by Ian Mortimer
Dentist examining the tooth of an old man, painting by Gerrit Dou (private collection; photo ©Bonhams London/Bridgeman Images).
Cheque of the Earl of Arran. Reproduced by kind permission of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc © 2017.
Frost fair on the Thames, winter of 1683–4, English school (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/Bridgeman Images).
The King’s Bath and the Queen’s Bath, drawing by Thomas Johnson (private collection/Bridgeman Images).
Sir Thomas Armstrong’s execution, engraving, 1684.
Titus Oates in the pillory, 1687, English school (Museum of London/Bridgeman Images).
View of a house and its estate in Belsize, Middlesex, 1696, Jan Siberechts (1627–c.1700) (© Tate London 2016)
The White Hart Inn in Scole, Norfolk, English school (private collection/Ken Welsh/Bridgeman Images).
Clarendon House, engraving (private collection/Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images).
View of Chatsworth from the south-west, painting by Thomas Smith of Derby (Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, © Derbyshire Collection, Chatsworth, reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees/Bridgeman Images).
Carving of musical instruments by Grinling Gibbons (Petworth House, West Sussex; National Trust Photographic Library/Andreas von Einsiedel/Bridgeman Images).
Indian hanging, dyed and painted cotton, c.1680 (© Victoria & Albert Museum, London).
William and Mary striking table clock by Thomas Tompion (private collection; photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images).
The Heaven Room at Burghley House, by Antonio Verrio (reproduced courtesy of Burghley House).
Pigs’ knuckles on a pewter plate, Flemish school (private collection; © Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, New York/Bridgeman Images).
Edward Barlow’s ship, the Sampson, caught in a hurricane in 1694 (reproduced from Edward Barlow, Barlow’s Journal of his life at sea in King’s ships, East & West Indiamen & other merchantmen from 1659 to 1703, ed. Basil Lubbock, 2 vols, London, 1934).
Portrait of Michael Alphonsus Shen Fuzong by Godfrey Kneller (Royal Collection Trust; © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2016/Bridgeman Images).
Portrait of William Dampier by Thomas Murray (National Portrait Gallery, London/De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images).
Mary Beale, self-portrait (National Gallery, London; photo © Stefano Baldini/Bridgeman Images).
Portrait of Aphra Behn by Mary Beale (St Hilda’s College, Oxford/Bridgeman Images).
Portrait of John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester, by Jacob Huysmans (Warwick Castle, Warwickshire/ Bridgeman Images).
Portrait of Samuel Pepys by Godfrey Kneller (Royal Society of Arts, London/Bridgeman Images).
Portrait of John Evelyn by Godfrey Kneller (© The Royal Society).
Opening page of Pepys’ diary. Reproduced by permission of the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Jacket details
Portrait of Charles II by John Michael Wright (Royal Collection Trust; © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2016/Bridgeman Images).
Habits of Quakers (Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images).
Whitehall, from Prospects of London (O’Shea Gallery, London/Bridgeman Images).
Portrait of Nell Gwynne after Samuel Cooper (Valerie Jackson Harris Collection/Bridgeman Images).
Richmond Palace engraved by Michiel van der Gucht (Bridgeman Images).
Frontispiece from The Theory of the Earth by Thomas Burnet (Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford/Bridgeman Images).
Raised embroidery of flower (private collection/Bridgeman Images).
Letters patent issued by Sir Edward Walker, 1664 (Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images).
Broadside of the Great Fire of London, 1666 (Bridgeman Images).
Image of a flea, from Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, 1665 (Bridgeman Images).
The ‘Definitive Design’ for St Paul’s Cathedral by Sir Christopher Wren (St Paul’s Cathedral Library, London/Bridgeman Images).
Ironwork design for Hampton Court Palace by Jean Tijou (Bridgeman Images).
Abbreviations used in the Notes
All places of publication are London unless otherwise stated.
