Entertainments in Samuel Pepys's Diary: Verses from John Evelyn and a Song to Mock Sir William Penn

The enduring friendship of the diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn began during the Second Dutch War (1665–67) when Pepys was Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board and Evelyn was a Commissioner for the Sick and Wounded.1 The plague helped bring them together. During the epidemic, the officials of the Navy Board evacuated from the City of London to Greenwich, a short walk from Evelyn’s home at Deptford. Pepys relished the social life among the evacuees at Greenwich: ‘I have never lived so merrily … as I have done this plague-time’ was how he summed up his experiences in 1665.2 One evening in particular was among the best that Pepys had ever had. On 10 September, he went for supper at the home of the merchant Captain George Cocke where he found, among others, Sir John Mennes (a fellow Navy Board member) and Evelyn. Reports had just arrived that Pepys’s patron, Lord Sandwich, had captured some much-needed Dutch prizes to fund the war effort: "the receipt of this news did put us all into such an extasy of joy, that it inspired into Sir J. Mennes and Mr. Eveling such a spirit of mirth, that in all my life I never met with so merry a two hours as our company this night was. (VI, 220)"