Edward Legon 
Revolution remembered 
Seditious memories after the British civil wars

After the Restoration, parliamentarians continued to identify with the decisions to oppose and resist crown and established church. This was despite the fact that expressing such views between 1660 and 1688 was to open oneself to charges of sedition or treason. This book uses approaches from the field of memory studies to examine ‘seditious memories’ in seventeenth-century Britain, asking why people were prepared to take the risk of voicing them in public. It argues that such activities were more than a manifestation of discontent or radicalism – they also provided a way of countering experiences of defeat. Besides speech and writing, parliamentarian and republican views are shown to have manifested as misbehaviour during official commemorations of the civil wars and republic. The book also considers how such views were passed on from the generation of men and women who experienced civil war and revolution to their children and grandchildren.

Tabella dei contenuti

1 Introduction: ‘Remember the Good Old Cause’
2 Locating seditious memories in England and Wales
3 The politics of memory after the Restoration
4 Seditious memories: contestation and cultural resistance
5 Sharing seditious memories
6 Seditious memories in Scotland and Ireland
7 Mis-commemoration after the Restoration
8 Seditious memories across generations
9 Conclusion: burying the good old cause
Index

Circa l’autore

Edward Legon is Lecturer in Heritage Management at Queen Mary University of London