Sir George Downing, 1st Baronet was an Anglo-Irish statesman and diplomat who held office first under the Commonwealth of England, then Charles II. As Teller of the Exchequer, he carried out major ref
Possible portrait by Thomas Smith, c. 1675–1690
Downing Street, now Official residence of the Prime Minister, awarded to Downing in 1660
Downing was buried in a vault he had built in All Saints' Church, Croydon, Cambridgeshire
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
Sir George Downing, 1st Baronet
…Miles Corbet and his former commander and sponsor John Okey. Against considerable opposition from the Dutch, they were taken to England and executed. Samuel Pepys, who characterised his conduct as odious if useful to the king, calls him a "perfidious rogue", and remarks that "all the world took notice of him for…
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".