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.

A Vision of True Equality by Leslie Wilson

As the country gears up to an expensive celebration of sixty years of one monarch's reign, I would like to look back to an event that until recently was largely uncelebrated in our history yet which was absolutely crucial to the development of democracy in this country. I'm talking about the Putney debates.



They happened at St Mary's Church in Putney, between the 28th October and the 9th of November 1647 - Charles I was still alive at this time - when soldiers from the New Model Army, which was fighting for Parliament, joined together with civilians to debate the future shape of England. This came about because of pressure from radicals in the ranks of the Army - Oliver Cromwell had been trying to negotiate a settlement still fundamentally based on monarchy and privilege - but there were multitudes of others, in England at that time, who had other ideas.

Radical, crazy visions. Like giving every man in England the right to elect members of Parliament. There were even activists who believed women should have the vote, though they were something of a minority. This was, after all, a time - inevitable, really, given the fact that the translation of the Bible into English had given ordinary people the ability to read it for themselves - when previous ideas of religious and social hierarchy had been seriously questioned. The Civil War itself was a challenge to the concept of the Divine Right of Kings - the idea that Kings, being set in their places by God, were answerable only to God and that the common people had a duty to obey them, no matter what they did.

I haven't room here to enumerate all the ideas that fermented in England then - and there are plenty of websites that give a detailed account of them - but to me there are two phrases which sum them up. One is Colonel Rainsborough's rallying call for universal manhood suffrage. 'For really I think that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee; and therefore truly, Sr, I think itt clear, that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under.' (I'd want to add Woman and shee - but hey..)

The other was the cry of George Fox, one of the founders of the Society of Friends (Quakers) - still probably one of the most radical religious groups in Britain. 'There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to your condition.' After years of agonised searching for salvation and inner peace, Fox had realised that God could speak directly to ordinary people, without the permission or control of priests. Given that the monarch was the head of the Church of England, this conviction was considered to pose a drastic threat to the fabric of society - as was the Quaker practice of sending out women to travel 'in the ministry.'

The concomitant passionate belief in equality - everyone is equal in the eyes of God, and it's important to live in God's way now, rather than wait for Heaven to make everything OK - led Quakers to refuse to take their hats off to so-called social superiors, and to call everyone 'thou' - which then, in England, was the familiar form, like 'tu' in French, and to call them, moreover, by their first and last names only, leaving off all titles. If a ploughboy spoke to the monarch, he still spoke as human being to fellow human being.

The visions of ordinary men and women in England at that time prefigured our modern ideas of a good society - of fundamental British values, indeed - and many of those courageous and far-seeing people suffered for them. Quakers certainly did. And yet our schoolchildren aren't taught about the English Revolution. Why not? Have we ever had Jubilee celebrations for the Putney Debates, country-wide? Why not? Instead, at a time when people are beginning to question the idea of an unelected Second Chamber of Parliament, the institution of unelected monarchy remains largely unchallenged - to a point where, when a member of the Royal Family made a mess of his ambassadorial role recently, Parliament was instructed that the Royal Family were not to be criticised. Incidentally, until the Human Rights Act was passed, it would have been illegal for me to write this blog piece, as it was a felony (I think that's the correct term) for anyone to advocate in writing the abolition of the Monarchy.

I'm sure that Elizabeth Windsor has worked very hard, in her way, during her years as monarch. But I doubt if she's worked any harder than any nurse, foster-parent, social worker, or other professional who works for the public good - and she certainly has never worked for peanuts. She is one of the world's super-rich. And it is deemed, in this country, that she and her family, by an accident of birth, deserve unconditional respect from the rest of us. Yet the rich, the aristocracy, and the monarch and her family are, simply, human beings, and thus deserve no less and no more respect or honour than any other human being in this country.

The discrepancy between the Windsors' status and that of their 'subjects' - which under the present arrangement every British national is deemed to be - iconises the inequality which turns many parts of our country into hell-holes. I am thinking of the recent Guardian report on accommodation, for example. People crammed into one sordid room, with inadequate heating or food. Or the parts of the country where - for the profits of shareholders - employment is simply no longer on offer and there are generations who haven't worked. It's convenient and easy to say that this is their fault. But if you shove people to the bottom of the heap, you can't expect them to be bright, motivated, and optimistic. Their hopes and faculties decay.

At a time when misfortune, illness, and disability, or simple poverty, are being seen as a crime, and when the obscenely wealthy are cosseted and rewarded, it seems to me more vital than ever to stand up for the concept of fundamental human worth divorced from wealth or status. The radicals of Putney wanted to remake England and they seemed like crazy visionaries to many of their contemporaries, who preferred what they saw as sensible pragmatism. Yet their ideas have born fruit, though they never lived to see it. Let's continue to pursue that vision of equality, especially at times like the present where it's under attack by the forces of cynicism, greed, callousness and despair.