The unfortunate Moss family

This is the story of how I depressed myself one day:

The other day I was trying to track down Elizabeth Moss.  The Moss(e) family was connected to William Clarke and Gilbert Mabbott, though the relationship is still unclear to me.  One HMC editor thought that Clarke may have been adopted into the Moss family, though there isn’t enough proof for that kind of assertion.  Certainly, Clarke does receive a letter from someone he calls “Mother Mosse.”

I found that there were a John and Elizabeth Moss who were having children, also named John and Elizabeth, in the later 1640s and early 1650s, this would have made them around the same age as Gilbert and William.  The baptisms were held at St. Margaret’s, the same place that Mabbott would have his children baptized.

My next piece of evidence was a letter (29 October 1650) from Mabbott’s and Clarke’s brother-in-law, Hilliard Kympton, to Clarke.  He said that he was “from my hart sorry for Mr. Moss” and that Elizabeth was “like a woman distracted” and a “miserable wretch.”  He then says the kinds of things that a person says when something terrible had happened.  At this point, I was excited by the mystery, and dug into my materials to see what I could find.

From there I found in an HMC volume two letters, drafted by Clarke, in which Elizabeth was trying to negotiate with the royalists for the release of her husband.  They were dated 1 January 1651.  Okay, so it looks like she was upset because John had been captured by royalists.  It is also clear that Elizabeth and Clarke had been trying to arrange some kind of prisoner transfer, but Cromwell decided that Moss was not worth the trade offered.  Elizabeth then tried to offer money.

I’m still not sure what exactly John Moss did, but it was apparent from the above letters that he was not part of the army, but he was connected to the war effort.  I found in the CSPD that there had been a John Mosse who brought some news to the Committee of Both Houses about the capture of Col. Powell.  At this point, I wonder about this whole family group.  Since I know that Hilliard was also involved with the New Model, it’s clear that there was a whole series of connected families that made their livings as civilian support for the military.  I guess I shouldn’t find that surprising, but I do.

Now I finally find the last piece of the puzzle.  On 25 June 1652, Elizabeth Mosse received £50 from the Council of State, “her husband having lost his life in the service.”  It looks like John was captured by royalists, held for negotiations, and when Clarke and Elizabeth couldn’t convince Cromwell to make a trade and couldn’t put together enough money to make it worthwhile, the royalists executed him.

For some reason, I just keep imagining how painful that must have been.  Can you imagine?  So much anger and pain and guilt.  I don’t know why, I just can’t shake it.  I think it might be because of that letter by Hilliard Kympton.  I just imagine how distraught Elizabeth must have been.  Then, she had the hope of some kind of prisoner exchange. Everything was going to be alright!  Then Cromwell said no, and they didn’t have the resources to pay the ransom.  It’s just awful.

Well, now I’ve gone and depressed myself again.  On a more positive note, Kympton married a Susan Moss, who, I’m guessing, was the offspring of John and Elizabeth.  However, since I know that Kympton remarried once, if not twice, Susan probably didn’t last all that long either.  I still have more looking to do in the parish registers, but at least I’ve figured the broad outlines of the Moss family tragedy.  Now I need a drink.

Forecast is sunny and warm

I am back in comfortable Santa Barbara, CA now.  It is nice to go outside without a scarf.  I should do a long update after having been gone so long, but I am afraid I do not have the time just yet.  I am presenting at PCCBS this weekend and I need to finish up the paper.  It’s mostly done, but it isn’t very polished, and I think it might be a bit confusing.  Work, work, work.

It’s taken from a paper I wrote last year that I will be turning into a chapter of my dissertation.  I am looking at the publication of accounts of Charles I’s trial, and Mabbott’s role in disseminating them.  In doing so, I look at Mabbott’s relationship with two other major newsbook editors: Samuel Pecke and Henry Walker.  I find that Mabbott used his (and the army’s) relationship with Pecke to facilitate the dissemination of the version of the trial published in the Moderate.  The version in the Moderate was in turn extracted from the separate published as the Narrative.  To make a long story short, the New Model organized the publication of that account of the trial, using Mabbott and his connections in London to facilitate it.  At the same time, Mabbott’s rivalry with Walker allowed/forced Walker to publish his own account of the trial, the Notes.  Thus, the episode shows an odd mix of personal, official, and public in the production of the news.  That could be interesting, right?

