100 Documents That Changed the World

by Scott Christianson

  Charles I’s beheading changed the way the English viewed themselves, their king, the Civil War and their country. Historians contend that the shocking execution shattered the image of an all-powerful monarch. The Church of England established the date of 30 January for perpetual lamentation – in memory of the events recorded in the reddish execution warrant of 1649 and as a warning of the dangers of ‘unnatural rebellion, usurpation, and tyranny of ungodly and cruel men, and from the sad confusions and ruin thereupon ensuing.’

  Today the warrant is preserved in the care of the House of Lords Record Office. Scholars continue to speculate about the way the document was constructed, particularly the timing of the warrant and its signatures.

  The document that sealed Charles I’s fate and led to the subsequent rule of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. Cromwell’s signature can be seen far left. Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the death warrant was used to identify and prosecute all of the ‘regicides’ who had signed it.

  Samuel Pepys’s Diary

  (1660–69)

  An urbane and very observant Londoner keeps a private daily diary covering everything from his most mundane activities to some of the greatest events of the age, leaving an intimate and fascinating record of life under England’s Restoration.

  Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), the son of a London tailor, was born into modest circumstances but rose to become a member of England’s privileged class. He attended the execution of Charles I in 1649, was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, dined in splendour, and enjoyed London’s high arts and society. Through patronage he held several posts, including Chief Secretary to the Royal Navy under King Charles II and James II. Pepys suffered from painful bladder stones and other ailments that left him sterile. Although married, he and his wife often lived apart and he engaged in extramarital affairs.

  No one would know this today except for the fact that from 1660 to 1669, a crucial period in Britain’s history, Pepys kept an extraordinarily detailed personal record of every aspect of his life and times. First published in 1825, Pepys’s diary is considered one of history’s finest eyewitness accounts.

  On 1 January 1660, he recorded his first entry:

  Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain but upon taking of cold. I lived in Axe yard, having my wife and servant Jane, and no more in family than us three. My wife, after the absence of her terms for seven weeks, gave me hopes of her being with child, but on the last day of the year she hath them again.

  Besides providing a vivid, firsthand view of Restoration London, and a rare peep into a gentleman’s intimate private musings and affairs, Pepys’s diary is notable for its detailed and colourful reportage about several major historical events of the period. During the Great Plague of London (1665–66), Pepys reports having to ‘buy some roll tobacco to smell to and chaw’ in order to take away ‘the apprehension’ of infection, writing, ‘But Lord! How everybody’s looks, and discourse in the street, is of death, and nothing else; and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken.’ After a maid awakens him early in the morning of 2 September 1666 to warn him of a blaze spreading in the distance, Pepys heads to the Tower of London to see ‘the houses at the end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side’ – the Great Fire of London.

  The diary recounts his rich cultural activities, detailing his tastes in books, music, the theatre and science (including his correspondence with Isaac Newton). ‘The truth is,’ he wrote, ‘I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it.’ His descriptions of the dramatic stage of the period are especially keen.

  Although encroaching blindness prevented him from writing after 31 May 1669, Pepys kept his diary well preserved. For these reasons, and its fine style, the work has long been a favourite among historians and general readers alike.

  Although written in a form of shorthand known as Tachygraphy, the six volumes of bound manuscripts were later deciphered, and published in 1825 and several times since. The original manuscript and first transcription lie in the Samuel Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

  The first page of Pepys’s diary, from 1 January 1660. Written in shorthand, and covering everything from politics and national events to the trials and tribulations of married life, his diary offers an invaluable insight into life in London in the 1660s. The six leather-bound volumes of his original handwritten diaries are kept at the Pepys Library in Cambridge.

  These two pages are taken from a notebook dating from the mid-to-late 1660s and show Newton’s early mathematical thinking that would eventually develop into his theories of calculus. His detailed notes and calculations are sometimes written on small scraps of paper that he had close to hand.

  Isaac Newton Papers

  (1660s–1727)

  The most influential scientist in history leaves behind one of the world’s largest collections of precious original scholarly manuscripts, but for centuries access is restricted to some of the papers because of Newton’s unorthodox ideas about certain subjects.

  Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was far and away the greatest scientist, mathematician and natural philosopher of the Enlightenment. Best known for his mathematical description of universal gravitation, but also revered for his achievements in calculus, classical mechanics, optics, colour and countless other domains, Newton is credited with so many important discoveries and inventions that he is regarded as probably the most influential scholar in the history of science. Yet many of his less well known writings delved into other subjects that complicated his legacy.

