After the diary
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Throughout the period of the diary, his health, particularly his eyesight, suffered from the long hours he worked. At the end of May 1669, he reluctantly concluded that, for the sake of his eyes, he should completely stop writing and, from then on, only dictate to his clerks[1] which meant he could no longer keep his diary. Pepys and his wife took a holiday to France and the Low Countries in June–October 1669; on their return, Elisabeth fell ill and died on 10 November 1669. Pepys erected a monument to her in the church of St Olave's, Hart Street, in London.
Member of Parliament and Secretary to the Admiralty
editIn 1672 he became an Elder Brother of Trinity House and in the following year he was promoted to Secretary to the Admiralty Commission and elected MP for Castle Rising in Norfolk. In May 1676, he was elected as Master of Trinity House and served in this capacity to 1689.
In 1673 he was involved with the establishment of the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital, which was to train 40 boys annually in navigation, for the benefit of the Royal Navy and the British merchant navy. In 1675 he was appointed a Governor of Christ's Hospital, and for many years he took a close interest in its affairs. Among his papers are two detailed memoranda on the administration of the school. In 1699 after the successful conclusion of a seven-year campaign to get the master of the Mathematical School replaced by a man who knew more about the sea, he was rewarded for his service as a Governor by being made a Freeman of the City of London.
At the beginning of 1679 Pepys was elected MP for Harwich in Charles II's third parliament which formed part of the Cavalier Parliament. He was elected along with Anthony Dean, a Harwich alderman, to whom Pepys was patron. By May of that year, they were under attack from their political enemies. Pepys resigned as Secretary to the Admiralty, and they were imprisoned in the Tower of London on suspicion of treasonable correspondence with France, specifically leaking naval intelligence. The charges are believed to have been fabricated under the direction of the Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury.[2] Pepys was accused, among other things, of being a papist. They were released in July, but proceedings against them were not dropped until June 1680.
Though he had resigned from the Tangier committee in 1679, in 1683 he was sent to Tangier to assist Lord Dartmouth with the evacuation and abandonment of the British colony. After six months' service, he travelled back through Spain, returning to England on 30 March 1684. In June 1684, once more in favour, he was appointed King's Secretary for the affairs of the Admiralty, a post that he retained after the death of Charles II (February 1685) and the accession of James II. The phantom Pepys Island, alleged to be near South Georgia, was named after him in 1684, having been first discovered during his tenure at the Admiralty.
From 1685 to 1688, he was active not only as Secretary for the Admiralty, but also as MP for Harwich. He had been elected MP for Sandwich, but was contested and immediately withdrew to Harwich. When James fled the country at the end of 1688, Pepys's career also came to an end. In January 1689, he was defeated in the parliamentary election at Harwich; in February, one week after the accession of William and Mary, he resigned his secretaryship.
Royal Society
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He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1665 and served as its President from 1 December 1684, to 30 November 1686. Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica was published during this period and its title-page bears Pepys' name. There is a probability problem, called the "Newton–Pepys problem", that arose out of correspondence between Newton and Pepys about whether one is more likely to roll at least one six with six dice or at least two sixes with twelve dice. [3] It has been only recently noted that while the gambling advice Newton gave Pepys was correct, the logical argument Newton included with it was unsound. [4]
Retirement
editFrom May to July 1689, and again in June 1690, he was imprisoned on suspicion of Jacobitism, but no charges were ever successfully brought against him. After his release, he retired from public life, aged 57. Ten years later, in 1701, he moved out of London, to a house at Clapham owned by his friend William Hewer, known as 'Will,' who had begun his career working for Pepys in the admiralty.[5] Clapham was then in the country though now very much part of Greater London, and Pepys lived there until his death, on 26 May 1703. He had no children and bequeathed his estate to his nephew, John Jackson.[6] His former protege and friend Hewer acted as the executor.[7]
- ^ One of his clerks was Paul Lorrain who became well known as Ordinary of Newgate Prison
- ^ Wheatley "Shaftesbury and the others not having succeeded in getting at Pepys through his clerk, soon afterwards attacked him more directly, using the infamous evidence of Colonel Scott"
- ^ Eric W. Weisstein. "Newton-Pepys Problem". Wolfram MathWorld. Retrieved 2008-06-28.
- ^ S. M. Stigler, 'Isaac Newton as Probabilist,' Statistical Science, Vol. 21 (2006), pp.400-403
- ^ footnote on Will Hewer, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol. 10, Samuel Pepys, Robert Latham, William Matthews, University of California Press, 2001
- ^ Pepys disinherited his nephew Samuel Jackson for marrying contrary to his wishes. Instead Pepys settled his estate on nephew John Jackson, who was unmarried at the time of Pepys's death in 1703. When John Jackson died in 1724, his estate reverted to Jackson's wife Anne, daughter of Archdeacon Samuel Edgeley[1], niece of Will Hewer and sister of Hewer Edgeley, nephew and godson of Pepys' old employee and friend Will Hewer. Meanwhile, the childless Will Hewer left his immense estate – consisting mostly of the Clapham property, as well as lands in Clapham, London, Westminster and Norfolk – to his nephew Hewer Edgeley, on the condition that the nephew (and godson) would adopt the surname Hewer. So Will Hewer's heir became Hewer Edgeley-Hewer, and he adopted the old Will Hewer home in Clapham as his residence. Thus did members of the Edgeley family come to acquire the estates of both Samuel Pepys and of his former employee at the Admiralty Will Hewer: sister Anne inheriting Pepys' estate; brother Hewer inheriting that of Pepys' friend Hewer. On the death of Hewer Edgeley-Hewer in 1728, the old Hewer estate went to Edgeley-Hewer's widow Elizabeth, who left the 432-acre (1.75 km2) estate to Levett Blackborne, Esq., the son of Abraham Blackborne, merchant of Clapham, and other family members, who later sold it off in lots. Lincoln's Inn barrister Levett Blackborne also later acted as attorney in legal scufflles for the heirs who had inherited the Peyps estate
- ^ "Will Hewer, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Samuel Pepys, 1899".