So I’m back in the United States.  I’m actually at the Clark Library in Los Angeles right now.  I’ve been finishing up cataloguing the pictures I took in the various archives.  It’s kind of annoying, but I’ve already figured out a bunch of stuff I missed, including something rather interesting.  One of the parliamentary clerks was having at least one of his correspondents send his newsletters directly to Mabbott, even before the clerk got his hands on them.  So I’ve found some of the newsletters and need to go take a look, since the calendar of them is rather imprecise.  I’ve also found direct evidence that Mabbott had access to at least the Commons Journal when he was writing his newsletters in the 1650s.  That could have been assumed, but it’s nice to have the supporting evidence.  Mabbott did start his career as a parliamentary clerk after all.

I’ve also got my hands on a few interesting print cases, including one with forged publisher information.  I guess it goes to show parliament’s determination to uphold its printing laws that while the perpetrators got in trouble for what they were printing, parliament seems not to have cared about the forgery.  And they were released a few days later.  Interestingly, the Commons said that while it was okay for the material to be printed, the real problem was that it only presented one side of the argument (the other side, of course).

A lot of this has to go on hold for a while because I’m trying to get a course ready for second summer session.  I decided to teach a course on the English Civil War, the Fronde, and the Catalan Revolt, and then found out how little there was in translation for the last two.  There is a reasonable amount for the Fronde, I suppose, but not many mazarinades, and almost nothing for the Catalans.

In other news, the symposium in Hull went very well, despite a sudden cold I caught the second day.  The papers were really interesting and thoughtful, and I think they showed both the progress made in this field of history as well as how many avenues there are left to explore.  What they all showed was the importance of not underestimating the power of religion as a motivator.  Of course, what else would we expect?

Although anyone reading this blog has undoubtedly already seen it, I should still point out the series of great posts over at Mercurius Politicus on the spat between John Taylor and Henry Walker.  Neither of them was particularly pleasant, so you know it has to be good.  Also, please check back regularly at my girlfriend’s blog isaacnewtonalso for updates on how her part of the UK trip went.

So I’ve traveling from archive to archive.  Right now I’m in Hull.  There’s the Morrill conference, and I’ve spent the last two days at the Hull City Archives.  It was a nice little archive with friendly people.  I also got to see a really well preserved seal of Mabbott’s.  It has three fleur-de-lis with a bird in the middle.  It’s probably a specific bird, but I’m not sure what.  I even found a receipt for his payment for his work as an agent for the Hull corporation, but it doesn’t say how long the work was for, so it’s almost worthless.  Still, the trip has been very enlightening.  I haven’t really been able to process all the information, but I found some interesting cases to include in my dissertation, including one interesting examination of Laurence Chapman, Samuel Pecke, Anne Griffin, and Francis Leach.  I’ll probably have a much bigger post when I get back, or maybe even one more before I leave.

This will be short because my battery is almost dead.  I’m in the UK and I’ve been finding a lot of useful things.  The parliamentary archives are a lot of fun and everyone has been very helpful.  I’ve also been spending some time in the BL and even found a letter to William Clarke that was not so catalogued!  My girlfriend and I are enjoying ourselves in the Cotswolds right now, and are heading to Oxford tomorrow.  We’re both presenting at SHARP, and then I’m heading to London for the IHR grad conference if anyone is interested!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.  I’ve been busy preparing for my trip to England.  I’ve been doing a bit of writing, but haven’t had too much to report.  However, my girlfriend found a book called Englishmen With Swords: A Narrative of the years 1647, 1648 and 1649 taken from the Journal of Gilbert Mabbott.  I think it’s fiction, but I ordered it and  I’m still excited about reading it.  I thought it was funny, though, because I wrote a seminar paper once that I called “By men that have swords in their hands, and resolution in their spirits,” borrowing from John Lilburne, and I always abbreviated it “men with swords.”  Even then, I was destined to write about Mabbott.  These days I’m trying to get my paper on the first two Agreements of the People together.  I am arguing that the Levellers were far more powerful than most of the modern historical work on them suggests, and that it was the Levellers’ inability to compromise (bordering on treacherous) that forced the New Model leadership to act against them.  It was the officers’ first desire to try to maintain military unity by negotiating with them, and they only decided to “break them” after it became clear that the Levellers would never support any sort of compromise.  The officers’ Agreement failed because without Leveller support, there was little reason for Ireton to support it.

At least, that’s my thinking so far.  I may change my mind a bit.

If anyone actually gets that reference I will be amazed.

I apologize for my absence.  I was in New York for a friend’s wedding and just got back.  The wedding was great, both tasteful and comfortable (a very difficult comination).  I think everyone had a good time.  Of course, what would be a trip to New York without a visit to the emergency room?  The night before the wedding, my poor girlfriend fell down a flight of stairs at a restaurant and had to be rushed to the hospital.  Nothing broken, fortunately, but she did have a really nasty gash on her leg which required three layers of stitches.  I have to say that if you are injured and require emergency services, New York is the place to do it.  The EMTs, nurses, and doctors (we went to St. Vincent’s) were all fantastic, and we really liked the doctor that sowed her up, named Jim.  We didn’t catch his last name.  The EMTs also earned particular distinction for their professionalism and bedside manner.

Anyway, I’ll have more on Gilbert Mabbott in a day or two.  I have to write up two conference papers I’m presenting next month, so stay tuned.  To put in some quick plugs, my girlfriend and I are both giving papers at SHARP, so if you’re there, we’re the ones talking about Isaac Newton and Gilbert Mabbott, respectively.  You can visit her blog, too!  It’s in the blogroll.  Also, I’m presenting at the IHR Turning Points conference the day before, so if you’re there, I’m the one talking about the Agreements of the People (Mabbott will probably work his way in there, too).  Finally, my advisor, Sears McGee is presenting at the symposium honoring John Morrill at the University of Hull in July.  I’m sure it will be great, and I’ll be there, too, as a whole bunch of Mabbott’s newsletters are in the Hull City Archives.  Hopefully I’ll see you in England!

