William Thomas’s Notebook: A Window on Seventeenth-Century Religion and Politics

William Thomas entered Brasenose College, Oxford, as an undergraduate in 1609 and, while there, possessed at least one small notebook in which he recorded sermons from hearing. After ordination in 1617, and as a committed Puritan, Thomas was twice ejected from his living at Ubley in Somerset, first in 1634, then in 1662 after the Restoration. In the period of the Civil War, he used the notebook to record excerpts from printed religious and political tracts. Now in private hands in New Zealand, this notebook adds to our understanding of the culture of sermon-notation, and to the life of Thomas himself, known otherwise through his published works and Somerset ecclesiastical records.