THE HISTORY OF THOMAS ELLWOOD WRITTEN BY HIMSELF




INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY



The life of the simple Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, to whom the pomps and
shows of earth were nowhere so vain as in association with the
spiritual life of man, may serve as companion to another volume in
this Library, the "Life of Wolsey" by George Cavendish, who, as a
gentleman of the great prelate's household, made part of his pomp,
but had heart to love him in his pride and in his fall. "The
History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself," is interesting for
the frankness with which it makes Thomas Ellwood himself known to
us; and again, for the same frank simplicity that brings us nearer
than books usually bring us to a living knowledge of some features
of a bygone time; and yet again, because it helps us a little to
come near to Milton in his daily life. He would be a good novelist
who could invent as pleasant a book as this unaffected record of a
quiet life touched by great influences in eventful times.

Thomas Ellwood, who was born in 1639, in the reign of Charles the
First, carried the story of his life in this book to the year 1683,
when he was forty-four years old. He outlived the days of trouble
here recorded, enjoyed many years of peace, and died, near the end
of Queen Anne's reign, aged 74, on the first of March 1713, in his
house at Hunger Hill, by Amersham. He was eleven years younger than