My work lately has been indicating the extreme importance of Mabbott’s personal relationships throughout his careers (licenser, agent, lobbyist, embezzler, etc.) which grew as government continued to professionalize, and I will probably have more to say on that in the future.  Being a parliamentary clerk opened a lot of doors for him.

I have also found out that Mabbott was a bit of a rake, though a very energetic one.  But I digress.

Random updates

The blog Early Modern History noted that Tanner-Ritchie now has, among others, the early HMC reports for purchase online.  While google books has some of the HMC reports up, it certainly does not have all, and I am seriously considering purchases reports six and seven.

Doing a little digging, I have found out that all the archival material of the Stationers’ Company up to the twentieth century has been microfilmed.  I am curious to see what the Court records have to offer.  The Huntington has copies, so I will have to go check it out.  Only about a dozen libraries in the US have full sets.  I may instead look up a guide and order some reels through ILL, because getting to the Huntington is a bit of a hassle.

The other day I told a friend I couldn’t do anything because I was busy reading about early modern papermaking.  Ever wonder what the hell it is that we do?

 I was at the Huntington for the Charles I conference last weekend.  It was really good.  I don’t have the time to go into it right now, but there were a lot of really interesting papers, such that it is difficult to single out any.  Of course, because of my own proclivities, Jason Peacey’s and Jason McElligot’s were most interesting, but all the papers were well considered and insightful.

I’m working on planning my trip back to the UK and Ireland in two weeks.  Most of the arrangements have already been made, but I’m trying to plan out my archive time as carefully as possible.  I’ve discovered, much to my chagrin (and Irish, as well), that the reason I have been able to find so little on Mabbott in Ireland is because of the fire that burned down the Irish Public Record Office in 1922.  Still, I’m making due, and I’m planning on swinging by the Dublin City Archives and the archive of the Representative Church Body which still has some of the old parish registers.  I’m hoping they will still have the one from the parish where Mabbott lived, but we’ll see.

I’m worried I might have to take a trip up to Edinburgh which I hadn’t planned for, though.  In the 1650s, Mabbott served as the agent for the town of Leith.  I’ve emailed the Edinburgh archives to see if there is anything I need to look at; hopefully I will hear back soon.  Clarke was stationed in Leith in the 1650s, which I assume is directly related to Mabbott’s service, but I would need to find some proof.  There is also the National Library of Scotland to consider.  I’m going down to the Huntington soon to check their manuscript catalogues.  If I need to, I’ll go, but I imagine Edinburgh is quite cold this time of year, and I live in Santa Barbara.

I have been finding some interesting tidbits on Mabbott’s later years, but nothing I’m ready to report on just yet.  It looks like he may have lived much longer than anyone has hitherto guessed and had some rather elite acquaintances.

Newsletters finis

I finally finished transcribing the Mabbott-Hull newsletters a little while ago.  I thought I would take a little time to think about what I found in them, and since it’s time for a new post, to discuss them here.

I suppose the more general comments should go first.  Unsurprisingly, it seems obvious that Mabbott was writing a lot of these newsletters.  Some of them survive both in Hull and in the Clarke Papers, and the daily updates suggest that he wrote the letters one day at a time.  There are occasional changes in hand, indicating that he had help in writing all of them.  At least in one case, where he made a special ps to discuss business he was carrying out for Hull, he wrote “(Hull)” in the bottom left of the page.  I would imagine that it was intended to remind him to send the letter to the correct recipient, which would not be terribly necessary with only a handful of correspondents.

These letters would be useful for someone studying the Anglo-Dutch war, the Jamaica expedition, or the period’s politics more generally.  They focus on parliament, military engagements, and foreign affairs.  It is clear that he had access to the Commons Journal, and he had numerous contacts in parliament that he used to try to prosecute Hull’s business.

I’ve found evidence suggesting that Mabbott clearly took his position as agent to the army as superior to his employment with the Hull corporation.  I found one case in which he appears to have been using his correspondence with Hull to spread a little printed army propaganda (yes, I know that isn’t the right word), as well as possibly tried to repurpose one of Lilburne’s pamphlets.

He mentions a few printed works that were supressed.  One, Sportive Wit, caught my eye as being singled out.  I took a brief look, and although it seemed rather bawdy, I didn’t think it deserved quite the treatment that it received.  However, near the end of the book, there is an epitaph to none other than John Taylor.  There was also a strange line on the title page, “Semel in anno ridet Apollo,” which translates as Apollo laughs once a year.  Does anybody know the reference?

