Family and Misfortune in the English Civil War: The Sad Case of Edward Pitt
1998; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 61; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3817799
ISSN1544-399X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Economic and Social Studies
ResumoI n 1640 Edward Pitt could count himself a fortunate man. He was devoted to his loving wife Rachel. Twelve of his fourteen children were alive and a ource of happiness to their parents. He was professionally well established and respected. He was, by most standards, rich and had houses in Palace Yard, Westminster, and at Stratfield Saye in Hampshire. He was embedded in a network of kin and connections in London, Dorset, and Hampshire, and lived in a world in which obligations and favors mutually exchanged oiled the processes of society and were evidence of standing within it. The tenor of life was not always even: there had been a recent falling out with his brother and neighbor William, probably over the settlement of their father's estate, but a mediator had returned them to peaceable inclinations and William's new wife Abigail and Rachel Pitt were to become the best of friends.' As far as we know, neither father nor eldest son of this happy and united family drew a sword or fired a shot in anger in the war that was about to break over their heads, but within a few years the family was overwhelmed by tragedy directly attributable to that war. Death and taxes took their toll; status and property were threatened; allegiance was divided. The story of one man and his family during the first few years of the English Civil War may appear at first sight to be narrow in scope and merely anecdotal and pathetic in its interest. In fact it illuminates multiple aspects of a war in which military and civilian life were inextricably entangled, and in which the individual confronted the state in unaccustomed ways. When war broke out in 1642 Edward Pitt was fifty years old and one of the Tellers of the Exchequer. He was the third generation of his family to hold office there, and a wide network of kin were also Exchequer officials. They were a Dorset family, and part of a Dorset Exchequer mafia. Edward's father, William, married a Wareham heiress, thus strengthening the county connections.2 He acquired a
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