Two Warwickshire women of character: Margaret Sheldon (c 1510-1590) and Margaret Knollys (c 1549-1606)

摘要

The Dugdale Society has for decades published volumes of records relating to Warwickshire history but it also prints occasional papers based on lectures read to the Society's annual meeting. This is laudable, for while the collections of documents printed by this and other county-level records series are an important engine of historical research, offering close and detailed perspectives on local history, the gap between the micro and macro levels can be hard to bridge. In a theoretical introduction to this paper, Cathryn Enis states ambitiously that 'local history seen in its regional, national and international context allows local knowledge to enrich our global understanding ... local studies can and should respond to doubts over their place in the canon of academic practice and knowledge by disputing the false division between the local and the national.' Understanding local detail in national, let alone global context, requires not only deep knowledge but an ability to synthesise reams of secondary literature. Nevertheless, it is right that it should be a historian's aspiration.