September 2, 2024
History

Records

Two portraits in the Dining Room pay homage to two different 1st Earls of Carnarvon. The two men lived a century apart. The earlier first Earl of Carnarvon died fighting for King Charles I in the battle of Newbury in 1643. The second first Earl of Carnarvon was born in 1741 and was created an Earl in 1793 by King George III, both a King in real life and one of the characters made memorable in the musical “Hamilton”.

There is some confusion as to exactly how and when the first earldom became extinct.  Following his death in battle, the first “first Earl’s” title and estates passed to his son Charles who had three daughters and a son. Family tales relate that this son, also called Charles, died without an heir in London in the plague of 1665 making the Carnarvon title dormant but there are no records to confirm exactly when and where he died.

The plague was followed a year later by the Great Fire of London which began on 6th September 1666  and destroyed homes, churches, livelihoods and letters – wills, legal disputes, contracts and records of births, marriages and deaths. An enormous chunk of history was lost which recorded the everyday lives of Londoners and Charles could well have been one of the gaps.

They did try to save some records. Many books and papers along with stocks from printers and booksellers were rushed into the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in the hope that the thick stone walls offered a safe refuge. Unfortunately, there was a lot of wooden scaffolding for various restoration projects around the cathedral which ignited. The cathedral burnt down leaving only a ruin.

The fire spread quickly. London had been a Roman settlement for four centuries with a defensive city wall within which was an increasingly overcrowded medieval street plan. Little winding cobbled alleyways with overhanging balconies jutting out across the street restricted access and provided narrow gaps which were easily jumped by the flames.

Popular reports suggest that hardly anyone died in the fire but given the loss of written records this may be an optimistic assessment. It would have been very hard to verify either way.

After the fire, flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II who feared rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical, but for all the new ideas for improvements,  London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan as before and which still exists today.

How do we research history? Usually it is from primary sources: state and church records, censuses, letters, diaries and books. Old writing is hard to decipher and language and spellings change but someone held a pen and put their thoughts into words so that you and I can read them. Sometimes there are quite a few diary entries and then they just stop, not necessarily for a dramatic reason. Who has not begun a diary and stopped, perhaps picked it up again and continued before life intervenes and the writing stops again.

However, I wonder how it will work in the future with our ever-increasing reliance on electronic record keeping? “Paper” in all its myriad forms has managed to last for millennia but I wonder if computer chips be as resilient.

As each new development in technology makes the previous form obsolete, will anyone be able to read what we leave behind. I pondered this as I opened a stack of boxes of DVDs I was kindly sent this week from a collaborative TV show we did last year. My much younger team looked at them, exclaimed they hadn’t seen a DVD for years and pointed out that very few people had DVD players anymore and certainly not anyone they knew. I kept quiet about my own collection but also thought that perhaps I also might check whether my DVD player actually still worked although  of course record players are now coming back into vogue.