A story through the diary · The man
The household
Servants hired and dismissed, boys and maids beaten, and Will Hewer, the clerk who stayed.
427 days across 10 years, 1660–1669 · 25 steps in its story
When the diary opens, Pepys and Elizabeth have one servant, Jane Birch. By 1669 they keep a coach and coachman, a boy and several maids. In between come many servants: maids who stay a month or a few years; Jane's young brother Wayneman, the footboy; the musical boy Tom Edwards, who marries Jane; and the companions hired to keep Elizabeth company, from Gosnell and Mary Ashwell to Mary Mercer, Barker and Deb Willet. They lived in the house, and he records paying their wages, sending them away, having runaways stripped of the clothes they fled in, and directing that one runaway girl be whipped. He records beating them too, and sometimes their side: tears at parting, a companion's complaint, a clerk who told Elizabeth he would not be made a slave.
That clerk is Will Hewer, who moves in with them in July 1660. Pepys scolds him, boxes his ears and strikes him, and in 1663, after Hewer complains of Elizabeth's treatment, has him move to lodgings; but Hewer stays his clerk: Pepys trusts him with his gold, takes his side against the Surveyor, and spends the diary's last morning with him over his accounts. In later life Pepys lived with Hewer at Clapham, and Hewer was his executor. Deb Willet's story has its own thread; Elizabeth's tells how Hewer was set to watch Pepys in November 1668; his advances to maids and companions are in Other women.
The story in 25 steps
Step 1 · Tuesday 17 July 1660
Pepys and Elizabeth sleep in their new house for the first time. Jane is washing the house, a servant boy also called Will is asleep, and Pepys's new clerk, Will Hewer, Mr Blackburne's nephew, already pleases him.
Will, Mr. Blackburne’s nephew, is so obedient, that I am greatly glad of him
17 Jul 1660Step 2 · Wednesday 5 September 1660
He dismisses the boy Will (not Hewer), whose thefts Elizabeth had found a week before. When the boy's father brings him back, Pepys sets out the boy's misdeeds, pays 10s. for the clothes he had made him, and tears up his indenture.
I did so clear up my boy’s roguery to his father, that he could not speak against my putting him away
5 Sep 1660Step 3 · Saturday 1 December 1660
Finding things put away in the wrong place, he takes a broom and beats “the girl” until she cries hard. The day does not name her: probably Jane, their only maid then.
which made me vexed, but before I went out I left her appeased
1 Dec 1660Step 4 · Monday 26 August 1661
Jane Birch leaves after three years as the Pepyses' maid. He thinks her grown lazy since his sister Pall came, yet pays her wages and 2s. 6d. over, and says no maid will ever please them better.
The poor girl cried, and I could hardly forbear weeping to think of her going
26 Aug 1661Step 5 · Saturday 2 November 1661
Wayneman burns his side and hand with gunpowder carried in his pocket. Finding him in a lie about where he bought it, Pepys beats the injured boy hard.
I did extremely beat him, and though it did trouble me to do it, yet I thought it necessary to do it
2 Nov 1661Step 6 · Monday 24 February 1662
Hewer has refused to go to church with the maids. After supper Pepys calls him up and scolds him in front of Elizabeth, for that and for what Hewer told Elizabeth.
telling his mistress that he would not be made a slave of, which vexes me
24 Feb 1662Step 7 · Saturday 21 June 1662
On complaints from Elizabeth and the maids he whips Wayneman, “such a little boy”, till he himself cannot stir; strips him to his shirt and whips him again till he confesses to drinking the whey, pulling a flower and leaving a candlestick on his floor.
I took him in task again, and pulled off his frock to his shirt, and whipped him till he did confess
21 Jun 1662Step 8 · Wednesday 27 August 1662
Pepys waits late at the office for Hewer, back from Deptford, and fears for him; then he finds him at ease at home. He strikes him, scolds him until midnight, and threatens to take a boy he can bring up “after my own mind”.
did in plain terms tell him that I would not be served so
27 Aug 1662Step 9 · Tuesday 9 December 1662
The maid Sarah, dismissed on 5 December because Elizabeth thought her ill-natured, leaves crying; Jane, back since March, cries too, and Pepys nearly does. Then Gosnell, Elizabeth's new companion, goes as well. He is partly glad of the saving.
All together makes my house appear to me very lonely, which troubles me much
9 Dec 1662Step 10 · Friday 24 April 1663
Sent for mustard the night before, Wayneman stayed half an hour in the streets, at a bonfire it seems. Pepys beats him with his “salt eel” (Wheatley: a rope's end), stopping two or three times for breath. The rest of the day he spends pleasantly.
with my salt eel went down in the parler and there got my boy
24 Apr 1663Step 11 · Tuesday 23 June 1663
Finding that Wayneman has not done the task in his copybook, Pepys beats him, then goes up for his rope's end. When he comes down the boy has gone, fled to his brother. Pepys resolves to let him go for good.
before I got down the boy was gone
23 Jun 1663Step 12 · Tuesday 28 July 1663
Jane and another brother, Will, come late to beg him to take Wayneman back, or send him to sea. She stays two hours. He will not take him back or give him anything; he would send him to sea, but no ship is going.
