Legon, EJ; (2015) Remembering Revolution: Seditious Memories in England and Wales, 1660-1685. Doctoral thesis , UCL(University College London).

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Abstract

The mark which was left by the English Revolution remained visible well beyond the ‘watershed’ of 29 May 1660. This thesis attests to this fact by illustrating the degree to which memories of those events endured long into the post-revolutionary era of Charles II’s reign. However, rather than focusing, as hitherto all studies of this subject have done, on the memories of those who emerged ‘victorious’ in the 1660s, this thesis takes as its subject matter the ‘seditious’ memories of those who remained sympathetic to the ‘Cause’ of the 1640s and 1650s after the Restoration of 1660. By placing these seditious memories in the context of pervasive and persistent attacks on the revolution, this thesis demonstrates how the possession and articulation of these memories enabled revolutionaries to contest, resist and subvert experiences of authority which related to, and derived from, control over the meaning of the recent past. In doing so, it illustrates that a re-imagining of the revolution enabled revolutionaries, in turn, to re-imagine the present and the future as well. Through an engagement with evidence of oral culture, this thesis looks beyond the ‘conventional’ histories of the printed public sphere, and considers the memories of men and women whose voices often remain marginalised. In doing so, it offers a fresh understanding of later seventeenth-century England and Wales in which the importance of memory, identity and the complex relationship between these concepts is emphasised.

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