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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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Articles Archive
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The Wife’s Administration of the Earnings’? Working-Class Women and Savings in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a range of proposals for ways to improve the condition of the poor by stimulating savings. Institutions that encouraged and rewarded thrift would, it was argued, reduce dependence in old age on the Poor Law: the industrious would be rewarded for their good habits and the idle and vicious would suffer if required to rely on their own exertions rather than on public assistance. -
Battlefield Integration: Wellington’s use of Portuguese and Spanish Forces During the 1812 Salamanca Campaign
Posted on March 12, 2012 | No CommentsThe Peninsular War offers one situation in history where a coalition of allies with somewhat dissimilar cultures and vastly different military capabilities fought together to defeat a common enemy. -
Treatments for bubonic plague: reports from seventeenth century British epidemics
Posted on March 12, 2012 | No CommentsThus, when the last plague struck, new views of scientific knowledge were taking hold; Galileo had been active twenty-five years earlier and Copernicus a century before that. Anne Van Arsdall has written, `The scientific revolution that began in the sixteenth century and drastically altered human understanding of nature and the universe affected medicine as well’. -
Body snatching: a grave medical problem
Posted on March 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe activities of the 18th century body-snatchers are among the most lurid and entertaining episodes in the history of medicine and have been cataloged exhuastively by scholars and popularizers of all kinds. -
I, Easy Philosopher: Who is Andrew Marvell’s Upon Appleton House Really About?
Posted on March 11, 2012 | No CommentsIt is generally assumed that the poem is a tribute to General Fairfax and his house and family. While these are important to the poem, as well as weighty political and religious considerations of the time, I wish to argüe that it is primarily about the poet himself. -
Scientific Culture and the Origins of the First Industrial Revolution
Posted on March 8, 2012 | No CommentsThe article addresses the role of scientific culture in the first Industrial Revolution and is based upon research undertaken in Britain, France and The Low Countries. -
An Inquiry into Scottish Identity Between the Years 1688 and 1707
Posted on March 7, 2012 | No CommentsImpoverished and stagnant, Scotland was looked upon as a backward kingdom to the north, having started the 17th century as the poorest kingdom in western Europe yet managing to decline through the century. The English actually viewed them in nearly as worse a light as they did the Irish. But how did Scotland view itself? -
Binding Prometheus: How the 19th Century Expansion of Trade Impeded Britain’s Ability to Raise an Army
Posted on March 6, 2012 | No CommentsContrary to the conventional wisdom that trade enhances a state’s military power, we find that the expansion of trade did not ease Britain’s resource constraints by making labor more freely available for military purposes. -
The surgeoness: the female practitioner of surgery 1400-1800
Posted on March 4, 2012 | No CommentsBut what was a 'surgeoness', and what art did she teach? -
Re-defining the English Reformation
Posted on March 4, 2012 | No CommentsThe collective problem faced by students of the Reformation, if indeed we have a problem, is not therefore one of nurturing a tender and precarious plant, struggling to thrive in stony and unyielding historical soil. Rather, it is the challenge of maintaining order and coherence in a large and untidy garden, alive with luxuriant foliage, periodic colorful blooms, and a smattering of undesirable weed. -
Shipbuilding and the English International Timber Trade, 1300-1700: a framework for study using Niche Construction Theory
Posted on March 1, 2012 | No CommentsEnglish trade has long been dependent upon the sea as the main thoroughfare for goods traveling to and from the island. Boats and ships of various sizes, shapes, and varieties have in tum, until the last century with airplanes and the Channel Tunnel, been the primary means of leaving England for any purpose. -
Invisible Helpers: Angelic Intervention in Post-Reformation England
Posted on February 29, 2012 | No CommentsProtestants dismissed some of the more dubious aspects of medieval angelology, including the complex hierarchy of ranks formalized by pseudo-Dionysius in the first century. Anxious to combat tendencies that smacked of idolatry, they were also at pains to insist that people should neither venerate nor pray directly to angels. -
Women Thieves in Early Modern England: What Can We Learn from Narrative Sources?
