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 L20,000 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, an