Sir Charles Firth
Maurice Ashley offers a tribute and reassessment of Sir Charles Harding Firth, the great historian of England in the seventeenth century.
It is strange to realize that it is exactly 100 years ago this March that Sir Charles Harding Firth, the great historian of England in the seventeenth century, was born.
For he was seventy-eight when he died and several of his writings have been published posthumously.
Two important books, which are the continuation of his work, the first specifically so, were published in 1955: The Restoration of Charles II, by Godfrey Davies, and England in the Reigns of James II and William III, by David Ogg. Other books which owe their inspiration to him still keep on appearing.
I only met Firth once, in his famous library in North Oxford. A bearded, wizened, and lame figure, he had considerable difficulty in moving around the room. I told him that I was intending to write a book on John Wildman, the Leveller leader.
Firth said sharply that everything that was to be said about Wildman would be found in his own article in the Dictionary of National Biography, and suggested some other subject: I forget what.
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