Samuel Pepys
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Samuel Pepys was an English writer and Tory politician. He served as an official in the Navy Board and Member of Parliament, but is now most renowned for the diary he kept for almost a decade, first p
Portrait by John Hayls, 1666
Bookplate, c. 1680–1690, with arms of Samuel Pepys: Quarterly 1st & 4th: Sable, on a bend or between two nag's heads erased argent three fleurs-de-lis of the field (Pepys); 2nd & 3rd: Gules, a lion rampant within a bordure engrailed or (Talbot). Samuel Pepys was descended from John Pepys who married Elizabeth Talbot, the heiress of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire. The Pepys arms are borne by the Pepys family, Earls of Cottenham.
Elisabeth de St Michel, Pepys' wife. Stipple engraving by James Thomson, after a 1666 painting (now destroyed) by John Hayls.
Samuel Pepys' bookplate. The motto reads Mens cujusque is est Quisque – "Mind Makes the Man".
Royal African Company
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The Royal African Company was an English trading company established in 1660 by the House of Stuart and City of London merchants to trade along the West African coast. It was overseen by the Duke of Y
1686 English guinea showing the Royal African Company's symbol, an elephant and castle, under the bust of James II
Cape Coast Castle, capital of the British Gold Coast