English Diarists: Gender, Geography and Occupation, 1500–1700

© 2005 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKHISTHistory0018-2648© 2004 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.April 2005902Original Article

ENGLISH DIARISTS, 1500–1700

ELAINE MCKAY

English Diarists: Gender, Geography and

Occupation, 1500–1700

ELAINE MCKAY

Queen’s University Belfast

Abstract

While historians have made use of early modern English diaries as a source for informa-tion on a variety of subjects there has been little corresponding research beyond a fewselect biographies into those people who actually wrote the diaries of this period. Fromthe first English diaries of the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth a picture canbe pieced together of the growing number of diarists, their status, economic backgrounds,and where they wrote these highly personal documents. In terms of gender it is clear thatalthough female diarists were in a minority, their ability to write analytical and intimateaccounts of their lives and close environment differed little from that of their malecounterparts. In terms of occupation it is evident that great events and dangerous timesinspired men to re-create their lives on paper. Consequently, military and naval diariescollectively make up the largest occupation for diarists. However, diarists also earnedtheir livings from trade, the law, as astrologers, farmers and also, in one case, as a theatre-owner. Moreover, the spread of diaries across England during the period shows that thispersonalized form of writing was not confined to the capital or to England’s universities.

T

he diary is an immensely useful source for historians. As a recordof specific events, an indicator of attitudes towards social, economicand religious trends, or simply acting as that connecting voice to

the past, diaries have been described as ‘the re-creation of a past age. Thediarists are perhaps our richest source of detail: not only in the majorhistorical events and personalities they depict, but in their social back-ground of manners and morals, contemporary tastes and fashions inrecreation and dress.’

1

Yet there are some drawbacks to using diaries ashistorical source material. The main cause for concern is that the peoplewho kept diaries tended to come from the more prosperous, and obvi-ously literate, sections of society. Given the high rate of illiteracy in earlymodern society, especially among the lower, labouring, sections of society,it can be argued that placing emphasis upon diaries limits the historicalevidence to a small, rather privileged proportion of the population.Another concern for those undertaking research into early modern

1

Margaret Willy,

English Diarists: Evelyn and Pepys

(1963).

192 ENGLISH DIARISTS, 1500–1700

© 2005 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

diaries is the possible unreliability of the source in terms of its factualaccuracy. During the early modern period diaries were a developinggenre and were not always the essentially private or spontaneous dailyrecords which might be assumed. Diaries of this period were often notintended to record everyday domestic detail. Some were written as spiri-tual exercises by those who wished to record their religious journey andkeep an account of their virtues and failings to prepare themselves fordivine judgement. Some, such as the famous diaries kept by SamuelPepys and John Evelyn, were elaborate and detailed accounts of daily lifebut were written up from previously existing, presumably sparser andmore immediate, memoranda.

Not all diaries were intended to be strictly private documents. Some,particularly nonconformist and travel diaries, may have been writtenwith a future audience in mind. For example, John Evelyn implied thathe expected his children to read his diary some day.

2

Some individualswho became involved in conflict or travelled to foreign climes printedtheir diaries for public edification and entertainment. The journal pub-lished by Admiral Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon, described navalaction off the Spanish coast in 1625. In 1636 John Dunton, a sailor in theroyal navy, published his diary account of the fleet’s encounter againstTurkish pirates. In 1607 Robert Coverte published his travel diary relat-ing a journey through Portugal, Persia and India. Other diaries, such asthat of Bulstrode Whitelock that was written during the 1650s, hint at ananticipation of an audience. Whitelock kept a diary while serving as anambassador to the Swedish royal court on behalf of the republicanregimes of 1653 and 1654. Keeping a diary served as a means by whichWhitelock could show evidence of good conduct and loyalty towardsCromwell’s regime when he returned to England. Such a diary may haveserved as a public account rather than private meditation.

3

The genre has been studied by scholars of literature as well as historyas a means of learning about European cultures from the Renaissanceonwards. This article, however, has a more narrow focus and sets out notto examine diaries specifically but to gain some insight into the peoplewho kept diaries in early modern England. It is noticeable that in Eng-land the numbers of diaries kept during the period from 1500 to 1700grew quite considerably from century to century. There are approxim-ately forty English diaries surviving from the sixteenth century. How-ever, during the next one hundred years over 332 surviving diaries areknown to have been written in England, or by English men and women

2

Evelyn indicated that he is writing with his children in mind as a future audience when heinstructs them to check the family pedigree in another document: ‘How this French Familie ofIvelin of Eveliniere, their familie in Normandie, & of a very antient & noble house is grafted intoour Pedegree; see in you Collection brought from Paris 1650’. See John Evelyn,

Diary

, ed. Guy dela Bédoyère (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 175.

3

Bulstrode Whitelock,

A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654. ImpartiallyWritten by the Ambassador Bulstrode Whitelock

, ed. Henry Reeve (1855).

ELAINE MCKAY 193


abroad.

4

It is important to note that this is an approximate figure. Manymore diaries were written during the course of both centuries and simplyhave not survived. It is also likely that many more are unaccounted for inofficial records and are in the hands of the descendants of the originaldiarist, or are in private collections.

The most useful bibliographical work concerning this subject is thecatalogue created by William Matthews in 1950.

5

By selecting onlyEnglish diaries Matthew’s catalogue gives an approximate total of 269diaries.

6

However, since Williams finished his catalogue many moreunpublished diaries have been deposited in archives. Heather Creatonhas compiled a catalogue of unpublished London diaries. This compila-tion together with a survey of English Public Record Offices conductedfor this article has brought the current total of English diaries writtenbetween 1500 and 1700 to 372.

7

The number of English diaries alludedto in this work is not conclusive and will continue to be updated. Theinformation presented below is designed to set the scene for an examina-tion of diary writers of the early modern era. From the examination oflists of published and unpublished diaries from public record offices andlibraries from across England, a profile of diarists during the period 1500–1700 has emerged. These lists provide information on gender, occupationand also geography, enabling a determination of what sort of peoplethese diarists may have been and where and how they lived.

When the sample of diaries is divided into gender categories, both ofthe two diaries surviving from the fifteenth century were written by men.The number offered by Matthews in his bibliography appears to be thecorrect number for this period, and no other diaries have come to lightfor that era. In the sixteenth century thirty-seven diaries were written bymen and two by women. For the seventeenth century 312 survivingdiaries were written by men and twenty by women. The most obviousreason for this imbalance is that female literacy was never equal to maleliteracy during this period. It is estimated that literacy rates ran at 20 percent male and 5 per cent female by the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558,

4

The approximate figure of 372 diaries kept during the period from 1500 to 1700 refers to Englishdiaries only. This number was calculated using the catalogue of British diaries compiled in WilliamMatthews,

British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written Between 1442 and1942

(California, 1950) [hereafter, Matthews,

British Diaries

], a list of London diaries compiled inHeather Creaton,

Unpublished London Diaries: A Checklist of Unpublished Diaries by Londonersand Visitors with a Select Bibliography of Published Diaries

(2003) [hereafter Creaton,

London Diar-ies

], and my own unpublished survey of public records offices in England.