I thank you for your responses.  I have since learned that £46 (not £49; I should always doublecheck) was actually a little low to pay this Mr. Paxton for paper, ink, and parchment.  To put it in perspective, there is a case where Robert White was paid 18s to print three reams worth of a pamphlet.  On the other end, John Crouch (of the Man in the Moon) claimed that one penny was just enough to pay for paper and ink (which works out to 216 sheets for 18s).  Obviously, there is some discrepancy.  £46 seems excessive, but the fact that Paxton received more (for periods of several months up to almost a year) on occasions would indicate more of a prodigious use of paper than anything else.

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.

So now I’m starting to wonder a bit more about Mabbott and the Moderate.  I found a letter by Clarke published by Robert Austin.  I can’t figure out Austin’s connection, but his publication was not licensed.  Anyway, I looked through the rest of the stuff published and I found that Perfect Diurnall and the Moderate had the only other copies.  This plays well with my theory that Mabbott had some kind of connection to the Moderate and Samuel Pecke.  I’m thinking that it will be worthwhile to sit the two newsbooks side-by-side to see just how much intelligence they share, and perhaps cross-check that with Walker’s Perfect Occurences.

I’m still digging around in the Provost Marshal position that Mabbott supposedly wanted for himself.  As I said in my last post, I don’t think Mabbott wanted to be Provost Marshal.  I’m starting to wonder if te office was not instead a hodge-podge solution to a number of problems, as well as a Presbyterian reaction against Major General Skippon.  Skippon had had more or less the powers of the Provost Marshal and may have earned some enemies among Presbyterians from his firm control of London during the Second Civil War.  I need to look into it some more.

I like the sense of freedom I have in my research these days.  Although so much of Civil War history has been well worn, I am still finding new pieces of evidence.  I am not just checking references; I feel like an honest-to-God historian.  There is something very gratifying in it.  I suppose that this is not uncommon, but it’s great to be in a profession that allows me such freedom.

Flight of the Conchords is really funny.

I did a lot of work today.  I can’t really recap all of the weird things a I discovered or decided to change in my methodology, but there are two big points.

One is that at some point in the summer of 1648, Mabbott seems to have gone into partial retirement.  Not really, but his imprimatur more or less disappears except from newsbooks.  I don’t know yet why, nor have I locked down when it happens quite yet.  My guess is late June because that’s when he gets in trouble with Dillingham, and someone starts the Moderate.  For a long time I have believed that Mabbott was not the editor of said newsbook, though he acted as patron, but maybe I’m wrong.  Certainly, editing a newsbook would take him away from some of his other duties.  Then again, I don’t yet know if that is when or why his imprimatur stopped appearing (though it was around in early June, and gone by August).  I found a note in the LJ thanking Mabbott for running a letter over from Colchester in late August, so maybe he was just away.  It is a problem I will continue to work on.

Importantly, it would seem that the publishers that he licensed most seem to have dropped off in his absence.  At least, that’s what happened to the ones who printed military news, like George Horton, H. Becke, and Robert Ibbitson.  Ibbitson is still around, but publishing less frequently.  It isn’t something I was expecting to find, but it does support my argument that Mabbott acted as patron to the London news industry.  I still have a lot more work to do to find the boundaries of his absence and its effects on the presses, but it is a promising start.  I know Mabbott was pretty much gone in August and September, and it looks the same until the end of the year.

Second, I spent most of the day looking at evidence from late August and September 1648 over Mabbott’s request for more powers for suppressing pamphlets.  The old story was that he requested these powers, eventually decided not to take them up, and a Captain Francis Bethan was appointed Provost Marshal in his stead.  I now believe that this contention is wrong.  If anybody actually cares to find out why, you are welcome to contact me.

I’ve been noticing that H. Becke seems to have become a useful Army printer.  He tends only to print pro-army kinds of stories, always licensed by Mabbott.  Conversely, Ibbitson, who had previously played such a role, has been publishing a lot less.  I don’t know much about Becke, but I’ll see what I can find.

I want to look more into this affair with the petitioners from Surrey.  In May, some rowdy petitioners allegedly threatened some of the MPs and harrassed the soldiers, who eventually opened fire on them.  It looks like there was a real attempt to present the army and parliament’s side of the story, always licensed by Mabbott.

May was a busy month for publishers.  It would seem that Mabbott was knocked back a bit.  He licensed some seemingly Presbyterian works and it looks like there were a lot more unlicensed works than usual.  By the end of the month he seemed to be getting back together again.  However, an “R.W.” and B. A. (Bernard Alsop I think) have been printing some pretty questionable material with his imprimatur.  I’m not yet sure what to make of all of this.  I’m beginning to wonder how much truth there was in Mabbott’s resignation letter, saying that the licenser’s opinion accounted for too much of what got licensed.  If it’s bare narrative, he seems to let a lot of matter through.  On the other hand, he will only license Independent, pro-Army, or occasionaly pro-Parliament polemic.  I guess that makes sense, though it is a little surprising in some ways.  I wonder if Cromwell thought he was getting his money’s worth in Mabbott.

There was one really clever piece of propaganda/news, published by Becke.  There was a letter, with the author expressing his desire for a peaceful solution in Kent (I think it was Kent), worrying about the effects of the army’s victory or its failure.  The next item reported that with a little fighting, there were no casualties, and that Fairfax looked to be finding a peaceful solution to the problem.  LIke I said, clever.