This is the first biography of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, a member of England's Long Parliament, Puritan, historian and antiquarian who lived from 1602–1650. D'Ewes took the Puritan side against the supporters of King Charles I in the English Civil War, and his extensive journal of the Long Parliament, together with his autobiography and correspondence, offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the life of a seventeenth-century English gentleman, his opinions, thoughts and prejudices during this tumultuous time.
D'Ewes left the most extensive archive of personal papers of any individual in early modern Europe. His life and thought before the Long Parliament are carefully analyzed, so that the mind of one of the Parliamentarian opponents of King Charles I's policies can be understood more fully than that of any other Member of Parliament. Although conservative in social and political terms, D'Ewes's Puritanism prevented him from joining his Royalist younger brother Richard during the civil war that began in 1642. D'Ewes collected one of the largest private libraries of books and manuscripts in England in his era and used them to pursue historical and antiquarian research. He followed news of national and international events voraciously and conveyed his opinions of them to his friends in many hundreds of letters. McGee's biography is the first thorough exploration of the life and ideas of this extraordinary observer, offering fresh insight into this pivotal time in European history.
This is the first biography of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, a member of England's Long Parliament, Puritan, historian and antiquarian who lived from 1602–1650. D'Ewes took the Puritan side against the supporters of King Charles I in the English Civil War, and his extensive journal of the Long Parliament, together with his autobiography and correspondence, offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the life of a seventeenth-century English gentleman, his opinions, thoughts and prejudices during this tumultuous time.
D'Ewes left the most extensive archive of personal papers of any individual in early modern Europe. His life and thought before the Long Parliament are carefully analyzed, so that the mind of one of the Parliamentarian opponents of King Charles I's policies can be understood more fully than that of any other Member of Parliament. Although conservative in social and political terms, D'Ewes's Puritanism prevented him from joining his Royalist younger brother Richard during the civil war that began in 1642. D'Ewes collected one of the largest private libraries of books and manuscripts in England in his era and used them to pursue historical and antiquarian research. He followed news of national and international events voraciously and conveyed his opinions of them to his friends in many hundreds of letters. McGee's biography is the first thorough exploration of the life and ideas of this extraordinary observer, offering fresh insight into this pivotal time in European history.
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This is the first biography of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, a member of England's Long Parliament, Puritan, historian and antiquarian who lived from 1602–1650. D'Ewes took the Puritan side against the supporters of King Charles I in the English Civil War, and his extensive journal of the Long Parliament, together with his autobiography and correspondence, offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the life of a seventeenth-century English gentleman, his opinions, thoughts and prejudices during this tumultuous time.
D'Ewes left the most extensive archive of personal papers of any individual in early modern Europe. His life and thought before the Long Parliament are carefully analyzed, so that the mind of one of the Parliamentarian opponents of King Charles I's policies can be understood more fully than that of any other Member of Parliament. Although conservative in social and political terms, D'Ewes's Puritanism prevented him from joining his Royalist younger brother Richard during the civil war that began in 1642. D'Ewes collected one of the largest private libraries of books and manuscripts in England in his era and used them to pursue historical and antiquarian research. He followed news of national and international events voraciously and conveyed his opinions of them to his friends in many hundreds of letters. McGee's biography is the first thorough exploration of the life and ideas of this extraordinary observer, offering fresh insight into this pivotal time in European history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804794282 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/18/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 536 |
| File size: | 10 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
An Industrious Mind
The Worlds of Sir Simonds D'Ewes
By J. Sears McGee
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9428-2
CHAPTER 1
"A rationall hearer"—1602–1620
In the very first few sentences of the autobiography that he wrote between 1636 and 1638, Simonds D'Ewes described his own birth and also—as was his wont—linked it to his faith and his nation. "I was borne through the mercie and prouidence of my gracious God (who hath hitherto preserued mee) at Coxden in the parish of Chardstocke" in Dorset on Saturday December 18, 1602, at about five in the morning. D'Ewes added that his birth occurred in the forty-fifth year of the reign of "that inestimable virgin Monarke Queen Elizabeth of Blessed memory." Her life ended just over three months later "to the exceeding greife of her deare subjects at home, & her faithfull allies abroad." At the time of his birth, his parents, Paul and Sissilia D'Ewes, were visiting at Coxden, the estate of Sissilia's parents, Richard and Johanna Simonds. The infant, who had been conceived there during an earlier stay, was baptized on December 29 in the gallery of their manor house. The vicar of Chardstock baptized him at home rather than in the parish church because of the bitterly cold weather. Sissilia was an only child, and through her the manor of Coxden later descended to Simonds. He stated that his parents and grandparents saw in him "the hope of continuing both ther names and families" and that his maternal grandfather treated him as though he was "his owne sonne begotten by himselfe." That was why his godparents (his uncle and his grandfather) gave them "ther owne sirname for my name of baptisme." Indeed, so intense was his grandfather's interest that it produced one of the few jokes Simonds related in his entire autobiography—though the jest was of his mother's making rather than his own. His father, he reported, told of the "pretty speach" his mother had made when he arrived at Coxden from London during the midsummer vacation in 1602. Sissilia told her husband that she was pregnant, and he pronounced himself delighted at the prospect at the "new likelihood of moore issue." She responded that "I am with childe, but this is none of youres." Since she was "an exemplarie patterne of pietie and virtue," his father understood that she was joking. She then "explained her owne riddle," saying that her father hoped to raise Simonds in Dorset since the lad had been "begotten" in his own house. And so it came to pass, at least for much of his youth.
