The Blundell collection at the Lancashire Archives includes a tantalizing mix of family papers relating to more than two centuries of the Blundell family’s history. The family clearly valued writing in all its forms; they left behind diaries, commonplace books, account books, recipes, and letters that provide valuable insight to the daily lives and thoughts of family members across generations. The three letter-books in the collection include a volume of transcribed copies of letters sent by William Blundell, which Geoff Baker refers to as Letter-Book One. It is this volume which is reproduced in The Letters of William Blundell the Cavalier.
This work is among the most recent of the publications series of the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, and the second of the Society’s publications of material from the Blundell papers. Nicholas Blundell’s Great Diurnal (Society volumes 110, 112, and 114) was published between 1968-1972. Since then, the Society has published forty additional volumes, including legal and civic records, churchwardens’ accounts, memoirs, diaries, and family papers. All of these publications help to illuminate the history and archival holdings pertaining to Lancashire and Cheshire. Blundell’s letter-books are a strong addition to this body of work.
The volume begins with a scholarly introduction to William Blundell (1620-1698) and his writings. Baker situates Blundell in the larger context of the place and time in which he lived, in the networks he inhabited, and in the body of work he produced. The chapter details the corpus of Blundell’s other surviving writings and introductory analysis of Letter-Book One. Most of the remaining pages are devoted to transcription of the letter-book, which consisted of 137 letters written by William Blundell between 1647-1690. The book concludes with two appendices: one a map of the region in which Blundell lived, Little Crosby in Lancashire, and the other detailing the marginalia in the letter-book.
Baker and Nick Martin-Smith, who assisted with the transcriptions, have produced a methodologically sound volume that carefully reproduces the spirit of the original letter-book. Transcriptions are faithful to the originals; these are not document summaries, but full transcriptions of the original letters. Baker and Martin-Smith have retained foliation, strikethroughs, interpolations, underlining, and most of the original spelling. However, the format of the letters is not replicated in the printed edition, meaning that the margins, indentations, and catchwords have been standardized for publication. This is reasonable; to reproduce those features in print could make the cost of publication prohibitive. Standardization of formatting will not be detrimental for most readers. Baker has not annotated the transcriptions, but he has offered brief commentary and context in footnotes. The result is enhanced clarity for the reader. We are able to read Blundell’s words, unadulterated, and still benefit from Baker’s deep knowledge of Blundell’s connections. Without Baker’s guidance, readers unfamiliar with Blundell’s kinship and social networks or the local setting of Little Crosby would have difficulty extracting the deeper significance within these communications.
William Blundell compiled this letter-book in a puzzling fashion. The letters are not in chronological order, nor are they grouped by topic. Rather, they are recorded in a random order that results in a disorganized jumble for the reader. To their credit, Baker and Martin-Smith retained the original order of the letter-book rather than rearranging it into chronological order. While doing so would have made it easier for a reader to follow the narrative of these letters, it would have undermined the methodological rigor of this volume.
The collection reveals both the external and internal life of this seventeenth-century gentleman. We see Blundell’s affection for his wife and children and his anxiety over childbirth (Letters 27, 58, and 65, and others). He expressed anxiety over a debt he owed and his desire to obey his father-in-law, Thomas Haggerston, 1st Baronet of Haggerston (Letter 77). He sympathized with friends in London during an outbreak of plague (Letters 97 and 99) and encouraged family members who sought religious life in Europe (Letters 69 and 113). These letters provide a view into Blundell’s daily life. He was both in the world and withdrawn from it, part of the larger gentry community in his region but also turned inward toward a distinctly Catholic community both in Little Crosby and in the wider Catholic community of Lancashire.
Although a reproduction does not allow the reader to engage with the sensory or material culture aspects of the manuscript, printed transcriptions are essential to research. They provide access to a wider body of readers than could reasonably use the manuscripts at the archive, allow academics and amateur historians alike to engage with archival material, and protect archival material by limiting user demands on the collection. This book would be even better with the inclusion of a few manuscript images. Seeing some of Blundell’s handwriting would allow the reader to more fully engage with Letter-Book One and Blundell himself. Given the costs associated with images, however, it might not have been feasible to do so here.
The book will appeal to scholars interested in William Blundell and the Blundell family, those interested in social networks (especially Catholic networks), and those who work on letters in early modern culture. Scholars of the English Civil Wars and Restoration could benefit from the on-the-ground perspective Blundell provides; it might be a useful comparison to other writings of this period, such as the diary of Ralph Josselin. The book could also be useful when teaching paleography, since students can see firsthand the value of retaining elements of the manuscript for a reader who does not have the manuscript before them. It is accessible to specialists, students, and local history enthusiasts alike.
