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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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SAMUEL PEPYS (1633 - 1703) In May 1682 Pepys was invited to accompany the Duke of York on a voyage to Scotland; Pepys himself was to receive the freedom of Newcastle. However, the Duke's ship Gloucester was wrecked in clear weather off Yarmouth because of pilot error. Most of the crew perished, though the Duke and his footman, and even his dog, were taken off with, as Richard Ollard puts it in his biography of Pepys 'an observance of ceremony disgusting even to that age of excessive formality'. Pepys was thought to have been lost too, but he was travelling aboard one of the accompanying yachts. Pepys' letters tell us little about his only visit to Scotland. He was disgusted by standards of personal hygiene, and, as was usual for travellers over the next hundred years, thought Glasgow beautiful and doesn't mention Edinburgh. Pepys stayed in Berwick on the return journey and visited Holy Island. He arrived in Newcastle on 29 May, having been met at Clifford's Fort in North Shields by the Mayor and his officials. According to Ollard, Pepys was feted in the city and made a freeman. He visited Durham, where he met the bishop, Nathaniel, Lord Crewe. Like Defoe (q.v.) he thought the bishop lived more like a prince of this earth than a preacher of the next. On his return to Newcastle, Pepys was invited to Seaton Delaval Hall by Sir Ralph Delaval. He finally left the Tyne by ship for Scarborough.
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