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King Charles I
Classic Pamphlet
The principles involved in the great religious and constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century are so important to us today, that it seems desirable on the occasion of the present tercentenary to lay before the members of the Historical Association some means of examining and re-examining their views on the...
King Charles I
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Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
Historian article
Books as evidence
The study of books as objects can reveal a great deal about their owners and the society in which they lived. By examining why the books were printed in the first place, and by whom; why they were acquired and for what purpose; how they were bound;...
Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
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The London Charterhouse
Historian article
Four hundred years ago, in 1611, Thomas Sutton was reputed to be the wealthiest commoner in England but he was nearing the end of his life. He had been a financier and he was formerly the Master of Ordnance in the Northern Parts. He decided to take up good works...
The London Charterhouse
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A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
Historian article
The Elizabethan Reformation in Staffordshire had a shallow seedbed. The radical reformers of the 1540s had greeted the conversion of the county with a mixture of high hopes and hyperbole. The East Anglian preacher and disciple of Latimer, Thomas Becon, wrote a treatise The Iewel of Ioye urging that itinerant...
A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
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Tudor Government
Classic Pamphlet
On 21 August 1485 Henry Tudor won the battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire and established himself as Henry VII, King of England. He had landed in Wales two weeks before, the Lancastrian claimant to the throne against the incumbent Yorkist, Richard III. He had received assistance from Charles VIII of...
Tudor Government
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Podcast Series: The British Empire 1600-1800
The British Empire
An HA Podcasted History of the early British Empire featuring Professor Trevor Burnard of the University of Warwick, Professor Stephen Conway of University College London, Dr Jon Wilson of King's College London, Professor Gad Heuman of the University of Warwick.
Podcast Series: The British Empire 1600-1800
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Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
Historian article
The late Frank Ellis was working on a full biography of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, at the time of his death in 2007. He had contributed a life of Wilmot to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography which appeared in 2004. In it he wrote that ‘on 21 November...
Lord Rochester's Grand Tour 1661 - 1664
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Cambuskenneth books: Looted Scottish law books return to Edinburgh
Historian article
Memorandum that Edinburgh was won on 8th day of May in the 36th year of the reign of Henry VIII and year of God 1543 and this book was acquired and brought away by me Wm. Norris of Speke, Knight, on 11th day of May aforesaid and is now the...
Cambuskenneth books: Looted Scottish law books return to Edinburgh
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Occult and Witches
Historian article
Occult and Witches: Some Dramatic and Real Practitioners of the Occult in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Periods
One purpose of this paper is to show a correspondence between real-life Elizabethan and Jacobean practitioners of the occult and the depiction of their theatrical counterparts, with particular reference to perceived differences between,...
Occult and Witches
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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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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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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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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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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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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
