Transcriber’s Note
Reading edition
The illustrations which were included as plates in the original have been moved near to the text they illustrate.
Footnotes have been moved to the end of chapters.
Variant spelling, inconsistent hyphenation and irregular punctuation are retained, but, in a few cases, missing punctuation has been added for consistency, e.g. after abbreviations, and to match quotation marks.
On page 109 the date on which Pepys first notices signs of the plague was originally printed as the 7th of June, 1667; the year has been changed to 1665.
In the index the page number (31) for the entry “Pepys thinks of writing a history of the Dutch war” has been added.
The five portraits of court ladies did not have captions in the original, but the names of the subjects are included in the following list of illustrations:
Nell Gwyn
The Rt. Hon. Francis North, Lord Keeper, Guildford
Katherine of Braganza
John Milton
Frances Jennings, Duchess of Tyrconnel
Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland
Frances Stuart, Duchess of Richmond
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon