Revolution Remembered: Seditious Memories after the British Civil Wars, by Edward Legon

Historiography, once confined to the study of historians’ own writings, is now notably broader in scope. The public reception and subjective assimilation of such writings is now very much on the agenda. In addition, “memory studies” have become well established. Edward Legon’s monograph belongs in this category and follows in the footsteps of earlier pioneers such as Matthew Neufeld.

Densely detailed, Legon’s study is nonetheless underpinned with theory. Works such as Barbara Misztal’s Theories of Social Remembering (2005) are directly drawn on. Clear, though unobtrusive, echoes of Michel Foucault and Karl Mannheim can be heard. Although it focuses on late-17th-century Britain, useful comparisons are made with earlier publications on memories of the Holocaust and of political struggles in Ireland and Spain. This is a well-rounded, methodologically sophisticated account of its subject.

In charting the post-1660 landscape of seditious memory of the mid-17th-century civil wars and republic in its political, social and cultural dimensions Legon takes issue with historians such as David Cressy and Tim Harris who have tended to dismiss such outpourings of memory as little more than alehouse chatter. By contrast, Christopher Hill, rather out of fashion these days, is applauded here and given space for the many probing insights he offered, especially in his book The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries (1985).

This author’s survey goes far beyond print culture and by using local sources, especially justice of the peaces’ court hearings, brings the long forgotten or silenced views of ordinary men and women into prominence. The cast list is not the familiar competing Royalist and Parliamentarian, Tory and Whig historians of the 1640s to 1680s but a miscellaneous assortment of plebeian losers whose hoped-for radical revolution had failed. Here we find humble box-makers, carpenters, fullers, haberdashers, knife-makers, millwrights, rope-makers and wire-drawers, and the opinions they expressed or were alleged to have uttered.

Resisting attempted governmental control and censorship of memory by being actively seditious or merely nostalgic for the days of the New Model Army and Oliver Cromwell, these people are located in their communities of memory and in the processes by which memories were shared and transmitted across generations. Remembering the past helped them to cope with the unwanted realities of their present and to project a more hopeful future. Open resistance or indifference to the days set aside for the national commemoration of the execution of King Charles I (30 January) and the restoration of Charles II (29 May) are carefully examined, as are the contrasts between Scottish, Irish and English seditious memories. Reference is made to the shadowy Calves Head Clubs and Green Ribbon Club which celebrated Parliamentarian victory and Charles I’s execution.

Revolution Remembered, a re-working of the author’s PhD thesis, is thoroughly researched, clearly structured and well argued. A university lecturer in heritage management, Legon has a good eye for the telling detail and quotation, and shows skill in marshalling his many examples. Here and there, however, proofreading has been rather slipshod. “The University of Yale” makes a very odd appearance. Occasionally the book also relies on the first rather than the latest, updated, edition of a secondary source. Such quibbles apart, it can be welcomed as a valuable and distinctively original contribution to its field.

R.C. Richardson, emeritus professor of history at the University of Winchester, is the author of many books, including The Debate on the English Revolution (3^rd edition, 2000).

Revolution Remembered: Seditious Memories after the British Civil Wars
By Edward Legon
Manchester University Press, 244pp, £80.00
ISBN 9781526124654
Published 25 February 2019