  The story of Isaac Newton’s papers is interesting for a number of reasons. Newton left behind an enormous stack of manuscripts, letters and other papers that was estimated in size at 10 million words. His celebrated works of scientific and mathematical genius were and are highly prized. But a large portion of his archives, dealing with alchemy, theology and chronology, remained under wraps for centuries.

  Newton’s wide range of unorthodox interests turned off some persons who had access to the papers. His forensic analysis of the Bible, for example, along with his pursuit of ‘heretical’ religious ideas – such as his rejection of the Holy Trinity – startled many religious conformists. And his obsession with alchemy and other ‘strange’ notions made others question his scientific judgement. As a result, the full breadth of Newton’s massive paper trail was kept out of bounds for centuries, continuing through the squeamish Victorian age, for what might be termed political reasons. One discriminating historian was aghast to find some of Newton’s pristine mathematical notes intermingled with worrisome theological materials, not appreciating, perhaps, the interdisciplinary nature of Newton’s genius. ‘I frame no hypotheses,’ he wrote, ‘for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.’

  Newton was closely associated with Cambridge University, where he was a student and holder of the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics. So it is not surprising that the bulk of his mathematical and scientific manuscripts were bequeathed to the University of Cambridge Library by one of his relatives in 1872. Another important collection of Sir Isaac Newton’s scientific manuscripts was donated to the university in 2000.

  The longstanding skittishness and censorship which has surrounded Newton’s papers appears to be changing in the digital age. A huge archive of classic Newton works is being posted online by Cambridge University. And another web-based initiative, the Newton Project based at Sussex University, has dedicated its
elf to publishing in full an online edition of all of Newton’s writings. Thus far, the project has transcribed 6.4 million words. It is also making available translations of his most important Latin texts. The Newton documents keep growing. Now readers will be able to gain a fuller understanding of one of history’s most extraordinary minds.

  First Printed Newspaper in English

  (1665)

  First printed as the Oxford Gazette, and later moving to become the London Gazette, the first English-language broadsheet was being read years before the term ‘newspaper’ was coined – and it is still in publication today as Britain’s official organ of record.

  On 7 November 1665, the first issue of the Oxford Gazette came off the press, authorized by King Charles II to tell the privileged classes what he wanted them to know. He had it printed 60 miles west of London in an effort to escape the Great Plague that was killing so many residents of that city, and the inaugural issue contained the government’s ‘Bill of Mortality’ listing the epidemic’s latest victims. Oxford University’s Leonard Litchfeld was authorized to serve as its printer.

  A well-known politician, Joseph Williamson, wrote the first edition, stating that its publication was, ‘For the Use of some Merchants and Gentlemen who desire them.’ The first article announced the appointment of a new Bishop of Oxford, reporting: ‘This day the Reverend Doctor Walter Blandford, Warden of Wadham Colledge in this University, was Elected Lord Bishop of this See; vacant by the death of Dr. Paul, late Bishop here.’

  Samuel Pepys in London got hold of a copy on 22 November and wrote in his diary: ‘This day the first of the Oxford Gazettes came out, which is very pretty, full of news, and no folly in it.’

  After three months in Oxford, Charles II judged London safe enough to return with his court and the useful broadsheet was moved with him as the London Gazette.

  Consisting of a single page broadsheet, measuring 18 x 28 centimetres and printed on both sides, the text was arranged in a visually pleasing two-column format known as coranto, with the paper’s distinctive title on top along with the date and the line, ‘Published by Authority’. It was issued twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, and widely distributed – at first to other neighboring towns and soon to foreign lands via ocean vessels – becoming the leading source of news in Britain and the colonies. The Gazette was not a newspaper in the modern sense: it was sent by post to subscribers, not printed for sale to the general public. By 1670 or so, some readers took to calling it a ‘newspaper’.

  As the Crown’s first official journal of record and newspaper, the London Gazette occupied a special place in British affairs, providing the most authoritative information about military actions, political events and legal proceedings. On 4 January 1666, it was noted that ‘Seventeen prisoners from Newgate, who were aboard a Barbadoes ship, got off...went ashore...[and the] master of the ship made pursuit after them.’

  The newspaper has been continuously published to this day and its back issues are now available in digital form over the Internet.

  The first edition of the Oxford Gazette (7 November 1665) included a ‘Bill of Mortality’ for the Great Plague.

  When the Great Plague had subsided, the Oxford Gazette relocated to the capital and became the London Gazette. The first edition was published on 5 February 1666. Until that time, no one would touch a London newspaper for fear of contamination.