AHEW Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agricultural History of England and Wales, vol. v: 1640–1750 (Cambridge, 2 vols, 1984–5)
Anglia Notitia Edward Chamberlayne, Anglia Notitia (9th edn, 2 vols, 1676)
AR Mark Overton, The Agricultural Revolution (1996)
Barlow’s Journal Basic Lubbock (ed.), Barlow’s Journal of his Life at Sea in King’s Ships, East & West Indiamen & other Merchantmen from 1659 to 1703 (2 vols, 1934)
Baskerville ‘Thomas Baskerville’s Travels in England, temp. Car. II’, in The Manuscripts of his Grace the Duke of Portland preserved at Welbeck Abbey, Historical Manuscripts Commission 13th report, part 2 (1893), pp. 263–314
BEG Stephen Broadberry, Bruce M. S. Campbell, Alexander Klein, Mark Overton and Bas van Leeuwen, British Economic Growth 1270–1870 (2015)
Bristol Edwin and Stella George (eds), Bristol Probate Inventories 1657–1689, Bristol Record Society, vol. 57 (2005)
Buckinghamshire Michael Reed (ed.), Buckinghamshire Probate Inventories 1661–1714, Buckinghamshire Record Society, no. 24 (1988)
Cosmo Lorenzo Magalotti, Travels of Cosmo the Third (1821)
Crisis Peter Clark and Paul Slack (eds), Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500–1700 (1972)
CUHB Peter Clark, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 2 (1540–1840) (Cambridge, 2000)
D&D Ian Mortimer, The Dying and the Doctors: The Medical Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England (2009)
DEEH H. E. S. Fisher and A. R. J. Juřica (eds), Documents in English Economic History: England from 1000 to 1760 (paperback edn, 1984)
Enclosure J. R. Wordie, ‘The chronology of English enclosure, 1500–1914’, The Economic History Review, 36, 4 (1983), pp. 483–505
EoaW A. F. Scott, Everyone a Witness: the Stuart Age (1974)
Essex Francis Steer (ed.), Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex 1635–1749 (Colchester, 1950)
Evelyn William Bray (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (Everyman’s Library edn, 2 vols, 1966)
Fashion Avril Hart and Susan North, Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Fashion in Detail (2009)
FDB C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain (paperback edn, 1991)
Fiennes Christopher Morris (ed.), The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes (1982)
Gamester Charles Cotton, The Complete Gamester (5th edn, 1725)
GFS Hannah Woolley, Guide to the Female Sex (3rd edn, 1682)
Global Crisis Geoffrey Parker, The Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013)
HECSC C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Seventeenth Century (3rd edn, 1972)
HELS Elizabeth Foyster and Christopher A. Whatley, A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600 to 1800 (Edinburgh, 2010)
Hooke Richard Nichols, The Diaries of Robert Hooke, the Leonardo of London, 1635–1703 (Lewes, 1994)
Josselin E. Hockliffe, The Diary of Ralph Josselin, Camden Third Series, 15 (1908)
King’s Highway Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: the Story of the King’s Highway (1913)
Later Stuarts Sir George Clark, The Later Stuarts 1660–1714 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1955)
Lincoln J. A. Johnston, Probate Inventories of Lincoln Citizens 1661–1714, Lincoln Record Society (1991)
London Spy Kenneth Fenwick (ed.), The London Spy by Ned Ward (Folio Society edn, 1955)
LSCCS David Brandon, Life in a Seventeenth-Century Coffee Shop (Stroud, 2007)
Magna Britannia Daniel Lysons and Samuel Lysons, Magna Britannia being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain (6 vols, 1806–22)
Markets Colin Stephen Smith, ‘The Market Place and the Market’s Place in London, c. 1660–1840’ (UCL PhD the
sis, 1999)
Misson M. Misson’s memoirs and observations in his travels over England. With some account of Scotland and Ireland (1719)
Noble Gladys Scott Thomson, Life in a Noble Household, 1641–1700 (1937)
OCSH Michael Lynch, The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford, 2001)
OCW Jancis Robinson, The Oxford Companion to Wine (3rd edn, Oxford, 2006)
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.odnb.com/
OED The Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oed.com/
Ogg, Charles II David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II (2 vols, Oxford, 1934; 2nd edn, 1956)
Ogg, J. & W. David Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II and William III (Oxford, 1963)
Old Bailey Old Bailey Online: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
Pepys Robert Latham and William Matthews, The Diary of Samuel Pepys: a New and Complete Transcription (11 vols, 1970–83)
Pepys Companion Robert Latham and William Matthews, The Diary of Samuel Pepys: a New and Complete Transcription: Companion (1983) [vol. x in the above series]
PFR Margarette Lincoln (ed.), Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution (2015)
Pharmacopoeia Nicholas Culpeper, Pharmacopoeia Londinensis or the London Dispensatory (4th edn, 1654)
PHE E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (1980)
PL Stephen Porter, Pepys’s London (2011)
PN J. D. Davies, Pepys’s Navy: Ships, Men & Warfare 1649– 1689 (2008)
Rugg William L. Sachse (ed.), The Diurnal of Thomas Rugg, 1659–1661, Camden Third Series, 91 (1961)
