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The Wives of King Henry VIII: Anne Boleyn
Posted on April 30, 2013 | No CommentsAnne has the distinction of being the first Queen Consort to be beheaded and because of her, the course of ecclesiastical history in England changed forever. -
Victorian and Edwardian Sporting Values
Posted on April 23, 2013 | No CommentsIt was understood that a boy's mind might be overtaken, if care were not taken, by one or both of the twin temptations that the cloistered life of the public school could give rise to - masturbation and homosexuality, the two great unmentionables of the Victorian age. -
THE DESTRUCTION OF A PRIORY
Posted on April 23, 2013 | No CommentsMerton priory was now suppressed, and demolition began immediately. There would have been countless workmen and craftsmen employed at the priory, but would they have been willing to destroy the work of their own hands? All strata of society had difficult decisions to make. Principles could so easily be forgotten, especially where there was a family to feed and no prospect of other employment. -
The Kildare Rebellion and the Early Henrician Reformation
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsThe Kildare Rebellion and the Early Henrician Reformation Steven G. Ellis (The Queen's University, Belfast) The Historical Journal, 19, 4 (1976), pp. 807-830 Abstract In the 1530s, Henry VIII and Thomas... -
Henry VIII, rebellion and the rule of law
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsHenry VIII, rebellion and the rule of law Steven G. Ellis (University College, Galway) The Historical Journal, 24, 3 (1981), pp. 513-531 Abstract It has been traditional to regard the reaction... -
Milton’s History of Britain in its historical context
Posted on April 8, 2013 | No CommentsThe prologue studies the Tory publication of Milton's Character of the Long Parliament (1681). It argues that the provenance of this tract is best explained if Milton did in fact attempt to include the Digression in his History of Britain. Further ambiguities in Milton's early reputation are discussed in a review of the History's reception. -
Irish journalists and litterateurs in late Victorian London, c. 1870-1910
Posted on April 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe above thesis is an examination of nineteenth century Irish literary emigration to London, with particular reference to the 1880s and 1890s. It begins with an exploration of the political, social, economic and cultural reasons, both in Ireland and Britain, why Irish writers, Catholic and Protestant, flocked to London, and especially Fleet Street, during this period. -
“Cruel and Abominable Tyrant”: The Pope Who Took on Henry VIII
Posted on March 30, 2013 | No CommentsHenry VIII's enemy, Pope Paul III, was a man of determination but with his own dark side. -
L’Estrange His Life: Public and Persona in the Life and Career of Sir Roger L’Estrange, 1616-1704
Posted on March 16, 2013 | No CommentsThis dissertation examines the life and career of Roger L’Estrange, an unsuccessful soldier and prisoner for the king, royalist pamphleteer and Tory apologist, licenser of books and Surveyor of the Press, scourge of Protestant dissent and the first Whig party, literary translator and amateur musician. -
British Foreign Policy and the War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-48
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsThis article seeks to examine policy as perceived by British statesmen during the period of the War of Austrian Succession. -
Re-orienting Victorian Studies: A European Perspective
Posted on February 27, 2013 | No CommentsAt the same time, however, the study of the relationship between the world of Victorian literature and culture and the context of Continental Europe remains firmly Anglocentric, or to be more precise Britocentric: both Continental Victorianists and Continent-conscious Anglophone critics tend to think about the relationship between Victorian Britain and Europe very much from within the context of English literary studies, relating their discoveries and analyses back to the conceptual frame of reference defined firmly in terms of the literary and cultural context of the British Isles, -
The politics of piracy : pirates, privateers, and the government of Elizabeth I, 1558-1588
Posted on February 25, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis addresses the distinctions between 'pirates' and 'privateers' and the reasons for and usefulness of these distinctions. -
Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners
Posted on February 16, 2013 | No CommentsThis fascinating and occasionally salacious historical study delves into the lives of six Tudor women celebrated for their reputed wickedness. -
The impact of the Reformation on the Tudor royal household to 1553
Posted on February 11, 2013 | No CommentsThe primary objective is to examine the impact of the Reformation upon private devotional practices of individuals within the royal household. -
With This Ring, I Surrender: Politics, Religion, and Marriage in Shakespeare and Tudor England
Posted on February 1, 2013 | No CommentsThe ideas I wish to explore are the overarching themes of politics, religion, and marriage in the Turor period under the rule of King Henry VIII from 1509 to 1547. The popular opinion of the period on Henry VIII's behavior can be seen in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and Henry VIII. -
Policy-Making on the Victorian British Empire: British Imperialism 1837-1901
