Ann Hughes is retired from Keele University where she was Professor of Early Modern History for almost twenty years. Throughout her career she has focused on the wide-ranging upheavals in mid-seventeenth century England, summed up as the English Revolution. Her first book was Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire and she has also published a book on religious conflict and print culture: Gangraena and the Making of the English Revolution; two more general studies, The Causes of the English Civil War and Gender and the English Revolution, besides co-edited works including an edition of the collected works of the Digger Gerard Winstanley and more recently of the household accounts of the second Lord Brooke and his widow. She is currently working on the religious manuscripts and public life of a London parliamentarian merchant, and on how local people interacted with the powerful parliamentarian war-time state.
This talk follows the career of a minor Warwickshire lawyer, John Bridges, Governor of the parliamentarian garrison at Warwick castle for much of the civil war, and later prominent as a soldier and politician in Ireland. Bridges, along with his father, aunt and four of his brothers were all senior servants in the household of Robert Greville, Lord Brooke (whose death in 1643 during the first siege of Lichfield is commemorated in Dam Street). Brooke’s premature death and the upheavals of war brought John Bridges independent military and political roles – including friendship with Oliver Cromwell’s son, Henry. Success in England, and in Ireland, brought profit and political advancement but also resentment and rivalry. His career and the fortunes of his family offer insights into the social and political implications of the English civil war; the complex relationships between England and Ireland; and general processes of social change through the seventeenth century.