Sissilia Simonds and Paul D'Ewes had married late in 1594, just two weeks after her fourteenth birthday, and Simonds believed that "her partaking somewhat too soon of the rites of marriage" made it unlikely that she would ever bear children. J. O. Halliwell, a vigorous bowdlerizer, omitted this phrase from the version of D'Ewes's autobiography that he published in 1845, and six years elapsed before the birth of their first child, Johanna. Simonds's arrival two years later was understandably a cause of great rejoicing. Yet the happiness that his birth created for his family was not unalloyed. As would so often happen later in his life, "it pleased God to add some intermixture of affliction vnto this ther ioy." The only midwife available was a woman "whose necke was distorted" on one side, and her appearance so distressed Sissilia that she would have sought the help of another if time had permitted. Perhaps because this woman resented his mother's reaction to her, during the birth she so "exceedingly bruised & hurt my right eye" that it was feared that he would lose the eye altogether. Thanks to "the blessed assistance of a higher prouidence," Simonds recovered from the bruise, but the damage to his "opticke facultie" in his right eye was such that although he could see large objects with it, he "could neuer make anye vse of it to read or write." As we shall see, Simonds and his wife would later suffer intense anguish over the deaths of their own babes, and they often wondered whether their tragic losses were caused by mistakes they made in the choice of midwives and wet-nurses.
Simonds enumerated a series of mishaps he suffered during his childhood, some of them so dangerous that his family doubted that he would reach adulthood. At the end of April 1603, when he was nearly six months old, his father insisted that his wife and child travel from Dorset back to London with him. Only twenty miles into the journey, the baby was so agitated by the "the continuall iogging of my fathers coach in those craggy & vneuen wayes" that his life was feared for, and they stopped in Dorchester. They were forced to leave him with a nurse, although his mother remained there with him for nearly a fortnight until he appeared to be out of danger. She had nursed him from the time of his birth until she had to leave for London. While in Dorchester, he suffered an injury that left "a large & deepe depression" on the left side of his skull for the rest of his life. His grandfather brought him back to Coxden, where he remained until 1610. But he nearly drowned in a rain-swollen stream when he was still dressed "in coates." He suffered a severe case of the measles during which he bled so copiously that that his death seemed imminent. He also chased a ball under one of his grandfather's coach horses, and everyone was terrified that the animal "would haue dashed out my braines with a kicke." Instead they rejoiced "when they saw God had soe wonderfully preserued mee." Not all the dangers Simonds experienced in his youth stemmed from accidents and illnesses. His grandfather, a lawyer, spent much of his time in London. His "affectionate & indulgent grandmother" weakened to the point that she could not effectively govern the household. Misbehavior ensued, including "drinking swearing & corrupt discourses," not least because it was his grandfather's habit to stock his cellar with "sider strong beere & seuerall wines." Simonds wrote that when he was only seven years old he "dranke soe liberally of them all" that his blood became "enflamed" and was followed by a fever, "which brought mee very neare my graue." The fever and a youthful hangover might have been unconnected, but Simonds remembered it so.
