explores the social and personal psychology of Josselin, making inferences about his "mental world" based on ruminations in the diary.
Josselin began his diary upon his appointment to a vicarage at Earls Colne in Essex. Deprived of a land inheritance by his improvident father, Josselin entered the clergy as a way of making a living. MacFarlane says that he devoted some time to what today would be called a job search. Once he was established in Earls Colne, Josselin appears to have devoted a good deal of time to keeping that job, to going along to get along as it were, in a time of enormous societal dislocation. Until the execution of Charles I he was fairly active in Cromwell's cause. After that he was more moderate in thought and deed. Macfarlane puts the connection between great and individual events in perspective.
These political commotions formed a particularly imp
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