The Diary of Samuel Pepys

As the year begins, Pepys enjoys showing off his social status with fine meals and hosting at his house; he has many distinguished guests over for a fine dinner on January 4. Throughout the Diary we sense the importance of Social Status and Social Mobility and how this is expressed in material possessions. Pepys refers to the fineness of the family “plate” (chinaware) several times as a sign of his prosperity.

The Eighth Year is lengthy yet relatively uneventful. The most notable events are the death of Pepys’s mother on March 27 after an illness and the end of the Anglo-Dutch War with peace proclaimed on August 24. With the plague and the worst effects of the fire also concluded, this marks the end of the most trying times for England depicted in the Diary. On August 28, Pepys goes to St. Bartholomew’s Fair for the first time since before the plague and greatly enjoys it (418); this makes the reader aware that two years that have elapsed since the plague, with some pleasurable activities just starting to resume.

Pepys’s eyesight continues to worsen due to his extensive writing and reading by candlelight; on September 24 he stays late at his office writing a draft of a report for the king and fears the damage to his eyes.

Another crucial event of the year is the arrival on September 24 of a new maidservant for Elizabeth Pepys, Deborah (Deb) Willet. She is described by Elizabeth as being “extraordinary handsome,” and physical beauty is often mentioned as a desirable quality in servants for the Pepys’s. This beauty will, however, occasion serious trouble for the Pepys’s in the Ninth Year.

On October 10 Pepys digs up the gold his wife and father had buried for him during the fire. This episode is extensively detailed on Pages 431-433. Pepys is frustrated by the careless way Elizabeth and his father buried it in the garden. He discovers the gold coins are full of dirt and must be washed and that other coins are loose among the dirt due to the rotting of the bags. However, Pepys and Will Hewer succeed in recovering many more gold coins among the dirt. After this arduous task, Pepys reflects on “how painful it is sometimes to keep money, as well as to get it” (433).  

As a sort of sequel to this, on November 29 the Pepys’s are startled by the sound of knocking outside their bedroom. They suspect thieves, and Pepys ventures out of the room with a gun. However, it turns out it was only the chimneys of the adjoining house being cleaned. Pepys remarks on “what the care of money and treasure in a man’s house is to a man that fears to lose it” (443).

At the end of the year Pepys attends a play with Mrs. Knepp; coming home, Pepys’s wife is “mad as a devil” (449) for his having been in Knepp’s company.