Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Mapping, chs. 4-5, 7, Early Modern England

Additional information for a map quiz, based largely on the Elizabethan and Early Stuart chapters of Early Modern England: London, Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Norwich, Edinburgh (Holyrood Palace), Paris, Antwerp, Douai, Welsh Marches, Tilbury, Flushing (now Vlissingen), Ulster, Munster, The Pale, Connaught, Dublin, Westminster (Whitehall), Greenwich, Berwick.
  • London is on the River Thames, Westminster is right next to it to the West (north of the river; Southwark is south of the river), and Whitehall is the working court of the Tudors and Stuarts in Westminster. Greenwich, another royal palace at the time of Elizabeth, is farther down the River Thames to the East (on the South bank of the river). Tilbury is farther down the River Thames to the East, as it opens up to the North Sea (on the North bank of the river). This is where Elizabeth placed her troops in case the Spanish had landed in 1588.
  • Canterbury is NOT on any map in the first edition of our textbook. But it is in Kent which is to the South and East of London. The archbishop of Canterbury controlled most of the dioceses South of York and the archbishop of York controlled York and those to the North. [See the following map of late Medieval dioceses (one or two were added later).]
  • Norwich (on the diocese map above–all dioceses have a Cathedral in them as that is the head of that region, also known as a bishopric).
  • Oxford, Cambridge, are the two English university towns in the 16th-17th century period and are, respectively Northwest and Northeast of London. Oxford is farther up the Thames although it is, of course, a much smaller river by then. Cambridge became more associated with Puritanism during Elizabeth’s reign. (Both are on this map of England.)
  • Holyrood Palace was and is a royal palace in the midst of Edinburgh. Mary Queen of Scots used it in the 1560s.
  • Borders: Welsh Marches is a nebulous area, basically the border of Wales [see this map of a Trail that goes along the Anglo-Saxon Offa’s Dyke; or see a map of the region]. The Welsh Marches were originally established by the Normans to give some barons extra powers to keep the Welsh in check. By Elizabethan times, the Council in the Marches in Ludlow, Shropshire provided a local law courts for the region, so people wouldn’t have to go to London.
  • Berwick-on-Tweed was another nebulous area, though this time just a city. On the River Tweed dividing England and Scotland, Berwick still has some Elizabethan ramparts which protected it from Scotland. In 1603, James VI of Scotland passed this way on his way to becoming James I of England.
  • Ireland: The Pale is nicely portrayed on this map circa 1450. Dublin would be in the nice rounded inlet on the south-central shore of the Pale. (The Pale is also in Leinster, but I won’t have that term on the exam.) Instead, I will choose from questions that ask you to locate Ulster in the North and East, Munster to the South and West, and Connaught in the central West (see this map of the four ancient provinces). Connaught is the most rugged and rocky. Ulster was the home of the leaders of the Clan O’Neil that the Tudors tried to pacify as the earls of Tyrone, but which broke out in war in the 1590s. Essex wandered around Munster (reinforcing its main port town of Cork) and Connaught to defeat O’Neil (which is strange, as the sentence above shows that O’Neil was mainly in Ulster).
  • Not English: Paris, Antwerp and Flushing (now Vlissingen) are ports in the lowlands: Belgium today; Antwerp is in Flushing is on an island next to the English Channel in the Netherlands today. Both are located north of Calais and Dunkirk on the following map.
  • Both had some importance in the Armada saga. The Catholics established a school for English Catholics in Douai in 1568 (and, I think, another in Flushing; the Dutch were pretty tolerant). [Finally, Douai is farther from the coast than I thought.]

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Research suggestion: Google books and Sources and Debates

Many of the articles and chapters listed at the end of each chapter in Sources and Debates in English History are readily available online if your library subscribes to major journals and/or JStor. If you have trouble finding works by historians mentioned in your library, you might try Google books.
  • You probably won't find a complete work by a recent historian in Google books (only a "Limited Preview." (Older works might offer you "Full view," which you can download and read. Others that offer "Snippet View" usually will not provide you enough to get a good quote from.) If you can't find the exact historians you want to contrast with each other but only others stating that they debate, perhaps your professor might be allayed if you find three historians summarizing them to make sure that this is a debate.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Yorkist or Tudor Revolution: document suggestions

