Give me some old bloke from the 1500's and I'm perfectly happy to rummage about reading his Will and wondering whatever his daughter would be doing with a cow...I can find out how much he paid in taxes if the records remain and hazard a vague guess as to the cause of his eventual demise...sometimes he might have his very own page on Wikipedia showing all his relations back to the year dot.
His house may still be standing...open on Sunday afternoons for people to gawp at the beeswaxed floors and oil paintings, have tea in the adjoining tea-room...maybe buy a potted plant from the gardens. They'll go home wondering about the cost of the electricity to live in such a place and be thankful they have a neat bungalow by the sea with a white meter to help with the cost.
I like those people with their stables for the horses and the ragged little scullery maids, their faces marked with the scars from the Smallpox...the man whose sole task was to empty the piss-pots onto the manure heap every morning...it's easy to imagine the Kings Messenger calling every year for the taxes due...putting the gold pieces into his purse tucked safely into his saddle-bag.
Maybe his wife plucked her hair-line in keeping with the fashions of the day and wore a cloak trimmed in soft ermine...bathed in water scented with Lavender flowers and died birthing her tenth child.
Instead I'm more usually faced with late Victorians who told fibs about their children's births...who lied in their teeth when the census form plopped through the letter-box...who had the truly irritating habit of naming every first son John or William...that makes me have to check and check and check again I have the 'right' John or William and not one who was born two generations ago...
There are those who simply disappear into thin air and drive me to despair searching through emigration records in case they decided to run away to America...if they didn't, then where in heavens name did they go.
And then there are the Irish records.
Did you know that many essential records of births etc were pulped during the First World War...they were. Mashed up to produce more paper for the War effort. And that's not counting the archives that went up in flames in the 1920's...or the bloody-minded village priests who filled in the books with their own version of spellings and dates...even in the present day those old boys hang on like grim death to any records they have in their possession and you have to sweet talk them and cajole and promise oodles of money before they'll let you see inside the Parish chest...then they hover over you in case you run out of the Presbytery with vital information tucked under your arm...
Give me the Mediaeval Yeomen with their farms and their land...the Knights who attended the Royal Court and were privy to the secrets and gossip...those old Wills leaving monies to the 'poor of the parish' and the bed and linen to the eldest son...gloves of Rabbit skin to small Grandchildren and a Shilling to the gravedigger. The best pewter platter to a sister and 'my fine linen chest' to the favourite youngest son...
I know where I am with those people...
Smugglers and the Demise of the Great Auk...
