Researching with Seventeenth Century Diaries

by Deborah Swift

One good thing about the internet is that I have access to many documents online, that previously were only available to me through archives. The most valuable sources for me are diaries, in which I get a first-hand account of seventeenth century life. I have linked all the diarists in this post to their online diaries.

Etching by Robert Spence

The first diary I used was that of the Quaker, George Fox, because he appears in my first novel, and like many diaries of the time his diary was written because of a religious impulse, in which he was documenting his relationship with God. The original journal was revised before it was published and I found both editions interesting to compare.

Fox's journal was first officially published in 1694, by which time it had been substantially edited, and cleaned up. Parts of the journal were not in fact by Fox at all but were re-constructed by his editors keen to spread a message of clean and godly living. References to meetings in taverns, and the dissent within the Quaker movement have been expunged from the narrative. The diary portrays Fox as rather more saintly than he probably was, and always vindicated by God's providence. This is the problem with diaries published later (particularly by Victorians) - the temptation is always to clean them up, thus losing value for researchers like me. Only recently have we been able to read the 'naughty bits' in Pepys' Diary.

Many diarists of the seventeenth century were religious men. Though the diary of Roger Lowe is very much the diary of the common man, it still shows his refusal to conform to the re-established church. It gives us insights into a seventeenth century mercer's apprentice living in a Lancashire village. In his entries we discover that literacy was unusual in his community, and somewhat prized, because he sometimes offered to write letters for his neighbours. In October 1663 his friend John Hasleden told him;

"that he loved a wench in Ireland, and so the day after I writ a love-letter for him into Ireland". 

Can't help wondering exactly what he put! His diaries reflect the concerns of a working class man, not a member of the aristorcacy, and as such are especially valuable:

"Friday. dyed Alexander Potter 3d son to Cozen John Potter de Lilly Lane who in his life time was nevr supposd to have any genius a meer child yet now att his death called father & mother & prayd forgivenes of his faults in cheating them of a half peny and wished them to live in peace & that his sister Ellin would leave off swearinge & so dyed & without question is now att rest." (25th June 1675)

The diary of Roger Lowe of Ashton in Makerfield is preserved in the Leyland Free Library and Museum, in Hindley, Lancashire. Here is a link to pictures and more extracts.

 

Samuel Pepys began his diary in 1660 and continued to write it for ten years. His diary is arguably the best-known resource we have on London in the 17th century. It provides us with a fly-on-the-wall account of daily life in the period just following the Restoration of King Charles II, and includes passages on The Plague and The Great Fire. Here's a bit from the Coronation of Charles II, in which he confesses that in the middle of the proceedings he has to answer a call of nature. This is the joy of Pepys; the personal and the political are intertwined.

"The King in his robes, bare headed, which was very fine. And after all had placed themselfs - there was a sermon and the service. And then in the Quire at the high altar he passed all the ceremonies of the Coronacion - which, to my very great grief, I and most of the Abbey could not see. The crowne being put upon his head, a great shout begun. And he came forth to the Throne and there passed more ceremonies: as, taking the oath and having things read to him by the Bishopp, and his lords (who put on their capps as soon as the King put on his Crowne) and Bishopps came and kneeled before him.....But I had so great a list to pisse, that I went out a little while before the King had done all his ceremonies and went round the abby to Westminster-hall, all the way within rayles, and 10000 people, with the ground coverd with blue cloth - and Scaffolds all the way. Into the hall I got - where it was very fine with hangings and scaffolds, one upon another, full of brave ladies. And my wife in one little one on the right hand."

An awareness of the importance of national events also seems to have encouraged Roger Morrice, who began to keep an 'entring book' in 1678 after the Popish Plot which aimed to re-establish the Catholic Church by assassinating Charles II. The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 created massive anti-Catholic hysteria. Like Pepys' Diary, Morrice's diary  was written in shorthand, and so was only translated this century, and runs to more than a million words. (See this article )His diary begins in 1677 and ends in 1691, and so covers the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William and Mary.

Morrice was a clergyman who had been expelled from his parish after Charles II returned from exile. He shows us many incidences of political or religious unrest, like this example from 1666 showing the persecution of the Quakers:

"Upon Lords day the 17th October at Leicester, the Quakers mett together. There are some Soldiers quartred in the Town, and a Black that is Kettle Drummer to one Company went into the Quakers Meeting, and did as they did, sign, groan, and sing, &c. A little after came in a Captain and three or foure Soldiers, who brought ale and Tobacco pipes with them and sate down and smoked and drunk. The Captain drank the King’s health to a Quaker; the Quaker answered I thirst not; the Captain said it thou drinkest not my Master’s health, I will Cuckold they wife before they eyes. With that, the Captain and Souldiers rose up, and drew their Swords, Shut the doores, and used and abused the women much. Some of the young Girles are so affrighted their recovery is questioned." 

