A new coded diary written by a late 17th Century Englishman has been recorded. The diary reveals some of the horrific realities of life in 17th Century England: the English Civil War (the diary, though, was written 26-40 years after it ended), prisoners held without trial, anti-Catholicism etc.....
Decoded Roger Morrice diary reveals dark days
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Sunday Telegraph
05/08/2007
Daily Mail
How people would have looked in 17th Century England
Freak weather, prisoners held without trial, bishops behaving badly: it's the stuff of everyday news. Except these are not 21st-century reports, they are 17th-century ones.
It has taken seven years - at least two longer than expected - and the collaboration of six leading international academics to extract these stories of life in the late Stuart period from the "diary" of Roger Morrice, a Puritan cleric-turned-lobby correspondent.
P
Prof Mark Goldie with his recently published set of 'The Entering Book of Roger Morrice 1677-1691'
His Entring Book, which lay forgotten for 300 years in a small research library in London, was unearthed in 2000, but this week the journal, hailed as "the most important unpublished British diary of the later 17th century", will be published.
The work has been compared in importance to that of Samuel Pepys.
The research team, led by Mark Goldie, of Cambridge University, has sifted through 1,500 pages, which amounts to nearly one million words of 17th-century English. This includes 40,000 words written in an archaic shorthand, critical of the monarch of the day, Charles II, which had to be decoded by a specialist.
"It is a huge source of material that will play a very significant role in helping historians and students understand the period," said Mr Goldie. "It shows England in a very different mood to the Pepys diary, which was celebrating getting rid of the Puritans."
Morrice's diary begins in 1677 and ends in 1691, covering the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William III and Mary II. He depicted a darker England thrown into a great crisis of "popery and arbitrary power".
His writing was shaped by his personal experiences. Born in 1628, he became vicar of Duffield in Derbyshire in 1658, but was expelled from his parish four years later after Charles II returned from exile, introducing the high church Restoration era that persecuted and jailed non-conformists.
Morrice moved to London where he became a de facto investigative journalist, relying partly on the gossip of the popular coffee houses and on a well-placed source in the king's privy council whose name was hidden in his coded writing.
"Like all journalists, Morrice needed good sources and he was lucky to have a very leaky secretary on the privy council called Richard Collings," said Mr Goldie.
Morrice's sources enabled him to provide unique accounts of events of great historical significance, including the death of Charles II.
"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."
In the diary, he writes of the persecution faced by those who refused to abide by the laws of the Stuart state and established Church, particularly against those, such as the Quakers and Puritans, who worshipped illegally.
"Eleven young men and women were seized at a chapel and convicted, fined and jailed, where they are put to hard labour," he wrote.
Other passages cover issues that are just as relevant today, discussing law, religion, terrorism or weather.
"The government has violated the fundamental laws of the kingdom and advanced arbitrary power and infringed liberty and property… and judges convict offenders… without any trial by juries," he writes on January 23, 1679.
Describing the detention of those suspected of plotting against the king, on October 16, 1684, he tells of the case of one unfortunate victim where the soldiers were ordered to "keep him from sleeping, which they did without intermission for nine or 10 days. When he was ready to die … the balls of his eyes swollen as big as tennis balls … they tormented him by the thumbs".
Elsewhere he reveals the debauched lifestyle of some of the country's most senior clergy: "The Bishop of London has lain in a bawdy house."
He describes how in the winter of 1683-84 the Thames froze so hard that coaches travelled across the ice, an ox was roasted and bear baiting and other sports were held on the river's surface.
Frances Henderson, who deciphered Morrice's code, said: "He clearly found it important to conceal his sources and developed a very effective shorthand code."
Extracts from The Entring Book of Roger Morrice
January 1687: The bisexual John Hoyle is prosecuted; he’s the former lover of the playwright and poet Aphra Behn, the first woman to make her living by her pen:
"Mr. Hoyle of the Temple, a person of good abilityes and witt, has Buggery Sworne against him by a youth (Apprentice to a Cooke or a Victualler). The matter came on Wednesday to the Kings Bench. Mr. Hoyle confessed some indecent familiarityes with the Boy. Some say enough to hang him. Mr. Hoyle is Committed to prison in Newgate. It is publickly known that Mr. Hoyle 10 or 12 years since kept Mrs Behn, and that there was a difference betweene them two, and that this boy used to carrey Messages betweene them, but I suppose they two have interrupted all acquaintance many years since."
-----------------------------
October 1686: it was a time of religious persecution of Puritans: soldiers behave brutally to some 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."
