When Pepys visited Portsmouth in May, 1661, he was very pleased with his reception by the officers of the dockyard, who treated him with much respect.

Although the date of the foundation of Woolwich dockyard is not recorded, it is known to have been of considerable importance in Henry VIII.’s reign. It figures very frequently in the “Diary.”[230]

Very soon after Pepys was settled in his office, he thought it advisable to give his attention to the question of the British dominion of the seas, and he made a special study of Selden’s “Mare Clausum.” He intended to write a treatise on the rights of the English flag, and present it to the Duke of York. His reason for doing this was that it promised to be a good way to make himself known.[231] The right of making foreign vessels strike their sails to the English flag had been insisted upon from early times. Selden’s work, in which the case was strongly urged, met therefore with great favour. Charles I. made an order in council that a copy should be kept in the council chest, another in the Court of Exchequer, and a third in the Court of Admiralty. The upholders of this right triumphed when, in the treaty of peace with the Dutch (February 9th, 1674), the States-General confessed that to be a right which before had been styled courtesy, and they agreed that not only separate ships, but whole fleets should strike sails to any fleet or ship carrying the king’s flag.[232] John Evelyn argued strongly in favour of England’s right to the dominion of the sea in his “Navigation and Commerce” (1674), but he privately confessed to Pepys that he did not consider there was any sufficient evidence of the right.[233]

We must now turn our attention to the Diarist’s colleagues at the Navy Office, and it is here very needful to caution the reader against putting implicit faith in all the adverse remarks that fill the “Diary.” It is a curious fact that, with the exception of Sir William Coventry, scarcely any of the officers come off with a good character. Pepys held Coventry in profound respect, and was never prouder than when he received a word of praise from him, and yet we do not obtain a very favourable idea of the secretary to the Duke of York from other writers, and in the pages of Clarendon we are presented with a very adverse character of him.

Those officers with whom Pepys came most in contact were Sir George Carteret, the Treasurer; Sir Robert Slingsby and Sir John Minnes, successive Comptrollers; Sir William Batten and Colonel Thomas Middleton, successive Surveyors; and Sir William Penn and Lord Viscount Brouncker, additional Commissioners.

Pepys did not hold Carteret in much esteem, and we read constant disparaging remarks respecting him, such as that on one occasion he wanted to know what the four letters S. P. Q. R. meant, “which ignorance is not to be borne in a Privy Counsellor,”[234] but after Sir George’s son had married a daughter of Lord Sandwich, and he had thus become a near connection of Pepys’s family, we read of “his pleasant humour,” and are told that he is “a most honest man.” Sir Robert Slingsby died in 1661, and therefore does not occupy a very prominent position in the “Diary,” but Pepys grieved for his loss.

Sir John Minnes was better known as a wit than as a sailor, and it was he who taught Pepys to appreciate Chaucer. He does not, however, come off very handsomely in the “Diary.” Captain Holmes called him “the veriest knave and rogue and coward in the world,”[235] and Sir William Coventry likened him to a lapwing, who was always in a flutter to keep others from the nest.[236] Pepys himself, after a few quarrels, hints pretty plainly that he was an old coxcomb, a mere jester or ballad-monger, and quite unfit for business.

We are told of Sir William Batten’s corruption and underhand dealing,[237] of his knavery,[238] and of his inconsequent action in objecting to lighthouses generally, and then proposing one for Harwich;[239] but Pepys’s two chief enemies were Sir William Penn and Lord Brouncker.

Sir William Penn and Pepys were much thrown together, and were alternately very friendly and very jealous of each other. When Pepys first associated with Penn, he found him sociable but cunning, and ever after the pages of the “Diary” are filled with vituperation respecting this successful admiral. Considering the eminent position of William Penn the son, as a leader among the Quakers, it is curious to note that before the Restoration, and when Monk was coming from the North, it was reported that Penn, the father, had turned Quaker.[240] In May, 1660, Charles II. wrote to Monk: “I have so good an opinion of General Penn, that if you had not recommended him to me I would have taken care of all his interests;”[241] and we cannot doubt that he possessed some eminent qualities of which we learn nothing in the “Diary.”

Lord Brouncker was a good mathematician in his own day, and his name has come down with credit to ours as the first President of the Royal Society, but his portrait as painted by Pepys is far from a pleasing one—let us hope that it was not a true likeness. He was not a rich man, for his mother was a gamester, and his father a land-lacking peer, and he was probably not over particular as to the means he took to obtain money. We may believe this, however, without agreeing with Pepys that he was “a rotten-hearted, false man.”[242] Aubrey says that the following lines were written on his parents:—