§19. Nehemiah Wallington. IX. Historical and Political Writings. Vol. 7. Cavalier and Puritan. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.

IX. Historical and Political Writings.

§ 19. Nehemiah Wallington.

We re-enter a homelier sphere in mentioning among records covering the earlier, as well as the later, years of Charles I’s fateful reign, the Historical Notices of Nehemiah Wallington of St. Leonard’s, Eastcheap, London, which, indeed, go back as far as 1623, and occasionally refer to much earlier dates. This worthy annalist, a London shopkeeper without family connections of a higher social order, was, at the same time, bookish in his tastes and a great reader of tracts, which he constantly quotes. His chronicle is of a miscellaneous sort, noting all kinds of unusual sights and occurences, and remarkable judgments of God, as, for instance, upon those that break the Sabbath day. Public events he notes in the same strain; on the meeting of the Long Parliament, he recognises the flow of God’s mercies in the judgments done upon Strafford and Laud; the troubles in Ireland are brought home to him by the sufferings there of his wife’s brother Zechariah; and the memoranda end with the execution of the king, on which he comments: “Whatever may be unjust with men, God is righteous and just in whatever he doth.”