John Manningham's Diary, written in 1602-3, was first discovered as an anonymous document in 1820 by John Payne Collier, and then in 1846 by Joseph Hunter who determined the authorship. Two main editions have been published-that of John Bruce and William Tite (1868); and the more modern Robert Parker Sorlien (1976). The diary is interesting to scholars in several fields, including daily life, law, politics and drama-particularly Shakespearean studies-because it gives rare insight into the mind of a seventeenth-century law student. John was a golden child, born of generations of noble, gentry and merchant class families. Here, Gillian Ford has investigated Manningham's family horizontally and vertically in order to determine his social class and privileges. The information in this book will be of interest to both Tudor scholars and hobby genealogists as it extends our knowledge about the sixteenth and seventeenth-century gentry network in Britain and the merchant class in Antwerp.