A story through the diary · His work
From £40 to £6,900
How a clerk worth £40 became a rich official, counting his pounds on the way.
298 days across 10 years, 1660–1669 · 25 steps in its story
In January 1660 Pepys was a clerk on £50 a year, worth £40 by his own reckoning. By May 1667 his accounts showed £6,900. His patron Edward Montagu, soon Earl of Sandwich, got him the post of Clerk of the Acts, at £350 a year; the Tangier treasurership and the victualling followed in 1665. The salary was the smaller part. Fees, shares in contracts, and presents from merchants and contractors who dealt with his office made him rich, and he counted his pounds, and worried over them. By the end of 1668 his accounts had fallen nearly two years behind, and he no longer knew what he was worth.
The Money and mood chart shows the totals he wrote down, most of them at a month's end and none after May 1667, with his average mood for each month alongside. Two early totals, drawn as hollow circles, are probably slips or misprints: £640 in May 1660, though later that month he is worth about £80, and 1,500 in March 1662, when he also finds himself over £100 worse off than six months before.
The story in 25 steps
Step 1 · Sunday 29 January 1660
He spends a Sunday afternoon casting up his accounts and finds himself worth £40 and more: better than he expected, though he fears he has forgotten something.
do find myself to be worth L40 and more, which I did not think, but am afraid that I have forgot something
29 Jan 1660Step 2 · Thursday 22 March 1660
About to sail with his patron, he gets his warrant as Secretary to the Generals of the Fleet. Men already offer him a rapier, wine, a gun or a silver hatband in return for favours; he prays not to be “too much lifted up hereby”.
Strange how these people do now promise me anything; one a rapier, the other a vessel of wine or a gun
22 Mar 1660Step 3 · Friday 29 June 1660
He gets his warrant as Clerk of the Acts, secretary to the Navy Board. News that his predecessor Barlow is alive and coming to claim the place “made my heart sad a little”, and that night he takes it to Montagu.
he bade me get possession of my Patent; and he would do all that could be done to keep him out
29 Jun 1660Step 4 · Thursday 16 August 1660
Riding with him in his coach, Montagu talks of how good the new place may prove: a man grows rich in office not by the salary but by the chances to make money it brings.
it was not the salary of any place that did make a man rich, but the opportunity of getting money while he is in the place
16 Aug 1660Step 5 · Wednesday 24 July 1661
Back at the office he takes “great pleasure” in talking with “persons of quality” and being “in command”. He gives it out among them that his late uncle left him £200 a year in land, to make them think more of him.
I give it out among them that the estate left me is L200 a year in land, besides moneys, because I would put an esteem upon myself
24 Jul 1661Step 6 · Sunday 2 March 1662
Talking long in bed with Elizabeth about living frugally, he tells her what he would do if he were worth £2,000: be a knight and keep a coach. It pleases her.
proposing to her what I could and would do if I were worth L2,000, that is, be a knight, and keep my coach
2 Mar 1662Step 7 · Wednesday 20 August 1662
Montagu, now Earl of Sandwich, has put him on the new Tangier commission with “a great many great persons”, and Mr Coventry calls him “the life of this office”. He counts himself “a very rising man”.
So that on all hands, by God’s blessing, I find myself a very rising man.
20 Aug 1662Step 8 · Tuesday 10 February 1663
Sir William Warren, who sells timber and masts to the Navy, leaves a box at his door. Inside, besides gloves, are a silver dish and cup engraved with his arms, worth about £18: “the best I ever had yet”.
a fair state dish of silver, and cup, with my arms, ready cut upon them, worth, I believe, about L18, which is a very noble present
10 Feb 1663Step 9 · Saturday 31 October 1663
A velvet cloak, new suits and two periwigs cut his worth to £717. He is resolved “to go like myself” rather than “sneake like a beggar”, but sees he must earn more than his salary.
therefore I must look about me to get something more than just my salary, or else I may resolve to live well and die a beggar
31 Oct 1663Wheatley cut part of this entry.
Step 10 · Saturday 12 December 1663
Mr Deering offers him 50 pieces and £200 a year for help with his business. He makes no bargain, but will help and take what is given. A ship-chandler sends Elizabeth a gown; already obliged to Mrs Russell, he is “in both their pays”.
as I would not by any thing be bribed to be unjust in my dealings, so I was not so squeamish as not to take people’s acknowledgment where I had the good fortune by my pains to do them good and just offices
12 Dec 1663Step 11 · Saturday 16 July 1664
At the Tangier Committee he gets the victualling contract “carried for my people”, Alsopp, Lanyon and Yeabsly, who have promised him £300 a year. Gauden, the Navy's victualler, wanted it too; Coventry argued for whoever served cheapest.
and by their promise I do thereby get L300 per annum to myself, which do overjoy me
16 Jul 1664Step 12 · Thursday 21 July 1664
Gauden's clerk asks what plate, worth about £100, he would like. He urges his unwillingness, then is sent “the noblest flaggons that ever I saw”, to oblige him over Tangier victualling. Having backed the rival bidders, he doubts he can help, but gains either way.
glad I am to see that I shall be sure to get something on one side or other, have it which will
21 Jul 1664Step 13 · Sunday 31 July 1664
His month's accounts show him worth £1,014, his first £1,000 and the height of all he has long aimed at. He hopes to lay up more if the Tangier victualling business goes on.
