the following year Master of the Clothworkers’ Company, when he presented a richly-chased silver cup, which is still used at the banquets of the company.  On Tuesday, 10th September, 1677, the Feast of the Hon. Artillery Company was held at Merchant Taylors’ Hall, when the Duke of York, the Duke of Somerset, the Lord Chancellor, and other distinguished persons were present.  On this occasion Viscount Newport, Sir Joseph Williamson, and Samuel Pepys officiated as stewards.

About this time it is evident that the secretary carried himself with some haughtiness as a ruler of the navy, and that this was resented by some.  An amusing instance will be found in the Parliamentary Debates.  On May 11th, 1678, the King’s verbal message to quicken the supply was brought in by Mr. Secretary Williamson, when Pepys spoke to this effect: 

“When I promised that the ships should be ready by the 30th of May, it was upon the supposition of the money for 90 ships proposed by the King and voted by you, their sizes and rates, and I doubt not by that time to have 90 ships, and if they fall short it will be only from the failing of the Streights ships coming home and those but two . . . . .

     “Sir Robert Howard then rose and said, ’Pepys here speaks rather
     like an Admiral than a Secretary, “I” and “we.”  I wish he knows
     half as much of the Navy as he pretends.’”

Pepys was chosen by the electors of Harwich as their member in the short Parliament that sat from March to July, 1679, his colleague being Sir Anthony Deane, but both members were sent to the Tower in May on a baseless charge, and they were superseded in the next Parliament that met on the 17th October, 1679.

The high-handed treatment which Pepys underwent at this time exhibits a marked instance of the disgraceful persecution connected with the so-called Popish plot.  He was totally unconnected with the Roman Catholic party, but his association with the Duke of York was sufficient to mark him as a prey for the men who initiated this “Terror” of the seventeenth century.  Sir.  Edmund Berry Godfrey came to his death in October, 1678, and in December Samuel Atkins, Pepys’s clerk, was brought to trial as an accessory to his murder.  Shaftesbury and the others not having succeeded in getting at Pepys through his clerk, soon afterwards attacked him more directly, using the infamous evidence of Colonel Scott.  Much light has lately been thrown upon the underhand dealings of this miscreant by Mr. G. D. Scull, who printed privately in 1883 a valuable work entitled, “Dorothea Scott, otherwise Gotherson, and Hogben of Egerton House, Kent, 1611-1680.”