Sex saga from sevententh century takes dramatic new twist

Diary. Photo by eleven47.

A press release from Leicester.

New research by a University of Leicester lecturer has revealed for the first time the fate of the relationship between famous diarist Samuel Pepys and his mistress Deb Willet, whose sexual encounters were recorded for posterity in his celebrated journal.

Deb, an employee in Pepys’s household, was banished from his home after being caught in flagrante with him by his wife, Elizabeth – who later threatened him with hot tongs!

But what became of Deb after the affair was exposed has remained a mystery – until now.

Research carried out by Dr Kate Loveman while at St Anne’s College, Oxford and published in The Historical Journal has revealed for the first time that long after Deb left the household she kept in touch with Pepys.

And it sheds new light on a key question about Pepys’s private life – was he a light-hearted philanderer or a sexual predator? Dr Loveman, of the Department of English at the University of Leicester, says her study also provides new information to interpret the diary, offering an insight into the social history of the 1660s.

She said: Samuel Pepys’s description of his affair with his wife’s companion Deb Willet is one of the most famous episodes in his diary.

“Pepys describes in vivid terms his infatuation with seventeen-year-old Deb, his wife Elizabeth’s discovery of the affair, and the strife which followed – including an episode when the jealous Elizabeth threatened him with hot tongs.

“After tracking Deb obsessively around London, Pepys eventually lost contact with her and, in his last diary entry in May 1669, regrets that ‘my amours to Deb are past’.

“What happened to Deb after the end of Pepys’s diary has always intrigued readers and Pepys’s biographers. She seemed to disappear at once from Pepys’s life and from the historical record.”

But Dr Loveman’s research has found new evidence from London archives and from Pepys’s papers in the Bodleian library, Oxford, showing that their connection did not end with the diary.

Dr Loveman discovered that just eight months after Pepys’s last diary entry about Deb, she married a young clergyman – Jeremiah Wells.

Her research has found the couple lived at lodgings in Angel Alley, Whitechapel. This alley still exists: it is next to the Whitechapel Art Gallery and just over a ten-minute walk from Pepys’s home in Seething Lane

The couple’s daughter Deborah was born in December 1670, and this prompted Wells to write to Pepys asking for assistance in getting additional employment.

Dr Loveman said: “It therefore appears that Deb was prepared to further contact between Pepys and her husband. As a navy official, Pepys was able to help Wells by getting him a job as a navy chaplain. Letters between Pepys and Wells show that Pepys continued to act as Wells’s patron throughout the 1670s, helping Wells to support his family through employment in the navy and in the church.

“Given Pepys’s past obsession with Deb, his continued contact with her family raises suspicions about the nature of their relationship. He may have assisted Deb and her husband out of simple benevolence. However Pepys’s wife was now dead, Deb was living close by, and Pepys knew she was without her husband – indeed he had helped send her husband elsewhere.

“The situation is particularly suspicious because Pepys’s diary reveals that his affairs with women had more than once led to him helping their husbands to a position on board ship. In fact, Wells arrived on his first ship with a letter of recommendation from Pepys addressed to the purser Samuel Martin – who also happened to be the husband of Pepys’s long-term mistress Betty Martin. With Deb’s financial state partly reliant on Pepys’s influence she may not have been in a position to refuse him if he sought to resume their affair.

“Although Deb and her husband eventually began to prosper, there was a sad end to their story. Deb died in 1678 when she was still a young woman.”

Despite Pepys’s often predatory attitude towards Deb, their renewed contact in the 1670s suggests he was right to believe that they had not parted on bad terms in 1669. At the very least, Deb felt able to appeal for aid to Pepys and trusted him to be discreet about their previous relationship.

While finding out what happened to Deb takes away some of the mystery of this part of the journal, instead we have the knowledge that Deb set about making a new life for herself and that Pepys played an influential role in it.

Dr Loveman added: “The fate of Deb Willet after the diary has attracted attention from Pepys’s biographers since the 1930s when Arthur Bryant raised the issue. In her recent biography Claire Tomalin wrote sensitively about the relationship between Deb and Pepys but was ultimately only able to speculate on what might have happened to their relationship after the close of the diary. These new findings are the first evidence on Deb Willet’s life after 1669 and the first evidence that her connection with Pepys continued after that date.

“From an academic perspective, the main interest in my study lies in the way in which Pepys’s amorous relationship with Deb Willet led to long-term sponsorship of her husband. Small case-studies like this allow us to build up a better picture of how individuals could rise in Restoration society through a combination of merit, diligence, and patronage. In this case, because we know of Pepys’s past relationship with Deb, we probably know more than Jeremiah Wells did about one of the factors assisting his rise.”

But the question remains: Did Pepys resume his sexual liaison with Deb now that he was widowed and her husband was at sea? Dr Loveman said:

“My research certainly adds to the sense of Pepys as an extremely complex personality. One of the fascinating things about Pepys is that it is possible to construct very conflicting views from the information we have about him: as regards his private life, you could choose to paint him as either a cheerful philanderer or a sexual predator. Here we have to give Pepys some credit for generously supporting his former servant, while recognising that his benevolence may have hidden darker motives.”

So though Pepys believed that his relationship with Deb had ended along with his diary, this was certainly not the last he knew of her.