Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

by Claire Tomalin

  There were other lighter moments. In June, for no fathomable reason, he adopted a fanciful vocabulary to describe an assignation, choosing to call the young woman ‘fairest flower’ and ‘the rose’. He takes ‘fairest flower’ to Tothill Fields in a coach for the air, and when it is dark they go in ‘to eat a cake, and there did do as much as was safe with my flower’. It is his only venture into the language of romance, altogether different from his usual foreign phrases, and he never repeated it; you wonder if it harked back to the novel he wrote at Cambridge.43 In September he had a business meeting near Ewell in Surrey, at Nonsuch Palace, semi-derelict and with a ruined garden, which he observed with pleasure; and in this romantic place, while conducting his financial dealings, he spoke to a little girl and heard her sing. Her singing impressed him so much that he decided he would offer her employment when he next needed a girl in his household; and, more than a year later, he remembered her and did so.44

  One more episode from the plague year concerns Pepys’s old friend from his clerking days, Peter Luellin, who had visited him aboard the Naseby in 1660. They had written to one another, agreed how their lives would be improved if they only had private incomes and spent evenings swapping stories over drinks. After a spell in Ireland, where he failed to make his fortune, Luellin was back in England in 1663, working for a timber merchant called Edward Dering. What made him useful to Dering was his friendship with Pepys, who was in a position to give contracts to timber merchants, and soon Luellin was offering Pepys £200 a year for his good offices and fifty gold pieces for taking immediate goods. Pepys explained he was not to be bribed, but was prepared to accept an ‘acknowledgment’ of his services.45 He repeated this more formally: ‘I told him that I would not sell my liberty to any man. If he would give me anything by another’s hand, I would endeavour to deserve it, but I will never give him himself thanks for it, nor acknowledge the receiving of any… I did also tell him that neither this nor anything should make me to do anything that should not be for the King’s service besides.’46 It is Pepys’s central statement of his position on accepting presents from interested parties, and he reverted to it when he was challenged on this point in 1670.

  For now, he took a £50 bill of exchange from Dering, ‘the best New Year’s gift I ever had’, cashed for him by Luellin, to whom Pepys gave £2 for his trouble. After this Luellin was a frequent caller at Seething Lane, dining and taking Elizabeth to the theatre, even setting off a twinge of Pepys’s jealousy.47 But Luellin’s target was always Pepys. The Diary sets out Pepys’s moral juggling, now hoping for money from Dering, now complaining that Luellin is trying to force him to take some. Luellin continued to visit Pepys in Greenwich when the Navy Office moved there, bringing more proposals from Dering, and Pepys accepted twenty gold pieces, ‘yet really and sincerely against my will’.48 Luellin was becoming an embarrassment to him, and Pepys wrote him off as a lightweight, too keen on his pleasures to do well in business. A few weeks later Dering told Pepys that Luellin had died of the plague in St Martin’s Lane, ‘which much surprised me’. This was all the epitaph he got from his old friend. Pepys had moved on.

  He was less eager to return to Seething Lane at the end of the year, when the danger had abated, than Elizabeth, who went home first with Mary Mercer and their maids, and had to make a special trip to Greenwich to urge Pepys to follow suit. When he did get back in January 1666, he was frightened by the sight of the churchyard at St Olave’s, in which the graves were piled high; more than three hundred burials had taken place during the previous six months. A covering of snow in February made it look less ghastly, but he discussed spreading lime over it with a local merchant. Their clergyman, Mr Mills, also crept back to his parish in February – first to go and last to return, jeered Pepys – and delivered a sermon blaming the plague on the sins of the nation, which Will Hewer took down in shorthand.49 Everyone kept a nervous eye on the plague figures; people were still dying, and the fear that it might increase when the hot weather started again could not be dismissed. ‘If the plague continues among us another year, the Lord knows what will become of us,’ wrote Pepys.50 Another 2,000 Londoners died in 1666; the theatres were not reopened until November, and there was no public thanksgiving for the end of the plague until then. We know that the last recorded case was in 1679, at Rotherhithe; but neither Pepys nor anyone else could possibly know that the plague was making its final appearance and would never return to England.51