Early Schooling in Dorset
After his return to Coxden from Dorchester, Simonds lived with his grandparents and, for varying periods, with Richard White, the vicar who had baptized him and was his first schoolmaster. He acknowledged that Mr. White got him off to a good start on "the exact spelling & reading of English" and that he "sometimes tooke care to purge out atheisme from mee, & to aduize mee to a reuerent & high esteeme of the scriptures." All that was to the good, but Simonds also later concluded that White was so indulgent that "I found little amendment of anye of my errors by residing with him." He attributed that terrible fever that had afflicted him for nearly two months to White's failure to stop him from indulging in the contents of Coxden's cellar. An excellent physician who lived nearby was so fearful about the boy's health at that point that he warned grandfather Simonds that the lad might die. Nevertheless, "through Gods mercie," Simonds recovered and regained his "former fauour & flesh (which my long sicknes had almost reduced to a scheletone)." In early October 1610, his grandfather took him to London and then on to the D'Ewes residence at Welshall in Suffolk. Not quite having reached the age of eight, Simonds did not then realize that this visit to Suffolk might prove permanent. Indeed, he recalled that he loved Coxden "aboue all others," and his grandparents "much moore dearely then my parents themselues." He remembered with sadness the tears his grandmother had shed when he took his leave of her. She had suspected, he later realized, that they would not meet again on earth.
An accident occurred on the journey to London that came to have a totemic significance for Simonds. In the stableyard of an inn, the Red Lion at Blandford in Dorset, he ran "like a true childe" to catch birds "picking vpon the dunghill," but it turned out to be a pit into which he fell and nearly drowned in dung. He acknowledged that "there scarce lives any man but hath escaped sickness and danger in his infancy." Yet he later became convinced that the fact that he survived "soe manye seuerall hazards" was "almost past beleife." He became convinced that his life had been repeatedly preserved so that he could "liue to doe good seruice both to Church & commonwealth" and that "God had not deliuered mee out of soe many perils but to some publike end." Although "euill times" presaged "a speedy ruine to truth & piety," Simonds determined that God himself would decide whether he would serve that end by "doing or suffering"; his responsibility was to give himself up entirely to divine providence. This was, to be sure, the way he viewed his early life between 1636 and 1638 when he was writing his autobiography, and he would not have claimed that he had any inkling of such things at age eight. Indeed, at the time, he emitted "a whole volly of teares" in an effort to get his grandfather to take him back to Coxden. But grandfather Simonds, "mastering his affection by his wisedome," persuaded him to remain in Suffolk with his parents while promising that a return to Dorset would come in due course. Simonds wrote, "I tooke my sorrowfull farewell of him; which, no doubt would haue been much moore dolefull had wee but guessed that this would haue proued the last time of our parting." On the following day he reached his parents' home at Welshall. When he arrived, his mother was walking through the hall into the kitchen, and he hurried "towards her & suddenly kneeling downe to craue her blessing; she was so ouer-ioyed with the unexpected sight of mee" that she cried out three times so loudly that his two sisters and some neighbors who were nearby in the parlor rushed in to help her, "fearing shee had been, in some great and eminent perill." They quickly understood the cause of her shouts and joined with Sissilia in her excitement.
Initially Simonds enjoyed Welshall, mainly because he received "indulgent affection" from his mother and enjoyed being with his two sisters, Jone, who was two years older, and Grace, who was two years younger. When, however, he realized that he would not soon return to Coxden, it was rare for him to be "soe chearelie as before." What he called his "disconsolation" heightened when his father came home from London for the Christmas holidays. Paul D'Ewes's "carriage" toward him was, he acknowledged "no other then became a father," but it was so unlike the "tender respect" his grandfather gave him that he often wished himself backin Dorset. Since there was a "good schoolemaster" at the nearby market town of Lavenham, he was sent there and met for the first time his "fellow schollers," the sons of leading Suffolk families such as the Barnardistons and Cloptons. It was in Lavenham that he receiving the devastating news that his "aged and affectionate grandmother" had died at Coxden on February 16, 1611. Afterward, he "mourned bitterly." He dreamed frequently that she still lived, and he conversed with her in his dreams.
On June 24, 1611, a terrible storm hit England, so devastating that many "thought verily the day of iudgment" had arrived. Many parents came to the school to take their sons home in order to pray for deliverance. Trees in the orchard at Coxden were blown down. His grandfather, traveling homeward from Salisbury during another storm a few days earlier, had been soaked to the skin and contracted "a feuer & the cholick." He died on June 27, and Simonds's parents sent for him on June 30 to join them in London, where they gave him the sad news. He found his mother "almost drowned in teares for the losse of soe dear & louing a father," and he tried to pretend it was not true. "I would in noe case beleeue it. For now my afflictions came soe thicke vpon mee, as I euen feared to make my selfe further miserable by beleeuing this." On their way to Dorset for the funeral, they stopped at the same inn at Blandford where he had nearly drowned in the stableyard only eight months earlier. There, the reality of the loss began to sink in when he saw the innkeeper and his wife trying to comfort his mother not only for her personal loss but also about "the great want the whole cuntry [county] would soon finde of him." At Coxden he found "a desolate and mournfull familie," and he regretted that he had nothing "to embrace of my deare deceased grandfather but his ensabled coffin, & liueles corps, enclosed in it." In later years, Simonds often lamented "that there was neuer anie picture taken of him."