Posted on February 1, 2013 | No CommentsQuestion: “Far from being exceptionally aggressive and masterful, the rulers of Victorian Britain were generally reluctant imperialists.” How justified is this view? -
Early Modern England – Politics
Posted on February 1, 2013 | No CommentsAndrew Bretz, who teaches English theatre and history at the University of Guelph and Wilfrid Laurier University, created a series of videos for his undergraduate student in 2012. -
Research Intelligence in Early Modern England
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsThis is a good place to introduce the early modern intelligence network and particularly the activities of John Dee, one of the most colorful and enigmatic characters of the English Renaissance. -
Vengeance, Variously: Revenge Before Kyd in Early Elizabethan Drama
Posted on January 20, 2013 | No CommentsAccordingly, this essay will respond to Broude’s call for ‘a systematic study of revenge tragedy’s dramatic antecedents in England’. -
Miraculous Rhetoric: The Relationship between Rhetoric and Miracles in the York ‘Entry into Jerusalem’
Posted on January 20, 2013 | No CommentsI argue that the York playwright juxtaposes overt references to verbal persuasion with depictions of miracles to highlight the differences between the uncertainty of his audience’s world and the miraculous certainty of the biblical narrative performed before them. -
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. -
Burghley: Minister to Elizabeth I 1520-1598
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsJoel Hurstfield's pen portrait of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520-98) appeared in History Today in December 1956. -
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 Polarization of Henry Tudor’s Wives: Jane Seymour
Posted on January 14, 2013 | No CommentsI began to wonder, was it Jane Seymour that Henry was in head over heels in love with? Or was Henry forever in love with change. -
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. -
“We Must Fight with Paper and Pens”: Spanish Elizabethan Polemics, 1585-1598
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsThis dissertation examines books written by a group of English Catholic exiles who, because of their close ties with the Spanish Monarchy, have been called Spanish Elizabethans. -
Conflicts and Loyalties: the Parliaments of Elizabeth I
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsParliament, in the modern sense as a permanent body, has existed only since the late seventeenth century. In Elizabethan England there were parliaments (plural). They were infrequent. In 1509-1603 there were 43 years during which parliaments were not called at all, and 26 of these occurred during Elizabeth’s reign. When parliaments did meet, moreover, they were short-lived. -
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Ermine: Elizabeth I’s Coronation Robes and Mothers’ Legacies in Early Modern England
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsThe first part of this essay explores how many links between mothers and children were therefore conceived through—even created by—mate- rial goods. -
The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Toleration
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsThe relatively minor role torture played in the Gunpowder Plot investigation is a good example of the myths that surround this emotive subject. Permission was given to employ torture on Fawkes, who initially refused to say anything, but whether it was actually used and how much is unclear. -
Tournaments at the court of King Henry VIII
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsTournaments were not just good sporting occasions: they had political importance and above all were splendid opportunities to impress foreign ambassadors who were likely to write glowing reports of the King’s evident wealth and power. -
Turncoats and Renegadoes: Treachery and Traitors during the English Civil Wars
Posted on January 4, 2013 | No CommentsThe practice does much to illuminate 17th-century perceptions of honour whilst the justifications employed by the turncoats themselves reveal how they sought to defend their reputations with their contemporaries or for posterity. -
Rethinking the fall of Anne Boleyn
Posted on January 2, 2013 | No CommentsThis article argues that the fate of the queen and those accused with her was not the result of wider factional battles or a cynical sacrifice, either to appease a jaded king or to enable a shift in religious or diplomatic policy. Nor was it a case of justice catching up with a libidinous woman who was guilty as charged. -
Images of the courtier in Elizabethan England
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsWho, exactly, counted as a courtier? Was the holding of court office a prerequisite, or was sporadic attendance on the monarch sufficient qualification? What hierarchies, official and unofficial, operated within the royal entourage? How readily was service - often menial in nature - reconciled with self-aggrandizement and the brokerage of power? What was a courtier’s primary duty, and what could he or she hope to achieve? -
In a Short Time There Were None Almost Left: The Success and Failure of the Tudor Conquest in Ireland
Posted on December 29, 2012 | No CommentsWhile England succeeded in pacifying the Irish with ‘fire and sword’ during the Desmond Rebellion (1579-1584) and again in the Nine Years’ War, its success came at an enormous cost, both in terms of lives and coin. Furthermore, the goal of ‘reforming’ Ireland religiously, socially, and agriculturally--so frequently expressed in contemporary English writing--was not achieved in any meaningful or lasting way during this period. -