  12. War

  England was at war during two and a half years covered by the Diary – from May 1665 until August 1667 – but it is often easy to forget this as you read. Since those years also encompassed the plague and the fire of London, war is sometimes upstaged by the great domestic disasters, as well as by Pepys’s private preoccupations and adventures. These were years in which he was spectacularly busy on many fronts, and his narrative grows fuller and longer every day: 1667 is the fattest year of the Diary. But he never saw action, and his pages offer no heroism and little violence. What he gives is a backstage view of war. There is confusion, jealousy, backbiting and greed; blame is laid, loyalties are divided; there is rejoicing – sometimes premature – as well as panic and despondency. The sound of guns is heard in the distance several times, and more immediate turmoil is produced by rioting, unpaid sailors and the weeping wives of pressed men. His job throughout was to supply and maintain the fighting force, and many of his associates were at sea during the summer months when the fleets expected to confront one another: Sandwich, Coventry, Penn, the duke of York all went off in the spring of 1665, alongside Monck, now duke of Albemarle, Prince Rupert and a mixture of sober, tough old Cromwellian captains like Lawson and light-hearted young gentlemen inclined to see war as a glorious game and surprised to find themselves spattered with blood and brains.

  The Second Dutch War, like the first under Cromwell, was a commercial conflict. Pepys predicted and feared it as early as 1662.1 It was meant to ensure English supremacy in trade with the Baltic, the East and West Indies and the African coast. The king and the duke of York, as well as Sandwich and Pepys’s colleague Povey, were all investors in the slave trade; even the Royal Society invested some of its funds in Africa Company Stock in 1676, and again in the 1690s.2 No one raised any objection to seizing and selling human beings until the Quakers began-to do so in 1671, and Aphra Behn published her anti-slave trade novel Oroonoko in 1688; neither had any effect on the trade. We have seen that Lord Sandwich brought ‘a little Turke and a negroe’ as presents to his family in 1662, and Pepys himself owned and sold two slaves in the 1670s and 1680s.3 The duke was president of the Royal Africa Company, which saw its business of supplying slaves to the West Indian sugar and tobacco industries threatened by the Dutch. The other trade routes were equally important and equally disputed. The king expected the war to be popular with the English merchant classes, and he was right. Parliament gave its blessing by voting two and a half millions towards its cost.

  The fighting was almost entirely at sea, with great set battles in which the fleets faced and bombarded one another in ships that have been well described as floating abattoirs.4 Apart from guns, the other weapons were fireships, launched as torpedoes, uncertain but often lethal. On the English side many of the men were pressed, meaning they were rounded up and forced to serve against their will. The Dutch never pressed – they had no need to – and there were English and Scotsmen who preferred to fight with the Dutch during this war, for political reasons and because they knew they were more likely to be paid. The English sailors were given vouchers, known as ‘tickets’, instead of money; the system was a bad one because proper payment was too often delayed, and men, desperate for ready cash, sold their tickets below value. When the Dutch attacked the Medway in 1667, Pepys was told that English voices were heard among the attackers, shouting that they were now fighting for money instead of tickets; and Esther St Michel, his sister-in-law, told him she heard both seamen and soldiers swearing they would rather serve the Dutch than the kin
g, ‘for they should be better used’.5

  The work of paying, supplying and maintaining the navy fell heavily on Pepys. He went at it energetically, patting himself on the back in a letter to Coventry: ‘had the hire of my labour been £10,000 per annum, I could not be possessed of a more hearty intentness in the early and late pursuance of my duty than I have been hitherto… I have heard no music but on Sunday these six months.’6 This was in May 1665, before the first battle. He was hampered by lack of money and inefficiency in the yards, and acknowledged to himself that his office bore some blame for leaving the fleet short of clothing and provisions.7 Coventry, aboard the Royal Charles, wrote asking for shirts for the men, turning his phrases with a smile but making a serious point: ‘I do not intend to buy any of those shirts for my own use yet I am much concerned for them, because I think the health of the men concerned in their clothes, and men are so hard to get that I should be sorry to lose them.’8 He also complained of the lack of essential provisions: ‘Many ships have been on short allowance, some have drunk water, and some been in danger of neither having beer nor water.’9 Less urbane grumbles came from Prince Rupert, who accused the navy commissioners of ‘intolerable neglect’.10

