The long friendship of these two was only terminated by the death of Pepys on 26th May, 1703, not long before Evelyn had himself to depart from this life.

'This day died Mr.Sam.
Pepys, a very courtly, industrious and curious person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy, in which he had passed through all the most considerable offices, Clerk of the Acts and Secretary of the Admiralty, all which he performed with great integrity.

When King James II., went out of England, he laid down his office and would serve no more.....

He was universally belov'd, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, skilled in music, a very great cherisher of learned men of whom he had the conversation.....

Mr.Pepys had been for near 40 yeares so much my particular friend, that Mr.Jackson sent me compleat mourning, desiring me to be one to hold up the pall at his magnificient obsequies, but my indisposition hinder'd me from doing him this last office.' II _Evelyn's Childhood, Early Education, and Youth._ The essential facts of Evelyn's life, as he himself would have us know them, are set forth at full length in autobiographical form, chronologically arranged in what is always spoken of as his _Diary_, although evidently this was (much of it, at any rate) merely a subsequent personal compilation from an actual diary, kept in imitation of his father, from the age of 11 years onwards and down even to within one month of his death in 1706.
The second son and the fourth child of Richard Evelyn of Wotton in Surrey, and of his wife Eleanor, daughter of John Stansfield 'of an ancient honorable family (though now extinct) in Shropshire,' he was born at Wotton on 31st.