The Pridi Banomyong Library Rare Book Room, Thammasat University, Tha Prachan campus, owns a number of rare and useful items of potential interest to students and researchers, especially those interested in history, literature, education, political science, Asian studies, and related subjects.

Among them is the book A Diary by Samuel Pepys (pronounced peeps), an English naval administrator in the 1600s.

He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and as Member of Parliament, but is most remembered today for the diary he kept for almost ten years.

The TU Library collection also includes other research about Pepys.

The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 1800s.  It is considered one of the most important primary sources for the era when Pepys lived.

It provides lively eyewitness accounts of major events such as the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London.

The Great Fire of London swept through the city in September 1666.

As explained in an online account,

On 1st January 1660 Samuel Pepys made his first diary entry, one that would lead to a further decade of recording everyday trivialities mixed with important events and battles. With candour and detail he wrote about his wife, the household, theatre, political events, social catastrophes and military might.

Despite Pepys having no prior maritime experience, he worked for the Navy and rose through the ranks to become Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and James II. As an administrator for the Navy he acquired first-hand information regarding naval encounters, battles, strategic decisions and the different characters involved.

At the time in which Pepys began to write his diary, England was going through a tumultuous period both politically and socially. Only a few years previously, Oliver Cromwell had died creating a precarious political vacuum. The civil unrest that had been brewing since Cromwell’s death meant that Pepys’s diary is even more relevant and pertinent to learn about the political climate of the day.

One important eyewitness account given by Pepys describes the impact of the Great Plague in London. The Second Pandemic as it became known was a centuries’ long epidemic of plagues which began in the 1300’s with the Black Death and continued until the outbreak of the Great Plague. In 1665 the Great Plague took its effect on the population.

Pepys however was not in one of the most at risk categories as he did not live in the cramped housing where the disease spread the easiest. The poorest in society were most affected whilst Pepys was in a financially fortunate position to send his wife Elisabeth away to Woolwich in order to protect her. On 16th August 1665 he noted:

“But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people”.

The Great Fire of 1666 claimed much of London’s original architecture as its victim. On 2nd September Pepys was awoken by one of his servants when he spotted a fire in the distance. His servant would later return to report that around 300 homes had been destroyed by the raging fire and there was a chance that London Bridge could be destroyed.

This prompted Pepys to go to the Tower in order to witness the unfolding events. He also ended up taking to a boat in order to better observe the devastation; his eyewitness account was subsequently reported in his diary.

“Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them”.

After witnessing the tragedy unfolding, Pepys personally advised the King to pull down homes that would find themselves in the path of the fire in order to stem the voracity of the flames that were engulfing the city. This advice was accepted, although Pepys noted that the sight of his city burning “made me weep”.

The following day he would make the decision to pack up his belongings and leave before he found himself in grave danger. He would later return to see the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral, his former school and his father’s house whilst most remarkably his own house, office and most pertinently his diary all survived the fiery flames which burnt London to a cinder. […]

His diary continues to be used as a great source of historical knowledge and ultimately as a reflection of one man who lived his life in a turbulent time in history.

A modern edition of the diary has been posted online. Here is a brief excerpt from Pepys’ description of the Great Fire:

By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish-street, by London Bridge.

So I made myself ready presently, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high places, Sir J. Robinson’s little son going up with me; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge; which, among other people, did trouble me for poor little Michell and our Sarah on the bridge.

So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King’s baker’s house in Pudding-lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus’s Church and most part of Fish-street already.

So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell’s house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there.

Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another.

And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. […]

So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from another.

When we could endure no more upon the water; we to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there staid till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)