I have had queries on how to use the documents. Well, let's say that you have one historian (Bernard, probably) who says that it was really monarchs (he would say Henry VIII) that had all the cards and all the power and there was no bunch of bureaucrats doing the modernization (and, thus, there was not much modernization). Whereas another (Elton?) says that it was Cromwell (and all the bureaucrats) who brought in change. Well, then, do you have documents where people worry much about what a king (Henry VII, Henry VIII) thinks, how he acts, even what he likes/dislikes? Those would support that first view, yes? But are there others about Wolsey and others that suggests that power and innovation lies somewhere else than the king? In courts, and bureaucrats? Those would support the second view. And what about statutes? They are signed by the king, but passed by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Which sort of centralization is that? You see that we have changed the question slightly from Henry vs. Thomas, to a wider one. But that is ok; ultimately you want a wide enough question that allows you to draw from a sizable number of documents to answer. We could have also discussed documents based on the debate that there was no change vs. that there was innovation and centralization. As to HOW you use the documents, well you have to find quotes in the documents that relate to your debate, quote them, and then show (a sentence or two) how that quote is related to your argument. Context is useful but only where it advances your argument (don't get bogged down in authors' biographies).

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Elizabethan Worlds: documents

If focusing on the religious settlement after 1558, there are a number of likely sources:
  • Elizabeth and Archbishop Grindal on prophesyings, 4.11 and 4.12 (1st ed.) relate strongly to
  • Field and Wilcox, Admonition, and their criticism of the established church (4.10, 1st ed.). Is this the Puritan criticism?
  • 4.8 and 4.9 are the established church taking on another side to the criticism of the religious settlement, this time from the Catholics.
  • The introductory essay (1st ed.) of ch. 4 also has a quote or two regarding "Church Papists," people who remained in the Protestant Church of England, but held to traditional religious beliefs as long as possible.

Elizabethan Worlds: secondary work suggestions

If interested in the Elizabethan religious settlement as a focus,
  • Bernard, George W. 'The Church of England, c.1529-c.1642'. History, 75:244 (1990), 183-206 is available online at booth library -- go to periodicals list for history (printed in UK, in case there is another by that name).
  • Haigh, Christopher. Elizabeth I (Profiles in Power). 2nd edn. London: Longman, 1998. A less positive spin, to put it mildly. This should be in the library.
  • There is also Haigh, Christopher. 'Rowse, Elizabeth and England'. History Today, 53 (May 2003), 25-28. available online through Booth, which might have something (Rowse is a very old school historian who Haigh would most probably criticize).
  • Haigh, Christopher (ed.). The reign of Elizabeth I. Basingstoke, 1984. although I don't know if we have that at Booth or not.
  • Norm Jones has a number of books and articles on the settlement.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Reformation(s) Papers: document suggestions

In response to a query about documents that support Dickens’s claim that the reformation came from the bottom up besides the Confession of John Pykas, I suggest
  • 3.3 (1st ed.) The Opening of the Reformation Parliament (November 3December 17, 1529) which has the MPs from the House of Commons quite willing to go along with Henry on this. Most of their reasons are more materialistic than Pykas, but they certainly buy into the idea of the corruption of the old church.
  • At the beginning of chapter 3 (1st. ed., and as a separate doc. in the new ed.) John Colet, who preached at the Convocation of English clerics summoned to discuss how to suppress heresy in 1511, attacks his audience for their venality and worldliness.
  • Ditto, William Melton (d. 1528), master of Michaelhouse, Cambridge, preaching in Latin to candidates for the clergy (1510).
  • Ditto, Simon Fish (d. 1531), who framed his attack on the clergy as a plea to Henry VIII to curb corrupt, greedy priests, bishops, pardoners, summoners, and friars.
Some bit of Dickens might be online. But there is also a chapter of Dickens in a collection by Marshall and that and Dickens should be in most university libraries.

Revolutions Seminar: reading

Jeremy Black, "Making a world safe for Whigs - Revisiting the Glorious Revolution: Patrick Dillon, Tim Harris and Edward Vallance on the Glorious Revolution," is a review essay on
It is not quite a fair revisionist reading. But it helps place them on a continuum of historiographical approaches.

