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Great uncle of Samuel Pepys, and patriarch of the family.

Talbot Pepys was the youngest son of John Pepys of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire and his wife Edith Talbot. He was baptised at Impington on 2 April 1583. He inherited the site of his father's mansion at Impington when he was six years old in 1589.

He matriculated from King's College, Cambridge in 1595 and became a scholar of Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1601. He was admitted at Middle Temple on 13 May 1605 and was called to the bar in 1613. Between 1624 and 1660 he served as Recorder of Cambridge.

In 1625 he was elected Member of Parliament for Cambridge. He was Reader of Middle Temple in 1631 and Treasurer in 1640. He was often visited by his great nephew Samuel Pepys.

Pepys married firstly, Beatrice Castell, daughter of John Castell of Raveningham, Norfolk on 3 August 1617. They had five children. After Beatrice's death he married Paulina, who died in 1626. He married his third wife Mary Tesmond not long after Paulina's death. His last wife was Mary Barker.

Talbot Pepys died at the age of 82 at Impington.

Samuel Pepys was admitted as a Sizar to Magdalene College in October 1650, and was subsequently a benefactor to the College. His most notable appointments to which he was appointed are as follows: Secretary to the Admiralty, 1673-1679, 1684-1689; MP for Castle Rising, 1673-1679, and Harwich 1679, 1685; Deputy Lieutenant for Huntingdonshire, 1685-1689; President of the Royal Society, 1684-1686. Pepys kept his celebrated diary ran from January 1660 to May 1669.

Arms in Hall glass, E2.

Further reading:
Latham, R. C. & Matthews, W. eds, The Diary (11 vols, 1970-1983)

Cunich, P., Hoyle, D., Duffy, E., Hyam, R., A History of Magdalene College Cambridge, 1428-1988 pp. 129-130

Article: ‘Pepys and Pascal’ College Magazine, vol. 86 (1955), pp. 5-8 (R. W. Ladborough)
Article: 'The Religion of Pepys' College Magazine, vol. 27 (1982-83) pp. 52-59 (E. Duffy and J. E. Stevens)
Article: 'Pepys and the Law', vol. 30 (1985-86) pp. (R. W. M. Dias)
Article: 'Pepys's Health Problems', vol. 42 (1997-98) pp. 40-45 (M. Keynes)

Among the biographies:
Ollard, R. Pepys: A Biography (1974)
Tomalin, C. Samuel Pepys: the Unequalled Self (2002)

Elizabeth de St Michel was born at Bideford, Devon, on 23 October 1640. She was the daughter of Alexandre le Marchant de St Michel and Dorothea Fleetwood. The family lived in Devon, where Dorothea had inherited land. They later lost this property and subsequently travelled between Germany, Flanders, and Ireland. Dorothea, along with Elizabeth and her brother Balthasar, fled to Paris after their fortunes had been undermined by Alexandre's increasingly determined religious views. Her mother intended that Elizabeth should become a nun, and she was briefly placed in the city's Ursuline convent before she and Balty were removed to London by their father.

It was in London that Elizabeth met Samuel Pepys, then in the employ of Edward Mountagu, later first earl of Sandwich. Details of the circumstances of their meeting remain unknown, though it is evident, given that neither party stood to gain financially from the union, that theirs was a love match. The couple were married at a civil service at St Margaret's, Westminster, on 1 December 1655, when Elizabeth, described as being of St Martin-in-the-Fields, was aged fifteen and Samuel twenty-two. By the time of this service the couple had apparently already 'married' in an unrecorded religious ceremony which took place on 10 October, the date Pepys identified as their anniversary during his years of diary keeping.

The early months of their marriage were characterised by antagonism and argument. The cramped conditions of his attic apartment at Whitehall Palace exacerbated both Elizabeth's irritation at the prosaic nature of married life and Samuel's jealousy and sexual frustration which derived, in part, from his own and his wife's recurrent ill health. Within a year of their marriage Elizabeth left her husband to stay with her family at Charing Cross returning to Whitehall in December 1657. In August of the following year the couple left for a house in Axe Yard, Westminster, where they stayed until July 1660 before moving to the Navy Office at Seething Lane.

By this date Pepys had begun a diary, which he maintained daily until six months before his wife's death. Pepys never named her in his journal but referred to 'his wife'.

Elizabeth gained additional leisure time as her husband's career, and salary, improved over the decade. She also enjoyed more freedom than many women of her status on account of the marriage remaining childless.

In June 1669 Elizabeth accompanied her husband and brother on a tour of northern France and the Netherlands. Here she contracted the fever, probably typhoid, which developed during their return journey and from which, aged twenty-nine, she died at Seething Lane on 10 November.

Matriculated from Magdalene College in 1839. He was directly descended through his mother from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s sister.
Rowed in the Blue Boat, 1840, 1841, 1842.
‘Architect, archaeologist and astronomer’, surveyor of the fabric of St Paul’s Cathedral (1852-1897), he is chiefly remembered as an architectural historian. His famous work Principles of Athenian Architecture (1851, 1888, 1973) demonstrated that there were no straight lines in the Parthenon (entasis of the columns).
One of the first Honorary Fellows, 1885.
President of the RIBA, 1894-1896, and first director of the British School at Athens.
For Magdalene he undertook the restoration of the Street Front and laid out River Court (he designed the gates); part of the Chapel Court in St John’s is also his work.

Further reading:
Article: 'Unbuilt Magdalene I Penrose's Plan for Second Court (1872-73)', College Magazine, No. 30, (1985-86), pp. 21-24 (R. Hyam)

Climbing sherpa on 1921 Mount Everest Expedition with George Mallory, mentioned by name.

