Biography Essay

Samuel Pepys, author of the finest and bestknown diary in English, was born in Salisbury Court near Fleet Street in London on 23 February 1633. He was the fifth of eleven children, of whom only three (Pepys the eldest) survived to adulthood. His father, John Pepys, was a tailor, his mother, Margaret Kite Pepys, the sister of a butcher. Pepys attended Huntingdon Grammar School, whose best-known graduate was Oliver Cromwell. From about 1646 Pepys studied at St. Paul's School, at that time adjacent to the great London cathedral. The curriculum was weak in mathematics, strong enough in classical languages and Hebrew to have well served John Milton, who had preceded Pepys by a generation. In his diary Pepys confessed to being "a great roundhead when . . . a boy." After 1660, when royalty had been restored, Pepys repented of his youthful radicalism. He met an old classmate and was "much afeared that...