Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In

Pepys’s house was a part of the Seething Lane front, and that occupied by Sir William Penn was on the north side of the garden, a house which was afterwards occupied by Lord Brouncker.211 When the new Somerset House was finished, the Navy Office was removed there, and the old buildings in the city were sold and destroyed.

In course of time the work of the navy could not be properly carried out with the old machinery, and, at last, the Admiralty Office, which had largely grown in importance, swallowed up the Navy Office. By an Act of Parliament, 2 William IV., the principal officers and commissioners of the navy were abolished, as were also the commissioners for victualling the navy; and all power and authority was vested in the Admiralty.

I have attempted to give in a few pages as clear an account as possible of the kind of machinery by which the navy was governed, and I now propose to pass rapidly in review a few of the points raised by Pepys. To do more than glance at some of these would require a volume. The “Diary” is filled with information respecting the office and the petty squabbles of the officers, and we obtain from it a gloomy notion of the condition of the navy. In fact, it would be hardly possible to believe the wretched details if we had them from a less trustworthy authority. The whole system of money-getting was unsatisfactory in the extreme, and the officers of the navy were often expected to perform the task of making bricks without straw. The Treasurer, not being able to get money from the Treasury, floated bills, and these were often in very bad repute. We read in the “Diary,” that on August 31st, 1661, the bills were offered to be sold on the Exchange at 10 per cent. loss; and on April 14th, 1663, things were even worse, for it was reported that they were sold at a reduction of 15 per cent. In December of the latter year Pepys could hardly believe the evidence of his ears when he learned the “extraordinary good news,” that the credit of the office was “as good as any merchant’s upon Change;” but these bright days did not last long. Parliament being very dissatisfied with the way in which the money was spent by the officers of the navy, appointed, a few years afterwards, a commission to look into the accounts. This gave Pepys much trouble, which he did not relish, and we find him busy in making things as pleasant as possible during the latter part of 1666. He was in “mighty fear and trouble” when called before the committee, the members of which appeared to be “in a very ill humour.” Three years after this he drew up a letter to the Commissioners of Accounts on the state of the office, a transcript of which, addressed to “H. R. H. the Lord High Admiral,” and dated January 8th, 1669–70, is now in the library of the British Museum.212

One of the most unsatisfactory divisions of the naval accounts related to the pursers. Pepys was early interested in the Victualling Department, out of which he afterwards made much money; and on September 12th, 1662, we find him trying “to understand the method of making up Purser’s Accounts, which is very needful for me and very hard.” On November 22nd, 1665, he remarks that he was pleased to have it demonstrated “that a Purser without professed cheating is a professed loser twice as much as he gets.” Pepys received his appointment of Surveyor-General of the Victualling Office chiefly through the influence of Sir William Coventry, and on January 1st, 1665–6, he addressed a letter and “New Yeares Guift” on the subject of pursers to his distinguished friend. He relates in the “Diary” how he wrote the letter, and how Sir William praised his work to the Duke.213

The want of money led to other evils that brought the greatest discredit upon the Navy Office. The tickets that were given to the men in place of money, were received with the greatest disgust, and during the time of the Dutch war the scarcity of sailors was so great that a wholesale system of pressing was resorted to. We learn that on June 30th, 1666, Sir Thomas Bludworth, the Lord Mayor, impressed a large number of persons wholly unfit for sea, and when we are further told that some of them were “people of very good fashion,” it is not surprising that Pepys should call the Mayor “a silly man.”

So great was the disgust of the unpaid men, that during the war with Holland English sailors positively preferred to serve in the ships of the enemies of England rather than fight for their own country, and when the Dutch were in the Medway English voices were heard from Dutch ships.214

The seamen were not likely to learn much good from their superiors, for throughout the whole fleet swearing, drinking, and debauchery were rampant.215