Matriculated at Magdalene College in 1890. One of the first men to take the Mechanical Sciences Tripos. After working on Parsons steam turbines, and teaching at the Leys School, he returned to the Engineering Department in 1898, where he continued to lecture until 1937, on mechanics and thermodynamics.

Made a Fellow at Magdalene in 1909; Steward, 1912-1913, 1942-1945; Bursar, 1913-1937, 1943-1947. He was brought out of retirement to fill the gap left by the departure of his successor.

Further reading:
Article: 'Mr Talbot Peel, 1872-1954', College Magazine, No. 85 (1954) pp. 21-23

Emperor of Brazil (1822–31).

Master of Magdalene College, 1781-1797

Educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in the late 1730s where he was a young tearaway, repeatedly in trouble for being drunk, even during divine service, which he often skipped. A major transformation in his character must later have taken place, perhaps due to his service as an Army Chaplain.
He lost his left arm 'when very young' the result of 'the unexpected going off of his companion's gun'. He was skilful in concealing the injury.

Married Martha Ferrar in 1755.
Vice-Chancellor, 1784-1785.
Dean of Peterborough, 1792-1797.
The first Anglican sermons against the slave trade were preached by Peckard in the College Chapel, leading to courageous and galvanic sermons in Great St Mary’s in 1783 and 1784, and to the prize essay which inspired Thomas Clarkson's campaign. Peckard was also a notable benefactor to the College.

Memorial brass in the Old Library.

College Mgazine:
Article: 'Peter Peckard', College Magazine, No. 1, 1956-57, pp.15-23
Article: 'The Peckard Bicentenary', College Magazine, vol. 42, 1997-98, pp. 29-31

Martha Peckard was a published poet in her day. Her Ode to Spring and Ode to Cynthia were featured in the periodicals The Gentleman's Magazine and The Weekly Magazine, or Edinburgh Amusement. She was the eldest daughter of Edward Ferrar, a lawyer in Huntingdonshire, and she married Peter Peckard in 1755. She ensured the safe transfer of the Ferrar Papers and Peckard's personal library to Magdalene College upon Peckard's death.

An English painter active in the later part of Elizabeth I's reign and for most of the reign of James I. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry; and in 1607, serjeant-painter to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz. Peake is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller William Peake (c. 1580–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake (c. 1605–67), who followed his father into the family print-selling business.

Karma Paul was a interpreter on the 1922 and 1924 British Mount Everest Expeditions, mentioned by name by George Mallory.

Among the climbers of the 1924 Third British Expedition to Everest Karma Paul had perhaps one of the least glamorous but most important jobs. He wasn't a climber, he never summited Everest, but as the group's translator his job was vital in communicating with the native Himalayan people and with the group's own Sherpa.

Karma Paul was fluent in Nepali, English and Tibetan and would serve as the translator for all the British expeditions from 1922 to 1938. Aside from his work as interpreter Paul also served as a recruiter and all-around moderator between the expedition and the native people.

Following the death of Sherpa Shamsher Pun from a likely blood clot on the brain, Paul was dispatched to the Rongbuk Monastery to see if the Sherpas, who were suffering low spirits following the death of young Pun, might be blessed by the head Lama there. The Lama agreed and invited the entire expedition to the monastery where he blessed them all and declared that they had been forced back by demons who would not do so again.

Following his career on Everest, Paul trained himself to be a skilled auto mechanic and in the 1950s won a small fortune at the horse races. He retired to Darjeeling.

Matriculated at Magdalene college in 1856; 8th Wrangler (1861). He spent his entire adult life in Magdalene, as a Fellow from 1861, Librarian (1863), Tutor from 1865, and President from 1876 until his untimely death at the age of 59 in 1896. He was suddenly taken ill while dining with his old friend Henry Latham, the Master of Trinity Hall, ‘and expired in a few minutes’ [Venn, J., and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses; a biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of office at the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900]. According to family tradition, Pattrick expected to become Master in succession to Latimer Neville (‘Binkie’/Pattrick, F. G. Twenty-Thirty: An Autobiography of this Decade of my Life (St Ives, Cambs, 1986) p 5).

Arms in Hall glass, W2.

Draughtsman and engraver; worked in London. Father of F.E. and Joseph Pastorini, miniature painters.

Matriculated in 1865. He was sent down for the remainder of term on 26 May 1869 after a fight near the railway station. He failed to return to College.
Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1880-1890.
Captain William O’Shea, MP, brought a divorce case against his wife who was Parnell’s long-term mistress and this destroyed Parnell’s political career.

The College has an annual Parnell Visiting Fellowship.

Further reading about Parnell's time in Cambridge please see Ged Martin's articles on his website: https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3?task=blogcategory&id=3
and College Magazine, No. 6, (1961-62), pp. 13-16.

Sister of Lord Howard de Walden, the first Lord Braybrooke, married the Revd Dr William Parker DD, FRS (1714 -1802), Rector of St James’s, Westminster, and curate of Catharine Cree Church, eminent preacher, royal chaplain and chaplain to the Bishop of London . Mary succeeded to the family estates on the death of her brother in 1797, so she and her husband had a life interest in Audley End, and as ‘owners’ under the old Statutes (an arrangement which lasted until 1926, when the right was vested in the Braybrooke family, not the ownership of Audley End), they jointly signed the patent for the presentation of William Gretton to the mastership in 1797; however, they did not reside at Audley End.