The Confessions of Samuel Pepys: His Private Revelations

Phil Gyford — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 16:46:48 +0000

Pepys’ record of his daily life experiences may have begun as a form of self-reflection, taking time at the end of each day to weigh up events. Among the details of business at the Navy Office, money earned and spent, food and drink, trips to the theatre and his enjoyment of music, there are also some frank descriptions of his many extramarital liaisons.

The Diary was kept secret while it was being written and Pepys used Shelton’s shorthand which would have disguised the text from the casual reader. As his adulterous liaisons gained in frequency and the Diary became more explicit, he began to use additional codes to maintain secrecy, altering the shorthand spelling or using a polyglot of foreign words; French, Spanish, Latin, even Greek to describe his encounters, for example: “I did hazer tout que yo voudrais con her” (4 March 1667).

Early editions of the Diary, including the 1893 text edited by H.B. Wheatley which is used on this website, simply cut these passages out; they had to, or risk prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act.

The first volume of the comprehensive Latham and Matthews edition, retranslated from the shorthand and with the contentious passages intact, was published in 1970 after the infamous “Lady Chatterley” trial brought about a change in the law. It was the first time that the Diary had appeared in its entirety and although the fig leaf of polyglot was left in place, Pepys’ sex life was laid bare in public for the first time.

Now Guy de la Bédoyère has systematically collected Pepys’ “confessions”; all the extra-marital liaisons, excessive drinking, overspending, and violent temper tantrums. He has retranslated both the Shelton shorthand and the polyglot and portrayed anew Pepys’ troubled relationship with his wife Elizabeth, a “uniquely valuable portrait of the relationship between a man and a woman” (p.2).

At first, the confessional aspect of the Diary is broad, depicting for example episodes of drunkenness, such as the time Pepys celebrates the coronation with endless toasts to the new King, until one of his companions collapses, vomiting. Pepys manages to stagger home but wakes the next morning “wet with spewing” (23 April 1661).His New Year Resolutions for 1662 include “abstaining from plays and wine”.

Pepys also records occasions when he loses his temper with household pets, a monkey which he beats almost senseless, and a pet dog, locked in the cellar for peeing on the floor. He regrets losing his temper at the time and promises himself that in future he will be more patient.

Occasionally in the early years he worries about overspending, though he qualifies this once his role with the Navy Office feels secure: “But though I am much against too much spending, yet I do think it best to enjoy some degree of pleasure now that we have health, money and opportunities…” (20 May 1662).

Increasingly though, the “confessions” are mostly sexual in nature. Even in the early years of the Diary, none of the female servants is safe. Pepys pursues Sir W Penn’s maid Betty, his own maid Jane, even Lord Sandwich’s maid Sarah. “God forgive me I did feel her, which I am much ashamed of but did do no more…” (22 July 1662)

Whenever Elizabeth is away from home, he goes looking for sex. He is not at first proud of his behaviour, “But I have used of late, since my wife went, to make a bad use of my fancy with whatever woman I have a mind to…” but this doesn’t stop him (29 June 1663).

He regularly consorts with Betty Lane (later Martin) and her sister Doll, both linen drapers, also Betty Howlett. Mrs Bagwell soon becomes a favourite target, though the terms are clear from the start: “… young Bagwell and his wife waylaid me to desire my favour about getting him a better ship, which I shall pretend to be willing to do for them, but my mind is to know his wife a little better.” (7 August 1663) He certainly did; there are 52 mentions of her in the Diary.

And so, the list of regular partners gets longer, and word seems to have got round that Pepys’ professional favours can be bought. “On 11th August (1665), the waterman Delkes, arrived with his daughter Mrs Robins, seeking exemption for his son-in-law from being pressed into Naval service.” (p.153).

Taken out of the context of Pepys’ other interests and daily activities, these extracts form a dark litany of loveless sexual encounters, always with women of lower social standing and often with a subtext of sex as currency. Mrs Bagwell and Betty Martin both exchange sexual favours for material gain in the form of assistance with their husbands’ careers. In some cases, Pepys simply hands over cash.

A particularly distasteful aspect of these encounters is when he seems, as is often the case, to be grooming and ultimately forcing himself on his victims, especially when they are very young like Frances Tooker, “my pretty little girl” (23 March 1666) who was barely 12.

