No historian has a perfect grasp of the facts, patching over the cracks with educated guesses is one of the key skills. Sometimes this will not do. For my work on Charles’ Stuart’s escape after the battle of Worcester, I reached that point. In my last essay, on the King’s lost weekend, I pointed out that the testimony Charles gave Samuel Pepys 29 years later is suspect but I still trusted Thomas Blount’s 1660 book Boscobel.
I no longer trust Blount, and I will write no more till the problems of what evidence is reliable has been addressed and hopefully have been resolved. This is best done collaboratively and readers who would like to see my essay on the problems with Blount and what needs to be done are asked to contact me – using the form on the Contact section of the site. More may be achieved by collective effort than me beavering away alone on material over 360 years or more in the making.