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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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Legal History Archive
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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. -
‘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. -
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... -
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. -
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). -
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. -
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. -
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. -
‘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. -
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. -
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. -
The 1536 Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries: Same Suppression, Different Century
Posted on January 13, 2012 | No CommentsFive hundred years ago, Henry VIII began the demise of monasticism in England. Beginning with the Suppression Act of 1536, and continuing with the Act for the Dissolution of the Greater Monasteries in 1539, monasteries across England were closed. -
“Like Spiders’ Webs for Flies”: False Confinement in Nineteenth-Century English Asylums
Posted on December 20, 2011 | No CommentsIn the eighteenth century, many people feared being taken by some unscrupulous person, be he family member, friend, or stranger, to a madhouse to be locked away forever to the detriment of their health, wealth, and sanity. ..By the early nineteenth century, enough legislation had been passed and enough investigations were being carried out that this fear should perhaps not have been so pressing. -
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 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 Hunt for Jack the Ripper
Posted on October 16, 2011 | No CommentsWilliam D. Rubinstein reviews the achievements of the ‘Ripperologists’ and lends weight to the argument surrounding the Ripper Diaries. -
“Most Barbarous and Damnable Treason”: The Gunpowder Plot and how it is viewed in the Past and Present
Posted on October 10, 2011 | No Comments“Most Barbarous and Damnable Treason”: The Gunpowder Plot and how it is viewed in the Past and Present York, Jill B.A. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, (2008) Abstract This paper will discuss... -
Sumptuary Legislation and the Fabric Construction of National Identity
Posted on October 10, 2011 | No CommentsSumptuary Legislation and the Fabric Construction of National Identity Early Modern England: Constructing the Past: Vol. 8: Iss. 1 (2007) SHULMAN, RACHEL Abstract As England transitioned from a medieval mode of... -
The Threat of Otherness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Posted on October 9, 2011 | No CommentsThe Threat of Otherness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula Muskovits, Eszter Trans— No 10 (2010) Abstract Hand in hand with scientific research on sexuality for modern culture, gothic fiction became immensely... -
Inventing the Wicked Women of Tudor England: Alice More, Anne Boleyn, and Anne Stanhope
Posted on October 9, 2011 | No CommentsInventing the Wicked Women of Tudor England: Alice More, Anne Boleyn, and Anne Stanhope Warnicke, Retha M. (Arizona State University) Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association,... -
Political Bodies and Animal Economies: Reconsidering the Relationship between Healthcare and Statecraft in Late Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on October 7, 2011 | No CommentsPolitical Bodies and Animal Economies: Reconsidering theRelationship between Healthcare and Statecraft in Late Seventeenth-Century England Ridge, Steve (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London) Ex... -
William Herle and the English Secret Service
Posted on October 6, 2011 | No CommentsWilliam Herle and the English Secret Service Gill, Michael Patrick M.A. Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington (2010) Abstract This thesis examines William Herle‘s life through his surviving letters to William... -
Aberrant Accounts: William Dugdale’s Handling of Two Tudor Murders in The Antiquities of Warwickshire
Posted on October 5, 2011 | No CommentsAberrant Accounts: William Dugdale’s Handling of Two Tudor Murders in The Antiquities of Warwickshire Broadway, Jane Midland history, Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring (2008) Abstract This article examines two accounts... -
The case of Aaron Kosminski: was he Jack the Ripper?
