ABSTRACT
For a valuable comparative anthology, see Ralph Houlbrooke, English Family Life, 1576-1716 (Oxford, 1988). The diary (1663-74) of Roger Lowe (d. 1679), shopkeeper and mercer in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire, arguably stands most comparison with Harrold’s: see W.L. Sachse (ed.), The Diary of Roger Lowe (New Haven, 1938). Lowe too recorded aspects of courtship, socialising, drinking and commercial endeavours, including spiritual sensibility. Other diaries to bear contemporary or geographical comparison with Harrold’s include the Nonconformist Revd James Clegg (1679-1755) of Chapel en le Frith, Derbyshire. A contemporary of Harrold’s, Clegg kept his diary (albeit not started until 1728) to record his spiritual resolutions and to detail his professional life and medical observations. He was a regular visitor to Manchester and patronised the reading rooms of the son of the publisher John Whitworth, with whom Harrold did much business: see Vanessa S. Doe (ed.), The Diary of James Clegg of Chapel en le Frith 1708-1755 (Matlock, 1978), vol. 1 [1708-36]. The most notable other published contemporary diarists of the north-west region include: Joseph Ryder (1695-1768) of Leeds, clothier: see Margaret C. Jacob and Matthew Kadane, ‘Missing, now found in the eighteenth century: Weber’s Protestant capitalist’, American Historical Review (2003), in which it is argued that Ryder exemplified many of the characteristics of the protestant capitalist as suggested by Max Weber. A chronological near-contemporary of Harrold’s, and also from a northern industrialising textile town, comparisons probably end there. While both were profoundly religious and wrote to record their spiritual frailties, expectations and aspirations, Ryder was rather the more pious in his daily conduct.
