Well, having promised updates I’m afraid I got carried away with the work. Transcription is never more exciting than when you realise that the ink was drying at a time when Henry VI’s uncles were getting their infant nephew the crown of France, or just a month after Oliver Cromwell had been confirmed Lord Protector in 1657 (three years before the monarchy was restored, in 1660).

However, my transcription of these indentures is now finished, and it only remains to translate and check out the background of the people and places involved. This could be a lengthy process, and will hopefully involve people far more expert than myself, but I hope to be able to share the information we gather through the blog.

Your Canterbury‘s Florence Tennent broke the news this week; her article can be found on page 5 of this week’s issue.

A slight correction is needed to the last post – although we thought that Charles Dickens was writing to Sir Charles Darley, further investigation (and the eagle eyes of Angela Groth-Seary) suggests that the gentleman in question was Sir Charles Pasley. There is a substantial amount of Pasley-Dickens correspondence extant, and the signed note we discovered would tie in to the exchanges between them during 1855, while Dickens was resident at Tavistock House. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, after 1855, Pasley devoted much of his time to re-editing his published works. This may offer a clue to ‘the enclosed’, the subject of the note, which Dickens ‘read…with much pleasure’ but which has been seperated from this note and is now almost impossible to identify.

While the vast majority of these items appear to be of small significance in political or national terms, it appears that there is still plenty to learn from them about life in Kent and Essex over the last 600 years.

This time, updates will follow!