Footnotes

A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTIONS, LARGELY IN SHORTHAND, EVIDENTLY COMPILED FOR PEPYS'S BROTHER-IN-LAW, Balthasar St Michel; his ownership being indicated by the final entry in the volume, which is separated from the main text by two blank leaves, being a transcript of "Instructions to be annexed to our Comission under our Great Seal appointing Balthazar St Michel Esquire to be our Commissioner of our Navy – particularly charg'd with the Direction & Care of our Service in our Yards at Depford & Woolwich", dated 19 April 1686, the original signed at the head and foot by James II and counter-signed "By his Majesty's Comand/SPepys" (contractions expanded). These are the instructions to St Michel on his appointment to the Special Commission of 1686-8, on which he "served to Pepys's complete satisfaction" (Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews, vol.x, Companion, 1983, p.375). The Special Commission had been set up by James II on Pepys suggestion to combine the functions of the Admiralty and Navy Board, and was the means by which Pepys set about his famous reform of Naval administration, all its members having been selected by Pepys himself: their achievements being described in Pepys's only published work, Memoires Relating to the State of the Royal Navy (1690).

Balthasar St Michel – known as 'Balty' – was the brother of Pepys's wife Elizabeth, and has been described as an "absurd, posturing, melodramatic egotist", who nevertheless "managed under Pepys's guidance to make a success in the naval service by virtue of sheer brashness and energy... His letters to Pepys, with their comic extravagance of language and feeling, perfectly reflect the man. 'If Balthasar St Michel had not existed', writes Richard Ollard, 'only Dickens could have invented him'" (Companion, pp.375-6). After various jobs, Pepys secured for him the appointment as Commissioner at Deptford and Woolwich in 1684, and then on the Special Commission of 1686-8. Like Pepys he was to lose office at the Revolution of 1688. It seems likely enough that this little volume was given to him by the brother-in-law who had appointed him.