Schellinks Maurice Exwood and H. L. Lehmann (eds), The Journal of William Schellinks’ Travels in England 1661–1663, Camden Fifth Series, 1 (1993)
SED Joan Thirsk and J. P. Cooper (eds), Seventeenth-century Economic Documents (Oxford, 1972)
SSW The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft: http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/Research/witches/
Sufferers Lucinda McCray Beier, Sufferers and Healers (1987)
Thoresby Joseph Hunter (ed.), The Diary of Ralph Thoresby (2 vols, 1830)
Thoresby Joseph Hunter (ed.), The Diary of Ralph Thoresby (2 vols, 1830)
ToH Peter Brears, ‘Seventeenth-century Britain’, in Peter Brears, Maggie Black et al. (eds), A Taste of History (1993)
Travel in England Joan Parkes, Travel in England in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1925)
TTGEE Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England (2012)
TTGME Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England (2008)
Urban growth E. A. Wrigley, ‘Urban growth and agricultural change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15, 4 (1985), pp. 683–728
WCH J. T. Cliffe, The World of the Country House in Seventeenth-century England (1999)
WWHL Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (2nd edn, 1971)
Notes
Introduction
1. Devon Archives and Local Studies Service: QS 1/9 fol. 51r (4 April 1654), 55r (11 July 1654). The baby was ordered to be passed from place to place until it reached her husband (who refused to look after it). • 2. Global Crisis, p. 22. • 3. The London Gazette, 24–8 Jan. 1684. • 4. WWHL, p. 167.
1. London
1. Schellinks, p. 48. • 2. John E. N. Hearsey, London and the Great Fire (1965), p. 97. See also Claude de Jongh’s views of the bridge, dated 1630 (at Kenwood), 1632 (Yale Center for British Art) and 1650 (V&A). • 3. Jonathan Swift, ‘A description of a city shower’ (1710). • 4. Sir John Hobart, quoted in PL, p. 20. • 5. The figures here are from vol. 36 of the Survey of London, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/pp25-34, downloaded 6 Nov. 2015. • 6. Schellinks, p. 58. • 7. Cosmo, p. 200. • 8. In ‘A Ramble in St James’s Park’. • 9. https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde-park/about-hyde-park/history-and-architecture, downloaded 19 Oct. 2016. • 10. This is a paraphrase. Brydall’s line was half in Latin. He actually wrote: ‘It [London] is stiled the epitome or breviary of all England, the seat of the British Empire, the king of England’s chamber, camera regis, reipublicæ cor, & totius regni epitome’ (p. 15). • 11. Misson was writing much later, in 1697, but the comment is about some old houses that pre-dated the Fire. See Misson, pp. 134–5. Note: the book is sometimes attributed to its editor, François Maximilien Misson (e.g. ODNB). However, the original French edition (1698) has a dedication signed by ‘H. M. de V.’, referring to his brother Henri Misson. It is not clear who was the actual author. • 12. Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year, quoted in Hearsey, London and the Great Fire, p. 19. • 13. Rosemary Weinstein, ‘New urban demands in Early Modern London’, Medical History, Supplement no. 11 (1991), pp. 29–40 at p. 31, n. 11. The words ‘if no’ have been deleted from the last line (after ‘increase’) to aid readability. • 14. Pepys, vii, p. 268. • 15. Thomas Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City (1667), quoted in PL, p. 136. • 16. Pepys, vii, pp. 271–2. • 17. Evelyn, ii, p. 12. • 18. As shown by melted pottery discovered by archaeological investigation and now in the Museum of London. http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/Online/object.aspx?objectID=object-750122, downloaded 9 Nov. 2015. • 19. Pepys, viii, pp. 87, 114. • 20. Hearsey, London and the Great Fire, p. 158. • 21. Evelyn, ii, pp. 14–15. • 22. Pepys, viii, p. 60. • 23. Owen Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes at Large, vol. 3 (1786), p. 289. • 24. M. J. Power, ‘East London housing in the seventeenth century’, in Crisis, pp. 237–62 at p. 244. • 25. This was later renamed the Hand-in-Hand Fire and Life Insurance Society. Note: fire insurance had been invented at a slightly earlier date in Germany, in 1664, by the guilds of Hamburg. See Global Crisis, p. 635. • 26. Edgar Sheppard, The Old Royal Palace of Whitehall (1902), pp. 383–8. • 27. Power, ‘East London housing’, in Crisis, pp. 237–62 at p. 237. • 28. PL, p. 208. • 29. Urban growth, p. 688; Ogg, J. & W., p. 132. For Dublin, S. J. Connolly (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish History (1998), p. 161, gives 50,000–60,000. • 30. This is based on a comparison of the population of London compared to the combined total of the next-largest ten cities or towns in England in the years 1377, 1600, 1670, 1700, 1750 and 1800. For 1377, see TTGME, p. 10 (London’s population was just 59% of the combined total of the next-largest ten cities); for 1600, see TTGEE, p. 16 (London was 225% the size of the next ten). For the other dates, see Urban growth, p. 700. In 1750, London was 282% the size of the next ten cities; in 1800 it was 172%; in 1861, 136%; in 1900, 160%; in 1951, 159%.
