Meanwhile, great was the explosion of public wrath, both against the Court and the Admiralty officials. Crowds of people congregated in Westminster, loudly clamouring for a parliament. The windows of the Lord Chancellor's house were broken, and a gibbet erected before his gate. "People do cry out in the streets of their being bought and sold; and both they, and everybody that do come to me, do tell me that people make nothing of talking treason in the streets openly; as, that they are bought and sold, and governed by Papists, and that we are betrayed by people about the king, and shall be delivered up to the French, and I know not what." Poor Pepys expected nothing else than an immediate attack upon his office, in which, by some miraculous circumstance, there happened to be at the moment a considerable sum of public money. His situation rendered him peculiarly obnoxious to abuse; and at one time it was currently reported that he was summarily ordered to the Tower. These things cost him no little anxiety; but what distracted him most was, the agonising thought that the whole of his private savings and fortune, which he had by him in specie, might, in a single moment, be swept away and dissipated for ever. If the seamen who were mutinous for pay should chance to hear of the funds in hand, and take it into their heads to storm the office, there was little probability of them drawing nice distinctions between public and private property: and, in that case, money, flagons, and all would find their way to Wapping. Also, there might be a chance of a reckoning in any event; "for," said he, "the truth is, I do fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone, that I do this night resolve to study with my father and wife what to do with the little I have in money by me, for I give up all the rest that I have in the king's hands, for Tangier, for lost. So God help us! and God knows what disorders we may fall into, and whether any violence on this office, or perhaps some severity on our persons, as being reckoned by the silly people, or perhaps may, by policy of state, be thought fit to be condemned by the king and Duke of York, and so put to trouble; though, God knows! I have in my own person done my full duty, I am sure." So, in the very midst of the confusion, Samuel, like a wise man, set about regulating his own affairs. He was lucky enough to get £400 paid him, to account of his salary, and he despatched his father and wife to Cambridgeshire, with £1300 in gold in their night-bag. Next day Mr Gibson, one of his clerks, followed them with another 1000 pieces, "under colour of an express to Sir Jeremy Smith." The two grand silver flagons went to Kate Joyce's, where it is to be presumed they would be tolerably safe. Pepys, moreover, provided himself a girdle, "by which, with some trouble, I do carry about me £300 of gold about my body, that I may not be without something in case I should be surprised; for I think, in any nation but ours, people that appear—for we are not indeed so—so faulty as we would have their throats cut." Still he had £200 in silver by him, which was not convertible into gold, there having been, as usual on such occasions, a sharp run upon the more portable metal. His ideas as to secreting this sum would not have displeased Vespasian, but he seems to have been deterred from that experiment by the obvious difficulty of recovering the silver at the moment of need. These dispositions made, Pepys obviously felt himself more comfortable, and manfully resolved to abide the chances of assault, imprisonment, or impeachment.
None of those calamities befell him. After the navy of Holland had disappeared from the waters of the Thames, an inquiry, of rather a strict and rigorous nature, as to the causes of the late disaster, was instituted; but, where the blame was so widely spread, and retort so easy, it was difficult to fix upon any particular victim as a propitiation for the official sins; and Pepys, who really understood his business, made a gallant and successful defence, not only for himself, but for his associates. We need not, however, enter into that matter, more especially as we hope that the reader feels sufficient interest in Pepys and his fortunes, to be curious to know what became of his money; nor is the history of its disposal and recovery the least amusing portion of this narrative.
Mr Peter Pett, commissioner of the navy, who was principally blamable for the loss of the ships at Chatham, had been actually sent to the Tower; and our friend Pepys, being summoned to attend the council, had an awful misgiving that the same fate was in store for him. He escaped, however; "but my fear was such, at my going in, of the success of the day, that I did think fit to give J. Hater, whom I took with me to wait the event, my closet key, and directions where to find £500 and more in silver and gold, and my tallies, to remove in case of any misfortune to me. Home, and after being there a little, my wife came, and two of her fellow-travellers with her, with whom we drank—a couple of merchant-like men, I think, but have friends in our country. They being gone, my wife did give me so bad an account of her and my father's method, in burying of our gold, that made me mad; and she herself is not pleased with it—she believing that my sister knows of it. My father and she did it on Sunday, when they were gone to church, in open daylight, in the midst of the garden, where, for aught they knew, many eyes might see them, which put me into trouble, and I presently cast about how to have it back again, to secure it here, the times being a little better now."
