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Recent Posts
- Patriotic women: Shakespearean heroines of the 1720s
- Sir Francis Kynaston: The importance of the ‘Nation’ for a 17th-century English royalist
- Anciennete among the Non-Jurors: a study of Henry Dodwell
- Wet-nurses in early modern England: some evidence from the Townshend archive
- Masters and servants: the Hudson’s Bay Company and its personnel, 1668-1782
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Patriotic women: Shakespearean heroines of the 1720s
Posted on May 19, 2012 | No CommentsEarly 18th-century adaptations of Shakespeare can arguably be regarded as reconstructions of the plays for the ‘modern’ stage. Commentators such as Jean Marsden have convincingly suggested that post-1660 drama turns its attention to love, family and marriage, all subjects befitting the presence of women... -
Sir Francis Kynaston: The importance of the ‘Nation’ for a 17th-century English royalist
Posted on May 19, 2012 | No CommentsA contemporary of important political theorists like Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653), Francis Kynaston (sometimes spelt Kinaston), poet and scholar, was born around 1586–1587 in Oteley, Shropshire. -
Anciennete among the Non-Jurors: a study of Henry Dodwell
Posted on May 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe present study may be regarded as treating upon those attitudes to the past and its relationship to the present generally discussed under the rubric of the conflict of the Ancients and the Moderns. -
Wet-nurses in early modern England: some evidence from the Townshend archive
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe study gives background information about the nurses and traces connections between them and their employers. It also questions our assumptions about what lay behind the widespread use of wet-nurses at this social level. -
Masters and servants: the Hudson’s Bay Company and its personnel, 1668-1782
Posted on May 17, 2012 | No CommentsThe HBC drew its labour force from the competitive labour ‘market’ of early modern Britain: the movement of men to and from the Bay was an aspect of domestic labour mobility. -
Rainbow for a Reign: The Colours of a Queen’s Wardrobe
Posted on May 16, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper evaluates the wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth I on the basis of the colours that she wore. -
Anne Boleyn: witch, bitch, temptress, feminist
Posted on May 14, 2012 | No CommentsAnne Boleyn wasn't exactly a Protestant, but she was a reformer, an evangelical; and the sixth finger, which no one saw in her lifetime, was a fragment of black propaganda directed at her daughter, Elizabeth I. -
“When the Plough and Breeding of Cattle Cease, Then Will the Rebellion End”: The Adoption of Total War as English Policy in Ireland, 1558-1603
Posted on May 14, 2012 | No CommentsAs money and men were sucked into an Irish black hole, the English felt it more necessary to quickly subdue the island, and with all other attempts having failed, the English were, if they were to have any chance of success, forced to make war on the Irish population, and therefore perpetrated the violence and brutality inherent in Total War. -
Little Ease: Torture and the Tudors
Posted on May 7, 2012 | No CommentsTorture and the Tower of London have long had an uneasy relationship. The echoes of those screams are part of the walled fortress’s allure, along with the X marks the spot of Queen Anne Boleyn’s and the Lady Jane Grey’s decapitations and tales of the travails of inmates Raleigh, Cranmer, Fisher and More. -
Negotiating the Grand Alliance: The role of the King-Stadtholder’s corps diplomatique in establishing a new alliance between ‘Austria’, the Dutch Republic and England, 1688 – 1690
Posted on May 6, 2012 | No CommentsFrom the moment William set sail for England, the Dutch Republic and England became involved in the Nine Years War, making it a truly European-wide war. -
Shakespeare for analysts: Literature and intelligence
Posted on May 6, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper is an argument and a suggestion. The argument is that what Shakespeare had to say about human behavior in the political and leadership realms is worth reading, and hearing, today. -
The Cheapside Hoard
Posted on April 29, 2012 | No Comments‘The Cheapside Hoard’ celebrates the 100th anniversary of its discovery in June 2012. This story of the discovery of this Renaissance-era treasure trove is an anglophile’s delight. -
‘The inordinate excess in apparel’: Sumptuary Legislation in Tudor England
Posted on April 29, 2012 | No CommentsSumptuary legislation can be defined as a set of regulations, passed down by legislators through statutory law and parliamentary proclamations, that sought to regulate society by dictating what contemporaries could own or wear based on their position within society. -
Anatomy of a Plague: A Glimpse of an Epidemic Through the Observations of One London Parish
