Samuel Pepys: sex, violence & corruption

At Magdalene Cambridge, Samuel Pepys' own college, the Pepys Library was a rare example of a C17th private library and one of the most significant collections of books and manuscripts in British history. The diary, written in 1660-9, was found in this college in 1825, when the censored version was pub­lished. The uncensored version first appeared in the 1980s by Hyman of London, supplemented with commentary from prominent hist­orians.

Samuel Pepys' diaries were valued for their colourful evocation of Restoration England. Yet a fresh analysis of Pepys’ world-famous journals, carried out by Guy de la Bédoyère, revealed a man with a proclivity for coercion and sexual violence. He was a bully, a vain and philandering hypocrite, and a domineering and mean-minded husband.

Samuel Pepys was Britain’s most celebrated diarist. Between Jan 1660-May 1669, he recorded his daily life in illuminating detail. He wrote about his relationship with his wife Elizabeth, and the frustrations of managing his household and the servants. He left first-hand accounts of the Plague Epidemic that likely claimed c100,000 lives in the capital in 1665–66, and of the Great Fire of London that followed. He has come down through the years as one of the key primary sources for those trying to understand the Restoration era.

But there was a dark side to Pepys’ writings, which was never intended to be made public. He described a sordid litany of sexual encounters ranging from his relationships with long-term mistresses to his assaults on maids, including members of his own staff. In an era when corruption was common-place, Pepys also wrote candidly about using his position as a civilian naval official in Restoration London to coerce sexual services from women seeking financial promotion for their husbands.

Consider Feb 1667 when one day Pepys met in his office with Elizabeth Burrows, who was c30 years old and the widow of a naval lieutenant killed in action in 1665. Pepys had promised her financial help. This diary entry, tellingly omitted from editions published in the C19th, appeared without its meaning explained in the 1970s edition. “I had Mrs Burrows all alone in my closet and did there kiss and touch her breasts as much as I wanted until making myself do, but she would not suffer that I should put my hand below her skirts which I endeavoured. Thence away, and with my wife by coach to the Duke of York’s playhouse.”

Elizabeth de Pepys, by John Hayls

National Portrait Gallery

The description was typically casual. That Pepys went to collect his wife Elizabeth immediately after playing with Ms Burrows was astonishing. And the mix of English and foreign words was a deliberate tactic. Pepys tended to avoid specifics in his writing, and often used indirect references to sexual details, except “making myself do” was direct.

There was a very dark side to Pepys’ writings, which was never intended to be made public. So why isn’t this ugly side of Pepys’ character better known? It helps to know that past diary transcribers and biographers often depicted these activities as fun, or simply ignored them altogether. The full extent and implications of Pepys’ self-confessed adulterous activities, including coercion and sexual violence, were often glossed over. It’s a story further complicated by the history behind the diary text publication, sections of which first appeared in print in 1825.

Why was Pepys paying such close attention to his wife?

Artists painting portrait of Elizabeth Pepys.

Year? Mary Evans Picture Library.

Most of the controversial entries were excised from C19th editions, but all are now featured in the new transcriptions & Pepys's secret code translated from the original shorthand diary. Confessions of Samuel Pepys also revealed how all previous transcribers of the diary and many biographers had deliberately massaged Pepys's reputation.

Confessions of Samuel Pepys focused on Pepys's controversial private life for a modern readership, by charting his varied and complex relationships with women. They included his wife Elizabeth whom he both loved and treated abominably, their domestic servants, the mistresses whom he secretly visited in Westminster and Deptford, a host of other opportunistic encounters, the great ladies of the court whom he ogled, and the actresses whose company he delighted in and combined with casual petting. All these he recounted in shorthand, often disguising the more salacious occasions in his own cryptic Franco-Latino so-called language.

This is for those who seeks to understand what it was like to live back then, a time of Charles II, Restoration London, where women wore beauty spots, and some men thought nothing of attempting a seduction during a church service. Guy de la Bédoyère has transcribed previously un-known or hidden aspects of Samuel Pepys's diary that concerned his pursuit, seduction, harassment and assault of a large number of women. From the wives of colleagues, ladies of fashion and prostitutes, Pepys was catholic in his taste in women. What made this books so astonishing though, was less the titillating details (eg breast fondling) and more the honest way in which Pepys records such endeavours and the inevitable fall out with his wife. Elizabeth Pepys seemed a tragic figure. Pepys 1] made some attempts to stop his fornicating, 2] failed, 3] was full of self-loathing and 4] recorded his hapless attempts to make his wife happier. He showed the full expanse of human brilliance and folly.

Pepys was not simply a dirty predator; he was also needy and some of the women involved appeared to tolerate his affections, in hope of preferment for their husbands. Guy de la Bédoyère deserves great credit for unlocking this hitherto hidden aspect of Pepys's life, clarifying that women would not endanger their husbands' careers by reporting Pepys.

Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Faculty of History