London Lives 1690 to 1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis is a readily accessible online source of information on a variety of topics, such as policing, criminal justice, prisons, the poor laws, settlement and vagrancy, and guilds.

 

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, available online at The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, 1674 to 1913. In addition to providing both facsimiles and transcripts of the original documents, this site is a readily accessible online source of information about crime, justice and punishment, as well as a history of the Old Bailey Courthouse. 

 

The Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts, available online at The Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Facsimiles and transcripts of the original documents are available at this site.

 

Newspapers

 

The entire archive of The London Gazette is available (and searchable) online at The Gazette: Official Public Record. The archive is searchable by keyword, issue number, and/or publication date—the archive offers an image of the original paper, not a transcription, and you can both read online and download a copy.

 

An advertisement for a “silver pendalum watch” that was “lost or left” in a hackney “coming from Chelsey” appeared in The London Gazette, issue 3359 (“from Monday January 17 to Thursday January 20 1697”).

 

Notice of the arrival of the duke of St. Albans in France and a report on his meeting with the king at Versailles and the subsequent return of the duke of St. Albans from France is from The London Gazette, issue 3362 (“from Thursday January 27 to Monday January 31”) and issue 3364 (“from Thursday February 3 to Monday February 7 1697”).

 

The entire archive of Le Mercure galant is available (and searchable) online at the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s Gallica website. The archive includes 414 issues from 37 years, 1678 through 1714, and offers an image of the original paper, and you can both read online and download a copy. The magazine’s content focused on fashion, literature, gossip, manners, and court life, its issues also containing songs, poems, and reviews, as well as noting marriages and deaths of socially prominent men and women. The special supplementary editions, with fashion engravings—L’Extraordinaire du Mercure galant—were only published from 1678 until 1685. The archive of 14 issues from 6 years, is also available at the Gallica website.

 

Letters, Diaries, and Journals

 

Many of the details in On Paradise Row, particularly descriptions of the day’s weather, have been drawn from the Memoirs of John Evelyn, . . . Comprising his Diary, from 1641 to 1705-6, vol. 3 (London: Henry Colburn, 1827).

 

Details have also been drawn from the diary of Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, vol. 2 (Oxford: University Press, 1857). 

 

Another wonderful contemporary source is the correspondence of Robert Sutton, lord Lexington, collected in The Lexington Papers; or, Some Account of the Courts of London and Vienna at the Conclusion of the Seventeenth Century (London: John Murray, 1851).

 

Although the last entry in his diary is 31 May 1669, Samuel Pepy’s diary, which he began on 1 January 1659/60, is an incomparable source for London life in the seventeenth-century. A digital version is available at The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Daily Entries from the 17th Century London Diary. In addition to the entries themselves, the site includes an encyclopedia of people, places, and things as well as an array of in-depth articles about seventeenth-century English life.

 

Parliamentary Debate

 

Cobbett’s Parliamentary History of England, vol. 5: Comprising the Period from the Revolution, in 1688, to the accession of Queen Anne, in 1702 (London: R. Bagshaw, 1809).

 

Narcissus Luttrell’s A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs is notable for its detailed account of parliamentary debates.

 

An account of Parliament under William III is also found in Arthur Trevor, The Life and Times of William the Third . . . vol. 2 (London: Longman, 1836). The king’s letter on the reformation of manners was published as His Majesties Letter to the Lord Bishop of London . . . (London, 1689).