5

See Matthews,

British Diaries

. Matthews included diaries from both Britain and Ireland so thatit is difficult at times to discern the author’s nationality.

6

Diaries which were written by Scottish, Welsh or Irish authors and those which were written

in

those countries but where the author’s nationality is not stated by Matthews have been omitted.

7

See Creaton,

London Diaries

. This work contains a further eight diaries not listed in the Matthewscatalogue. A survey of thirty-seven public records offices and libraries conducted for this articlehighlighted a further sixty-six diaries that have been deposited in archives since Matthew’s cata-logue was published in 1950. It should be noted that an additional two diaries can be credited tothe fifteenth century, bringing the overall total of English diaries up to 1700 to 374.



reaching 45 per cent male and 25 per cent female by 1714.

8

Female liter-acy levels therefore rose by 20 per cent over approximately one hundredyears, with a corresponding leap in the number of women keeping diariesfrom two to eighteen.

The relative lack of female diarists can be accounted for by thenumber of women who could not write or whose writing extended onlyto the ability to write their own name, and who were not, therefore, suf-ficiently literate to keep a daily record. A further point to be made is thatfew women would have been given an education at a grammar school.The encouragement of pupils to keep commonplace books in which torecord mottoes and miscellanea worthy of remembrance would haveinstilled into many youths the habit of note-keeping and analysis ofmaterial that would, in some cases, have developed into the habit ofpersonal record. This level of education, however, would have beendenied to most young girls of the period. Those who kept commonplacebooks or other personal notebooks tended to be girls from wealthy back-grounds whose parents could afford to hire personal tutors or gover-nesses for their education. Not only were most women illiterate, but it isunlikely that most of those who did possess some reading and writingskills were ever encouraged to keep personal written records. This madethe psychological step from the ability to write to the more complex abil-ity to assess and analyse one’s own life and environment all the moredifficult.

To understand why at least twenty women kept diaries during thisperiod it is necessary to review the contents of the diaries for clues as totheir motives. The personal diary, being an essentially individualisticform of writing, is unique. Therefore, each diarist must have undergonedifferent and various experiences and also a certain amount of psycho-logical development to arrive at a point in their lives where they felt aneed to keep a daily record. In the surviving diaries written by women,the reader is initially confronted with the impression that all women’sdiaries were essentially religious notebooks with daily meditative annota-tion. However, while there is no denying the strong element of religiousdevotion displayed in these diaries, it is misleading to generalize aboutwomen’s diaries in such a definite way. To do so is to ignore the high levelof awareness which many of those women displayed about their environ-ment, and also their level of self-analysis in using the diary format toexpress emotion and their thoughts concerning their place in society.

9

In fact, the contents of diaries written by women did not differ frommen’s diaries in any fundamental regard. For both sexes, religion was

8

See David Cressy,

Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart Eng-land

(Cambridge, 1980) [hereafter Cressy,

Literacy and the Social Order

], pp. 151–83. Cressy alsopoints out that in New England female literacy was much higher than in the old country with 31%of women able to sign their names to wills in 1660.

9

For an examination of female diary-writing see Sara Heller Mendelson, ‘Stuart Women’sDiaries and Occasional Memoirs’,

Women in English Society, 1500–1800

, ed. Mary Prior (1991),pp. 181–91.

ELAINE MCKAY 195


often the principal reason to keep a diary, and also formed the main sub-ject of many other diaries. For both men and women, the diary was alsoused in a secular sense for the recording of a personal, subjective historyof their own lives. Women also kept travel diaries, though they did so lessfrequently than men. The diary of Celia Fiennes, written in 1695, is aprime example.

10

Some of the diaries kept by women display a gift forwriting and analysis equal to that of talented male diarists. That is to say,the ability to be a ‘good’ diarist, which involved observational skills, theability to write clearly and succinctly, an ability to analyse both oneselfand the surrounding world, and to confide thoughts and feelings to thepages of a diary, does not appear to have been the exclusive talent ofeither sex.

The very fact that surviving women’s diaries are rare makes themworthy of a special subject of study. While men and women may wellhave had the same or similar reasons to begin a diary, there is a case forwondering whether the diary may have had an added significance for awoman. Since most women had no real platform to air views and expressopinions in public, did the diary serve as a device for women of educa-tion to re-create their lives, their experiences as women in society andtheir views of that society? These women’s diaries should be examinedfrom another perspective: that they wrote to release and express emo-tions that, perhaps, they would have felt uncomfortable in sharing withothers, or that society would have found unusual and unseemly andwould not have encouraged.

Some of the primarily religious diaries often reveal an outpouring ofmystical expression. Indeed the writing is often quite sensual in tone. Anexample of this level of devotion is the writing of Lady Grace Mildmay,a Tudor gentlewoman from Wiltshire.

11

Beginning her diary in 1570 sheprovides the first example of a women diarist in the sample to date. Inone entry, concerned with her religious sensibilities, she appears to com-pare Christ to a lover. She wrote: ‘Oh let my wellbeloved kiss me with thekisses of his mouth, let him indue me with his love, and with the Savourof his good ointments. Let his holy name be unto me as a precious oint-ment poured out. And let my sanctified soul continually and wholly loveand be in love with him.’

12

In a later entry she again used quite explicitsexual imagery to display her devotion:

my beloved is as a bundle of myrrh unto me, he shall lie between mybreasts. My beloved is as a cluster of camphor unto me. His lips are likelilies, dropping down pure myrrh. His mouth is as sweet things and he iswholly delectable . . . Return my wellbeloved and be like a rose or a young

10

Celia Fiennes,

Through England on a Side Saddle: Being the Diary of Celia Fiennes

, introducedby The Hon. Mrs. Griffiths (1888). For a more recent edition of this diary see Christopher Morris,

The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes, 1685–1712

(Stroud, 1995).

11

With Faith and Physic, the Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay 1552–1620

, ed.Linda Pollock (1993).

12

Ibid., p. 75.



hart, upon the mountains of Bether. Go from me but come again quicklyand tarry not. In my bed let me seek my wellbeloved.

13

The devotional outpouring of Lady Grace Mildmay is a ratherextreme example. Other female diarists used a more subdued tone toexpress their religious sentiments. Mary Rich, countess of Warwick, alady famed for her piety, who kept a diary from 1666 to 1672, also usedlanguage which might be considered as suitable for a loving and intimaterelationship. In one entry she wrote: ‘went out alone into the wildernessto meditate; and there God was pleased to give me sweet communionwith him’. In the same entry she described how her soul was ‘carried outwith desires to be with Christ’.

