The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain

by Ian Mortimer

  3. The People

  1. SED, p. 775. • 2. PHE, pp. 528–9. • 3. OCSH, p. 488. For the emigration to Poland, see Global Crisis, p. 100. • 4. This figure is based on the statistics for the early 1680s. Wrigley et al., English Population History from Family Reconstitution, p. 267. See also WWHL, pp. 132–3. • 5. Global Crisis, p. 93. • 6. The 1695 figures, which relate only to England and Wales, are from Gregory King, quoted in WWHL, p. 108; these have been adapted to provide a breakdown for the ages 60+. The figures for 2011 are for the whole of the UK, from the 2011 Census (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_270487.pdf, downloaded 4 Jan. 2016). • 7. Evelyn, ii, p. 140 (Grafton); Pepys, iii, p. 297n.; iv, p. 107. • 8. WWHL, p. 116. • 9. WCH, p. 66. • 10. Josselin, p. 169. • 11. Evelyn, ii, p. 153. • 12. Evelyn, ii, pp. 159, 174. • 13. Josselin, p. 160. • 14. Fiennes, p. 146. • 15. WWHL, pp. 115–16. Alice is generally described as Mother George, née Guise. Mrs Reginald Lane Poole’s catalogue of the paintings of Wadham College (R. Lane, Catalogue of Portraits in the Possession of the University, Colleges, City and County of Oxford, vol. iii, part 2 (1925), p. 218) suggests she was born in 1582, as Mother George was careful to relate that she was born in ‘Saltwyche’, Worcestershire (i.e. Droitwich) on Thursday, 1 November – and 1 November fell on a Thursday in 1571, 1575, 1582 and 1593; Mrs Lane Poole opts for the second-to-last, but with no explanation as to why. She adds that Mother George’s father was Hugh Guise and her mother Bridgit Watkins. One Hugh Gise did live at the time in Hadzor, a mile from Droitwich, but he was married to a woman called Alice. Hugh and Alice Gise had the following children: Francis (baptised in July 1565), Johane (Dec. 1568) and Christopher Gise (Jan. 1575). There is therefore a gap in the recorded births of children around the time that Alice Guise is supposed to have been born (c. 1571) and it could be that Mother George was the child of Hugh and Alice, but baptised elsewhere; there is also the circumstantial evidence of the same name being borne by her possible mother. However, it should be noted that there was another Hugh Gise in the area, whose son John was baptised in St Andrew’s, Droitwich, in February 1598. Also, children were born in the 1570s and 1580s to John Gise of Hadzor; William Guyse of St Andrew’s, Droitwich; Richard Guyse of St Peter’s, Droitwich; and Thomas Guyse of the same parish. None of these were called Alice or Mary (the other name associated with the portrait of Mother George in 1691). As for her children, her son John George was noted by Locke as being 77 in March 1681. While his baptism has not been found, three children surnamed George were baptised in the parish of St Giles in the years 1610–16, including one called Bridget George, so there is every likelihood that Alice married Richard George before 1610. In conclusion, the appearance of a Hugh Guise in Droitwich having children between 1565 and 1575 may be considered as supporting Alice’s claim to have been born in the early 1570s, and the three Oxford baptisms also support her claim to have been married before 1610, but her exact age cannot be verified. She cannot have been 108 on 1 March 1681, when Locke met her, if she was born on a Thursday, 1 November, but she could have been 105 or 109. Nor can we be certain about the number of children she had. Given that she lived for another 10 years, there is a case to be made for hers being a rare case of genuine extreme longevity. • 16. Schellinks, p. 72. • 17. SED, pp. 780–1. King did not group his status ranks according to class – these associations are my own – but given that he used terms such as ‘greater sort’, ‘middle sort’ and ‘lesser sort’, he clearly understood that such groupings could apply in the 1690s. • 18. Thomas Blount, Glossographia, or a Dictionary interpreting all such Hard Words of Whatsoever Language now used in our refined English Tongue (2nd edn, 1661), under ‘classe’. On the evolution of the terminology of class in the early modern period, see Keith Wrightson, ‘Estates, Degrees and Sorts in Tudor and Stuart England’, History Today, 37, 