Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys, (23 February 1633 - 26 May 1703) was a leading 17th century English civil servant, latterly famous for his diary. The diary is a fascinating combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London.

Interests and achievements

As well as being one of the most important civil servants of his age, Pepys was a widely cultivated man, taking a learned interest in books, music, the theatre, and science. He served on a great many committees and public bodies.

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• He was variously M.P. for Castle Rising, Norfolk; for Sandwich; and for Harwich. Most of these constituencies had connections with his patron Edward Montagu.
• Also through Montagu, he was involved in the administration of the short-lived British colony at Tangier. He was appointed to the Tangier Committee in 1662 when the colony was first founded, and became Treasurer in 1665. He resigned in 1679, but in 1683 went out as secretary to Lord Dartmouth's expedition to evacuate and abandon the colony.
• He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1665 and served as President from December 1, 1684 to November 30, 1686. The frontispiece of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica was published in this period, and as a result bears Pepys's name.
• He was admitted as a Younger Brother of Trinity House in 1662, and as an Elder Brother in 1672. He served as Master from 22 May 1676 to 26 August 1689.
• From 1676, he was a Governor of Christ's Hospital school, and was involved in setting up the mathematical school there. He served as Governor for many years and was rewarded for his service in 1699 by being made a freeman of the City of London.

His contemporary John Evelyn remembered him as "universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things". Pepys' character seems encapsulated in his Latin motto mens cujusque is est quisque, which can be translated as "Each man's mind is who he is" or, more poetically, "The mind is the man".

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