The poor girl cried all the time she was with me
28 Jul 1663Step 13 · Monday 17 August 1663
Against his will, though glad of the saving, Pepys agrees that Ashwell should go, since she and Elizabeth cannot agree; she is willing. Sure the cook-maid Hannah has a collar a former maid lost, and wanting her gone, he charges her; she leaves at once.
she do believe that my wife would have some body there that might not be so liable to give me information of things as she takes her to be
17 Aug 1663Step 14 · Saturday 14 November 1663
Hewer moves out to lodgings, weeping, with Pepys's blessing. That day Pepys hears Wayneman has been put on a Barbados ship for his behaviour with a Mr Davis. The boy asks him to get his release; Pepys will not, he says out of love.
I doubt to keep him here were to bring him to the gallows
14 Nov 1663Step 15 · Friday 9 September 1664
Mary Mercer, Elizabeth's new companion, dines at their table for the first time. That night Elizabeth, Mercer, Pepys and the new servant boy, Tom Edwards, sit singing and fiddling till eleven.
a great joy it is to see me master of so much pleasure in my house
9 Sep 1664Step 16 · Sunday 19 February 1665
At supper he hears that the maids let in a Scotswoman who haunts the office to help wash. He makes Elizabeth beat the little servant girl, unnamed that day (his December list names a little girl, Susan); they shut her in the cellar all night.
I fell mightily out, and made my wife, to the disturbance of the house and neighbours, to beat our little girle
19 Feb 1665Step 17 · Thursday 14 September 1665
Counting the day's good and bad news in the plague year, he ends with the deaths of his two servants' fathers. He puts off his sad thoughts as best he can, to keep Elizabeth and the household in good heart.
both my servants, W. Hewer and Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers, both in St. Sepulchre’s parish, of the plague this week
14 Sep 1665Step 18 · Saturday 20 January 1666
Sent home for papers, the servant boy Tom Edwards stays longer than Pepys would have him. Vexed at being kept from the office, Pepys boxes him so hard that he hurts his own thumb. The diary says nothing of how Tom fared.
boxed my boy when he came, that I do hurt my thumb so much
20 Jan 1666Step 19 · Monday 3 September 1666
As the Fire spreads, Mercer goes to her mother's without Elizabeth's leave. Her mother answers Elizabeth back, and Elizabeth sends Mercer away. It troubles Pepys less than it might: he may soon be unable to keep a companion.
her mother saying that she was not a ‘prentice girl, to ask leave every time she goes abroad
3 Sep 1666Step 20 · Friday 12 April 1667
Finding his door and hatch left open by the cook-maid Luce, he kicks her in the entry and offers a blow. Penn's footboy sees it; Pepys puts on a pleasant face so the boy may not think him angry.
was seen doing so by Sir W. Pen’s footboy, which did vex me to the heart, because I know he will be telling their family of it
12 Apr 1667Step 21 · Monday 13 May 1667
Elizabeth had struck her companion Barker over what he calls lies; Barker would not stay, and he found lies too. Elizabeth sends her off with over £10 of clothes and 20s., more than she deserved, he thinks; he is glad to be rid of her.
she had rather be put to drudgery and to wash the house than to live as she did like a gentlewoman
13 May 1667Step 22 · Wednesday 19 August 1668
Jane Birch raves for half an hour, more than four or five of them can hold down. Tom Edwards got her to promise to marry him and has now cooled. Pepys questions them and resolves to dismiss both, which troubles him.
a fit of jealousy about Tom, with whom she is in love
19 Aug 1668Step 23 · Tuesday 8 December 1668
At the Board the Navy's Surveyor accuses Hewer over a contract for kerseys and cottons, in a letter that reflects on Pepys's office, and says that if Hewer were his clerk he should lose his ears. Pepys takes Hewer's side.
I declaring I would believe W. Hewer as soon as him
8 Dec 1668Step 24 · Monday 19 April 1669
Now married and in their own lodging, Tom Edwards and Jane learn Pepys will give Tom £40 and Jane £20, and Elizabeth Jane £20 more, so both start equal. Elizabeth spends the day at Jane's, helping her, as she said, to cut out linen.
I did intend to give him L40 for himself, and L20 to his wife, towards their setting out in the world
19 Apr 1669Wheatley cut part of this entry.
Step 25 · Monday 31 May 1669
On the last day of the diary he spends the morning with Hewer over accounts that his bad eyes and his own neglect have left behind, so that he can go abroad. The diary ends that day.
Up very betimes, and so continued all the morning with W. Hewer, upon examining and stating my accounts
31 May 1669
See all 427 days on the mood grid
Related stories
- Elizabeth Nine years of a marriage in his own words: tenderness and quarrels, her loneliness, his jealousy and his violence, her reproaches, and the night she found him embracing Deb Willet.
- Deb Willet Elizabeth's young companion: his sexual advances in his own house, the discovery, her dismissal, and how he went on pursuing her.
- Other women The women he made sexual advances to over nine years, many of them dependent on him for a husband's post, a widow's pay or a place in his house.
- The family A tailor's family, an uncle's estate at Brampton, and the eldest son who ran them both.
- From £40 to £6,900 How a clerk worth £40 became a rich official, counting his pounds on the way.
- Music Singing in parts, the viol and the flageolet, songs of his own: from the diary's first month to its last week.
Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Introduction (Henry B. Wheatley) (opens in a new tab)