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Squire Papers
The Squire Papers were a literary hoax perpetrated upon Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle in 1847. The documents purported to be portions of a journal kept by one Samuel Squire during the English Civil War and letters from Oliver Cromwell to Squire. Their authorship is unclear but they were probably fabricated by William Squire (1809-1880), then resident in Great Yarmouth. Portions of the Squire Papers were first published by Carlyle in the December 1847 number of Fraser's Magazine, and the complete documents in the 3rd edition of Carlyle's Letters And Speeches Of Oliver Cromwell: With Elucidations. by Thomas Carlyle published in November 1849. Critics immediately attacked the authenticity of the papers, and Carlyle's judgement in authenticating them without proper investigation. By the 1880s, when Carlyle was dead, historians were almost unanimous in rejecting the Squire Papers as spurious.
Carlyle first published his Oliver Cromwell in 1845. He had intended writing a biography of Cromwell, but found it impossible and destroyed his manuscript. Instead he turned to making a collection of Cromwell's speeches and writings that would allow the Lord Protector to speak for himself and allow readers to form their own assessment of life and character. The book was received with general approval, and started a reassessment of Cromwell's life and character, which is still ongoing. As often happens with such works, it stimulated the appearance of much previously unknown Cromwell material as people produced documents from private collections or pointed Carlyle to repositories where they could be found. A second edition followed in 1846 incorporating the new material.
William Squire wrote to Carlyle in January 1847, saying that he had enjoyed the book and that he had a journal and some letters which had belonged to Samuel Squire, an ancestor of his who had "rode with Oliver" in the English Civil War. He included a tempting titbit from the journal: ' I thought he [i.e. Cromwell] looked sad and wearied ; for he had had a sad loss ; young Oliver got killed to death not long before, I heard : it was near Knaresborough, and 30 more got killed'. This was a shrewd move; Carlyle had been seeking clarification on the cause of Oliver Cromwell jr.'s death for many years and Squire, cleverly, gave him what he wanted to see. Eventually Squire sent Carlyle transcriptions of what he said were letters from Oliver Cromwell to Samuel Squire. Carlyle replied saying he was eager to see the original manuscripts, and the journal. Squire then wrote back saying that he had burned all the papers, leaving only the transcribed portions which Carlyle had already - he feared, he said, that the publication of the papers might cause bad blood in his extended family, reviving Civil War-era quarrels.
Carlyle printed these in an article in Fraser's Magazine for December 1847 with the title 'Thirty-Five Unpublished Letters of Oliver Cromwell' adding "Let me hasten to say ... that these letters are of indubitable authenticity". He gave an account of the papers' provenance and their destruction, referring to Squire, at his own request, only as "my Unknown Correspondent". Readers reacted with a mixture of surprise and scepticism. Had Carlyle been fooled, they asked, or was it some sort of literary joke that he was playing on the public? In a letter to E.T. Blakely[1] dated 1st Jan. 1848 Carlyle wrote, "I am sorry any person whatever should fancy I would put my name publicly or privately to a fiction, and ... call the operation a good “joke.”"
Carlyle now indulged in a curious piece of literary sleight-of-hand. He sent his friend John Forster the materials for an article, ostensibly a review of Carlyle's own Fraser's article, to be published in the Examiner, which Forster edited. "Do as you will; - only be sure to put it into another than my dialect!" he wrote - Carlyle did not want his characteristic style (which was already being called 'Carlylese') to betray the fact that he was effectively sitting in judgement on his own work. The article duly appeared, on 15th January 1848.
Carlyle was now in a difficult position. If he was honest with himself he probably recognised that the Squire Papers were distinctly dubious. A new (3rd) edition of his Oliver Cromwell was called for; if he omitted the Squire Papers people would want to know why, when he had already proclaimed them authentic. Yet to incorporate them would call into question his judgement as an historian and man of letters. He decided to place the papers, plus a reprint of his Frasers's article, in a separate appendix with a separate introduction and to make no reference to them in the body of the book or the index.
The episode also throws light on Carlyle's limitations as an historian. Notoriously reluctant to travel to examine primary documents, he rarely bothered to work with manuscript sources if they were not available in London and relied on transcriptions made for him by friends and collaborators as well as previously published sources.
In 1886 William Aldis Wright published the surviving correspondence between Carlyle and Squire[2]. Wright was a believer in the authenticity of the Squire Papers, but the effect of publication was to confirm the sceptics in their view.
When in 1904 a new (4th) edition of Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell was issued the Squire Papers were pointedly omitted and in his introduction Professor Charles Harding Firth could write: By competent judges it is now universally admitted that these letters are forgeries manufactured for the express purpose of deceiving Carlyle.