1 (1987). • 19. Daniel Defoe, The Review (25 June 1709). • 20. Anglia Notitia, i, p. 263–7. Note that this number was a relatively recent development; in 1603 there were no dukes, just one marquess, 19 earls, 3 viscounts and 40 lords: a total of 63 secular lords. • 21. For wealth earlier in his career, see Noble, p. 366. For his wealth at death, see ODNB, under Bedford, quoting Thomson, Russells in Bloomsbury, p. 101. • 22. Noble, pp. 23–5, 124, 203. • 23. Pepys, iv, p. 22. • 24. Evelyn, ii, p. 111; D. C. Coleman, ‘Banks, Sir John, baronet (bap. 1627, d. 1699)’, ODNB. • 25. Evelyn, ii, pp. 152, 177; Michael J. Braddick, ‘Fox, Sir Stephen (1627–1716)’, ODNB; Richard Grassby, ‘Child, Sir Josiah, first baronet (bap. 1631, d. 1699)’, ODNB. • 26. Sir Henry Craik, The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England (1911), p. 222. • 27. B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (1988, paperback edn, 2011), pp. 166–9, analysed for the years 1670– 1700 in my Centuries of Change (2014), p. 312. See also BEG, p. 60. • 28. DEEH, pp. 207 (Trowbridge), 523 (carpenters’ wages). • 29. Devon Heritage Centre: Z1/21/2/1 10 March 1693. Counterpart of lease, for 99 years or 3 lives. • 30. Essex, pp. 170–1. • 31. Barlow’s Journal, i, p. 251. • 32. These examples are from Pepys, i, p. 307; ii, p. 207; iii, pp. 37–8, 105; iv, p. 109. • 33. SED, p. 769. • 34. WCH, p. 101; DEEH, p. 524. • 35. Hooke, pp. 23–4. • 36. Josselin, p. 136. • 37. Pepys, iii, p. 53; iv, p. 86. • 38. Pepys, iv, p. 95. • 39. Evelyn, ii, p. 116. • 40. DEEH, p. 526, quoting Daniel Defoe, Giving alms no charity and employing the poor a grievance to the Nation (1704), pp. 25–8. • 41. Paul Slack, The English Poor Law 1531–1782 (1990), pp. 26–7, 30 (table). • 42. For example, those measures adopted by Huntingdonshire in 1676. See DEEH, pp. 448–51. • 43. Ian Mortimer, ‘Baskerville, Hannibal (1597–1668), antiquarian dilettante’, ODNB. • 44. This comes from the preamble to the 1697 Act of Parliament allowing for the establishment of a new workhouse in Exeter. • 45. Ogg, Charles II, i, p. 124. • 46. As several people have pointed out, the story does not correspond with the historical dates. However, that is not the point here. People believed it in the 1660s – indeed, Pepys himself believed it. See Pepys, ii, pp. 114–15. • 47. Pepys, i, p. 269. • 48. Evelyn, ii, p. 104. • 49. Evelyn, ii, p. 253. • 50. Pepys, iii, pp. 232–3. • 51. Misson, p. 32. • 52. John Miller, James II (3rd edn, 2000), p. 38. • 53. Pepys, iv, p. 132 (dissection); p. 156 (horse’s dung). • 54. The marquess of Halifax, Advice to a daughter, quoted in Ogg, J. & W., pp. 78–9. • 55. David Norbrook, ‘Hutchinson, Lucy (1620–1681)’, ODNB. • 56. Anglia Notitia, i, pp. 291–6. • 57. William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (1622), p. 337, quoted in Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby and Helen Wilcox (eds), Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen (1989), p. 8. • 58. Pepys, iv, pp. 9–10. • 59. Anglia Notitia, i, pp. 293, 299. • 60. Cosmo, pp. 399–400. See also pp. 314–15 for the liberty of London women, even at night. • 61. For example, 4 April 1661: Pepys left his wife at a gathering and returned home alone. See Pepys, ii, p. 66. For the potential seduction of a maidservant, see Pepys, iii, p. 152. He knew it was shameful, as he said so later, on p. 157. • 62. Pepys, ix, p. 337. • 63. This and the following instances of the law being favourable to women are from Anglia Notitia, i, p. 293. • 64. Defoe, Giving alms no charity, quoted in DEEH, p. 526. • 65. Divorce was very rare and was only possible for the very wealthy. Two forms were recognised in Restoration Britain: a vincula matrimonii (that the marriage should never have been contracted in the first place) and a mensa et thoro (that adultery had taken place). The latter precluded the divorced partners from remarrying after the divorce was complete. Only in 1700 did the duke of Norfolk’s divorce a mensa et thoro result in an Act of Parliament specifically allowing him to remarry. Ogg, J. & W., p. 78. For alimony, see WCH, p. 77. • 66. Misson, p. 129. • 67. WCH, p. 71. • 68. Edward Albert Parry, Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple (1652–54) (1888), letter 19.

