Cloves, cumin, ginger

Vasco da Gama, the famous Portuguese explorer, died all of 490 years ago today. Although he did not leave behind a diary of his own, an unknown author did keep a journal of da Gama’s first expedition to India. This was stored in a Portuguese convent for centuries, before being published in the 1860s, and then translated into English in the 1890s. It provides a rich and colourful account of the very earliest days of European attempts to colonise the sub-continent.

Da Gama was born in Sines, Portugal, around 1460. His father was Estêvão da Gama, commander of the local fort. In 1492, Vasco da Gama was sent by King John II to the south of the country to take revenge against the French, who had been seizing Portuguese ships. Meanwhile, Estêvão da Gama was chosen by the king to lead a Portuguese fleet to India in search of lucrative trade routes. However, both the king and Estêvão da Gama died, and the mission was handed to Vasco de Gama by the new King Manuel.

In 1497, da Gama sailed from Lisbon with four ships; he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and, with the aid of a pilot found on the east coast of Africa, sailed to the west coast of India, stopping at various ports, before reaching Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the Malabar coast. Unable to establish a colony because of opposition from the local Muslims, da Gama returned to Portugal, with a cargo of very profitable spices and the certain knowledge of a potential trade route. The mission was, thus, celebrated as a great success. Around 1500, he married Catarina de Ataíde who bore him six sons.

Vasco da Gama, by this time ranked as an admiral, undertook a second journey, in 1502, to try and secure the trading colony established in the interim by Pedro Carbal, but which had been wiped out in a massacre. He successfully laid siege to Calicut, and concluded favourable peace treaties with the native rulers. However, on his return, he felt inadequately rewarded, and became embroiled in an ongoing dispute concerning his ownership of the town of Sines (given him by the king in 1499, but still claimed by the Military Order of Santiago).

For some years after, da Gama lived a relatively quiet life. In 1519, he was appointed Count of Vidigueira; and, in 1524, after Manuel’s death, King John III appointed him as Portuguese Viceroy in India. He set sail for a third time, to try and restore administrative order to the Portuguese holdings. However, he fell ill at Cochin and died on 23 December 1524. Further information is available from Wikipedia, or from various out-of-copyright biographies available at Internet Archive, such as Vasco da Gama and his successors 1460-1580 by K. G. Jayne.

A diary account of da Gama’s first voyage - named Roteiro - survived over 300 years, and was first published in 1838. This was edited by Diogo Kopke and Dr. Antonio da Costa Paiva, both teachers at the Academia Polytechnica of Oporto, and funded by subscription. Only 392 copies were printed then, but a second edition appeared in Lisbon in 1861. A few years later, in 1869, the Hakluyt Society published Lord Stanley of Alderley’s translation of the Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and intended to bring out an English translation of the Roteiro, but this latter was left in abeyance for another three decades, until the Society published, in 1898, A journal of the first voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1497-99 as translated and edited by E. G. Ravenstein. The book is freely available online at Internet Archive or Googlebooks.

Ravenstein notes, in his introduction, that the extant manuscript is not the original, but only a copy, and that the author of the original remains unknown. He explains: ‘The manuscript originally belonged to the famous Convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, whence it was transferred, together with other precious manuscripts, to the public library of Oporto. [. . .] This copy, however, was taken in the beginning of the sixteenth century, as may be seen from the style of the writing. [. . .] It is quite possible, as suggested by Prof. Kopke, that the title by which the Roteiro was known at the convent of Santa Cruz misled certain bibliographers into a belief that Vasco da Gama himself had written this account of his voyage. [. . .] No one has yet succeeded in discovering the author of the Roteiro.’ Ravenstein adds that his translation is ‘literal and complete’. Here are a few extracts.

8 April 1497
‘On Palm Sunday the King of Mombaça sent the captain-major a sheep and large quantities of oranges, lemons and sugar-cane, together with a ring, as a pledge of safety, letting him know that in case of his entering the port he would be supplied with all he stood in need of. This present was conveyed to us by two men, almost white, who said they were Christians, which appeared to be the fact. The captain-major sent the king a string of coral-beads as a return present, and let him know that he purposed entering the port on the following day. On the same day the captain-major’s vessel was visited by four Moors of distinction.

Two men were sent by the captain-major to the king, still further to confirm these peaceful assurances. When these landed they were followed by a crowd as far as the gates of the palace. Before reaching the king they passed through four doors, each guarded by a doorkeeper with a drawn cutlass. The king received them hospitably, and ordered that they should be shown over the city. They stopped on their way at the house of two Christian merchants, who showed them a paper (carta), an object of their adoration, on which was a sketch of the Holy Ghost. When they had seen all, the king sent them back with samples of cloves, pepper and corn, with which articles he would allow us to load our ships.’

10 April 1497
‘On Tuesday, when weighing anchor to enter the port, the captain-major’s vessel would not pay off, and struck the vessel which followed astern. We therefore again cast anchor. When the Moors who were in our ship saw that we did not go on, they scrambled into a zavra attached to our stern; whilst the two pilots whom we had brought from Moçambique jumped into the water, and were picked up by the men in the zavra. At night the captain-major “questioned” two Moors whom we had on board, by dropping boiling oil upon their skin, so that they might confess any treachery intended against us. They said that orders had been given to capture us as soon as we entered the port, and thus to avenge what we had done at Moçambique. And when this torture was being applied a second time, one of the Moors, although his hands were tied, threw himself into the sea, whilst the other did so during the morning watch.

About midnight two almadias, with many men in them, approached. The almadias stood off whilst the men entered the water, some swimming in the direction of the Berrio others in that of the Raphael. Those who swam to the Berrio began to cut the cable. The men on watch thought at first that they were tunny fish, but when they perceived their mistake they shouted to the other vessels. The other swimmers had already got hold of the rigging of the mizzen-mast. Seeing themselves discovered, they silently slipped down and fled. These and other wicked tricks were practised upon us by these dogs, but our Lord did not allow them to succeed, because they were unbelievers.

Mombaça is a large city seated upon an eminence washed by the sea. Its port is entered daily by numerous vessels. At its entrance stands a pillar, and by the sea a low-lying fortress.Those who had gone on shore told us that in the town they had seen many men in irons; and it seemed to us that these must be Christians, as the Christians in that country are at war with the Moors.

The Christian merchants in the town are only temporary residents, and are held in much subjection, they not being allowed to do anything except by the order of the Moorish King.

It pleased God in his mercy that on arriving at this city all our sick recovered their health, for the climate (“air”) of this place is very good.

After the malice and treachery planned by these dogs had been discovered, we still remained on Wednesday and Thursday.’

17 April 1497
‘We approached nearer to the town [Malindi]. The king sent the captain-major six sheep, besides quantities of cloves, cumin, ginger, nutmeg and pepper, as also a message, telling him that if he desired to have an interview with him he (the king) would come out in his zavra when the captain-major could meet him in a boat.’

18 April 1497
‘On Wednesday, after dinner, when the king came up close to the ships in a zavra, the captain-major at once entered one of his boats, which had been well furnished, and many friendly words were exchanged when they lay side by side. The king having invited the captain-major to come to his house to rest, after which he (the king) would visit him on board his ship, the captain-major said that he was not permitted by his master to go on land, and if he were to do so a bad report would be given of him. The king wanted to know what would be said of himself by his people if he were to visit the ships, and what account could he render them? He then asked for the name of our king, which was written down for him, and said that on our return he would send an ambassador with us, or a letter.

When both had said all they desired, the captain-major sent for the Moors whom he had taken prisoner, and surrendered them all. This gave much satisfaction to the king, who said that he valued this act more highly than if he had been presented with a town. And the king, much pleased, made the circuit of our ships, the bombards of which fired a salute. About three hours were spent in this way. When the king went away he left in the ship one of his sons and a sharif, and took two of us away with him, to whom he desired to show his palace. He, moreover, told the captain that as he would not go ashore he would himself return on the following day to the beach, and would order his horsemen to go through some exercises.

The king wore a robe (royal cloak) of damask trimmed with green satin, and a rich touca. He was seated on two cushioned chairs of bronze, beneath a round sunshade of crimson satin attached to a pole. An old man, who attended him as page, carried a short sword in a silver sheath. There were many players on anafils, and two trumpets of ivory, richly carved, and of the size of a man, which were blown from a hole in the side, and made sweet harmony with the anafils.’

19 April 1497
‘On Thursday the captain-major and Nicolau Coelho rowed along the front of the town, bombards having been placed in the poops of their long-boats. Many people were along the shore, and among them two horsemen, who appeared to take much delight in a sham-fight. The king was carried in a palanquin from the stone steps of his palace to the side of the captain-major’s boats. He again begged the captain to come ashore, as he had a helpless father who wanted to see him, and that he and his sons would go on board the ships as hostages. The captain, however, excused himself.’

The Diary Junction

34 heads on London Bridge

Here is a second sample chapter from the yet-to-be-published London in Diaries, this one about a German tourist to London in August, more than 400 years ago.

Duke of Württemberg visits London’s sights

The late 16th century saw an early German tourist, Frederick, soon-to-be Duke of Württemberg, visiting London. His foreigner’s eye gives far better descriptions of the main sights than any London diarist up to this point. He also writes of the inhabitants being ‘magnificently apparelled’, but ‘extremely proud and overbearing’, and of the women being dressed in velvet though they have no bread on the table at home. While visiting Windsor Castle he took a fancy to being made a Knight of the Garter. He then spent five years lobbying the English crown for the high honour, leading him to be mocked in English society, and to Shakespeare satirising him and Germans in general in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor. Another quirky link between Frederick and London is that he is an ancestor of the current mayor, Boris Johnson!