The prose picture that Simonds inserted in his autobiography was nevertheless an evocative one. His grandfather, he wrote, was "of a most comelie aspect and excellent elocution," so much so that when the county's justices of the peace convened at the quarterly sessions he "ordinarilie gave the charge." Aged sixty-one when he died, Richard Simonds had been a tall man "of personage proper" with "a full face ... and a large grey eye, bright & quicke." He had an excellent memory, "a sound & deepe iudgment," and "well composed language and gracefull deliverie." As a young man, he had been "somewhat prodigallie enclined," but he later made up for it by "giuing good example to his greatest neighbours by his constant hospitalitie" and being generous in "the releife of the distressed, & mercifull to the poore." He had "little academicall learning" but was deeply informed about the "the Municipal Lawes of the Realme." His will, dated January 14, 1608, made young Simonds the sole heir to "a great personall estate in readie monie, debts ... leases, Household-stuffe and other goods and chattels." However, Richard Simonds had made Paul D'Ewes his executor, and therefore Simonds during his minority benefited little because his father granted him a small allowance that was "no moore, then hee in his owne prudence thought fitt." The consequence was that he experienced "wants and necessities" during his youth, but he eventually concluded that the result was "to my great good." The deprivations forced him "to gett an humble heart in a good measure, to avoid ill companie, to follow my studies moore closelie, & to value secret praier with other holie duties at the higher rate." The resignation and equanimity Simonds expressed here about this matter was not, as we shall see, maintained throughout his youth. There would be times when he found his father's tightfistedness was so galling that he could not restrain himself from expressing his resentment of it.
Soon after his grandfather's death in 1611, the D'Ewes family suffered yet another loss. Their property at Welshall was awarded to a widow who claimed title to the lands on the grounds that her late husband had sold it to Paul D'Ewes even though it was part of her jointure and not his to sell. She then occupied Welshall until her own death in August 1632, a year and a half after Paul's death. Simonds reported that his father attributed this reverse to usurious loans he had made and considered it "a iust punishment for the practice of that controversiall sinne." Paul and Sissilia debated whether to send Simonds to school in Lavenham or Dorset. He begged his mother to allow him to stay in Dorset for the next phase of his schooling, and she acquiesced. His original schoolmaster, Richard White, had retired from teaching, and so, after due investigation, they chose a school at nearby Wambroke run by Christopher Malaker. Simonds remained there from 1611 to 1614. His mother and sisters spent half of 1612 at Coxden, and in that interval Simonds related that he experienced at least some "of that pleasant and comfortable life" he had enjoyed with his grandparents.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from An Industrious Mind by J. Sears McGee. Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents and Abstracts0Introduction: "An industrious mind" chapter abstractThis introduction offers an exploration for the surprising neglect (except for the autobiography and Long Parliament journal) of the massive D'Ewes archive. It then offers four reasons for why this neglect should end: the size and important contents of the collection for a broad array of subjects; D'Ewes's significance as a consumer of news and conveyer of it to others; the highly unusual quantity and quality of information about his upbringing, education, and family life; D'Ewes's role in the Long Parliament which was based on his deep political and theological beliefs and commitments.
1"A rationall hearer" – 1602-1620 chapter abstractChapter 1 describes D'Ewes's birth, childhood and education from its beginnings through his two years at St. John's College, Cambridge (1618-20). It is based largely on the autobiography he wrote between 1636 and 1638 along with letters he wrote to his parents as a schoolboy. From his adult point of view, the story was about what seemed to him his erratic and episodic progress toward the Puritan piety that preoccupied him until it reached what seemed to him its completion in the 1620s. High points include his agonized despair as he watched his beloved mother die in 1618; his enjoyment of his studies at Cambridge; and his mixed feelings about his father's order to leave Cambridge in order to take up study of the common law at the Middle Temple in London.
2"The whole time&minde are filled with law" – 1620-1626 chapter abstractFrom 1620 until late in 1626, D'Ewes spent most of his time as a student of the common law at the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court that provided legal education. His initially reluctant and ultimately successful immersion in the law is one of five themes into which the chapter is divided. The second is his fascination with the historical documents he began to read in the Tower of London and other archives and his decision to write a history of England based on them. The third is his growing preoccupation with the news of events at home and abroad, and the fourth is his continuing spiritual development as he became as much a consumer of sermons as of news. The fifth is the complicated story of his repeated attempts to find a bride which finally succeeded with his marriage to Ann Clopton in 1626.