A great part of the evils arose from the appointment of so-called “gentlemen captains,” men who were unacquainted with maritime affairs, and treated the sailor captains with contempt, calling them tarpaulins, a name which now only remains to us in the reduced form of tar. This evil was well known in the reign of Elizabeth, and was pointed out by Gibson, who wrote memoirs of the expeditions of the navy from 1585 to 1603,216 and all readers are familiar with Macaulay’s remarks on the same subject. Captain Digby, a son of the Earl of Bristol, and one of these “ornamental officers,” after he had been in the fleet about a year expressed the wish that he might not again see a tarpaulin have the command of a ship.217 These useless captains, who could make bows, but could not navigate a ship, raised the ire of old Nan Clarges, otherwise Duchess of Albemarle, who “cried out mightily against the having of gentlemen captains with feathers and ribbands, and wished the king would send her husband to sea with the old plain sea captains that he served with formerly, that would make their ships swim with blood, though they could not make legs as captains now-a-days can.”218

The common custom of employing indiscriminately land officers as admirals, and naval officers as generals, often led to disasters. There can be no doubt of the bravery of Monk and Rupert, but when on shipboard they made many blunders and endangered the safety of the fleet.

All this confusion caused dire disasters, which culminated in the presence of the hostile Dutch fleet in our rivers; a national disgrace which no Englishman can think of even now without a feeling of shame. While reading the “Diary,” we are overwhelmed with the instances of gross mismanagement in naval affairs. Many of the men whose carelessness helped to increase the amount of rampant blundering were, however, capable of deeds of pluck and bravery. In one of the engagements with the Dutch, Prince Rupert sent his pleasure-boat, the “Fanfan,” with two small guns on board, against the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter. With great daring, the sailors brought their little boat near, and fired at De Ruyter’s vessel for two hours, but at last a ball did them so much damage that the crew were forced to row briskly to save their lives.219

Another instance of bravery more deserving of honour is that recorded of Captain Douglas, of the “Royal Oak,” who had received orders to defend his ship at Chatham. This he did with the utmost resolution, but, having had no order to retire, he chose rather to be burnt in his ship than live to be reproached with having deserted his command. It is reported that Sir William Temple expressed the wish that Cowley had celebrated this noble deed before he died.220

Pepys tells us that on July 21st, 1668, he went to his “plate-makers,” and spent an hour in contriving some plates for his books of the King’s four yards, and that on the 27th of the same month the four plates came home. They cost him five pounds, and he was in consequence both troubled and pleased.

No account of the state of the navy in Charles II.’s time, however short, would be complete without some notice of the four dockyards (Chatham, Deptford, Portsmouth, and Woolwich), which necessarily occupy a very prominent place in the “Diary.” Chatham yard was founded by Queen Elizabeth, and it remained under the special charge of the Surveyor of the Navy until a Special Commissioner was appointed in 1630. This explains a passage in the “Diary” which has not hitherto been illustrated. When, in April, 1661, Sir William Batten, the Surveyor of the Navy, and Pepys were on a visit to Chatham, they went “to see Commissioner Pett’s house, he and his family being absent, and here I wondered how my Lady Batten walked up and down, with envious looks, to see how neat and rich everything is, saying that she would get it, for it belonged formerly to the Surveyor of the Navy.”221 The first Commissioner was Phineas Pett, who died in 1647, and was succeeded by his son, Peter Pett, who figures so frequently in the “Diary.” Peter was continued in office at the Restoration, but he was suspended in 1667 in consequence of the success of the Dutch attack upon Chatham. He was sent to the Tower and threatened with impeachment, but, although the threat was not carried out, he was never restored to office. The appointment remained in abeyance for two years after, when, in March, 1669, Captain John Cox, the master attendant at Deptford, was made resident Commissioner at Chatham. In January, 1672, he was appointed flag captain to the Duke of York, in the “Prince,” without vacating his office at Chatham, was knighted in April, and killed at the battle of Solebay in May, all in the same year.

The Hill-house that Pepys visited for the first time on the 8th of April, 1661, is frequently mentioned on subsequent pages of the “Diary.”222 The “old Edgeborrow,” whose ghost was reported to haunt the place, was Kenrick Edisbury, Surveyor of the Navy from 1632 to 1638. Pepys does not seem quite to have appreciated the story of the ghost which was told him as he went to bed after a merry supper, although he affirms that he was not so much afraid as for mirth’s sake he seemed.223 In the “Memoirs of English Affairs, chiefly Naval, from the year 1660 to 1673, written by James, Duke of York,” there is a letter from James to the principal officers of the navy (dated May 10th, 1661), in which he recommends that the lease of the Hill-house should be bought by them, if it can be obtained at a reasonable rate, as the said house “is very convenient for the service of his Majesty’s Navy.”224

