Posted 9 years ago
Hamish
(62 items)
Well quite a few years ago now I was ambling around a car boot sale looking for nothing in particular, when I spotted a bunch of old documents sitting beside a box on someone's stall. They were all rolled up together so I couldn't see what was there, just a few little snippets of writing, which I couldn't decipher at the time. I decided whilst standing there that it might be interesting to look through, and they were very cheap at about £4, so I bought the bunch and took them home. I had a little look though at the time and thought they were interesting, but left it at that. Anyway they stayed tucked away for years until about 6 months ago when I found them again.
I decided to have a look though, and found this. There are 5 documents in all, some larger than others (one appears to be 7 pages of Latin). This one in particular was interesting mainly due to the date and main character involved. The date is February 1644 and it is the height of the English civil war between the Parliamentarians, of which William Brereton was Commander-in-Chief, and the Royalists, led by Oliver Cromwell. At this time he was the leader of a group of individuals called The Deputy Lieutenants in Cheshire, a band of prominent figures, most with links to Parliament, who oversaw the financial aspects of Cheshire. This letter is correspondence relating to some financial matters of the time and ends with the list of names of the members of the Deputy Lieutenants who were in session at the time.
I've so far managed to glean this information via research of the names but the writing is very hard to decipher so it is unlikely I will find out much more. I have no idea how many items like this have survived and my next task is to take it to someone who has better knowledge than I, but a nice little piece of history. I just need to work out the Latin one now!
This stuff pops up in a car boot sale in England? that does it, I'm going to update my passport and start checking trans-Atlantic air fare.
I'd love to see the Latin and be too !!!!
.... the Latin one too !!!!
Thanks all. vetraio50, I'm afraid the Latin one is purely a guess at this point. The word Opus shows up a few times so that lead me to believe Latin, but in reality I have no idea! I'll post some pictures later
What a GREAT find!
It just occurred to me that if all of these documents came from the same purchase then there might well be a common thread to all of them. Perhaps it was one of the names above?
The link is the county of Cheshire in Northern England. All the documents relate to this area, the odd one out being the Latin document, however with some research this may prove to be from this area also. They are all different periods though.
Hamish, I have some knowledge concerning at least one of these documents if you want to get in touch and discuss, please message me "decimuseb at yahoo.co.uk".
(ignore my comment earlier about other jewellery? items - this is the one I meant to comment on.