Posted on April 24, 2012 | No CommentsSt. Giles of Cripplegate is utilized as a representational case study for the impacts of the 1665 plague of London. -
‘Ripeness is all’: the death of Elizabeth in drama
Posted on April 22, 2012 | No CommentsAs the life of Elizabeth I began to wane, rumours repeatedly circulated that her possible successor, James VI of Scotland, would not wait peacefully until her death, but intended to seize the English throne forthwith. -
Sir Henry Vane, 1613-1662: America’s First Revolutionary
Posted on April 22, 2012 | No CommentsIt was the 14th of June, 1662. Tower Hill in London was set up for an execution. -
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556: a political study
Posted on April 21, 2012 | No CommentsSuch evaluations of Cranmer, which slight his political abil- ity during the reign of Henry VIII, are inadequate. They leave unexplained the glaring inconsistency between the non-political pawn who was Henry VHI's archbishop and the determined protestant reformer of Edward VI's reign. -
The final years of the Court of Star Chamber, 1558-1641
Posted on April 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe final years of the Court of Star Chamber, 1558-1641 Boyd, Newell Dalton Master of Arts, History, Texas Tech University, May (1971) Abstract The English Court of Star Chamber was... -
The Seymour Family: Edward, Jane, and Thomas, c. 1500-1552
Posted on April 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe Seymour family was a very old and well established, if not distinguished, family. Their lineage can be traced to an obscure knight who came to England v/ith 1/iliiam the Conqueror. The Seymour name came to the family in the first half of the fourteenth century when Sir Roger de St.Maur married Cicely,the eldest sister and heir of John de Beauchamp. -
The British invasion of Egypt and the political press, 1882
Posted on April 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe objective of this paper is to return the study of the British invasion of of Egypt in 1882 to an important element of the original source material—the periodic press, which helped to condition the attitudes of the educated British public as well as reflect those attitudes. -
An ordinary metropolis: the evolution of criminal justice in London, 1750-1830
Posted on April 19, 2012 | No CommentsHistorians often view the creation of the police as separate from legal and penal reform. The three are intricately related. Reformers' and pamphleteers' messages for reform joined law reform to a general plea for modernity. -
The enforcement of the anti-slave trade laws as an issue in British politics, 1833-1850
Posted on April 19, 2012 | No CommentsWhen the abolitionists began their campaign, England was still one of the world's major slave-trading nations, and by 1833 the British empire contained nearly 600,000 slaves. -
‘Feeling pleasures’: The sense of touch in renaissance England
Posted on April 18, 2012 | No CommentsMy dissertation contends that the nature and status of touch were granted unprecedented scrutiny in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, with the sense assuming a new importance amidst the cultural transformations that characterized those centuries. -
“Unspottyd Lambs Of the Lord”: Presbyterianism and the People in Elizabethan London
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsAs a result of this popular appeal, the presbyterian movement was able to endure the systematic attempts to eliminate it carried out by the Queen and the church hierarchy, to continue to help shape the nation's religious climate under the Stuarts, and to leave a lasting mark on English culture. -
All the World’s a Stage: Pageantry as Propaganda at the Court of Elizabeth I, 1558-1569
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsIn order to strengthen her position and unite the country during her first decade as queen, Elizabeth and her council launched an organized and effective propaganda campaign and cultivated an image that focused her subjects’ loyalty on her. She accomplished this through the use of spectacle, drama, and pageantry, specifically in her coronation procession, the performance of plays and masques at court, and annual progresses. -
Local Government and Society in Early Modern England: Hertfordshire and Essex, C. 1590-1630
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsIn this dissertation, I propose to study the administrative and social history of two adjoining English counties, Essex and Hertfordshire, for the period of 1590 through 1630. As a political and social history, this study will track the careers and social relationships of the justices of the peace, as well as other county officials, such as the sheriff, the deputy lieutenants, and the lord lieutenant (usually the resident nobleman of a county). -
“The Prince and His People”: A Study of Edwardian Propaganda, 1547-1549
