Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com
1893 text
Richard Gibson, so frequently noticed by Pepys, was a clerk in the Navy Office. His collection of papers relating to the navy of England A.D. 1650-1702, compiled, as he states, from the Admiralty books in the Navy Office, are in the British Museum. — B.
Annotations
-
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.
-
The Oxford DNB says that Gibson was born in 1635 and live until at least 1712. The article credits him with originating the plan for a Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich.
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66462?docPos=3 (subscription required)
The hospital, established in 1694, operated at Greenwhich until 1869, and still exists as a charitable foundation. The hospital buildings later housed the Royal Naval College and are now part of the world heritage site in Greenwich.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Hospital_(London)#Greenwich_Hospital