Wow, it’s been a month.  I can’t believe it has been that long.  The school year has started and I’ve been trying to finish up a chapter.  I can’t believe how painful it has been.  I spend all day and write maybe two pages and I hate it all the next day.  At least I have almost a complete draft, even if it still has to be revised a few hundred times.

I have also started teaching Writing 2.  It’s a freshman composition course required by the university.  It’s been kind of fun, but it is tricky to teach a course you’ve never taught before and not quite what you expected to teach.  It is certainly rather different from teaching a history class.  We spend a lot of time doing exercises and whatever random thing I can think of the night before.  I also still owe the English Broadside Ballad Archive some hours.

I was going to post more, but I don’t really wnat to discuss Writing 2 or my dissertation anymore right now.  I think it’s time for a violent movie.

Since I’ve been doing a bunch of transcribing lately, I thought I would add some tidbits I liked that I ran across.

In March/April 1659, Richard Cromwell or his Council (it isn’t clear from the newsletter.   It could have been parliament, too, I suppose) spent £1000 on bibles for Bohemian and Polish exiles.  I find myself wondering if they bought them any food, or just the bibles.  I also wonder what language said bibles were in.

In a letter dated Dec. 22, 1632 to William Raylton, Strafford (or Wentworth, I guess would be more appropriate) complained that his “eyes have used me very hardly for this last moneth, and would not performe all the work I had for them.”  My eyes are fine, with the exception of being rather near-sighted, but I still like the formulation and plan to use it next time I don’t get as much done as I wanted to.

Some odd gift giving: in a letter dated February 1633/4, Wentworth requested plate rather than money for his New Years’ gift.  It’s not clear who the gift was to come from, but he requested that his agent Raylton find and purchase a piece for him.  I would hope that Raylton was not on the line for that.  In the same letter, Wentworth responds to Raylton’s earlier letter about Lord Deputies being required to send gold to the Privy Councillors and their clerk as a Christmas gift.  Wentworth didn’t see why he should be required to do so.

Back-handed gift giving: nothing like giving your newswriter an appreciative gift of a lamp — so that he can write you at night, too.

I was going to add more, but I just realized that it has been a really long time since I posted anything, so I’ll just put up another post when I have more.

Isn’t that how everyone spends their days?  I am currently scanning in newsletters from the microfilm reels of the Clarke Papers, and I have been working more on one of my dissertation chapters.  I can not believe how slowly the writing goes.  Didn’t I used to write faster than this?

Right now I’m working on a section discussing Mabbott’s role as agent for the army.  In this particular chapter I am trying to steer away from discussing his licensing duties, though it will come up, in favor of more usual kinds of agent work.  Most agents were not press licensers, after all.  However, even this can be subsumed into the larger function of London agents, which seems to have primarily been the control of information.

I am also surprised at the lack of work on lobbying during the period.  This isn’t to say that it has been ignored, certainly not, but I am looking for a particular kind of lobbying, more akin to what historians like Dean and Green have found in the Tudor parliaments.  I want to see who bribed whom how much and to do what.  If anybody knows work on this for the Stuart parliaments or the Commonwealth, and not about men-of-business or undertakers, I’d really appreciate it.  Lenthall was notoriously bribeable (I’m not sure if that is a word, and if it is, that it isn’t mispelled), and considering the number of famous clerks from the period, like the Frosts, Scobell, Brown, Elsynge, Thurloe, Rushworth, etc., it seems like there should be more on this kind of matter.  I’m sure they weren’t any harder to bribe than their sixteenth-century counterparts, and they could probably offer even more interesting services.

Anywho, I think I’ll take a break now.  It’s been an exhausting couple of weeks, and we are throwing a party tomorrow, so I’ll need my energy.  It will be, for reasons we won’t get into, 1996-themed.  You wouldn’t believe how much of the 90s was encapsulated in music released in 1996.

Well, I made it back to Santa Barbara last night.  It was a very enjoyable vacation, for the most part, in the northwest.  To correct something I said earlier, you can in fact get a number of real ales up there.  Cask conditioning is very “in,” it would appear.  The beer was delicious, and I got to take my girlfriend to my favorite old haunts up in Seattle.  Corvallis was gorgeous, and we took some trips out to Newport (Rogue Brewery HQ) and Portland to see an old roommate.  Portland is a great town, too.  We capped it off with a couple of nights at my parents in the Bay Area, and are back in action now down south.

We also got to go see the Yankees destroy the Mariners at Safeco Field.  The game was unpleasant, but it was still fun, and the ball park is fantastic.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now.  By the way, I’m thinking of starting a facebook page for old Gilbert sometime soon, so keep an eye out for that.  He’s been dead for some three centuries, so he’ll need help finding friends.

