A story through the diary · His work
Making the Navy work
How a clerk new to the Navy learned its business, and then had to defend it.
262 days across 10 years, 1660–1669 · 25 steps in its story
In 1660 Pepys became Clerk of the Acts: secretary of the Navy Board, which he calls “the office”, recording its orders, contracts and warrants and making up its accounts, and one of its principal officers, equal in rank with the others. By his editor Wheatley's account he knew nothing about the Navy. The diary shows him learning the trade: sea terms, the making of a cable, arithmetic, how to measure timber and masts, how pursers keep their accounts.
His colleagues included Sir William Batten, Sir William Penn and later Lord Brouncker, with Sir George Carteret as Treasurer of the Navy. William Coventry, secretary to the Duke of York, the Lord High Admiral, joined them in 1662 (Patrons tells Coventry's and the Duke's part). Hater, Hewer and Gibson were his clerks. Warren, Wood and Cocke were among the merchants he contracted with, and Warren and Gauden, the victualler, also gave him presents and money; before his speech he asked them to keep those quiet. From £40 to £6,900 tells that side.
From 1662 he also sat on the commission for Tangier, the town in North Africa that came to the King with his marriage, and from 1665 he was its treasurer; in the Dutch war he took on the victualling of the fleet. The war brought the Dutch fleet into the Medway at Chatham, and seamen were paid off with tickets, promises of pay, instead of money (The Dutch war, from his desk tells it). Afterwards Parliament and its Commissioners of Accounts inquired into the office. He answered for it, above all at the bar of the Commons on 5 March 1668, after which, Wheatley says, Parliament took no further proceedings against the officers on that charge; that morning he had resolved to quit the office once he could clear himself. The Commissioners went on, and the diary ends three days after the last step.
The story in 25 steps
Step 1 · Friday 30 November 1660
After an office day he sends for Hater, shares a barrel of oysters with him, and sits down to learn sea terms from him. Then he works till midnight to finish Sandwich's accounts.
did afterwards sit down discoursing of sea terms to learn of him
30 Nov 1660Step 2 · Tuesday 15 January 1661
At Woolwich he walks into the ropeyard, looks into the tar-houses, and takes great notice of every stage of making a cable. Then he goes on to view the new wet dock at Blackwall.
took great notice of all the several works belonging to the making of a cable
15 Jan 1661Step 3 · Thursday 19 June 1662
The Board agrees a contract for 500 tons of hemp, and he is to draw up the conditions. His head has not been so full of business, or of pleasure in it, for a long while.
for I begin to see the pleasure it gives
19 Jun 1662Step 4 · Friday 4 July 1662
He starts lessons in mathematics with Cooper, mate of the Royal Charles, beginning with the multiplication table. Later the merchant Sir William Warren begins to teach him the nature of every sort of timber and deal, and they talk till four without eating.
my first attempt being to learn the multiplication-table
4 Jul 1662Step 5 · Monday 18 August 1662
Riding into Waltham Forest with Deane of Woolwich, he is shown how the King is cheated on the timber he buys. At Ilford they practise until he understands measuring timber and board, and that evening he goes over the rules again.
he showed me the whole mystery of off square, wherein the King is abused in the timber that he buys
18 Aug 1662Step 6 · Friday 20 February 1663
At Deptford yard with Commissioner Pett he has the men called over, a muster, and is very pleased with the new call-books, “being my invention”. At Woolwich they go over the yard's stores of masts.
wherein I am very highly pleased with our new manner of call-books, being my invention
20 Feb 1663Step 7 · Thursday 10 September 1663
The Board signs his £3,000 contract with Warren for masts after one reading, with no question of quality, price, number or need. He sees what a knave in his place could do, and hopes the King has the best bargain of masts in 27 years.
good God! to see what a man might do, were I a knave
10 Sep 1663Step 8 · Wednesday 17 February 1664
Thought to have dealt hard with the merchant Wood, he is still ashamed he understands measuring Wood's masts no better. Hoping to save the King more, he sits up alone at the office till four in the morning and sets it down fairly clearly.
I was resolved to sit up and did till now it is ready to strike 4 o’clock, all alone, cold, and my candle not enough left to light me to my owne house
17 Feb 1664Step 9 · Tuesday 25 October 1664
The Board finishes Sir William Warren's great contract for timber, to Pepys's great content, for it follows the terms he wrote to Warren the night before, not those Batten proposed. That night he works late, very full of business, he writes, to his content.
because just in the terms I wrote last night to Sir W. Warren and against the terms proposed by Sir W. Batten
25 Oct 1664Step 10 · Saturday 14 October 1665
Carteret and Coventry write to tell him that his proposal on the victualling of the fleet has been read before the King, the Duke of York and “the Caball” “with complete applause and satisfaction”.
my heart and head to-night is full of the Victualling business, being overjoyed and proud at my success in my proposal about it
14 Oct 1665Step 11 · Friday 1 December 1665
He spends the day in his small room at the office drafting instructions for his surveyors of the ports. That night Gibson explains the victualling and the pursers' trade to him, until he is ashamed to be taking on a business he understands so little.
