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Seventeenth century Archive
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Brewers’ tales: making, retailing and regulating beer in Southampton, 1550-1700
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsBrewers' tales: making, retailing and regulating beer in Southampton, 1550-1700 James R. Brown Journal of the Brewery History Society, No.135 (2010) Abstract For some years now early modernists have been... -
Women, ale and company in early modern London
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsWomen, ale and company in early modern London Tim Reinke-Williams Journal of the Brewery History Society, No.135 (2010) Abstract This article explores attitudes to female ale- and beer-drinkers and the... -
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. -
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. -
Exhuming Henry VIII’s Court: The Tudor Household on the Jacobean Stage
Posted on March 16, 2013 | No CommentsBy revisiting the recent past of Henry's reign, the plays construct the events as a historical past, distinct and separate from the present. Early modern performance presents, reshapes, and diverges from the collective memory of a diverse socio-economic populace. Plays about recent history offer both a form of remembrance and construction of a memory for the historical moment brought to life on stage. -
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. -
The Meaning of Thunder and Lightning: Stage Directions and Audience Expectations
Posted on March 11, 2013 | No CommentsThe linking of thunder and lightening with supernatural figures was not theatrical in origin; rather, the effects were a theatrical reproduction of unnatural disruptions generally believed to accompany the appearance and actions of figures such as witches, devils, and conjurers in the real world of the audience. -
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. -
On Resistance: The Case of 17th Century Quakers
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsDrawing on Scott's influential paradigm I present an historical anthropology of seventeenth century Quakerism, focusing on this religious movement from its genesis in around 1650, to the Act of Toleration in 1689. -
‘Thou glorious kingdome, thou chiefe of empires’: Persia in seventeenth-century travel literature
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsThe late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw a rise in European travel to Persia, and consequently in writings about such travel. -
Crime Among the Puritans … and the penalties therefor
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsMassachusetts in the seventeenth century. You weren’t afraid to walk the streets. Drugs and pornography hadn’t yet become stylish, and the big overcrowded prison hadn’t been invented. Some of us might long to return to that morally unambiguous, less violent age. But before giving in to such yearnings, let’s take a closer look at Law and order in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. -
Indecision 1655: The debate surrounding the Readmission of Jews to England
Posted on February 13, 2013 | No CommentsWhat were the differing opinions regarding Jews and how did these notions play a role in the readmission of Jews to England? -
Subjects and Objects: Material Expressions of Love and Loyalty in Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsThe relationship between material objects, the passions, and contractual obligations was deeply embedded within early modern England. -
The house is hers, the soul is but a tenant’: Material Self-Fashioning and Revenge Tragedy
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsPlaying dead, however, is not merely a staging issue, though performance of a single character in two simultaneous but separate locations is a legitimate concern, both metaphysical and staging, since playing dead also poses eschatological and ontological challenges to neoplatonism, stoicism, and Christian theology, frameworks within which many Jacobean and revenge plays are conceived. -
Becoming a London Goldsmith in the Seventeenth Century: Social Capital and Mobility of Apprentices and Masters of the Guild
Posted on January 26, 2013 | No CommentsThe goldsmiths experienced a great change in the second half of the seventeenth century with the development of banking. -
Ideas of Civil War in Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on January 24, 2013 | No CommentsIt would take the shock of the French Revolution for the term 'English Revolution' to be used to describe the mid-century upheavals. -
‘An honest dog yet’: Performing The Witch of Edmonton
Posted on January 24, 2013 | No CommentsAt the climax of Dekker, Ford, and Rowley’s 1621 tragedy The Witch of Edmonton, the devil treats a young morris dancer named Cuddy Banks to a discourse on the relationship between the everyday world in which Cuddy lives and the demonic realm over which he himself reigns. -
Alchemy and Economy in Seventeenth Century England
Posted on January 22, 2013 | No CommentsThis essay examines two seventeenth-century approaches to gold, alchemy and economics, both of which esteemed gold as ‘valuable’ and pursued it practically. -
The concept of male honour in seventeenth century England
Posted on January 21, 2013 | No CommentsThe aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the importance of honour to men as a value and power system in seventeenth century England. -
The Kirk, the Burgh, and Fun
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsThis complex web of interests and principles produces individual ironies, and the paper contrasts the activity of Haddington's one-time schoolmaster and play director, James Carmichael, who, as he reformist minister of the town, was chosen to subdue the author of a local May play (here named for the first time). -
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. -
