Dover: Lock and Key of the Kingdom

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was the son of a London tailor.  Through the patronage of Admiral Edward Montague, later 1st  Earl of Sandwich, he rose rapidly in the naval service becoming  Secretary to the Admiralty in 1672. He is most well known for  his celebrated diary , which he kept from 1 January 1660 to 31  May 1669, and which recounts such momentous events as the  Great Fire of London. The 27 year old Pepys was on hand at  Dover, as secretary to Admiral Montague, to record the return  of Charles II to England on 25 May 1660.  “About noon (though the brigantine that Beale made was there  ready to carry him) yet he would go in my Lord’s barge with  the two Dukes. Our Captain steered, and my Lord went along  bare with him. I went, and Mr. Mansell, and one of the King’s  footmen, with a dog that the King loved, and so got on shore  when the King did, who was received by General Monk with all  imaginable love and respect at his entrance upon the land of  Dover. Infinite the crowd of people and the horsemen, citizens,  and noblemen of all sorts. The Mayor of the town came and  gave him his white staff, the badge of his place, which the King  did give him again. The Mayor also presented him from the  town with a very rich Bible, which he took and said it was the  thing that he loved above all things in the world. A canopy was  provided for him to stand under, which he did, and talked  awhile with General Monk and others, and so into a stately  coach there set for him, and so away through the town  towards Canterbury, without making any stay at Dover. The  shouting and joy expressed by all is past imagining”