John Lingard and the Pursuit of Historical Truth

Edwin Jones studied at the University of Wales and Cambridge University. Appointed OBE in 1986 for services to Education, he retired in 1994 and started to write The English Nation: The Great Myth (1998), and the present work, which represents over 40 years of research.

"In this magisterial volume Dr. Jones has revealed the full extent of Lingard's historiographical labours and achievements.'' -- Recusant History."Edwin Jones has produced a very good book, and has re-introduced one of Catholicism's greatest historians to the English-speaking world... all educated historians would do well to read this book.'' -- Catholic Historical Review."John Lingard was a member of the English Catholic community who wrote his ten-volume History of England in the years immediately preceding emancipation. But for the best part of a century after that event it was held by historians in the Whig-Protestant mainstream that a good Catholic historian was almost an oxymoron. Edwin Jones's definitive research into Lingard is a major event in English historiography.'' -- Patrick Collinson, Regius Professor of Modern History, Emeritus, University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College."Edwin Jones is well equipped to tell Lingard's story, to examine Lingard's methods with true Lingardian meticulousness and to explain the circumstances of his intellectual ostracism... This book confirms the view that the search for historical truth, despite the obstacles, is not a waste of time or effort. It restores Lingard to his rightful place in the pantheon of British historians. And it shows that the British historical tradition is even richer than most of us were led to believe.'' -- From the Foreword by Norman Davies, author.

• Contents: Introduction: The Background to Lingard's Work; An Invitation to the Historian's Workshop; The Historiography of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; The Collation of Sources and Lingard's Use of Public Records as a Tool of Source Criticism; The Role of Private Sources and Their Use as a Tool of Source Criticism; The Great Step Forward: Pursuit of the Source of the Source'; A Critical Apparatus for Prioritising the Authority of Sources; The Use of Forensic' Rules of Source Criticism; The Application of Lingard's Source Criticism; to Some Celebrated Historical Problems; Lingard's Place in English Historiography; Epilogue: Hic caestus artemque repono'; Index.