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14 unusual facts about Samuel Pepys


A Different Flesh

1661: The story is made up of a series of entries in Samuel Pepys's diary.

Chapbook

Many of the surviving chapbooks come from the collections of Samuel Pepys between 1661 and 1688 which are now held at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Château Haut-Brion

Samuel Pepys wrote in The Diarist, having tasted the wine at Royal Oak Tavern on April 10, 1663, to have "drank a sort of French wine called Ho Bryen that hath a good and most particular taste I never met with".

Coffee: A Dark History

He also notes that coffee was frequently consumed at meetings of the Royal Society and by political philosophers such as Andrew Marvell and Samuel Pepys.

Deb Willet

Deborah "Deb" Willet (1650–1678) was a young maid employed by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament.

Donald Vining

Vining's playwriting ambitions gradually petered out, and he eventually took a full-time position in the Development Office at Teacher's College, Columbia University, spending 30 years there in a job he disliked before taking early retirement, in part so he could start his own publishing company, The Pepys Press, named in honor of one of the most celebrated of all diarists, Samuel Pepys.

George Seton, 4th Earl of Winton

An interesting letter written to Mr. Hewer from Edinburgh, on Monday 8 May 1682, on this disaster is found in the correspondence of Samuel Pepys who was also with the Duke of York.

Han Feng

Han Feng kept a Pepysian diary with entries covering his daily activities from January 1, 2007 to June 10, 2008 with a total of more than 500 post entries.

Nightmare Creatures

When they decided to use these creatures as an army of conquest, one of their number, Samuel Pepys, set their headquarters on fire, resulting in the First Great Fire of London.

Soulton Hall

In 1668 a semi-circular pediment bearing the marital coat of arms of Thomas Hill, a descendant of Sir Rowland's and a friend of Samuel Pepys, was added above the front door.

Spic and Span

The product took the name from a common phrase meaning extremely clean, "spick and span", which was a British idiom first recorded in 1579, and used shortly afterwards in Samuel Pepys's diary.

Tatian

After the Codex Fuldensis, it would appear that members of the Western family lead an underground existence, popping into view over the centuries in an Old High German translation (c. 830), a Dutch (c. 1280), a Venetian manuscript of the 13th century, and a Middle English manuscript from 1400 that was once owned by Samuel Pepys.

Thomas Chicheley

According to Pepys, Chicheley lived extravagantly in London, and this was probably the reason that he sold his estate at Wimpole thirteen years before his death.

William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker

He was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Navy in 1664 and his career can be traced in the Diary of Samuel Pepys; despite frequent disagreements Pepys on the whole respected Brouncker more than most of his other colleagues.


Barnet

High Barnet is home to an Odeon cinema, the Barnet Museum, the All Saints Art Centre, the traditional annual Barnet Fair, which was chartered in Medieval times, the Ravenscroft local park and Barnet recreational park, a now disused well that was frequented by, among others, Samuel Pepys, and many restaurants and public houses.

Earl of Cottenham

The title of the earldom is derived from the village of Cottenham (pronounced "Cot-nam") in Cambridgeshire, birthplace of John Pepys, ancestor of the first Earl, and great-uncle of Samuel Pepys the diarist.

John Bagford

Originally a shoemaker by trade, he was active on the book-trading market from 1680 in and around Holborn, travelling to Haarlem, Leiden, and Amsterdam on this business and aiding such collectors as John Moore, Robert and Edward Harley, Sir Hans Sloane, Samuel Pepys and John Woodward.

John Mennes

Mennes was himself satirised by John Denham, whose poem about Mennes going from Calais to Boulogne to "eat a pig" is mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his diary.

Lauderdale House

In 1645 it was inherited by the Earl of Lauderdale (hence its name) and in 1666 it was visited by Charles II and Samuel Pepys, while Nell Gwyn is said to have lived there briefly in 1670.

Richard Levett

A pioneering British merchant and politician, he counted among his friends and acquaintances Samuel Pepys, Robert Blackborne, John Houblon, physician to the Royal Family and son-in-law Sir Edward Hulse, Lord Mayor Sir William Gore, his brother-in-law Chief Justice Sir John Holt, Robert Hooke, Sir Owen Buckingham, Sir Charles Eyre and others.

Robert Moray

Moray had a range of notable friends: James Gregory, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, John Evelyn and Gilbert Burnet.

Royal Wardrobe

Samuel Pepys records that a party of children sang to Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich when he was appointed as Master of the Royal Wardrobe during the Restoration but he was unmoved, the orphans were evicted, and the Wardrobe resumed its usual function.

Street magic

In his diary, Samuel Pepys mentions seeing magicians performing in this fashion and one can see street magicians in depictions by Hieronymous Bosch, William Hogarth, and Pieter Brueghel.

Syllabub

The word occurs repeatedly, including in Samuel Pepys' diary for 12 July 1663; "Then to Comissioner Petts and had a good Sullybub." and in Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown at Oxford of 1861; "We retire to tea or syllabub beneath the shade of some great oak."

The Complete and Utter History of Britain

Sketches included interviews with the vital characters in the dressing-room after the Battle of Hastings, Samuel Pepys presenting a TV chat-show and an estate agent trying to sell Stonehenge to a young couple looking for their first home ("It's got character, charm and a slab in the middle").

Westbourne Grove

Amongst the well-known residents of this house were Sir William Yorke, baronet; the Venetian ambassador; the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell (a great great nephew of the diarist Samuel Pepys); and the General Commander in Chief of the Army, Viscount Hill, who left in 1836 (and who gave his name to the modern road bridge north of Westbourne Grove called Lord Hill's Bridge).

Wine from the United Kingdom

In the 1660s Lady Batten, wife of Sir William Batten, Surveyor of the Navy, had a vineyard at their estate at Walthamstow; Samuel Pepys thought the wine (which was red) "very good".

Worshipful Company of Clothworkers

Famous Clothworkers included King James I, Samuel Pepys, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Baroness Burdett-Coutts, George Peabody, Sydney Waterlow, Edward VII, Lord Kelvin, Viscount Slim, Robert Menzies and the Duke of Kent.