  4. Character

  1. Barlow’s Journal, i, p. 261. • 2. Misson, pp. 358 (hairs), 130 (coins). • 3. Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 190–1.
• 4. HELS, p. 220. • 5. John Aubrey, Miscellanies (1696). • 6. EoaW, pp. 224–5, quoting Rev’d John Glanville’s Saducismus Triumphatus. • 7. Evelyn, ii, p. 282. • 8. For examples of an almanac, see Pepys, i, p. 289; for a horoscope, Evelyn, ii, p. 92; for palmistry and gypsies, Pepys, iv, pp. 234, 284, 296. • 9. Pepys, iv, p. 339 and n. • 10. Pepys, i, p. 281. • 11. Evelyn, ii, p. 199. • 12. Harold J. Cook, ‘Sydenham, Thomas (bap. 1624, d. 1689)’, ODNB; Michael Hunter, ‘Boyle, Robert (1627–1691)’, ODNB. • 13. As noted in James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, 1997), p. 23, the decades around 1600 saw a marked increase in the number of witch trials. • 14. Paula Hughes, ‘Witch-hunting in Scotland 1649–50’, in Julian Goodare (ed.), Scottish Witches and Witch-hunters (2013), p. 86. • 15. Owen Davies, ‘Witches in the dock: 10 of Britain’s most infamous witch trials’, BBC History Magazine (Dec. 2012). • 16. SSW, downloaded 25 Jan. 2016. • 17. Robert Pitcairn, Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland (3 vols, 1833), vol. 3, part 2, pp. 602–16. • 18. SSW, downloaded 25 Jan. 2016. • 19. Misson, pp. 129–30. • 20. For example, see Moses Pitt’s book, An account of one Ann Jeffries now living in the county of Cornwall, who was fed for six months by a small sort of airy people called Fairies (1696). • 21. Schellinks, p. 123. • 22. Baskerville, p. 268. • 23. Anglia Notitia, i, p. 34. • 24. Cosmo, pp. 426–62. • 25. Later Stuarts, p. 27, gives 150,000–250,000. Ogg, J. & W., p. 93, gives the proportions of faith amongst freeholders in 1676 as 2,477,154 conformists, 108,676 nonconformists and 13,856 Roman Catholics, but makes the point that Catholicism and dissent were more common in the northern province than these figures (based on the province of Canterbury) suggest. As the population of England in 1676 was about 5,003,488 (according to PHE, p. 528), this proportion would suggest considerably more than 200,000 people were living in nonconformist households. • 26. This was especially the case in the aftermath of the Popish Plot of 1679. See John Cordy Jeaffreson (ed.), ‘Middlesex Sessions Rolls: 1679’, in Middlesex County Records, volume 4, 1667–88 (1892), pp. 113–42. • 27. Pepys, iii, pp. 266–7. • 28. R. H., The Clownish Hypocrite Anatomized (1671). • 29. Later Stuarts, p. 27 (30,000); Schellinks, p. 40 (Quakers in prison); Pepys, iv, p. 271 (100 arrests); PL, p. 144 (fine). • 30. Cosmo, p. 428. • 31. Robert Beddard, ‘Anti-popery and the London Mob, 1688’, History Today, 38, 7 (1988). • 32. PL, p. 16. In 1697 Misson reckoned there were 60 or 70 Jewish families in London. See Misson, p. 144. • 33. Famarez Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex (2012), p. 53. • 34. Brian P. Levack, ‘The Prosecution of Sexual Crimes in Early Eighteenth-century Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, 89, 288 (2010), pp. 172–93 at p. 175, n. 11. • 35. Barlow’s Journal, i, p. 286. • 36. Misson, p. 311; Thoresby, i, p. 18. • 37. Pepys, iii, p. 26 (music on a Sunday); i, pp. 220, 239. • 38. Misson, p. 60. • 39. Pepys, viii, 29 July 1667. • 40. Pepys, iv, pp. 1, 