Unashamedly experiential

Brilliana Harley (1598-1643) was a prolific letter writer. Close to 400 of her letters written from 1623 until her death in October 1643 have survived. They provide a detailed picture of her married life with husband Robert, the outbreak of the Civil War in Herefordshire, and the life of a family at odds with local political sentiment. The majority of these letters are to her eldest son Edward, or Ned, as she calls him.

Edward Harley (1624 –1700), Brilliana and Robert’s eldest son, went up to Magdalen Hall at Oxford University in 1638, which was to Oxford what Emmanuel College was to Cambridge, namely, a seedbed for Puritanism.

He stayed at Oxford for two years, went down in 1640, and when the Civil War broke out in 1642, he fought with the Parliamentary armies. He supported the Presbyterians, and later opposed Cromwell, and thus fell out of favour with the government of the Commonwealth. He supported the Restoration of Charles II, but also the religious toleration of non-Anglicans, known as Dissenters or Nonconformists.