The Letters
These letters
are largely written by Edward Abney, a teenager
at the height of the war, and in 1661 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 flirting with the idea of a career in the
civil law or even the Church.
Moreover, the Restoration left the family in an uncertain position. Edward’s father James had participated in the royalist defence of Ashby castle in 1645 but also after 1649, he seems to have maintained his authority locally through the Derbyshire commission of the peace and also to bolster the family estate at Willesley Hall and around by being one of the first Derbyshire commissioners for the sequestration of royalist estates. He was also Sheriff of Derby in 1656. 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. 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 Cudworth’s stepdaughter Damaris,
and marriage was now being mooted. One difficulty for the Abney family in
1661 and 1662 was that the grandfather of Damaris had been one Thomas
Andrewes.
Now, in 1661, Charles II’s government was moving to punish the regicides and their families – Andrewes died in 1659 and his substantial estate was in line for forfeiture under the Bill currently before Parliament. The same estates were likely to form part of Damaris Andrewes’s dowry of £150,000 (at 2005 prices) in the possible marriage to Edward Abney.
The twenty-four letters in this recently discovered collection provide an invaluable glimpse into a moment of tension within one family in the aftermath of the conflicts of the mid-seventeenth century. Mostly written by Edward Abney in February 1660 and then between January 1661 and December 1663 to his father, they are a social and political commentary set in Willesley, Derbyshire, Cambridge and London.
The author of these letters comes across as earnest and expansive. With the passage of time, earnestness turns to despair as his father seems to dither over the question of consent for the marriage to Damaris.
James Abney’s continuing silence 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”.
