SIX

NORTH COUNTRY DIARIES.

QUOD VIDES, SCRIBE IN LIBRO.-Apocalypsis, i 11.

Published for the Society

BY ANDREWS & CO., DURHAM ;

WHITTAKER & CO., 2, WHITE HART STREET,

PATERNOSTER SQUARE;

AND BERNARD QUARITCH, 15, PICCADILLY, LONDON;

BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH.

1910.

At a Meeting of the COUNCIL OF THE SURTEES SOCIETY, held in Durham Castle on Tuesday, December 1st, 1908, the DEAN OF DURHAM in the chair,

'It was resolved that a volume of North Country Diaries be edited by Mr. JOHN CRAWFORD HODGSON, F.S.A.'

WILLIAM BROWN,

Secretary.

PREFACE.

Of the diaries printed in this volume, the most important, in every way, is the first. Written by John Aston, a younger son of the ancient family of Aston of Aston, in Cheshire, who was attached to the suite of Charles I. on his expedition through the counties of York, Durham and Northumberland in the first Bishops' War of 1639, the journal corroborates incidents mentioned in Edward Norgate's letters, written, from Newcastle and Berwick, to Secretary Windebank and others, as abstracted in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic for 1639. To the members of the Surtees Society it affords further evidence of the then waste and poverty-stricken condition of the Border lands, enlarging the report sent to the Doge and Senate of Venice in 1617 by their Secretary Lionello, who stated that the country at a distance of from forty to fifty miles from the frontier, and especially the county of Northumberland, was very poor, uncultivated and exceedingly wretched, a condition proceeding from the sterility of the ground, and also from the perpetual wars with which these nations have savagely destroyed each other' (Calendar of State Papers, Venice, 1615-1617, p. 550).

The second diary, from which only extracts are given, is of the Commonwealth and Restoration period. The third, although of the period of the Great Revolution, is singularly silent about that event. In the fourth diary, written by a young clergyman, who reveals his self-seeking propensities with artless candour, are echoes of the Rebellion of 1715. The fifth is that of a sagacious lawyer, whose pithy and analytical comments on Durham people and events are always decided; the sixth is that of an Alnwick attorney with personal tastes inclining to sermons and to cock-fighting, who noted many domestic events concerning his family, his neighbours and his widespread connections.

The editor desires to acknowledge his obligations:-To Sir Jonathan Backhouse, bart., for the fullest use of his contemporary copy of Sanderson's diary; to Mr. F. C. Beazley, F.S.A., for collating the proofs of Sanderson's diary with the original MS. in the possession of his kinswoman, Mrs. G. R. Clover; to Mr. William Bell, for the generous gift of Brown's diary; to Mr. William Brown, F.S.A., for reading proofs and for other assistance; to Dr. C. C. Burman, for his liberal permission to print from the originals four letters of the Rev. Percival Stockdale; to Mr. H. H. E. Craster, Fellow of All Souls, for some useful and appropriate notes; to Mr. F. W. Dendy, for reading the proofs and for valued counsel; to Mr. Charles Forster for help in constructing the pedigree of Thomlinson; to Miss M. T. Martin, for her accurate transcripts of Aston's and Thomlinson's diaries from the originals in the British Museum and for collating the proofs of ambiguous passages with the MS.; to Mr. Richard Welford, M.A., for reading the proofs and other valuable assistance; to Mr. H. M. Wood, B.A., for many extracts from Parish Registers to prove the accuracy of corresponding entries in the diaries and for other generous help; and to all others who have imparted information.

ALNWICK, April, 1910.

J. C. HODGSON.