Gerald Aylmer
Gerald Aylmer | |
---|---|
Born | Gerald Edward Aylmer 30 April 1926 Greete, Shropshire, England, United Kingdom |
Died | 17 December 2000(2000-12-17) (aged 74) Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom |
Occupation | Historian |
Parent(s) | Edward Arthur Aylmer, Phoebe Evans |
Gerald Edward Aylmer, FRHistS FBA (30 April 1926, Greete, Shropshire – 17 December 2000, Oxford) was an English historian of 17th century England.
Gerald Aylmer was the only child of Edward Arthur Aylmer, from an Anglo-Irish naval family, and Phoebe Evans. A great-uncle was Lord Desborough. Educated at Beaudesert Park School and Winchester College, he went to Balliol College, Oxford for a term before volunteering for the Navy, where he was a shipmate of George Melly. Returning to Balliol, he was tutored by Christopher Hill. He graduated in 1950, spent a year at Princeton University as a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow, and completed his thesis, 'Studies on the Institutions and Personnel of English Central Administration, 1625–42' (1954) as a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol. The thesis, in two volumes, was 1208 pages long: the Modern History Board subsequently introduced a word-limit.)
In 1954, Alymer went to Manchester University as an assistant lecturer, and in the following year married Ursula Nixon. Appointed lecturer at Manchester in 1962, he was then invited, aged 36, to become the first Professor of History at University of York. In 1979, he returned to Oxford as Master of St Peter's College, presiding over an improvement in academic performance at the college, increased endowment and building extensions before retiring in 1991. He remained an active publisher for the remaining nine years of his life before dying in hospital following what appeared to be routine surgery.
In 1993 Aylmer was honoured with a festschrift edited by his long-time colleagues John Morrill and Paul Slack and his former doctoral student Daniel Woolf.
Aylmer was on the editorial board of the History of Parliament Trust from 1968 to 1998, and chaired the board from 1989 to 1997. A Commissioner for Historical Manuscripts from 1978, he chaired the commission from 1989 to 1989. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1976, and President of the Royal Historical Society between 1984 and 1988.
Aylmer's most substantial historical contribution was his trilogy on seventeenth-century administration before, during and after the Civil War. Alymer brought a prosopographical method to the study of 17th century bureaucracy, as well as an interest in the political sociology of bureaucracy in Max Weber, James Burnham and Milovan Djilas. The first volume – a careful statistical study of Charles I's officials – effectively rebutted Hugh Trevor-Roper's attribution of the rise of the gentry to the profits of royal office, and characterisation of the Civil War as a conflict between 'rising' and 'declining' gentry. The second volume showed that Interregnum reforms had real, if not absolute, effects; the third, published posthumously, treated the partial return to older practices under Charles II. In this final volume, Aylmer described himself as "an old Whig (and one with some residual Leveller leanings too)".[1]
Works
- The King's Servants. The Civil Service of Charles I, 1961
- The State's Servants. The Civil Service of the English Republic, 1649-1660, 1973. ISBN 978-0-7100-7637-3
- The Struggle for the Constitution 1603-88, 1963. 4th ed, 1975.
- (ed.) The Interregnum: the Quest for Settlement, 1972
- The Levellers in the English Revolution, 1975. ISBN 978-0-8014-0957-8
- (ed. as microfilm edition) The Clarke Manuscripts at Worcester College, Oxford, 1979
- (with John Morrill), The Civil War and Interregnum: Sources for Local Historians, 1979
- Rebellion or Revolution? England 1640-1660, 1986
- The Crown's Servants: Government and Civil Service under Charles II 1660-85, 2002. ISBN 978-0-19-820826-6
Aylmer's publications up to 1990 are listed in his Festschrift.[2]
References
- Keith Thomas, 'Gerald Edward Aylmer, 1926-2000', Proceedings of the British Academy, 124 (2004), 3–21
- Austin Woolrych, 'Gerald Aylmer: Historian who always blended authority with humanity' (obituary), The Guardian, 29 December 2000
- Obituary, The Telegraph,
External links
- Peter Aylmer, Gerald Aylmer: foremost authority on the 17th century English state
Academic offices | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by | President of the Royal Historical Society 1985–1989 | Succeeded by |
- v
- t
- e
- 1871–1872 George Grote
- 1873–1878 John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
- 1878–1891 Henry Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare
- 1891–1899 Sir M. E. Grant Duff
- 1899–1901 Sir Adolphus Ward
- 1901–1905 Sir George Prothero
- 1905–1909 William Hunt
- 1909–1913 William Cunningham
- 1913–1917 Sir Charles Firth
- 1917–1921 Sir Charles Oman
- 1921–1925 Sir John Fortescue
- 1925–1929 Frederick Tout
- 1929–1933 Sir Richard Lodge
- 1933–1937 Sir F. M. Powicke
- 1937–1945 Sir Frank Stenton
- 1946–1949 Robert William Seton-Watson
- 1949–1953 Theodore Plucknett
- 1953–1957 Hale Bellot
- 1957–1961 David Knowles
- 1961–1965 Sir Goronwy Edwards
- 1965–1969 Robin Humphreys
- 1969–1973 Sir R. W. Southern
- 1973–1977 Sir Geoffrey Elton
- 1977–1981 Sir John Habakkuk
- 1981–1985 Sir J. C. Holt
- 1985–1989 Gerald Aylmer
- 1989–1993 Michael Thompson
- 1993–1997 Sir Rees Davies
- 1997–2001 Sir P. J. Marshall
- 2001–2005 Dame Janet Nelson
- 2005–2008 Martin Daunton
- 2009–2012 Colin Jones
- 2012–2016 Peter Mandler
- 2016–2020 Margot Finn
- 2020-present Emma Griffin