Review
'There is no doubt that the work that has gone into this volume has been immense. At least first its size might belie the scholarly effort that has been made in bringing these papers to a wider audience, but the work is undoubtedly impressive and important. For the published work alone, Frances Henderson deserves our gratitude; for the act of transcription our admiration is thoroughly deserved too. this is an outstanding piece of work and one that will be useful to many of us for years to come.' Martyn Bennett, Nottingham Trent University
Product Description
Since their publication in the Camden Series over 100 years ago, Sir Charles Firth's editions of the papers and New Model Army secretary William Clarke, Clarke Papers I-IV (1891-1901), have formed a fundamental source for students of the English Civil War and Interregnum, 1642-1660. This volume offers a further selection, deciphered for the first time since they were written by Frances Henderson, from the many documents which Clarke disguised in one of the rudimentary shorthand systems of his day. The new material consists mainly of the political intelligence which was being passed at every level from informed sources in London and elsewhere to English army headquarters in Scotland, where Clarke was based during the 1650s. The text is fully annotated. Appendices include a list of correspondents identified by Clarke in shorthand letters otherwise written en clair, and a survey of the use of shorthand in early seventeenth-century England.