14

In all these entries the language usedexpresses the diarist’s feeling of participation in a two-way relationship;she not only set aside time to devote to worship, but God also came toher and spent time in communication. The language adopted by thediarist is expressive of this intimate relationship she believed she sharedwith God alone and separate from her husband and others of her society.Like Lady Grace Mildmay, who wrote her diary one hundred yearsbefore, Mary Rich used similar language to express her desire for such aspiritual relationship. Her diary acted as a means to articulate that needand those feelings of closeness and fidelity between the diarist and God.There is a case for suggesting that this seeking after intimacy reflected aneed in these women for spiritual or emotional closeness that they, per-haps, did not find with their husbands. A mystical and sensual relation-ship within a religious context may have provided the comfort andsupport that was lacking in their relationships with their spouses. The actof recording such feelings in a diary may, in a sense, have confirmed thereality of that spiritual relationship. The diarist could create a day-by-day account of the development of the relationship, and by writing itdown could lend it some permanence and enable the diarist to read andrelive such spiritually important experiences.

If the primarily religious diarists used the format of the diary to giveexpression to a one-to-one relationship with their God, those diaristswhose writing was more secular in nature also used the diary to defineand re-create themselves as individuals, as well as to validate themselveswithin the traditional role of wife and mother. In the case of female diar-ists such as Lady Ann Fanshaw and Lady Anne Clifford, the diaries areintrospective and personal works in which the diarists use the medium ofthe diary to give expression to a range of emotions and also, importantly,to set out their particular and personal story.

15

The writing of Lady Ann

13

Ibid., p. 79.

14

Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick,

Memoir of Lady Warwick, also Her Diary

(1847), pp. 73, 119.

15

Lady Ann Fanshaw,

The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshaw

(1907). Two editions exist of the diariesof Lady Anne Clifford:

The Diary of the Lady Anne Clifford, with an Introduction by V. Sackville-West

(1923); and

The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford

, ed. D. J. H. Clifford (Stroud, 1992) [hereafter Clifford,

Diaries

]. A similar female diarist is Mrs Elizabeth Freke, whose work survives in two printed editions:‘Mrs. Elizabeth Freke, her Diary, 1671 to 1714’,

Journal of the Cork Historical and ArchaelogicalSociety, Second Series

, xvi (1910); and

Mrs Freke, Her Diary

, ed. Mary Carbery (Cork, 1913).

ELAINE MCKAY 197


Fanshaw, as it has been left to us today, is, like the diary of John Evelyn,essentially an autobiographical work culled from original diaries andgiven a chronological format. Fanshaw was the wife of the Englishambassador to Portugal during the early Restoration period. Whenwidowed in Spain in 1666 she returned to England with her children andhusband’s body. She transcribed her memoirs in 1676, ostensibly in orderto perpetuate the memory of her deceased husband and glorify her fam-ily’s suffering and service to the once exiled and newly restored Stuartdynasty. What is interesting about Fanshaw’s memoirs is that althoughshe professed to write only in order to sustain the memory of her deadhusband, the actual content of the work revolved around her own activ-ities and thoughts. This, in itself, would suggest that the ‘memoirs’ weretaken from her earlier writings and were based upon first-hand experi-ence. Although sharing the spotlight with her departed husband, LadyFanshaw made herself the subject and hero of her narrative. Her writingwas not simply to tell her husband’s story but also to document her ownstruggle in doing her duty as a wife (carrying twenty pregnancies andburying all but two children) while following her husband aroundEurope.

The diaries of Lady Anne Clifford also illustrate a woman whodesired to tell her own story. The only daughter of the third earl ofCumberland, her father’s title and considerable estates in the north ofEngland bypassed her at his death in 1608 and went instead to her uncle.It is probable that the chief motivation for beginning the diary was torecord her struggle against her blood-family, her husband, and even theking in order to fight for the inheritance which she believed to be legallyhers. Much of the diary is taken up with Anne’s laments at her loneliness,the injustice of her inheritance being bestowed upon her uncle and herstand against all authority in order to claim her father’s lands. Manyentries make for depressing reading, for often her complaint was oftedium or sadness. In one entry, dated 8 May 1617, she complained: ‘Ispent this day in working, the time being very tedious unto me as havingneither comfort nor company, only the Child.’ In a later entry, dated 10August 1617, Anne noted that she kept to her room alone ‘being verytroubled & sad in mind’. She often hinted at the troubled state of herfirst marriage, especially when it became clear that her husband did notintend to support her claim to the earldom of Cumberland. Instead heinsisted that her inheritance should be settled upon himself as her hus-band. Her refusal to consider such a scheme often caused bad feelingbetween them and even, at times, pitted her against the wishes of KingJames I, who intervened in order to settle the case. This led to entries inthe diary where she would bemoan her hard lot, as in one entry whereshe wrote: ‘I weeping the most part of the day seeing my enemies had theupper hand of me.’ Her husband’s insistence that she should agree tohis claim upon her lands left her depressed and these feelings werechannelled into her diary. In another entry dated 21 September 1619 shelamented: ‘all this week I spent with my Sister Compton & my Sister



Sackville, being sad about an unkind letter from my Lord’. On a previ-ous occasion her husband removed their young daughter, Margaret, outof her mother’s care in order to persuade her to consent to the passing ofher claim to him. This separation between mother and child is recordedin the diary: ‘[9 May, 1616] At night was brought to me a letter from myLord to let me know his determination was [that] the Child should live atHorseley, & not come hither any more, so as this was a very grievous andsorrowful day to me.’

16

As with Lady Fanshaw, Anne Clifford placed herself on centre stagewithin her own diary. Although the whereabouts of her husband (oftenfar from home) were recorded, as well as his successes and losses at hisfrequent gambling pursuits, and his career at the court of King James I,it is clear that her writing was primarily both about herself and for her-self. By keeping a diary Anne Clifford had an outlet for the mental andemotional stress which she often suffered. It is possible that because ofthe absence of sympathy and support from her husband, and her percep-tion that she had many enemies both within her own household andwithin the royal court, Anne decided to act as her own confidante andto rely upon her own strength to get through such troubled times. Byrecording day-by-day the little ups and downs of her life, and the seriousproblems and traumas when they arose, she was able to tell her own storyand express her own point of view. In a society that did not encouragewomen to express opinions independently of their husbands or placethemselves in the spotlight, the diary was a means of stepping outsidethe accepted social barriers. It enabled these women to express thoughtsand opinions and, in a way, to reinvent, or re-create, themselves as indi-viduals away from their acceptable roles as dutiful wives and mothers.

