the return of the Clerk of the Acts, but without success. When the election came on, Pepys was in distress, and his loss prevented him from taking part in the proceedings; so that, in spite of all that friends could do for him, he was defeated, and John Bence was elected on the 9th of November. In the following year he quarrelled with Sir James Barkman Leyenburg, the Swedish Resident in this country, and a duel between them was only prevented by an order from the King, given in a letter from Matthew Wren to Pepys, commanding him not to send or receive a challenge. This incident is not easy to be understood, as from what we know of Pepys he was not a man who would be very wishful to rush into a hostile encounter. Lord Braybrooke suggests that, as Leyenburg married the widow of Sir William Batten, the quarrel may have related to some money which was owed to Pepys by Batten, and for which the widow was liable; but this suggestion can only be taken for what it is worth.
We do not know the exact date of Pepys’s appointment to the Secretaryship of the Admiralty, but in a document found among his manuscripts, and dated November 3, 1672, he is described as holding that office.81 When he was thus raised in his official position he was able to obtain his old place of Clerk of the Acts for his own clerk, Thomas Hayter, and his brother, John Pepys, who held it jointly. The latter does not appear to have done much credit to Samuel. He took holy orders in 1666,82 and was appointed clerk to the Trinity House in 1670. When he died, in 1677, he was in debt £300 to the corporation, which Samuel had to pay.
Pepys’s kind patron and kinsman the Earl of Sandwich died heroically in the naval action in Solebay, and on June 24, 1672, his funeral was performed with some pomp. There were eleven earls among the mourners, and Pepys, as the first among “the six Bannerrolles,” walked in the procession. This same year there was some talk of the elevation to the peerage of Sir Robert Paston, M. P. for Castle Rising, and the Duke of York at once thought of Pepys as a candidate for his seat. The influence of Lord Howard, who had done what he could at Aldborough, was pre-eminent at Castle Rising; and James at once spoke to him to obtain his interest. Lord Howard was, however, in somewhat of a fix, for according to a letter which Thomas Povey wrote Pepys on August 31st, 1672, “he stands engaged to the King for Sir Francis North, to the Duchess of Cleveland for Sir John Trevor, her counsel and feoffee, and to the Duke for” Pepys. Time, however, got the peer out of his dilemma. First of all, Sir Robert Stewart, a Master of Chancery and the other member for the borough, died, and Trevor was elected in his place; then North was put in for King’s Lynn; and lastly, when Paston was created Viscount Yarmouth, Pepys was chosen to succeed him, on the 4th of November, 1673. Mr. Offley, his unsuccessful opponent, petitioned against the return, and the Committee of Privilege determined the election to be void; but Parliament being prorogued shortly afterwards, before any decision had been come to by the House, Pepys was permitted to retain his seat. The journals of the House83 contain a full account of the proceedings, which chiefly consisted of evidence respecting a frivolous charge made against Pepys. It was reported that a person of quality (who turned out to be Lord Shaftesbury) had seen an altar with a crucifix upon it in his house. When called upon, Shaftesbury denied that he had ever seen “an altar in Mr. Pepys’s house or lodgings; as to the crucifix,” he said he had “some imperfect memory of seeing somewhat which he conceived to be a crucifix.”84 Pepys stood up in his place and flatly denied “that he had ever had any altar, or crucifix, or the image or picture of any saint whatsoever in his home from the top to the bottom of it.”85 He further explained what might have given cause for the aspersion. “Because he could not go much abroad, he has made his home as pleasant to himself as he could, embellishing it with painting. He has a small table in his closet, with a Bible and Common Prayer-book upon it, and ‘The Whole Duty of Man,’ a bason and an ewer, and his wife’s picture over it, done by Lombard. This is the whole thing talked of for an altar.”86
It appears from the endorsement of a letter from Balthasar St. Michel to Pepys, to which allusion has already been made, that the latter was actually charged with having turned Mrs. Pepys from a Protestant to a Roman Catholic. Pepys therefore obtained from her brother an account of the fortunes of their family, which shows the utter absurdity of any such imputations.87 He was always a true Protestant, although there is some reason for believing that Mrs. Pepys was a Catholic at heart.88 On the passing of the Test Act, in 1673, the Duke of York resigned all his employments; and the Admiralty being put in commission, Pepys, as secretary, was brought in immediate correspondence with Charles II.
In 167789 he was elected Master of the Clothworkers’ Company, when he presented a richly-chased silver cup, which is still used at their dinners. He was not long allowed to remain in peace, for the charge of popery, which was first made in 1673, was frequently repeated, and in 1679 he was accused, on the depositions of Colonel John Scott, of betraying the navy, by sending secret particulars to the French Government; and also of a design to dethrone the King and extirpate the Protestant religion. He and Sir Anthony Deane were committed to the Tower under the Speaker’s warrant on May 22nd, and Pepys’s place at the Admiralty was filled up by the appointment of Thomas Hayter. When the two prisoners were brought to the bar of the King’s Bench on the 2nd of June, the Attorney-General refused bail; but subsequently they were allowed to find security for £30,000. At length, after several months of delay, it was found that Colonel Scott refused to acknowledge to the truth of the original deposition; and the prisoners were relieved from their bail on February 12th, 1679–80. Scott turned out to be a blackguard. He is said to have cheated the States of Holland out of £7,000, in consequence of which he was hanged in effigy at the Hague, in 1672; and in 1681 he fled from England to escape from the law, as he had been found guilty of wilful murder for killing a coachman. James, a butler, previously in Pepys’s service, confessed on his deathbed, in 1680, that he had trumped up the whole story relating to his former master’s change of religion at the instigation of Mr. Harbord, M.P. for Launceston, a leading enemy of Pepys.90
Evelyn visited Pepys in the Tower, and expressed his belief in the unjustness of the charge. While he was in custody Pepys kept up a correspondence with the Duke of York, who was then abroad, and he received an application from a Mr. D’Oyly for a loan of £50; but he was obliged to answer that he himself had been forced to borrow £100 from friends, to pay his fees and defray his expenses while in durance. It is impossible not to respect Pepys for his conduct towards James when the Royal Duke was in disgrace. He certainly made enemies by his action, and one of these was Andrew Marvell, who is reputed to have published a “Black Book” entitled, “A List of the principal labourers in the great design of Popery and arbitrary Power,” which contains the following vituperative entry: “Castle Rising—Samuel Pepys Esquire, once a taylor, then a serving man to Lord Sandwich, now Secretary to the Admiralty, got by passes and other illegal wages £40,000.” We know these assertions to be untrue, but they probably did the victim as much harm as if they had been true.
Pepys was chosen by the electors of Harwich as their member in the short Parliament that sat from March to July, 1679, his colleague being Sir Anthony Deane; but both members were superseded in the next Parliament, that met on the 17th of October, 1679.
In 1680 Pepys attended on Charles II. at Newmarket, and there he took down, from the King’s own mouth, the narrative of his escape after the Battle of Worcester, which now remains in the Pepysian Library, both in shorthand and longhand.
Sir Thomas Page, the Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, died in August, 1681; and S. Maryon, a Fellow of Clare, wrote at once, suggesting that Pepys was a fit and proper person for the post, and urging him to apply to the King for it. Pepys replied that he believed Colonel Legge (afterwards Lord Dartmouth) wanted to get the office for an old tutor. Although he pretended unfitness, he evidently liked the idea; and in a letter to Legge, while recommending an early application for the tutor, he expresses himself as willing to take the Provostship if the tutor cannot get it. He also promises, if he should be chosen, to give the whole profit of the first