A database of several hundred historical descriptions and references to London's sounds. They're drawn mainly from primary sources such as autobiographies, diaries and statutes, as well as novels written around the times they depict.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Religious > Church sermons
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1664
Page/volume number: 25 March 1664
’ It was the worst sermon I ever heard him make,
I must confess; and yet it was good’
The Doctor preached upon the thirty-first of Jeremy, and the twenty-first and twenty-second verses, about a woman compassing a man; meaning the Virgin conceiving and bearing our Saviour. It was the worst sermon I ever heard him make, I must confess; and yet it was good, and in two places very bitter, advising the King to do as the Emperor Severus did, to hang up a Presbyter John (a short coat and a long gowne interchangeably) in all the Courts of England. But the story of Severus was pretty, that he hanged up forty senators before the Senate house, and then made a speech presently to the Senate in praise of his owne lenity; and then decreed that never any senator after that time should suffer in the same manner without consent of the Senate: which he compared to the proceeding of the Long Parliament against my Lord Strafford. He said the greatest part of the lay magistrates in England were Puritans, and would not do justice; and the Bishopps, their powers were so taken away and lessened, that they could not exercise the power they ought. He told the King and the ladies plainly, speaking of death and of the skulls and bones of dead men and women, how there is no difference; that nobody could tell that of the great Marius or Alexander from a pyoneer; nor, for all the pains the ladies take with their faces, he that should look in a charnels-house could not distinguish which was Cleopatra's, or fair Rosamond's, or Jane Shoare's.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Religious > Church sermons
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1662
Page/volume number: 19 January 1662
‘Very bold words’ at a church sermon
To church in the morning, where Mr. Mills preached upon Christ's being offered up for our sins, and there proving the equity with what justice God would lay our sins upon his Son, he did make such a sermon (among other things pleading, from God's universal sovereignty over all his creatures, the power he has of commanding what he would of his Son by the same rule as that he might have made us all, and the whole world from the beginning to have been in hell, arguing from the power the potter has over his clay), that I could have wished he had let it alone; and speaking again, the Father is now so satisfied by our security for our debt, that we might say at the last day as many of us as have interest in Christ's death: Lord, we owe thee nothing, our debt is paid. We are not beholden to, thee for anything, for thy debt is paid to thee to the full; which methinks were very bold words.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Religious > Church and other indoor sermons
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1660
Page/volume number: November
Pepys hears the Book of Common Prayer reintroduced in church
In the morn to our own church, where Mr. Mills did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer, by saying "Glory be to the Father, &c." after he had read the two psalms; but the people had been so little used to it, that they could not tell what to answer. This declaration of the King's do give the Presbyterians some satisfaction, and a pretence to read the Common Prayer, which they would not do before because of their former preaching against it.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Religious > Indoor sermons
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1660
Page/volume number: September 1660
‘Before sermon I laughed at the reader’
She went with Mr. Child to Whitehall chapel and Mr. Pierce with me to the Abbey, where I expected to hear Mr. Baxter or Mr. Rowe preach their farewell sermon, and in Mr. Symons's pew I sat and heard Mr. Rowe. Before sermon I laughed at the reader, who in his prayer desires of God that He would imprint his word on the thumbs of our right hands and on the right great toes of our right feet. In the midst of the sermon some plaster fell from the top of the Abbey, that made me and all the rest in our pew afeard, and I wished myself out.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Religious > Church and other indoor sermons
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1660
Page/volume number: February 1660
‘A stranger, an old man, preached a good honest sermon’
In the morning to Mr. Gunning, where a stranger, an old man, preached a good honest sermon upon "What manner of love is this that we should be called the sons of God." [. . .] To their church in the afternoon, and in Mrs. Turner's pew my wife took up a good black hood and kept it. A stranger preached a poor sermon, and so read over the whole book of the story of Tobit.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Religious > Church and other indoor sermons
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1660
Page/volume number: January 1660
‘A lazy poor sermon’
I went in the morning to Mr. Messum's, where I met with W. Thurburn and sat with him in his pew. A very eloquent sermon about the duty of all to give good example in our lives and conversation, which I fear he himself was most guilty of not doing. [. . .] To church in the afternoon to Mr. Herring, where a lazy poor sermon.
[. . .]
In the morning I went to Mr. Gunning's, where he made an excellent sermon upon the 2d of the Galatians, about the difference that fell between St. Paul and St. Peter (the feast day of St. Paul being a day or two ago), whereby he did prove, that, contrary to the doctrine of the Roman Church, St. Paul did never own any dependance, or that he was inferior to St. Peter, but that they were equal, only one a particular charge of preaching to the Jews, and the other to the Gentiles.