"The Parish of Myddle in 1701 was as full of life, gossip, intrigues, births, marriages, and deaths as any other small community in Stuart England. What made Myddle different was that one of its parishioners, Richard Gough, decided to write down the family history of the occupants of each pew in the church. And, as he was gifted with a remarkable ear for anecdote, a sharp eye for foible and a pithy pen for a telling phrase, his history, brimming over with a delighted curiosity and enjoyment, gives us a quite incredible glimpse into the seventeenth-century family and parish, and into the characters of the men and women who seem to live and breathe on his pages today as they did then."--Back cover.