The Diary of Samuel Pepys, which Sam kept from 1660 until 1669. Pepys laid down his quill for fear the diary might be ruining his eyes. Our loss—he lived until 1703. To him we owe much of what we know of life during that decade: the Restoration, the Great Fire of London, the Plague, royal gossip, executions galore. Historians tell us what happened. Pepys tells us what it looked, felt, sounded, and tasted like. The alert reader—that is, all of you—will recognize that all but the first diary entry and a few extracts are of the author’s devising. It is most Earnestly and Prayerfully hoped that these pastiches will be seen as a token of Homage. For further reading, see Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (New York: Knopf, 2002).
Second, and no less indispensable, Russell Shorto’s superb The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (New York: Doubleday, 2004). It was in these pages that I learned, among a thousand other shimmery details, that grumpy old Peter Stuyvesant had a soft spot for tropical birds.
Research happily included rereading a book—by any measure, the book on our Puritan forefathers—by my college tutor, mentor, and friend Kai T. Erikson: Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Wiley, 1966). It was in these pages, forty years ago, that I first learned of the unusual—indeed arresting—form of protest by Quaker women in old New England.
I’m in debt to the fine scholarship and narratives of the following authors and works.
Books
Ackroyd, Peter. Civil War: The History of England, Vol. III. New York: Macmillan, 2014.
Blue, Jon C. The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639–1663. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015.
Daniels, Bruce C. New England Nation: The Country the Puritans Built. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York: Knopf, 1994.
Frasier, Antonia. Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration. New York: Knopf, 1979.
Gunn, Giles, ed. Early American Writing. New York: Penguin, 1994.
Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early America. New York: Harper, 1988.
Jaffe, Eric. The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America. New York: Scribner, 2010.
Jordan, Don, and Michael Walsh. The King’s Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History. New York: Pegasus, 2016.
Karr, Ronald Dale, ed. Indian New England, 1524–1674: A Compendium of Eyewitness Accounts of Native American Life. Pepperell, MA: Branch Line Press, 1999.
Lipman, Andrew. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.
Malone, Patrick M. The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among the New England Indians. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Nicolar, Joseph. The Life and Traditions of the Red Man. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
Pagliuco, Christopher. The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe, Smuggled Through Connecticut. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012.
Shapiro, James. The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Shonnard, Frederic, and W. W. Spooner. History of Westchester County, New York, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Year 1900. New York: New York History Co., 1900.
Spencer, Charles. Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Wilbur, C. Keith. The New England Indians: An Illustrated Sourcebook of Authentic Details of Everyday Indian Life. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1996.
Pamphlets
All of the following were addresses delivered at St. Olave Hart Street’s annual Pepys Commemoration Service.
de la Bédoyère, Guy. Pepys and Shorthand. May 20, 2010.
Latham, Rt. Hon. Sir David. The Convivial Pepys. May 25, 2011.
May, Simon, Esq. Pepys and St Paul’s School. May 27, 2009.
McCullough, Peter. Pepys and Faith. May 25, 2012.
Skeaping, Lucie. Pepys’s Musical World. May 25, 2007.
Skipp, Matt. Pepys and the Theatre. May 26, 2005.
Walker, Rev. Andrew. Pepys, Hooke and the Renaissance Spirit. May 25, 2006.
Woodman, Captain Richard. Pepys and Trinity House. May 28, 2008.
Finally, my thanks to the indispensable Wikipedia. I endeavored to rely only on information whose source is certified by footnoted entries.