I mentioned in a post back in January that in my father’s library are some old handwritten notebooks. Well, last week I managed to find one of them, two pages of which you can see above. The notebook appears to be have been in use from 1699 until 1719, although with considerable gaps in between. That means that the author, identified inside the front cover as “Anto. Smith”, lived during the reigns of William and Mary, Anne and George I. This was quite a time of change for Britain, when the separate Kingdoms of Scotland and England were finally brought together under one crown when Great Britain was formed, on 1 May 1707.

The notebook contains sermon notes from seven different Bible texts, which according to the table on the first two pages were each preached several times over the years in different churches, including four south of the River Thames in London (St George’s Southwark, St Mary Newington, St Saviour’s and Lock Chapell [sic]), four in the City (St Botolph’s Bishopsgate, St Sepulchres, St Michael and St Peter’s Cornhill), one in Westminster (Westminster Abby [sic]), and one in Buckinghamshire (St Saviour’s Newport Pagnell).

Two of the sermons appear to be funeral sermons, with names and dates being given, which will make for interesting further research when I have time!

If you keep a notebook, do be thoughtful and include enough details to make an amateur historian’s day in 300 year’s time!