Reformation(s) : bibliography suggestions

Regarding Dickens, The best works (besides his general intro. textbook) are in P. Marshall, ed., The Impact of the English Reformation, 1500. The are many recent articles and chapters continuing the Reformation historiography debate in Sources and Debates, ch. 3 on the following questions:
  • Was the Reformation popular, shaped by grass-roots movements from below?
  • Was it unpopular and forced by a few powerful members of the elite from above?
See also, now, R. H. Fritze, "The English Reformation: Obedience, Destruction and Cultural Adaptation," JEcclH 56, 1 (2005). G. Redworth,"Whatever Happened to the English Reformation?," HT 37 (October 1987) (available online) discusses one set of early post-revisionists which go back to Dickens and argue against Haigh and Duffy.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Discussion Leaders' documents; chapter 5

Student discussion leaders are asked to select documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 5 (society ca. 1600):, listing 3 documents from chapter 5, 1st ed. (one from the new chapter from the 2nd edition) with 1-2 sentences on each explaining what the class should get out of those documents. Then, during the next class I announce to the rest of class which documents they should read based on those documents selected.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Discussion Leaders' documents; chapter 4

Student discussion leaders are asked to select documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 4 (Elizabethan Worlds):, listing 3 documents from chapter 5, 1st ed. (one from the new chapter from the 2nd edition) with 1-2 sentences on each explaining what the class should get out of those documents. Then, during the next class I announce to the rest of class which documents they should read based on those documents selected.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Discussion Leaders' documents, group "c"; chapter 3 [post-1547]

By Mon. morning, 22 Sept., post a list of 3 documents from chapter 3 (one should be from the 2nd half of the chapter in the new edition which I will hand out to you on Tuesday) with 1-2 sentences on each explaining what the class should get out of those documents.

Then, during class on Tues., 23 Sept., I will announce to the rest of class which documents they should read for Thursday, 25 Sept. (based on those documents you all have selected), and you will introduce the documents to class.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Reformation historiography: an addition

The following review article came to our notice too late to place it in the Historians' Debates section of Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714, 2nd ed., ch. 3. But it opens with a useful brief discussion of changing keywords in Reformation historiography. R. H. Fritze, "The English Reformation: Obedience, Destruction and Cultural Adaptation," JEcclH 56, 1 (2005).

Discussion Leaders' documents, group "b", chaper 3 (pre-1547)

His 3100, Fall 2008, Discussion Group Assignments: Post a ranked list of 3 documents from ch. 3, Sources and Debates with 1-2 sentences on each explaining what the class should get out of those documents by September 15 (by noon)

I will then draw up a list of 5 documents which the whole class should read and the group will then be responsible for presenting the documents Sept. 18 to the class, ask questions, present context (using: other documents in the chapter and its introduction, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford English Dictionary, and textbook), and, if necessary, begin the discussion between themselves.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Discussion Leaders' documents, group 1, chapter 2

His 3100, Fall 2008, Discussion Group Assignments: Post a ranked list of 3 documents from ch. 2, Sources and Debates with 1-2 sentences on each explaining what the class should get out of those documents by September 9 (by noon)

I will then draw up a list of 5 documents which the whole class should read and the group will then be responsible for presenting the documents Sept. 11 to the class, ask questions, present context (using: other documents in the chapter and its introduction, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford English Dictionary, and textbook), and, if necessary, begin the discussion between themselves.

Monday, February 25, 2008

charles ii's entry into london

The 2nd edition of Early Modern England will have a detail from the following painting on the cover:

Charles Stoop, Charles II's Cavalcade through the City of London (1661)?

A contemporary engraving of the entry for his coronation is

surviving titles 1600-1700



Compare this with discussion on Early Modern England, ch. 8 to show the increase in tracts in the 1640s and 1650s. From David Cressy, "Revolutionary England 1640-1642," P & P 181 (2003): 61.

Some Statistics on the Number of Surviving Printed Titles for Great Britain and Dependencies from the Beginnings of Print in England to the year 1800, by Alain Veylit is based on the raw numbers from ESTC.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

mapping lord darnley's murder


contemporary sketch map of 1567 murder (from 1576?)

The Mermaid and the Hare


This placard denounced Mary Queen of Scots and Bothwell soon after the Darnley murder, and certainly suggests a popular reaction to the murder in Scotland if not a fully developed public sphere there in the mid-sixteenth century.

Another James


Compare the portrait of James VI and I in Early Modern England (2nd. ed., p. 218) with this portrait, from 1595, when only James VI, by Adrian Vanson as the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
 

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