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Play Houses: Drama at Bolsover and Welbeck
Posted on March 11, 2013 | No CommentsBetween 1590 and 1634, a period more or less exactly coterminous with the great age of English Renaissance drama, a group of remarkable houses took shape in the north Midlands of England, on the borders of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. -
More Than Just Kidd’s Play
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsTom Wareham examines the role played by a legendary yet ill-fated pirate in the consolidation of England’s early trading empire. -
The Lost Archangel: A New View of Strafford
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsC.V. Wedgwood challenges the accepted view of Charles I's fated minister, Thomas Wentworth. -
Rubens and King Charles I
Posted on January 14, 2013 | No CommentsPainter of genius, gifted courtier and much-travelled man of the world, Rubens reached England in 1629, charged with the delicate task of furthering an entente between the Spanish government and Great Britain. C.V. Wedgwood shows how he enjoyed the conversation of his youthful host, whose fine aesthetic taste he shared, but shrewdly judged the weakness of King Charles I’s diplomacy. -
Cromwell, Charles II and the Naseby: Ship of State
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsThe fortunes of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II and the regard in which their successive regimes came to be held were mirrored in the fate of one of their mightiest naval vessels, as Patrick Little explains. -
Social status and literacy in north-east England, 1560-1630
Posted on December 23, 2012 | No CommentsExamination of the surviving depositions from our ecclesiastical jurisdictions reveal something of the pattern of illiteracy in England from the age of Elizabeth to the end of the Stuart era. -
Violence and duelling between exiled courtiers: the case of the Caroline Stuart Court in exile, c. 1649-c. 1660
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsYet, though we can clearly say that the duel was not unique to the exiled Caroline Stuart Court, we must still concede that such acts of violence occurred quite frequently there. This was especially true from 1656-59, when Charles II’s Court was in the Spanish Netherlands, and this tendency to conflict was even remarked upon by contemporary observers. -
The Five Knights’ Case and Debates in the Parliament of 1628: Division and Suspicion Under King Charles I
Posted on October 11, 2012 | No CommentsThis article discusses the Five Knights' Case of 1628 and also the more general ideas that were debated in England at the time about how much power a monarch should be allowed to have. -
Dissecting the Living: Vivisection in Early Modern England
Posted on October 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe term ‘vivisection’, which refers to the act of dissecting a live animal or human being, was coined in 1709. Yet, it celebrated a long tradition reaching back thousands of years. One of the earliest recorded accounts dates from 500 B.C., when Alcmaeon of Croton severed the optic nerves of live animals in order to understand how it affected their vision. -
Oliver Cromwell : Man of Force
Posted on October 5, 2012 | No CommentsThere is no denying the fact that in many instances, Oliver Cromwell was in the right place at the most opportune time and that events often seemed to work in his favor through sheer luck, assuming that he had no hand in them. -
Provincial preaching on the eve of the Civil War: some West Riding fast sermons Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, edited by Anthony Fletcher
Posted on September 24, 2012 | No CommentsThese were hardly words which Charles wished to hear from his loyal subjects, and the king's displeasure was widely reported. The mayor's speech was not the only public pronouncement in the city on that day, however, and it may be that Charles' subsequent irritation arose more from knowledge of the other public criticism being voiced by the civic preachers. -
Francis Bacon’s use of ancient myths in Novum Organum
Posted on September 8, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper, I will show how the ancient myths of Pan, Perseus, Dionysius, and Prometheus have an impact on Book I of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum. -
Sir Thomas Cotton’s Consumption of News in 1650s England
Posted on September 7, 2012 | No CommentsIt is the evidence regarding Cotton's consumption of such tracts, and particularly two bookseller's bills from 1659, with which this piece is concerned. -