2. Beyond London
1. Thoresby, i, pp. 267–8. • 2. Fiennes, p. 168. • 3. Fiennes, pp. 166, 183. Blackstone Edge was in Lancashire in the 17th century; it has been in West Yorkshire since 1974. • 4. Schellinks, p. 34. • 5. Schellinks, p. 64. • 6. Lincoln, p. 111. • 7. Schellinks, p. 130 (Dorchester); BEG, p. 106. • 8. Most late-17th-century writers regard Monmouthshire as part of England, not Wales, following its adoption within the framework of English legal circuits in the reign of Charles II. By this reckoning, its area of 507 square miles should be deducted from the Welsh total and added to the English one. However, not all commentators saw it as English; Charles Davenant, for whom Gregory King drew up his tables, did not. See SED, p. 802. • 9. Urban growth, at p. 700, shows rural employment in agriculture declining from 70% to 66% in this period. However, Wrigley’s definition of a town is a place with 5,000 or more people, and thus includes many small towns in his ‘rural’ sample. If he had excluded all small towns from this calculation, the level of agricultural employment would have been far higher. • 10. The total population is from Urban growth, p. 700. Note: PHE, p. 528, gives a figure of 4.962 million. This was obtained by back-projection. In E. A. Wrigley, R. S. Davies, J. E. Oeppen and R. S. Schofield, English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580–1837 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 614, the authors use a different method (generalised inverse projection) to arrive at a figure for the midpoint in the five-year period 1696–1700 of 5.118 million. The autho
rs did not regard Monmouthshire as part of England in this study. Gregory King put the population in 1695 at 5.5 million; SED, p. 772. To determine the rural population for England I have taken 75% of 5.06 million. The figure for urban density in 1695, adopting King’s proportion of 25%, is 562 per square mile. • 11. Enclosure, p. 502. • 12. Ian Mortimer, Berkshire Glebe Terriers 1634, Berkshire Record Society (1995), xx. Parliamentary enclosures after 1738 account for a further 160,000 acres of the old county, or roughly one-third (using its pre-1974 boundaries). Relatively little enclosure took place in England in the early 18th century, as private agreements petered out and Enclosure Acts had yet to become popular as a means whereby landlords could secure control of the land. See Enclosure, p. 498. • 13. These are Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire, East Riding of Yorkshire, Rutland, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. See Enclosure, pp. 500–1. County Durham should also be added to these counties; see AR, p. 149. • 14. Figures adapted from Enclosure, p. 502. J. R. Wordie’s statistics – about 47% enclosed by 1600, and about 71% enclosed by 1700 – have been adjusted to exclude the remaining commons in 1914: this is in order to focus on the decline of champaign country, not unenclosed spaces in general. • 15. Robert C. Allen, ‘Community and Market in England: Open Fields and Enclosures Revisited’, in M. Aoki and Y. Hayami (eds), Communities and Markets in Economic Development (Oxford, 2001), pp. 42–69 at p. 62. • 16. BEG, p. 54. This is a logarithmic scale and seems to show a rise in horses from about 0.32 million to 0.64 million. See also Nat Alcock, People at Home: Living in a Warwickshire Village 1500–1800 (Chichester, 1993), p. 190; John Langdon, ‘The Economics of Horses and Oxen in Medieval England’, Agricultural History Review, 30, 1 (1982), pp. 31–40. As Langdon explains, oxen were cheaper than horses in the Middle Ages because, being held in common, many of their costs fell to the manor, not to the tenants. • 17. BEG, p. 106. For comparison, there were about 23 million sheep in the UK in 2015, one-third of a sheep per person; about 10.9 million of these were in England, one-fifth of a sheep per person. • 18. AR, pp. 100, 106. • 19. Pepys, iv, p. 356 (29–30 Oct. 1663). • 20. John McCann, Clay and Cob Buildings (3rd edn, Princes Risborough, 2004), p. 35. • 21. Fiennes, p. 168. • 22. AHEW, ii, pp. 409–11. The total functioning in 1690 was put at 874 (including 73 in Wales) by John Adams. However, he must have included some desperately small