  Well supplied or not, the English fought the Dutch at the battle of Lowestoft on 3 June and beat them. Everyone in London went out to the park or the riverside to listen to the sound of the guns.11 Pepys’s old employer George Downing, ambassador in the Hague, also heard a ‘continued terrible thunder from about 2 of the clock in the morning upon Saturday till between 11 and 12 at night’. When the news of the English victory came, he prudently fortified his house with stones and barrels of earth at the top of the stairs, fearing retaliation for the 5,000 Dutchmen dead.12 Coventry had already decided that one victory would avail the English little, since the Dutch would be out again, and he was right. It was in any case a very partial victory, because fears for the safety of the duke of York, narrowly missed by a cannon ball that knocked off the head of the friend standing beside him on the deck, led to the pursuit of the Dutch being called off. It was not his decision but done while he was sleeping; still, the royal admiral had proved a liability. In spite of this, when the news of victory reached London five days later, Pepys lit a bonfire at his gate and distributed money to the local boys; and when the sunburnt officers arrived back in London, Coventry was rewarded with a knighthood and made a privy councillor. Sandwich protested that he had received no acknowledgement for his part in the fight, and told Pepys that he blamed Coventry, who was responsible for the official accounts of the battle.

  Sandwich’s next triumph proved still more bitter in its effects. He went to sea again – this was when he left Pepys in charge of his daughter’s wedding – and captured two Dutch East Indiamen with cargoes worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. The news reached Pepys in September and produced an ‘extasy of joy’ in him – ecstasy on behalf of Lord Sandwich and the nation but also on his own behalf, since he was confident he could expect some share in the prize.13 The distribution of prize treasure was subject to special commissioners. Officially the bulk of it was always meant to go to the state, with some allowed to the officers who took the prizes. The arrangement did not work out as it should, and in the time of Queen Elizabeth officers had on occasion shared out virtually the whole of the cargo among themselves; things were better controlled in the next century, but even under the commonwealth treasure sometimes disappeared mysteriously, as happened when Sandwich brought in his prize ships in 1656. Perhaps with that occasion in mind, he now called a council of his officers to consider what to do, and a majority agreed to start distributing part of the treasure among themselves before receiving any authorization. This was called ‘breaking bulk’, and Sandwich may have reckoned that, if the treasure was going to be plundered by others, he might as well get in first; he was also confident that the king would give his formal approval when asked. It was an arrogant assumption, and four officers refused to join in the distribution. Sandwich had made many enemies during his career; he was both envied and mistrusted.

  He let Pepys know that he had taken £3,000 of goods for himself and offered him the chance to buy another £5,000 worth. Pepys went into partnership with a friend, Captain George Cocke, an old royalist now a merchant and navy contractor, and they prepared to move cartloads of goods to a lock-up found for them in Greenwich by John Tooker, the Navy Board messenger. This is when he started a second diary for his dealings in the prize goods, as though he felt he had to split off this part of his life.14 Sandwich wrote a letter authorizing him to remove ‘Several parcells of spirits, Silks and other Goods taken out of the two East India Prizes’; but even as the goods were being moved, Pepys began to have doubts.15 Sandwich was attracting criticism on all sides: some of his own flag captains declared their opposition, Sir Christopher Myngs complaining that he had been kept waiting ‘3 or 4 hours together at that Earle’s Cabin door… and at last foiled of admittance’ – this was Pepys’s report.16 Albemarle spoke of ‘embezzlement’, and both he and Carteret wrote to Sandwich advising caution. So did Coventry, who asked coolly on 3 October for a list of the prizes ‘with some account of their qualities… it might be of some use, for satisfying the nation, that their money hath not been thrown away’.17 The warning tone from the man he now considered an enemy did nothing to stop Sandwich. On 14 October he wrote to Pepys again, assuring him the king had confirmed his right to what he had taken, ‘so that you are to own the possession of them with confidence; and, if any body have taken security from them upon seizure, remand the security in my name, and return their answer. Carry it high; and own nothing of baseness or dishonour, but rather intimate, that I shall know who have done me indignities.’18

