Genealogy and History

Some thoughts on the relationship between genealogical methods with historical research, to uncover the full picture

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The Encounter of Genealogy and History

There comes a point in a genealogical journey when a family story meets the story of the place from where the family came, and then the wider national, even global, history. The family story itself starts to blossom by adding local and national context to the direct history of a single family. The encounter also provides a direct route into local and national history, which is far more enthralling to follow than a more formal reading of history.

Genealogy is best progressed not in isolation, but as part of a multidisciplinary world, and encounters with historical and archaeological research is the inevitable direction to building the depth and richness of a family narrative.

The starting point in reaching beyond pure genealogy is a study of the history of the places which have been identified as the home of the family. A study of local history starts to build context and to explain.

A History of Whitby, 1817

The Making of South Yorkshire, David Hey, 1979

The Poachers of Pickering Forest 1282 to 1338, Derek Rivard

Great Ayton, A History of the Village, Dan O’Sullivan

As the local history unfolds, a broader understanding of the national story is very helpful. These are some of the broader texts that I found helpful.

Robert Tombs, The English and their History A comprehensive journey into English History

Marc Morris, The Anglo Saxons A helpful starting point for a deeper dive into pre Norman Conquest history

Simon Schama, A Complete History of Britain A thorough history in three volumes

The Shaping of Modern Britain, 1790 to 1914, Eric Evans

Whilst the secondary sources provide the broad patterns of history, the best approach is to constantly dive back into primary sources, to found the basis of the factual narrative and which provide direct contemporaneous sources to help build up your story. Those primary sources can start to venture beyond genealogical records such as BMD and census records, to wider historical material.

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People

The Yorkshire Lay Subsidy, 1301

City of York Register of Freemen 1272 to 1558

Beowulf

I also find podcasts helpful to listen to. They may not be primary sources of material of which historians might approve, but they are helpful to conjure up ideas, and inspire the direction of travel.

The In Our Time Podcasts The ultimate history series, with a database of thousands of historical episodes.

The Rest is History Podcasts Inspiration from chat between Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook

Gone Medieval Some useful topics from medieval history

The English Heritage Podcast Some helpful summaries of historical landmarks and their history

The encounter with historical and archaeological material provides richness and depth to the genealogical narrative and the disciplines are properly entwined. Genealogy is the study of history, and the study of history gains direct meaning from rooting it in a search for a genealogical story. The relationship is symbiotic.

The History of History

There is a helpful In Our Time Podcast, the History of History which explores how studying history, and the writing of history, has changed over time, and another which considers History and Understanding the Past.

There was an intellectual divide which arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from a divergence of views between supporters of Stuart absolute monarchy and the Puritan challengers of the time of Civil War, which has influenced the evolution of British identity.

The first monumental history was by Charles I’s councillor, Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon who began his History of the Rebellion which he started in the 1640s and published in 1702. Separately there developed a Whig history, whose pioneer was a Protestant soldier in William of Orange’s invading army called Paul Rapin de Thoyras who wrote Histoire d’Angleterre (1723 to 1727) aimed at a foreign audience. It set out the Whig view of English history as a continuous struggle through the ages to defend ancient freedoms. Charles I had tried to enslave England, but the culmination of the national evolution came with the Glorious Revolution.

A competing Tory history was found in the works of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume’s History of England (1757). He argued against extremes and suggested that societies progressed through improvements in education, government, law and economic management. He did not recognise the idea that the Norman Yoke had subdued an antique Anglo Saxon character that needed to be revived. Liberty did not come from resisting the Crown, rather it required the authority, even absolute, of the monarchy. The Tudors had laid the foundations for the best form of government. It was Cromwell who had seized power by violence. True liberty was not in ancient rights but in modern thinking. History should teach the people to be grateful for what they had. Hume was accused by the Whigs of being a Jacobite.

John Wilkes’ History of England (1768) adopted Rapin’s view, that liberty is the character of the Englishman. Catherine Macaulay attacked Hume in her History of England (1763 to 1783) and recounted an eternal struggle for Saxon freedom against the Norman yoke.

Edmund Burke wrote the Whig history Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). He argued that fundamental rights had built up since Magna Carta in the evolution of custom and the Common Law. England’s age of revolutions was over and had changed from a period of political turbulence to a nation of continuity and peace.

Thomas Babington Macaulay continued the Whig historical tradition with his History of England (1848 to 1855). His focus was on resistance to the Stuarts, but he downgraded the idea of an ancient constitution inherited from the Anglo Saxons and focused on progress through enlightened trade, libraries, factories etc.

Thomas Carlisle published Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845), which allowed Cromwell himself to posthumously speak to heroic struggles.

There was nevertheless a distaste for Roundhead oppression, captured in W F Yeames’ painting When did you last see your father? (1878) and Frederick Marryar’s children’s novel, The Children of the New Forest (1847).

Whig pieties were reaffirmed by Macaulay’s great nephew, George Macaulay Trevelyan, one of the last of the Whig Historians, in his History of England (1926), Shortened History (1942) and English Social History (1944).

After that, the Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield, dismissed Whig history in his caricature, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) and it was parodied by W C Sellar and R J Yeatman’s 1066 and all that, portraying every episode of British history as a good thing which progressed Britain’s progress to top nation.

Whig history died as the focus turned in the twenty first century to what had gone wrong with Britain. The American version perhaps outlived the British. The First World War shook British confidence and a period of post war declinism and European integration, and the democratisation of European nations including Germany, led to the waning of the Whig historical perspective.

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