Qualla: Samuel Pepys https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/samuel-pepys-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Samuel Pepys https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys Samuel Pepys: Introduction https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys/ Photo credit Kleon3, CC BY-SA 4.0. On a September night in 1666, with London burning to the south of him and the wind blowing the flames toward Seething Lane, Samuel Pepys went into the garden and buried his Parmesan cheese. He also buried his wine. The diary records this without irony, alongside the gold he sent by cart to Bethnal Green, the wife he dispatched to Woolwich, and the documents he stuffed into trunks by moonlight. Pepys was thirty-three years old, secretary to the Navy Board, and the most reliable witness modern historians have to what it was like to be a Londoner during the Stuart Restoration. He saw the king come home, the plague kill his neighbours, the fire eat his city, and a Dutch fleet sail up the Medway and tow away the Royal Charles. He wrote all of it down in shorthand, in a million and a quarter words, between 1660 and 1669. Then his eyes began to fail, and he stopped.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/samuel-pepys-wp/gcpv-samuel-pepys-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Samuel Pepys: Salisbury Court https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys/ Photo credit Samuel Pepys/Wheatley, Public domain. He was born on 23 February 1633 in Salisbury Court off Fleet Street, the son of John Pepys, a London tailor, and Margaret Kite, a Whitechapel butcher's daughter. He was the fifth of eleven children, and most of his siblings died young. He went to St Paul's School and watched, at ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/samuel-pepys-wp/gcpv-samuel-pepys-salisbury-court.mp3 0:06 2 full Samuel Pepys: A Diary in Shorthand https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys/ Photo credit Samuel Pepys, Public domain. On 1 January 1660 he began the diary. He used Shelton's tachygraphy, a shorthand system, and slipped into clumsy schoolboy French, Spanish, and Italian whenever the subject matter became too dangerous to entrust to English even in cipher. He recorded what he ate. He recorded the ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/samuel-pepys-wp/gcpv-samuel-pepys-a-diary-in-shorthand.mp3 0:06 3 full Samuel Pepys: Plague Year https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1665 plague returned to London. By summer it was killing more than seven thousand a week. Pepys was not, on paper, in danger — he lived comfortably on Seething Lane, did not mix with the poor, did not have to remain in town. He sent Elisabeth to Woolwich. He chewed tobacco aga...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/samuel-pepys-wp/gcpv-samuel-pepys-plague-year.mp3 0:06 4 full Samuel Pepys: Fire https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys/ Photo credit Jack1956, CC0. At about three in the morning on 2 September 1666, Jane the maid woke Pepys to tell him she could see fires in the City. He looked, judged it not serious, went back to bed. By dawn three hundred houses were gone. He took a boat down to the Tower, then to Whitehall, and became the...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/samuel-pepys-wp/gcpv-samuel-pepys-fire.mp3 0:06 5 full Samuel Pepys: The Navy and the End https://qualla.com/samuel-pepys/ Photo credit James Digman Wingfield, Public domain. After the diary closed in May 1669, Pepys lived another thirty-four years. He never went blind. He served as Secretary of the Admiralty under Charles II and James II, professionalised the Royal Navy, was imprisoned twice in the Tower on charges that came to nothing, sat as Presid...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/samuel-pepys-wp/gcpv-samuel-pepys-the-navy-and-the-end.mp3 0:06 6 full