Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys (PEEPS; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English writer and a Tory politician. Though he held posts on the Navy Board and in Parliament, he is best remembered for the diary he wrote over nearly ten years. First published in the 1800s, it is a key primary source for the Stuart Restoration era.

Pepys was born in London on Fleet Street, the son of a tailor. He studied at St Paul’s School and then at Magdalene College, Cambridge, earning a bachelor’s degree. After university, he worked for his cousin Sir Edward Montagu and later became a teller at the Exchequer under George Downing. He started his detailed private diary in 1660. It mixes personal revelations with eyewitness accounts of major events like the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Great Plague, and the Great Fire of London. He kept up the daily record until 1669, when worries about his worsening eyesight made him stop.

In 1660, thanks to Montagu, Pepys became Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board. Despite having no maritime background, he worked his way up to Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both Charles II and James II. He got ahead through patronage, hard work, and administrative skill. His reforms at the Admiralty helped professionalise the Royal Navy. He later served as MP for Castle Rising in 1673 and for Harwich in 1679 and 1685. From 1684 to 1686, he was President of the Royal Society.

Pepys came from a family that included a Recorder of Cambridge and a Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He was the fifth of eleven children, but most died young, leaving him the eldest survivor. He was baptised at St Bride’s Church in March 1633. As a child, he lived for a time with a nurse north of London. He attended Huntingdon Grammar School and then St Paul’s School, and he witnessed the execution of Charles I in 1649. In 1650, he went to Cambridge, helped by scholarships from St Paul’s and a grant from the Mercers’ Company. He entered Magdalene College as a sizar in 1651 and got his BA in 1654. Soon after, he joined the household of his cousin Sir Edward Montagu. At age 22, he married 14-year-old Elisabeth de St Michel, a descendant of French Huguenots, in both a religious and a civil ceremony in 1655.

From a young age, Pepys suffered from bladder stones, a painful condition that also affected his mother and brother. By the time he married, it was severe. In 1658, he chose to have surgery, a dangerous and painful operation. Surgeon Thomas Hollier removed the stone successfully in the bedroom of a cousin’s house. Pepys celebrated the anniversary for years, but the incision reopened late in life. The procedure may have left him sterile, though he had no children before it either. After the operation, he moved to Axe Yard, near modern Downing Street, and worked as a teller in the Exchequer.

On 1 January 1660, Pepys began his diary. He wrote about his daily life for nearly a decade, producing one and a quarter million words and mentioning over 3,000 people. It is often called Britain’s most celebrated diary. He is considered the greatest diarist ever because of his frankness about his own weaknesses and his accurate record of both everyday British life and major 17th-century events. He wrote about the court, the theatre, his love affairs with actresses, his household, and big political and social happenings. Historians use the diary to better understand life in London during that period.