I do find myself most clearly worth L1014, the first time that ever I was worth L1000 before
31 Jul 1664Step 14 · Monday 20 March 1665
Povy resigns the Tangier treasurership to him, and the Tangier Committee hears the Duke's praise of him and confirms him at once: “a good fortune beyond all imagination”.
a man whose industry and discretion he would trust soon as any man’s in England
20 Mar 1665Step 15 · Friday 27 October 1665
He accepts the post of Surveyor-General of Victualling, which he had asked Coventry for and which Coventry proposes in the warmest terms. That night he finds he has made above £129 in six months from his services to Captain Taylor.
do make me joyful beyond myself that I cannot express it, to see that as I do take pains, so God blesses me
27 Oct 1665Step 16 · Friday 8 December 1665
Offering Mr Gauden the £4,000 owed him for Tangier, he is asked for a note for only £3,500, keeping £500 himself. It is far more than the £100 he expected, and “against my judgement”, but Gauden insists; it puts him “into great joy”.
prayed me most frankly to give him a note for L3500 and accept the other L500 for myself
8 Dec 1665Step 17 · Sunday 31 December 1665
The year ends “to my great joy”: his worth has more than tripled, from £1,300 to £4,400, and his posts have grown, with Tangier and the victualling. The plague has cost him dear, with his household and clerks lodged out of town.
It is true we have gone through great melancholy because of the great plague, and I put to great charges by it
31 Dec 1665Step 18 · Monday 31 December 1666
His year-end accounts disappoint him: gains down to £2,986 and spending up to £1,154, “a sum not fit to be said”. Still he is worth above £6,200, and serves his guests on silver plates.
I am come to abound in good plate, so as at all entertainments to be served wholly with silver plates
31 Dec 1666Step 19 · Friday 31 May 1667
In the evening he gets his tangled interest accounts, mixed up with some of Sir George Carteret's money, “evened and set right”, and finds himself £6,900 in credit.
finding by the balance of my account that I am creditor L6900, for which the Lord of Heaven be praised!
31 May 1667Wheatley cut part of this entry.
Step 20 · Thursday 13 June 1667
With the Dutch burning ships at Chatham, he sends his father and wife to Brampton with about £1,300 in gold, sends more after them, makes his will, and carries £300 in gold in a belt: “my heart is full of fear”.
I have also made a girdle, by which, with some trouble, I do carry about me L300 in gold about my body
13 Jun 1667Step 21 · Thursday 10 October 1667
At Brampton, by dark lantern, he digs up the gold his father buried in the garden, not half a foot down and in sight of the neighbours. The bags are rotten. Over a hundred pieces are missing; at midnight he and Hewer find forty-five more.
But I was out of my wits almost, and the more from that, upon my lifting up the earth with the spudd, I did discern that I had scattered the pieces of gold round about the ground among the grass and loose earth
10 Oct 1667Step 22 · Monday 24 February 1668
Captain Allen, once Clerk of the Ropeyard at Chatham, warns him he may be accused of taking £50 from Mason, a timber merchant. He believes it false, but the presents he has “indeed taken” send him to review his dealings.
it troubles me to have my name mentioned in this business, and more to consider how I may be liable to be accused where I have indeed taken presents
24 Feb 1668Step 23 · Wednesday 2 December 1668
He rides out with Elizabeth for the first time in his own coach, to the King's playhouse and Whitehall, and prays God to bless it to him and continue it.
And so back to my wife in my coach, and so with great content and joy home
2 Dec 1668Step 24 · Thursday 31 December 1668
At the year's end he pays his bills and wages, owing barely £5 except to the public. But his accounts are nearly two years behind, and he no longer knows what he is worth; he means to catch up as far as his eyes allow.
My greatest trouble is now from the backwardness of my accounts, which I have not seen the bottom of now near these two years, so that I know not in what condition I am in the world
31 Dec 1668Step 25 · Monday 10 May 1669
Creed warns him that people talk of his fine coach and horses, and Povy has noticed his gold-lace sleeves in the Park. Vexed, he resolves to have the lace taken off at once.
who tells me he hears how fine my horses and coach are, and advises me to avoid being noted for it
10 May 1669
See all 298 days on the mood grid
Related stories
- The family A tailor's family, an uncle's estate at Brampton, and the eldest son who ran them both.
- The household Servants hired and dismissed, boys and maids beaten, and Will Hewer, the clerk who stayed.
- Patrons Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich from 1660, made him; then Coventry and the Duke of York took over, while Sandwich fell from favour, went abroad and came home deep in debt.
- The Dutch war, from his desk England's war with the Dutch, 1664–67, seen by the man who had to find the ships, the seamen and the money.
- Making the Navy work How a clerk new to the Navy learned its business, and then had to defend it.
Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Introduction (opens in a new tab)