Researching a County History: Edwin Butterworth, Edward Baines and the History of Lancashire (1836)

Abstract

mSTORIANS HAVE EXHllilTED a growing fascination in recent years with the development of their own discipline: the purpose of historical writing; how individual scholars pursued their research; and what the immediate and lasting significance of their work was.1 The study of county history has received particular attention with the publication of a major survey of English County Histories,2 but, despite this, we still know little about the precise research methods which individual historians employed. This article sheds light on a publication which has long been recognized as a major contribution to county historiography: Edward Baines's fourvolume History o/the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster (1836).3 It discusses why Baines's work was, and is, so significant and then, in more detail, why and how it came to be written. It suggests that, far from being a compendium of 'objective', antiquarian and topographical information, the publication was a deliberate construct designed to fulfil specific ideological and commercial purposes. It then discusses in detail the research methods which Baines employed, emphasizing the contribution which another relatively neglected historian, Edwin Butterworth, made to the work, as well as that of the unnamed 'most intelligent persons in each parish' whose oral evidence provides much of the local detail. It concludes with a brief discussion of the ways in which Baines adapted this information to suit his own purposes.