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins advised the establishment of a chest at Chatham for the relief of seamen wounded in their country’s service, and the sailors voluntarily agreed to have certain sums “defalked” out of their wages in order to form this fund. In July, 1662, Pepys was told of the abuse of the funds, and advised to look into the business.225 At the end of the same year a commission was appointed to inspect the chest,226 but the commissioners do not seem to have done much good, for in 1667 there was positively no money left to pay the poor sailors what was owed to them.227 After a time the property became considerable, but unfortunately the abuses grew as well. In 1802 the chest was removed to Greenwich, and in 1817 the stock is said to have amounted to £300,000 consols.

Deptford dockyard was founded about the year 1513. Pepys made occasional visits to it, and on one occasion he and Coventry took the officers (of whose honesty he had not a very high opinion) by surprise. On June 16th, 1662, he mentions going to see “in what forwardness the work is for Sir W. Batten’s house and mine.” He found the house almost ready, but we hear no more of it in the subsequent pages of the “Diary.”

Portsmouth dockyard was established by Henry VIII., but it did not hold a foremost position until, in the reign of William III., Edmund Dummer contrived a simple and ingenious method of pumping water from dry docks below the level of low tide, which enabled Portsmouth for the first time to possess a dry dock capable of taking in a first-rate man-of-war. It was Dummer who also designed and constructed the first docks at Plymouth.228

Sir Edward Montague first chose Portsmouth as the place from which to draw his title, but he afterwards gave the preference to Sandwich.

When Pepys visited Portsmouth in May, 1661, he was very pleased with his reception by the officers of the dockyard, who treated him with much respect.

Although the date of the foundation of Woolwich dockyard is not recorded, it is known to have been of considerable importance in Henry VIII.’s reign. It figures very frequently in the “Diary.”229

Very soon after Pepys was settled in his office, he thought it advisable to give his attention to the question of the British dominion of the seas, and he made a special study of Selden’s “Mare Clausum.” He intended to write a treatise on the rights of the English flag, and present it to the Duke of York. His reason for doing this was that it promised to be a good way to make himself known.230 The right of making foreign vessels strike their sails to the English flag had been insisted upon from early times. Selden’s work, in which the case was strongly urged, met therefore with great favour. Charles I. made an order in council that a copy should be kept in the council chest, another in the Court of Exchequer, and a third in the Court of Admiralty. The upholders of this right triumphed when, in the treaty of peace with the Dutch (February 9th, 1674), the States-General confessed that to be a right which before had been styled courtesy, and they agreed that not only separate ships, but whole fleets should strike sails to any fleet or ship carrying the king’s flag.231 John Evelyn argued strongly in favour of England’s right to the dominion of the sea in his “Navigation and Commerce” (1674), but he privately confessed to Pepys that he did not consider there was any sufficient evidence of the right.232

We must now turn our attention to the Diarist’s colleagues at the Navy Office, and it is here very needful to caution the reader against putting implicit faith in all the adverse remarks that fill the “Diary.” It is a curious fact that, with the exception of Sir William Coventry, scarcely any of the officers come off with a good character. Pepys held Coventry in profound respect, and was never prouder than when he received a word of praise from him, and yet we do not obtain a very favourable idea of the secretary to the Duke of York from other writers, and in the pages of Clarendon we are presented with a very adverse character of him.

Those officers with whom Pepys came most in contact were Sir George Carteret, the Treasurer; Sir Robert Slingsby and Sir John Minnes, successive Comptrollers; Sir William Batten and Colonel Thomas Middleton, successive Surveyors; and Sir William Penn and Lord Viscount Brouncker, additional Commissioners.

Pepys did not hold Carteret in much esteem, and we read constant disparaging remarks respecting him, such as that on one occasion he wanted to know what the four letters S. P. Q. R. meant, “which ignorance is not to be borne in a Privy Counsellor,”233 but after Sir George’s son had married a daughter of Lord Sandwich, and he had thus become a near connection of Pepys’s family, we read of “his pleasant humour,” and are told that he is “a most honest man.” Sir Robert Slingsby died in 1661, and therefore does not occupy a very prominent position in the “Diary,” but Pepys grieved for his loss.

