I really wanted to understand more about the 1600s Jersey diarist, Jean Chevalier. His journal (a legacy gift to his own familial descendants) has become an unmatched window into his times. It is also the crown jewel of the Société Jersiaise, and the only credible historical document to tell of Sir Richard Lane’s fate while in exile with King Charles II during the English Civil War. But who was Jean Chevalier? How credible were his observations? I finally found a book that promised to tell me…
Category: Lane’s service in the monarchy of Charles I and II
The story of Sir Richard Lane’s evolving and ultimately tragic service to Kings Charles I and II
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Update on the Trial of Strafford Painting
“Proving” is an ambitious word. How do you “prove” that a mid-1800s painter depicting an important historical scene was aware of and attempting to portray specific actors and their inter-relationships in a drama that was already more than 200 years old at the moment he first stood before his empty canvas? Clearly, Thomas Woolnoth went to pains to realistically portray the principals of the scene in “The Trial of Strafford”, but was he aware of Richard Lane and his role? How much research did he do? How can we assert that he would have been aware of historical research that was being done in his own time? Without corroborating evidence, such assertions must be considered a hypothesis – one based on raw speculation…but, I think we can do better! (more…)
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