places to reach that total; the 1693 figure is more useful when considered in conjunction with those for the earlier and later periods. The English cities were Durham, York, Carlisle and Chester in the province of York; and Canterbury, Rochester, Chichester, Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Wells, Worcester, Hereford, London, Lincoln, Ely, Norwich, Lichfield, Bristol, Gloucester, Peterborough and Oxford in the province of Canterbury. The Welsh cities – Bangor, St Asaph, St David’s and Llandaff – were also part of the province of Canterbury. The diocese of Sodor and Man, in the Isle of Man, was also in the province of Canterbury. • 23. There is a full survey in the History of Parliament volumes for 1690–1715 (available online at http://www.historyofParliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/survey/constituencies-and-elections, downloaded 20 Dec. 2015). The total I have given for England includes the eight Cinque Ports (Dover, Hastings, Hythe, New Romney, Rye, Sandwich, Seaford and Winchelsea) as well as Durham and Newark, which were enfranchised by an Act of Parliament in 1673. It does not include Monmouth, which included the out-boroughs of Newport and Usk, and which is included in the Welsh total. • 24. John Toland, The Art of Governing by Partys … (1701), p. 75. • 25. http://www.clickonwales.org/wp-content/uploads/4_Factfile_Settlements.pdf, downloaded 24 Nov. 2015. Christopher Chalkin, The Rise of the English Town, 1650–1850 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 8, suggests the population of Wrexham was just 2,500 in 1650. • 26. Data from Urban growth, p. 700. • 27. For Exeter houses at this time, see Michael Laithwaite, Exeter Houses 1450–1700 (Exeter, 1966), p. 58. • 28. Fiennes, p. 198. • 29. Cosmo, p. 133. He describes the cathedral as ‘a very considerable edifice; the architecture is gothic but it deserves praise for its size and for having its exterior … ornamented with different figures in stone, both in high and low relief, representing saints both of the Old and New Testament. Many of these have been injured and broken in the time of Cromwell.’ • 30. Cosmo, p. 137. • 31. Cosmo, p. 137. The awkward 19th-century translation has been smoothed a little here. • 32. For this reference I am indebted to the excellent blog ‘Demolition Exeter’, http://demolition-exeter.blogspot.co.uk/, downloaded 25 Nov. 2015. For the ballast in the next sentence, see Michael Laithwaite, Exeter Houses 1450–1700 (Exeter, 1966), p. 60. • 33. Fiennes, p. 197. • 34. Fiennes, p. 197. • 35. Baskerville, p. 308. • 36. Cosmo, pp. 124–5. • 37. Philip Jenkins, A History of Modern Wales 1536–1990 (2nd edn, 2014), pp. 34–5; Paul Slack, ‘Great and good towns 1540–1700’, in CUHB, pp. 347–76, at p. 350. • 38. Lincoln, pp. 143–4. • 39. Fiennes, p. 172. • 40. Michael Faraday, Ludlow 1085–1660 (Chichester, 1991), pp. 160, 168. The figure for 1700 is an estimate based on the 66 baptisms in that year, reported in Abstract of answers and returns made pursuant to an Act passed in the forty-first year of King George III … (1802), p. 251, extrapolated using an approximate annual crude birth rate of 31 births per thousand people. • 41. Magna Britannia, iii, pp. 99–101. • 42. Magna Britannia, iv, pp. 22–6; AHEW, i, p. 7. • 43. The 810 is Gregory King’s urban 25% of the total population of England and Wales in 1700 (5.5 million), less the population of the large towns (850,000), divided between the 648 market towns and cities in England and Wales in 1693 with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. • 44. Schellinks, p. 81. • 45. Cosmo, p. 140; Fiennes, p. 181. • 46. For the population of Moretonhampstead: the parish registers indicate a total parish population of about 1,600, rising to 1,700 in the late 17th century, to which should be added a few Presbyterians after 1672. The borough had as many houses as the manor of Moreton in the 1639 survey of the manor and borough, and about another third of the population lay in other manors in the parish (Doccombe, Wray and South Teign). It is probable that the town supported about 40% of the parish population. Other details are from the 1639 survey (in the archives of the Rural History Centre, University of