But right from the start he mixes affairs of state with personal entries about himself, his household, health, the weather and other day to day subjects.

Why he kept a diary at all no one really knows, it may have been because he sensed that the Commonwealth was coming to an end and that he wished to record public events.

When he wished to keep his philandering secret he used a mixture of foreign languages, which would not have been difficult for any educated person of his day to decipher. Many of his contemporaries could have read it. It ran to many editions over the next 80 years. Entitled “Zeiglographia, or a new art of shorthand writing”. He used a widely known type of shorthand which had been invented around 1626 by Thomas Shelton. Pepys almost certainly learned shorthand when he was an undergraduate at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The diary has left a unique record for posterity, much of which resonates with aspects of life today, as the snippets given below illustrate. Thus began a 9 year recording of his life and times, reflecting on many of the momentous changes taking place in the life and very fabric of the country as well as his own fame and fortunes. The new Common Council of the City doth speak very high and hath sent to Monke their sword-bearer to acquaint him with their desires for a free and full Parliament, which is at present the desires and the hopes and expectation of all. Only my Lord Lambert is not yet come in to the Parliament nor is it expected that he will, without being forced to it. Lawson lie still in the River and Monke is with his army in Scotland. The officers of the army all forced to yield. the Rump, after being disturbed by my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again.

My wife, after the absence of her terms for seven weeks, gave me hopes of her being with child, but on the last day of the year she hath them again. I lived in Axe yard, having my wife and servant Jane, and no more in family than us three. The opening sentences of the diary ran as follows:īlessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain but upon taking of cold. Pepys started to write his diary, using shorthand, on New Year’s Day 1660, at the age of 26.

The diary of samuel pepys