However, it would be erroneous to conclude that either Lady AnneClifford or Lady Ann Fanshaw considered themselves as female rebels orearly feminists. Both frequently recorded their commitment to beinggood wives and mothers. They wrote about the raising of their children,their sorrow when a child died, and, as we saw with Lady Clifford, herpain when her child was taken from her. In addition both took trouble tomention the merits of their husbands. Yet for all this the reader is leftwith the impression that both of these women were strong and self-reliant. Lady Fanshaw, when her husband died in Spain in 1666, tookcharge of her family household and brought his body home to England.Lady Clifford kept up her suit to have her father’s lands descend to her,despite her father’s will and the judgement of almost every authority inEngland. She eventually gained the lands of the earldom of Cumberlandwhen the male line of the Cliffords died out in 1643 when she was agedfifty-one. It could not be said, however, that these two diarists weretypical of their times. While both displayed the required level of submis-siveness to their husbands and God, they also found a way of placing

16

Clifford,

Diaries

, pp. 55, 61, 59, 79, 32.

ELAINE MCKAY 199


themselves outside the traditional, quiet, female persona. The diary wasa means of communicating what was going on in their lives. It was notenough for these women to hope for the occasional mention in theirhusbands’ correspondence or diary; they made sure to define themselvesand their own role in society.

The diaries that were written by men form a much larger corpus. Inall there are approximately 352 English diaries from the period 1500 to1700 written by men. The considerable difference in numbers makes acomparison between male and female diarists very difficult and, on thewhole, rather pointless because there is no certainty whether the sampleof diaries written by women was wholly representative of the entirenumber of diaries that were actually written between 1500 and 1700.This is also true of the diaries written by men; they are only what sur-vived from the period under examination. However, with the men’s diar-ies the size of the sample available inspires somewhat greater confidence.What can be said about male diarists from their writing? As discussedabove, it is difficult to determine whether the content of diaries wasshaped by gender to any significant degree. For example, while somediaries written by women veered a little towards mysticism, similarexamples of meditative, mystical leaning also exist in diaries written by men.It is perhaps true, however, that the reasons for keeping a diary differedbetween men and women. Given the moral outlook of the times andideas on female demeanour, it is possible that male secular diaries weregiven more credence than women’s as a personal history by those whosucceeded them. Women may not have received the same encourage-ment from educators, from their families or from the pulpit, to keep diariesas men. There is also the factor that women of all classes faced exclu-sion from formal higher education. Furthermore, it is worth noting thatthe majority of female diarists, such as Mildmay, Fanshaw and Clifford,belonged to the higher reaches of society, and were not, therefore, typicalwomen of their era. It is likely that all of these women received aneducation and were expected, when married, to perform duties, such asestate management, which would have placed them in charge of a largenumber of people, such as servants, estate workers and members of theirown family. They were women who may have felt restrained by theirenvironment, educated enough to be able to analyse their situation in lifebut unable to give voice to their opinions and needs. Their role as man-ager of a large household gave them all of the economic responsibilitiesof men but without the ability to decide or change the direction of theirlives. For such women keeping a diary enabled them to express them-selves in their own words and re-create themselves on paper in their ownimage, rather than according to a social expectation. On the other hand,male diarists, through their role as economic providers, had more oppor-tunities to extend their environment beyond the home and intimatesocial circle. This was because their day-to-day interests were not tied upwith housekeeping and within a relatively enclosed environment. Menwent out to work, they held professional occupations, and this necessity



of leaving the home and mixing with people who were outside the imme-diate circle of family and friends is usually reflected in their diaries.

For the purpose of analysis, this article has grouped the diarists into anumber of occupations. This allows an investigation into the relationshipbetween socio-economic status and diary-keeping. Were there any particu-lar occupations which show a disproportionate number of diarists? Bybreaking the sample into groups of occupations insight is gained into thetypes of people who tended to keep diaries during the early modernperiod.

From the sample of diaries available it has been possible to establishthe occupation of 245 male diarists and one female. This tally hasdepended upon the diarist himself giving us information on his occupa-tion, or, in cases where the diary has not yet been examined, relyingupon the information recorded in Matthews’s catalogue, Creaton’s cata-logue, and upon information sent from various public record offices andlibraries throughout England.

17

Some diarists did not state any particu-lar occupation. From their writing, however, it is clear that they lived offtheir estates. In a social context such people would be defined as ‘gentry’.In this survey they are labelled as ‘landlords’ since their income wasderived from land on which they did not use their personal labour. Sim-ilarly, three prisoners have been included in the survey. These diarieswere kept by a Catholic prisoner in the Tower of London in 1580, SirThomas Dawes imprisoned in 1644, and a highwayman imprisoned inNewgate in 1684.

18

While ‘criminal’ may not have been the ‘occupation’of these men this was their status when they wrote their diaries. When-ever it has been impossible to determine the occupation of the diaristthat example has simply been excluded. Particular problems arose whenattempting to calculate the number of soldiers and sailors in the sample.The various wars and insurrections fought in Ireland and Scotland alsomake it difficult to determine whether the diarist in question was of Eng-lish, Irish, or Scottish origin, and serving in the king’s forces, or againstthe royalist causes, throughout the seventeenth century. Again, examplesin which there is uncertainty have been excluded.

The military and naval diaries collectively make up the largest occupa-tion for diarists. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that if all exampleswere included in the sample then soldier and naval diaries would makeup an even more considerable proportion of diarists with forty-onediaries. The naval diaries incorporate the crews of merchant ships,warships and three termed ‘buccaneers’. Another problem with some of

17

The large number of unpublished diaries in archives across England means that biographicaldetails are not available for all diaries listed in library and PRO catalogues. The geographicalspread of these manuscripts also means that only those that have been printed or are held in theBritish Library, the Guildhall Library, London, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and WarwickshirePRO have been personally examined by the author. Other data has been derived from informationgiven from PRO archivists and the lists compiled by Matthews and Creaton.

18

This is listed in Matthews’s catalogue as ‘Prison diary, April 1644–April 1645; kept while underarrest’. It has been printed in

Surrey Archaeological Collections

, xxxvii (1924), pp. 1–36.

ELAINE MCKAY 201


these examples is that most soldiers’ diaries were kept during the civilwars. With no full-time standing army in England, until the New ModelArmy was instituted in 1645, it is very likely that many of these men weresimply temporary soldiers with other professions in peacetime which,unfortunately, were not recorded in their diaries.

Table 1 shows that, when the military professions of soldier and sailorare divided up, the occupation most frequently represented by the diariesis that of a minister of the clergy. This figure of forty diarists includesclergy of all denominations, both Church of England and dissenter. Thisties in with a theory on the origins of diary-writing which connects thegrowth of the diary with the growth of Protestantism through the laterpart of the sixteenth century, and particularly throughout the seven-teenth century.