3"To dippe my pen in teares not inke" – 1626-1631 chapter abstractD'Ewes's marriage enabled him to turn his energies to his research projects and draw back from his plan to follow his father into the practice of law. This chapter begins with the completion of his construction of his Puritan spirituality and his discovery of the significance of the early history of Christianity in Britain (and especially the Pelagian heresy) for his understanding of the great struggle between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in his own time. He followed the news of the success of Habsburg armies in the Thirty Years War with fear and trepidation and became increasingly alarmed at the rise of an anti-Calvinist (Arminian) faction of clergymen in the Church of England. He also began building what would become his huge library of books, manuscripts, and coins, and he experienced the death of his father Paul in 1631.
4"My dearest, dearest" (1631-1639) chapter abstractAlthough D'Ewes and his wife expected to enjoy life at Stow Hall after Paul D'Ewes's death, a series of conflicts with Richard Damport, the rector of Stowlangtoft, produced periods of exile in Lavenham and elsewhere for the couple and their family in the 1630s. Eight of the ten children Anne bore died very young, and they agonized over those losses repeatedly. D'Ewes also saw to the completion of his brother Richard's upbringing and education and corresponded with him when the young man went on lengthy journeys on the Continent. D'Ewes continued his research project and library building. He also completed his journals of the parliaments of Queen Elizabeth I.
5"The highest stepp of wickednes" (1631-1639) chapter abstractThis chapter treats the continuing development of D'Ewes's political and religious ideology and its relation to news from abroad and at home in the 1630s. At home his anger against and fear of the advance of the Laudian party of churchmen (which he believed was part of plot to restore Roman Catholicism and overthrow Protestantism) increased, culminating in a personal attack on him from the pulpit of his parish church at Stowlangtoft by a minion of Matthew Wren, bishop of Norwich. D'Ewes met with and advised the young Elector Palatine and corresponded with his exiled mother, Elizabeth (daughter of James I) and widow of Frederick Elector Palatine. D'Ewes began writing his autobiography and his interest in the possibility of emigration to Massachusetts in order to escape the religious persecution he expected increased. He wrote a treatise against persecution which he could not publish due to censorship by the Laudians.
6"An Iliad of miseries" (1639-1640) chapter abstractIn November, 1639, King Charles I appointed D'Ewes as the sheriff of Suffolk, his first public office and a highly unwelcome one because he was charged with collecting the hated levy known as "ship money." Stuck with this task for a year, he spent most of his energy dragging his feet and attracting the ire of the Privy Council in London (like many of his fellow sheriffs around the country). Yet he also managed to find time to work on a project he had begun earlier, the production of an Anglo-Saxon/English dictionary. In October, 1640, he was elected to represent the town of Suffolk in the new parliament that the king had called, the first since 1629. The chapter concludes with a descriptions of D'Ewes's efforts in the House of Commons to overthrow the religious and political policies the king had introduced.
7"Stub vp the rootes of all our mischifes" (December, 1640 – July, 1642) chapter abstractThis chapter tracks D'Ewes's work as an MP from the early months of the Long Parliament when hope remained high for a settlement with the king until the summer of 1642 when it had become obvious that civil war might be around the corner. D'Ewes suffered a devastating loss when in July 1641 his wife Anne died of smallpox, and his letters displayed the depth of his grief powerfully. Fully aware of the nearness of civil war because of, in his view, the extremism in London and in the king's headquarters in Oxford, he sought in his speeches to keep the door to compromise open. But those he called "the fiery spirits" prevailed, and his enemies in the Commons subjected him to a painful humiliation on July 23, 1642 that led to his (temporary) withdrawal from political activity.
8"No end . . . but by the sword" (July 1642-1650) chapter abstractAt the same time that he underwent his political Waterloo on July 23, 1642, D'Ewes was beginning his courtship of Elizabeth Willughby, the young woman who would become his second wife. The courtship proved no less complicated, although for different reasons, than his first one in 1626. After it, D'Ewes returned to the fray in Parliament (despite what some historians have asserted) and to the attempt to support a settlement with the king even though the war finally broke out in September 1642. The tragic death of Richard D'Ewes during the siege of Reading in April, 1643, was another heavy blow. Simonds continued to keep his journal until November 1645, and to attend, albeit less assiduously, until the army purged the House of Commons late in 1648. He continued to work on his Anglo-Saxon diary and collect and distribute news to his friends until his death in April 1650.