This is something more of a personal post.  It’s probably not the right forum, but it will have to do.  I found out last night that one of my roommates from college died two years ago.  He was 29 (he would be 31 now).  You always kind of figure that someone would tell you these kinds of things, but in retrospect, how could they?  Jason and I weren’t in touch, we saw each other last for only about 2 hours, and that was 3 years ago.  We (meaning me and his other roommates) didn’t know his family or other friends all that well, so even if they wanted to, they would have no idea how to contact us.

This is a picture of us at graduation.  I’m on the left, he’s on the right.  He ironed his gown, I didn’t.  Like I said, you can’t tell in the pictures.

He had a laugh that was sort of a half screech.  It always made me laugh when I heard it.  He planned to be president one day.  He had an identical twin brother who was thinner than he was and he was very touchy about it.  I bought him a whistle for his birthday one year, because he was working as a security guard and all he was allowed to do if there was a break-in was to call the police, so I thought he should at least have a whistle for self-defense.  I imagined him chasing down evil-doers with it.  He lied to me once and told me he used it.  He once came home so drunk that he rolled down the hill, destroying some bushes along the way, came in through the window because he couldn’t work the door, and shattered his phone on our front porch by accident.  We had to piece it together the next day, only realizing that the grass stains and scrapes came from rolling down the hill as we headed back to the bar that night (we found the trampled bushes).  He loved dogs to an embarassing degree.  He came home from a trip with a ridiculous GOP tattoo on his arm.  Our senior year, he took to drinking Olympia beer.  He sometimes went by the nickname “Smoz.”  He considered changing his phone number to 1-800-THE-SMOZ, but it was already taken.  Sometimes people called him Smaz, because he was kind of a spaz.  Fortunately, he had a good sense of humor about himself.  He had the ugliest POS car I’ve ever seen.

He was a good friend.  Rest in peace, buddy.

I’ve been in Corvallis for about half a week now.  My girlfriend and I are house/catsitting for our shared advisor.  It seemed like a way to get out of town without having to pay for a hotel, and the cats are friendly (ignoring the bite marks on my hand).

I have to say that Corvallis has been very pleasant.  It’s a small town built around the college, which is quite beautiful in its own right.  I also do like OSU’s library, which you can tell they are doing their best to turn into a strong research library.

I do love the Pacific Northwest.  Corvallis is very green, both in foliage and habits.  Most places compost, recycle, and use biodegradable containers.  A lot of the food is locally and organically grown.  It was rather hot when we got here, but the last few days have been very pleasant, and the house is great.  A few days ago, we took a drive out to Newport on the coast, and it was absolutely gorgeous.  We’re planning on checking out some of the local cheeses soon, and I’ve been enjoying the beer.  Most people not from the area wouldn’t know, but the northwest is great beer country.  Also, coffee.  I did my undergrad at UW-Seattle, and they say that no place does brown liquids like Seattle.  No real ales, though, unfortunately.

I just submitted my grades for the class I was TAing, and I have some thoughts on summer school.  I think it’s a terrible idea.  They try to collapse an entire quarter into six weeks, with predictable exhaustion and frustration.  The students and the instructors have a hard time keeping up with the pace of even just one class.  However, the university, in an effort to drum up enrollment, has made summer school one low price for as many classes as you can handle.  Again, predictably, students take too many classes, and succeed at none.  As I have found, a surprising number are driven to cheat, and many turn in half-baked work.  I have also, strangely, had some students perform very well.  It would appear that some flourish in the environment, while a majority are crushed by it.  In general, I think it’s a bad idea.

Following my previous post, I am still curious as to what people think an appropriate punishment for cheaters at the university level is.  We failed them and reported them to the university.  Since it was their first offenses, they will receive a letter of warning, and the record is kept private by the university until the student either offends again or has the incident expunged from their record.  It’s mainly insurance against further offenses.  We had the option to request a hearing, but declined.  At a hearing, the penalty can range from warning to expulsion.  If a student is reported a second time, a hearing is required.

I don’t have anything to report on Mabbott right now.  I just wanted to mention that I have graded 15 papers so far, and 3 of them were plagiarized.  Rather, two students plagiarized, and one bought an essay off of lotsofessays.com.  I can’t handle any more right now.

Anybody want to commiserate over a glass of scotch?  That’s where I’m headed.

Updated: what do people think is an appropriate punishment for someone who cheats at the university level?

I have been doing some work with the Royalist Composition Papers lately, so I thought I would discuss what I’ve learned so far.  I haven’t found a guide beyond what is in the introduction in the fifth volume of the Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding, which is better than anything I’ll give here, but I thought I’d do it anyway.

The general practice, fairly well established by 1645, was for the properties of known recusants or delinquents (royalists) to be seized by commissioners in the counties.  There were two committees in London, the Committee for Sequestrations and the Committee for Compounding, though these were eventually merged into the latter.

