Sorry this is a bit late, but I've only just seen your question as I've
been recovering from celebrations - I've just received my Oxford
University Undergraduate Advanced Diploma in Local History from the
university vice chancellor at the Sheldonian Theatre. (Hurray! It's
been three years of hard but fascinating work.) At the reception
afterwards, my old tutor told me that she has recently been commissioned
to research and write new material for the Victoria County History for
Hampshire. (The VCH - it doesn't get more authoritative.) May I pass
on your message to her, as I'm certain that she will be most interested
in the document you have discovered?
Meanwhile, I would suggest that you handle it as little as possible, and
keep it away from too much sunlight, dryness or damp - much as you would
with a precious piece of lace. If you want to make a copy of your
document for closer examination, please don't photocopy it: take it to
an archivist if you can, they have special machines to make scans
safely. My tutor was complaining about the conditions in which she is
having to work at Corpus Christi College: they have some land records
there, and they are kept in the cellar! Also, she has to do her work
under the continuous gaze of the college archivist, and if he wants to
leave the room at all, then he locks the door and everyone has to stand
outside until he returns.
Thank you for letting us know about this find - it sounds most
intriguing. I'll see if I can discover anything in my textbooks about
it, until I go in to Oxford again and can look in the library and
computer database. (Not having direct access at home any more to that
computer database - full texts of online books, journals, reference
works, facsimiles of old documents, and free access to all sorts of
websites - well, it feels like an amputation!)
Yours sincerely,
Linda Walton,
in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, U.K.,
at the end of a wonderfully warm and sunny Spring day.
Thurlow Weed wrote:
(snip)
I have a question highly off-topic, but there is such a wealth of
knowledge here I'm hoping someone on the list is an English Civil War
history buff or historian or have connexions thereunto and can provide
some help.
(snip)
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