19

Religious writers such as Isaac Ambrose and RichardBaxter encouraged those wishing to worship privately to spend timeexamining their lives and remembering their daily faults. Members of theclergy would have been familiar with this advice, and with a universityeducation behind them they were also men with highly developed literacyskills. This education would also have equipped them with knowledge of

19

The absence of the priest-confessor in reformed religious doctrine is thought to have given riseto the diary as a spiritual account book; an audit of one’s soul and a private means to express theconfession of sins. Contemporary moralists such as Isaac Ambrose and Richard Baxter encour-aged their godly readership to take up diary-writing as a means of expressing their virtues andfaults. See Isaac Ambrose

Prima, the First Things in Relation to the Middle and Last Things

(1674),and Richard Baxter,

A Christian Directory, or a Sum of Practical Theology and Cases of Conscience

(1673).

Table 1 Diarists by Occupation/Status

Occupation/Status No. diaries

Minister 40Gov. Official 39Sailor 22M.P 22Scholar 20Soldier 19Local Gov. 16Landlord 13Tradesman/Merchant 13Lawyer 11Yeoman/Farmer 9Doctor 8Servant 6Astrologer 3Criminal 3Midwife 1Theatre-owner 1



formats for self-expression through commonplace books and examplesfrom classical literature. Therefore, it is no surprise to find that clergy-men tended to be keen diarists. Moreover, ministers who believed thatkeeping a diary was a beneficial spiritual exercise were likely to haveencouraged their parishioners to follow their example. It is possible thatthe growth of diaries was, in part, owing to the example and advice givenby local clergy to parishioners.

The military diarists included in the sample were from all ranks, andhighlight how many literate men may have served in the military duringthis period. However, this may well include a number of men who heldother professions during peacetime. In fact it is impossible to judge thetrue level of representation of these soldier-diarists. What the diaries doshow is that many men who served in the army during the early modernperiod were not simply illiterate and unable to comprehend the politicalarguments of their time. From the military diaries examined in this sur-vey it would appear that these soldiers were principally from the officerclass, and therefore more likely to have gained a formal education. Theyhad acquired a level of education which enabled them to analyse andrecord their reasons for participation in the fighting and political struggle,though many were content simply to record the events in which theyparticipated. One diarist who related his feelings towards the conflictin which he found himself was John Aston. Aston, educated at Oxford,held the position of ‘Privy Chamber-man Extraordinary’ to Charles Iduring the ‘Bishops War’ of 1639. Aston’s diary is notable in that hewent beyond simply recording the movements of the royalist army andhis own duties, and also set down his criticisms of the king’s advisers andthe bishops for whom, in his opinion, the war constituted a ‘quarellfor . . . pride and unlimited power’.

20

Aston used his diary to present hisanalysis of and complaints against the war, criticism which he would nothave dared to make public.

The large number of diaries written by soldiers hints at one of the keyreasons for diary-writing. In accordance with Delany’s theory of auto-biographical writing in the seventeenth century that people experiencedthe need to record their personal participation in great events, the soldier,unaware of what his fate might be, felt the urge to transfer his experi-ences onto paper.

21

There are various motives behind this type of diary.First, by keeping a diary of life as a soldier, the individual was respond-ing to a dramatic change of circumstances in his life. From ordinarycivilian to soldier trying to win a war, this man’s life was no longer thatof a humble, anonymous civilian; he was part of something momentousand his life was no longer the same. By keeping a diary he could bothanalyse the changes which had happened to him, and also keep a recordto act as an

aide mémoire

when these events had passed into history.

20

John Aston, ‘Journal of John Aston, 1639’, in

Six North Country Diaries, Surtees Society

, cxviii(1910), pp. 14–15.

21

Paul Delany,

British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century

(1969), p. 10.

ELAINE MCKAY 203


Secondly, this record may not have been designed simply to refresh hisown memory in years to come but would also serve to justify his actionsand beliefs as a soldier, and therefore temporarily outside commonexperience, to his friends and family.

22

A diary account could show theconditions of life for soldiers in camp or on the march, such as the diaryof John Aston, a gentleman officer, written in 1639 to record his experi-ences serving in the English army sent against the Scots. A diary, as apermanent record, gave the soldier an opportunity to re-create his lifeand actions in a manner which best suited his idea of himself. It servedto justify him and his actions by only stating the facts that he chose torecord and the interpretation that he chose to place upon those facts.Following on from this, the soldier’s diary may have been conceived as alast testament of the days leading up to his death. By recording hisactions and thoughts the soldier was, in effect, re-creating himself onpaper. By writing a diary he was preparing himself for death. By trans-ferring his thoughts onto paper the soldier was attempting to escapeanonymity in death. His thoughts would speak to those who read hisdiary and they would remember him. The diary of Nathan Drake, a gentle-man volunteer in the royalist side during the siege of Pontefract castlein 1644, contains an inscription by his great-grandson Francis whichstates the hope that: ‘I desire that this ms, in my great-grandfather’s ownhand writing may never go out of the family.’

23

Elisabeth Bourcier hasargued that those who kept diaries only during times of conflict were nottrue diarists. Along with those who kept travel diaries, war diarists were‘diarists by accident and chose of occasion’ . They did not simply recordall events of their lives but only certain momentous occasions which theythought worthy of record.

24

Whatever their limitations, however, suchdiaries should not be denigrated. War and travel diaries are justified in sofar as they were written as records of the day-to-day personal experienceof an individual. As Michael Mascuch has observed, the diary as wellas the autobiography enabled soldiers, and civilian men and women, ‘bytheir writings, in all faculties and sciences, to enjoy a sort of immortalityupon earth, by having their memories honoured by succeeding genera-tions who never saw their faces in the flesh’.

25

The category of ‘government official’ covers those involved ingovernment at court level. This includes courtiers, employees of statedepartments and diplomats, but it excludes MPs (who have their owncategory) whose diaries were often primarily records of parliamentary

22

For the use of diaries amongst families and social networks see Elaine McKay, ‘The DiaristNetwork in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England’,

ERAS Journal

(Melbourne, 2001).

23

Nathan Drake, ‘A Journal of the First and Second Sieges of Pontefract Castle, 1644–1645, byNathan Drake, a Gentleman Volunteer Therein’, ed. W. Hylton Dyer Longstaffe,

Surtees Society

,xxxvii (1860).24 Elisabeth Bourcier, Les journaux privés en Angleterre de 1600 á 1660 (Paris, 1976), p. 7.25 James Fretwell, ‘Family History Begun by James Fretwell’, cited by Michael Mascuch, Originsof the Individualist Self, Autobiography and Self-identity in England, 1591–1791 (1997), p. 73 [here-after Mascuch, Origins of the Individualist Self ].



proceedings.26 Local government officials include town and countyofficials such as town clerks, justices of the peace and sheriffs. Withthirty-nine diarists classed as government official and sixteen as localgovernment officials, it is clear that those men who held positions ofauthority, both within the royal court and in the shires and towns, alsobelieved in the importance (or the fashion) of keeping a daily record oftheir lives. These men may have considered their positions and influencein society at a local or national level to be of great enough importance tomerit a permanent record. Again, it is likely that these were all men ofgrammar or university education and as such had probably encounteredat some point the biographical and autobiographical literature dis-cussed earlier. The connection between keeping a diary and experienceof higher education is further illustrated by the number of scholars in thesurvey. These twenty scholars include university teachers, schoolteachers,students and antiquaries.

