The civil wars after 1660: public remembering in late Stuart England

Abstract

The civil wars after 1660: in late Stuart England, by Matthew Neufeld, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2013, 284 pp., £60.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1- 84383-815-9In The Civil Wars After 1660: Public Remembering in Late Stuart England, Matthew Neufeld examines how conflicted past was represented in later Stuart era. He argues that form that took during this half century was not concerned with re-fighting old struggle, but rather commending and justifying, or contesting and attacking, Restoration settlements (2). In making this argument, Neufeld contends that of past was manipulated by Restoration regime to justify proscription of what he terms puritan impulse. Aiming to present the political nation's answer to question of and forgetting conflict (5), author analyses published material between years 1660 and 1714, particularly histories, memoirs, sermons, and petitions.Neufeld's book is a valuable contribution to rapidly growing field of interest in memory of early modern period in England. A particular strength of book is Neufeld's analysis in chapter two of recollections of military service in veterans' war stories as well as petitioners for state pensions and military memoirists. Through an examination of these sources, Neufeld demonstrates that civil war stories and military memoirs published after Restoration were a unique form of writing about war; this category of publications, reader learns, shows an effort to connect individual writer's remembered experience of wars with a contemporary religious and political situation that, in fact, contested conflict's military outcome. A further strength of Neufeld's book is his research on a single major historical work, John Walker's The Suffering of Clergy (1714). In chapter five, Neufeld studies this important resource to explore transformation of communicative memories into cultural memory in early eighteenth-century England.While Neufeld offers valuable insights, study's methodology is not unproblematic. Although author briefly mentions reading (25) in his discourse of published histories, he does little in way of explaining who these readers were or how these particular sources, which were in fact quite lengthy works, impacted aspect of public remembering (which are defined as those representations of past that were put abroad for common and open consumption, discussion and debate, 7-8). Indeed, Neufeld does not address issues of common readership or impact and, although much has been done already on literacy, reading, and, to a lesser extent, text reception in early modern period, Neufeld's book would have benefitted from a review of this research to support its central argument and sharpen its position in relation to existing scholarship. Without this supporting material, extent to which these books had a far reaching effect on is questionable, since more lengthy, expensive or abstruse publications of time were less popular, and less accessible, than cheaper and shorter forms of published material, such as broadsheets and ballads. …