The historian’s craft (2)

Abstract This chapter seeks to articulate Lucy Hutchinson’s use of digressions with her apologetic purpose, namely the rehabilitation of the Colonel’s actions during the Civil War and Interregnum. For the sake of clarity, a typology of digressions is presented. First, the polemical digressions, which explore the long- and short-term causes of the Civil Wars, provide an apt discursive strategy to write about national history. Second, the narrative digressions offer both a synoptic vision of the English Civil War and a defence of tyrannicide. Third, the politico-moral digressions shed light on the persecution of the Colonel in the 1640s and foreshadow his final sufferings and death. The chapter finally argues that providence plays a crucial part in the economy of the Memoirs by allowing the convergence of several narrative lines and the integration of the life of Colonel Hutchinson into a larger eschatological framework.