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Archiver > ESSEX-UK > 2004-01 > 1073311654


From: ElouiseMSF <>
Subject: Re: The Restoration
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 14:07:34 +0000 (GMT)
In-Reply-To: <BC1E3DEF.744D%r.s.aylett@salford.ac.uk>


I stand corrected. I wasn't expecting a full-scale
history lesson back and was only pointing out that
that period wasn't actually the Restoration. My
comment about the upper classes is in my opinion, what
you said in a nutshell - albeit a little misleading.

I won't bother next time!

Regards
El

--- Ruth Aylett <> wrote: >
on 4/1/04 3:03 pm, ElouiseMSF at
> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I don't wish to split hairs (well ok maybe I do)
> but
> > the period between 1649 and 1660 was actually
> known as
> > the Interregnum. The Restoration refers to Charles
> II
> > returning to the throne and occurred after 1660.
> >
> > There are often lapsed records and missing
> official
> > documents between 1649 and 1660 as there wasn't a
> > 'proper' ruler and the upper classes (ie the
> record
> > keepers) didn't recognise Cromwell as their King.
> >
>
> Well, splitting a few more hairs, the reasons for
> missing records in this
> period have little to do with the upper classes not
> recognising Cromwell as
> their king.
>
> As a matter of fact, the 'upper classes' initially
> split between King and
> Parliament since a large chunk of them were unhappy
> about the way parliament
> had been treated - remember the House of Lords _was_
> the upper classes.
> Without such a split there couldn't have been a full
> scale civil war.
> Cromwell become Protector in 1653 for the five years
> until his death in
> 1658, so this was only a small part of the whole
> Interregnum (1642-1660). In
> any case, records were generated by a large number
> of official bodies and
> actually written by professional clerks.
>
> Parish registers were severely disrupted, but this
> had to do with the
> turmoil in the Church I mentioned before, along with
> the abolition of
> religious marriages in favour of civil ones. These
> were carried out in
> larger towns by a local magistrate - thus if you
> look at the Kelvedon PR in
> the 1650s you will see marriages carried out for
> much of the surrounding
> area by Jeremy Aylett, a local JP. Many PRs have
> little or nothing recorded
> between 1642 and 1660.
>
> Of course when people were actually fighting in the
> 1640s it was harder to
> keep records, and some may have been lost in sieges
> etc (quite a lot of
> Colchester was flattened in 1648) but there are
> whole new sources as a
> result of the reorganisation of the county
> administrations and the
> sequestration of property from supporters of the
> king. And some things just
> seemed to carry on regardless for most of the period
> - for example legal
> cases in Chancery.
>
> There was also a huge amount of pamphleteering etc -
> everything was shaken
> up in a big way and people who might not usually
> have been visible in
> history joined in enthusiastically. Birth became
> temporarily less important
> than it had been and competence more important than
> it had been, while
> people who'd gone into the army experienced wider
> horizons and altogether
> different activity from the usual run of things. So
> there is a vast amount
> of interesting stuff..
>
> Ruth
> ----
>
> --
> Ruth Aylett Professor of Intelligent
> Virtual Environments
> Centre for Virtual Environments, Business House,
> University of Salford
> Salford, M5 4WT, UK Tel: 44-161-295 2912
> Fax: 44-161-295-2925
> http://www.nicve.salford.ac.uk/ruth/
> "Life is beautiful"
>

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