My favorite part is still where he refers to the Speaker being “modestly” pulled out of his chair at the dissolution of the Rump.

Well, that’s not everything, but those are some of the more important (or more interesting) things I’ve discovered by looking at his newsletters.

Property and Patronage

Sorry it has been this long since the last post.  I guess I just didn’t have too much to report.  I’ve been looking into Mabbott’s property a bit more.  It would seem he moved up the social scale quite a bit.  Frances Henderson thinks he was the son of a cordwainer.  I think Williams says he was the son of a cobbler.  Either way, he seems to have become definite landed gentry.  I don’t have anything I’m ready to report on yet, but I’m finding some interesting material.

I was reading Peter McCullough’s article, “Print, Publication, and Religious Politics in Caroline England” and he makes a really interesting point.   We can find some of the patrons of various clerics by finding out who stood surety for their First Fruits.  I think I even saw a calendar of First Fruits and Tenths on google books the other day.  As McCullough points out, there were a lot of printers.

I was surprised to discover how deep the ties between the Mabbott and Clarke families ran.  In a published version of his will, George Clarke (Sir William’s son) left a fair amount of property to Mabbott’s grandson (also Gilbert) as well as to a few other Mabbotts I don’t recognize.  Anyway, that’s all for now.

“Please sir, get out of your chair”

Another one of those days that I feel like I did a lot and then had very little to show for it at the end of the day.  However, I will at least be able to vote in November; I took care of my absentee ballot registration.

More to the point, I did get to transcribing one and a half of Mabbott’s newsletters.  I still have a bunch of photos of the newsletters in Hull that I haven’t gotten to yet.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I was reading one where Mabbott described Cromwell’s expulsion of the Rump!  My favorite part was when he says that Lenthall was “modestly” pulled out of his chair by another MP.  I also thought to doublecheck Woolrych’s Commonwealth to Protectorate and found that he quoted the same newsletter, but sent to William Clarke rather than the Hull corporation.  He notes the similarity, giving credit to Blair Worden for bringing it to his attention.  Anyway, I checked out the newsletter in the Clarke Papers (which I found online by doing a search for “Clarke Papers 3.”  I love the internet.)  I found that the endings of both were actually quite different, even if most of the letter was the same.  I’ll have to take some time to figure out why these were different.  The information was not such that the Hull fathers and an army secretary needed to be told separate things.

I also came up with an idea for a paper on published sermons, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the time to go through with it.  I can content myself with knowing that someone has probably already done it.

A crazy idea

Okay, here’s a crazy idea.  I don’t have any real proof, and it’s probably just a weird coincidence.  There’s a publisher, C. W., that pops up, I think in late 1647, does a lot of work in the second half of 1648, and then more or less disappears, near as I can tell (I did some quick-and-dirty EEBO searching).  I checked Plomer (whose Dictionary of English Printers is now on Google books) and he lists no C. W.s except Charles Webb, whom he lists as active 1658-60.  Glancing on EEBO, I only found a Charles Wright, publishing in the early 1630s.  Now, it looks like William Clarke was behind one of the published versions of the king’s trial, signing it C. W.  Here’s the crazy: I think the publisher C. W. may have been William Clarke, too.

It makes some sense.  To be a publisher, all a person needed was the capital to pay for everything (ie, no printing skills).  Mabbott’s imprint had disappeared by late 1648, so the army may have needed a new way to get its info out.  That explains C. W.’s frequency in late 1648.  Also, I think the C. W. I saw from 1647 was in September, while Mabbott was temporarily sacked from his post.  C. W. seems to exlusively publish army-related news.  I tried to follow a money trail, but couldn’t find one, by looking at Clarke’s contingencies accounts, though he does pay a Mr. Paxton over £49 for paper, ink, and parchment.  That seems like a lot, but then I’m sure the New Model’s hq went through a lot of paper.   Anyway, that’s my crazy idea for the day; it probably won’t play out.  If anybody actually reads this blog, what do you think?

It’s about 30 minutes later.  I just found something published by a “C. Withrington.”  That’s probably C. W.  However, it’s not military news, and the print looks distinctly different.  I don’t know, it’s probably time to put this in the “too crazy” idea pile.