Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Per L&M Companion:
One of the ablest and most experienced of Pepys’s assistants; more than once commended by Pepys for his diligence, sobriety and honesty. Originally a purser (1652, 1655-65), he was given charge of the wartime victualling at Great Yarmouth 1665-7. From Aug. 1667 - Aug. 1670 he was clerk to Pepys in the Navy Office and after a spell as Purser-General to the Straits fleet (1670-72) served as chief clerk to three successive Clerks of the Acts 1672-7, as Clerk of the Cheque at Deptford 1677-80, as chief clerk to the Comptroller 1686-8, and as chief clerk of the Victualling Accounts 1686-8. He then moved to the Admiralty and appears to have gone out of office in 1693, with the resignation of Lord Cornwallis, the First Commissioner, whom he had also served as chief clerk. In that year he wrote (somewhat in Pepys’ manner) a comprehensive memorandum to the King on the state of the Navy and sent a copy to Pepys. In the ’90s he contributed largely to the notes Pepys made for his projected history of the Navy. He had made a collection of Naval MSS - now in the British Library BL Add MSS 11602, 1650-1702 - again in Pepys’s manner. His handwriting is curiously (perhaps significantly) very similar to to Pepys’s. He was alive in 1703 when he received a ring at Pepys’s funeral as a former servant and dependent.
Gibson’s own account of his career survives, BL Sloane MSS 2572, ff.79-87.