‘By Merit Raised to That Bad Eminence’: Christopher Merrett, Artisanal Knowledge, and Professional Reform in Restoration London
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsThis article examines the career and reform agenda of Christopher Merrett as a means of evaluating the changing conditions of medical knowledge production in late seventeenth-century London. -
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. -
Gender and the Culture of the English Alehouse in Late Stuart England
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsThis essay explores the place of women within the public house, in serving, buying and consuming alcohol, and the unwritten conventions that underpinned social practice. -
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. -
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. -
The Purgation Of The Hero In Shakespearean Tragedy
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsIn each play, when the hero has seen the failure of his subjective passion, the nature of the universal Good, upon which all goods, natural and human depend, begins to appear. -
Leather guns and other light artillery in mid-17th-century Scotland
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsIt was the Scottish officers who had served under Gustavus Adolphus who brought knowledge of leather guns to Britain. -
An Introduction to the Coffee-house: a discursive model
Posted on January 4, 2013 | No CommentsThe distinctive features of coffee-house sociability were egalitarianism, congeniality and conversation. Although there were important differences between the coffee-houses of Istanbul and London, there were also some intriguing similarities, including the manifestation of this distinctive sociability. -
Common Woman to Commodity: Changing Perceptions of Prostitution in Early Modern England, C. 1450-1750
Posted on January 2, 2013 | No CommentsI began this project under the assumption that the modern definition and conception of the term “prostitute” had materialized by the eighteenth century. This is not a difficult conclusion to draw when examining the existing historiography of illicit sexuality in early modern England. -
Vinum Britannicum: The “Drink Question” in Early Modern England
Posted on December 31, 2012 | No CommentsThis article highlights the influence of English medical writing on the work of Benjamin Rush, concluding that Rush is best considered as a conduit for ideas already circulating in England rather than as the source of a novel approach to alcohol. -
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. -
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. -
Mother Shipton and the End of the World
Posted on December 21, 2012 | No Comments'A carriage without a horse shall go; Disaster fill the world with woe; In water iron then shall float; As easy as a wooden boat.' -
Household Politics: The View From Early Modern England
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsThat’s a glimpse of the sort of evidence I’ll canvass in this book. I hope to conjure up a social world full of ornery, funny, sickening, and lethal controversies about gender, patriarchy, misogyny, public and private, and more. -
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? -
“The Nightmare in Early Modern England.”
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper was held at Victoria College by the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies and dealt with the idea of the nightmare and its evolution from demonic possession to medical malady. -
Changes in Russian diplomacy under Peter the Great
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsDiplomatic relations among the nations of Western Europe had given rise to the exchange of permanent representatives, but no such development occurred in Russia until the 18th century. -
Othello’s Alienation
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough I agree broadly with the arguments of Jones and Hunter, it seems to me important to appreciate the particularityof Shakespeare'sportrait and its resistance both to negative stereo- typing and abstractuniversalizing. There is little question that in choosing Othello for his protagonist Shakespearesought to create a realistic portrait of a Moor. -
Hot Holiday Reads!
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsGreat reads & holiday ideas! -
Undermining Apprenticeship: City, Law and Growth in early modern London
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper describes a very different, and entirely neglected, side of apprenticeship in London: the city’s system of contract dissolution. I suggest easy dissolution played a vital role in sustaining apprenticeship in London, and was apparently echoed in a weaker form elsewhere in England. -
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. -
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? -
Shakespeare’s Use of the Supernatural
Posted on October 31, 2012 | No CommentsTherefore, this thesis aims to approach this issue from a different perspective and will deal with the concept of the Supernatural only in three selected plays of William Shakespeare and will present a comparison with three pieces of drama by different authors. -
Some Bloody good reads for Halloween!
Posted on October 30, 2012 | No CommentsSome Bloody good reads for Halloween! -
Cunning Folk and Wizards in Early Modern England
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsI aim to offer an original perspective on white witchcraft in this period; revealing its relevance to the historical study of witchcraft in which it is often overshadowed. -
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. -
Poor Relief in Edinburgh and the Famine of 1621-24
Posted on October 22, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough Scottish (and English) historians have not ignored the famine of 1621-24, the crisis still needs to be adequately contextualised within investigations into the development of poor relief in the early seventeenth century.