During the 1630s, under the direction of Nicholas Ferrar, members of his family held ‘conversations’ in which nearly every phase of contemporary society was a cause for discussion—and dismay. The first of the two conversations reproduced here reflects the fascination with the retirement of Charles V which permeated a good deal of the thought and literature of the early seventeenth century. The second conversation shows the increasing concern of thoughtful contemporaries with the luxury and selfindulgence which helped prepare the way for Cromwell. The Ferrars were intelligent and outspoken critics of life under the Stuarts, sure in their condemnation of the declining morality of the upper classes, of the licentiousness common to both literature and dress, of the sybaritic luxury of the wealthy, and of the pernicious influence of imports from the New World, especially tobacco. In their defence of the old-fashioned virtues of honesty, modesty, hard work, and simple living they have much to say to our tempestuous times.

What follows is the best attempt that I can make to reproduce the two hitherto unpublished manuscripts at Clare College and in the British Museum. The task of transcribing the originals was considerable. I have been as accurate as I possibly can be, but the number of different scribes—each with his personal idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation—and the fact that the same scribe was by no means consistent in his own practices may open me to the charge of carelessness. In the printing of the manuscript,superior letters have been brought down to the line and theorthography has been expanded and amended where necessary. With these exceptions the text is as exact a transcript as modernmethods of printing can reasonably produce.