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Varieties of Reformation
Classic Pamphlet
The most significant change to have occurred in our view of the Reformation in recent years is the growing acknowledgement of historians that it was no unitary phenomenon whose triumph was assured and inevitable. What we refer to in short-hand as ‘the' Reformation was a many-sided affair which began with...
Varieties of Reformation
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Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
Historian article
The dissolution of the monasteries was one of the most dramatic developments in English History. In 1536, the religious orders had owned about a fifth of the lands of England. Within four years the monasteries had been abolished and their possessions nationalised by Henry VIII. Within another ten years, most...
Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
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Why did regional variations exist in the prosecution of witches between 1580-1650
Historian article
Regional variations in the intensity of European witchhunting existed because the necessary preconditions for panic chain-reaction hunts were only constantly in place in a very small number of regions. More than 35,000 witchcraft executions took place in the Holy Roman Empire where there was a wide acceptance of the cumulative...
Why did regional variations exist in the prosecution of witches between 1580-1650
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The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
Article
Dr Michael Bush investigates the interpretations of the pilgrimage of grace. Our perception of the pilgrimage of grace has been largely created by Madeleine and Ruth Dodds and their magnificent book The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-7, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (Cambridge). Published in 1915, it has dominated the subject...
The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
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Cartoons and the historian
Historian article
Many historical books contain cartoons, but in most cases these are little more than a relief from the text, and do not make any point of substance which is not made elsewhere. Political cartoons should be regarded as much more than that. They are an important historical source which often...
Cartoons and the historian
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Peter the Great
Classic Pamphlet
No European ruler except Napoleon I has impressed both contemporise and later historians so profoundly as Peter I of Russia by the originality and the personal character of his achievements. Like Napoleon, Peter appeared to some observers, at least in his later years, as almost more than human. He seemed...
Peter the Great
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Charles XII
Classic Pamphlet
The reputation of Charles XII who became king of Sweden before he was fifteen years old and had the responsibility of absolutist goverment thrust upon him within the next six months - contrary to the plans laid down for him by his father - has tended to attract political rather...
Charles XII
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The Jesuits and the Catholic Reformation
Classic Pamphlet
The society of Jesus, formally approved by Pope Paul III in his bull Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae of September 1540, was one of many new religious orders of men and women - such as Barnabites, Capuchins, Oratorians, Piarists and Vincentians among the male orders, and Daughters and Sisters of Charity, Ursulines,...
The Jesuits and the Catholic Reformation
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A Mid-Tudor Crisis?
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet takes you through the Mid-Tudor period focusing on foreign affairs and finance, the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, the risings of 1549, coups and commissions 1549-53, Edwardian Protestantism success and failure, Mary and the Catholic Restoration, the Marian Administration and the Spanish Marriage.
A Mid-Tudor Crisis?
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Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
Historian article
The National Portrait Gallery in London is home to many thousands of portraits, photographs and sculptures of the great and the good, as well as those who travelled on the darker side of history.
In 2007 it hosted a small exhibition in the Porter Gallery entitled Between Worlds: Voyagers to...
Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
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London and the English Civil War
Historian article
In the spring of 1643 William Lithgow, a Scot born in Lanark in 1582, who had spent most of his life travellingaround Europe, often on foot and having many fantastic adventures, decided to return to Britain. Having just turned sixty, he was obviously feeling pretty gloomy. ‘After long 40 years...
London and the English Civil War
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From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756
Historian article
Why is Henrietta Luxborough, who was born in 1699, of interest today? In the first place because of whom she was; in the second because of what happened to her; and in the third because of her courage which enabled her to overcome adversity and lead a life utterly different...
From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756
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The history of bigamy
Historian article
Though people are still sometimes prosecuted for repeatedly marrying immigrants to rescue them from the attentions of the Home Office, while forgetting to get divorced between times, one uncovenanted result of the now common practice of living together without matrimony is the decline of that celebrated Victorian institution: bigamy.
In...
