抄録
Henry Swinden's The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Burgh of Great Yarmouth in the County of Norfolk is one of the most remarkable achievements in historical writing in the eighteenth-century England. It has almost one thousand pages, filled with narratives based on documents. In one chapter, Swinden provides detailed narratives on political conflicts in Yarmouth during the 1620s and 1630s between a group of puritan aldermen and their anti-puritan opponents. The anti-puritan aldermen attempted to introduce a less popular form of town government by revising Yarmouth's charter. Each group struggled to secure considerable backing at court. Privy councillors advised town's ruling elites to accommodate internal disputes as quickly as possible.
However, in some crucial points, Swinden's narrative distorts the facts. Swinden shows no sympathy for the non-puritan aldermen. He also underestimates the importance of the part played by the earl of Dorset, the high steward of Great Yarmouth, who tried to protect that corporation from full-scale division. Through the intensive research on the Swinden's narrative, this article tries to show how an eighteenth-century historian understood the political conflict in the preceeding century.
