As the year 1660 opens, Samuel Pepys is 26 years old and thankful to be in good health after a drastic operation to remove a “stone” (gallstone) two years previously in March 1658. He works as a clerk in the Exchequer (treasury department) and lives in Axe Yard in London with his wife Elizabeth (never named in the Diary), and their servant Jane. Pepys and his wife have been married for about two years as the Diary opens. Pepys’s boss at the Exchequer is George Downing (for whom Downing Street was later named), and he also serves Edward Montagu, the First Lord of the Admiralty, in his business affairs. Montagu, who is 35 years old as the Diary opens, will later be named as the first Earl of Sandwich. Pepys’s frequent references to “my Lord,” without any subsequent name, refer to Montagu.

Although considered by others to be well-off, Pepys considers himself to be “very poor” and his job to be “somewhat uncertain” due to the unstable political situation. The First Year of the Diary is set in the period between the Commonwealth (the republican government led by Oliver Cromwell) and the restoration of the monarchy, which will be described in the Second Year.