Of course, as Bédoyère points out, Pepys lived in a “hierarchical, patriarchal, deferential society” (p.3) but this does not excuse this behaviour, this predatory attitude to women. He cites the occasion when Pepys witnessed a rape: “They seem to drag her by some force… God forgive me, what thoughts and wishes I had of being in their place.” (3 February 1664). Bédoyère reflects sadly that “Pepys had been titillated by the sight of a rape underway and wished he had been able to take part… The victim of course had little chance of help from any public official.” (p.117)

In 1668, Elizabeth is delighted when 17-year-old Deb Willett joins the household as her companion. Deb is tall, elegant, and well educated by the standards of the day, and Pepys is inevitably attracted to her. The outcome is predictable; Pepys pursues Deb, grooms her, gropes her. This time Elizabeth finds them in flagrante. Pepys is mortified and Deb is eventually dismissed, but Elizabeth uses the moral leverage she now has over her husband to the full. She storms and rages for weeks on end, threatens to finish his career by falsely suggesting she is Catholic. She disturbs his sleep night after night, terrorising him by appearing at his bedside brandishing red-hot tongs (12 January 1669). In fact, she makes so much out of the situation that Bédoyère wonders if it wasn’t in fact a set-up. It might have been. “For the first time in their marriage, perhaps Elizabeth believed she was now in control.” (p.272)

Attempts have been made to explain, if not to excuse, Pepys’ behaviour. The Companion to the Latham and Matthews Diary has a report under “Health – A Psychoanalyst’s View” written by Dr Martin Howard Stein which seeks to explain Pepys’ sexual drive as being the result of his brush with death when he was “cut for the stone” in 1658. Bédoyère himself concludes that “It is too glib to dismiss him as a ‘sex pest’ or ‘sex offender’… in their extent and nature they were also consistent with the neuropsychological disorder of addiction.” (p.16)

For me, the title of this book is perhaps misleading because “confession” implies repentance and changed behaviour. There is no indication that Pepys felt any lasting guilt, beyond occasional reflections on his own weakness when faced with temptation. He made sexual advances to whoever he liked, wherever and whenever he could get away with it. He enjoyed the sensation of conquest and enjoyed writing about it later, presumably with a view to re-reading at leisure.

In that sense, these accounts are not “confessions” at all; the subterfuge and the detailed recording of his encounters seem to add to the enjoyment. It is interesting to note that when Pepys abandoned the diary in 1669 because he thought he was going blind, he concluded that otherwise he would have to “have it kept by my people in long hand and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know…” In other words, no more writing about sex. And where, he seems to imply, is the fun in that?

He concludes that perhaps he could “endeavour to keep a margin in my book open to add here and there a note in shorthand with my own hand…” (31 May 1669) Despite his apparent guilty feelings, his love for Elizabeth and the shame of getting caught with Deb, he is ultimately unrepentant.

The appeal of the Diary to the modern reader is that it functions as a spyhole into the past, allowing us a brief, authentic glimpse of life in 17th century London. The cover of this book is consequently disturbing: Pepys’ eyes stare calmly back at us as if through the same spyhole. If he had in later life become ashamed of his promiscuous sexual encounters, he would have destroyed the diary, but he did not. He kept the volumes in his library, which was bequeathed to Magdalene College Cambridge. Of course, he could not have foreseen that it would eventually be published and read by millions, in print and online too, thanks to Phil Gyford’s hard work on this website. Perhaps he would have enjoyed the attention, and the notoriety.

This excellent book is an original and useful piece of scholarship, taking a fresh look at Pepys’ marital and extramarital relationships. It is a major contribution to our understanding of the Diary. But grouped together out of context, these confessions sadly contribute nothing positive to Pepys’ reputation.

[The publisher provided a copy of this book for review.]

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The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary

Phil Gyford — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:43:01 +0000

Guy de la Bedoyere has filmed an interesting review of Kate Loveman’s new book about the history of the diary for his YouTube channel, and I thought it worthwhile including it here in the Book Reviews section of our site.

Here’s what the publisher says about the book:

This engaging book explores the creation of the most famous journal in the English language, how it came to be published in 1825, and the many remarkable roles it has played in British culture since then. Kate Loveman – one of the few people who can read Pepys’s shorthand – unlocks the riddles of the diary, investigating why he chose to preserve such private matters for later generations. She also casts fresh light on the women and sexual relationships in Pepys’s life and on Black Britons living in or near his household. Exploring the many inventive uses to which the diary has been put, Loveman shows how Pepys’s history became part of the history of the nation.

The book sounds fascinating, and Guy’s review is itself an absorbing summary of these topics and well worth your time.

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The Confessions of Samuel Pepys: His Private Revelations

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