Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In

by Henry B. Wheatley

Sir Thomas Osborne, subsequently Viscount Dunblane, Earl of Danby, Marquis of Carmarthen, and Duke of Leeds, was appointed joint Treasurer of the Navy, with Sir Thomas Littleton, to succeed Lord Anglesey. This appointment was greatly disliked by the Duke of York and the officers of the navy, who looked upon the two men as spies set to watch them. Pepys calls Osborne a creature of the Duke of Buckingham’s,[292] and at another time says he is a beggar “having £11 or £12,00 a year, but owes about £10,000.”[293] It is clear that the Diarist did not foresee the great figure Osborne was about to make in the world; a rise somewhat due to his own parts, and much to the favour of the King. When Charles made him Lord High Treasurer, he told him that he ought to take care of himself, for he had but two friends in England. This startled Osborne, until his majesty explained himself by saying that he (the King) was one, and the other was the Treasurer’s merits.[294]

Joseph Williamson, who rose from a college tutorship to the office of Secretary of State, has a few words of praise given to him in the “Diary.” He was the son of a clergyman, and in early life is said to have acted as secretary to a member of parliament. He graduated at Oxford as a member of Queen’s College, and in December, 1661, was appointed Keeper of the State Paper Office. About the same time he was Latin Secretary to the King, an office the reversion of which had been promised to John Evelyn. In 1666 Williamson undertook the superintendence of the “London Gazette,” and in 1672 obtained the post of Clerk to the Privy Council, on the resignation of Sir Richard Browne, when he was knighted. The King had many years before promised to give the place to Evelyn, but in consideration of the renewal of the lease of Sayes Court, the latter parted with it to Williamson. Honours now came thick upon the new-made knight. He was Plenipotentiary at the Congress of Cologne in 1673 and 1674, and on his return to England was made Principal Secretary of State, a position which he held for four years. He was President of the Royal Society in 1678, and married Catherine Stuart, daughter of George, Lord Aubigny, and widow of Henry O’Brien, Lord Ibracken, eldest son of the Earl of Thomond, in 1682. He died in 1701, and was buried in the Duke of Richmond and Lennox’s vault in Henry VII.’s Chapel, by right of his wife’s connection with the Duke of Lennox.

The widow’s eldest son by her first husband, Donald O’Brien, was lost in the wreck of the “Gloucester” in 1682, and he is mentioned in a letter of Pepys to Hewer, written from Edinburgh on May 8th of that year. The will of the father contains the following very remarkable paragraph:—“I conjure my son Donatus O’Brien, to honour and obey his King in whatever he commands that is not contradictory to the Holy Scripture and Protestant religion, in which I conjure him (upon pain of my curse) not only to continue himself, but to advise his brothers and sisters to do the same; and that he never marry a Papist; and that he take great care if ever God bless him with children (which I trust he will many) to breed them strictly in the Protestant religion. I advise him to cherish the English on his estate, and drive out the Irish, and especially those of them who go under the name of gentlemen.”[295]

Before passing on to make a final note on some of the celebrated sailors alluded to in the “Diary,” a place must be found for one of the most eccentric women that ever lived—Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. Pepys writes, “the whole story of this lady is romance, and all she does is romantic.”[296] Every one who came in contact with her fooled her to the top of her bent. Evelyn likened her to Zenobia, the mother of the Gracchi, Vittoria Colonna, besides a long line of other celebrities, and when she “took the dust” in the park she was followed and crowded upon by coaches all the way she went, so that nobody could come near her.[297]

Her husband’s play, “The Humourous Lovers,” was, Pepys says, “the most silly thing that ever came upon a stage,”[298] and also “the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote,”[299] yet she and the Duke were “mightily pleased with it, and she at the end made her respects to the players from her box, and did give them thanks.”

On the 30th of May, 1667, the Duchess made a visit to one of the meetings of the Royal Society, when various fine experiments were shown for her entertainment. She was loud in her expressions of admiration as she was led out of the room by several noblemen who were among the company present. There had been great debate among the philosophers as to the advisability of inviting the lady, for many believed that the town would be full of ballads on the event. Her footmen were habited in velvet coats, and she herself appeared in antique dress, so that there is no cause for wonder that people came to see her as if she were the Queen of Sheba. Mrs. Evelyn drew a very lively picture of the Duchess in a letter to Dr. Bohun: “I acknowledge, though I remember her some years since, and have not been a stranger to her fame, I was surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any person not confined within four walls.... Her mien surpasses the imagination of poets or the descriptions of romance heroine’s greatness; her gracious bows, seasonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from her discourse, which is airy, empty, whimsical, and rambling as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions, terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.” Pepys’s summing up of the Duchess’s character is shorter, but accords well with Mrs. Evelyn’s opinion—he says she was “a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman.”[300]

In a book written by a man so intimately connected with the navy as Pepys was, it is not surprising that mention should occur pretty frequently of sailors and soldiers who commanded at sea.

In the great victory over the Dutch in 1665, the Earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Richard Boyle, second son of the Earl of Burlington, were all killed by one shot, as they were standing on board the “Royal Charles,” close by the Duke of York, into whose face their blood spurted. The Earl appears very frequently in the “Diary” as Sir Charles Berkeley, Lord Berkeley, Lord Fitzharding, and Earl of Falmouth, and he was to have been created a Marquis had he lived. Charles II. shed a flood of tears when he heard of his friend’s death, but Pepys tells us that none but the King wished him alive again.[301]

Lord Clarendon put in a few bitter words the most thorough condemnation of the man. He said, “few had observed in him any virtue or quality which they did not wish their best friends without.” The various allusions to Lord Falmouth in the “Diary” quite bear out this character, and yet because he was Sir William Coventry’s friend we are told of “his generosity, good nature, desire of public good, and low thoughts of his own wisdom; his employing his interest in the king to do good offices to all people, without any other fault than the freedom he do learn in France of thinking himself obliged to serve his king in his pleasures.”[302]