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe conclusion of this study draws direct parallels between the 1549 petitions and the rhetorical strategies used in the previous two years. The government’s direct patronage of this propaganda and the language that drew the commons into a political partnership with their king helped to spark the rebellions, resulting in a crisis of leadership and legitimacy. -
Playing at Command: Midshipmen and Quarterdeck Boys in the Royal Navy, 1793-1815
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe increasing social status of young gentlemen in the Royal Navy of the Great Wars and the processes that maintained their authority reflected wider social and cultural trends - developments that confirmed the view of Georgian England as an ancien regime. -
Anatomizing the social body: representing the plague in London, 1665
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis will analyze the motivations behind a broadsheet produced in response to the outbreak of bubonic plague in the City of London in 1665. -
Westall’s peasants : British identity and the crisis of nation in 1799
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis examines a set of stipple engravings representing groups of peasants and the rural countryside in four regions of the British Isles. -
From obligation to agreement: concepts of servitude in early modern England
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsUntil quite recently, servants played a central role in European family life...Early Modern England was no exception, for nearly every household participated in the institution of servitude. -
Poor Relief in Sixteenth Century England
Posted on April 5, 2012 | No CommentsThis study models any potential bias in recorded poor relief as a function of the characteristics of the data collectors themselves; such characteristics should be unrelated to the poor relief that the religious houses actually provided. -
Victorian Governesses: A Look at Education and Professionalization
Posted on April 4, 2012 | No CommentsVictorian governesses found themselves central to the debate of ideal womanhood because of their roles as educators and workers. Governesses and others concerned with the conditions of governesses endeavored to professionalize that career by embracing and taking part in the movement for higher female education and the advancement of women in other fields of work. -
Illustrated Soap Advertisements in Myra’s Journal 1875-1912: Hygiene, Beauty and Class in Victorian England
Posted on April 3, 2012 | No CommentsIdeas about cleanliness were also changing in the time leading up to the Victorian era; the observance of being clean developed from an activity largely practised by monks and those of the religious community into an exercise that almost anyone could and should adopt, though cleanliness came to be defined as denoting both physical and moral purity. The development of a cult of cleanliness occurred during this time, where this society detested dirtiness to such an extent that in advertisements, cleanliness received praise but dirtiness was ridiculed. -
Riotous or Revolutionary: The Clubmen during the English Civil Wars
Posted on April 3, 2012 | No CommentsIn the English Civil Wars, which pitted the supporters of the King (Royalists, or Cavaliers) against the Roundhead Parliamentarians, some might point to the rise of the 1644 Clubmen in the countryside as just such a lower class, agrarian revolutionary moment. -
Ballads, Culture and Performance in England 1640-1660
Posted on March 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis study argues that ballads were a uniquely potent cultural medium. Because ballads were used for popular entertainment, the discourses about contemporary political and religious controversies contained in them pervaded culture more so than messages contained in other kinds of print. -
Buttressing a Monarchy: Literary Representations of William III and the Glorious Revolution
Posted on March 27, 2012 | No CommentsThe 1690s have been unfairly criticized as one of the dullest periods in English literature.i While the period lacks the euphoria of the years immediately following the Restoration, the literature in the years following William III’s ascension is anything but dull. As writers wrestled with the monumental changes to the English government brought about by the Glorious Revolution, they created a body of literature that significantly engages political issues and vibrantly expresses the varied conceptions of government circulating at the time. -
Haunting the House, Haunting the Page: The Spectral Governess in Victorian Fiction
Posted on March 27, 2012 | No CommentsFor James’s novella participates in a period-spanning discourse that associated governesses with ghosts both real and imaginary. Throughout the Victorian period, governesses found themselves implicitly allied with the legions of the unquiet dead. -
