History:Plots and conspiracies, acts of treachery and spectacular changes of fortune, all flourished as never before in English political life of the 17th century. Their effects might be experienced by anyone, however unlikely: Samuel Pepys, for example, was one prominent victim, writes Patricia Craig
The authors of The Plot Against Pepys have set themselves a formidable task: to disentangle the intricacies, accusations and counter-accusations, the skeins of corrupt motivation and opportunist activity, surrounding the impeachment of the diarist and naval administrator, and his imprisonment in the Tower.
The Longs (father and son) go about the business of clarification by setting out elements, and ramifications, of the central plot in short brisk chapters whose effect is steadily illuminating. They begin with Pepys's journey, under escort, from the House of Commons to the Tower of London. He has just resigned as secretary to the admiralty and is facing a charge of treasonable correspondence with France. The year is 1679, and Protestant England is in the grip of a phobia about popery. Pepys is accused, among other things, of being a closet Catholic and of keeping a priest among his household staff to facilitate his diabolical devotions. Titus Oates, at this time, is forging ahead with his phoney "Popish Plot", and moves are afoot to get the Catholic Duke of York excluded from the line of succession to the throne.
In the prevailing climate of agitation and suspicion, and with the testimonies of so-called "witnesses" available for purchase (and selling like hot cakes), it was easy enough, if ultimately risky, for any unscrupulous person to settle an old score. Pepys believed his association with the Duke of York, as one of the royal protégés, was behind his iniquitous incarceration. But it soon emerges, in the Longs' account, that a specific antagonist, a Col John Scott, is orchestrating the downfall of the diarist, and going about this objective with the utmost venom and determination. Why? To answer that question is the authors' primary purpose - and, step by step, they succeed in getting to the bottom of Scott's vendetta against Pepys.
It is quite a tortuous process, with new players in the drama, high and low, arriving by the minute. One strand of the story begins in 1678, with the murder, near Primrose Hill, of a London magistrate named Edmund Berry Godfrey, an incident believed by some to be the opening move in a planned Catholic uprising. Scott, at this moment, is about to leave the country from Gravesend, and his inexplicable assumption of the alias "Godfrey" brings him up against Pepys in his capacity as justice of the peace for Kent - a turn of events with striking consequences.
"Godfrey" is not the only pseudonym adopted by the colourful colonel, whose career as an adventurer and swindler on a prodigious scale merits a good deal of attention in the book. There are long stretches of the narrative from which Pepys is absent, while the authors get to grips with his adversary's adept chicanery and monumentally fraudulent undertakings. How Scott pulls it off, time after time, is a cause of wonder - as is his resilience when each grandiose project comes crashing down around his ears and he promptly engages in another.
Pepys in the meantime - with his life at stake - is, from his quarters in the Tower, assiduously preparing his defence and recruiting friends and allies at home and abroad (including his dead wife's impecunious brother, Bartholomew St Michel, or "Balty" for short) to further this purpose. It's never straightforward; there are many setbacks and convoluted byways to be negotiated. But Pepys's eventual reinstatement is assured - at least until the downfall of the Stuarts places him temporarily in jeopardy once again.
All this makes a good story, and it is painstakingly recounted by James and Ben Long. Restoration England, with its precarious political structures, its statutory intrigues and complex goings-on, its executions, shipwrecks, pope-burning parades and so forth, looms appropriately in the background, while Samuel Pepys and his principal enemy fight it out to the last rapier thrust in these pages.
Patricia Craig is a critic, biographer and anthologist. Asking for Trouble, her memoir of Belfast and Donegal, will be published by Blackstaff in the autumn
The Plot Against Pepys By James Long and Ben Long Faber & Faber, 322pp. £17.99