Frederick of Mömpelgard (now Montbéliard in France) was born in 1557. He studied history and philosophy at the University of Tubingen, and then undertook a tour, including in his itinerary, Bohemia, Denmark and Hungary. Soon after he married Sibylla, a princess of Anhalt, and they were to have more than a dozen children. When Frederick undertook a second tour, this time to England in 1592, he was heir apparent to the dukedom of Württemberg, an area in the southwest of Germany centred around the city of Stuttgart. He succeeded to the title the following year and remained Duke until his death in 1608. He is credited with releasing the duchy from the overlordship of the powerful Habsburg Empire. He also tried to establish a new town, Freudenstadt, in the north of the Black Forest, as the Duchy’s capital since it was closer to Mömpelgard than Stuttgart, but he died before his plans were realised.    

Frederick’s diary - or rather the diary written down for him by his assistant - was first published in German as early as 1602. It was given the following title: A concise and faithful Narrative of the Bathing-Excursion, which his serene Highness Lord Frederick, Duke of Wirtemberg and Teck, Count of Mümppelgart, Lord of Heidenheim, Knight of the two ancient royal Orders of St Michael of France, and of the Garter of England, made, in the year 1592, from Mümppelgart to the far-famed kingdom of England; afterwards returning through the Netherlands back again to Mümppelgart. As it was noted down from day to day in the most concise manner at his Highness’ gracious command, by his private secretary who accompanied him.

This was first translated and published in English in 1865 for William Brenchley Rye’s book England as Seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First. At the time, Rye was assistant-keeper of the department of printed books at the British Museum. His long introduction begins: ‘Courteous and Gentle Reader, With all becoming respect we beg leave to introduce to your favourable notice a group of “intelligent foreigners,” who, in the ensuing pages, will discourse, if not very learnedly, at least it is hoped pleasantly and profitably, on the fascinating and attractive theme of Old England - its men and manners, its women and their ways, as they were seen and noted by those observing foreigners during the glorious effulgence of the Shakespearian era.’ 

Rye introduces Frederick’s tour as follows: ‘In 1592, the Count, still intent on the acquisition of wisdom and experience, contemplated another far-distant and more important tour, and this was now in the direction of England. Accordingly, on the 10th of July, he set out with two coaches and several riding horses. His companions included a steward, a counsellor, a physician, grooms of the bed-chamber, his secretary Jacob Rathgeb, the author of the printed journal, with a queue of barber, tailor, &c.’ Of the journal, Rye says: ‘in style and language it is exceedingly obscure and uncouth, the punctuation moreover is wretched. A plentiful crop of difficulties is thereby presented to the translator.’ 

Of passing curiosity is the name ‘bathing-excursion’ given to the tour. The printer of the original German edition, Cellius, as it happened, was also the poet laureate of Tubingen, and he incorporated into the volume his own verse to explain the term:
‘I am called the Bathing-trip, 
For his Highness in a ship 
Bathed in ocean all night long, 
Winds tempestuous blowing strong; 
Roaring waters rushing in,
Drenched his Highness to the skin,
As he shivering sat and sweating, 
Fear with fever alternating.
Ye gentlemen of Germany, who live at home in clover, 
O think upon our good Duke’s straits within the Straits of Dover.’ 

Interestingly, while visiting Windsor Castle, Frederick was greatly attracted by the Order of the Garter - the highest order of chivalry in England - and believed Queen Elizabeth had promised to admit him to the order. However, when she subsequently denied this, he never ceased to solicit her, sometimes by letter, usually by embassy, for the fulfilment of her promise. She did, eventually, admit him, after he had inherited the dukedom and become more prominent, but, in a deliberate slight, he was not informed of his admission in time to attend the investiture at Windsor in 1597. For that event, the newly-written play The Merry Wives of Windsor was performed, and, in it, Shakespeare included several satirical references to Germans (stealing horses), and to a Duke in particular, who is clearly modelled on Frederick.

Linking right to the present, the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is descended from Frederick. This quirky fact was discovered during research for the BBC’s programme (in 2008) Who Do You Think You Are on Johnson.

Along the Thames into London
10 August 1592
The same post carried us as far as Rochester; from thence nearly half a stage forward to Gravesend. Here, having first dined, a small vessel was ordered, and [we embarked] upon the river Thames, which is tolerably broad, and in which there are many swans; these are so tame that you can almost touch them, but it is forbidden on pain of corporal punishment in any way to injure a swan, for Royalty has them plucked every year, in order to have their down for court-use. Into this river Thames there sets also a tide of the sea, which accordingly every six hours flows up and down. We then sailed towards London. Upon the left-hand side of the river we passed the beautiful and pleasant royal Palace of Greenwich, where the Queen moreover is usually accustomed to receive and to give audience to envoys and ambassadors from foreign potentates. 

11 August 1592
London is a large, excellent, and mighty city of business, and the most important in the whole kingdom; most of the inhabitants are employed in buying and selling merchandize, and trading in almost every corner of the world, since the river is most useful and convenient for this purpose, considering that ships from France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Hamburg, and other kingdoms, come almost up to the city, to which they convey goods and receive and take away others in exchange. 

It is a very populous city, so that one can scarcely pass along the streets, on account of the throng. 

The inhabitants are magnificently apparelled, and are extremely proud and overbearing; and because the greater part, especially the tradespeople, seldom go into other countries, but always remain in their houses in the city attending to their business, they care little for foreigners, but scoff and laugh at them; and moreover one dare not oppose them, else the street-boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike to the right and left unmercifully without regard to person; and because they are the strongest, one is obliged to put up with the insult as well as the injury. 

Velvet clothes but no bread
The women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other place; they also know well how to make use of it, for they go dressed out in exceedingly fine clothes, and give all their attention to their ruffs and stuffs, to such a degree indeed, that, as I am informed, many a one does not hesitate to wear velvet in the streets, which is common with them, whilst at home perhaps they have not a piece of dry bread. All the English women are accustomed to wear hats upon their heads, and gowns cut after the old German fashion - for indeed their descent is from the Saxons.

In the city there is among others a large and remarkable church, called St Paul’s, where there are two choirs or churches, one over the other, but otherwise there is nothing of importance to be seen in it. There are also many other churches here and there; in particular three, where they preach in the French, Italian, and Dutch tongues. 

The Exchange (La Burce) is a palace, where all kinds of beautiful goods are usually to be found; and because the city is very large and populous, the merchants who transact business together appoint to meet each other at that place, of whom several hundreds are constantly to be met with congregated there.

The sweet water is preserved in various parts of the city in large well-built stone cisterns, to be drawn off by cocks; and the poor labourers carry it on their shoulders to the different houses and sell it, in a peculiar kind of wooden vessels, broad at the bottom, but very narrow at the top, and bound with iron hoops.

Thirty-four heads on London Bridge
13 August 1592
Over the river at London there is a beautiful long bridge, with quite splendid, handsome, and well-built houses, which are occupied by merchants of consequence. Upon one of the towers, nearly in the middle of the bridge, are stuck up about thirty-four heads of persons of distinction, who had in former times been condemned and beheaded for creating riots and from other causes. [This practice of dipping the heads of executed men in tar and displaying them on pikes had been going on since the 14th century and would not stop until the mid-17th century.]

14 August 1592
His Highness and suite went in wherries [gondolas] to the beautiful and large royal church called Westminster, situated at the end, outside the city. In order to inspect the same. It is a very large structure, and in particular has a chapel within it which was built eighty years ago by King Henry VII, arched over with carved stone, so elegantly wrought that its equal is not easily to be found: there are inside some beautiful tombs of deceased Kings and Queens, covered all over with gilding, and executed in a most beautiful manner.

In front of this chapel, outside in the choir, are many other monuments of Kings made of marble, of all kinds of curious colours; [ . . .] In this choir stands also the chair in which, for several centuries past, all the Kings and Queens have been crowned: underneath lies a large stone, which is said to be the very one upon which the patriarch Jacob reposed when he saw the angels ascending and descending a ladder reaching to heaven. In the same choir was also shown the sword which King Edward III is said to have carried and used in battle and war; it is an immense blade, like a double-handed sword, so heavy that one can scarcely lift it. [. . .] In this beautiful church the English Ministers, who are dressed in white surplices such as the Papists wear, sang alternatively, and the organ played.

The most magnificent royal palace 
21 August 1592
In the afternoon his Highness was conducted to see the grand and truly beautiful royal Palace called Hampton Court. 

Now this is the most splendid and most magnificent royal Palace of any that may be found in England - or, indeed, in any other kingdom. It comprises ten different large courts, and as many separate royal or princely residences, but all connected; together with many beautiful gardens both for pleasure and ornament - some planted with nothing but rosemary; others laid out with various other plants, which are trained, intertwined, and trimmed in so wonderful a manner, and in such extraordinary shapes, that the like could not easily be found. In short, all the apartments and rooms in this immensely large structure are hung with rich tapestry, of pure gold and fine silk, so exceedingly beautiful and royally ornamented that it would hardly be possible to find more magnificent things of the kind in any other place. In particular, there is one apartment belonging to the Queen, in which she is accustomed to sit in state, costly beyond everything; the tapestries are garnished with gold, pearls, and precious stones - one tablecover alone is valued at above fifty thousand crowns - not to mention the royal throne, which is studded with very large diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and the like, that glitter among other precious stones and pearls as the sun among the stars. 

Many of the splendid large rooms are embellished with masterly paintings, writing-tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, organs, and musical instruments, which her Majesty is particularly fond of. Among other things to be seen there, are life-like portraits of the wild man and woman whom Martin Forbisser the English captain, took in his voyage to the New World, and brought alive to England. 

