Marc Fitch Lecture, 6 July 2009
The 9th annual VCH lecture, sponsored by the Marc Fitch Fund, was held at Birkbeck College on 6th July 2009. Professor John Morrill, FBA, of the University of Cambridge, spoke on ‘The British Revolution in the English Provinces, 1640-9’. Professor Miles Taylor, Director of the Institute of Historical Research, took the chair, and guests included Professor Claire Cross, BALH chairman.
Professor Morrill recalled his days in the 1970s spent working on Cheshire politics for VCH Cheshire II, published in 1979, which he undertook in conjunction with research which appeared in his book Cheshire, 1630-1660: county government and society during the English Revolution published by OUP in 1974. Professor Morrill took the opportunity to reflect on things he had NOT considered important in the 1970s. He argued that an understanding of the local dimension is important in explaining much of the thinking during the Civil War, and he admitted that this was not one he had really considered when he first worked on Cheshire, partly because of the nature of the debates at that time, particularly in respect to the discussion of the county community. He now recognises that local issues played a part in determining how different parts of the country responded to the events of the 1640s, and that proximity to Ireland and Scotland respectively impacted on reactions in Cheshire and the north-east. The Irish dimension, he now believes, made a significant contribution to the general nastiness of the civil war in Cheshire, which he had not previously stressed, while the Scottish threat impacted significantly on the north-east in relation to how the civil war was viewed. By contrast, Essex had quite a different civil war because of its proximity to London, and its remoteness from Ireland and Scotland. He concluded that ‘place matters as much as abstract ideas’ in thinking about the civil war, and that ‘local history has taught us much and it still has much to teach us’.
The lecture was followed by a reception in the Institute of Historical Research.
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the Marc Fitch Fund for their support of our annual lecture and of course their overall support of the VCH.
