A University research team has studied the lost version of a diary by Yorkshire woman Alice Thornton which was written between 1685 and 1695, alongside three of her other texts.
The memoirs offer commentary on major political events combined with local and personal details of her life.
Thornton’s books offer a rich example of how a woman below the ranks of the nobility wrote about her life in early modern England and Ireland.
Retelling of events
They provide a “northern female perspective” of events, in contrast to the London-based diarist Samuel Pepys who wrote his diaries during the same period, the researchers say.
Alice Thornton wrote four versions of her autobiography capturing her life as a royalist, Church of England woman during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, English Civil War and Restoration era.
The manuscripts chronicle Thornton’s life, including her childhood in Ireland and return to England during the civil war.
Two of four autobiographical volumes were discovered by history professor Cordelia Beattie leading to research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Unique discovery
One was handed to Beattie’s father by a descendant of Thornton in a pub in Ludlow, Shropshire, and the second was discovered miscatalogued in the library of Durham Cathedral.
They have been reunited online with two other volumes that were acquired by the British Library from a private collection in 2009.
Professor Beattie and the project team – Professor Suzanne Trill, Dr Joanne Edge and Dr Sharon Howard – have produced a digital edition of the volumes.
For the first time, the digital edition makes all four of Thornton’s books available to read, compare and search.
The digital edition is hosted by King’s Digital Lab.
Alice Thornton married into a parliamentarian family in 1651 to help secure her family’s estate after the death of her older brother.
However, her husband made a series of financial errors, which left her saddled with debts upon his death.
The memoirs contain accounts of her experiences as a wife, mother and widow as she faced scandal and financial ruin. Thornton lived to be 80.