In the middle of the first and principal court stands a splendid high and massy fountain, with an ingenious water-work, by which you can, if you like, make the water play upon the ladies and others who are standing by, and give them a thorough wetting. 

The baiting of bulls and bears
1 September 1592
His Highness was shown in London the English dogs, of which there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but each in a separate kennel. In order to gratify his Highness, and at his desire, two bears and a bull were baited; at such times you can perceive the breed and mettle of the dogs, for although they receive serious injuries from the bears, are caught by the horns of the bull, and tossed into the air so as frequently to fall down again upon the horns, they do not give in, that one is obliged to pull them back by the tails, and force open their jaws. Four dogs at once were set on the bull; they, however, could not gain any advantage over him, for he so artfully contrived to ward off their attacks that they could not well get at him; on the contrary, the bull served them very scurvily by striking and butting at them. 

London in Diaries

Last year, encouraged by a literary agent, I compiled a book called London in Diaries. Unfortunately, the agent moved on, and my subsequent efforts to find a publisher for the book came to no avail. Rather than let the work lie dormant, I am going to include, here in The Diary Review, the full text of the introduction, and, over the next few weeks, several of the chapters as well. Anyone interested in publishing London in Diaries please do get in touch!

London in Diaries: Introduction
London! One of the greatest capital cities in the world, one of the most important, one of the most visited, and one of the most cosmopolitan and dynamic. It is also a place of major historical sights, from the Tower of London to Hampton Court along the ever-restless Thames, and from St Paul’s Cathedral in the ancient City of London to the Abbey in the ancient City of Westminster. World-class entertainment is everywhere, not least in the West End and South Bank theatres; while glorious open spaces abound, whether in Regent’s Park, Kew Gardens or Hampstead Heath. Today London is as famous for the buzz of its night life, as it is for its high class shopping in Kensington, by way of Oxford Street, and Covent Garden, or for the financial power in its Square Mile. 

Of all the literary resources available to understand and, perhaps peer into, this astonishing city, its past and the lives of its people, none are as fresh or vital as diaries. Unique among historical and cultural records, they give a more immediate - in the moment - description of the city and commentary on its happenings than an autobiography or memoir. 

Diaries cannot, of course, be compared with histories which provide facts and figures in a coherent and comprehensive way, but they can highlight aspects of past times and ways, sometimes even shining a spotlight on lost charms or customs - Vauxhall Gardens, for example, or the spectacle of executions. This is especially true of the earliest diary extracts in this collection, for which some historical context is useful. The diarists - each chapter is focused on one - are arranged in a roughly chronological order, beginning with Edward VI in the mid 16th century.

It is a salient fact that those who live or have lived in the city, and thus could be expected to know it best, tend to be blind to its treasures when putting pen to their diary papers. Many of the 20th century writers considered to be great diarists have almost nothing to say about London - what seems to mark them out as good diarists is the political or social content, rather than any personal observations or descriptions about the place in which they live and work. 

Thus, throughout the five hundred years in which men and women have written diaries in London, those with the most detail of its famous and interesting sights are those written by visitors. So it is no surprise that their diaries make up a fair proportion of this book. Some of these are from elsewhere in Britain, but most are foreigners - early Continental travellers (such as Frederick of Mömpelgard and Lodewijck Huygens), diplomats (like the Persian Abul Hassan), and, more recently, North Americans (Herman Melville and Elizabeth Smart) - who are interested in, and often fascinated by, what they see and experience around them.

That said, it does fall to those living in London (such as the funeral provisioner Henry Machyn, Samuel Pepys, the painter Benjamin Haydon, or the teenager Ellen Buxton) to reveal much of interest about their city, and life therein, almost often in passing, by reporting daily routines, or noticing a special event or some change in the environment or society around them. The 20th century’s two world wars are an exception in that circumstances were so extraordinary that Londoners themselves (like the two journalists Malcolm Macdonagh and Charles Graves) did write far more expansively in diaries about the city itself and what was happening to it.

Another difference between diaries and other textual resources is that, though literary types are more likely to have kept diaries, literary talent has never been a fixed prerequisite for diary writing, nor either for preservation of diaries. The extracts herein not only evoke a kaleidoscopic view of the city across time and space, but do so from many different viewpoints - with contributions from royalty and commoners, rich and poor, merchants and artists, young and old. Indeed, though London is the focus, the raison d’être of this book, it is also about the people who have found themselves in the city, for one reason or another, and have bothered, again for whatever reason, to write about it, there and then. For this reason, each chapter opens with a short and pertinent biography for each diarist, helping to provide some context for the selection of extracts that follows. (Full details of their sources, as well as other published and online references, can be found at the back of the book.)

Historical background
London is around 2,000 years old, having originally been peopled by the Romans who called it Londinium, for no reason we can be sure of today. It became the capital of their British territory with a population rising to over 50,000, but was abandoned when they left. The Anglo-Saxons tentatively began settling in the area, adapting its name variously, to Lundenwic or Lundenburgh at different times. They built the first St Paul’s Cathedral, and, under repeated attack from Vikings, repaired the Roman walls for defence.

The Normans famously brought with them fortress know-how. On arriving in London, William the Conquerer immediately set about building a stronghold of wood. It was soon replaced by a much stronger structure, the White Tower or Tower of London. For centuries it protected the city, and for more centuries it became a foreboding symbol of power and punishment, though, surprisingly, it also housed exotic animals. Today, it’s for tourists who come to see the Beefeaters and the Crown Jewels.

Two miles west as the crow flies, or nearer three along the river, lies Westminster Abbey. Although the Anglo-Saxons had a place of worship on the site, as well as a palace close by, both were much rebuilt by the Normans. William the Conqueror was, according to documentation, the first King to be crowned in the Abbey, since when there have been 37 more coronations. For the next few hundred years, London and Westminster co-existed, uneasily at times, the former more of a centre of commerce with its evolving trade guilds and livery companies, and the latter the nation’s royal, religious and political centre. Although connected by a road called The Strand, traffic between the two cities was common via the Thames. William Caxton, it is worth a note in passing, set up his first printing press in Westminster, in 1476, before moving to London.

Henry VIII looms large in English history, and the impact of his break with Rome and Catholicism had a profound effect on London. Until the break, London life was dominated by religion, its churches, monasteries and religious houses. After the dissolution, though, in the 1530s, when much property changed hands, trade started to boom, not least through the business of new companies established by Royal Charters, like those wishing to trade with the Levant, and Muscovy.

The earliest diaries 
It is from this period - the 16th century - that we have today the first surviving diaries written in England. Japanese culture, though, produced the oldest texts generally classified as diaries, from the 9th century; and European - Italian mostly - diaries emerge in the 15th century. Perhaps the oldest English diary is that by Sir Richard Torkington, published in the 1880s as Ye Oldest Diarie of Englysshe Travell: being the narrative of the pilgrimage by Torkington to Jerusalem in 1517. The earliest bona fide diary that tells us anything about London was written a few decades later, and, astonishingly, it was kept by a teenager, none other than Henry VIII’s successor as King, Edward VI - sometimes dubbed the Boy King.

Having been crowned at the age of nine, Edward VI’s reign lasted only six years before he died, probably of TB. Historians believe the period of regency rule, led initially by Edward’s uncle, Edward Seymour, saw important developments in the English Reformation, though subsequently under Edward’s successor, the Catholic Mary, Protestant changes were stalled. Edward’s diary entries - written at the suggestion of a tutor - are usually succinct and often newsy. He writes about the coming of ‘the sweat’ into London, of visiting ambassadors being taken to watch the baiting of bears and bulls, and about the trial of his uncle. He also records a large protest against the ‘unreasonable prices of thinges’ in London, and that, unless the craftsmen mend their ways, he will ‘call in their liberties’ and appoint officers to look into the situation.

While Edward VI was still on the throne, a far humbler man - an undertaker and supplier of funeral trappings - was also starting to keep a diary, one that would, in time, ensure he was remembered (where otherwise he might not have been), and would, in fact, mark him out as one of the great early British diarists. Henry Machyn began his diary in 1550, describing - very colourfully - the rich funerals and processions of his business. Of Edward VI’s funeral he wrote: ‘And at his burying was the greatest moan made for him of his death as ever was heard or seen.’

But Machyn lived in turbulent and changing times, and before long, he found himself writing also about extraordinary public events - royal pageants, trials, and hangings (such as Seymour’s). He is the earliest writer to leave a description of the Lord Mayor’s show; and he also details several coronations and subsequent celebrations: ‘all the churches in London did ring, and at night did make bonfires and set tables in the street and did eat and drink and made merry for the new Queen Elizabeth.’

The first of the foreign diaries in this collection is by a young man, Frederick, soon to become the Duke of Württemberg, who visited London in 1592. His passion to become a Garter Knight is intriguing, as is the knowledge that he is an ancestor of the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Also, Shakespeare satirised him specifically and Germans in general in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor. Frederick’s diary has much to say about London - ‘a very populous city, so that one can scarcely pass along the streets, on account of the throng’ - and its women, who wear velvet even though they’ve no bread at home. And it is thanks to him - rather than Edward VI for example - that we have a first hand, at-the-time, description of the baiting of bulls and bears.

Revolution and restoration
More than half a century later, the Elizabethan period is long over, as are Guy Fawkes’ plot, the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers for America, and the reign of James I. Charles I’s reign has brought religious strife and civil war, leading to his beheading and the defeat of his son in battle by Oliver Cromwell. It is 1652, when Lodewijck Huygens, a young Dutchman travels to London. Cromwell has not yet been named 1st Lord Protector of the Land, but the city is clearly a changed place. Huygens tells his diary about how he followed the route taken by Charles I from his home to his execution, and how St James’s Park was now full of Cromwell’s bucks and roes. While noting signs of decay in the city, he also mentions nearby villages, Clapham, Islington (famous for the good cakes) and Chelsea (a pleasant little village where the gentle class retire in summer).

