good minister. Home to dinner, where my wife had on her new petticoat that she bought yesterday, which indeed is a very fine cloth and a fine lace; but that being of a light colour, and the lace all silver, it makes no great show. Mr. Creed and my brother Tom dined with me. After dinner my wife went and fetched the little puppies to us, which are very pretty ones. ”

“ Pepys was such a bubble of mirth, such a book of shrewd sense, such a register of anecdotes, that his loquacity and his infinite good-fellowship made even romance linger in its onrush for an hour.
Late shadows were floating down the river before John Gore escaped from the secretary’s weak eyes and stalwart tongue. He had some small affairs of his own to attend to in the City and at the New Exchange in the Strand: some new harness at a saddler’s; stockings and shirts at a silk mercer’s; a case of long pistols at a gunsmith’s in a street near the New Exchange. ”

“ Hughes come to speak with me about office business, and told me that as he came this morning from Deptford he left the King’s yarde a-fire. So I presently took a boat and down, and there found, by God’s providence, the fire out; but if there had been any wind it must have burned all our stores, which is a most dreadfull consideration. But leaving all things well I home, and out abroad doing many errands, Mr. Creed also out, and my wife to her mother’s, and Creed and I met at my Lady Sandwich’s and there dined; but my Lady is become as handsome, I think, as ever she was ”

“ Captain Ferrers, I see, is come home from France. I only spoke one word to him, my Lord being there. He tells me the young gentlemen are well there; so my Lord went to my Lord Albemarle's to dinner, and I by water home and dined alone, and at the office (after half an hour's viallin practice after dinner) till late at night, and so home and to bed. This day I sent my cozen Edward Pepys his Lady, at my cozen Turner's, a piece of venison given me yesterday, and Madam Turner I sent for a dozen bottles of her's, to fill with wine for her. ”

“ During the fearful period when the Plague was raging, Pepys stuck to his business, and the chief management of naval affairs devolved upon him, for the meetings at the Navy Office were but thinly attended. In a letter to Coventry he wrote:—
"The sickness in general thickens round us, and particularly upon our neighbourhood. You, sir, took your turn of the sword; I must not, therefore, grudge to take mine of the pestilence."
At this time his wife was living at Woolwich, and he himself with his clerks at Greenwich; one maid only remained in the house in London. ”

“ Thence to the Duke of York, and there did a little navy business as we used to do, and so to a Committee for Tangier, where God knows how my Lord Bellasses’s accounts passed; understood by nobody but my Lord Ashly, who, I believe, was mad to let them go as he pleased. But here Sir H. Cholmly had his propositions read, about a greater price for his work of the Mole, or to do it upon account, which, being read, he was bid to withdraw. But, Lord! to see how unlucky a man may be, by chance ”

“ The King of France, it is believed, is engaged for this year; so that we shall be safe as to him. The great misery the City and kingdom is like to suffer for want of coals in a little time is very visible, and, is feared, will breed a mutiny; for we are not in any prospect to command the sea for our colliers to come, but rather, it is feared, the Dutch may go and burn all our colliers at Newcastle; though others do say that they lie safe enough there. No news at all of late from Bredagh what our treaters do. In the evening comes Mr. Povy about business ”

“ Pepys, vulgar as he was, had nevertheless received an university education; first entering Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar. To our wonder we find him marrying furtively and independently; and his wife, at fifteen, was glad with her husband to take up an abode in the house of a relative, Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, the 'my lord' under whose shadow Samuel Pepys dwelt in reverence. By this nobleman's influence Pepys for ever left the 'cutting-room;' he acted first as secretary, (always as toad-eater, one would fancy) , then became a clerk in the Admiralty ”

“ No work of the kind in the world’s literature can for a moment be compared to Pepys’s Diary; but many circumstances must combine ere the existence of such a book is possible. It is characteristic of Pepys to be at once a very extraordinary and a very ordinary person. In one point of view he is the most perfect representative imaginable of the bourgeois type of humanity, worthy, sensible, indispensable, and at the same time dull, prosaic, and narrow-minded. ”