Historical Heroes: Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys has been an inspiration and source of knowledge to novelists and historians alike. By Deborah Swift

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys began his diary in 1660 and continued to write it for ten years. His famous diary is the best resource we have on London in the 17th century and provides us with a fly-on-the-wall account of daily life in the period just following the Restoration of King Charles II. It includes passages not only on this unexpected about-turn from Cromwell’s protectorate, and the coronation of the King, but also on seminal events in the city of London such as The Plague and The Great Fire.

What is wonderful when reading a diary like this is that it is a personal recollection. Who could not empathize with Pepys when he tells you he had to go out for a pee after sitting through the lengthy coronation service;

But so great a noise, that I could make but little of the music; and indeed, it was lost to everybody. But I had so great a list to piss, that I went out a little while before the King had done all his ceremonies, and went round the Abbey to Westminster Hall, all the way within rails, and 10,000 people, with the ground covered with blue cloth — and scaffolds all the way.

Pepys is famous for his unbridled affairs which went on all through his marriage, and his personal life by his own admission was full of passions and opportunistic encounters. However, this masked a fierce intelligence and dedication to duty that led him to be one of Charles II’s leading lights in the affairs of the Navy – which, in an age when wars were fought at sea, was an enormous and impressive task.

As a novelist what I enjoy most about Pepys’ diary is the insight it gives us into the minutiae of day-to-day life. Pepys had opinions about nearly everyone he met, and there are nearly three thousand of them named in his diary. I appreciate especially that his interests include Kings and commoners; he is equally at home berating the King as he is the serving boy in his employ.

‘I see it is impossible for the King to have things done as cheap as other men.’

Charles II

Surely one of the most succinct impressions of the libertine Charles II. Having access to King and Parliament gives the reader an insider’s view and Pepys doesn’t steer away from court gossip, but rather seems to revel in it. Here, a passage about the King’s mistress Lady Castlemaine:

This afternoon walking with Sir H. Cholmly long in the gallery, he told me, among many other things, how Harry Killigrew is banished the Court lately, for saying that my Lady Castlemayne was a little lecherous girle when she was young … This she complained to the King of, and he sent to the Duke of York, whose servant he is, to turn him away. The Duke of York hath done it, but takes it ill of my Lady that he was not complained to first. She attended him to execute it, but ill blood is made by it.