  Sandwich’s advice to ‘carry it high’ was meant to encourage Pepys. It failed to do so, because he had other plans afoot that depended on the goodwill of Coventry and Albemarle. On 19 October he asked Coventry to back him for the new position he had thought up for himself, as surveyor-general of victualling for the whole navy; on the same day he applied to Albemarle to give Balty a job as one of his guards. Albemarle agreed, and when Coventry consulted him about the victualling job for Pepys he agreed to that too.19 Pepys wrote to thank the duke of York for confirming that the job was his and sent Albemarle a list of names he wanted appointed as his assistants. He was building up his own web of patronage and influence.

  Meanwhile he made an attempt to restore friendly relations between his two warring patrons, Sandwich and Coventry. But Sandwich, proud and injured, told him reconciliation was impossible and accused Coventry of stirring up the trouble over the prizes. At this Pepys gave up. ‘So I stopped,’ he wrote flatly, and on 13 November he extricated himself from any further involvement with the prize business, selling his share to Cocke, and closing his second diary with the words, ‘Ended all with Captain Cocke.’20 Three days later he visited one of the prize ships with the other commissioners. He went into the hold and was overwhelmed by what he saw there, ‘the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs I walked above the knees, whole rooms full. And silks in bales, and boxes of copper-plate, one of which I saw opened… as noble a sight as ever I saw in my life.’ It is a magnificent moment, showing us the inside of the great trading ship, packed so full the spices crunched underfoot; and an emblematic scene, as he surveys the riches of commerce and the spoils of war, now in his official capacity. There is some rich irony about too, since he has only just withdrawn from involvement in what some judged to be plundering it for private profit.

  This was not the only irony. Shortly after the visit to the prize ships, he observed to Commissioner Pett at Chatham that ‘It is now 2 months within 2 days since this Office hath felt one farthing of money for any service, great or small, though to save the life of a man by paying a ticket. We are in hopes of a little in a little while.’21 While the wealth of the East Indies lay piled up in the prize ships
, unpaid sailors were rioting outside his office, breaking the windows, cursing those inside, beating the unfortunate messengers, assaulting Batten and threatening to come back and pull the whole place down. ‘What meat they’ll make of me anon, you shall know by my next,’ wrote Pepys to Coventry.22 But Pepys remained unharmed, and on 4 December he received his official appointment as surveyor-general of victualling. It gave him another salary – he now had three – and the chance to make more on the side. At the end of the year he recorded the biggest increase yet in his personal fortune.

  Sandwich would have been impeached had the king not given him immunity by quickly appointing him ambassador to Spain. Pepys, at his most sanctimonious, wrote in his end-of-year summary, ‘The great evil of this year, and the only one indeed, is the fall of my Lord Sandwich, whose mistake about the prizes hath undone him, I believe, as to interest at Court… and endeed, his miscarriage about the prize-goods is not to be excused.’ His own quick thinking had extricated him from being associated with Sandwich’s mistake, and even improved his position with those in power. He rose as Sandwich fell, and his Lordship was left with a shadow over his reputation: ‘it is scarce possible to tell you the public scandal and wound I have received’, wrote Sandwich.23 He was obliged to seek an official pardon, which was granted, but was slighted at a council meeting just before his departure for Spain and not even offered a seat. Pepys gave up his stool to his old master; but that evening abased himself to Coventry, ‘desiring he would do the last act of friendship, in telling me of my faults’.24 And when Pepys clashed with Prince Rupert in a council meeting a few months later, he was still worried that he might be regarded as ‘a creature of Lord Sandwiches’. He made no effort to keep in touch with him, and in September 1667 observed that he had not written him a single letter since he left for Spain.25