The Insecure World of Oliver Heywood
The English seventeenth century was an Age of Anxiety; Iris Macfarlane describes how Oliver Heywood and other devout spirits sought refuge in religious faith.
‘18 yeares civil warres in England, besides many dreadfull sea fights, the crown or command of England changed 8 times, Episcopacy laid aside 14 yeares, London burnt by papists, and more stately built again, Germany Wasted 300 miles, 200000 protestants murdered by papists in Ireland, this town thrice stormed once taken and plundred.’
Thus Oliver Heywood catalogues the uncertainties and catastrophes that surrounded him. He was a great cataloguer. His little black books of autobiography and speculation, his anecdote and event books and diaries and memoranda, are proof of his obsessional need to record everything, from lofty moments with his Lord to his own weight and his wife’s.
They form an invaluable picture of the existence and thoughts of a seventeenth-century Non-Conformist minister, living through times as disturbed as any in our history. Heywood emerges from his diaries as a fearful and guilt-ridden man. ‘I am afraid to fall into sin again (he admits), afraid to goe out of my study into the world, into company, imployment, I find little strength, I am weary of the world, weary of my sinful heart...’
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