  Written in iron gall ink on parchment, the Bill of Rights established ‘Parliamentary Privilege’, which allowed for frequent parliaments, free elections and freedom of speech within parliament.

  English Bill of Rights

  (1689)

  After decades of bloody conflict, the most important document of the Glorious Revolution is an act of Parliament that spells out new limits on the powers of the Crown and establishes the supremacy of Parliament, proclaiming that all Englishmen possess certain inalienable rights under law.

  As James II (England’s last Roman Catholic monarch) was being deposed and William III and Mary II were about to accept the crown as joint monarchs in culmination of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a small commission of Parliament members drew up papers to resolve several core issues that had long plagued British rule.

  The commission drafted a document declaring that since James II had ‘abdicated’ the throne, Parliament was naming his successors and moving to prohibit further monarchial abuses of the kind that James II had committed. The act was also designed to clarify the powers of Parliament and the civil rights of the people, reflecting some of the political ideas proposed by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, who had been in exile in Holland during James II’s reign.

  Passed on 16 December 1689, the Bill of Rights recounted twelve specific wrongs that James II had committed, and by doing so it helped to establish the rights that Parliament said must be upheld. The act imposed certain limits on royal power, stating that Parliament’s consent is required for the king to suspend or create laws, raise taxes or raise a standing army in peace time; the people are entitled to petition the king without being prosecuted; Parliaments should be held frequently; and that Roman Catholics are barred from the throne.

  The new standards held that ‘excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted’; ‘jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders’; and ‘all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void.’

  The new monarchs were required to swear they would obey Parliament’s laws, including the Bill of Rights, which they did, saying, ‘We thankfully accept what you have offered to us.’ They also had to swear to uphold the Protestant religion.

  The document joined Magna Carta as a fundamental pillar of British rights and liberties and later helped inspire the creation of the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen, the US Bill of Rights and other landmarks of civil liberties. It is still in effect in all Commonwealth realms.

  The original document is held at the National Archives in Kew.

  An eighteenth-century engraving showing ‘The Bill of Rights ratified at the Revolution by King William and Queen Mary previous to their Coronation.’

  Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary

  (1755)

  An eccentric genius spends eight years compiling a mammoth and innovative original dictionary, complete with more than 40,000 word definitions and numerous illustrative literary quotations, making for the most engaging lexicographic treasure house of the English language yet devised.

  Many of the most erudite writers and intellectuals of mid-18th-century London called Samuel Johnson (1709–84) the most brilliant man of his era. Adam Smith said, ‘Johnson knew more books than any man alive’, and Edmund Burke thought that if Johnson had gone to Parliament he would have been certainly ‘the greatest speaker that ever was.’

  Although he was a man of modest means and odd mannerisms, Johnson was commissioned by London booksellers to create an authoritative English dictionary, and he spent more than eight years immersed in the Herculean task. One of his few assistants was a former Jamaican slave, Francis Barber.

  The dictionary’s 42,773 word entries included rarities such as odontálgick (pertaining to toothache) and some of its definitions were as quirky and humorous as Johnson himself. He defines cough as ‘a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity’, and lexicographer as ‘A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.’

  Another of Johnson’s delightful innovations was to illustrate a word’s meanings by means of apt literary quotations – 114,000 of them – which he had taken from Shakespeare and 500 other authors from every branch of learning in a feat of extraordinary scholarship and erudition.

  When it first appeared in 1755, Johnson’s Dictionary of the English
Language was priced for the well-to-do and sold only a few thousand copies in its first decade. Yet readers hailed the author as ‘England’s most distinguished man of letters’ and called his compendium the ‘greatest feat of scholarship’ of its time. Later marketed in a cheaper abridged edition, the work became a big seller. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928, Johnson’s gem was generally viewed as the leading English-language dictionary, and literary scholars have long considered it one of the most influential works in the English language.

  Some of Johnson’s original manuscripts, including his diary and drafts of his Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language, are housed at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. Copies of the original first edition of the dictionary have sold for as much as $250,000. Allen Reddick has written extensively about the original documents in The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773.

  Johnson is recognized for other literary achievements and he is also the subject of one of the greatest single works of biography: James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).

  The stupendous two-volume tome, measuring nearly 46 centimetres tall and weighing roughly 9 kilograms, ran to 2,300 pages.

  The title page of the first edition. Taking eight years to compile, the dictionary was Johnson’s attempt to stabilize the rules governing the English language, in which ‘there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated.’