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Charles I Archive
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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. -
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. -
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. -
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... -
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. -
‘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. -
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. -
Staging Executions: The Theater of Punishment in Early Modern England
Posted on July 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1571, the first permanent structure for public hangings was constructed at Tyburn. Attending public hangings at “Tyburn tree,” as well as other forms of public punishment was a popular pastime in Elizabethan and Stuart England. Events we would now call “entertainment” in early modern England were fairly limited. -
Civil Wars in Britain, 1640-1646: military revolution on campaign
Posted on July 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe wars in Scotland and England between 1640 and 1646 were complex affairs that defy ready categorization. They were also remarkably destructive. The Second Bishops’ War of 1640 caused relatively few casualties because one side, the Scots, soundly defeated the English in a rare and extraordinary example of a decisive battle. The English Civil War of 1642 -1646 that pitted Parliamentarians (and Scots for awhile) against the royalist supporters of King Charles I was far bloodier. -
Writing and Re-writing the English Civil War
Posted on January 15, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough not ‘total war’ in the modern sense in which that term has come to be understood – Royalists and Parliamentarians were militant minorities, fighting was seasonal, and some parts of the land were relatively unaffected – the English Civil Wars hit this country with devastating impact. -
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. -
High crimes: the law of treason in late Stuart Britain
Posted on December 14, 2011 | No CommentsThis is the first work on treason to concentrate exclusively on the all important years between the Restoration and the Union, when the number of trials for this most serious of all crimes reached new heights and during which time the procedural law of treason underwent significant changes. -
`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. -
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 chapel and the chamber: ceremonial dining and religious ritual at the court of King Charles I
Posted on November 21, 2011 | No CommentsThis dissertation explores the ritual behavior and material culture associated with ceremonial dining at the court of King Charles I of England (b.1600 – d.1649) -
In Defense of the Monarchy: The Restoration of Charles Stuart
Posted on November 12, 2011 | No CommentsCharles was determined to go home as King; his mind was full of doubt and his heart was bursting with contradictory emotions. He must not dare to hope, but how could he not? -
Who was afraid of Prince Rupert’s dog?: The enduring power of seventeenth-century propaganda
Posted on October 27, 2011 | No CommentsPopular histories of the English Civil War of 1642-46 - fought between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians - make frequent reference to a dog named 'Boy', which belonged to King Charles I's nephew Prince Rupert. -
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. -
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...