Two diarists that today are considered among the best and most important that ever lived were both 17th century Londoners - Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. They themselves were of very different characters, as shown in their diaries, but they were friends, and Evelyn was particularly attentive to Pepys when he fell out of favour for a short while and was imprisoned in the Tower.

‘A wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done, as to periwiggs, for nobody will dare to buy any haire, for fear of the infection.’ This is Samuel Pepys who, as a young man, was appointed to the Navy Board, and soon showed precocious talent, eventually rising to become Chief Secretary to the Admiralty. He met and conversed with Charles II on the vessel that brought him back from exile in May 1660. Earlier that same year, Pepys had begun to write a diary. For ten years, he wrote with great detail, intelligence and flair about his life, and in doing so could not help but paint a portrait of the city in which he lived and in which he was such an important personage, and provide an extraordinary record of the Restoration period. His diary is also hugely important for its descriptions of how the plague and the Great Fire devastated London, and these entries make up the bulk of his contribution here. The diary, though, is full to bursting with his myriad daily movements, whether concerned with family, politicking, theatre or philandering, and with a wide interest in everything going on around him.

John Evelyn’s diary is a more sober, largely less personal, work. His entries are often brief and factual, though when his son Richard dies aged 5, he writes for several pages about the precocious boy’s achievements and concludes with ‘Here ends the joy of my life, and for which I go even mourning to the grave.’ But what Evelyn generally lacks in colour and depth, he makes up for with perseverance: his diary, starting in 1641, goes on for over 60 years, encompassing more than half a century of London’s history. He was involved in the planning and rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, and his diary shows an interest in development of new squares, houses and gardens: ‘Dined at my Lord Treasurer’s, the Earl of Southampton, in Bloomsbury, where he was building a noble square or piazza, a little town.’

Dudley Ryder, by contrast to Evelyn and Pepys, is far less well known. He was the son of a Hackney draper, but studied law, entered politics, and ended up Attorney General. His diary, 1715-1716, gives a lively account of London’s coffee houses and spas, as well as its executions. His florid description of a frozen Thames seems reminiscent of much more recent literature.

The 18th century - most of it under the rule of one King George or another, the so-called Georgian Period - was a time of unprecedented growth for London, with its population more or less doubling. In 1700, Hugh Clout’s History of London suggests, an observer in the dome gallery of St Paul’s could have seen London in its entirety, with fields, farms and hill-top villages (Hampstead and Highgate) in the distance. By the early 1800s the edges of London would have been far more difficult to discern, since the built-up area was twice as large, ribbons of development had sprung up along transport routes, and many a remaining field was marked out for building. Smog from coal burning was also starting to be a major problem affecting visibility, and, presumably, health. Despite a fast growing and affluent middle class, this London was still a fairly dark, primitive and unsanitary place, without main drains, water supply, lighting, or public transport, fire or police services. Crime and prostitution were rife. Given the ongoing high death rate, the city’s rapid expansion was driven largely by immigration from elsewhere in Britain.

Indeed, around the middle of the century, in 1762, one young Scottish man, as precocious as Pepys and as literate, arrived in the city. Shortly after settling down, he writes in his diary, ‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London several weeks without ever enjoying the delightful sex, although I am surrounded with numbers of free-hearted ladies of all kinds.’ This is James Boswell who would go on to write one of the world’s most admired biographies, that of his friend Samuel Johnson. The biography came after Boswell had published an earlier book about Johnson, a diary of their travels together in the Hebrides, which was a commercial success. Intriguingly, all of Boswell’s diaries, with the exception of the Hebrides journal, remained lost, and were only discovered in the 1920s in a Dublin castle. Yale University published a first volume of these in 1950 - Boswell’s London Journal - and since then has brought out a dozen or so more.

What visitors saw
Until the 19th century, women writers (that we know of today) are a rarity - that said, The Book of Margery Kempe written in the early 15th century is considered to be the first autobiography in the English language. There are very few surviving diaries written by women prior to the 1800s. The earliest of these - by Margaret Hoby, Anne Clifford and Elizabeth Freke - are important, but have little to offer in the context of a book about London. Thus it falls to a German visitor, Sophie von La Roche, a novelist, to give the earliest female perspective on London in this collection. With a curious mind and an observant eye, she writes about everything she sees and experiences - not least, a pastry-cook’s shop, a Moorish funeral, the ‘hateful’ Tower, outdoor dancing at Sadler’s Wells, the inside of a master saddlers’ workshop, and the need to eat oysters because she is in London.

Abul Hassan came to London in 1809, and was the first Persian envoy to do so in 200 years. He was tall, dark and handsome, wore rich silken robes, and had a very large beard. During his eight months stay he became something of a society celebrity - even the royal family gave parties in his honour. His diary, though somewhat formal, is rich in detail about the city. It also has an intriguing naive quality in that much of what he saw was very different from his familiar Persian world, as in this extract written after he’d seen some rioting in the streets: ‘I was utterly amazed! If such a situation had lasted for several days in one of Iran’s cities, 2,000 or more people would have been executed by now.’

Early 19th century London certainly made a deep impression on another visitor, this time a young man from Sheffield who, at the end of his visit, waxed lyrical: ‘And now, London, I must bid thee “Farewell.” Thou art the centre of Good and Evil, of Virtue and Vice! How many and how various are the characters which inhabit thy walls! How magnificent thy palaces! How mean thy cottages! How miserable some, how happy others!’ Thomas Asline Ward might have been completely forgotten today, but for the fact that his diary was published in a local paper in instalments, and then in book form. His visit to London only takes up a small part of the published diary, but his youthful descriptions, especially of the once-famous Vauxhall Gardens, are alight with city excitement.

Anne Chalmers was a little younger than Ward on her visit to London, three decades later, but her enthusiasm for the city has a more serious edge. She visits ‘the ventilator’, in the House of Commons, where ladies can hear the speakers, and attends an anti-slavery rally. Her diary, like Ward’s, reminds us of places now long forgotten, such as the Colosseum, near Regent’s Park, built to house the world’s largest painting, and also, incidentally, gives advice to those asking for beer in London.

Benjamin Haydon, like Boswell before him, was a man who needed female company, and saw London as a city of opportunities: ‘I felt this morning an almost irresistible inclination to go down to Greenwich and have [a] delicious tumble with the Girls over the hills.’ He was a painter with a significant talent, but his allegiance to 18th century trends, especially historical subjects, meant he was swimming against the Romantic tide, one which would make household names of William Blake and J. M. W. Turner. Chronic financial difficulties compounded his artistic frustrations, and he rarely managed to live within his means, especially after he had married and had children. His story is a sad one, but his characterful diary - initially published in five volumes - is superb because it not only tells us much about the man, but also gives picturesque insights into city life, whether the art and literary scene, or the trials of a day out with his family.

Riches and poverty
Whereas London had already seen rapid expansion for centuries, the 1800s saw explosive growth, with the city’s population increasing from, very approximately, one million at the start of the century to more than six times that at the end. By the 1830s, it was considered to be the largest city in the world in terms of population (a ranking it retained until the 1920s), and was the centre of a global empire, the world’s foremost trading and financial powerhouse. The wealth financed all kinds of changes, the building of suburbs, the construction of railways, sewers, water systems, schools. But it was also a magnet for immigration not only from other parts of Britain, but from the Empire; and this immigration only served to enhance the rich-poor divide, and the presence of slums - as so well depicted in the novels of Charles Dickens.

Any hint of London slums or the poverty therein is not to be found in Queen Victoria’s diaries. She ascended the throne aged only 18, and remained sovereign for over 60 years. For much of this time, she kept a diary, contained in over 100 manuscript volumes, extracts of which have been published. In reference to London, her diary is at its best when she writes about big occasions - her coronation, the Great Exhibition and jubilee celebrations. Although formal in style, it is splendid to have such a person, such a celebrity at the centre of the nation’s attention, telling us what her day has been like.

Herman Melville visited London in 1849 to try and find a publisher for his new book White-Jacket, about the American naval service and, in particular, the ills of flogging. Although his most famous novel, Moby Dick, would follow in 1852, he was already a well-known author. Melville spent a lot of time in and around The Strand, where he loved exploring the second-hand bookshops. Not one to mince his words he wrote in his diary that the Lord Mayor’s Show was a ‘most bloated pomp’, and described a coffee he bought in a Temple bar as ‘villainous’. He was, though, excited by the public execution of the husband and wife murderers, the Mannings, an event that Dickens also attended.

A simpler, more charming view of Victorian London comes from the teenager, Ellen Buxton, brought up in Leytonstone, by Wanstead Flats, just south of Epping Forest. Her father worked at the family brewery in Spitalfields; but both her grandfathers were important Quaker characters, one a noted anti-slavery campaigner, and the other brother to the prison reformer, Elizabeth Fry. Ellen’s teenage diary is unaffected, and illustrated throughout with delightful sketches of people and places. Though short on emotion, the writing comes alive when she’s outdoors, watching Prince Albert lay a foundation stone, fishing with her father in Carshalton, or visiting an institution such as the Mint or the ‘Christal Palace’ rose exhibition.

The beautiful Thames
The feature of London most often mentioned in these diaries - in all but a handful - is the Thames. Throughout the city’s history, of course, it was far more important, far more busy than it is today. Apart from Ryder’s florid description of the frozen river, another diarist describes a frost market, the kind that regularly appeared when the water froze. Others mention a watermill that supplied water, a pub landlady drowning herself, the burning of a bankside warehouse, and the mighty disturbance of the water after the falling of bombs.