Morrice had a friend who was a Privy councillor and so was able to comment on the death of Charles II, a report that is somewhat controversial and indicates a return to Catholicism.

"On Thursday night a priest came up the back way. It was believed by all that he confessed the king, gave him extreme unction and that His Majesty died a papist."

Death of Charles II

But what of the women of this period? I can recommend the diary of Anne Clifford, a stubborn and independent woman who travelled great distances in her attempt to regain her stolen inheritance - which included Skipton Castle in Yorkshire along with Pendragon Castle, Brough Castle, Appleby Castle and Brougham Castle, all in Westmorland. Her relationship with her husband was strained, but her love for her estates never wavered:

'Upon the 5th my Lord went up to my closet and saw how little money I had left, contrary to all that they had told him. Sometimes I had fair words from him and sometimes foul but I took all patiently and did strive to give him as much content and assurance of my love as I could possibly. Yet I always told him that I would never part with Westmoreland upon any condition whatsoever.'

Though not strictly a diary, though written in her lifetime, a source I really enjoyed reading was the memoir of Anne Fanshawe, a Royalist during the English Civil War. As was common in that period, she gave birth to 14 live children and had six miscarriages. When her husband was taken prisoner at the Battle of Worcester she stood outside his window in the middle of the night in the rain to talk to him.  She also wrote a book of cookery and her recipe for ice cream is thought to be the earliest recorded in Europe.

Anne Fanshawe's Recipe for ice cream

Here is a passage from her memoirs about the arrival of the King:

"We had by the States' order sent on board to the King's most eminent servants, great store of provisions: for our family we had sent on board the Speedwell a tierce of claret, a hogshead of Rhenish wine, six dozen of fowls, a dozen of gammons of bacon, a great basket of bread, and six sheep, two dozen of neats' tongues, and a great box of sweetmeats. Thus taking our leaves of those obliging persons we had conversed with in the Hague, we went on board upon the 23rd of May, about two o'clock in the afternoon. The King embarked at four of the clock, upon which we set sail, the shore being covered with people, and shouts from all places of a good voyage, which was seconded with many volleys of shot interchanged: so favourable was the wind, that the ships' wherries went from ship to ship to visit their friends all night long."

Anne Fanshawe

Other diarists worth considering from this period are John Evelyn, Ralph Josselin and Robert Hooke. For women, try Celia Fiennes the great traveller, or Lucy Hutchinson's account of the English Civil War. I hope you have enjoyed my small foray into the many seventeenth century diaries available to us, and I hope it fuels more research! My novels featuring the hidden lives of the women in Pepys' Diary are available now from Accent Press.

Do nudge me on twitter @swiftstory to chat, or find me on my website.
All pictures are from Wikipedia, unless linked.

The Delivery of Letters - a novelist's dilemma

by Deborah Swift

Despatch Rider 1648

Every time I write a book  there is nearly always a point in the plot where a letter or message needs to be sent, and I am obliged to calculate how long it will take for the letter to reach its destination. And of course someone in the novel is waiting for the reply, which doubles how much fictional time the reader has to wait to find out the outcome. This calculation nearly always involves the speed of a horse and rider, the distance, the state of the road, and the reliability of the postal service. Nowadays, mail is instant - a few seconds and it's on your screen. In the medieval Chronicle of Croyland, (named for its place of origin, the Benedictine Abbey of Croyland or Crowland, in Lincolnshire, England) we read:

' Richard III followed the practice which had been recently introduced by King Edward in the time of the last war with Scotland, of appointing a single horseman for every twenty miles, by means of whom travelling with the utmost speed and not passing their respective limits, news was able to be carried by letter from hand to hand 200 miles within two days.'

This was the beginning of the despatch rider, at first a temporary measure to take mail of national urgency, and later a method of sending mail along organised routes.Under this new 'stage' system, a fresh horse was available every twenty miles, and so a  hundred miles could be covered in a day.

In Tudor times as the court moved from place to place, so despatch routes would be organized between London and the designated palace. The earliest mention of a Master of the Posts is in the King's Book of Payments where a payment of £100 was authorised for Brian Tuke to take on the role February 1512. Tuke was the secretary of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey and was asked to look into the King's Posts. He sent a memorandum to Thomas Cromwell which stated that only the London to Dover route was a regular post, and the rest a hotch-potch of disorganisation, with people pulling carthorses from the fields if a message was urgent.

Brian Tuke by Holbein

Because of this shortcoming, the idea of always having a horse in readiness became essential. So the postmaster was born, a man who would have a horse always available for despatches (and of course he could hire these horses out to private persons too.) On major routes now there would be a postmaster appointed in each town, and they were instructed to have the sign of a posthorn hanging on the door, for the couriers to be able to find the source of their next mount.

