Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com
from L&M Companion entry for Sir John Buckworth
[John, kt 1682, (?1622-87)] a neighbor, living in a large house (taxed on 12 hearths) on the n. side of Crutched Friars. He was a prosperous Turkey merchant, and served as Alderman 1683-?6. Pepys had dealings with him in the ’70s about the Mediterranean convoys. In 1662 he married as his second wifer Hester Goodyear (d. 1702)….
Presumably if she was ‘churched’ she had recently given birth to a child. Women, after the fashion of the Jews, were considered ‘unclean’ for a period after childbirth. Page 195 in The Book of Common Prayer provides a form of liturgy - ‘The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth, commonly called The Churching of Women’.We read of Mary’s purification after the birth of Jesus in the Bible in Luke chapter 2 from verse 22.The legal layout is in Leviticus chapter 12.