Edward Abney
Edward Abney (later Sir Edward Abney MP) was the writer of the majority of the letters featured in Letters to My Father.
Edward Abney was a teenager at the height of the English civil war and in 1661 was aspiring to make his fortune and uphold the family name. The son of well-to-do Derbyshire gentryman, Abney was actively soliciting a fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge whilst also considering the idea of a career in the civil law or even the Church.
The Restoration left the Abney family in an uncertain position. Edward’s father James had participated in the royalist defence of Ashby castle in 1645. Yet, despite the collapse of the royalist cause and the fall of Charles I in 1649, he seems to have maintained his authority locally by being one of the first Derbyshire commissioners for the sequestration of royalist estates. He was also Sheriff of Derby in 1656. James Abney might have benefited from favourable patronage networks or an unwillingness to disrupt local power structures by punishing prominent royalists or removing them from positions of authority. During the flux of the 1640s and 1650s, James Abney it seems had played both ways but, by 1660, it was still unclear how the family would resolve their ambiguous social and political situation.
Edward Abney was at Christ’s College, Cambridge at a time of political ferment. The Master of the College was Ralph Cudworth, the eminent Platonist theologian. He had garnered favour with Oliver Cromwell sufficient for the invitation to give a sermon to the House of Commons in March 1647. The Restoration raised fresh doubts within the Cambridge academic hierarchy, who had not been unambiguously loyal to the Crown over the previous two decades. At Christ’s College, Ralph Cudworth – who greeted Charles II’s return with a set of congratulatory verses addressed to the King – faced considerable opposition to his reappointment as Master. Appointments to Fellowships were similarly highly political affairs and Edward Abney therefore had to tread carefully.
And Abney was in love. Whilst under the wing of Cudworth, Edward had met and become quite taken with Ralph Cudworth’s stepdaughter Damaris, and marriage was now being mooted. One difficulty for the Abney family was that the grandfather of Damaris had been one Thomas Andrewes.
A London linen-draper and devout Puritan, Andrewes had risen to become a prosperous merchant and moneylender. He became Alderman in February 1642 and was one of the principal financiers to Parliament during the first Civil War. Andrewes was one of judges appointed to try the King at Westminster and he attended most of the trial sessions in January 1649 and was present at Charles I's execution. A few days later, he unseated the royalist incumbent to become the first Lord Mayor of London under the republic.
Now, in 1661, Charles II’s government was moving to punish the regicides and their families – Andrewes died in 1659 and his multi-million pound estate in line for forfeiture by Parliament. The same estate (by 2005 standards) was likely to form part of Damaris Andrewes’s substantial marriage dowry (i.e. £150,000).
Edward Abney in his letters comes across as earnest and expansive. He is bold and often direct on “this business, which has caused the greatest trouble and perplexity of mind to me”. Earnestness turns to despair as his father seems to dither over the question of consent for the marriage to Damaris. Parental authority remained paramount in this period, both out of custom and for inheritance purposes. Edward uses all means he can to persuade his father, in whose hands his future effectively lay. He emphasises the social and intellectual qualities of his proposed bride, “a very comely and descreet person neither hath she any of the too common defects of lameness or crookedness” and “who has been piously educated”. The relationship with the eminent and influential Ralph Cudworth was important.
James Abney's prevarication over the course of five months in 1661 turns Edward’s subtle exhortations into despairing, almost poetical, pleadings: “I shall be wholly frustrated in, some cave or dessert (sic.) or solitary wilderness would be the fittest place for me to retire unto”.