Posted on February 28, 2012 | No CommentsAccording to the Assize records for Sussex which cover the entire reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), 12 women were tried in that county and over that period of time for witchcraft, 24 for infanticides and 127 for all kinds of theft. -
Equine Imagery in Early Modern Literature
Posted on February 26, 2012 | No CommentsEarly modern England relied heavily on horses for a wide variety of trades and pursuits. Horses plowed fields, transported people and goods across the country, carried knights in tournaments and battles, raced for the enjoyment of the upper classes, and even occasionally performed alongside human entertainers. -
Servants in Preindustrial Europe: Gender Differences
Posted on February 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe specific mobility and type of work of servants of both sexes were indeed a major feature in the delineation of building up European societies. Domestic service was the main way to elect for young rurals wanting to migrate towards small and big towns, since they could consider service as a transitory phase, giving them an opportunity to adapt themselves to a new way of life before marriage. -
Preaching before Princes: A study of some sixteenth century sermons preached before the monarch during the Tudor era
Posted on February 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe reigns of the five Tudor monarchs were the context of vast changes in the nature of religion and government in England. This study explores the way in which these changes were reflected in sermons preached before the princes. -
The English Reformation In Image and Print: Cultural Continuity, Disruptions, and Communications in Tudor Art
Posted on February 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe sixteenth century was a period of social, political, and religious change for the English Crown and people. Of these shifts the English Reformation and the resulting modifications to Catholic traditions were especially significant. Material culture (including art forms such as portraiture, church art, and illustrated texts) was a prominent indicator of larger political and religious alterations. -
Garden seeds in England before the late eighteenth century: I. Seed growing
Posted on February 19, 2012 | No CommentsPeculiar elements which shaped the development of garden seed production and marketing include the important role of foreigners in the process of innovation, technical difficulties and uncertainties of production balanced by the possibility of high profits, competition from imports, dependence on a retail market subject to fashion, and the emergence of seed growing from another innovation-market gardening. -
To the Ends of the Earth: A Study of the Explorative Discourse Promoting British Expansionism in Canada
Posted on February 19, 2012 | No CommentsBetween the second half of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century, the British conception of the western Canadian wilderness remained remarkably consistent. The popular British image of western Canada, persisting into the 1830s, was of a wasteland fit only for the fur trade. -
‘Boasting of silence’: women readers in a patriarchal state
Posted on February 19, 2012 | No CommentsThis essay considers three prescribed forms of female readerly silence - restraint from public reading, limitations on linguistic proficiency and abstention from vocal criticism - as the context for women's habitual silence in the margins of their books. -
London and the English Civil War
Posted on February 19, 2012 | No CommentsWhy did London not collapse into an anarchy of disorder, why did the capital not fall apart under the impact of the Civil War, why did the capital’s social, economic, political, religious and governmental structures survive the massive stresses and divisions brought about by the war, as they clearly did? -
Writing the Self? Love and the Letter in England, c. 1660–c. 1760
Posted on February 15, 2012 | No CommentsBefore we examine the socio-cultural meanings of Ursula’s letters, and what they tell us about emotional experience and expression in long eighteenth-century England, we need to consider their circumstances of production. -
The protestant idea of marriage in early modern England
Posted on February 14, 2012 | No CommentsThe English conduct book writers, themselves from the first generation of married pastors, saw it as their task to model the patriarchal family afresh for this new world. -
From Maiden to Matron: Victorian Heroines and the Creation of Domestic Identity
Posted on February 14, 2012 | No CommentsFor the Victorian heroine, no goal is as important to her happiness, social position and financial security as a successful courtship that leads to a successful marriage with a suitable man. -
Fencing in Seventeenth-Century England: A Visual Study of Joseph Swetnam’s Treatise
Posted on February 12, 2012 | No CommentsIn early modern England, there existed a simultaneous eagerness to embrace Italian humanism and a reluctance to abandon England's own established culture. A microcosm of this cultural tension can be found in English fencing treatises of the turn of the 17th century -
Errors in the King James Version?
Posted on February 12, 2012 | No CommentsWe find that today there are those who teach that one Bible, the KJV, has no errors. Certainly, no one is arguing, or has apparently ever argued, that any other English translation is without error. -
“Monks, Monks, Monks”: the Myths of the Death of Henry VIII
Posted on February 10, 2012 | No CommentsYet there are other stories told of the death and funeral of Henry VIII. He was perhaps the most famous king in English history, and so it is no surprise that in books and on the Internet, some strange or maudlin words and ghoulish acts have attached themselves to his demise. -
Below stairs at Arbury Hall: Sir Richard Newdigate and his household staff, c.1670–1710
Posted on February 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn all these spheres of activity, Newdigate had a preference for micro-management which sat very uneasily with his irascible, volatile personality. He was, therefore, the worst type of control-freak: that is,none with time on his hands -
‘Contrary to the liberties of this city’: Henry VII, English towns and the economics of law and order
Posted on February 9, 2012 | No CommentsFurthermore, the second half of the fifteenth century witnessed the increasing popularity of equity law as a desirable alternative to both common law courts and local jurisdictions. This situation was not lost on the mayors, burgesses and aldermen of English towns, nor on Henry VII. -
Tudor: What’s in a Name?
