Excellent exhibitions!

I’m pleased to announce that the much-anticipated exhibitions by the students of ‘British theatre 1860-1940′ went off brilliantly, an much fun was had all round. Not only did all eighteen students produce really good work, but they also introduced their exhibitions to all of our guests, chatted about what they had discovered and even played a part expertly pouring drinks for the opening!

All of the feedback which I have had from guests and visitors has been overwhelmingly positive, with everyone hoping to repeat the success in the next semester…so there’s no pressure for next semester’s module group!

More on the exhibitions will follow, including a new section of the Special Collections website, where we hope to include details of each exhibition that takes place in the reading room, and link to students’ exhibition websites.

In the meantime, please come and visit the reading room to see the excellent work. We will be reopening from 4th January 2011, at the usual times of 9.30-1 and 2-4.30, Monday to Friday. The exhibition will remain up until 14th January.

And if you’d like to whet your appetite, or see more on the exhibitions, please have a look at the websites:

Theatre and Class Identity

The Popularity of Music Hall

Women in Victorian Theatre

Any comments would be gratefully received!

Exhibitions looming

The final preparations are now under way for the British Theatre 1860-1940 Exhibition, which will open to the public on Wednesday 15th December.

The reading room and office have been tidied up, cleaning is underway and three sets of empty boards are looming over three remarkably clear tables. We have six sheets of (almost) identically cut cotton waiting to throw over each group’s work (in the interest of fairness), which will be covered until the grand unveiling. Cushions, books rests, snake weights and Secol covers are neatly stacked, awaiting the formation of three different exhibits created by the eighteen students of the British Theatre module.

The exhbits will be titled

  • The changing representation of women 1860-1910
  • The reasons for the popularity of Music Hall
  • The ways in which theatre troubled class relations

Each group of six students has gone through a process of exploring the sources available in Special Collections, researching topics which interest them and selecting sources to support the arguments they make in the course of their exhibit.

While staff have been on hand to offer advice on the use of collections and on the topics, the work is the students’ own and will draw on their theatrical experiences to inform current academic debates. We are looking forward to experiencing the work which these talented students produce and hope that you will be able to share in it.

If you can’t get to the exhibition, opening times below, each group will produce a website to support their exhibit, which will include digital images of the sources they used. We hope, in the near future, to be able to link these websites to the Special Collections website in order to make this work accessible to everyone.

Exhibition Opening Times

Opens: Wednesday 15th December

Daily opening: 9.30-1pm & 2-4.30pm Monday-Friday (normal reading room opening times)

Closures: 12-3pm Tuesday 21st December
23 December-3rd January (Library closure for vacation)

Closes: 7th January

If in doubt, please phone ahead of your visit on 01227 827609

Turbulent Times

So, I have finally been able to do some research on one of the indentures which we discovered earlier in the year and I thought you might like to know the results…

1657 document

This particular document is from the ‘thirtenth day of July'(sic) 1657, and records William Wiseman mortgaging the lands of his family in the parish of St Mary’s and Allhallows, including the manor of St Mary’s Hall, in the hundred of Hoo, Kent. One Robert Wiseman, ‘Doctor of the Civill Lawes’ (sic) is to pay £1,000 for these lands, and to pay an annual rent of one pepppercorn on the feast of St Michael the Archangel (otherwise known as Michaelmas, on 29th September) for the term of one thousand years until 16th July 1661, by which time William Wiseman or his heirs agree to have paid back £1,240.

William Wiseman's signature and seal

William Wiseman was the second son of Sir Thomas Wiseman of Rivenhall in Essex, referred to in this document as ‘Esquire’ but he later became baronet, on 15th June 1660. William was born around 1630 and became the MP for Maldon; the baronetcy was created specifically for him and became extinct on his death (without heirs) in 1688. The timing of his elevation to the peerage is informative; it seems likely that Sir William had made a good impression on  Charles II, who returned to Britain in May 1660 to be restored as monarch eleven years after his father’s execution. Gathering more information on Sir William will take some time, especially because the Wiseman family had several titled branches in Essex, including the baronetcy of Canfield Hall and Thundersley, and because William appears to have been a popular Wiseman family name.

Robert Wiseman, it transpires, was rather more influential than his brother. The seventh son of Sir Thomas, he matriculated from Cambridge as a pensioner in 1628 and purchased muskets and ammunition during the early period of the civil war for Trinity Hall; these weapons were later confiscated by Cromwell. Robert progressed through Trinity Hall until 1653 and became a judge and jurist. He was warranted as an advocate in the Court of Arches in 1640 and in 1656, he published The Law of Lawes, or, The Excellency of Civil Law above All Other Humane Laws Whatsoever, championing the use of civil law. He became advocate-general on 15th June 1660 (intriguing since his brother became a baronet on the same day), was knighted in 1661 and reached the height of his career when he was appointed Dean of  the Arches, in 1672, effectively presiding over Doctor’s Commons. He was married twice; his second wife, Elizabeth North, was the daughter of the fourth Lord North and went on the marry William Paston after Sir Robert’s death. Sir Robert also died without leaving heirs, in 1684, leaving his wife as the executor of his will.

Robert Wiseman of Doctors Comons London doctor of the Civill Lawes

In total, there are three documents: the indenture referred to above, on parchment, and two smaller documents (almost A4 sized) on paper, both of which refer to the ‘Indenture or deed indented’. These smaller documents appear to be a receipt for the sum of £1,000 received by Sir William and an agreement to pay Sir Robert £2,000 if Sir William or his heirs default on the arrangement. These  documents does not include any signature or mark by Sir Robert Wiseman, but all three documents related to this transaction are signed by Sir William Wiseman. One of them even looks as though it was written by him.