that I am ashamed I should go about the concerning myself in a business which I understand so very very little of
1 Dec 1665Step 12 · Friday 12 January 1666
The Board meets to hear his paper on the pursers. Penn objects to his proposal and catches him overstating one or two things, but in the end calls it the best thing of its kind he ever heard.
with great good will and great approbation of my method and pains in all
12 Jan 1666Step 13 · Tuesday 29 May 1666
Coventry inspects the Victualling Office; Pepys fears it is to find his negligence. Made “a little able” overnight, he acquits himself, he writes, “beyond belief”. That night he drafts with Captain Cocke a contract to offer the Duke; Cocke promises him £500 if it proceeds.
if ever I fall on it again, I deserve to be undone
29 May 1666Step 14 · Monday 20 August 1666
He works till nearly midnight on his Tangier accounts, with a helper writing as he reads, and finds himself right to a farthing in an account of £127,000.
find myself most happy in the keeping of all my accounts
20 Aug 1666Step 15 · Sunday 23 September 1666
With Coventry at Carteret's lodgings he goes through the office's accounts for Parliament: they reckon the war's charge from September 1664 to Michaelmas at £3,200,000, of which about £2,200,000 is paid. He judges the office's method near the mark, but unfit for a strict examination.
our method of accounting, though it cannot, I believe, be far wide from the mark, yet will not abide a strict examination if the Parliament should be troublesome
23 Sep 1666Step 16 · Thursday 14 February 1667
He presents the state of his Tangier accounts to the Tangier commissioners at the Lord Chancellor's. The Chancellor, in an ill humour on other matters, says no man in England has more method or makes himself better understood.
no man in England was of more method, nor made himself better understood than myself
14 Feb 1667Step 17 · Wednesday 24 July 1667
With the Dutch fleet in the Thames below Gravesend, he spends the morning abstracting the contract book into his abstract book, neglected for two years through the war, so as to have all his books perfect when Parliament comes.
now am endeavouring to have all my books ready and perfect against the Parliament comes
24 Jul 1667Step 18 · Tuesday 22 October 1667
Before the Commons committee on the Medway and Chatham he gives a full account of the office's part, reading his papers by candlelight, and believes the members are satisfied. In his view Commissioner Pett, answering for himself, makes the weakest defence of any man living.
I had a chair brought me to lean my books upon: and so did give them such an account, in a series of the whole business that had passed the Office touching the matter
22 Oct 1667Step 19 · Sunday 24 November 1667
Drafting a history of the tickets for Sir Robert Brookes, he is shown by his clerk Hewer that his denial that the Board ever discharged whole ships by ticket will not hold. He resolves instead to justify the office.
I did alter my whole counsel, and fall to arme myself with good reasons to justify the Office in so doing
24 Nov 1667Step 20 · Friday 31 January 1668
He takes the contract books to the new Commissioners of Accounts, his first time before them, and by his account gives them great satisfaction. Colonel Birch, thanked for defending him in the Commons, calls him “a man of the old way for taking pains”.
making it my endeavour to inform them what it was they were to expect from me, and what was the duty of other people
31 Jan 1668Step 21 · Thursday 5 March 1668
After a restless night and brandy for courage, he answers the committee's report on tickets at the bar of a full House until past three. All who heard, he writes, cry it up as the best they ever heard; the vote is put off.
I began our defence most acceptably and smoothly, and continued at it without any hesitation or losse
5 Mar 1668Step 22 · Friday 3 July 1668
At Brooke House for the first time, before the Commissioners of Accounts, he is questioned on Warren's business and gives “proper and safe answers”. At home he writes down what he said.
and set down presently what I had done and said this day
3 Jul 1668Step 23 · Sunday 30 August 1668
With Coventry he reads over his long letter to the Duke, which the Duke has made into his own sharp letter to the Board. Brouncker and the rest, he perceives, suspect it comes from him but dare not find fault with it.
it being my glory and defence that I did occasion and write it
30 Aug 1668Step 24 · Monday 15 March 1669
He spends the day at the Rolls with Hewer, who takes notes in shorthand while a hired clerk reads them a dozen rolls. He goes home content, having found almost all he wants of the history of the Navy from 1618 to 1642.
it was great pleasure to me to see the method wherein their rolls are kept
15 Mar 1669Step 25 · Friday 28 May 1669
Carteret tells him the Commissioners of Accounts question his providing calico flags. Asked to account for all money in their remit he has received and issued, he asks them which: the eleven months' tax, customs and prize money, they say. He leaves not fully satisfied.
my mind not fully satisfied about the monies they mean
28 May 1669
See all 262 days on the mood grid
Related stories
- From £40 to £6,900 How a clerk worth £40 became a rich official, counting his pounds on the way.
- 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.
- The failing light From tired eyes by candlelight to the fear of blindness that ended the diary.
- Curiosity Books bound alike, a microscope, a comet, the Royal Society: the reader and collector who wanted to know how things work.
Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Introduction (opens in a new tab) · The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wheatley's notes (the Officers of the Admiralty, 2 July 1660; William Coventry, 1660; Brouncker as Pepys's colleague) (opens in a new tab)