Of all the writers in this collection, though, it is Thomas Cobden-Sanderson whose diary shows the most romantic relationship with the river. ‘How superbly beautiful the river is at this moment! There is a high wind blowing the surface into innumerable ripples, each of which catches instantly and reflects a dazzling gleam from the sun.’ A book-binder, printer, and close associate of William Morris, he operated his business close by the Thames in Hammersmith. Towards the end of his life, he was so troubled by the idea that, after his death, his partner would misuse a special typeface they had together employed for years - Doves Type - that he secretly went night after night to a river bridge to drop and drown every last block of the type. He confesses all to his exquisitely written diary.

Cobden-Sanderson was very much a socialist, in keeping with the ideology of Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement. Indeed, his wife was imprisoned as a suffragette at one time. Yet his diary, perhaps, reveals him as more of a spiritual than a political man. Not so another socialist, the Northern writer Arnold Bennett. Both Cobden-Sanderson and Bennett take us into the 20th century, but Bennett’s diary is far punchier, richer in detail about what’s happening in the streets of London. ‘Never since I first came to London,’ he writes in 1897, ‘has the West End been so crowded with sightseers, so congested by the business of pleasure.’ Though his novels, full of gritty realism, had gone out of fashion by the 1920s his literary journalism was much sought after, and his diaries by that time were full of famous London names.

The 20th century and wars
‘I want to see the Docks and Dockland, to enter East End public-houses and opium-dens, to speak to Chinamen and Lascars: I want a first-rate, first-hand knowledge of London, of London men, London women. I was tingling with anticipation yesterday and then I grew tired and fretful and morose, crawled back like a weevil into my nut.’ This is Bruce Frederick Cummings, better known as Barbellion and only remembered today because of his unique diary - published as The Journal of a Disappointed Man. He worked in the British Museum’s department of Natural History, but died very young of multiple sclerosis. His diary displays an extraordinary mind, sharp yet often frustrated with himself or the world around him. It is also funny, as when he describes a morning at Petticoat Lane market.

The First World War affected the life of everyone in London, not least Cobden-Sanderson, Bennett and Barbellion, though often their diary references to it are in passing. Michael Macdonagh, by contrast, kept a diary that was almost entirely about the war and the affect it was having on London and its people. Macdonagh was a journalist with The Times, and thus writing publicly about London news, yet his diary is a far more personal testimony to, what he called, ‘the drama of the life of the greatest civil community of the world in its direct relation to the Great War’. Not only is Macdonagh present for important political events, in Parliament or at the Lord Mayor’s banquet for example, but he is out tramping the street every day reporting faithfully in his diary what he sees, hears and feels. At the war’s end, he is in Parliament Square: ‘I had heard Big Ben proclaim War’ and after four years of silence, ‘I was now to hear him welcoming Peace.’

The Canadian writer Elizabeth Smart is best remembered for her novel of poetic prose - considered a classic of the genre - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. The book draws heavily on the passionate affair she had with the British poet George Barker. In 1943, by when she already had two children by Barker, she moved to live in London; there she had two more children fathered by him, but brought them all up alone, as a single mother. Two volumes of her diaries were published shortly after her death in the 1980s, and these reveal how her style deteriorated over the decades: from bright, cheerful, extravagant writing, full of external observations, to brief notes focused on her internal preoccupations. Thus, though, she was living in London, there is very little about the city in her later diaries. However, her early ones, when she was still travelling and passed through London, contain lovely, evocative passages about the city, such as one about Hyde Park which begins as follows: ‘I did the only right and inevitable thing to do when the sky is singingly blue and the sun is showing up the nakedness of London and everything is sunshining and smelling of new-forgotten damp earth and crocuses - I went out.’

All too soon after the terrible first war, came another, and with it Britain’s militarisation to defend against German aggression. The country - but especially its capital - suffered more years of bombing, rationing and general hardship. There are many published diaries specifically about the Second World War, and even today, more than 65 years later, newly found or edited war diaries are popular publishing ventures. Only a small proportion of WW2 diaries, though, have much to say about London itself. In addition, there are many unpublished diaries, not least those held by Mass Observation, and those archived by the BBC for its WW2 People’s War website.

Two Second World War diaries are included in this collection, one published, though not very well known, and one unpublished, from the Mass Observation archive. Charles Graves, like Michael Macdonagh, was a journalist, more of a columnist than a reporter, and he moved in higher social circles than Macdonagh, but he too decided to keep a personal diary, with publication in mind, of the war years. An early entry reads: ‘As I lay in bed it occurred to me that the Londoner’s ears are now accustomed to distinguish immediately sixteen different noises caused by the blitz;’ and then he lists them. Against official orders, which expressively prohibited Home Guard personnel from keeping diaries, he wrote often about his own Home Guard activities - ‘My mob were supposed to be German parachutists landing in Regent’s Park’. And, Graves didn’t let his work or volunteering stop him from flitting to The Ritz or a cricket match at Lords.

Responding to Mass Observation’s call for volunteers to provide diaries and other written material about the war, Marielle Bennett submitted a series of manuscripts covering various months of 1939, 1941 and 1942. These typed diaries reveal a more mundane life, perhaps, than that lived by Graves, but no less interesting for that. On reading her diary, one feels very close to Bennett, as though one is there with her making curtains out of black satin, hearing Chamberlain’s speech through a window on a neighbour’s wireless, noticing how little meat one gets with a 1/6 luncheon at Maison Lyons, having great trouble finding an air-raid suit she likes, and being frustrated that she no longer wants to go to the cinema because all the films are ‘only slightly covered propaganda’.

The 1960s and modern nature
Noel Coward, born in the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign in Teddington, was one of the greatest show business personalities of the 20th century. His playwriting and performing fame grew steadily in London during and after the First World War, and before long he was as popular in New York as in London. His published diaries only begin in the 1940s, and cover all the years to his death in 1973. Though his popularity in London waxed and waned, by the post-war years he was still putting on highly successful West End hits, and starring in films such as Around the World in 80 Days and Our Man in Havana. His diaries reveal a constantly hectic schedule with London home only for a few weeks or so once or twice a year. Nevertheless, a few extracts give a grand sense of the London theatre world, such as when he is describing a night at the Palladium, or hobnobbing with royalty.

It is the start of the 1960s, and Kate Paul is just out of her teens and excited about life and art and going to live in London. ‘In Chelsea,’ she writes, ‘it’s the vogue to wear dark glasses at the dead of night and to shave the head bald.’ She loves the city’s galleries, and spends a lot of time at the Troubadour cafe in Earls Court, a London institution for decades (though not of Palladium grandeur). But reality doesn’t take long to set in, and her self-published diary soon reveals dissatisfaction and depression, often caused by her work, flat-mates or boyfriends. She feeds her depression by reading Barbellion’s diary, and goes so far as to seek out some presence of him at the Natural History Museum.

‘Sunlit cool autumnal day. Writing this diary on my way to St Mary’s in a taxi that cruises down Oxford Street alongside a lovely lad on a bike. Today London is a joy.’ This is the extraordinary film-maker Derek Jarman who, having been diagnosed with HIV in the mid-1980s, moved to live on shingle flats near the coast in Kent, and also began keeping a diary of his daily life. A first volume - Modern Nature - was published while he was still alive, and is very readable, full of wistful recollections about his youth and 60s London. Though still drawn back to the city often enough, at this time, for work or pleasure (the above quote is the last extract in Modern Nature), he is disillusioned with the film world, and is finding more fulfilment in his garden and the natural world around him in Kent.

Finally, as a way of bookending this journey through London in Diaries, I am including extracts from my own diary, all chosen for giving at least a flavour of the London in which I was growing up and maturing as an adult. Although I no longer live in the city, it has been home for at least half my life; and I was born in the long-since closed New End Hospital, Hampstead. My diary-writing habit, of nearly 50 years, began with a five-year diary given me for Christmas in 1962. I was ten, and living in a flat on Fitzjohns Avenue (mentioned by Marielle Bennett in her diary). The following summer, my parents moved out of London, and I didn’t return as a resident until I’d finished university. Chance found me renting a room in Earl’s Court, drinking coffee in the Troubadour (like Kate Paul), and, after much travelling, returning to live in Kilburn, near enough Hampstead to explore and enjoy the Heath (though in very different ways from Derek Jarman). Also in my diaries are London markets, theatres, squats, carnivals, bingo halls, and stories of clowning antics. The last diary extract of all describes Millennium New Year’s Eve and Day when my 12 year old son, Adam, and I endeavoured to walk the streets of central London and shake hands with a thousand people - we called it ‘The Day of the Thousand Handshakes’.

Thus, this collage or kaleidoscope of London through time and space, is uniquely patterned and coloured by the internal voices of those living in, or just passing through, its fascinating history and culture.

And so made significant

Sir John Cheke, an English classical scholar and statesman, was born exactly 500 years ago today. He left behind no diaries, but he is credited with influencing Edward VI - the Boy King who died aged only 15 - to keep a diary. King Edward’s diary is one of earliest surviving English diaries, and is all the more remarkable for having been written by a teenager who was also a reigning monarch. Remarkable, too, is the fact that we have some idea of why Cheke advised the young man to keep a diary. 

John Cheke was born on 16 June 1514 in Cambridge, the son of Peter Cheke an administrator at the university. He was educated at St John’s College, where he excelled at Latin and Greek, became a fellow, and became a protestant. Dr William Butts, a friend of his father, was also a great friend and counsellor to John. He spoke highly of the young man to King Henry VIII, who gave him an exhibition [grant] in 1538 to aid his studies. Two years later, on Henry VIII’s foundation of the regius professorships, Cheke was elected to the chair of Greek.

