75 Facts About Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys was an English diarist and naval administrator.

Samuel Pepys served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade.

Samuel Pepys was the fifth of eleven children, but child mortality was high and he was the oldest survivor.

Samuel Pepys did not spend all of his infancy in London; for a while, he was sent to live with nurse Goody Lawrence at Kingsland, just north of the city.

Samuel Pepys attended the execution of Charles I in 1649.

Samuel Pepys was almost never without pain, as well as other symptoms, including "blood in the urine".

In 1657 Samuel Pepys decided to undergo surgery; not an easy option, as the operation was known to be especially painful and hazardous.

Samuel Pepys's stone was successfully removed and he resolved to hold a celebration on every anniversary of the operation, which he did for several years.

In mid-1658 Samuel Pepys moved to Axe Yard, near the modern Downing Street.

Samuel Pepys worked as a teller in the Exchequer under George Downing.

Samuel Pepys recorded his daily life for almost ten years.

Samuel Pepys has been called the greatest diarist of all time due to his frankness in writing concerning his own weaknesses and the accuracy with which he records events of daily British life and major events in the 17th century.

Samuel Pepys wrote about the contemporary court and theatre, his household, and major political and social occurrences.

Samuel Pepys wrote consistently on subjects such as personal finances, the time he got up in the morning, the weather, and what he ate.

Samuel Pepys wrote at length about his new watch which he was very proud of, a country visitor who did not enjoy his time in London because he felt that it was too crowded, and his cat waking him up at one in the morning.

Samuel Pepys's diary is one of a very few sources which provides such length in details of everyday life of an upper-middle-class man during the seventeenth century.

Samuel Pepys had been a strong supporter of Cromwell, but he converted to the Royalist cause upon the Protector's death.

Samuel Pepys did not plan on his contemporaries ever seeing his diary, which is evident from the fact that he wrote in shorthand and sometimes in a "code" of various Spanish, French, and Italian words.

However, Samuel Pepys often juxtaposed profanities in his native English amidst his "code" of foreign words, a practice which would reveal the details to any casual reader.

Samuel Pepys did intend future generations to see the diary, as evidenced by its inclusion in his library and its catalogue before his death along with the shorthand guide he used and the elaborate planning by which he ensured his library survived intact after his death.

Samuel Pepys's diary reveals his jealousies, insecurities, trivial concerns, and his fractious relationship with his wife.

Samuel Pepys's eyesight began to trouble him and he feared that writing in dim light was damaging his eyes.

Samuel Pepys did imply in his last entries that he might have others write his diary for him, but doing so would result in a loss of privacy and it seems that he never went through with those plans.

Samuel Pepys kept a diary for a few months in 1683 when he was sent to Tangier, Morocco as the most senior civil servant in the navy, during the English evacuation.

Samuel Pepys learned arithmetic from a private tutor and used models of ships to make up for his lack of first-hand nautical experience, and ultimately came to play a significant role in the board's activities.

Samuel Pepys's job required him to meet many people to dispense money and make contracts.

Samuel Pepys's diary provides a first-hand account of the Restoration, and includes detailed accounts of several major events of the 1660s, along with the lesser known diary of John Evelyn.

Samuel Pepys's colleagues were either engaged elsewhere or incompetent, and Pepys had to conduct a great deal of business himself.

Samuel Pepys excelled under the pressure, which was extreme due to the complexity and under-funding of the Royal Navy.

Samuel Pepys wrote about the Second Anglo-Dutch War: "In all things, in wisdom, courage, force and success, the Dutch have the best of us and do end the war with victory on their side".

In 1667, with the war lost, Samuel Pepys helped to discharge the navy.

The Dutch raid was a major concern in itself, but Samuel Pepys was personally placed under a different kind of pressure: the Navy Board and his role as Clerk of the Acts came under scrutiny from the public and from Parliament.

In 1669, Samuel Pepys had to prepare detailed answers to the committee's eight "Observations" on the Navy Board's conduct.

Furthermore, Samuel Pepys was not among the group of people who were most at risk.

Samuel Pepys did not live in cramped housing, he did not routinely mix with the poor, and he was not required to keep his family in London in the event of a crisis.

Samuel Pepys worked very hard that year, and the outcome was that he quadrupled his fortune.

