Pepys’ Diary.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 143, 18 June 1931, Page 8

Pepys’ Diary.

January 9th, 1663. Waking in the morning, my wife I found also awake, and begun to speak to me with great trouble and tears of -the necessity of her keeping somebody to bear her company ; for her familiarity with her other servants is it that spoils them all, and other company she hath none, which is too true; and called for Jane to reach her out of her trunk, giving her the keys to that purpose, a bundle of papers: and pulls out a paper, a copy 'of what, a pretty while since, she had wrote in a discontent to me, which I would not read, but burnt. She now read it, and it was so piquant, and wrote in English, and most of it true, of the retiredness of her life and how unpleasant it was; that being wrote in English, and so in danger of being met with and read by others, I was vexed at it, and desired her and then commanded her to tear it. When she desired to be excused it I forced it from her and tore it, and withal took her other bundle of papers from her, and leapt out of the bed, and in my shirt clapped them into the pocket of my breeches that she might not get them from me; and having got on my stockings and breeches and gown I pulled them out one by one and tore them all before her face, though it went against my heart to do it, she crying and desiring me not to do it; but such was my passion and trouble to see the letters of my love to her, and my will wherein I had given her all I have in the world when I went out to sea with my Lord Sandwich, to be joyned with a paper of so much disgrace to me and dishonour if it should have been found by any body. Having torn them all, saving a bond of my uncle Robert’s which sh? hath long had in her hands, and our marriage license, and the first letter that ever I sent her when I was her servant, I took up the pieces and carried them into my chamber; and there, after many disputes with myself whether I should burn them or no, and having picked up the pieces of the paper she read to-day, and of my will which I tore, I burnt all the rest, and so went out of my office troubled in mind.