The English Revolution and its Patriotic Exiles
Despite the plethora of literature that has been published on the English Revolution and Restoration over the years, the topic of exile during this most exciting period of British history remains an understudied area. There is still much unseen primary source material to be uncovered in European and North American archives and plenty of gaps in knowledge to be filled. With Writings of Exile in the English Revolution and Restoration Philip Major has taken the plunge and produced a fascinating yet somewhat disjointed book.
Tackling Edward Hyde as the ‘Case Study of a Royalist Exile’ the first chapter engages with ‘many of the key corollaries of dislocation and dispossession with which royalist exiles are habitually preoccupied’, including ‘the loss and reassertion of identity; displays of stoicism, patriotism, friendship and nostalgia’ and the ‘intense debate on the discernment of divine providence’. These are accessed through ‘a close reading of Hyde’s Contemplations and Reflections on the Psalms of David’ (27) begun during his first exile on Scilly, Jersey and elsewhere during the 1640s and 50s and completed during his second exile in Montpellier in the late 1660s and 70s.
Chapter 2 on ‘Ceremony and Grief in the Royalist Exile’ explores the reaction of royalists ‘to the death of fellow exiles, as well as friends and family left behind in England’ (67). Major highlights the extent to which the use of the Book of Common Prayer in burial rituals as well as other Episcopalian traditions gave displaced royalists a shared sense of identity, while deaths within the exile community also enhanced Prince Charles’s public role and helped to revive the patriarchal image of King Charles I, which after the regicide was transferred to his son.
Chapter 3 deals with ‘Royalist Internal Exile’, primarily focusing on the banishment of royalists from London and their confinement to the countryside where focus on friendship networks and shared value systems and traditions resonated with issues pertinent to external exiles.
In his final chapter, Major then turns to the regicide ‘William Goffe in New England’ after the Restoration, showing that some of the key themes of exile such as ‘the choice of the place of refuge; the symbolism of the journey into exile; the critical importance of correspondence; the influential, sustaining role of Christian … belief; … and the attitudes of the exile towards the homeland from which he has been displaced’ (139) were similar to those we find in Hyde. Intriguingly, Major also observes that we find parallels between Goffe’s and Hyde’s use of the Psalms and other Biblical texts in their exile writings revealing their shared Protestant experience. (more…)
The Archive Closes for Lunch
If you want to do research in Switzerland, you better learn to get up early. I always thought I was an early riser, but compared to the average Swiss person I’m clearly a sleepy head. Arriving at the Berne State Archive just after 8am on a Tuesday morning, I found that most of the other readers were already there. Like me, they probably wanted to make the most of their working day as the archive closes again at 5pm, and of course for lunch. Between 11.45 and 11.50am a bell announces that you should leave the reading room, which feels a bit like an emergency evacuation every time, not least because you are always in the middle of something or other. You’re not allowed back in before 1pm. Healthy meal times and breaks for weary academics are enforced with Swiss precision.
Apart from that, the Swiss are pretty relaxed, it seems. At the Berne State Archive, most readers seem to know each other. You can leave your laptop and digital camera in the reading room over lunch, and nobody is going to take them. The archivists bring the material you order to your desk. They know who you are, and if not, it’s easy to work out. On most days I’m the only female in the reading room, I’m one of their younger readers too, and one of the few interested in Anglo-Swiss links in the seventeenth century. (more…)
Elizabeth Ludlow: The Exile’s Wife
As I am doing my research on the English republican exiles in Europe, I notice more and more what an important role was played by their wives. In particular the regicide Edmund Ludlow (1617-92), who fled to Switzerland after the Restoration of Charles II, on many occasions relied on the help of his wife Elizabeth (c 1630-1702). Throughout his flight and exile she remained his close companion, trusted advisor and friend, as might be expected from a good Puritan wife. But she was also much more than that. Elizabeth Ludlow was well-connected in political circles in her own right and served as a mediator, messenger and organiser behind the scenes.
Elizabeth's husband, the regicide Edmund Ludlow
When Charles Stuart issued his proclamation calling on all the King’s judges to surrender themselves to him, Edmund records in his memoirs that his ‘deare wife’ went ‘to informe herself, from knowing friends, what they would advise me to doe in this case.’ Among other things, Elizabeth went to see the Speaker of the Convention, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, to discuss Edmund’s case with him and to obtain a pass for her husband, so he would not be seized on the way to his surrender.
The wives of contemporary political figures also formed their own networks, discussing political issues in the absence of their husbands. Edmund Ludlow recorded, for instance, that he had little hope of a pardon from the King because the wife of his fellow republican Sir Henry Vane had informed Elizabeth ‘that she was assured [General George] Monke’s wife had sayd she would seeke to the King, upon her knees, that Sir Henry Vane, Major Generall [John] Lambert and myself should be hanged.’
When Ludlow has to hide from the authorities, Elizabeth goes to live with him at a friend’s house, and when he finally decides to go abroad to escape from the claws of the government, they settle the affairs of his estate together, before she accompanies him from his hiding place to Southwark, where a horse for his flight is waiting for him.
While Ludlow managed to escape via France to Geneva, Lausanne and finally Vevey in Switzerland, it was Elizabeth who looked after his affairs in England and provided him with money and news from home, before joining him in exile in 1663. Edmund’s memoirs are full of love and praise for his ‘deare wife’, and their marriage was one of mutual respect. They stayed together until Edmund’s death in 1692.
Quotes from: Edmund Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch Tower. Part Five: 1660-1662, ed. A. B. Worden, Camden Fourth Series, 21 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978).
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