Samuel Pepys FRS (1633-1703) and The Royal Society

Abstract

Born in London during the reign of Charles I, whose execution he witnessed, Samuel Pepys lived through the Interregnum, the Restoration of the Monarchy and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He is known to later generations through his secret Diary, first published in 1825, in which he reported such events as the Plague and the Great Fire of London, and on everyday life in seventeenth-century England. But to his contemporaries he was admired as an extremely able administrator in the Admirality Office. Pepys was elected FRS on 15 February 1665; and during his presidency of The Royal Society (1684-86) Newton's Principia was published.