The Diary of Samuel Pepys, from 1659 to 1669, presents us with a picture of London in the days of CharlesII. that has perhaps not been equalled in any other work dealing with the manners, customs, and the social life of the period. We get a good idea from it how Sunday was spent in an age largely given to pleasure. Samuel Pepys had strong leanings towards the Presbyterians, but was a churchman, and seldom missed going to a place of worship on Sunday, and did not neglect to have family prayers in his own home. He generally attended his own church in the morning, and after dinner in the afternoon would roam about the city, and visit more than one place of worship. Take for an example an account of one Sunday. After being present at his own church in the forenoon, and dining, he says: “I went and ranged and ranged about to many churches, among the rest to the Temple, where I heard Dr.Wilkins a little.”

It is to be feared pretty faces and not powerful preachers often induced him to go to the house [p 245] of prayer. Writing on August 11th, 1661, he says: “To our own church in the forenoon, and in the afternoon to Clerkenwell Church, only to see the two fair Botelers.” He managed to obtain a seat where he could have a good view of them, but they did not charm him, for he says: “I am now out of conceit with them.” Another Sunday he writes: “By coach to Greenwich Church, where a good sermon, a fine church, and a good company of handsome women.” At another church he visited he says that his pretty black girl was present.

Pepys has much to say about the sermons he heard, and when they were dull he went to sleep. Judging from his frequent records of slumbering in church, prosy preachers were by no means rare in his day.

Writing on the 4th August, 1662, he gives us a glimpse of the manners of a rustic church. His cousin Roger himself attended the service, and says Pepys: “At our coming in, the country people all rose with so much reverence; and when the parson begins, he begins, ‘Right worshipful and dearly beloved’ to us.”

Conversation appears to have been freely carried on in city churches. “In my pew,” says [p 246] Pepys, “both Sir Williams and I had much talk about the death of Sir Robert.” Laughter was by no means unusual. “Before sermon,” writes Pepys, “I laughed at the reader, who, in his prayer, desired God that he would imprint his Word on the thumbs of our right hands and on the right toes of our right feet.”

When Pepys remained at home on Sunday he frequently cast up his accounts, and there are in his Diary several allusions to this subject.