6 Diligent enquiries and perfect accounts
-
Ann Hughes
Abstract
In 1650, anticipating a Scottish invasion, a Herefordshire parliamentarian published a pamphlet enumerating the ‘plunderings, losses and sufferings’ in the county at the hands of the Scottish army’ that had besieged the city of Hereford in 1645. The pamphlet, an abstract of 160 parish accounts of losses, might be regarded as a strategic deployment of information efficiently gathered by central authority from the localities. Clearly, the increased scope, and energy of central government in early modern England can be demonstrated through the soliciting of information from the localities as well as through its transmission, and Parliament’s civil war regime was no exception, albeit in more contested circumstances. But the drawing up accounts of civil war losses does not demonstrate straightforwardly successful enforcement or willing compliance. Accounting reveals instead the strength of local agency, not through disobedience but in responses that subverted central priorities. It was a form of political communication that used manuscript and print to reflect on local experience, and to conduct intra-parliamentarian disputes, while also prompting broader reflections on the public service and the burdens of war, generating political agendas that were national in scope but certainly not set by central authority.
Abstract
In 1650, anticipating a Scottish invasion, a Herefordshire parliamentarian published a pamphlet enumerating the ‘plunderings, losses and sufferings’ in the county at the hands of the Scottish army’ that had besieged the city of Hereford in 1645. The pamphlet, an abstract of 160 parish accounts of losses, might be regarded as a strategic deployment of information efficiently gathered by central authority from the localities. Clearly, the increased scope, and energy of central government in early modern England can be demonstrated through the soliciting of information from the localities as well as through its transmission, and Parliament’s civil war regime was no exception, albeit in more contested circumstances. But the drawing up accounts of civil war losses does not demonstrate straightforwardly successful enforcement or willing compliance. Accounting reveals instead the strength of local agency, not through disobedience but in responses that subverted central priorities. It was a form of political communication that used manuscript and print to reflect on local experience, and to conduct intra-parliamentarian disputes, while also prompting broader reflections on the public service and the burdens of war, generating political agendas that were national in scope but certainly not set by central authority.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Notes on contributors x
- Abbreviations and conventions xii
- 1 Introduction 1
- 2 ‘A dog, a butcher, and a puritan’ 22
- 3 The Lord Admiral, the Parliament-men and the narrow seas, 1625–27 44
- 4 Space, place and Laudianism in early Stuart Ipswich 66
- 5 ‘Written according to my usual way’ 94
- 6 Diligent enquiries and perfect accounts 116
- 7 Provincial ‘Levellers’ and the coming of the regicide in the south-west 133
- 8 Sovereignty by the book 157
- 9 Local expertise in hostile territory 174
- 10 News and the personal letter, or the news education of Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 1660–71 193
- 11 The news out of Newgate after the 1715 Jacobite rebellion 209
- Index 229
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Notes on contributors x
- Abbreviations and conventions xii
- 1 Introduction 1
- 2 ‘A dog, a butcher, and a puritan’ 22
- 3 The Lord Admiral, the Parliament-men and the narrow seas, 1625–27 44
- 4 Space, place and Laudianism in early Stuart Ipswich 66
- 5 ‘Written according to my usual way’ 94
- 6 Diligent enquiries and perfect accounts 116
- 7 Provincial ‘Levellers’ and the coming of the regicide in the south-west 133
- 8 Sovereignty by the book 157
- 9 Local expertise in hostile territory 174
- 10 News and the personal letter, or the news education of Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon, 1660–71 193
- 11 The news out of Newgate after the 1715 Jacobite rebellion 209
- Index 229