Sir John Minnes was better known as a wit than as a sailor, and it was he who taught Pepys to appreciate Chaucer. He does not, however, come off very handsomely in the “Diary.” Captain Holmes called him “the veriest knave and rogue and coward in the world,”234 and Sir William Coventry likened him to a lapwing, who was always in a flutter to keep others from the nest.235 Pepys himself, after a few quarrels, hints pretty plainly that he was an old coxcomb, a mere jester or ballad-monger, and quite unfit for business.

We are told of Sir William Batten’s corruption and underhand dealing,236 of his knavery,237 and of his inconsequent action in objecting to lighthouses generally, and then proposing one for Harwich;238 but Pepys’s two chief enemies were Sir William Penn and Lord Brouncker.

Sir William Penn and Pepys were much thrown together, and were alternately very friendly and very jealous of each other. When Pepys first associated with Penn, he found him sociable but cunning, and ever after the pages of the “Diary” are filled with vituperation respecting this successful admiral. Considering the eminent position of William Penn the son, as a leader among the Quakers, it is curious to note that before the Restoration, and when Monk was coming from the North, it was reported that Penn, the father, had turned Quaker.239 In May, 1660, Charles II. wrote to Monk: “I have so good an opinion of General Penn, that if you had not recommended him to me I would have taken care of all his interests;”240 and we cannot doubt that he possessed some eminent qualities of which we learn nothing in the “Diary.”

Lord Brouncker was a good mathematician in his own day, and his name has come down with credit to ours as the first President of the Royal Society, but his portrait as painted by Pepys is far from a pleasing one—let us hope that it was not a true likeness. He was not a rich man, for his mother was a gamester, and his father a land-lacking peer, and he was probably not over particular as to the means he took to obtain money. We may believe this, however, without agreeing with Pepys that he was “a rotten-hearted, false man.”241 Aubrey says that the following lines were written on his parents:—

“Here’s a health to my Lady Brouncker, and the best card in her hand;And a health to my Lord her husband, with ne’er a foot of land.”242

These were some of the men who helped to carry on the work of the English navy. It would have been well for the fame of most of them if Pepys had never put pen to paper.

CHAPTER IX.

THE COURT

“And when he was beat,He still made his retreatTo his Clevelands, his Nells, and his Carwells.”Marvell’s Ballad on the Lord Mayor and Aldermen.

THE Court of Charles II. was not unlike that of Comus, for drunkenness and vice reigned supreme in both. Pepys’s “Diary” forms a valuable antidote to the Grammont “Memoirs,” because in the latter work the pictures are drawn in rose colour, while in the former we see the squalid poverty that accompanied the wasteful extravagance. In the courts of most of our sovereigns statesmen have borne an important part, but at the Restoration the court was formed of wits and beautiful women only. Then statesmen moved in the outer circles, and were laughed at by those who dwelt in the inner ones. Grammont relates that the Earl of Arlington was one day offering his humble services and best advice to Miss Stewart, to assist her in conducting herself as King’s mistress, a situation “to which it had pleased God and her virtue to raise her!” He had only just begun his speech, “when she recollected that he was at the head of those whom the Duke of Buckingham used to mimic; and as his presence and his language exactly revived the ridiculous ideas that had been given her of him, she could not forbear bursting out into a fit of laughter in his face, so much the more violent as she had for a long time struggled to suppress it.” It is not to be supposed that Pepys could know much of the inner circle of the court, but still there was much gossip about those who composed it, and he sets down many tales in his “Diary” respecting the doings of the too celebrated ladies. Several of the stories which were supposed to have owed much to the lively imaginations of Counts Hamilton and Grammont, are corroborated by Pepys.243 The wild frolic of Miss Jennings and Miss Price, to which allusion will be made later on in this chapter, is not overlooked by Pepys.244 Miss Jennings was not singular in her freak, and Bishop Burnet relates that about the year 1668, the King and Queen and all the court went about disguised in sedan chairs to houses where they were not known. On one occasion the Queen’s chairmen, not knowing who she was, left her alone, and she had to get back to Whitehall as best she could in a hackney coach or in a cart. The same masqueradings went on in the country as in town; and in 1670 the Queen, the Duchess of Richmond, the Duchess of Buckingham, and some others, disguised themselves as country lasses, in red petticoats, waistcoats, &c., in order to visit the fair at Audley End. The grand ladies and their companions overacted their parts, and were soon discovered, so that they were glad to escape as best they could from the crowd that gathered round them.

