The Diary of John Evelyn (volume 1 of 2)
Here is a rare thing: the voice of a man who watched history happen. John Evelyn (1620-1706) moved through the corridors of power in an age that saw a king executed, a republic declared, and a monarchy restored. He was friend to Charles II, colleague of Christopher Wren, cofounder of the Royal Society, and neighbor to Samuel Pepys. His diary captures not the grand ceremonies but the texture of lived experience in seventeenth-century England: the fog over London streets, the clothes people wore, the death of children, the rebuilding of a nation. This first volume carries us from Evelyn's birth in Surrey through the civil wars, the Interregnum, and into the early years of the Restoration. It is a document of extraordinary intimacy from an age of extraordinary violence, and it remains one of the few personal accounts we have from inside the English Revolution. For anyone curious about how people actually lived, thought, and grieved four hundred years ago, there is no substitute.
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“This day came in his Majestie Charles the 2d to London after a sad, & long Exile, and Calamitous Suffering both of the King & Church: being 17 yeares: This was also his Birthday, and with a Triumph of above 20000 horse & foote, brandishing their swords and shouting with unexpressable joy: The wayes straw’d with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with Tapissry, fountaines running with wine: The Major, Aldermen, all the Companies in their liver[ie]s, Chaines of Gold, banners; Lords & nobles, Cloth of Silver, gold & vellvet every body clad in, the windos & balconies all set with Ladys, Trumpets, Musick, & [myriads] of people flocking the streetes & was as far as Rochester, so as they were 7 houres in passing the Citty, even from 2 in the afternoon 'til nine at night: I stood in the strand, & beheld it, & blessed God: And all this without one drop of bloud, & by that very army, which rebell'd against him: but it was the Lords doing, et mirabile in oculis nostris: for such a Restauration was never seene in the mention of any history, antient or modern, since the returne of the Babylonian Captivity, nor so joyfull a day, & so bright, ever seene in this nation: this hapning when to expect or effect it, was past all humane policy.””
— John Evelyn
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Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn (volume 1 of 2). Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-diary-of-john-evelyn-volume-1-of-2-7d776583-d99e-4398-9e46-44fb49882532.Evelyn, J. (n.d.). The Diary of John Evelyn (volume 1 of 2). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-diary-of-john-evelyn-volume-1-of-2-7d776583-d99e-4398-9e46-44fb49882532Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn (volume 1 of 2). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-diary-of-john-evelyn-volume-1-of-2-7d776583-d99e-4398-9e46-44fb49882532.