For this reason, we often still see the image of a posthorn on our mailboxes, stamps, and on taverns or pubs that were former staging posts. Some are still called the Post Horn Inn, the Horn or the Bugle Horn.

By Elizabeth's reign, entrepreneurs had begun to set up rival companies, until a proclamation was made that the only mail that could be sent abroad was to go by the official posts. By 1598 it was possible to send mail to Ireland via two routes - Holyhead and Bristol. However, unofficial postmasters still plied their trade until the reign of Charles I when Thomas Witherings was apponted Postmaster of England. In April 1633 Witherings was sent on a visit to the Calais and Antwerp to regularise the foreign mail service, and he subsequently became so efficient that he gained a virtual monopoly on the routes from the capital to Bristol, Norwich, Plymouth, Edinbugh, Holyhead and Dover, all places linked to foreign trade.

Mail in Early Modern England was notoriously unreliable. Footpads and thieves lurked on all the highways, and the post was often the target. Some post boys had 'arrangements' with local thieves. Added to this, many roads only had a weekly or bi-weekly service. I soon realised it was no good, as a novelist, thinking that the letter your character has sent would go the same day. It might be a week before the letter even began its journey.

The post was then subject to the vagaries of its individual riders, and in the 18th Century John Palmer of Bath described the problem of postboys:

'an idle boy without character, mounted on a worn-out hack, who, so far from being able to defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with one.'

John Palmer, who owned a theatre in Bath, used a coach to take his theatrical scenery from town to town. Finding this quicker than the mail,  he conceived of the idea of doing the same for the post. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, allowed him to make a trial run carrying the post between Bristol and London. Under the 'stage post' system the journey had taken 38 hours. The coach, funded by Palmer, left Bristol at 4 pm on 2nd August 1784 and arrived in London just 16 hours later. The government was impressed, so the mailcoach was born.

Royal Mail Coach , Science Museum London

To increase speed and efficiency, mail coaches in England were made to an approved design. Mail was held in a box at the rear where the only Royal Mail employee, who was armed, was allowed to stand. The guard's seat could not be shared with a passenger. The service ran to a punishing schedule, which meant that aside from quick changes of horses, the coach only stopped for collection and delivery of mail. The toll and turnpike gates had to be open by the time the mail coach passed through, and the gatekeeper was warned to open the gates by the blaring of the posthorn.

Mail coaches were able to travel the roads toll-free, but even by Regency times the frequency of foreign correspondence was limited. Just before the advent of the railways, Horne's Foreign Mail Service left St Martin's le Grand  each Tuesday and Friday night. It travelled all night and arrived in Dover at 8.15 the next morning. This gives some idea of the speed and the state of the roads.

Even after researching postal history, I still find myself calculating anew for each novel what sort of length of time my characters might expect to wait for their mail.

BBC  History of the World - Packet Bag

Images from Wikipedia
Bibliography:
From Track to Highway -- Gibbard Jackson
Masters of the Post; The Authorized History of the Royal Mail -- Duncan Campbell-Smith

My website and books www.deborahswift.com Twitter @swiftstory

STAR-CROSSED LOVE, ROYAL BLOOD AND THE TOWER by Elizabeth Fremantle

In February people’s thoughts turn to love – whether we want them to or not – so I thought I might take a brief look at some Tudor and Stuart love stories, though not the kind with happy endings.

Margaret Douglas in later years

In the mid sixteenth century with Henry VIII on the throne and no male heir, the Tudor dynasty was not secured; meaning marriages that might challenge the throne were dangerous indeed. This resulted in a number of sorry tales of star-crossed romances and the incarceration of some of the noblest lovers in the land. One such lover was Lady Margaret Douglas. Born in 1515, Margaret was the daughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister Margaret Tudor and her second husband Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. She lived under the watchful eye of her uncle at the English court, eventually joining Anne Boleyn’s household.

Margaret was a particularly romantic girl, being part of a group of young courtiers that wrote and exchanged love poems. The love sonnet was becoming fashionable in English court circles, as a result of Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard’s re-workings of Plutarch. Fuelled by notions of romantic love, and also perhaps by the unusual example of the King who had recently made a love match with Anne Boleyn, the young and attractive coterie around the new Queen created a hothouse ambiance of flirtation. This was encouraged by Anne Boleyn and would later be used against her. 

Bess Throckmorton

It is probable that the king hoped to make a useful alliance by marrying Margaret into one of the European ruling houses, but while no marriage was arranged it was perhaps inevitable that Margaret’s head would be turned in this heady atmosphere. She fell for one of the Queen’s cousins: Lord Thomas Howard whose family was exceedingly powerful. She and Thomas met in secret, exchanging love tokens and eventually engaged in a secret betrothal. This was a serious commitment at a time when to make such a promise in front of a witness was a binding contract. Their betrothal remained a secret for a year, perhaps due to the fact that the King’s attentions were entirely taken up with the collapse of his second marriage, ending with the Queen, for whom he had sacrificed so much, on the scaffold. With the fall of her mother the two-year-old Elizabeth Tudor was, like her half sister Mary, deemed illegitimate, meaning that Margaret Douglas found herself second in line to the English throne, after her half-brother James V of Scotland. This made her secret betrothal to one of the powerful Howards all the more dangerous, as any male heirs from the match could potentially destabilise Henry’s position.

