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CHAPTER XVIII.

SAMUEL PEPYS TAKING NOTES.

Life of Pepys-To Scheveling and back-The Plague-Angry seamenThe Fire-The Dutch in Medway-Hidden gold.

B

ETWEEN New-Year's day 1660 and May 31st 1669 a

keen eye was looking upon the upper phases of English society, and a ready pencil was jotting down in short-hand the little incidents of everyday life. Samuel Pepys,* Esquire, was during that interval writing his very amusing and very valuable Diary.

He was the son of a retired London tailor, and went to school at Huntingdon and St. Paul's. He became a sizar at Trinity, and a scholar at Magdalene College, Cambridge; and in 1655, being then twenty-three, he married a well-born Somersetshire girl of fifteen without a coin of fortune. He rose in life by clinging to the skirts of his cousin Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, a name well known in our naval history. His first public appointment was a clerkship in some department of the Exchequer, connected with the pay of the army. After holding that for a couple of years, he had the good fortune to be selected for the post of secretary to the generals of the fleet that went to bring Charles the Second from exile to the throne. Out of this important trip across the North Sea grew his nomination as Clerk of the Acts of the

* Pepys, pronounced Peps.

Navy, on which office he entered in June 1660. In a time when the navy of England was at its very lowest, Pepys came to its rescue, and contrived to stem the tide of corruption. He rose to a more prominent position in 1673, when he entered Parliament as member for Castle Rising, and became secretary for the affairs of the navy. A suspicion that he was secretly a Roman Catholic excited against him a good deal of odium and persecution, leading in 1679 to his committal to the Tower. It is an interesting point in the story of his life that he wrote in short-hand from the king's own lips, during a ten days' visit to Newmarket in 1680, that account of the fugitive monarch's escape from the field of Worcester which was afterwards published. As Secretary of the Admiralty he served James the Second, to whom while Duke of York he had been closely allied. The Revolution brought his public career to a close; but in his chambers at York Buildings, amid his books and papers, he lived an honoured and useful life until 1703, when he died in the house of a friend at Clapham. His literary standing may be judged from the fact that he was elected President of the Royal Society in 1684, and held the chair for two years.

We find in this diary the self-drawn portrait of a man, tinged with all the doubtful hues of the Restoration era, but possessing no shades of deep black in his nature. We see him as he rises in the world, counting his gains and expressing his thankfulness for prosperity and health. The moods in which this courtier exhibits himself are too varied to be more than glanced at; but we see the real man everywhere as even his own wife never saw him, and we find the life of the time mirrored with the most minute and entertaining fidelity. Take, for example, his account of the embarking of Charles the Second at Scheveling.

Having crossed to the sandy shore at Scheveling, where the recalled Stuart was to embark, Pepys and a Mr. Creed took coach to the Hague, "a most neat place in all respects." After

they had viewed the May-poles which stood at every great man's door, and had visited the little Prince of Orange, "a pretty boy" (better known to history as William the Third), they supped off a sallet and some bones of mutton, and lay down to sleep in a press-bed. Next day (May 15), they returned to their ship at Scheveling. Not until the 22nd did the royal personages begin to embark. On that day a Dutch boat bore off the Duke of York in yellow trimmings, the Duke of Gloucester in gray and red. (The tailor's son seldom forgets the dress of the people he describes.) The guns were fired all over the fleet, and during the dinner in the cabin, at which the Dutch admiral, Opdam, was present, the music of a harper who played was often drowned in the thunder of the ordnance. Loyal Pepys, acting after dinner as an amateur artilleryman, "nearly spoils his right eye" by holding it too much over the gun. The king embarked on the 23rd of May, and after dinner the names of some of the ships were changed-the Naseby becoming the Charles; the Winsly, the Happy Return; and so forth. Walking up and down the quarter-deck, the king told of his mud-wading after Worcester in a green coat and country breeches, and of the risks he ran until he got to Fécamp. On the 25th the king and the two dukes went ashore at Dover, after having breakfasted on ship's diet-pease, pork, and boiled beef. "I went," says Pepys, "and Mr. Mansell, and one of the king's footmen, and a dog that the king loved, in a boat by ourselves, and so got on shore when the king did, who was received by General Monk with all imaginable love and respect. Infinite the crowd of people and the gallantry of the horsemen. The mayor of the town came and gave him his white staff, which the king did give him again. The mayor

also presented him from the town a very rich Bible, which he took, and said it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world. And so away towards Canterbury, without making any stay at Dover."

The Plague is depicted by Pepys in graphic touches. Whether he walks the streets by night with a lantern, or stops to speak to the watchman as he goes home late, the awful burden—a corpse dead of the plague-goes by with its wretched bearers. Walking from Woolwich, where his wife is lodging during the time of sickness, he sees an open coffin lying by Coome Farm with a dead body, which none will bury. As he continues his walk to Redriffe, he fears to go down the narrow lanes where the plague is raging. In London almost all the shops are shut, and 'Change is nearly deserted. Then we have a glimpse that serves to explain the sorry stains which these years brought on the British flag at sea: "Did business, though not much at office, because of the horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money, which do trouble and perplex me to the heart; and more at noon when we were to go through them, for above a whole hundred of them followed us, some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us." A similar scene next year with a comic touch: "July 10, 1666. To the office; the yard being very full of women, I believe above three hundred, coming to get money for their husbands and friends that are prisoners in Holland; and they lay clamouring, and swearing, and cursing us, that my wife and I were afraid to send a venison-pasty that we have for supper to-night to the cook's to be baked, for fear of their offering violence to it; but it went, and no harm done.”

His account of the Great Fire is also very striking. Called up at three on Sunday morning, Sept. 2, 1666, by his servant Jane to see the red light of a fire in the sky, he finds when he goes out that the fire began in the king's baker's house in Pudding Lane. How graphic the glow and terror of the following

scene!

"Met my wife and Creed, and walked to my boat, and then upon the water again. So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's faces in the wind, you were

almost burned with a shower of fire-drops.

When we could

endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house on the Bankside, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and in corners, and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the city, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame; not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. We saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long; it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire, and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin...... The news coming every moment of the growth of the fire, we were forced to begin to pack up our own goods, and prepare for their removal; and did by moonshine, it being brave, dry, and moonshine, and warm weather, carry much of my goods into the garden; and Mr. Hater and I did remove my money and iron chests into my cellar. And got my bags of gold into my office, ready to carry away, and my chief papers of accounts also there, and my tallies into a box by themselves. About four o'clock in the morning my Lady Batten sent me a cart to carry away all my money, and plate, and best things, to Sir W. Rider's at Bednall Greene, which I did, riding myself in my night-gown

in the cart."

The summer of 1667 saw the Dutch, after taking Sheerness, run up the Medway to break the chain, and capture, sink, or burn several vessels of the English fleet. The news of this humiliation struck Pepys to the heart, overloading him also with a pressure of work. And disheartening work it was, when the public coffers were empty and the unpaid seamen were deserting in scores. Amid all the hurry our diarist takes

care of his little hoard, sending off £1,300 to the country in a night-bag with his father and his wife, and sewing three hundred pieces of gold into a girdle, which he wore himself.

The

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