Pepys was educated at Trinity Hall and Magdalene College, Cambridge and began his career as a clerk in 1659. In 1660, he obtained a position with the Royal Navy and began to keep a diary which he would continue until 1669, when his eyesight began to fail. The Diary was in a form of cipher which was not decoded until 1825, the year of its first publication by the efforts of Lord Braybrooke and John Smith. The first complete edition was not published until 1893. In 1672, Pepys was appointed secretary to the Admiralty, but in 1679 was committed to the Tower of London for his supposed complicity in the Popish Plot. Released soon after, he went to Tangier in 1683 and wrote an interesting diary while there. He was reappointed to the Admiralty in 1684 and at one point was one of the most powerful men in England. Pepys also wrote Memoirs of the Navy: 1690, which was published in 1906, but it is his diary that remains a unique and insightful study. |
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