Letter 0762

Pepys returns Sloane’s jewel with apologies. He made great use of it, amusing himself and his friends. He thanks Sloane for his last visit and wishes he were sick again so that he could invite Sloane over by himself. One of Sloane’s patients ‘with her lame Legg’ had to go to the country to attend her dying mother in Lincolnshire. Pepys was a naval official who is best known as a result of the publication of his diaries, which recount the various political and social happenings of his day (C. S. Knighton, Pepys, Samuel (16331703), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21906, accessed 19 June 2013]).