ABSTRACT
One example of the lasting collective memory and kinship links from the civil wars, as well as a continuity of radicalism, were the experiences of Bridget and Henry Ireton, two of the children of the regicide Ireton and his wife Bridget, daughter of Cromwell. This chapter considers how aspects of the lives of Henry and Bridget illustrate ownership of the memories of the civil wars and Cromwell into the eighteenth century by those with kinship links to figures who had resisted the Stuarts in the 1640s and 1650s by kin who themselves opposed the Stuarts in the 1680s. Part of what shaped Henry and Bridget's resistance to Charles II and James II was the community at Fleetwood's Stoke Newington home of old New Model soldiers and nonconformists that after 1660 provided a living link to memories of the civil wars and Cromwell. This chapter analyses the post-1660 community of radicals that lived and met at Fleetwood's London house despite the Restoration. Bridget continued to live with her stepfather, Fleetwood, until her 1669 marriage. This chapter also touches upon Bridget's apparent ‘intimacy’ with John Milton, who had written of himself as a ‘friend’ of Fleetwood.
