In two of the most recent book-length examinations of Tudor and Early Stuart English antiquarianism, both Jan Broadway and Angus Vine close their studies with the example of Thomas Browne, in particular focusing upon his Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall (1658) and ‘Concerning some urnes found in Brampton-field in Norfolk, Anno 1667’.1 These two works, we are told, are
exemplary of an intellectual shift in antiquarianism taking place around the time of the Restoration. Browne is situated by both Broadway and Vine ‘at the crossroads between the study-bound scholar… and the new experimental natural scientists’.2 The intellectual changes described are, in short, a more sceptical
attitude to textual sources, increased use of observational practices, and an intention to report on specific occurrences rather than to imaginatively recreate the past.3 As will be discussed in later chapters, this summation of intellectual
change has been an orthodox position in intellectual history since the 1980s and, while perhaps over-simplistic, has much to commend it and has led to a plethora of productive research.4
1 Thomas Browne, 'Concerning some Urnes Found in Brampton Feild in Norfolk 1667', in
Geoffrey Keynes (ed.), The Works of Sir Thomas Browne (London, 1964); Thomas Browne, 'Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall', in Geoffrey Keynes (ed.), The Works of Sir Thomas Browne (London, 1964).
2 Broadway, 'No historie so meete', p. 133.
3 Angus Edmund Vine, In defiance of time : antiquarian writing in early modern England
(Oxford, 2010), pp. 204-206; Broadway, 'No historie so meete', pp. 232-235.
However, the focus of Broadway and Vine was upon the socio-cultural position of antiquaries and other local historians, rather than their intellectual background and thought. This chapter, therefore, discusses the socio-cultural place of the ‘new’ antiquary, the county natural historian, in the period to 1720. I will ask whether, despite their natural historical interests, new scientific practices and a more empirical than imaginative mind-set, the county natural historians were still occupying the same socio-cultural space as their antiquarian predecessors. Or, can we map a change in their social and cultural roles alongside the intellectual content of their works, as compared to predecessors? In doing so, it seeks to move Broadway and Vine’s work forward in time, encompassing the next two generations of local historians. Therefore, a brief summation of both Broadway and Vine’s principal arguments is necessary.
Broadway’s central interest and achievement in ‘No historie so meete’ was to demonstrate the socio-cultural position of local historians through the Tudor and Early Stuart period, and the relationship between this position and the style of the work produced. She shows that many local historians were members of a community centred around the regional gentry, and that those who were not members per se felt compelled (or at least encouraged) to share gentrified interests. Hence, while recognising that the county community was not always a unified one, the focus of most local antiquarian work was upon the common heritage and shared factors which brought a community together. Status and family connections, then, take their position alongside piety and civil obedience in being the shared values behind, and didactically put forward through, local
history.5 Alongside this inherently localised focus, Broadway examines the role of
national connectors, or nodes, in the development of antiquarian writing, particularly focusing upon the use of connections forged between gentlemen from different regions through the Inns of Court, the College of Arms and the short-lived (and little-recorded) Society of Antiquaries.6 I would ask whether we
see any significant changes in this picture through to the early eighteenth century: as I will show, family and local concerns remained at the heart of antiquarian study as undertaken through the county natural history, and while the institutions connecting regional antiquaries developed, most notably with the emergence of the Royal Society from 1660, their role as nodal points did not.
Vine, focusing upon the national rather than regional picture, traces the aims and intentions of antiquarians through the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries within the wider context of memorial culture. Vine argues, in his work In Defiance of Time, as the title suggests, that pre-Civil War antiquaries and chorographers shared the humanist aim of restoring and/or resurrecting the past, using the educated imagination to piece together evidence in order to make it live again for the reader. He traces the disappointment antiquaries felt when they were unable to complete their task due to a lack of evidence, and the impetus given to their endeavour by events, especially the dissolution of the monasteries. The first to undertake research into the natural history of a county, John Aubrey, holds a transitional position in this schema: he appears to be one of
5 Broadway, 'No historie so meete', pp. 7-9, 232-235. 6 Ibid., pp. 57-76.
the last figures of the ‘old’ generation, before his ‘new’ successors, including county natural historians Charles Leigh and Robert Plot, alongside naturalist Edward Lhwyd.7 I will demonstrate, that despite the shift Vine describes, county
natural historians did share a keen interest in restoring or at least preserving the past. Their intentions had, it will be shown, developed markedly from those of their predecessors, but this was an evolutionary progression rather than a generational shift.