Posted on October 4, 2011 | No CommentsThe case of Aaron Kosminski: was he Jack the Ripper? S. K. Lekh, A. Langa, P. Begg and B. K. Puri Psychiatric Bulletin (1992), 16:786-788 Abstract The Whitechapel murders of... -
The Victorian Child, c. 1837-1901
Posted on October 4, 2011 | No CommentsThe Victorian Child, c. 1837-1901 Gubar, Marah (University of Pittsburgh) The Representing Childhood Project (2005) Abstract In 1799, children’s author and educator Hannah More reacted against the revolutions that had... -
Justices of the Peace in Mid-Tudor Devon Circa 1538-1570
Posted on July 17, 2010 | No CommentsJustices of the Peace in Mid-Tudor Devon Circa 1538-1570 By Rebecca Jane Zmarzly Master’s Thesis, Texas State University (2007) Introduction: The mid-Tudor era of English history is characterized by larger... -
“Not Onely a Pastour, but a Lawyer also”: George Herbert’s Vision of Stuart Magistracy
Posted on March 18, 2010 | No Comments“Not Onely a Pastour, but a Lawyer also”: George Herbert’s Vision of Stuart Magistracy Powers-Beck, Jeffrey Early Modern Literary Studies 1.2 (August 1995) Abstract “Justice is the ground of charity”... -
Milton’s ‘Divorcive’ Liberties: Ecclesiastical, Domestic or Private, Civil and Cosmological
Posted on March 9, 2010 | No CommentsMilton’s ‘Divorcive’ Liberties: Ecclesiastical, Domestic or Private, Civil and Cosmological Howard, W. Scott Early Modern Literary Studies 10.1 (May, 2004) Abstract In his pamphlets from the 1640s – in particular:... -
Women, Children, and the Rhetoric of Milton’s Divorce Tracts
Posted on March 9, 2010 | No CommentsWomen, Children, and the Rhetoric of Milton’s Divorce Tracts van den Berg, Sara Early Modern Literary Studies 10.1 (May, 2004) Abstract In his divorce tracts, Milton uses vignette, metaphor, and... -
Are We Bestial?: The Alterity of the Renaissance: A Response to “(Un)natural Loving: Swine, Pets, and Flowers in Venus and Adonis” by Dympna Callaghan
Posted on February 18, 2010 | No CommentsAre We Bestial?: The Alterity of the Renaissance: A Response to “(Un)natural Loving: Swine, Pets, and Flowers in Venus and Adonis” by Dympna Callaghan Bach, Rebecca Ann Early Modern Culture,... -
(Un)natural Loving: Swine, Pets, and Flowers in Venus and Adonis
Posted on February 18, 2010 | No Comments(Un)natural Loving:Swine, Pets, and Flowers in Venus and Adonis Callaghan, Dympna Early Modern Culture, No. 3 (2003) Abstract The history of the twentieth century is such that one is tempted... -
Medea in the courtroom and on the stage in nineteenth century London
Posted on February 15, 2010 | No CommentsMedea in the courtroom and on the stage in nineteenth century London Goc, Nicola Elizabeth Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, Vol 14, No 1 (2009) Abstract In 430 BC Greek... -
Law, Literature and Symbolic Revolution: Bleak House
Posted on February 15, 2010 | No CommentsLaw, Literature and Symbolic Revolution: Bleak House Kieran, Dolin Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, Vol 12, No 1 (2007) Abstract In 1988 the House of Lords decided an appeal case... -
Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London
Posted on January 25, 2010 | No CommentsSanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London By Shannon McSheffrey Law and History Review, Vol. 27:3 (Fall 2009) Introduction: In early sixteenth-century England, the presence of ecclesiastical sanctuaries in the... -
Give Me Not Poverty, Lest I Steal
Posted on January 21, 2010 | No CommentsGive Me Not Poverty, Lest I Steal Backscheider, Paula R The Eighteenth Century, Volume 48, Number 1, Spring 2007 Abstract “The Judges sat Grave and Mute, gave me an easy... -
The Poll Tax and Census of Sheep, I549, (Continued from Vol. 1, p. 15)
Posted on January 7, 2010 | No CommentsThe Poll Tax and Census of Sheep, I549, (Continued from Vol. 1, p. 15) Beresford, M. W. Agricultural History Review,Volume 2 (1954) Abstract It is in this atmosphere of proposals... -
The Old Bailey proceedings and the representation of crime and criminal justice in eighteenth-century London
Posted on December 17, 2009 | No CommentsThe Old Bailey proceedings and the representation of crime and criminal justice in eighteenth-century London By R.B. Shoemaker Journal of British Studies, Vol.47:3 (2008) Introduction: The Proceedings of the Old...