23rd February, 1632–3, but the place of birth is not known with certainty. Samuel Knight, D.D., author of the "Life of Colet," who was a connection of the family (having married Hannah Pepys, daughter of Talbot Pepys of Impington), says positively that it was at Brampton. His statement cannot be corroborated by the registers of Brampton church, as these records do not commence until the year 1654.
Samuel's early youth appears to have been spent pretty equally between town and country. When he and his brother Tom were children they lived with a nurse (Goody Lawrence) at Kingsland, and in after life Samuel refers to his habit of shooting with bow and arrow in the fields around that place. He then went to school at Huntingdon, from which he was transferred to St. Paul's School in London. He remained at the latter place until 1650, early in which year his name was entered as a sizar on the boards of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was admitted on the 21st June, but subsequently he transferred his allegiance to Magdalene College, where he was admitted a sizar on the 1st October of this same year. He did not enter into residence until March 5th, 1650–51, but in the following month he was elected to one of Mr. Spendluffe's scholarships, and two years later (October 14th, 1653) he was preferred to one on Dr. John Smith's foundation.
Little or nothing is known of Pepys's career at college, but soon after obtaining the Smith scholarship he got into trouble, and, with a companion, was admonished for being drunk.
[October 21st, 1653. "Memorandum: that Peapys and Hind were
solemnly admonished by myself and Mr. Hill, for having been
scandalously over-served with drink ye night before. This was done
in the presence of all the Fellows then resident, in Mr. Hill's
chamber.—JOHN WOOD, Registrar." (From the Registrar's-book of
Magdalene College.)]
His time, however, was not wasted, and there is evidence that he carried into his busy life a fair stock of classical learning and a true love of letters. Throughout his life he looked back with pleasure to the time he spent at the University, and his college was remembered in his will when he bequeathed his valuable library. In this same year, 1653, he graduated B.A. On the 1st of December, 1655, when he was still without any settled means of support, he married Elizabeth St. Michel, a beautiful and portionless girl of fifteen. Her father, Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, was of a good family in Anjou, and son of the High Sheriff of Bauge (in Anjou). Having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, when in the German service, his father disinherited him, and he also lost the reversion of some £20,000 sterling which his uncle, a rich French canon, intended to bequeath to him before he left the Roman Catholic church. He came over to England in the retinue of Henrietta Maria on her marriage with Charles I, but the queen dismissed him on finding that he was a Protestant and did not attend mass. Being a handsome man, with courtly manners, he found favour in the sight of the widow of an Irish squire (daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill), who married him against the wishes of her family. After the marriage, Alexander St. Michel and his wife having raised some fifteen hundred pounds, started, for France in the hope of recovering some part of the family property. They were unfortunate in all their movements, and on their journey to France were taken prisoners by the Dunkirkers, who stripped them of all their property. They now settled at Bideford in Devonshire, and here or near by were born Elizabeth and the rest of the family. At a later period St. Michel served against the Spaniards at the taking of Dunkirk and Arras, and settled at Paris. He was an unfortunate man throughout life, and his son Balthasar says of him: "My father at last grew full of whimsies and propositions of perpetual motion, &c., to kings, princes and others, which soaked his pocket, and brought all our family so low by his not minding anything else, spending all he had got and getting no other employment to bring in more." While he was away from Paris, some "deluding papists" and "pretended devouts" persuaded Madame St. Michel to place her daughter in the nunnery of the Ursulines. When the father heard of this, he hurried back, and managed to get Elizabeth out of the nunnery after she had been there twelve days. Thinking that France was a dangerous place to live in, he removed his family to England, where soon afterwards his daughter was married, although, as Lord Braybrooke remarks, we are not told how she became acquainted with Pepys. St. Michel was greatly pleased that his daughter had become the wife of a true Protestant, and she herself said to him, kissing his eyes: "Dear father, though in my tender years I was by my low fortune in this world deluded to popery, by the fond dictates thereof I have now (joined with my riper years, which give me some understanding) a man to my husband too wise and one too religious to the Protestant religion to suffer my thoughts to bend that way any more."
[These particulars are obtained from an interesting letter from
Balthasar St. Michel to Pepys, dated "Deal, Feb. 8, 1673–4," and
printed in "Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys,"
1841, vol. i., pp. 146–53.]
Alexander St. Michel kept up his character for fecklessness through life, and took out patents for curing smoking chimneys, purifying water, and moulding bricks. In 1667 he petitioned the king, asserting that he had discovered King Solomon's gold and silver mines, and the Diary of the same date contains a curious commentary upon these visions of wealth:—
"March 29, 1667. 4s. a week which his (Balty St. Michel's) father
receives of the French church is all the subsistence his father and
mother have, and about; £20 a year maintains them."
As already noted, Pepys was married on December 1st, 1655. This date is given on the authority of the Registers of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster,
[The late Mr. T. C. Noble kindly communicated to me a copy of the
original marriage certificate, which is as follows: "Samuell Peps
of this parish Gent. & Elizabeth De Snt. Michell of Martins in the
fields, Spinster. Published October 19tn, 22nd, 29th 1655, and
were married by Richard Sherwin Esqr one of the justices of the
Peace of the Cittie and Lyberties of Westm. December 1st. (Signed)
Ri. Sherwin."]
but strangely enough Pepys himself supposed his wedding day to have been October 10th. Lord Braybrooke remarks on this,
"It is notorious that the registers in those times were very ill
kept, of which we have here a striking instance. … Surely a
man who kept a diary could not have made such a blunder."
What is even more strange than Pepys's conviction that he was married on October 10th is Mrs. Pepys's agreement with him: On October 10th, 1666, we read,
"So home to supper, and to bed, it being my wedding night, but how
many years I cannot tell; but my wife says ten."
Here Mrs. Pepys was wrong, as it was eleven years; so she may have been wrong in the day also. In spite of the high authority of Mr. and Mrs. Pepys on a question so interesting to them both, we must accept the register as conclusive on this point until further evidence of its incorrectness is forthcoming.
Sir Edward Montage (afterwards Earl of Sandwich), who was Pepys's first cousin one remove (Pepys's grandfather and Montage's mother being brother and sister), was a true friend to his poor kinsman, and he at once held out a helping hand to the imprudent couple, allowing them to live in his house. John Pepys
