Pepys’s life is written large in the Diary, and it is not necessary here to do more than catalogue the chief incidents of it in chronological order.  In February, 1661-62, he was chosen a Younger Brother of the Trinity House, and in April, 1662, when on an official visit to Portsmouth Dockyard, he was made a burgess of the town.  In August of the same year he was appointed one of the commissioners for the affairs of Tangier.  Soon afterwards Thomas Povy, the treasurer, got his accounts into a muddle, and showed himself incompetent for the place, so that Pepys replaced him as treasurer to the commission.

In March, 1663-64, the Corporation of the Royal Fishery was appointed, with the Duke of York as governor, and thirty-two assistants, mostly “very great persons.”  Through Lord Sandwich’s influence Pepys was made one of these.

The time was now arriving when Pepys’s general ability and devotion to business brought him prominently into notice.  During the Dutch war the unreadiness of the ships, more particularly in respect to victualling, was the cause of great trouble.  The Clerk of the Acts did his utmost to set things right, and he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Victualling Office.  The kind way in which Mr. Coventry proposed him as “the fittest man in England” for the office, and the Duke of York’s expressed approval, greatly pleased him.

During the fearful period when the Plague was raging, Pepys stuck to his business, and the chief management of naval affairs devolved upon him, for the meetings at the Navy Office were but thinly attended.  In a letter to Coventry he wrote:—­

     “The sickness in general thickens round us, and particularly upon
     our neighbourhood.  You, sir, took your turn of the sword; I must
     not, therefore, grudge to take mine of the pestilence.”

At this time his wife was living at Woolwich, and he himself with his clerks at Greenwich; one maid only remained in the house in London.

Pepys rendered special service at the time of the Fire of London.  He communicated the king’s wishes to the Lord Mayor, and he saved the Navy Office by having up workmen from Woolwich and Deptford Dockyards to pull down the houses around, and so prevent the spread of the flames.

When peace was at length concluded with the Dutch, and people had time to think over the disgrace which the country had suffered by the presence of De Ruyter’s fleet in the Medway, it was natural that a public inquiry into the management of the war should be undertaken.  A Parliamentary Committee was appointed in October, 1667, to inquire into the matter.  Pepys made a statement which satisfied the committee, but for months afterwards he was continually being summoned to answer some charge, so that he confesses himself as mad to “become the hackney of this office in perpetual trouble and vexation that need it least.”