Samuel Pepys and 'Discourses touching Religion' under James II

IN the mid-1680s, Samuel Pepys was at the summit of his career. A favoured client of King James II, he held the post of secretary for the admiralty and for two years was president of the Royal Society. Pepys had long since ended the copious diary he had kept during the 1660s and nothing comparable survives to detail his activities during James’s reign. Yet among his surviving papers is a cryptic document entitled ‘Notes from Discourses touching Religion’.1 Over ten pages, the paper discusses a spectrum of religious themes, drawing on the latest scientific theories and political debates. It proves to be a record of the books, manuscripts and conversations that were shaping the responses of Pepys and his associates to James’s controversial Catholicising policies. Soon after James’s accession in 1685, he began efforts to abrogate the penal laws and Test Acts that had been put in place to deter worship outside the Church of England and exclude Catholics from positions of power. It became apparent that he was prepared to act without Parliamentary consent in these matters and to remove from office those who disagreed with his plans. As a result office-holders—Pepys among them—faced pressing questions about religious allegiance, the extent of the sovereign power, and the relationship between church and state. Pepys’s notes are the result of deliberations on these issues and, as such, offer unexpected insights into political thought and debates among clergymen and government officials in the early period of James’s reign. Tracing the sources of the ‘Notes’ illuminates not only discussions among Royal Society members but also James II’s personal efforts to steer political opinion through the circulation of manuscript material

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