Reader's Guide

Summary

The text. The text of the Entring Book appears in Volumes II–V, divided as follows. The numbers at the right indicate the pagination of the manuscript volumes.

Volume II The Reign of Charles II Mar. 1677 – Mar. 1685 P1–p457

Volume III The Reign of James II Apr. 1685 – Mar. 1687 P458–q83

Volume IV The Reign of James II Apr. 1687 – Feb. 1689 Q84–q469

Volume v The Reign of William III Feb. 1689 – Apr. 1691 Q470–r241

Although Charles II died on 6 February 1685, Morrice's narrative is such that it is appropriate for the break between Volumes II and III to occur at the coronation of James II in April. Similarly, while William III and Mary II were offered the crown on 12 February 1689, the break between Volumes IV and V occurs later in the month.

Apparatus. Readers of the Entring Book will find supporting information not only in the

footnotes to the text but also in the two companion volumes, I and VI, and they may find it useful to have open beside them Volume I, for the Appendices, Genealogical Tables, and Maps, and Volume VI, for the Biographical Dictionary, Glossary, and Chronology. (The absence of a footnote against the name of an individual may imply that there is an entry in the Biographical Dictionary rather than that nothing is known.) An index volume appears as an independent, supplementary volume subsequent to the publication of this six-volume edition. As an aid to navigating the text of the Entring Book before the appearance of the index, a searchable cd-rom will be found in a sleeve at the back of Volume VI.

Citations. All books cited were published in London unless otherwise stated. In footnotes, the editors’ citations of the Entring Book are usually given using the pagination of the manuscript, the three volumes being Morrice MSS P, Q, and R, rather than to page numbers of this edition. In order to facilitate finding manuscript page numbers, each new page is indicated in bold in square brackets, e.g. [Q345], and tracked in the running headlines (at the inside edge). This way of citing is not ideal, but it has saved many hundreds of cumbersome double citations of the sort, ‘q514–6 ; iv, 368–9’.