In the example of the diaries kept by scholars, these men clearly usedthe diary as a means of expressing their capacity for individualisticthinking. As with ministers, the role of the scholar was nothing new insociety, but why did these people became more likely to create such ego-documents in the early modern period? The answer lies within educationitself. The steady rise of literacy and the growth of cheap print created apopulation that was well used to the sight of pen and paper and the pur-poses to which they could be put.27 Individuals who had perhaps keptsome sort of commonplace book while at school may have developedthis personal record into a diary. Others may have developed their busi-ness account books into an account of their personal lives. As a few peoplebegan to write personal memoranda and to record the things whichbest described themselves and their environment, a few more may havefollowed their example so that diary-writing became a trend, perhapseven a fashion, among those of the educated sort. It is likely that thishabit brought about a greater sense of self-knowledge and awareness ofpersonal identity to those who became diarists. As scholars stood at theforefront of learning, with developed analytical and literacy skills, it ishardly surprising that many of them tapped into this trend for recordingindividual life. As a profession that sought to explain, edify, and justifyideas and beliefs, scholars were like ministers in seeking to teach othersto follow their example and keep a diary.

In all, there are few categories of diarists that preclude some form ofeducation. It is clear that the diarists were, for the most part, educated

26 For an example of a parliamentary diary see The Parliamentary Diary of Sir Richard Cocks,1698–1702, ed. D. W. Hayton (Oxford, 1996), and ‘The Parliamentary Diaries of John Newdigate,1628’ (Warwick Record Office, CR136/ A 1–3).27 Margaret Spufford has examined the dissemination of printed material, particularly chapbooksand ballads sold cheaply enough for the lower levels of society to afford to purchase. See SmallBooks and Pleasant Histories (1981) [hereafter Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories], ch. 3on the distribution of chapbooks, and ch. 5 on the pedlars of cheap print. See also Adam Fox, Oraland Literature Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), ch. 6 on the dissemination of ballads.

ELAINE MCKAY 205


people possessing not only the ability to read and write, but also theability to analyse and conceive of themselves as separate individuals withmoral duties answerable only to the law of the monarch and of God. AsMascuch states, it is the ability to set oneself apart as the subject of one’slife and be able to regard oneself as a wholly separate entity from one’sfamily group and community that creates an individual.28 Significantly, itwas the mind which was educated to think for itself which conceived thediary.

So far this examination has concentrated upon the types of peoplewho kept diaries and has found, not surprisingly, that diarists tended tobe from economically comfortable backgrounds and to have had accessto higher education. The key point is that many of the diarists includedin the sample displayed a highly developed level of learning in theirability to write analytically, and they often mentioned literature that theywere currently reading or admired. Others restricted their writing tonoting personal or national events and recording the weather. Yet thefact that they kept a day book, even if it was little more than simple listsof expenses and receipts, hints that they had been at one time under theinfluence of a guiding educational figure such as a teacher. Seventeenth-century ideas of diary-writing may have differed from the modernpractice of recording highly personal memoranda. A large quantity ofself-analysis of the sort that modern society encourages is absent. Thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the beginning of the developmenttowards self-expression and analysis, and to see diarists such as Pepys,Anne Clifford and Roger Lowe expressing and analysing their feelings,beliefs and motives is to witness modern individualism’s emergence inwritten documents. Most of these analytical diaries were principallyreligious. Yet religion was not an essential condition for self-analysis. Forexample, though he was clearly a committed Christian, the diary kept byRoger Lowe detailed all aspects of his life, not simply his spiritual medi-tations.29 The diary entries in which he sets out his thoughts or feelingswere as likely to be about his love for his sweetheart, Mary Naylor, thesister of his friend Roger Naylor, his quarrels with friends and neigh-bours, or concerns for his future.30

28 Mascuch, Origins of the Individualist Self, p. 88.29 See Roger Lowe, The Diary of Roger Lowe, ed. William L. Sachse (New Haven, 1938) [hereafterLowe, Diary]. Lowe was an apprentice mercer in the village of Ashton-in-Makerfield. He wrote hishighly personal diary from 1663 to 1668. An inventory of deaths and burials in Lowe’s neighbour-hood was appended to the diary from 1671 to 1678. Much of the value and interest of Lowe’saccount lies in his young age (though we have no evidence of his exact age when beginning hisdiary), his relatively lowly station in life and descriptions of courtships which he and his friendsembarked upon, as well as the nonconformist aspect of his spiritual life which is laid out in thediary.30 For his brief relationship with Mary Naylor see the entry on 5 May 1663, when he and Marydecided that they were a couple: ‘This was the first night that ever I stayd up a wooing ere in mylife’. See Lowe, Diary, p. 20. He afterwards married Emma Potter in 1668. Lowe quarrelled withMary Naylor’s brother, James, when James stole some love letters from Roger to Mary and showedthem to their friends (22 Nov. 1663).



It is useful for an understanding of the diarists to place them withintheir economic and social brackets, but they can also be placed withintheir geographical context. From the overall total of 372 English diaries,206 have proved traceable to a county of origin.31 There are two ways ofapproaching the geographical origins of these diaries: to note where thediarist lived normally, and to note where the diary was actually written.Whenever possible this survey has tried to record where the diary waswritten. The reason is that the diarist may have found himself or herselfin a situation or environment which was outside of his native county orarea and which inspired him to start writing. Thus most diaries writtenby MPs which appear to be no more than parliamentary records areattributed to London. Diaries written by students are attributed to theiruniversity town. It was the fact of being in parliament, in London, or atuniversity, that presumably prompted the diarist to write. The influenceof migration also applies to ministers, many of whom would havelearned of the value of diary-writing whilst studying at university, yetonly began their own diary when they were settled in a living. For femalediarists marriage may have caused them to move from the area of theirbirth and childhood to take up residence in their marital home. Thus,some diarists could have travelled much of the country and settled farfrom their birthplace before finding an incentive to begin writing. There-fore, the origin of most of these diaries can be looked at in the areawhere the diarist lived. For these people, writing a diary began when theymarried, started in business, or began their ministry. The information inTables 2 and 3 is intended as a basic overview of the locations of diariesof the period. The 206 diaries that have been used in this sample comefrom a total of thirty-three out of the thirty-nine English counties. Tosummarize further, the thirty-three counties have been grouped into sixregions: Home Counties, East Anglia, West Midlands, East Midlands,Northern England and the West Country.