----------------------------------
July 1690: King William III is injured by Jacobite gunfire on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne: a unique firsthand account given to Morrice:
"Sunday his Majesty and the Army Marched to Ardee which the Enemy had Pillaged and abandoned; there his Majesty received intelligence that King James and his Army were certainly Encamped on the other side of the Boyne near Drogheda. On Monday we Marched betimes, the King being on Horseback by two in the morning, and by 8 the King with the Vauntguard could from the Hills easily discover all King James’s Camp, which as we could judge consisted of about 25000 men. Towards Noon we came just over against them, and some of our Dragoons and theirs began to Shoot at one another. About one the King dyned upon the side of a hill, where coming from dinner we could easily observe the Enemy planting two or three great Guns upon us, and though I tooke the liberty to show the King the Gunns, and pressed him to shelter himselfe, his great courage would not give him leave. I had scarce spoake when not from above 250 yards distance they fired in upon us and one of the Bullets Grazed upon the Kings shoulder, tore his Coate and shirt, and made his skinn all black. How does God take particular Care to preserve him for the good of Mankind and the support of our Religion; never was there so miraculous an escape and never was there such a Consternation among us."
--------------------------------
January 1682: Roger Morrice is full of admiration for the Muslim ambassador from Morocco:
"The Ambassador of the King of Fez and Morocco whose name is Ben Haddi Mor carries it with great bravery and Honour. Hee is a person of great extraction, a great Polititian and Soldier and eminently devout. Already Sainted for hee has Visited the Sepulchar of Mahomett. When some of our English Gentlemen had too neare a Conversation with some Ladyes and urged him to receive a Who re into his bed, hee said, to our great rebuke and shame, My Religion forbids Whor es, does not yours? Hee and his Country are Mahomitans though they are counted a sort of Puritan Mahomitans as the more sober or strict of Papists are called Puritan Papists. Hee said that when I go home, I that never yet was counted a lyar shall seem so, for my Master will not believe me that so many Ladyes came open faced and with bare Brests to see me, and some of them tooke up the skirt of my Garment and looked upon my feete and Leggs. Hee delights very much in Musick, having none in his own Country, and somewhat in Playes. But especially in Masculine exercises as Hunting, Shooting, killing any thing almost that flyes or runnes. If this brave man had fallen into the acquaintance of grave, wise and religious persons, hee would either have given an honourable Character of the Christian Religion or become a Christian."
--------------------------
December 1688: during the Glorious Revolution, the London mob destroy the "popish mass houses":
"The Mob was up in most parts of the Town all Tuesday night and committed many tumultuous insolencies, and made an invasion upon Liberty and Property to the great grief of all Wise men, and to the great Scandall of the City. They gathered together in the evening about most of the known Masshouses in Town (the Ambassadors Chappells that were open and publick not escaping) and particularly about the Masshouse in Lyncolns Inn Fields. They tooke out of those Mass-Chappells all the furniture, Utensills, and combustable materialls and brought them into the Streete and there burnt them. They have since pulled down, burnt and carryed away all the Timber in most of them and the Girders and Joysts. They were pulling up the ground Joysts on Tuesday night about midnight and multitudes were carrying away Bricks in baskets so that they have left scarce any thing but the bare Walls. They have seized upon and exposed to Rapine all the rich furniture and Plate in the Spanish Ambassadors house, and the Treasures of severall Papists that were deposited with him."
-------------------------------
March 1680: duels to settle trivial quarrels are all the rage among the libertine aristocrats and gentry:
"On the 27th of Feb. there was a Duell betwixt Mr. Oglethorp and Mr. Polney on the one side and Mr. Henry Wharton (who wounded his opposite and was wounded) and Mr. Warcup on the other, because one of them trod upon the toes of another in the Playhouse and did not cry him Mercy. On Saturday the 28th there was another Duell betwixt the Earl of Plimoth and Viscount Mordent on the one side and Sir George Hit and the Lord Cavendish on the other side, about some words that passed concerning oranges they were buying. On Lord’s day there was another Duell betwixt Mr. Mecarte, Mr. Parker, and another about a foolish trifle; and another hourly expected betwixt Mr. Oglethorpe and Sir Scroop How.’
---------------------------
April 1687: a seventeen year-old soldier is condemned to death for desertion:
‘Upon Tuesday the 19th a Soldier for running away from his Colours and condemned at Reading was brought to the King’s Bench Bar. Mr. Attorney Generall said that the Soldier was condemned & it was his Majestie’s pleasure he should be executed at Plymouth where the Regiment was of. The Soldier was a proper young man, and looked like a very orderly man and all the spectators pittyed him. He spoak: My Lord I humbly submit to and acknowledge the Justice of the Nation, and confess my fault, and humbly submitt my selfe to his Majesties grace and Mercy, and do beg your Lordship to intercede with his Majesties that he would be gratiously pleased to pardon me, for I am but 17 years of age. My Grandfather was killed in the King’s service at Edge hill. I my selfe was wounded and shott in the King’s service against the Rebells."
dailymail.co.uk
Decoded Roger Morrice diary reveals dark days
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Sunday Telegraph
05/08/2007
Daily Mail
How people would have looked in 17th Century England
Freak weather, prisoners held without trial, bishops behaving badly: it's the stuff of everyday news. Except these are not 21st-century reports, they are 17th-century ones.
