Honest to a Fault: Pepys’s journals bear witness to events large and small
neh.gov
neh.gov
> By chance, a Cambridge scholar, the Reverend George Neville, a master of Magdalene College, saw Macpherson's passing reference to Pepys's diaries and grew intrigued to know what else might be in them. Pepys after all had lived through momentous times - through the restoration of the monarchy, the last great plague epidemic, the Great Fire of London of 1666 - so their content was bound to be of interest. He commissioned a clever but penurious student named John Smith to see if he could crack the code and transcribe the diaries. The work took Smith three years. The result of course was the most celebrated diary in the English language. Had Pepys not had that cup of tea, Macpherson not mentioned it in a dull history, Neville been less curious, and young Smith less intelligent and dogged, the name Samuel Pepys would mean nothing to anyone but naval historians, and a very considerable part of what we know about how people lived in the second half of the seventeenth century would in fact be unknown. So it was a good thing that he had that cup of tea.
Pepys wrote in a rare (Shelton) form of shorthand and then used code words as well, for further security. His writings were reasonably secure, in their time.
They’re all great reading.