It is worth noting at this point that I am by no means the first to consider the continuities in local and antiquarian study through the seventeenth century. Both Graham Parry in his The Trophies of Time (1995) and Samuel Mendyk in his Speculum Britanniae (1989)are exemplary here, documenting the intellectual change while focusing upon antiquarian research in the seventeenth century.8 Parry and Mendyk’s work belongs to a tradition of intellectual history
of history which can be traced back to Douglas’ seminal English Scholars (1939).9
Indeed it is, I would suggest, their intellectual interests which encourage them to span either side of the 1660 ‘divide’, to show the changes which occurred in this revolutionary period. The work of Daniel Woolf is perhaps the best example of
7 This comes across particularly clearly within Hunter, John Aubrey. Also see Vine, In defiance of time, pp. 5, 21, 202; Swann, Curiosities and Texts, pp. 116-117; Mendyk,
'Speculum Britanniae', pp. 170-184.
8 Graham Parry, The trophies of time : English antiquarians of the seventeenth century
(Oxford, 1995); Mendyk, 'Speculum Britanniae'.
9 Among which particularly noteworthy works include: Joseph M. Levine, Humanism and history : origins of modern English historiography (Ithaca, 1987); Joseph M. Levine, The autonomy of history : truth and method from Erasmus to Gibbon (Chicago, 1999); Ferguson, Clio unbound : perception of the social and cultural past in Renaissance England; F.J. Levy, Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, 1967); David C. Douglas,
more recent historiography on historical studies written in the seventeenth century. His work is strongly influenced by cultural history and provides a nuanced understanding of the connections between social and intellectual change, making an important contribution to our understanding of memorial culture and the perception of the past. Importantly, he has convincingly argued that historical interest and what he terms a ‘historical culture’ spread far wider than those involved in formal historiography.10 In many ways his work, focusing
on wider shifts regarding society’s relationship with the past, provides the context for the more narrowly-focused work of Broadway and Vine.
The argument I will put forward is that the socio-cultural predecessors of the later Stuart county natural historians were neither naturalists nor historians, in contemporary parlance; they were antiquaries and chorographers. And, they drew extensively in their work on pre-Restoration antiquarian authors, as well as sharing many of the same cultural inspirations. For instance, John Aubrey’s initial inspiration for local history came from the destruction wrought by the Civil War, mirroring the effect of the dissolution of the monasteries on antiquaries a century earlier. This destruction led to Aubrey’s desire to record the world around him both for his own memory and, in an impulse strongly driven by the success of previous record-keepers, for posterity. Antiquaries had
10 D. R. Woolf, 'The Image of the Antiquary in Seventeenth-Century England', in S. Pearce
(ed.), Visions of Antiquity: the Society of Antiquaries of London 1707-2007 (London, 2007); Woolf, The social circulation of the past; D. R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000); D. R. Woolf, 'The Dawn of the Artifact: The Antiquarian Impulse in England, 1500-1730', Studies in Medievalism no. 4 (1992); Woolf, 'Memory and Historical Culture in Early Modern England'; D. R. Woolf, 'Erudition and the Idea of History in Renaissance England', Renaissance Quarterly 40 no. 1 (1987).
long been interested in both the written word (for example court records, family trees) and objects (for example Roman coins, church buildings); Aubrey was initially no different. It was with the changing socio-cultural and political setting following the Restoration, and particularly the emergence of the Royal Society, that this interest morphed into a more naturalistic focus.
Aubrey, along with Robert Plot, was heavily involved in the Royal Society and other central intellectual networks of the day; that is to say that the county natural historians participated in the intellectual changes which both Broadway and Vine argue mark the end of “early modern antiquarianism”. Inspired by the examples of Aubrey and Plot, the next generation of county natural historians were more provincial: to give one example of how this manifested itself they were members of the Royal Society, but instead of attending meetings contributed by correspondence. At the same time they demonstrate a continuation of the cultural desire to “know” and record one’s locality, illustrated by the continued existence of networks of interested gentry who were able and willing to financially support research by county natural historians such as Morton and Leigh into their locales.
The chapter is organised in a chronological fashion, with the first section exploring the motivation behind county natural history through a discussion of projects of local history through Tudor and Early Stuart England. This section draws heavily upon the work by Jan Broadway and Angus Vine discussed above. Following sections, based on more extensive primary research, take us through local history during the Civil War, Restoration period, and after the Revolution of
1688. Each section, as well as offering a narrative of local history centred upon the county natural historian, also offers commentary on the extent to which local history as a social practice had changed since the period investigated by Broadway and Vine. The conclusion to the chapter bridges the period, arguing that while the events of the Civil War, Restoration and Revolution did each provide break points in certain types of local history, the discipline as a whole continued to occupy a similar socio-cultural space, and continued to be undertaken by a similar “sort” of individual.