31 Many soldiers’ diaries have been left out of this survey. In such cases there is often no accompany-ing information regarding the diarist’s geographical origins or even his location when writing thediary.

Table 2 Total by Region

Region 16th Century 17th Century

Home Counties 12 77East Anglia 2 17North England 1 23East Midlands 3 19West Midlands 0 28West Country 4 20Total 22 184

ELAINE MCKAY 207


Not surprisingly, London/Middlesex provided the largest number ofsurviving diaries. Although officially London is within the county ofMiddlesex, the diaries are all attributed to London itself rather than anyother area of the county. The large number of diaries (forty-four) in thisone area of England is certainly attributable to the cultural leadership ofa capital city. As the main entrepôt of England, London was the cruciblefor new ideas, fashions and travellers from Europe and beyond. As Eng-land’s principal seat of business and politics it also attracted the wealthyand educated who wished to make their fortunes or get ahead in the cityor royal court. This combination of innovation, ambition, education andwealth in many of its citizens made London a prime location for diary-writing. In the case of the surrounding counties there is little to suggesta specific theme or pattern to their numbers, except for the fact that theyall bordered upon Middlesex and therefore were subject to London’scultural influences. These counties may also have absorbed more of thegraduates of the main university in the area, Oxford, and slightly furtherafield, Cambridge. It is likely that such a highly literate population wouldhave been more inclined to keep diaries.

The most interesting and noticeable fact observable from Table 3 (andalso with the following tables) is the leap in diary-writing between thetwo centuries. Indeed Table 3 shows that four out of the ten counties inthe survey had no surviving diaries for the sixteenth century, yet by theend of the seventeenth century all had at least one. Essex had the greatestdifference in numbers over the course of 200 years with a rise of elevendiaries. Leaving the Home Counties and travelling north into northernEngland the results of the geographical survey again show one area witha large number of diaries.

Yorkshire leads the table with thirteen out of a total of twenty-fourdiaries for the whole area. This puts it overall second in the nationaltable after London and before Essex. Why did Yorkshire, a county far

Table 3 Total in Home Counties

Home Counties 16th Century 17th Century

London/Middlesex 7 37Surrey 0 3Sussex 1 7Hampshire 0 2Berkshire 1 0Oxfordshire 0 6Buckinghamshire 0 1Hertfordshire 1 1Essex 1 11Kent 1 9Total 12 77



away from the influences of the capital, and with no university to encour-age the settlement of scholars, produce such a high number of diaries?The answer is not immediately clear from examining the available dataon profession and the dating of the diaries. The size of Yorkshire (it isthe largest county in England) may have given it an advantage, thoughit was more sparsely populated than the south-eastern counties. A largecounty might be expected to produce more evidence, yet as already dis-cussed, it was the educated, literate proportion of the population whotended to keep diaries. However, no reliable data exists for the popula-tion of Yorkshire for this period.32 Therefore, it would be erroneous toattempt to give a reliable estimate of the population size of Yorkshireand the proportion of its population which had attained the requisitestandard of literacy to keep a diary. However, evidence exists on the ratioof people from the north of England who attended one of the nation’suniversities, which could give us an idea of the general standard of higherliteracy in an area such as Yorkshire. According to Lawrence Stone, whotraced the geographical origins of Oxford students for the year 1751, thenorth of England was ‘grossly underrepresented’ at Oxford.33 He statesthat according to his research ‘the only exception is Westmorland whichhad the highest ratio of all – a freak produced by the number of closedscholarships from that county to Queen’s College’.34 Of course, this oneexample is by no means conclusive for the standard of higher educationin the north of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Yet, if the number of people from the north attending Oxford Universityin 1751 was low, then it is unlikely that it was significantly higher beforethat date. Another possibility is that a high proportion of the Yorkshirediarists were godly ministers who may have been more likely than secularmembers of the population to keep diaries. Without further evidence itcan only be concluded that the high number of diaries we have which areattributable to Yorkshire must have been due simply to an unusual sur-vival rate from that county. Put simply, for whatever reasons, Yorkshiremay be well represented because fewer of its early modern diaries havebeen lost or destroyed. Yet the number attributed to Yorkshire remainsas a fascinating clue as to possible levels of literacy in the north of Eng-land.35 The exact reasons for its large proportion of diaries will providefuture researchers with further study.

32 Surveys such as E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (1981), and David Coleman and John Salt, The British Population, Patterns,Trends and Processes (Oxford, 1992), encompass the population as a whole but do not break itdown to county level. Early modern population statistics are difficult to quantify because nonational population census was recorded until 1801.33 Lawrence Stone, The University in Society, Oxford and Cambridge from the Fourteenth to the EarlyNineteenth Century (Oxford, 1975) [hereafter Stone, University in Society]. See ch. 1, ‘The Size andComposition of the Oxford Student Body 1580–1909’. However, there is also the possibility thatthe Yorkshire gentry preferred Cambridge University on account of its geographical proximity.34 Ibid., p. 77.35 For literacy rates in England during this period see Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order, p. 151,and Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories, pp. 21–2.

ELAINE MCKAY 209


Two points are immediately striking from an examination of Table 5.First, there is the fairly even spread of diaries across the country. Thereis no area that appears to be under-represented, and, with the exceptionof Cheshire and Devon, no county has a conclusive lead over others.Cheshire and Devon provide ten and eleven surviving diaries respectivelywith the remaining fifteen counties following with an average of four

Table 4 Total in Northern England

Table 5 Total in the Remaining Four Regions of England

Northern England 16th Century 17th Century

Yorkshire 1 12Lancashire 0 7Cumberland 0 1Northumberland 0 1Durham 0 2Total 1 23

16th Century 17th Century

West MidlandsCheshire 0 10Gloucestershire 0 5Warwickshire 0 9Worcestershire 0 3Herefordshire 0 1Total 0 28East AngliaNorfolk 1 5Suffolk 1 8Total 2 13East MidlandsLincolnshire 0 2Nottinghamshire 0 1Derbyshire 0 4Northamptonshire 1 4Cambridgeshire 1 7Bedfordshire 1 1Total 3 19West CountryCornwall 1 3Devon 3 8Somerset 0 3Dorset 0 2Wiltshire 0 4Total 4 20



each. Secondly, as mentioned above in relation to Table 3, the data showa noticeable rise in the numbers of diaries over the course of two centu-ries across the country.

