Born in 1633, died in 1703; son of a London tailor, educated at Cambridge; a clerk in the Admiralty in 1660, becoming finally Secretary; conducted the entire administration during the great plague, when he alone remained in London; assisted in checking the great fire in 1666; elected to Parliament in 1678; President of the Royal Society in 1684-86; gave his library of three thousand volumes to one of the colleges at Cambridge; his "Diary," first published in 1825, was written in cipher, without intent of publication.