Pepys seems to have held the vulgar opinion that the great people ought to converse in a more distinguished tone than ordinary mortals, and he constantly remarks on the commonplace character of the King’s talk. On October 26th, 1664, there was a launch at Woolwich, attended by the King and his Court, which is fully described by our Diarist, who remarks: “But Lord! the sorry talke and discourse among the great courtiers round about him, without any reverence in the world, but so much disorder. By and by the Queene comes and her Mayds of Honour; one whereof Mrs. Boynton, and the Duchesse of Buckingham had been very sicke coming by water in the barge (the water being very rough); but what silly sport they made with them in very common terms, methought was very poor and below what people think these great people say and do.”

On the 15th of November, 1666, there was a grand ball at court, that day being the Queen’s birthday; and Pepys and his wife went to see the dancing, which they found very tiresome. The ladies, however, were pleasant to look upon, and their dresses very rich; so we read in the “Diary:” “Away home with my wife, between displeased with the dull dancing and satisfied with the clothes and persons.”

These ladies owe much of their fame to the series of portraits which still exists to show a later age the outward forms that charmed the men of two centuries ago. We are told in the Grammont “Memoirs” that, “the Duchess of York being desirous of having the portraits of the handsomest persons at court, Lely painted them, and employed all his skill in the performance; nor could he ever exert himself upon more beautiful subjects. Every picture appeared a masterpiece; and that of Miss Hamilton appeared the highest finished: Lely himself acknowledged that he had drawn it with a particular pleasure.” Next to the deshabille, in which most of these ladies are arranged, the most noticeable feature in these portraits is the soft, sleepy eye—a supposed beauty that was attained to after a considerable amount of practice:—

“– on the animated canvas stoleThe sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.”

Mrs. Hyde, the first wife of Henry Hyde, afterwards second Earl of Clarendon, had by long practice given such a languishing tenderness to her looks, that we are told by Hamilton, “she never opened her eyes but like a Chinese.” In spite of all this softness, many of these women were in the habit of swearing “good mouth-filling oaths”—a practice thoroughly in character with the general grossness of manners and language at Charles’s court. When looking at these portraits of the beauties, we must not think of them all as the mistresses of the King and Duke of York, for some remained pure in this corrupt atmosphere. “La belle Hamilton” was one of these, and the description both of her mind and person by her husband, the Count de Grammont, forms such an exquisite portrait in words that, although well known, I venture to transfer it to my pages:—“Miss Hamilton was at the happy age when the charms of the fair sex begin to bloom; she had the finest shape, the loveliest neck, and most beautiful arms in the world; she was majestic and graceful in all her movements; and she was the original after which all the ladies copied in their taste and air of dress. Her forehead was open, white, and smooth; her hair was well set, and fell with ease into that natural order which it is so difficult to imitate. Her complexion was possessed of a certain freshness, not to be equalled by borrowed colours: her eyes were not large, but they were lively, and capable of expressing whatever she pleased: her mouth was full of graces, and her contour uncommonly perfect: nor was her nose, which was small, delicate, and turned up, the least ornament of so lovely a face. In fine, her air, her carriage, and the numberless graces dispersed over her whole person, made the Chevalier de Grammont not doubt but that she was possessed of every other qualification. Her mind was a proper companion for such a form: she did not endeavour to shine in conversation by those sprightly sallies which only puzzle; and with still greater care she avoided that affected solemnity in her discourse, which produces stupidity; but without any eagerness to talk, she just said what she ought, and no more. She had an admirable discernment in distinguishing between solid and false wit; and far from making an ostentatious display of her abilities, she was reserved, though very just in her decisions: her sentiments were always noble, and even lofty to the highest extent, when there was occasion; nevertheless, she was less prepossessed with her own merit than is usually the case with those who have so much. Formed as we have described, she could not fail of commanding love; but so far was she from courting it, that she was scrupulously nice with respect to those whose merit might entitle them to form any pretensions to her.”