Posted on February 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn 2008, I published in the Times Literary Supplement an article suggesting that the word ‘Tudor’ was hardly used or known in sixteenthcentury England. Monarchs, after all, had no occasion to use family names. -
The German Reformation and Medieval Thought and Culture
Posted on February 9, 2012 | No CommentsAfter Luther’s death in 1546, it was said, the seeds mostly fell dormant in Germany, where leaders failed to rally around the philosophical core of Luther’s message, retreating into political division and older authoritarian patterns of thought. -
A Mechanized Society in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times
Posted on February 7, 2012 | No CommentsMy choice of writing about mechanization is not only to describe how this mechanization of the society is but, to show the importance of fancy and fiction in the life of people. -
“The wife of Lucifer” : women and evil in Charles Dickens
Posted on February 7, 2012 | No CommentsThe central thesis behind this is that no human being commits evil “knowingly” – an evil action must therefore be the result of mistakenly believing that the action is good; or it must be done unintentionally, through accident, coercion, or incapacity. -
The anatomy of Charles Dickens: a study of bodily vulnerability in his novels
Posted on February 7, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation concludes that the body’s vulnerability is not only a continual presence in Dickens’s novels but is an under-examined yet fundamental element in what makes his writing style distinctive and what makes his work continually popular. -
The importance of Charles Dickens in Victorian social reform
Posted on February 7, 2012 | No Comments...While the likes of Victorian thinkers such as Marx, Mill, Carlyle, and Ruskin to name but a few,formulated the ideas of and laid the groundwork for social reform in the 19th c., it was in reality men like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy who pointed out through their various novels, the abuses of the Industrial Age in Victorian England. -
Seeking the Supernatural: The Exorcisms of John Darrell and the Formation of an Orthodox Identity in Early Modern England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the questions raised by Darrell‘s exorcisms and the ways in which they were shaped by relations of power. I hope that it will shed new light on the ways in which people formed their religious and ideological identities in this pivotal period in English history. -
Warning, Familiarity and Ridicule: Tracing the Theatrical Representation of the Witch in Early Modern England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe image of the witch and the vehicle of the theatre seem to be a natural fit. The spectacle inherent in the supernatural aspects of the witch provided a wealth of vivid opportunities for the employing the latest in scenic and technical advances and for experimenting with the possibilities for new special effects. -
English Assimilation and Invasion From Outside the Empire: Problems of the Outsider in England in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsNo matter how relevant the novel may seem to current readers, it would be foolish to ignore the ways in which Dracula excited emotions in its earliest readers. Late Victorian English citizens would have viewed the novel through a number of different lenses that 21st century readers may be unable to appreciate. -
Constructions of Infanticide in Early Modern England: Female Deviance During Demographic Crisis
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsNewborn child murder may have been rare in early modern England, but there is little doubt that it happened. Evidence of it exists in the judicial records, as it was criminalized by the legal code. -
Chinoiserie: Revisiting England’s Eighteenth-Century Fantasy of the East
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsChinoiserie, a French word, is also used in the English language for a seventeenth and eighteenth century European style of ornamentation whose inspiration is entirely Oriental. Spanning centuries, continents and cultures, Chinoiserie explores the clash and fusion of values and perceptions between the East and the West. -
Musicians and Intelligence Operations, 1570-1612: Politics, Surveillance, and Patronage in the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Years
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsReligious and political upheavals in late Tudor England had markedconsequences on artistic patronage. Although this dissertation is not a comprehensive study of music patronage as it shifted with changing networks of power, I will propose that a form of alternative patronage did emerge with the growth industry in intelligence operations. -
The City of York in the time of Henry VIII
Posted on January 31, 2012 | No CommentsDuring this period, the role of the landed aristocracy was changing. With the creation of a professional standing army, in which soldiers were paid a wage, and the use of foreign mercenaries (think of the Swiss Guard), the traditional military function of the nobility receded. -
Scripture versus Church in the Debate of More and Tyndale
Posted on January 29, 2012 | No CommentsWritten law was given to the people of Israel as their morals got generally corrupted and they became blind to understand the will of God, thus God gave them the Ten Commandements of his his mercy... -
Victorian Governesses : A Look at Education and Professionalization
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsHistories and fictions explore the lives of Victorian governesses. The governess appeared lonely, depressed, and unwanted, yet thousands of women entered the profession. Victorian governesses experienced changing social and economic conditions. -
Beliefs and Approaches to Death and Dying in Late Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis study evaluates beliefs and practices of death and dying among Puritans and Arminians in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, from the English Civil War era through the Glorious Revolution. -
Forging a coalition army: William III, the grand alliance, and the confederate army in the Spanish Netherlands, 1688-1697
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsThe wars against Louis XIV were fought by coalition armies. In the autumn of 1688, Louis’ forces invaded the Palatinate triggering the largest European conflict of the age, a war that would eventually involve — either directly or indirectly — every state in Europe. -
A Crisis in Regal Identity: The Dichotomy Between Levinia Teerlinc’s (1520-1576) Private and Public Images of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsTeerlinc’s career began with an invitation to serve as official court painter to Henry VIII (1491-1547). After his death in 1554, she worked for Edward VI (1547-1553), Mary I (1516-1558), and finally Elizabeth I (1533-1603). -
Courtship and Marriage Rituals in Seventeenth Century England
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis will examine the more personal side of courtship and marriage, through the use of seventeenth century diaries and letters. -
Imagining the pain and peril of seventeenth-century childbirth: travail and deliverance in the making of an early modern world
Posted on January 23, 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. -
English Almanacs and Animal Health Care in the Seventeenth Century
Posted on January 18, 2012 | No CommentsIn seventeenth-century England, the health and welfare of nonhuman animals rested almost solely on the shoulders of their keepers. Veterinary institutions had not yet been founded, and academically trained animal doctors did not exist.