So when Henry, newly married to Jane Seymour, got wind of the secret romance the erstwhile couple were clapped in the Tower, where they continued to exchange gifts and poems. They were entirely oblivious to the fact that Henry was forcing a new law through parliament that deemed those of royal blood who married without consent, and those who sought to marry them, as committing treason. Thomas was condemned to death; Margaret fell seriously ill and was released into the care of the nuns at Syon Abbey. Some months later poor Thomas died of ‘an ague’ still incarcerated in the Tower. Margaret, with her beloved Thomas dead and shunted to third in line after the birth of Edward Tudor, was released and pardoned, going on to serve the next Queen, Anne of Cleves, and her successor the young and naïve Katherine Howard.

Lady Katherine Grey with her son, born in the Tower

Margaret behaved impeccably in the four years following the debacle that sent her to the Tower, but her romantic spirit had not been entirely quashed and it was yet another Howard boy, this time Charles, brother to the new queen, who caught her eye. But Katherine Howard was on the brink of a calamitous fall, due to her own amorous and adulterous behaviour, and when her household was investigated Margaret’s flirtation with Charles Howard emerged. He was banished and she was warned in no uncertain terms by the King that having ‘demeaned herself towards His Majesty, first with the Lord Thomas Howard, the second with Charles Howard’, to ‘beware the third time’. She was later happily married to the charismatic Earl of Lennox, in a political alliance that gave Henry VIII leverage over Scotland. This marriage produced two sons, one being Lord Darnley who was the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots and father of Scottish King James VI who eventually became James I of England.

Elizabeth Vernon

A few decades later, during Elizabeth’s reign, love became an increasingly dangerous business. The queen’s cousin, Lady Katherine Grey, sister of the tragic Jane, secretly married the Earl of Hertford, was imprisoned and gave birth to two sons in the Tower. The eldest, as the first boy to be born with Tudor blood for some years, would have had a strong claim to the throne, had Elizabeth not had him deemed illegitimate. Poor Lady Katherine died in captivity and her sister, Lady Mary, too, was imprisoned for an unsanctioned marriage. Elizabeth was notoriously averse to her maids-of-the-chamber getting hitched, royal blood or not, and a number of them ended up incarcerated: Anne Vavasour, who gave birth to the Earl of Oxford’s bastard in the maid’s dormitory at Whitehall Palace, and Queen’s favourites, Bess Throckmorton and Sir Walter Ralegh, were sent to the Tower. Elizabeth Vernon, who secretly married the Earl of Southampton, had a spell in the Fleet Prison. Other’s avoided prison but were banished from court, like Lettice Knollys who wed the Queen’s beloved Earl of Leicester never to be forgiven, and her daughter-in-law, Frances Walsingham, whose marriage to Lettice’s son the Earl of Essex (another of the Queen’s favourites) was cast out from court for life.

Arbella Stuart

Another sad story is that of the granddaughter of the above-mentioned Margaret Douglas. Arbella Stuart was, like her grandmother, a strong claimant to the English throne. Some championed her as Elizabeth’s heir, suggesting her claim was stronger than that of her cousin James VI of Scotland, as she’d been born on English soil; but it was James who won out. Seventy years had passed since Margaret Douglas’s incarceration, when Arbella found herself in a similar situation. Having secretly married William Seymour (grandson of the above mentioned Lady Katherine Grey) the couple were locked up: William in the Tower and she under house arrest in Highgate. The doughty couple managed to both escape, Arbella dressed as a boy. Sadly William failed to make it to their meeting place on time and Arbella was obliged to set sail without him in the hope that they would be reconciled once on the continent. But her ship was captured off Calais and she was returned to the Tower where some accounts say, she starved herself to death. William made it to the Low Countries where he spent some years as a fugitive only able to return to England after Arbella’s death.

On that note, Happy Valentine’s Day!

For Margaret Douglas and Katherine Grey’s stories see Leanda De Lisle’s Tudor: The Family Story & The Sisters who would be Queen; for the shenanigans of Elizabeth’s maids- of-the-chamber see Anna Whitelock’s Elizabeth’s Bedfellows and for Arbella Stuart’s sad tale see Sarah Gristwood’s Arbella: England’s Lost Queen.

Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel Sisters of Treason – out May 2014 – tells the tragic story of the Grey sisters. For details see Elizabethfremantle.com