Samuel Pepys chewed tobacco as a protection against infection, and worried that wig-makers might be using hair from the corpses as a raw material.

Furthermore, it was Samuel Pepys who suggested that the Navy Office should evacuate to Greenwich, although he did offer to remain in town himself.

Samuel Pepys decided that the fire was not particularly serious and returned to bed.

Samuel Pepys went to the Tower of London to get a better view.

Samuel Pepys took a coach back as far as St Paul's Cathedral before setting off on foot through the burning city.

Samuel Pepys described the chaos in the city and his curious attempt at saving his own goods:.

Samuel Pepys was fond of wine, plays, and the company of other people.

Samuel Pepys spent time evaluating his fortune and his place in the world.

Samuel Pepys was always curious and often acted on that curiosity, as he acted upon almost all his impulses.

Samuel Pepys was one of the most important civil servants of his age, and was a widely cultivated man, taking an interest in books, music, the theatre and science.

Samuel Pepys was passionately interested in music; he composed, sang, and played for pleasure, and even arranged music lessons for his servants.

Samuel Pepys played the lute, viol, violin, flageolet, recorder and spinet to varying degrees of proficiency.

Samuel Pepys was a keen singer, performing at home, in coffee houses, and even in Westminster Abbey.

Samuel Pepys taught his wife to sing and paid for dancing lessons for her.

Samuel Pepys was an investor in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, which held the Royal monopoly on trading along the west coast of Africa in gold, silver, ivory and slaves.

Samuel Pepys had a habit of fondling the breasts of his maid Mary Mercer while she dressed him in the morning.

Knep provided Samuel Pepys with backstage access and was a conduit for theatrical and social gossip.

Samuel Pepys writes in his diary that it was a "mighty lewd book," and burned it after reading it.

Samuel Pepys wrote it out in fair copy from rough notes, and he had the loose pages bound into six volumes, catalogued them in his library with all his other books, and is likely to have suspected that eventually someone would find them interesting.

Samuel Pepys's health suffered from the long hours that he worked throughout the period of the diary.

Samuel Pepys erected a monument to her in the church of St Olave's, Hart Street, London.

Samuel Pepys never remarried, but he did have a long-term housekeeper named Mary Skinner who was assumed by many of his contemporaries to be his mistress and sometimes referred to as Mrs Samuel Pepys.

Samuel Pepys served as Master of the Clothworkers' Company.

At the beginning of 1679 Samuel Pepys was elected MP for Harwich in Charles II's third parliament which formed part of the Cavalier Parliament.

Samuel Pepys was elected along with Sir Anthony Deane, a Harwich alderman and leading naval architect, to whom Pepys had been patron since 1662.

Samuel Pepys was accused, among other things, of being a secret member of the Catholic Church in England.

The phantom Samuel Pepys Island, alleged to be near South Georgia, was named after him in 1684, having been first "discovered" during his tenure at the Admiralty.

Samuel Pepys had been elected MP for Sandwich, but this election was contested and he immediately withdrew to Harwich.

When James fled the country at the end of 1688, Samuel Pepys's career came to an end.

Samuel Pepys moved out of London ten years later to a house in Clapham owned by his friend William Hewer, who had begun his career working for Pepys in the admiralty.

Samuel Pepys had no children and bequeathed his estate to his unmarried nephew John Jackson.

Samuel Pepys was buried along with his wife in St Olave's Church, Hart Street in London.

Samuel Pepys was a lifelong bibliophile and carefully nurtured his large collection of books, manuscripts, and prints.

Samuel Pepys made detailed provisions in his will for the preservation of his book collection.

Samuel Pepys laboured at this task for three years, from 1819 to 1822, unaware until nearly finished that a key to the shorthand system was stored in Pepys's library a few shelves above the diary volumes.

Smith's transcription, which is kept in the Samuel Pepys Library, was the basis for the first published edition of the diary, edited by Lord Braybrooke, released in two volumes in 1825.

In 2003, a television film, The Private Life of Samuel Pepys aired on BBC2, in which Steve Coogan played Pepys.

Samuel Pepys is a character in the film and is portrayed as an ardent devotee of the theatre.

Samuel Pepys has been portrayed in various other film and television productions, played by diverse actors including Mervyn Johns, Michael Palin, Michael Graham Cox and Philip Jackson.