The Entring Book of Roger Morrice I

First edition of an eye-witness account of seventeenth-century England - the dark side of Pepys.

The Entring Book is the longest and richest diary of public life in England during the era of the Glorious Revolution. Spanning the years 1677 to 1691, in nearly a million words, it records the downfall of the House of Stuart. This is a chronicle not only of politics and religion, but also of culture and society, gossip and rumour, manners and mores, in a teeming metropolis risen phoenix-like from the Great Fire. Its author, Roger Morrice, was a Puritan clergyman turned confidential reporter for leading Whig politicians - well-connected, a barometer of public opinion, and supremely well-informed. Written just twenty years after Pepys's Diary, the Entring Book depictsa darker England, thrown into a great crisis of `popery and arbitrary power'.

MARK GOLDIE lectures in History at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of Churchill College.