Pepys , Samuel , 1633-1703 , naval official and diarist

Samuel Pepys was born in 1633 in London. His father was a tailor, but had good family connections including a landed uncle in Huntingdonshire and an aunt with an advantageous marriage. Pepys attended Saint Paul's School and Cambridge, after which he became the private secretary of his cousin Edward Mountagu (later the Earl of Sandwich). In 1659 he began his 30 years of service to the Navy when Mountagu was made general at sea. In 1660 Pepys was given a job at the Navy Board, and was part of the group sent to bring Charles II back to England to begin his reign. In the same year he began his diary, which has made him famous and which provides an insight into the life and customs of his day, as well as giving accounts of major events such as the plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666. Pepys ended the diary in 1669, concerned that his eyesight was failing. His career continued to be successful, and he became Secretary to the Admiralty Commission in 1672. He died in 1703 and was buried at Saint Olave, Hart Street.

Information from: C ] S Knighton, Pepys, Samuel (1633-1703), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21906, accessed 16 June 2011].