The Diaries of Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys was the world famous diarist of the 17th Century. He witnessed and recoded events such as the Great Plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666. His diaries covered many years and contain many invaluable details of life at that time.

There is now a web-site dedicated to his diaries at www.pepysdiary.com. There is a search facility available and I have used it to locate a number of references to Pinckney's. The spellings vary between Pinckney, Pinkney and Pinkny but some of the entries I have found under Pinkney and Pinkny clearly point to Pinckneys as I have other evidence to prove the name spelling. Some pages even have two different spellings when clearly talking about the same person.

This is an excellent web-site and you can even add annotations to the pages. Unfortunately some of the entries added by other people contain incorrect information. When I get time I will contact them to see if we can sort out the errors.

Some of the dates are shown as 1659/60, the reason for this is that until the Calendar Act of 1752 the year in England began on 25th March (Lady Day) even though 1st January was celebrated as New Year's day. So 1659 was the date as recorded in the diary but as far as we are concerned we would say it was 1660.

The results are as follows -

Pinckney (1)

Pinkney (9)

Pinkny (3)

As you can see there is definate confusion over the spelling because even on a single page the same person is referred to with different spellings.

I have tried several different spellings but this is all I have come up with so far. If you try something else and find some more entries please let me know and I'll add them to this page.

The main Pinckney's identied in the Diaries are Henry who was a Goldsmith and Banker and who founded the Bank of "The Three Squirrels" in Fleet Street, London which is now the Gosling's Branch of Barclay's Bank and still exists today. The other two are George and his son Charles who were "Embroiderers to the King". I am confused about these two at the moment. I have a chart which shows them and a will from George which mentions his son Charles. However, I have many other births, deaths and marriages from that time which appear to show a different family headed by a George who also had a son Charles. It may be a coinsidence that there are two similiar families around at the same time, it may be some more important information hasn't come to light yet. When I work it out I'll let you know.

Lastly, it's important to understand that this site is continually changing with a new diary page being added every day. It started on 1st January 2003 when the very first page of the diary, the corresponding page for 1st January 1660, was published. Each day the corresponding page will be published so new entries for Pinckneys will hopefully appear in future so we'll have to keep an eye on developments. Let me know if you see and new entries and I'll update this page.