Jack Neill
DPhil Research Topic
Popular Politics, Social Relations and the Committee for Indemnity, c.1647-c.1655.
Supervisor: Andrew Hopper and Ismini Pells
My research assesses how partisan politics of the internecine warfare and political revolution associated with the British Civil Wars (1642-1651) impacted social relations across England and Wales. It is likely that a greater proportion of the British population died as a result of this conflict than during the First World War, and for the first time people across the social order had to choose an allegiance separate to their confessional identities.
My thesis uses the underutilised records of the Parliamentary Committee, and later Commission, for Indemnity, found in State Papers 24 in The National Archives. This body was established in 1647 and allowed defendants in civil and criminal lawsuits to petition to the state in order to be indemnified from prosecution, provided that they could prove that their actions were carried out in the Parliament’s service.
The limited existing studies of the Committee and its proceedings have focused upon apprenticeship, property disputes, and the prosecution of parliamentary officials. Informed by the recent scholarly turn away from the causes of war and towards its impacts, my thesis uses the committee’s records to probe the social depth of politics during the English Revolution. I examine how the poorer and middling sorts engaged with novel partisan politics, revealing the individual experiences, grassroots resentments, score-settling, and principled stands that underpinned the experience of this deeply divisive conflict. This theme is the foundation of my thesis, and is investigated through four chapters, pertaining to the following subjects:
• The politics of reporting speech.
• The denunciation of officeholders.
• Royalist resistance.
• The experience of the clergy.
Whilst the archive of the Indemnity Committee forms my main body of sources, I also utilise other series within the State Papers, quarter sessions records, and the Civil War Petitions Project.
Whilst primarily focusing upon the experience of the English Revolution, my research also engages with the recent scholarly interests in early modern petitioning, memory, and the uses of the law.
My research is generously supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the
Cyril and Phillis Long Scholarship from The Queen’s College.
Originally, I am from Northumberland and I completed an MSt in early modern History at St Catherine’s College (Oxford) in 2024. Prior to this I studied my BA in History at the Durham University.