There are three other names recorded on these documents as witnesses: Francis Clarke, Alington Payneter and Geo. (possibly George?) Gaell.Although I haven’t had much time to research any of these names in detail, it looks as though there are relatively straightforward links with the two Wisemans.

A Sir Francis Clarke of ‘Ulcombe, Kent’ gave consent for his daughter, aged 22, to marry in 1682 and entertained Charles II on the eve of his restoration at his house in Rochester. While I could find no immediate mention of Alington Payneter (perhaps due to spelling differences), it appears that one George Alington requested permission to alienate lands he held in Gillingham, Rainham, Chatham and Breadhurst (Brodehurst) in 1621, prior to the marriage of Elizabeth Alington and William Payneter: this may be a clue to some of Alington Payneter’s ancestors. So these two, it appears, were men local to the lands in north Kent which were to be mortgaged.

Witnesses to 1657 document

The third, presumably George Gaell, may be the George Gaell who died in 1667 at the age of 1663 and whose memorial records his position as Procurator in Curia de Arcubus: Procurator of the Court of Arches. Presumably, this man was known to Sir Robert.

There is one more thing that is interesting in the indenture. As part of a security clause, it is stated that this agreement is binding in spite of any ‘Order of Orders Ordinance or Ordinances Act or Acts of Parliament or other supreme authority’. This mortgage was signed on 13th January 1657, in which it was agreed that Sir William would pay Sir Robert in six-monthly installments, beginning on 16th January 1658 and ending on 16th July 1661. During this time, the Commonwealth collapsed; following Oliver Cromwell’s death in September 1658, his son Richard was installed as Lord Protector but was unable to maintain control of the army or its generals. Charles II returned to London on 29th May 1660 and was crowned in April 1661, a matter of weeks before the last installment of  William Wiseman’s payments was due. This simple mortgage agreement therefore covers a major turning point in British history, from Commonwealth to monarchy.

It is probably over-enthusiastic to suggest that the reference to the decisions of ‘Parliament or other supreme authority.’ is anything more than a product of the uncertainty of everyday life at this time, since the beginning of the Civil War in 1642. Although the men involved in this agreement all appear to have been closer to Royalist than Parliamentarian in their sympathies, it is highly unlikely that any of them could have foreseen the return of the king two years before the event. However, with Oliver Cromwell taken ill early in 1658, it is possible that the Wisemans were concerned about further political social and political upheaval, and took every precaution to ensure that this document was binding in every eventuality. Whether they hoped for the restoration of the monarchy which appears to have benefited both brothers is something that we will probably never know.

There you go; that’s just one of the recently discovered documents that gives a fascinating insight into the lives of people living through some of the most turbulent times of British early modern history.

Have a look at these links to see transcriptions of the texts:

Mortgage agreement between William Wiseman and Robert Wiseman

Receipt of payment

Agreement of payment

Latest news

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!

Breaking news…

It’s not often I get the chance to be up-to-the-minute with Special Collections news, but this last week has seen a very exciting development.

As part of his process of ‘rationalising’ the assorted collections which the newly created Specialist Collections and Academic Archives is responsible for, Steve Holland has been investigating various donations stored in the basement of the Templeman. On Thursday 19th, he made a very exciting discovery in part of the Baldwin collection. A box marked ‘original deeds’ turned out to contain some very original deeds: fifteen indentures, the earliest from 1425, the third regnal year of Henry VI.

Thorough investigation is still underway, but so far we have encountered some documents on paper and others on parchment, some in English and some in Latin (at least one item in both) and some with seals, or parts of seals, still intact. The most impressive in terms of seals is one indenture from the reign of William and Mary, which appears to be the latest of the selection, which has 5 seals attached to the document by parchment tags.

The majority of these indentures appear to be from the Elizabethan period, although so far we have identified one indenture from the reign of Henry VI, one from the reign of Henry VII, one from the reign of Henry VIII, one from the Commonwealth and one from the reign of Charles II. I am still in the process of transcribing and translating (where necessary) these documents, but the majority thus far (including a large indenture dated to 1657) have concerned the transfer of land in Kent. The Baldwin Collection focusses upon local history, so it makes sense that he gathered these documents relating to medieval and early modern Kent.

Also included in this unassuming box were two more recent correspondences. One is from King William IV, signed William R and dated 1825; the other a short note apparently from Charles Dickens to Sir Charles Darley[?], dated 1855. These will also be investigated further.

I will post further updates as they emerge; for the moment, the transcription, identification and appropriate storage of these materials is our priority.

As a taster, here’s one of the more legible documents, in English.

It reads:

Be yt knowne unto all men by theise p[re]sent[es], that we S[ir] Thom[a]s Fane
knight [and] Will[ia]m Lambeard in the country of kent Esq[uires] for avoiding
of all ambiguities doubt[es] or controversies that may hearafter aryse
of one Franncis Shakerley in the p[ar]ishe of Dytton and in the
county of kent gent[leman], that he is at the date hearof in good health
and p[er]fect memory: Wherunto we the fore sayde S[ir] Thomas Fane
knight and Will[ia]m Lambeard in the foresaid county have sett
to our handes to vereafy the truthe thereof : the vth Day of Novemb[er]:
In the yere of our lord. Anno Dom[ini] : 1588.

Tho[mas] Fane Sen[io]r
William Lambarde