Finding the Bodies
Posted on September 6, 2012 | No CommentsCastlehaven was a minor peer, but it was rare for the early modern English state to try, much less to behead, a nobleman for anything but treason. Castlehaven is the only peer of whom I am aware who was executed solely for what on the record were sexual crimes... -
Reading Silk: England’s Search for a National Identity, 1590-1630
Posted on August 28, 2012 | No CommentsIn this thesis, I plan to demonstrate that silk becomes a tool for nation building. While at first the English peoples’ insatiable appetite for silk creates an identity crisis of sorts for England, with the conflicting desires to emulate foreign practices and also to remain steadfast to the nation, silk is eventually recognized as a material that has the power to unite the English people. -
Anne Askew and Margaret Fell: Religious Women in Prison And Technologies of the Self
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsBoth Anne Askew (1521-1546) and Margaret Fell (1614-1702) were imprisoned and wrote significant writings in jail. In prison Askew wrote The First Examination (1546) and The Latter Examination (1547); Fell wrote Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666). The two Protestants’ imprisonment indicates not only their struggle for freedom of their Protestant belief but also the government’s arbitrary exercise of institutional power over non-conforming women. -
English privateering during the Spanish and French wars, 1625-1630
Posted on August 20, 2012 | No CommentsWhile the fortunes of the King's fleet, waned those of the privateers waxed, as prize upon prize was seized and returned to England. The success of many privateers recalled the Elizabethan sea war against Spain, which many in the 1620s looked on as a golden age of English maritime plunder and as a model for the warlike efforts of their own generation. -
An examination of interpretations of ghosts from the reformation to the close of the Seventeenth Century
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsAn examination of interpretations of ghosts from the reformation to the close of the Seventeenth Century. -
Good Reads for the Dog Days of Summer
Posted on August 18, 2012 | No CommentsSee summer off with these fun reads! -
‘The art of dancing, demonstrated by characters and figures’: French and English sources for court and theatre dance, 1700-1750
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsIn the early seventeenth century, during the reigns of James I and Charles I, England developed its own court entertainment in the masque - many of them devised by the dramatist and poet Ben Jonson in collaboration with the architect and designer Inigo Jones. -
‘The Summe of all Intelligence’: Pamphlets and Newsbooks of the English Civil War
Posted on July 29, 2012 | No CommentsPamphlets evolved into newsbooks, the forerunners of newspapers. The first English newsbook was published in November 1641 and was simply a record of parliamentary proceedings -
‘That Fiction of the Ganza’s’: Engraving and Authority in Early Modern Science
Posted on July 20, 2012 | No CommentsWhatisthis“fiction of the Ganza’s?”How did it persuade Wilkins that man might be able to fly “By the help of fowls?” On what authority did he base his claim? What enabled him to shift the status of this knowledge from the fictional to the probable? -
Oh, what a lovely war? War, taxation, and public opinion in England, 1624-29
Posted on July 17, 2012 | No CommentsWhy did Charles I encounter such difficulties in funding his war? One factor was perhaps the financial illiteracy of a political elite which failed to comprehend the cost of warfare in an age of military revolution. -
The English Civil War in the American Colonies
Posted on July 15, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough Privateers claiming to support the King operated out of Wexford and Waterford in Ireland as well as Dunkirk, it was not until the Royalists took Bristol, Exeter and Dartmouth in 1643 that they had major anchorages in mainland Britain from which to import arms, conduct trade and launch maritime operations. -
Adultery in Early Stuart England
Posted on July 6, 2012 | No CommentsBut spectacles of sexual transgression could not only be seen in theatres. Rhymes and broadside ballads sung at street corners or markets, or hung up on walls of taverns and private houses told of lusty bachelors and maidens, of unfaithful, slothful, or violent husbands and wives. -
Jews and crypto-Jews in sixteenth and seventeenth century England
