Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) was a student of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and bequeathed his personal library of 3000 volumes to the College on condition that the contents remained intact and unaltered; they remain there, in his original bookcases, to this day. In the early twentieth century, a project to produce a complete catalogue was begun, and four volumes were published between 1914 and 1940. Volume 1 lists 114 manuscripts relating to maritime and naval matters, a subject of particular interest to Pepys, who was employed by the admiralty. They fall into three main categories: official documents of his own time, other official and unofficial documents that he collected as material for his projected 'History of the Navy', and books and papers that appealed to him but are not directly relevant to naval history. This catalogue remains a valuable resource for researchers in naval history.