It has taken seven years - at least two longer than expected - and the collaboration of six leading international academics to extract these stories of life in the late Stuart period from the "diary" of Roger Morrice, a Puritan cleric-turned-lobby correspondent.
Prof Mark Goldie with his recently published set of 'The Entering Book of Roger Morrice 1677-1691'
His Entring Book, which lay forgotten for 300 years in a small research library in London, was unearthed in 2000, but this week the journal, hailed as "the most important unpublished British diary of the later 17th century", will be published.
The work has been compared in importance to that of Samuel Pepys.
The research team, led by Mark Goldie, of Cambridge University, has sifted through 1,500 pages, which amounts to nearly one million words of 17th-century English. This includes 40,000 words written in an archaic shorthand, critical of the monarch of the day, Charles II, which had to be decoded by a specialist.
"It is a huge source of material that will play a very significant role in helping historians and students understand the period," said Mr Goldie. "It shows England in a very different mood to the Pepys diary, which was celebrating getting rid of the Puritans."
Morrice's diary begins in 1677 and ends in 1691, covering the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William III and Mary II. He depicted a darker England thrown into a great crisis of "popery and arbitrary power".
His writing was shaped by his personal experiences. Born in 1628, he became vicar of Duffield in Derbyshire in 1658, but was expelled from his parish four years later after Charles II returned from exile, introducing the high church Restoration era that persecuted and jailed non-conformists.
Morrice moved to London where he became a de facto investigative journalist, relying partly on the gossip of the popular coffee houses and on a well-placed source in the king's privy council whose name was hidden in his coded writing.
"Like all journalists, Morrice needed good sources and he was lucky to have a very leaky secretary on the privy council called Richard Collings," said Mr Goldie.
Morrice's sources enabled him to provide unique accounts of events of great historical significance, including the death of Charles II.
"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."
In the diary, he writes of the persecution faced by those who refused to abide by the laws of the Stuart state and established Church, particularly against those, such as the Quakers and Puritans, who worshipped illegally.
"Eleven young men and women were seized at a chapel and convicted, fined and jailed, where they are put to hard labour," he wrote.
Other passages cover issues that are just as relevant today, discussing law, religion, terrorism or weather.
"The government has violated the fundamental laws of the kingdom and advanced arbitrary power and infringed liberty and property… and judges convict offenders… without any trial by juries," he writes on January 23, 1679.
Describing the detention of those suspected of plotting against the king, on October 16, 1684, he tells of the case of one unfortunate victim where the soldiers were ordered to "keep him from sleeping, which they did without intermission for nine or 10 days. When he was ready to die … the balls of his eyes swollen as big as tennis balls … they tormented him by the thumbs".
Elsewhere he reveals the debauched lifestyle of some of the country's most senior clergy: "The Bishop of London has lain in a bawdy house."
He describes how in the winter of 1683-84 the Thames froze so hard that coaches travelled across the ice, an ox was roasted and bear baiting and other sports were held on the river's surface.
Frances Henderson, who deciphered Morrice's code, said: "He clearly found it important to conceal his sources and developed a very effective shorthand code."
Extracts from The Entring Book of Roger Morrice
January 1687: The bisexual John Hoyle is prosecuted; he’s the former lover of the playwright and poet Aphra Behn, the first woman to make her living by her pen:
"Mr. Hoyle of the Temple, a person of good abilityes and witt, has Buggery Sworne against him by a youth (Apprentice to a Cooke or a Victualler). The matter came on Wednesday to the Kings Bench. Mr. Hoyle confessed some indecent familiarityes with the Boy. Some say enough to hang him. Mr. Hoyle is Committed to prison in Newgate. It is publickly known that Mr. Hoyle 10 or 12 years since kept Mrs Behn, and that there was a difference betweene them two, and that this boy used to carrey Messages betweene them, but I suppose they two have interrupted all acquaintance many years since."
-----------------------------
October 1686: it was a time of religious persecution of Puritans: soldiers behave brutally to some 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."
