The Verneys, by Adrian Tinniswood

It is notoriously difficult to write the history of ordinary people, to find out what it was like to live in those days. Occasionally, a fabulous trove of personal writings survives, and makes it possible to know a man, a woman, their children, and to feel about them as we might about personalities who died last weekend.

The letters of the Verneys allow us the privilege of getting to know a 17th-century family. There are more than 30,000, hoarded by the head of the family, Sir Ralph, and by his son John. Discovered in a dusty attic in 1827, the Verney letters have become a staple of 17th-century social history. But to regard the Verneys as typical of their class slights their individuality. They were a normal family in their concern for property, eagerness to get on at court, and ambition for their children. But as Adrian Tinniswood shows in this vivid and exciting account of their mixed fortunes, they had a strain of extreme eccentricity they sought to conceal.

Tinniswood's first example of Verney oddity is unforgettable: Sir Francis Verney abandoned his wife in 1608 to run off to Morocco, where he became a convert to Islam and a Barbary pirate. His family were horrified; when he died they received his turban and slippers with a sigh of relief. Later, Restoration Verneys were shamed by Cousin Dick, who became a highwayman.

More than one Verney daughter eloped with an unsuitable man. Other Verneys were caught up in the gambling frenzy that shook Stuart England. They were subject to melancholy; Edmund refused to put on his armour before the Civil War battle of Edgehill, perhaps hoping for death, which duly found him. His son Ralph, this book's main character, increased his father's despair by declaring for Parliament, and found himself in exile in France, where he too grew gloomy. Part of his depression might have been caused by the impact his stand had on the family fortunes; his estates were sequestered because he was suspected of royalism, and his sisters made disastrous marriages.

Fascinating behind-the-arras glimpses of great persons and greater events are one of the book's chief attractions; huge canvases of war, politics and social history are reduced to enjoyable human terms. Events become important to us because they are important to the Verneys we have come to know and like.

Edmund's view of the ill-fated Spanish marriage negotiations bring delicious details to light; jolted and bruised by the irregular roads, Edmund's discomfort is a new explanation of English lack of enthusiasm for more dealings with Spain. We see with Edmund the cruel dilemma of the Bishops' Wars and Civil War; loyal to his king, but anxious about the need to protect true Protestant religion, his social position and religious views pull him in different directions.

Despite Tinniswood's care, the Verney habit of calling sons Edmund or Ralph and then marrying women called Mary can confuse, but that draws our attention to the way the family stressed continuity rather than disruption. The overlap of names also allows for some poignant contrasts. The Mary who married Sir Ralph was amply possessed of that key Jane Austen virtue, good sense. She put all her wit and charm at the service of her unlucky husband. Ralph's estates were sequestered because it was impossible to forget his relatives' royalist allegiances. By dogged perseverance, Mary managed to get the sequestration limited, preserving the Buckinghamshire manor from which the family drew its gentry identity. She did this despite the loss of beloved children and in her husband's absence: a strong woman, whose story compels respect.

Her polar opposite is the Mary Verney of the later 17th century, an heiress who fell wildly in love with the Edmund Verney of the Restoration. He never returned her passion, but his father saw her pecuniary advantages, and arranged a fateful match. Within months of the wedding, Mary was behaving extremely oddly, cuddling up with scissors and knives in bed. Tinniswood suggests that she simply wasn't up to the job of marriage to a Verney. He is keen to dismiss any idea that her mental illness was a protest against circumstances. It seems to have begun when she suspected her husband of adultery, a suspicion only too well-founded.

Mary's fits of embarrassing laughter protest against the creed of dignified silence enjoined upon betrayed wives. Whatever Mary intended, her loud laughter was experienced as aggressive and frightening. Her husband and father-in-law, intimidated by the inescapable sound of her suffering, had her bled under the tongue, a practice which suggests a half-conscious wish to silence her noise-making, though one in keeping with the medical ideas of the day.

The rich and vivid characters of the Verneys make history not only painless but positively pleasurable. This is a welcome return to exactly the kind of history that has always captivated the general reader.

Diane Purkiss's 'The English Civil War: a people's history' is published by HarperPerennial

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