Recollection in the Republics: Memories of the British Civil Wars in England, 1649-1659

Description

Following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, England's fledgling republic was faced with a dilemma: which parts of the nation's bloody recent past should be remembered, and how, and which were best consigned to oblivion? Across the country, the state's opponents, local communities, and individual citizens were grappling with many of the same questions, as calls for remembrance vied with the competing goals of reconciliation, security, and the peaceful settlement of the state. Recollection in the Republics provides the first comprehensive study of the ways Britain's Civil Wars were remembered in the decade between the regicide and the restoration. Drawing on a wide-ranging and innovative source base, it places the national authorities' attempts to shape the meaning of the recent past alongside evidence of what the English people - lords and labourers, men and women, veterans and civilians - actually were remembering. Recollection in the Replublics demonstrates that memories of the domestic conflicts were central to the politics and society of England's republican interval, inflecting national and local discourses, complicating and transforming inter-personal relationships, and infusing and forging individual and collective identities. In so doing, it enhances our understanding of the nature of early modern memory and the experience of post-civil war states more broadly. Memory was a multifaceted, dynamic resource, and this book emphasises its fecundity, the manifold meanings it possessed, and the creativity of those who deployed it. Further, by situating 1650s England in relation to other post-conflict societies, both within and beyond early modernity, it points to a consistency in some of the challenges that have confronted post-civil war states across time and space. Cover Recollection in the Republics: Memories of the British Civil Wars in England, 1649–1659 Copyright Dedication Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures List of Abbreviations and Conventions Introduction 1: Republican Recollections 1.1. ‘The author of England’s calamity’: History, Memory, and the Causes of the Civil Wars 1.2. ‘Great Deliverances’: Providence and Civil War Memory 1.3. ‘To propagate their Just odium to all posteritys’: Memories of the Scots 1.4. Remembering—and Forgetting—Civil War Service 1.5. Conclusion 2: Rival Recollections 2.1. Martyrdom and Memory 2.2. Peace and Puritanism: (Re)assigning Responsibility for the Civil Wars 2.3. ‘Toil, treasure, and blood’: The Wars in Radical Rhetoric 2.4. Conclusion 3: Memories in Everyday Discourse 3.1. Reputation and Resistance: Speaking of Civil War Service 3.2. ‘A Malignant in his harte’: Regulation, Remembrance, and the Limits of Reconciliation 3.3. From Edgehill to Execution: Memories of Civil War Events 3.4. Conclusion 4: Places of Memory 4.1. ‘A City Assaulted by Man but saved by God’: Local Commemorations 4.2. ‘An Epitaph of Rubbish’: Description, Destruction, and Memory 4.3. Monuments and Memorials 4.4. Conclusion 5: Narratives of War 5.1. ‘I am engaged to vindicate my Honour’: Self-Fashioning and Forgetting in Military Memoirs 5.2. ‘Stript, plundered, lamed, and imprisoned’: Maimed Soldiers’ Stories 5.3. Women’s Words: The Tales of Parliamentarian War Widows 5.4. Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Manuscripts Pamphlets and Newsbooks Printed Editions Secondary Material Online Sources Index