30. • 41. Pepys, ii, p. 209. • 42. Misson, p. 287. • 43. Cosmo, p. 397. The word order has been altered, with regard to the French, to make the meaning clearer. • 44. Pepys, iii, p. 268. • 45. Evelyn, ii, p. 351n. To be fair to that servant, the house was never the same again. • 46. Evelyn, i, p. 378. • 47. EoaW, p. 49, quoting A Trip to Barbarous Scotland by an English Gentleman (1709). • 48. Schellinks, p. 75. • 49. This was certainly the case in Devon. For some early-18th-century examples, see the militia assessments for Bere Ferrers and Egg Buckland (transcripts available at http://www.foda.org.uk/militia/documentindex.htm, downloaded 1 Nov. 2016). • 50. Ogg, Charles II, ii, p. 492. • 51. Misson, pp. 81–2. • 52. Misson, pp. 81–2, 232–3; Schellinks, pp. 61–2; PL, p. 208. • 53. Susan Dwyer Amussen, Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society 1640–1700 (2007), p. 221. • 54. Anglia Notitia, i, p. 299. • 55. According to Miranda Kaufmann, he expressed this opinion in the trials of Chamberlain vs Harvey (1696), Smith vs Brown & Cooper (1701) and Smith vs Gould (1706). See http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/common-law.html, downloaded 14 March 2016. • 56. Amussen, Caribbean Exchanges, pp. 219–20. • 57. Devon Heritage Centre: Bishopsteignton parish register, 3/4/1708. • 58. W. J. Hardy (ed.), Middlesex County Records: Calendar of Sessions Books 1689–1709 (1905), p. 41. • 59. Pepys, iii, p. 95. • 60. Pepys, vi, p. 215. • 61. Manuel Eisner, ‘Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime’, Crime and Justice, 30 (2003), pp. 83–142 at pp. 85, 99. • 62. Eisner, ‘Long-Term Historical Trends’, p. 99. Strangely, the Belgian propensity to violence continues to this day: at the time of writing, the murder rate in Belgium is 1.8 per 100,000, twice the UK figure. • 63. Misson, pp. 305–6. • 64. Keith M. Brown, ‘Gentlemen & Thugs in 17th-Century Britain’, History Today, 40 (Oct. 1990). • 65. Much of what follows about duelling comes from Markku Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (Cambridge, 2003). For this point about it being the golden age of the duel, see p. 202. • 66. Pepys, i, p. 20 (Chesterfield); ODNB (Tankerville); Evelyn, ii, p. 230 (Talbot); Pepys, ii, pp. 32–3 (Buckingham); Evelyn, ii, p. 355 (Seymour); J. Kent Clark, Whig’s Progress: Tom Wharton Between Revolutions (2004), p. 218 (Wharton); Pepys, viii, p. 363. • 67. Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England, pp. 206–8. • 68. Sword duels were three times as lethal as pistol duels. They killed more than 20% of combatants, whereas pistol duels killed 6.5%. The reason was that honour could be satisfied by firing a shot (regardless of whether it hit or not) whereas, with a sword, blood had to be drawn. See Robert B. Shoemaker, ‘The Taming of the Duel’, The Historical Journal, 45, 3 (2002), pp. 525–45 at p. 528. • 69. Misson, p. 216. • 70. Schellinks, p. 62. This practice had begun slightly earlier, under Cromwell. • 71. John Cordy Jeaffreson (ed.), ‘Middlesex Sessions Rolls, 1670’, in Middlesex County Records, volume 4, 1667–88 (1892), pp. 17–24. • 72. John Cordy Jeaffreson (ed.), ‘Middlesex Sessions Rolls, 1657’ in Middlesex County Records, volume 3, 1625–1667 (1888), pp. 256–68. • 73. Pepys, iv, p. 150 (devil); iii, p. 116 (whey). • 74. Pepys, iii, p. 66 (cellar); iv, p. 8 (Barbados). • 75. Schellinks, p. 73. • 76. Pepys, ii, p. 214. • 77. E. S. de Beer (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford, 1959), p. 540, quoted in PL, p. 59. • 78. Anglia Notitia, i, pp. 52–3. • 79. Pepys, ii, p. 17 (monkey); ii, p. 23 (canaries); iv, pp. 150–2 (blackbird). • 80. Fiennes, p. 32. • 81. D. B. Horn, British Diplomatic Representatives 1689–1789, Camden Third Series, xlvi (1932), passim. • 82. Anglia Notitia, ii, pp. 284–5. • 83. You can buy globes, by this period. Pepys does so in Sept. 1663 for £3 10s. See Pepys, iv, p. 302. • 84. Pepys, ii, pp. 33–4 (Algerian slaves); Evelyn, ii, pp. 149, 195 (China and Japan); Pepys, iv, 11 Dec. 1663 (Königsberg). • 85. Pepys, iii, pp. 172, 298; iv, pp. 189, 315, 350. Pepys owned books in Chinese and Russian. See PFR, p. 34. • 86. News of Ameixial reported by Pepys on 25 June 1663 and published in The Kingdom’s Intelligencer, 29 June – Pepys, iv, pp. 198, 202–3. For Lima, see Evelyn, ii, p. 278. • 87. Michael Hunter, ‘Boyle, Robert (1627–1691)’, ODNB, quoting Hunter, Boyle by Himself (1994), xlii. • 88. Most of the details in this section are derived from Jeremy Lancelotte Evans, ‘Tompion, Thomas (bap. 1639, d. 1713)’, ODNB. • 89. Pepys, i, p. 264. • 90. Fiennes, p. 205; Baskerville, p. 291; Evelyn, ii, pp. 28, 180; Alan Marshall, ‘Morland, Sir Samuel, first baronet (1625–1695)’, ODNB. • 91. Hooke, p. 65. The density of air is generally taken to be about 1.29kg per cubic metre. • 92. Paul Pettitt and Mark White, The British Palaeolithic: Hominin Societies at the Edge of the Pleistocene World (2012), p. 145; J. S. Cockburn, H. P. F. King and K. G. T. Mcdonnell (eds), A History of the County of Middlesex: volume one (London, 1969), pp. 11–21. British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol1/pp11-21, accessed 13 Oct. 2016. • 93. William Petty, Political Arithmetick, quoted in DEEH, p. 61. • 94. Evelyn, pp. 134–5. • 95. Noble, pp. 93–4. • 96. R. A. Houston, ‘The Development of Literacy: Northern England, 1640–1750’, The Economic History Review, New Series, 35, 2 (1982), pp. 199–216 at pp. 206, 208; Houston, ‘The Literacy Myth? Illiteracy in Scotland 1630–1760’, Past & Present, 96 (198
2), pp. 81–102 at pp. 92, 95, 97. • 97. GFS, pp. 2–3. • 98. Houston, ‘The Development of Literacy’, pp. 199–216 at p. 204; Houston, ‘The Literacy Myth?’, pp. 81–102 at p. 90. • 99. Evelyn, ii, p. 267. • 100. Anglia Notitia, i, pp. 320–1. • 101. Dewey D. Wallace, jun., ‘Morton, Charles (bap. 1627, d. 1698)’, ODNB. • 102. Macfarlane, Family Life of Ralph Josselin, pp. 165–6. • 103. Evelyn, ii, pp. 217–21, esp. p. 219. • 104. Pepys, i, p. 167; ii, pp. 43, 71, 73, 164, 169. • 105. Ward, London Spy, p. 33. • 106. George de Forest Lord (ed.), Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660–1714 (7 vols, 1963–75), i, p. 146. • 107. de Forest Lord (ed.), Poems on Affairs of State, i, p. 424. • 108. Pepys, vii, p. 371. • 109. Quoted in Keith Brown, ‘Gentlemen and Thugs in 17th century Britain’, History Today, 40 (1990). • 110. Quoted on the website of the National Portrait Gallery, http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01903/Catherine-Sedley-Countess-of-Dorchester. • 111. Evelyn, ii, p. 251. • 112. Evelyn, ii, p. 100.