The autumn was well advanced before Pepys could obtain leave to go down into the country, whither at length he proceeded, not to shoot partridges or pheasants, but to disinter his buried treasure. We doubt whether ever resurrectionist felt himself in such a quandary.
"My father and I with a dark-lantern, being now night, into the garden with my wife, and there went about our great work to dig up my gold. But, Lord! what a tosse I was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was; that I began hastily to sweat, and be angry that they could not agree better upon the place, and at last to fear that it was gone: but by-and-by, poking with a spit, we found it, and then began with a spudd to lift up the ground. But, good God! to see how sillily they did it, not half a foot under ground, and in the sight of the world from a hundred places, if anybody by accident were near hand, and within sight of a neighbour's window: only my father says that he saw them all gone to church before he began the work, when he laid the money. But I was out of my wits almost, and the more for that, upon my lifting up the earth with the spudd, I did discern that I had scattered the pieces of gold round about the ground among the grass and loose earth; and taking up the iron headpieces wherever they were put, I perceived the earth was got among the gold, and wet, so that the bags were all rotten, and all the notes, that I could not tell what in the world to say to it, not knowing how to judge what was wanting, or what had been lost by Gibson in his coming down; which, all put together, did make me mad; and at last I was fixed to take up the headpieces, dirt and all, and as many of the scattered pieces as I could with the dirt discern by candle-light, and carry them into my brother's chamber, and there lock them up till I had eat a little supper; and then, all people going to bed, W. Hewer and I did all alone, with several pails of water and besoms, at last wash the dirt off the pieces, and parted the pieces and the dirt, and then began to tell them by a note which I had of the value of the whole, in my pocket; and do find that there was short above a hundred pieces; which did make me mad; and considering that the neighbour's house was so near that we could not possibly speak one to another in the garden at that place where the gold lay—especially my father being deaf—but they must know what we had been doing, I feared that they might in the night come and gather some pieces and prevent us the next morning; so W. Hewer and I out again about midnight, for it was now grown so late, and there by candle-light did make shift to gather forty-five pieces more. And so in, and to cleanse them; and by this time it was past two in the morning; and so to bed, with my mind pretty quiet to think that I have recovered so many, I lay in the trundle-bed, the girl being gone to bed to my wife, and there lay in some disquiet all night, telling of the clock till it was daylight."
Then ensued a scene of washing for gold, the study of which may be useful to any intending emigrant to California.
"And then W. Hewer and I, with pails and a sieve, did lock ourselves into the garden, and there gather all the earth about the place into pails, and then sift those pails in one of the summer-houses, just as they do for diamonds in other parts of the world; and there, to our great content, did by nine o'clock make the last night's forty-five up seventy-nine: so that we are come to about twenty or thirty of what the true number should be; and perhaps within less; and of them I may reasonably think that Mr Gibson might lose some: so that I am pretty well satisfied that my loss is not great, and do bless God that all is so well. So do leave my father to make a second examination of the dirt; and my mind at rest on it, being but an accident: and so gives me some kind of content to remember how painful it is sometimes to keep money, as well as to get it, and how doubtful I was to keep it all night, and how to secure it in London: so got all my gold put up in bags."
And then did Samuel Pepys return to London rejoicing, not one whit the worse for all his care and anxiety, yet still incubating on his treasure, which he had prudently stowed away beneath him, and, says he, "my work every quarter of an hour was to look to see whether all was well; and I did ride in great fear all the day."
We have already hinted that Pepys was by no means a Hector in valour. The sight of a suspicious bumpkin armed with a cudgel, on the road, always gave him qualms of apprehension; and in the night-season his dreams were commonly of robbery and murder. For many nights after the great fire, he started from sleep under the conviction that his premises were in a bright flame: the creaking of a door after midnight threw him into a cold perspiration; and a reported noise on the leads nearly drove him past his judgment. He thus reports his sensations on the occurrence of the latter phenomenon:—
"Knowing that I have a great sum of money in the house, this puts me into a most mighty affright, that for more than two hours, I could not almost tell what to do or say, but feared this night, and remembered that this morning I saw a woman and two men stand suspiciously in the entry, in the dark; I calling to them, they made me only this answer, the woman saying that the men only come to see her; but who she was, I cannot tell. The truth is, my house is mighty dangerous, having so many ways to be come to; and at my windows, over the stairs, to see who goes up and down; but if I escape to-night, I will remedy it. God preserve us this night safe! So, at almost two o'clock I home to my house, and, in great fear, to bed, thinking every running of a mouse really a thief; and so to sleep, very brokenly, all night long, and found all safe in the morning."