Posted on June 1, 2012 | No CommentsOn 31 October 1655 Menasseh waited outside the door as the Council of State sat in session. Menasseh hoped to present copies of his books to members of the Council and eventually a clerk went out to receive them. Among these books was probably a recently written work arguing the case for Jewish readmission ... -
Witches, Wives and Mothers: witchcraft persecution and women’s confessions in seventeenth-century England
Posted on May 23, 2012 | No CommentsMany problems arise in using documents relating to witchcraft trials in general and these confessions in particular as source material. We have no records left directly by the women themselves. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
Literature, war and politics, 1642-1668
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsWhat the two poems could not register (beyond a loaded remark in the Epilogue to the effect that if the play had offended the prince then ‘we’ve now / Three hours done treason here’) was the full extent of the political crisis then unfolding. -
The politics of art and religion : Absolutism and Catholic iconography in early Stuart England 1603-1649
Posted on December 21, 2011 | No CommentsThe two Stuart kings, James and Charles, brought important change to England. For inspiration to modernize, James I looked outside of England, a strategy more vigorously pursued by his successor Charles I. -
`The counterfeit silly curr`: money, politics and the forging of royalist newspapers in the English civil war
Posted on December 13, 2011 | No CommentsConsidering visual,textual,and contextual evidence, as well as literary style and substantive content,I develop in this article methods for distinguishing rivals of Pragmaticus. -
The contexts and contours of British economic literature, 1660-1760
Posted on December 12, 2011 | No CommentsIn the century after the Restoration of Charles II there was a remarkable outpouring of thinking about economic issues in Britain, of exploring the ways and means to prosperity and plenty. -
Signs and Wonders and the English Civil War
Posted on November 29, 2011 | No CommentsChris Durston records how the monstrous and the supernatural were seized on by political and religious factions in seventeenth century England as signs of judgment. -
Why did Charles I fight the Civil War?
Posted on November 29, 2011 | No CommentsConrad Russell finds that it is easier to understand why sheer frustration may have driven Charles to fight than to understand why the English gentry might have wanted to make a revolution against him. -
The Ghost in Early Modern Protestant Culture: Shifting perceptions of the afterlife, 1450-1700
Posted on October 25, 2011 | No CommentsThe Ghost in Early Modern Protestant Culture:Shifting perceptions of the afterlife, 1450-1700 McKeever, Amanda Jane PhD Thesis, Philosophy, University of Sussex, September 27, (2010) Abstract My thesis seeks to address... -
The Role of Charles I in the Evolution of Taste and Collecting in England
Posted on October 16, 2011 | No CommentsCharles and his courtiers brought to England, for the first time, the awareness of taste and the development of collecting habits similar to those in continental Europe. -
The bio-medical pursuits of Christopher Wren
Posted on October 16, 2011 | No CommentsI suppose that anyone who reads the English language sooner or later crosses the path of Christopher Wren. A meteorologist, an astronomer... -
Margaret Cavendish’s Imaginary Friends
Posted on October 15, 2011 | No CommentsMargaret Cavendish’s Imaginary Friends Rachel Warburton - Lakehead University Session: “English Epistolary Friendships" Paper given at the conference: Friendship In Pre-Modern Europe (1300-1700) This paper analysed Margaret Cavendish’s sociable letters. They... -
Early Modern Space Travel and the English Man in the Moon
Posted on October 14, 2011 | No CommentsEarly Modern Space Travel and the English Man in the Moon Cressy, David The American Historical Review, Vol. III, No. 4, October (2006) Abstract The moon, for early modern Englishmen... -
The Muse of Mount Orgueil: a reading of William Prynne’s poetry
Posted on May 5, 2010 | No CommentsThe Muse of Mount Orgueil: a reading of William Prynne’s poetry Green, Paul D. Early Modern Literary Studies 10.2 (September, 2004) Abstract The author of Histriomastix, the mortal enemy of... -
“Powdered with Golden Rain”: The Myth of Danae in Early Modern Drama
Posted on April 6, 2010 | No Comments"Powdered with Golden Rain": The Myth of Danae in Early Modern Drama Sanders, Julie Early Modern Literary Studies 8.2 (September 2002) / Special Issue 10 Abstract This essay explores the...