The history of bigamy
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Wellington's Soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars
Historian article
Wellington's Soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars
The war with France, which began in 1793, had moved to the Iberian Peninsula by 1808. This year is therefore the two-hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Peninsular War campaigns. War on the Peninsula demanded huge resources of manpower in order to defeat...
Wellington's Soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars
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Shipwrecks, Clocks and Westminster Abbey: the story of John Harrison
Historian article
‘Poor England has lost so many men'
On 22 October 2007 an unlikely group of people were to be seen casting wreaths upon the sea off the Scilly Isles. They comprised a Chief Executive, a Naval Commander, a Science journalist and the Fourteenth Astronomer Royal (this writer). A clue which...
Shipwrecks, Clocks and Westminster Abbey: the story of John Harrison
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Upwards till Lepanto
Article
Ottoman society centred on the Sultan. He was lawgiver, religious official, leader in battle-and until the late sixteenth century an active field commander on campaign. The Law of Fratricide of Mehmet (Mohammed) II, 1451-81, urged each new Sultan to kill his brothers in order to produce a capable ruler and...
Upwards till Lepanto
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Presenting Naseby
Historian article
The summer of 2007 saw the completion of new visitor facilities on and near the battlefield of Naseby. The two locations are the first to be created since the Cromwell Monument was finished in 1936 and they stand more than 5km (3 miles) apart, one of them 2km south-east of...
Presenting Naseby
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The Creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707
Historian article
Why did both the parliaments of Scotland and England vote themselves out of existence in 1707 in order to create a new ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’? From an English perspective, there was always a strong feeling that this union did not create a new kingdom and that it certainly...
The Creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707
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The Slave trade and British Abolition, 1787-1807
Historian article
In the 1780’s the British slave trade thrived. In that decade alone more than one thousand British and British colonial slave ships sailed for the slave coasts of Africa and transported more than 300,000 Africans. There was little evidence that here was a system uncertain about its economic future. If...
The Slave trade and British Abolition, 1787-1807
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A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Forgotten William Dampier
Historian article
In September 1683 in the Cape Verde Islands William Dampier lay 'obscured' among the scrubby vegetation to do some bird watching. He was excited for he had just caught his first sight of flamingos. The detail and delicacy of his description would gladden any modern ornithologist. They were, he wrote,...
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Forgotten William Dampier
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France during the reign of Louis XVI
Historian article
The system of Ancien Régime France was indeed archaic, to the extent that its nominal social structure not only contained remnants of the feudal system, like many European countries at that time, but was largely based on it. The extensive corruption inherent in this same system was such that those...
France during the reign of Louis XVI
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Thomas Muir and the 'Scottish Martyrs' of the 1790s
Article
From the 1750s, after more than a century of intense political and religious disputes and of economic stagnation, Scotland began to enjoy several decades of almost unprecedented political stability, religious harmony, economic growth and cultural achievements. Jacobitism had been crushed and most propertied and influential Scots rallied to the Hanoverian...
Thomas Muir and the 'Scottish Martyrs' of the 1790s
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The Last Duke of Lorraine
Article
The Place Stanislas in Nancy has a high reputation. But expectations are far surpassed as one surveys the beautifully proportioned square, with its imposing buildings such as the Hôtel de Ville and the Governor's Palace, its Arc de Triomphe and its magnificent iron work. It is a reminder of how...
The Last Duke of Lorraine
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George III & America
Article
George III has had no reason to complain of modern historians. He has been cleared of the 'taint' of madness (though I had never realised it was a taint) and instead suffered from porphyria, arsenic poisoning or both. Romney Sedgwick cleared him of the charge of being backward and Namier...
George III & America
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'Right well kept': Peterborough Abbey 1536-1539
Historian article
Although the reasons for and the process of dissolution in Peterborough Abbey compare closely to all other religious houses, the consequences were unique. Peterborough received favourable treatment and so emerged from the dissolution as one of six abbeys to be transformed into new cathedrals. The changes imposed on Peterborough were...
'Right well kept': Peterborough Abbey 1536-1539
