Deborah Willet

Deborah Willet was born in 1650, the daughter of a Bristol merchant, and entered the Pepys household in 1667 as a companion to Elisabeth Pepys. Samuel Pepys recorded his growing sexual interest in her and the crisis that followed when Elisabeth discovered his conduct in 1668.

Willet’s life did not end with her dismissal from the household. Research has shown that she remained in London, married the clergyman Jeremiah Wells in 1670 and had children before her death in 1678. These findings help restore a biographical outline to a woman long known chiefly through Pepys’s account of his own behaviour.

In Deborah Swift’s Pleasing Mr Pepys, Deb Willet escapes a restrictive aunt by becoming companion to Elisabeth Pepys, wife of the naval administrator and diarist Samuel Pepys. The position promises independence and access to a wider world, but Deb soon discovers that the Pepys household is shaped by Samuel’s ambitions, appetites and secrets as much as by Elisabeth’s expectations. Against the political and naval tensions of Restoration London, Deb is forced to judge how far patronage can protect her and how easily dependence can become vulnerability.