The Offords
Community Website
Feb 2009 Edition
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys and Offord
I made these notes as a result of reading various documents at Huntingdon Library and the County Record Office, Huntingdon, while researching local history for the village millennium book “The Offords Revisited”
Following the death of his uncle Robert Pepys at Brampton in July 1661, Samuel Pepys came up from London for the burial. The house in Brampton and much land in the locality passed to Samuel’s father, to be inherited by him. He took a lot of interest in the legal matters, and in inspecting the land he would inherit. This included a half acre in Offord, which was mortgaged by Richard Pigott to Robert Pepys.
On a typically busy day, Monday 15th July 1661 “Up by three o’clock this morning, and rode to Cambridge, and was there by seven o’clock, where, after I was trimmed, I went to Christ College, and found my brother John at eight o’clock in bed, which vexed me”. At noon he rode to Impington, and “Having done there, I rode to Gravely with much ado to inquire for a surrender of my uncle’s in some of the copyholders’ hands there, but I can hear on none, which puts me into very great trouble of mind, and so with a sad heart rode home to Brampton, but made my self as cheerful as I could to my father, and so to bed.”
The rest of the week was spent “putting things in order” including “in riding to Offord and Sturtlow, and up and down all our lands”.
On another trip to Brampton on Friday 20th September 1661 he records “Will Stankes and I set out in the morning betimes for Gravely, where to an ale-house and drank…”. Later in the day “.. and so rode to Offord”.
After the Plague of 1665 and Great Fire of 1666, he records while in London on 9th April 1667 a letter from his father in Brampton “Jasper Trice is gone to board with his brother, Naylor, at Offord, which is very sad”.
It is recorded elsewhere that Jasper Trice was the stepson of Samuel Pepys’s late Uncle Robert. He married Elizabeth Naylor, elder sister of Richard Naylor. The Naylor family were Lords of the Manor in Offord Darcy from 1605 to 1794, until one of the descendents, Chorlotte Matilda Green married George Thornhill in 1809, and this was the start of the Thornhill connection with Offord Darcy which continues to this day.
[G Sherlock January 2004]