In 1544, Cheke was confirmed as tutor to the young Prince Edward to teach him, according to documents in the famous Cotton Library (part of the British Library), ‘of toungues, of the scripture, of philosophie and all liberal sciences’. He left Cambridge to live in the prince’s household, and continued as Edward’s tutor after he became king in 1547, until 1549. Also, in 1547, Cheke married Mary Hill, and they would have three sons.

Cheke increasingly became more active in public life: he sat as member for Bletchingley for two short parliaments; he was made provost of King’s College, Cambridge; he was one of the commissioners for visiting Cambridge and Oxford universities and Eton College; and he was appointed to help with draw up a body of laws for the governance of the church. He was knighted in 1551, and in 1553 the new and protestant queen, Lady Jane Grey, made him one of her secretaries of state, and he joined the privy council.

On the accession of Mary, a Catholic, however, just days later, Cheke lost his positions and was, briefly, imprisoned in the Tower of London. On his release, he fled abroad, living mostly in Strasbourg. He published further papers on Greek pronunciation, but was beset with debts and concerns over the lack of provision for his family. He continued, however, to oppose Mary’s Catholic regime, and was arrested again, in Belgium, and imprisoned in the Tower. There, faced with the prospect of death by burning, he publicly and humiliatingly recanted his Protestant faith - providing Mary with a propaganda coup. He died of shame - or so it is said - soon after, in 1557. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), or from John Strype’s 1821 biography, The Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke, freely available at Internet Archive.

More about Edward VI’s historically valuable diary - some extracts and links to online texts - can be found in another Diary Review article. Here, though, is a passage from Strype’s biography explaining Cheke’s advice to the young King Edward VI to keep a diary:

‘And that all King Edward’s transactions, and the emergencies of his kingdom, whether public or private, might be the better remembered by him, (whereby his experience might be the greater,) Cheke directed him to keep a diary of all occurrences of weight; and to write down briefly, under each day of every month, debates in Council, despatch of Ambassadors, honours conferred, and other remarks, as he thought good: and this, we may conclude, produced that excellent Journal of this King preserved in the Cotton library, and printed thence by Bishop Burnet. And, to set forth the benefit of keeping of such a day’s book, Cheke is said to use this aphorism, “That a dark and imperfect reflection upon affairs floating in the memory, was like words dispersed and insignificant; whereas a view of them in a book, was like the same words digested and disposed in good order, and so made significant.” ’

The Diary Junction

After private prayers

Margaret Hoby died all of 380 years ago today. She married three times, kept a rich household, and was a very religious person. There is nothing remarkable about her life except for the fact that she kept a diary, and that this is the oldest known extant diary - written over four centuries ago - by any English woman. Unfortunately, it is more a record of her private prayers than her private thoughts.

Margaret was born in 1571, the only child of a landed gentleman, Arthur Dakins of Linton, East Riding, and his wife Thomasine Gye. Margaret was educated at a school for young gentlewomen in a Puritan household. She married Walter Devereux, the younger son of Essex, and a court favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. The manor and parsonage of Hackness near Scarborough were purchased for the couple, and remained Margaret’s property after Devereux died at the siege of Rouen in 1591. She married Sir Thomas Sidney, but he died in 1595, and she then married Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby, son of the translator and English ambassador to France, in 1596. They lived at Hackness, but had no children. Margaret spent much of her time tending the sick and infirm in her own community, as well as running her household. She died on 4 September 1633.

A little further biographical information about Hoby can be found at Wikipedia, in A Historical Dictionary of British Women by Cathy Hartley, or in Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-representation, 1500-1660 (several authors).

Between 1599 and 1603, Margaret kept a diary fairly regularly. According to Arthur Ponsonby, editor of More English Diaries (1927), ‘she was no doubt instructed to keep a diary for the sake of religious discipline.’ He continues: ‘Her piety is very pronounced. Not only does she go to church frequently and listen to many sermons, but she has private prayers, writes out sermons, writes notes in her Testament, sings psalms, listens to lectures and nurses the sick. [. . .] But the diary is not exclusively confined to her religious exercises. We learn much of her daily occupations. How she gathers “apples”, exercises her “body at bowles a while of which I found good”; is busy “preserving quinces” and damsons, busy in the kitchen, busy dyeing woold, “stilling”, “working some fringe”, “dressing sores”, taking “the aire in my cocsh”, out fishing or relining “a sute of blake satan for Mr. Hoby”.

Ponsonby concludes the chapter in his book on Hoby by explaining that her manuscript is in the British Museum (now the British Library), but that he was able to read a transcript with full notes in the possession of the Librarian of the House of Lords. He, Ponsonby, recommends the diary ‘should be published in full’. In fact, it was edited a few years later by Dorothy M. Meads and published as Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599-1605 by George Routledge & Sons in 1930. Meads, however, can’t help but give vent to her own frustration that Hoby did not write more extensively on issues other than her religious devotions.

In her introduction Meads writes: ‘This daily record is of great value as a contemporary document, though it is not nearly so full as we would have it. The religious element is prominent, to the exclusion of much else, for the record seems to have been kept largely as a means of assisting in the religious exercise of self-examination, and only partly because it was useful in other ways. [. . .] Her daily personal record is very introspective, yet she shows no real capacity for self-knowledge or ability in self-analysis, for she sets down more or less conventional religious expressions of self-disparagement. A perusal of the contents of the diary gives one to think that she may have written with an eye on a possible reader, for we are rarely allowed a glimpse of the living woman. In spite of this barrier which she herself has raised, every detail of the record increases our acquaintance with her and our sympathy for her. She is interesting because she matters so much to herself.’

More recently, in 1998, Sutton Publishing brought out a new edition, The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599-1605 by Joanna Moody. The following extracts, though, come from Meads’ edition, which includes over 600 annotations (for 150 pages of diary text). In one of these notes - linked to the first extract below -  Meads cannot help but repeat the frustrations voiced in her introduction: ‘If only Lady Hoby had committed more of her feelings, impressions, and offences to paper, her diary would have increased greatly in interest’.

18 July 1600
‘After priuatt praers I went about the house and deliuered some directions to Iurden: after, I talked with my Cosine Isons and about his goinge to yorke, and then I went to diner: after, I was busie pouidinge some thinge to be carried to York: afte, I wrought and, lastly, I went to priuate examenation and praier: after, I went to supper, then I walked abroad: after, I Came in to publeck praers and, after, to priuate, wher I pleased the lord to touch my hart with such sorrow, for some offence Cometted, that I hope the lord, for his sonne sake, hath pardoned it accordinge to his promise, which is ever Iust: after, I reed apaper that wrought farther humiliation in me, I thanke god.’

17 October 1600
‘from thence I tooke my Iurnie to London wher, in the way, I was tould that order was giuen to fetch all the stuffe from york, and and to giue ouer house ther, vpon which and about we had laied forth 18li, which newes did much touch me, so that I procured Contrarie directions forth with: after I Came to london I praied, and was viseted with all my Cosines Cookes: then I praied after supper and went to bed, wher I was more meanly lodged, with so great Cost, then to my remembrance I was euer in my Life: and yet I was Glad of my brothers house’ [Meads believes this house was in The Strand or nearby].

5 May 1601
‘After praers I went to the church, wher I hard a sermon: after, I Came home and hard Mr Rhodes read: after diner I went abroad, and when I was come home I dressed some sore: after, I went to see a calfe at Munckmans, which had: 2: great heades, 4 eares, and had to ether head a throte pipe besides: the heades had long heares like brisels about the mouths, such as n’other Cowe hath: the hinder legges had no parting from the rumpe, but grewe backward, and were no longer but from the first Ioynte: also the backe bone was parted about the midest bicke, and a rowne howle was in the midest into the bodie of the Calfe: but one would haue thought that haue comed of strocke it might gett in the Cowes bely: after this I Came in to priuat medetation and praier.’

13 May 1603
‘his Majestie remoued from the Tower to Grennige’ [Greenwich]

7 June 1603
‘this day Mr Hoby and my selfe remoued from London in kent, to Mr Bettnames house, wher, I praise god, I had my health very well’ [those not with a need to remain at court had been ordered to leave London because of the plague, Meads explains, because James was alarmed at the multitudes besieging the court]

20 June 1603
‘this day we removed from thence towards Yorkshere, and the first night lay at Barnett’

21 June 1603
‘this day we lay at Noth hamton’

22 June 1603
‘at Ashbye, wher I kissed the Queens hand’

23 June 1603
‘we lay at Notingame’

24 June 1603
‘we lay at Dankester’

25 June 1600
‘at Yorke, wher we staied all the Lordes day’

27 June 1603
‘we lay at Linton wt my Cosine Dakins’

28 June 1603
‘we Came safe, I praise god, to Hacknis’

27 September 1603
‘thes day we hard from Hacknes that all there was well, But that the sicknes was freared to be at Roben Hood bay, not farr off: I Continewe my accostomed exercises but my increasinges in goodes waies is not as I thirst for’

The Diary Junction

A swarme of bees

Adam Winthrop, a lawyer and prosperous Suffolk landowner, died all of 390 years ago today. He is remembered partly because he kept a diary, and partly because his immediate descendants were leading figures in the development of colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Winthrop was born in 1548 in London but he spent some of his youth in Suffolk, where his father, also Adam (see picture), a master clothmaker, had purchased a manor at Groton. He studied at Magdalene, Cambridge, where he met John Still, and later married Alice Still. He trained for the law at the Inns of Court. In 1575, Winthrop was appointed steward of the college’s Kentish manors.