It Isn’t About Duck Hunting: The British Origins of the Right to Arms
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsWho, if any, of these American analysts has found the truth? Does the story of the British right to arms offer anything of value to the modern American gun debate? The academic literature has heretofore been sparse. My two books on gun control in Great Britain both focused mainly on twentieth-century gun policy, rather than the story of the 1689 Bill of Rights and its right to arms. -
Oliver Cromwell and the Print Culture of the Interregnum
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsHow does one determine which writings influenced Cromwell the most? -
Negative Portrayals of Poles in Elizabethan Literature
Posted on December 8, 2012 | No CommentsAnglo-Polish relations improved during the first half of the sixteenth century. The newly established power of the kingdom of Poland-Lithuania probably raised English hopes that English merchants would gain greater access into the Baltic Sea. High-level diplomatic contacts between the two nations became more frequent. -
‘High Housewifery’: the Duties and Letters of Barbara Gamage Sidney, Countess of Leicester
Posted on November 29, 2012 | No CommentsBarbara Sidney makes a particularly rewarding study because of the rich archival sources preserved by the Sidney family over many generations—account books, estate papers, genealogical records, and a wealth of correspondence. -
“The Wonderfull Spectacle” the Civic Progress of Elizabeth I and the Troublesome Coronation
Posted on November 27, 2012 | No CommentsElizabeth I faced far more challenging ecclesiastical and liturgical difficulties than either of her predecessors, and yet, characteristically, her solution was more adroit and more oblique. -
Hot Holiday Reads!
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsGreat reads & holiday ideas! -
A Special Reference to the Correspondence between England and the Low Countries during the Dutch Revolt 1585-1587 ; Diplomatic Communication in the Early Modern Europe
Posted on November 21, 2012 | No CommentsA significant part of this Leicesterian correspondence has been preserved to our days, and it offers an excellent case study of the diplomatic communication in the Early Modern times. The original letters are located in the various archives of the Netherlands, Great Britain and France. In addition, many of them are printed in collections. By examining this correspondence, it is perhaps possible to trace the broader conventions of communication in the Early Modern Europe. -
Space, place, and popular politics in northern England, 1789-1848
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsThese studies underline the crucial role of space and place in this volatile and revolutionary period. They argue that space is socially constructed, which in itself helps to shape behaviour of those who inhabit or imagine the space. -
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. -
Managing Change in The English Reformation: The 1548 Dissolution of the Chantries and Clergy of the Midland County Surveys
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsDid the English Reformation happen because Thomas Cromwell, seeing political possibilities in the new religious ideas now abroad, applied these to resolving Henry VIII‟s marital difficulties? After all, Henry VIII wanted a son and, despairing of his now middle-aged wife, Katherine, had found a likely fruitful replacement in Anne Boleyn. -
Elizabeth Tudor: Reconciling Femininity and Authority
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsDespite the misogyny of her time, Elizabeth Tudor was a woman who presided at the top of a male hierarchy and successfully reconciled her rank to her gender. -
From courtly curiosity to revolutionary refreshment: Turkish coffee and English politics in the Seventeenth Century
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsWhy was coffee so fashionable yet so divisive a political symbol during the latter half of the seventeenth century? -
The Pacific King and the Militant Prince? Representation and Collaboration in the Letters Patent of James I, creating his son, Henry, Prince of Wales
Posted on October 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe Letters Patent is a complex object, containing a variety of visual and textual material which can only be properly understood when its contents, context and function are considered in their entirety. -
“Pillars of the Authority of Princes”: Reflections on the Employment of Bishops in the British Isles in the Reign of James VI/I
Posted on October 22, 2012 | No CommentsEven if he had never succeeded Elizabeth I and become king of England, James VI of Scotland was well aware of the regional challenges presented by the British Isles, and the limited force of government authority in some of its more remote areas. -
English Xenophobia in the 18th Century: the Case of Lord Bute
Posted on October 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe covert manipulator, in other words, of the political strings chiefly responsible for the difficulties which marked the opening years of George III’s reign. -
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe aim of this bachelor thesis is a detailed analysis of Anne Boleyn`s life. The thesis is divided into five main chapters.