----------------------------------
July 1690: King William III is injured by Jacobite gunfire on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne: a unique firsthand account given to Morrice:
"Sunday his Majesty and the Army Marched to Ardee which the Enemy had Pillaged and abandoned; there his Majesty received intelligence that King James and his Army were certainly Encamped on the other side of the Boyne near Drogheda. On Monday we Marched betimes, the King being on Horseback by two in the morning, and by 8 the King with the Vauntguard could from the Hills easily discover all King James’s Camp, which as we could judge consisted of about 25000 men. Towards Noon we came just over against them, and some of our Dragoons and theirs began to Shoot at one another. About one the King dyned upon the side of a hill, where coming from dinner we could easily observe the Enemy planting two or three great Guns upon us, and though I tooke the liberty to show the King the Gunns, and pressed him to shelter himselfe, his great courage would not give him leave. I had scarce spoake when not from above 250 yards distance they fired in upon us and one of the Bullets Grazed upon the Kings shoulder, tore his Coate and shirt, and made his skinn all black. How does God take particular Care to preserve him for the good of Mankind and the support of our Religion; never was there so miraculous an escape and never was there such a Consternation among us."
--------------------------------
January 1682: Roger Morrice is full of admiration for the Muslim ambassador from Morocco:
"The Ambassador of the King of Fez and Morocco whose name is Ben Haddi Mor carries it with great bravery and Honour. Hee is a person of great extraction, a great Polititian and Soldier and eminently devout. Already Sainted for hee has Visited the Sepulchar of Mahomett. When some of our English Gentlemen had too neare a Conversation with some Ladyes and urged him to receive a Who re into his bed, hee said, to our great rebuke and shame, My Religion forbids Whor es, does not yours? Hee and his Country are Mahomitans though they are counted a sort of Puritan Mahomitans as the more sober or strict of Papists are called Puritan Papists. Hee said that when I go home, I that never yet was counted a lyar shall seem so, for my Master will not believe me that so many Ladyes came open faced and with bare Brests to see me, and some of them tooke up the skirt of my Garment and looked upon my feete and Leggs. Hee delights very much in Musick, having none in his own Country, and somewhat in Playes. But especially in Masculine exercises as Hunting, Shooting, killing any thing almost that flyes or runnes. If this brave man had fallen into the acquaintance of grave, wise and religious persons, hee would either have given an honourable Character of the Christian Religion or become a Christian."
--------------------------
December 1688: during the Glorious Revolution, the London mob destroy the "popish mass houses":
"The Mob was up in most parts of the Town all Tuesday night and committed many tumultuous insolencies, and made an invasion upon Liberty and Property to the great grief of all Wise men, and to the great Scandall of the City. They gathered together in the evening about most of the known Masshouses in Town (the Ambassadors Chappells that were open and publick not escaping) and particularly about the Masshouse in Lyncolns Inn Fields. They tooke out of those Mass-Chappells all the furniture, Utensills, and combustable materialls and brought them into the Streete and there burnt them. They have since pulled down, burnt and carryed away all the Timber in most of them and the Girders and Joysts. They were pulling up the ground Joysts on Tuesday night about midnight and multitudes were carrying away Bricks in baskets so that they have left scarce any thing but the bare Walls. They have seized upon and exposed to Rapine all the rich furniture and Plate in the Spanish Ambassadors house, and the Treasures of severall Papists that were deposited with him."
-------------------------------
March 1680: duels to settle trivial quarrels are all the rage among the libertine aristocrats and gentry:
"On the 27th of Feb. there was a Duell betwixt Mr. Oglethorp and Mr. Polney on the one side and Mr. Henry Wharton (who wounded his opposite and was wounded) and Mr. Warcup on the other, because one of them trod upon the toes of another in the Playhouse and did not cry him Mercy. On Saturday the 28th there was another Duell betwixt the Earl of Plimoth and Viscount Mordent on the one side and Sir George Hit and the Lord Cavendish on the other side, about some words that passed concerning oranges they were buying. On Lord’s day there was another Duell betwixt Mr. Mecarte, Mr. Parker, and another about a foolish trifle; and another hourly expected betwixt Mr. Oglethorpe and Sir Scroop How.’
---------------------------
April 1687: a seventeen year-old soldier is condemned to death for desertion:
‘Upon Tuesday the 19th a Soldier for running away from his Colours and condemned at Reading was brought to the King’s Bench Bar. Mr. Attorney Generall said that the Soldier was condemned & it was his Majestie’s pleasure he should be executed at Plymouth where the Regiment was of. The Soldier was a proper young man, and looked like a very orderly man and all the spectators pittyed him. He spoak: My Lord I humbly submit to and acknowledge the Justice of the Nation, and confess my fault, and humbly submitt my selfe to his Majesties grace and Mercy, and do beg your Lordship to intercede with his Majesties that he would be gratiously pleased to pardon me, for I am but 17 years of age. My Grandfather was killed in the King’s service at Edge hill. I my selfe was wounded and shott in the King’s service against the Rebells."
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