Reading) and the several 18th-century surveys in the Courtenay collection (Devon Heritage Centre, Exeter). See also Ian Mortimer, ‘Index of Medical Licentiates, Applicants, Referees and Examiners in the Diocese of Exeter, 1568–1783’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 136 (2004), pp. 99–134; Bill Hardiman and Ian Mortimer, A Guide to the History and Fabric of St Andrew’s Church Moretonhampstead (Friends of St Andrew’s, paperback, 2012); and Magna Britannia, vi, 2, p. 357. • 47. Baskerville, pp. 289–90. • 48. OCSH, p. 488. • 49. Various dates are given for this landmark killing; I have gone with the one in Later Stuarts, p. 409. • 50. Pepys to W. Hewer, Rawlinson MSS A 194, ff. 276–7, quoted in Arthur Bryant, Samuel Pepys (3 vols, 1954–8), ii, p. 379. • 51. A Trip to Barbarous Scotland (c. 1708), quoted in EoaW, p. 49. • 52. Fiennes, pp. 182–4. • 53. The other 11 dioceses were Argyll, Brechin, Caithness, Dunblane, Dunkeld, Moray, Ross, Galloway, the Isles, Orkney and St Andrews. • 54. For the average size of touns, see HELS, p. 31. • 55. HELS, p. 37. • 56. CUHB, p. 419. • 57. Ogg, Charles II, i, pp. 400–2. • 58. HELS, p. 5, states that 5.3% of the Scottish population lived in towns of 10,000 or more, i.e. Glasgow and Edinburgh. Robert Allen Houston, Population History of Britain 1500–1750 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 20 (quoting Ian D. Whyte, ‘Urbanisation in early modern Scotland: a preliminary analysis’, Scottish Economic History Society, 9, 1 (1989), pp. 21–37 at p. 22), gives the same figure, based on a population of 53,000 in towns of 10,000 or more, and thus presuming a total national population of 1 million. However, the hearth tax of 1691 suggests a population nearer to 1.2 million, and a figure close to that of 1.265 million in Webster’s census of 1755 is supported by OCSH, pp. 487–8. In addition, there seems to be some debate on the populations of the towns in 1700. Older works tend to say 50,000 for Edinburgh and 12,000 for Glasgow. Paul Slack
diplomatically puts the figure at ‘40,000 or more’ in CUHB, p. 350, and states that Glasgow’s population in 1700 was 18,000. David Harris Sacks and Michael Lynch in the same volume (p. 419) put Edinburgh, Canongate and South Leith at a total of 40,000; Glasgow at 15,000, Dundee at 9,000, Aberdeen at 10,000 and Ayr at 5,000 in 1691: thus they give a total large-town population of 79,000. Presuming the figure of 1.2 million is correct for the whole country in 1691, this suggests that 6.6% lived in large towns. If Slack’s figure for Glasgow is correct, this would add 3,000 to the large-town urban population, meaning the proportion would be 6.8%. • 59. OCSH, p. 220. • 60. Sir Alexander Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh During its First Three Hundred Years (2 vols, 1884), i, pp. 224–5. • 61. HELS, p. 220. • 62. Robert Chamber, Notices of the Most Remarkable Fires in Edinburgh from 1385 to 1824 … (Edinburgh, 1824), pp. 13–15. • 63. Alexander Reid, ‘Aye Ready’: The History of Edinburgh Fire Brigade, the Oldest Municipal Brigade in Britain (1974). This reproduces the Act Appointing a Company for Quenching of Fire (1703), which company consisted of 12 firefighters. It is sometimes said that the brigades set up by the London fire-insurance companies were the earliest fire services in the world, and they may have been (see chapter 1). However, these were private services, not municipal ones. According to Arthur E. Cote, P.E., and Percy Bugbee, Principles of Fire Protection (1988), p. 4, the world’s first paid town fire service was set up in Boston after a fire in 1679, employing a fire chief and 12 firefighters and using an engine imported from England. Reid gives the credit for Britain’s first municipal fire brigade to the Edinburgh force set up in 1824, because its staff were paid and not voluntary (as they were in 1703). Brian Allaway does likewise in his preface to the second edition (Edinburgh, 2004) of James Braidwood’s On the Construction of Fire Engines and Apparatus (1st edn, Edinburgh, 1830). No mention is made of the earlier force, which, I presume, either fell into abeyance in the 18th century or failed to meet the test of a municipal fire brigade by the standards of 1824.
