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SAMUEL PEPYS

Samuel Pepys was an English civil servant and staunch Royalist, renowned for his diary. He was born in 1633 at London and died in 1703. He entered the navy office in 1660, a few months after starting his diary. He was appointed secretary to the Admiralty in 1672, imprisoned in the tower of London with loss of office in 1679 on suspicion of being connected with the Popish Plot - no formal charges were ever brought against him, he was reinstated in 1684, and finally deprived at the 1688 Revolution when he retired to Clapham. His diary was discontinued in 1669 as he thought his sight was failing, and was written in a personal version of Shelton's shorthand, and was not deciphered until 1825 - and then only transcribed in a censored edition. In 1970 his diary, all twelve volumes and 1.3 million words was finally transcribed in its entirety. His diary is unrivalled for its intimacy and the human picture it presents of daily life in the 17th century, much of which is disturbing by modern standards, Pepys having no qualms about recording details of the executions he witnessed, and the adulterous affairs that appear to have been the norm.
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