The diary of Henry Machyn, citizen and merchant-taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563 / Edited by John Gough Nichols.

  • Machyn, Henry.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diary of Henry Machyn, citizen and merchant-taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563 / Edited by John Gough Nichols. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    day; whilst the same occurrence is explained by Foxe as a casual and unpremeditated rencontre.* * * § It is instructive, however, to observe that, in common with the population at large, he after¬ wards took a great interest in the public sermons which were so zealously multiplied by the new preachers; at one of which it was his fate to perform penance, in consequence of having spread reports defamatory of master Veron, the French protestant minister.f With this exception the Diary contains scarcely anything of personal adventure. It is as little egotistical as a private Diary could well be. With all the dignity of an old chronicler the writer even mentions himself in the third person, on the few oc¬ casions that he makes his appearance, and in the unfortunate penance affair he further disguises himself in French costume,—a whim which has amusingly misled our Ecclesiastical Historian.]; Henry Machyn has twice noticed the occurrence of his birth¬ day^ from which we learn that he was more than fifty years of age at the time the Diary commences, and approaching seventy at the period of its close. In 1557 he records a birth in his family,|| but * Strype has placed together both sides of the story, and in so doing regards our author as a prejudiced witness, speaking of him as “the writer of the Journal whence I take this and divers other things, otherwise a diligent man.” Eccl. Memorials, vol. iii. p. 122. f See p. 272. X “ At Paul’s Cross a certain French Gentleman, named de Machin, sat at the sermon¬ time [i.e. in the place of penance] for reporting,” &c. (Annals, vol. i. p. 237.) Strype was, perhaps, misled the more readily because the person slandered was himself a Frenchman. § There seems to have been some little forgetfulness on this point about the old man, as the two entries do not perfectly agree. On the 16th May, 1554, he was fifty-six (p. 63); and on the 20th May, 1562, he was sixty-six (p. 283). || P. 153.