The potential compounder was expected to take the Covenant and the Negative Oath and submit a particular of his estate, including the yearly value of each property.  If he misrepresented his property, by an order of the House of Commons, the compounder would have to pay four times the property’s value and lose the advantage of compounding.  The commissioners in the counties would do their own examination to verify the particular.  I could be mistaken on this; it seems that the compounder may have been allowed to reconcile the particulars without being fined extra.  It may have been only if a property was discovered after he had already been fined.

Upon petitioning to compound, the clerks of the committee would be ordered to examine what records they could find to determine the level of the fine.  The fines ranged from a tenth to two-thirds of the estates’ value.  The difference between a tenth and two thirds was large, but somewhat diluted by the calculation, the tenth was calculate for 20 years’ purchase, and the two thirds at 12 years.  The fines in the middle were progressively rated between the two extremes.  The wealthier or worse offenders were charged more, those less active or poorer less.  From what I have seen, most of the fines were set around one third.  The compounder would also be allowed to make deductions from the fine for debts owed, jointures to be paid, or other holds in their properties.

There were two acts for sale of sequestered properties that had not been compounded.  There were, apparently, a great deal of problems with these acts.  Some of the cases I have looked at involve the reclamation of the lands by the heirs of a dead delinquent, who had only been seised for life in a particular property.  While, most often, the claimant was simply handed the rents from the land in question, it could get stickier on occasion.

All of the cases I have looked at have required at least a year if not two or three to see a person go from delinquent to compounded and pardoned.

As to the Calendars themselves, I have run into several errors.  I am not trying to fault too greatly the work that went into compiling them.  However, the compilers generally neglected the depositions in many of these cases, and have thus misidentified persons, types of sequestration, or misnarrated the case more generally.  In fact, they seemed to have relied entirely on the persons name and home town to identify them, which turns out can be rather problematic though certainly practical from their point of view.  On a side note, I was astounded at the number of Lancelots running around in Civil War England.  I never thought of it as a common name.

So if you want to be certain about a particular case, you need to look up the materials at Kew yourself.  The depositions are tedious, but chalk full of goodies.  There are a few indexes available.  I got started by looking at the suggestions on the inside cover of the first volume of the Calendar in the Maps and Large Documents Room at Kew, so I guess I would recommend that for others, too.  Of course, the Calendars have references as well, but I found much more in the National Archives than what was listed in the them.

Anyway, that’s my post for now.  Hope it helps someone.  Actually, I really hope that someone helps me.  Anyone seen anything on the Committee for Compounding anywhere else?

PS. Thank you to everyone for your comments and submissions for my turn hosting Carnivalesque.  It was a surprisingly rewarding experience.  As well, thank you to everyone who drummed up my blog stats by stopping to take a look at it.

I apologize for the lateness of the post.  I had imagined getting this done early enough that many of you might be able to spend a lazy Sunday looking over these posts, but instead it is only still Sunday if you live west of the Rocky Mountains.  Nonetheless, the Carnival is here:

The Proceedings of the Council of State, 9 Julii 2009.

1.  Counsell heard from Wynken de Worde on the fruits of blogging.

2.  Mercurius Politicus petitions to closely examine secretaries and newsbook editors.  So ordered.

3.  That examination be made into the teaching of students.  Ordered that Blogenspiel carry out said inspection.

4.  Investigation to made by Executed Today into a particularly successful saint.  Note: investigation delayed until further report from the Congo.

5.  Airs, Waters, Places to be allowed 4s. for counsell on avoiding monstrous births.

6.  Investigations of a Dog to be admitted to the treasury commission for finding a bright side to archival funding cuts.

7.  Wonders and Marvels to be committed to the Fleet for discussing  a blasphemous relic.

8.  Reports heard from Historian’s Craft on how to use newspapers and 1200-year-old sunken cargo.  Approved with great satisfaction.

9.  Ordered, that Westminster Wisdom review Mark Stoyle’s Soldiers and Strangers and report to this Council in seaven-night.

10.  A special embassy to be sent to welcome Early Modern Underground.

11.  Report by Tudor History that there is a plot to build onto Westminster Abbey.  Ordered, that the Abbey be secured until further notice.

12.  Report by Early Modern History on the Heads of the Proposals.  Debate postponed.

13.  Letter received from Early Modern Notes on some of the reasons that the RHS Bibiliography is so expensive and far better than wikipedia.  Committee appointed for reply.

14.  The Long Eighteenth, imprisoned for questioning modes of information, to be released upon security.

15.  5 l. to Bookn3rd for these medical manuscripts.  To be paid out of the moneys for sequestrations.

I will be hosting the next Carnivalesque in one week (July 19) !  Please make your submissions for your favorite or otherwise interesting blog entries.