Fourteen out of the thirty-nine English counties of the early modernperiod show a result for the sixteenth century. This is approximately one-third of the country with at least one surviving diary from that period.There is no evidence why these counties and not others produced diaries.Based on the data from the geographic survey it would appear that inthe sixteenth century diary-writing was very limited, being the personalproject of only a few individuals. Compare this with the seventeenthcentury during which 79 per cent of the counties of England provided atleast one diary. From these results it appears that while diary-writing wasslowly developing during the sixteenth century much of the country hadnot taken up this new form of literary self-expression. None the less, overthe course of the seventeenth century it had become established almosteverywhere. Further, it is entirely possible that the counties that have notbeen mentioned in this survey may still have some ancient diaries, as yetundetected.

The overall impression is that diary-writing was not a literary practiceconfined to the areas surrounding London and the universities, but hadextended throughout the nation by the close of the seventeenth century.The geographical distribution of the diaries may not tell us anythingnew about why the people of this period started to write their personalexperiences. Yet it is clear that, in England, diaries dating from the earlymodern period can be found in Yorkshire as in Essex or London. Per-haps the best way to look at the reasons for this distribution would be toconsider each county, or each region, separately and examine factorssuch as literacy rates and cultural developments for each county ratherthan puzzle over the country as a whole. It may make more sense to treateach area separately rather than try to explain why Yorkshire, for example,has so many surviving diaries; the reason could be based upon localconsiderations such as that county’s own educational system, or theinfluence of some individual diarists upon their families, acquaintancesor congregations for example. The various literacy rates for each countymay prove a more effective indicator of the numbers of diaries than thelocation of the shire. However, it is beyond the scope of this article toattempt such a survey on regional literacy.

One more indicator is worth mentioning: the number of diarists whowere university graduates in each county may provide a reason why somecounties have more diaries than others. It is possible that if numbersof university students were introduced to the concept of diary-writingduring their time at university they would, for whatever reason, begin orcontinue their practice of daily annotation when they moved from univer-sity to begin their professional lives in the shires. Thus, it was not theirhome county which equipped them for keeping a diary. Instead, theybrought the practice back with them when they finished their educationand perhaps influenced others to emulate their writing. One example of

ELAINE MCKAY 211


such migration is that of Philip Henry, who kept a diary between 1647and 1696.36 His father was of Welsh origin but worked in the court ofCharles I in London, and his son, Philip, was born in Whitehall. Hisdiary began when he was a student at Oxford and continued when hemoved to Flintshire in Wales to begin his ministry. The diary traditionwithin his family continued through his daughter, Mrs Sarah Savage,who kept a diary in Flintshire from 1694 to 1732.37

In summary, the geographical distribution of diaries belonging to thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries shows that by the end of the perioddiaries were an established literary genre throughout the country. It isnot yet entirely clear why this was so but it is likely that the answers liein the literacy rates of each shire, and also in broader cultural factors likeindividualism and fashion, and perhaps also in the number of graduatesreturning from universities. Unsurprisingly the area which yielded, andwhich may have inspired, most diaries was London, and the highnumber of diaries kept in the Home Counties area is probably attribut-able to their proximity to the capital.

The diarists themselves were not confined to one specific area ofEngland. By the seventeenth century they were spread across all areas ofthe country. This development may attest to the increasing levels of liter-acy in all parts of England during the course of the early modern period.Yet the fact remains that diarists were in most cases from the higherlevels of society with access to grammar school and university education.They were people who could not only read and write but who were oftencapable of thinking analytically and developing themselves in a spiritualand individual sense. This fact distances the diary-writer from the lower,more illiterate levels of society. It is very unlikely that many diarieswritten by labourers are waiting to be discovered. Yet the social distancewhich in many cases existed between the diarist and other sections of thepopulation does not mean that the diary is an elitist source giving infor-mation merely on the lives and opinions of the privileged sections ofsociety. The ministers who kept diaries may have been socially far abovemany of their parishioners and have received a far superior education,but they still moved and lived among all sections of society. Their pasto-ral concern for the souls under their care meant that the lives, opinionsand problems from various sections of the population appear in theirdiaries. Similarly, great men such as Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn didnot limit themselves to the society of the high born and ignore the dailygrind of everyday life in the society in which they lived. The people whomthey encountered were not all privileged, and the places where they wentto work or re-create themselves were not exclusively those of the aristo-cratic or gentle sections of society. They walked the streets and attendedsporting events which encompassed the highest and lowest that English

36 Philip Henry, Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry, M.A. of Broad Oak Flintshire, A.D 1631–1696,ed. Matthew Henry Lee (1882).37 Sarah Savage, Memoirs of Mrs. Sarah Savage (Boston, 1821).



society had to offer at that time. These snapshots of everyday lifecaptured by observant and analytical men and women justify the use ofdiaries as an important primary source for social historians. The diarymay have been primarily limited to certain sections of the population,but that does not necessarily mean that what was observed and recordedwas in any way limited to a particular social group.

Although diaries are subject to criticism their value as a source forsocial history is indispensable. The number of diaries kept during theperiod 1500–1700 is significant enough to warrant their exclusive exam-ination. As historical source material diaries must be treated with somedegree of caution, but there are, overall, clear advantages in their use. Pri-marily, the diary breaks history down to the level of the individual. It isthe record of everyday living. Here are the voices of at least hundreds ofpeople, and not only the authors’, but also in the background are theirwives, or husbands, servants, friends and neighbours. In the context ofsocial history the contents of the majority of diaries extended beyondthe events, thoughts and spirituality of the individual author and giveinformation on the society in which that individual lived. Diarists didnot always confine their writing to the events of their own lives but alsotended to include events which concerned the people whom they encoun-tered during their day, and the current affairs which affected their localcommunity and the nation as a whole. This means that historians canuse diaries as a general social source to gain information on wider socialtrends such as the development of political thought among at least a pro-portion of the populace, and how people at grass-roots level reacted tothe major events which affected society such as war, economic depriva-tion or prosperity, the succession of monarchs, and decisions on socialand religious policies made by government. The diaries may have beenego-documents, personal notations of individual lives, but these textsalso tended to document the current beliefs, opinions and events of thewider society.

The diaries themselves were created in a range of formats. Some runinto several volumes, the prime examples being those of Samuel Pepysand John Evelyn. Others were kept for perhaps just one year in one note-book which could be small enough for one’s pocket. Yet others were butmere fragments jotted down on blank pages within an almanac. Yet allhave the essential characteristics of a diary, in that they were dailyaccounts, personal versions of that author’s day to be written down andkept as a permanent record of that one individual’s life. The motivationfor putting pen to paper varied and some diarists were more disciplinedin keeping their daily record than others. Yet from the diaries historiansare given an immeasurably valuable insight into life during the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries; the work, games, religion, relationships, sick-ness and general struggle of life.

English Diarists: Gender, Geography and Occupation, 1500–1700

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