Alice died young, and Winthrop married Anne Browne, son of Henry Browne, a former clergyman of Groton. He acted as a minor landowner in his own right and as estate manager for his brother John, who had inherited Groton Manor, and performed legal services for local landowners. In 1592, he was appointed auditor of Trinity College and travelled regularly to Cambridge.

Over time, Winthrop acquired a theological library which he shared with clerical friends. He continued to correspond with John Still who became the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Winthrop died on 28 March 1623 at Groton. His son by Anne Browne, John, became a historically important figure - one of the founders of New England and the first Governor of Massachusetts - and Adam’s grandson, another John, was one of the founders of the Connecticut Colony. A little further information can be found from the DeLoria-Hurst family tree website, from Rootsweb, or the Miller-Anderson Histories.

Winthrop kept a diary which, because his son, John Winthrop, achieved such a high position in early American society, has proved of some historical importance. Indeed, extracts were published (by Tickner and Fields, Boston, 1864) in Life and Letters of John Winthrop by Robert C. Winthrop - which is freely available at Internet Archive - and in the so-called Winthrop Papers. Millersville University has used the diary to replicate Winthrop’s library. Further information about Winthrop’s diary can also be found in Francis Bremer’s book, John Winthrop - America’s Forgotten Founding Father, much of which can be read at Googlebooks.

Here is an extract from the opening pages of the published diary (in the Appendix of Life and Letters of John Winthrop).

‘Special matters & observations noted in the yere of our Lords God 1595: by me A. W.

This yere Corne was very scarce vntil haruest, notwithstanding yet there was muche wheate & rye brought into Inglande from by yonde the Seas, whereby the price of corne was abated.

Also al other kinde of vitaile was in the begynnynge of this yere sould at great prices.

On Whitsonday I had a great swarme of bees, and on Munday in Witsonweeke ther did come a swarme of bees flyeng ouer Castleynes heathe into Carters grounde. [There were many superstitions about bees in Suffolk County; and, among others, that bad luck was portended by a stray swarm of bees settling on one’s premises, unclaimed by their owner.]

The same day & tyme Mr. Gatcheroode, Mr. Walton, Mr. Th. Waldgraue, Mr. Clopton & my selfe were ther present about the bounding of the heathe.

On Thursday the 3. of July, Mr. Brampton Gurdon had a soonne borne to him: who was baptized on Sunday the 13 of July and named John. Sr Wm Waldegraue and old Mr. John Gurdon were godfathers: and the Lady Moore & olde Mris. Gurdon were godmoothers.

This yeare at ye Sommer assises, viz: 22 Julij 1595, diuers Justices of the Peace were put out of ye Comission by the Q. comandement [. . .]

This yere the viiith Day of July my brother Roger Alibaster, & my sister his wife wth their iij sones, George, John & Thomas, & Sara their daughter, tooke their iourny from Hadleigh to goe into Irelande.

The same day it Thundred, hailed & Rayned very sore.

Willm Alibaster their eldest soonne departed from my house towards Cambrige the ixth of July, malcontent.

This yere harvest began not wth vs vn till the xijth of August & contynued vntill the _ of September.

The 27 of August Mr. Hanam fell sicke & recouerd the iiijth of Sept. The same day my brother killed a brocke [badger] wth his hounds. [. . .]

The 3, 4 & 5 daies of October Sr Wm Waldegraue mustred all souldiors viz. 400, vppon a hill nere Sudbury.

The 8 day of October my wyfe rydde to her father at Pritlewell in Essex & returned the xxth.

The xth day of October Adam Seely retourned home, & the same day I Recd a lre from my L. of Bathe. [Dr John Still]

In the moneth of Octobre, Ano 1595, Sr Thomas Heneage died, Vir bonus & pius, & on the same day & monethe Philip, late Erle of Arundell died in the Tower of London.

The XXXth day of Octobre Richard Bronde of Boxford sherman [cloth worker] Departed out of this life, ano etatis 59.

The 7 of November the Erle of Hertford was comitted to the Tower.

The xiiijth of Decembre I receyved a lre from my brother Alibaster written from Tenby in Wales concernynge his ill successe in his Irisshe iourny.

The _ Day of January the butcher of Netherden woodde was cruelly murdered viz. his hed was cutt of & his body devided into iiij qrtrs & wrapt in a sheet & layd vpon his owne horse, as he came from Bury markett; & so brought home to his wyfe, who vppo the sight therof pntly died. [. . .]

The last of Aprill Sr J. Puckringe, L. keper of the great seale died of the deadde palsey.

The xth of May Grymolde of Nedginge did hange himselfe in his Barne.

The xvijth of May Adam Seely went privilie from my house & caried awaye xv he did steale from Richard Edwardes, pro quo facto dignus est capistro.

The xxviijth of May Mr. Pie of Colchester died suddenly.

The xjth of June Sr Wm Waldegraue trayned his whole band of footemen & horsemen on Babar heathe.

The 16 of June my brother Winthrop departed from my house towards Ireland, & my brother Alibaster went wth him.’

No good barber in Italy

Michel de Montaigne, the great 16th century French essayist and philosopher, was born 480 years ago today. His essays on any number of topics - from sleep to smells and from cannibals to cruelty - remain in print to this day, and a new biography, by Sarah Bakewell, even credits him with inventing the idea of writing about oneself. For a short while in the 1580s, he travelled beyond the French borders, often seeking out spas in search of relief for his kidney stones. He kept a fine journal of his journeys, often full of detail about the cures he found, and several translations are freely available online.

Montaigne was born in Chãteau de Montaigne, near Bordeaux, in southwest France, on 28 February 1533. His father was a soldier and a lawyer, and his mother came from a Spanish Jewish family converted to protestantism. He studied at Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, and then trained for the law in Bordeaux and Toulouse. He worked at the Court des Aides of Périgueaux, and then in 1557 was appointed to the Bordeaux Parliament. From 1561 to 1563 he served at the court of Charles IX. In 1565, he married Françoise de la Chassaigne. They had one daughter that survived infancy.

After his father died in 1568, Montaigne moved to the family Chãteau. There he wrote the many essays - on numerous topics including sadness, idleness, the education of children, sleep, smells, the greatness of Rome - which, subsequently, brought him fame. From 1578, he suffered from kidney stones which led him in search of cures in Switzerland, Germany and Italy. In 1581, while at La Villa, in Italy, Montaigne found out he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux. He returned to the city, and served in that post for four years. In 1588 he accompanied Henry III to Rouen. He died in 1592. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or Adam Thorpe’s review of Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.

Montaigne was no regular diarist, but he did keep a journal during his travels of 1580 and 1581 - across France to Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy - and this often appears with his essays as part of a set of ‘complete works’. The most modern translation of the journal was made by Donald M. Frame in The Complete Works of Montaigne published by Stanford University Press in the US in 1957, and Hamish Hamilton in the UK in 1958.

Frame says, in his ‘notes on the travel journal’, that Montaigne’s journal has a curious history. Part of it was dictated in French to a secretary, and part of it was written by Montaigne in French and Italian. The manuscripts lay buried in a chest at the Chãteau for two centuries before being discovered by a historian in 1770. This led to it being published soon after in five editions during the mid-1770s; thereafter, though, the original manuscripts vanished during the Revolution. All subsequent editions and translations, thus, rely on the French printed editions from the 1770s which, according to Frame, ‘offer only many variants but also a good many apparent misplacements and misreadings’. Nevertheless, more modern editions in French and Italian, Frame adds, are helpful for their geographical amendments or conjectural emendations.

The Journal, Frame explains, has been translated into English three times, by William Hazlitt (1842), W. G. Waters (1903) and E. J. Trechmann (1929), though he only rates the latter as any good. All three of these translations are available freely online, the first two at Internet Archive, and the latter at the Hathi Trust Digital Library. The following extracts are taken from Frame’s The Complete Works of Montaigne. (The journal reads more as a narrative than a diary in that the dates are incorporated into the text, and I have left the extracts thus.)

1581
‘Monday early we left there. And along the road, without dismounting, after stopping a while to visit the villa of the bishop, who was there (and were made much of by his men, and invited to stay there to dinner), we came to dine at the baths of La Villa, fifteen miles. I received a warm welcome and greetings from all those people. In truth it seemed that I had come back to my own home. I went back to the same room I had the first time, at the price of twenty crowns a month, and on the same conditions.

Tuesday August 15th I went to the bath early and stayed there a little less than an hour. I again found it rather cold than otherwise. It did not start me sweating at all. I arrived at these baths not only healthy, but I may further say in all-round good spirits. After bathing, I passed some cloudy urine; and in the evening, after walking a good bit over alpine and not at all easy roads, I passed some that was quite bloody; and in bed I felt something indefinably wrong with the kidneys.

On the 16th I continued the bathing, and I went to the women’s bath, where I had not yet been, in order to be separate and alone. I found it too hot, either because it was really so or indeed because my pores, being opened from the bathing of the day before, had made me get hot easily. At all events I stayed there an hour at most and sweated moderately. My urine was natural; no gravel at all. After dinner my urine again came turbid and red, and at sunset it was bloody.

On the 17th I found this same bath more temperate. I sweated very little. The urine rather turbid, with a little gravel; my colour a sort of yellow pallor.

On the 18th I stayed two hours in the aforesaid bath. I felt I know not what heaviness in the kidneys. My bowels were reasonably loose. From the very first day I felt full of wind, and my bowels rumbling. I can easily believe that this effect is characteristic of these waters, because the other time I bathed I clearly perceived that they brought on the flatulence this way.