![Opium was not an enormously expensive commodity, and “at 1d [,] an ounce of laudanum was cheap enough—about the price of a pint of beer,” in consequence, many, even of the working class, were regular users. Self-medicating, the cheapest, and often the only means available to many of the poor when sickness struck, was a socially acceptable practice.](http://earlymodernengland.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Opium-115x115.jpg "Opium Use in Victorian England: The Works of Gaskell, Eliot, and Dickens")
Opium Use in Victorian England: The Works of Gaskell, Eliot, and Dickens
Posted on March 27, 2012 | No CommentsOpium was not an enormously expensive commodity, and “at 1d [,] an ounce of laudanum was cheap enough—about the price of a pint of beer,” in consequence, many, even of the working class, were regular users. Self-medicating, the cheapest, and often the only means available to many of the poor when sickness struck, was a socially acceptable practice. -
Imagining the pain and peril of seventeenth-century childbirth: travail and deliverance in the making of an early modern world
Posted on March 26, 2012 | No CommentsAlice Thornton’s accounts of the pains and perils of childbirth, including this passage on the birth of her fifth child, have attracted the attention of a number of recent historians as particularly detailed and evocative examples of personal testimony to the experience of giving birth in the early modern period. -
To “Bring Down the Flowers”: The Cultural Context of Abortion Law in Early Modern England
Posted on March 25, 2012 | No Comments...their concerns with abortion were based on its providing a means to enable or conceal extra-marital sex, not on any condemnation of abortion per se. -
Childbirth Prayers in Medieval and Early Modern England: “For drede of perle that may be-falle”
Posted on March 25, 2012 | No CommentsChildbirth prayers and rituals from the medieval period and early modern era shall be analyzed and compared with childbirth prayers and rituals in post-Reformation England. -
Violent Crime in Victorian England: A Gender Analysis of Sherlock Holmes
Posted on March 21, 2012 | No CommentsIn many ways, Sherlock Holmes serves as a mirror for the attitudes of Victorian England in regards to women and their involvement in crime; as both victims and perpetrators. -
Texts and Textiles: Self-Presentation among the Elite in Renaissance England
Posted on March 21, 2012 | No CommentsTextiles and fashion were central to court life, and even, in themselves, a means of communication. They attracted what seems to us a completely disproportionate amount of available resources, infinitely more than the paintings and other more permanent artefacts which are now more familiar to us. -
Battle of the Boyne: King William III’s Victory in Ireland
Posted on March 18, 2012 | No CommentsIt would be difficult to find a battle more indelibly etched into the folk memory of a people than the Battle of the Boyne, which remains as meaningful to Irish Protestants today as it was to their forefathers in 1690. Each year on July 12, thousands of Orangemen march to the sound of tin whistles, accordions and booming lambeg drums to honor the 'glorious and immortal memory' of William III, Prince of Orange and King of England. -
Revolution and the British Nationalist Imaginary: The Case of Charles Dickens
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsEver since the late 16th Century, when protogenic nationalism made its appearance in England, the English Channel, rather than a watery passage connecting two seas and lands, figured in the nationalist Imaginary as a symbolic divide which insulated England from its Others - France and the Continent -
Conflict, consensus and charity: politics and the provincial voluntary hospitals in the eighteenth century
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsJust as each individual infirmary linked county and town, so collectively the provincial voluntary hospitals displayed both national and local features. On the one hand, they were linked in a national movement. -
Commercial conflict and regulation in the discourse of trade in seventeenth-century England
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough the term is no longer as popular as once was the case, mercantilism continues to dominate our understanding of the commercial ideas and legislation of seventeenth-century England, referring not so much to a distinctive school of economic thought or ideology, as a vague set of assumptions about the belligerent nature of commerce and the inevitable need for state regulation of it. -
Do you recognise this costume?
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsWhere did the costume come from? -
The taming of the duel: masculinity, honour and ritual violence in London, 1660–1800
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe duel had a long history, but it was a malleable custom, and has been variously described as fundamentally feudal, early modern, and modern."Although traceable back to medieval tournaments, feuds, and judicial combat, the single combat to resolve questions of honour developed in the sixteenth century in several European countries, arriving in England in the 1570s.