Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) studied at St Paul’s School in London, and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating in 1653. He married Elizabeth St Michel (1640-1669) two years later, and the couple at first relied on the hospitality of Samuel’s cousin Sir Edward Montagu (later Earl of Sandwich). Sir Edward brought Samuel into Naval administration, and after Pepys had escorted Charles II home across the Channel to his Restoration in 1660 he was appointed Clerk of the Acts at the Navy Office, work in which he excelled. Promoted Secretary to the Navy in 1673, he also served as a magistrate and as MP for Castle Rising and later Harwich; but in 1679 Pepys was relieved of his Navy post and briefly remanded to the Tower on suspicion of Popery. He was reappointed in 1684 but retired in 1690 after more charges were laid, following the Glorious Revolution. Pepys is best known today for his diary, which he began on January 1st 1660 and kept up until May 31st, 1669, when his eyesight began to fail.
In the family of Samuel Pepys, the Feast of the Epiphany was kept with music, cake and quaint traditions.
Twelfth Day, the Feast of the Epiphany, is kept on January 6th each year and marks the end of the Christmas season. Samuel Pepys, never one to miss the opportunity for a glass of good cheer and some venison pasty, took care to make a family party of it — even if his duties as paymaster for the Treasury meant a slow start to the festivities.
Samuel Pepys ran into a little knot of seafaring men at the Exchange, who told him some hair-raising tales about their time in Algiers.
On February 8th, 1661, Samuel Pepys, a civil servant with the Royal Navy, popped over to the Exchange to meet William Warren, who supplied wood for the nation’s warships. Warren was unavailable, but the convivial Pepys invited some Naval officers to the nearby Golden Fleece tavern, where he listened open-mouthed to their recollections of life in the slave compounds of Algiers.
After getting lost on a woodland walk and spraining his ankle, Samuel Pepys felt amply compensated when he stumbled across a flock of sheep.
On Sunday 14th July, 1667, Samuel Pepys took his party for a woodland walk in Epsom, near the home of his cousin John. Much to Samuel’s chagrin, he managed to get them lost, so they never found the pleasant woodland paths he had been looking forward to. And indeed, it seemed that things were fated to get worse before they got better.
In 1680, Samuel Pepys sat down with Charles II to record how, many years before, a bold double-bluff saved the King from Cromwell’s men.
Following defeat at Worcester on September 3rd, 1651, King Charles II (who was just twenty-one at the time) reluctantly fled to France, stumbling in disguise towards the south coast, never more than a step ahead of Cromwell’s men. In 1680, the King looked back in the company of Samuel Pepys on those anxious days, and what happened one famous night at Boscobel House in Shropshire.