On the 19th I went to the bath a little later to give way to a lady of Lucca who wanted to bathe, and did bathe, before me; for this rule is observed, and reasonably so, that the ladies may enjoy their own bath when they please. I again stayed there for two hours. There came over me a little heaviness in my head, which had been in the best of condition for several days. My urine was still turbid, but in different ways, and it carried off a lot of gravel. I also noticed some commotion in the kidneys. And if my feelings are correct, these baths can do much in that particular; and not only do they dilate and open up the passages and conduits, but furthermore they drive out the matter, dissipated and scatter it. I voided the gravel that seemed really to be stones broken up into pieces.

In the night I felt in the left-side the beginning of a very violent and painful colic, which tore me for a good while and yet did not run its ordinary course; it did not reach the belly and the groin, and ended in a way that made me believe it was wind. [. . .]

On the 27th after dinner I was cruelly tormented by a very acute toothache, so that I sent for the doctor, who, when he had come and considered everything, and especially that my pain had left me in his presence, judged that this defluxion had no body unless a very subtle one, and that it was wind and flatulence that mounted from the stomach to the head and, mingling with a little humor, gave me that discomfort. This indeed seemed to me very likely, considering that I had suffered similar accidents in other parts of the body.

On Monday, August 28th, at dawn, I went to drink at Bernabo’s spring and drank seven pounds four ounces of the water, at twelve ounces to the pound. It made my bowels move once. I voided a little less than half of it before dinner. I clearly felt that it sent vapors to my head and made it heavy. [. . .]

On Thursday, September 7th, in the morning I was an hour in the big bath. This same morning they delivered into my hands, by way of Rome, letters from Monsieur de Tausin, written in Bordeaux on August 2nd, by which he advised me that the day before, by general consent, I had been made mayor of that city; and he urged me to accept this charge for the love of my country.

On Sunday, September 10th, I bathed for an hour in the morning in the women’s bath; and since it was a bit warm, I sweated some. After dinner I went alone on horseback to see some other places in the neighbourhood, and a little villa called Granajolo, which stands on top of one of the highest mountains in these parts. As I passed over these heights, they seemed to me the most beautiful, fertile, and pleasant inhabited slopes that could possibly be seen.

Talking with the natives, I asked one very elderly man whether they used our baths, and he replied that it worked out with them as it did with the people who live near Our Lady of Loreto; that those people rarely go there on a pilgrimage, and that there is little use of the baths except for the benefit of foreigners and those who live far away. He said he was very sorry about one thing, that for a number of years he had observed that the baths did more harm than good to those who used them [. . .].

Monday, September 11th, in the morning, I voided a good quantity of gravel, most of it looking like millet, solid, red on the surface and grey inside.

On September 12th, 1581, we left the baths of La Villa early in the morning and came to dine at Lucca, fourteen miles. These days they were beginning to gather the grapes. The Feast of the Holy Cross is one of the principal ones in this city; and for a week around it freedom is given to anyone who wants it and who has been banished on account of a civil debt, to return in security to his house, to give him opportunity to attend to his devotions.

I have not found in Italy a single good barber to shave my beard and cut my hair.’

Columbus in the Bahamas

Some five hundred and sixty years ago today, or thereabouts, was born Christopher Columbus, probably the most famous explorer of all time. His voyages across the Atlantic brought much knowledge to Europe of the American continents, and also set in motion Spanish colonisation - a process which would have the most profound impact on the future of the world. Fortunately, Columbus kept detailed logs or diaries, and these are among the earliest of any surviving European diaries.

The eldest of five children, Columbus was born on (or around) 31 October 1451 in Genoa (there is some dispute about the place as well as the date) into a wool weaving family, possibly of Spanish Jewish descent. How he became a sailor is unclear, although it seems he may have worked first as a commercial agent in his home city, a busy port. He may also have been in the service of a pirate for a while. He made his first trading voyage to Khios in the Aegean Sea. On one early voyage, his vessel sank during a battle off the Portuguese coast, and it is thought he swam ashore. He then settled in Portugal, and married, in 1479, the daughter of the governor of the island of Porto Santo, who bore him one son.

In the belief that the world was smaller than thought, and round, and that Asia could be reached quickly by sailing west, Columbus petitioned the Portuguese court for funds, only to be rejected. He moved to Spain where his plans were more favourably received. Here, Beatriz Enriquez became his mistress and bore him a second son, Ferdinand Columbus. In 1492, Columbus set off on the first of four famous voyages. On the first one, he explored the Caribbean islands. On the second, he founded the first European town in the New World - on Hispaniola (the island now shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti).

During his third voyage, Columbus discovered the mainland of South America before returning to Hispaniola, where considerable discontent had arisen among the settlers; lobbying against him then led to his arrest. On returning to Spain, he regained his freedom, but at the cost of much prestige and the governorship of the Indies, a title and role he’d acquired after his first voyage. On his fourth and somewhat ill-fated journey, Columbus explored the coast of Central America, but was later stranded on Jamaica for a year. He returned to Spain in 1504, and, in 1506, died a wealthy man, though still in dispute with the Spanish crown over his share of the income from the new lands.

There is much information about Columbus available online, at Wikipedia, Royal Museums Greenwich, The Smithsonian, and in his famous journals which are all freely available at Internet Archive. Here is an extract describing the first sighting of land in the West Indies. It is taken from The Journal of Christopher Columbus (during his First Voyage, 1492-93), and Documents relating to the voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Real, published by The Hakluyt Society in 1892 (on the 400th anniversary of the voyage).

11 October 1492 ‘The course was WSW, and there was more sea than there had been during the whole of the voyage. They saw sandpipers, and a green reed near the ship. Those of the caravel Pinta saw a cane and a pole, and they took up another small pole which appeared to have been worked with iron; also another bit of cane, a land-plant, and a small board. The crew of the caravel Niña also saw signs of land, and a small branch covered with berries. Everyone breathed afresh and rejoiced at these signs. The run until sunset was 26 leagues.

After sunset the Admiral returned to his original west course, and they went along at the rate of 12 miles an hour. Up to two hours after midnight they had gone 90 miles, equal to 22 1/2 leagues. As the caravel Pinta was a better sailer, and went ahead of the Admiral, she found the land, and made the signals ordered by the Admiral. The land was first seen by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana. But the Admiral, at ten in the previous night, being on the castle of the poop, saw a light, though it was so uncertain that he could not affirm it was land. He called Pero Gutierrez, a gentleman of the Kings bed-chamber, and said that there seemed to be a light, and that he should look at it. He did so, and saw it. The Admiral said the same to Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, whom the King and Queen had sent with the fleet as inspector, but he could see nothing, because he was not in a place whence anything could be seen. After the Admiral had spoken he saw the light once or twice, and it was like a wax candle rising and falling. It seemed to few to be an indication of land; but the Admiral made certain that land was close.

When they said the Salve, which all the sailors were accustomed to sing in their way, the Admiral asked and admonished the men to keep a good look-out on the forecastle, and to watch well for land; and to him who should first cry out that he saw land, he would give a silk doublet, besides the other rewards promised by the Sovereigns, which were 10,000 maravedis to him who should first see it.

At two hours after midnight the land was sighted at a distance of two leagues. They shortened sail, and lay by under the mainsail without the bonnets. The vessels were hove to, waiting for daylight; and on Friday they arrived at a small island of the Lucayos, called, in the language of the Indians, Guanahani [Watling Island, named San Salvador by Columbus]. Presently they saw naked people. The Admiral went on shore in the armed boat, and Martin Alonso Pinzon, and Vicente Yañez, his brother, who was captain of the Niña. The Admiral took the royal standard, and the captains went with two banners of the green cross, which the Admiral took in all the ships as a sign, with an F and a Y and a crown over each letter, one on one side of the cross and the other on the other.

Having landed, they saw trees very green, and much water, and fruits of diverse kinds. The Admiral called to the two captains, and to the others who leaped on shore, and to Rodrigo Escovedo, secretary of the whole fleet, and to Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and said that they should bear faithful testimony that he, in presence of all, had taken, as he now took, possession of the said island for the King and for the Queen, his Lords making the declarations that are required, as is more largely set forth in the testimonies which were then made in writing.

Presently many inhabitants of the island assembled. What follows is in the actual words of the Admiral in his book of the first navigation and discovery of the Indies. “I,” he says, “that we might form great friendship, for I knew that they were a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force, gave to some of them red caps, and glass beads to put round their necks, and many other things of little value, which gave them great pleasure, and made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see. They afterwards came to the ship’s boats where we were, swimming and bringing us parrots, cotton threads in skeins, darts, and many other things; and we exchanged them for other things that we gave them, such as glass beads and small bells. In fine, they took all, and gave what they had with good will. It appeared to me to be a race of people very poor in everything. They go as naked as when their mothers bore them, and so do the women, although I did not see more than one young girl. All I saw were youths, none more than thirty years of age. They are very well made, with very handsome bodies, and very good countenances. Their hair is short and coarse, almost like the hairs of a horse’s tail. They wear the hairs brought down to the eyebrows, except a few locks behind, which they wear long and never cut. They paint themselves black, and they are the colour of the Canarians, neither black nor white. Some paint themselves white, others red, and others of what colour they find. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. They neither carry nor know anything of arms, for I showed them swords, and they took them by the blade and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their darts being wands without iron, some of them having a fish’s tooth at the end, and others being pointed in various ways. They are all of fair stature and size, with good faces, and well made. I saw some with marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to ask what it was, and they gave me to understand that people from other adjacent islands came with the intention of seizing them, and that they defended themselves. I believed, and still believe, that they come here from the mainland to take them prisoners. They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion. I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses, that they may learn to speak. I saw no beast of any kind except parrots, on this island.” The above is in the words of the Admiral.’