Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In

by Henry B. Wheatley

The first great improvement in coach-building was made soon after the Restoration, when glass-coaches were introduced. The Comte de Grammont did not approve of the coach made for the King, and therefore ordered from Paris an elegant and magnificent calash, which was greatly admired, and cost him two thousand louis.

There were some who did not appreciate the improved carriages, and were alive to the evils that were caused by the change. “Another pretty thing was my Lady Ashly’s speaking of the bad qualities of glass-coaches, among others the flying open of the doors upon any great shake; but another was that my Lady Peterborough being in her glass-coach with the glass up, and seeing a lady pass by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear that she thought it had been open, and so ran her head through the glass!”[346]

It is a curious instance of the survival of terms in popular language that certain carriages were styled glass-coaches even within living memory.

Although the hours kept by “society” in Charles II.’s reign were considerably earlier than those now adopted, and Pepys often went to bed by daylight,[347] yet people did sit up very late sometimes. On the 9th of May, 1668, the House of Commons sat till five o’clock in the morning to discuss a difference that had arisen between them and the House of Lords. One night Pepys stayed at the office so late that it was nearly two o’clock before he got to bed,[348] and at another time the servant got up at the same hour to do the week’s washing.[349] The watchman perambulated the streets with his bell and called out the hours, so that when Pepys was sitting up to fill up the entries in the “Diary,” he often heard the cry “Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning,”[350] or some similar information.

It is not easy to settle with any great accuracy the respective values of money at that time and at present, as many things were considerably cheaper, but others were dearer. Bab May said that £300 per annum was an ample income for a country gentlemen; a remark that was repeated by Marvell, and increased by him to £500. The gentry did not like this criticism, but it shows at least that money had a much greater purchasing power then than now. In the winter of 1666–67 the farmers were very unfortunate, and many were forced to become bankrupts, so that property previously bringing in £1,000[351] suddenly became worth only £500. The wages of a cookmaid were £4 a year, which Pepys thought high,[352] and a coach cost £53,[353] but a beaver hat was charged as high as £4 5s.[354] Twenty-five pounds was paid for a painted portrait, and £30 for a miniature, and £80 for a necklace of pearls. Cherries were sold at two shillings a pound,[355] oranges at six shillings a dozen, and dinners at an ordinary varied from seven shillings to a guinea.

There are so many little items in the “Diary” which are of interest as illustrating old customs, some of which still exist, and others which have died out, that it would be quite impossible to allude here even to a fraction of them. One or two instances, therefore, gathered at random, must be sufficient. Pepys on several occasions mentions the custom of “beating the bounds” in the various parishes on Ascension Day or Holy Thursday, when a boy was in some cases beaten, or, as in Dorsetshire, tossed into a stream, in order to impress very forcibly upon his memory the locality of the parish boundaries. At one time he writes, “This day was kept a holy-day through the town; and it pleased me to see the little boys walk up and down in procession with their broomstaffs in their hands, as I had myself long ago gone,”[356] and at another, “They talked with Mr. Mills about the meaning of this day, and the good uses of it; and how heretofore, and yet in several places, they do whip a boy at each place they stop at in their procession.”[357] Allusion has already been made to the mixed motives that drew Pepys to church, and how he often attended more to the pretty faces in the congregation than to the words of the preacher. He had high authority for his conduct in the demeanour of the court, and he himself tells us how, while Bishop Morley (of Winchester) was preaching on the song of the angels, and reprehending the mistaken jollity of the court, the courtiers “all laugh in the chapel when he reflected on their ill actions and courses.”[358]

There is comparatively little in the “Diary” about the Nonconformists, although in the early part of his career Pepys was more favourable to their claims than to those of the conforming clergy. He was once induced to give five shillings to a parson among the fanatics, who said a long grace like a prayer, and was in great want, although he would willingly have done otherwise. His aunt James, “a poor, religious, well-meaning, good soul,” told him that the minister’s prayers had helped to cure him when he was cut for the stone.[359]

We have a curious peep into a rustic church which Pepys and his cousin Roger attended on the 4th of August, 1662: “At our coming in, the country people all rose with so much reverence; and when the parson begins, he begins ‘Right worshipful and dearly beloved,’ to us.”

There are several allusions in the “Diary” to various punishments in vogue at the time. In 1663, the parish of St. Olave’s was supplied with a new pair of stocks “very handsome,” and one Sunday, a poor boy who had been found in a drunken state by the constable, was led off “to handsel them.”[360] It was formerly the custom to punish offenders on the spot where their crimes had been committed; thus, on February 18th, 1659–60, two soldiers were hanged in the Strand for their mutiny at Somerset House. The bodies of the criminals were frequently allowed to hang in some conspicuous spot until they rotted away; and on April 11th, 1661, Pepys and “Mrs. Anne” “rode under the man that hangs upon Shooter’s Hill, and a filthy sight it is to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones.” London must have exhibited a ghastly appearance when the heads of traitors were stuck up on the city gates, on Temple Bar, Westminster Hall, and other public places. The heads and the limbs were covered with pitch, and remained in their elevated position for years, until in many cases they were blown down by the wind. Pepys once found the head of a traitor at the top of one of the turrets of Westminster Abbey.[361] Some of Charles I.’s judges received an easier punishment. William Monson, the “degraded” Earl of Castlemaine, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Robert Wallop were sentenced to imprisonment for life, and to be drawn on sledges with ropes round their necks from the Tower to Tyburn and back, on the anniversary of the late King’s execution. Pepys met the three sledges on Tower Hill on the 27th of January, 1661–62.

If called upon in the character of a judge to sum up the case against the people of England in respect to their manners after the Restoration, I think it would be but fair to say that these were better than those of their rulers. It was not until after the Revolution, when the vices of Charles’s court had had time to pollute the children of the men who brought him back, that the lowest depths of immorality were reached.