he is
a blockhead, and not fitt for that imployment. But why he should
not make as able a Commissioner as a Shipp wright lett wise men
judge."

In Pepys's patent the salary is stated to be L33 6s. 8d., but this was
only the ancient "fee out of the Exchequer," which had been attached to
the office for more than a century. Pepys's salary had been previously
fixed at L350 a-year.

Neither of the two qualifications upon which particular stress is laid in
the above Instructions was possessed by Pepys. He knew nothing about the
navy, and so little of accounts that apparently he learned the
multiplication table for the first time in July, 1661. We see from the
particulars given in the Diary how hard he worked to obtain the knowledge
required in his office, and in consequence of his assiduity he soon became
a model official. When Pepys became Clerk of the Acts he took up his
residence at the Navy Office, a large building situated between Crutched
Friars and Seething Lane, with an entrance in each of those places. On
July 4th, 1660, he went with Commissioner Pett to view the houses, and was
very pleased with them, but he feared that the more influential officers
would jockey him out of his rights. His fears were not well grounded, and
on July 18th he records the fact that he dined in his own apartments,
which were situated in the Seething Lane front.

On July 24th, 1660, Pepys was sworn in as Lord Sandwich's deputy for a
Clerkship of the Privy Seal. This office, which he did not think much of
at first, brought him "in for a time L3 a day." In June, 1660, he was
made Master of Arts by proxy, and soon afterwards he was sworn in as a
justice of the Peace for Middlesex, Essex, Kent, and Hampshire, the
counties in which the chief dockyards were situated.

Pepys's life is written large in the Diary, and it is not necessary here
to do more than catalogue the chief incidents of it in chronological
order. In February, 1661-62, he was chosen a Younger Brother of the
Trinity House, and in April, 1662, when on an official visit to Portsmouth
Dockyard, he was made a burgess of the town. In August of the same year
he was appointed one of the commissioners for the affairs of Tangier.
Soon afterwards Thomas Povy, the treasurer, got his accounts into a
muddle, and showed himself incompetent for the place, so that Pepys
replaced him as treasurer to the commission.

In March, 1663-64, the Corporation of the Royal Fis