41 Come Again

Perhaps my headline is a bit of a misnomer for a link to the 1641 Depositions Project regarding the Irish Rising of October 1641.  But, when the English during the Exclusion Crisis c. 1680 worried that their divisions from the first years of the Long Parliament might be erupting again, they did have some fear about Catholic or Irish Plots. 

As Sir George Hungerford noted in the Commons debate 15 December 1680 (as printed in Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, 2nd ed. (2009), 221:

• I am of opinion, that the late queen mother’s [Henrietta Maria’s] zeal for her religion, was not only a great occasion (amongst many others) of the miseries that befell us in [16]41; but the great cause of all our miseries now, by perverting the duke [of York] from his religion, as is reported. …

In any case, the depositions called for in the wake of the 1641 Irish Rebellion have been transcribed, appropriately enough beginning with those from Ulster where the rising began, and are available online.
As a recent article on the project notes:

• While massacre is an old theme in Irish history, digitisation is, of course, a relatively new one. Both themes have been brought together in The 1641 Depositions Project, an initiative involving scholars from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Cambridge and IBM (LanguageWare). The project is funded by the AHRC, the IRCHSS and the TCD Library. The depositions are witness statements relating to the Irish rebellion of 1641. They detail a range of experiences and alleged crimes such as losses of possessions, murder and massacre. Their contents have generated controversy for centuries. ("Digitisation, Massacre and Irish History," by John Cunningham, History Compass Exchanges, November 25, 2009)

Virtual Grub Street?

An expanding array of blogs cover the early modern England, Britain, and the World. Perhaps because the blogosphere emulates the cheap and ready world of Stuart London printing presses (the main title of the accompanying pamphlet title-page from the anarchic year of 1659, when censorship evaporated, is my personal favorite representing the early modern internet), many of these blogs focus on print, newspapers, and publishers. The wall between regular sites and blogs is not fast and is permeable. The following list is partial even of those I have bookmarked.

• A Bit British (presses, pamphleteering)
• Carnivalesque (blog carnival dedicated to pre-modern history)
• A Cuppe of Newes (Renaissance Research Group, English, Exeter)
• Diary of Samuel Pepys (the original blogger)
  
• Early Modern at the Beinecke (Yale's rare holdings)
• Early Modern History (English history and beyond, well integrated with other web sites)
• Early Modern Intelligencer (Birkbeck Early Modern Society)
• Early Modern London, Probably (printing, maps, and that metropolis)
• Early Modern Notes (blogger also runs Early Modern Resources gateways)
  
• Early Modern Rambler (newspaper advertisements, printing)
• Early Modern Whale (literature, ephemera)
• Eastern Association (Civil Wars)
  
• Fragments (poetry, medicine, entertainments)
• Investigations of a Dog (broader military issues, Civil Wars, horse-trade)
  
• Mercurius Politicus (books, history)
• Mistris Parliament (British Civil Wars)
• TudorHistory.org (things Tudor)
  
• Tudor Stuff (material culture and culture tout court)
  
• Wynken de Worde (books, culture)
  

A Room of One's Own

Wenceslaus (Wenzel) Hollar's 1656 engraving of William Dugdale (1605-1686) suggests the tools of the trade in early modern England were a bit simpler than today. Still, Dugdale might be pleased to learn that "Historian" was listed as one of The Ten Best Jobs in America 2009.

Bibliography of Online Document Archives

To the bibliography of online works in the 2nd ed. of Sources and Debates should be added:

• The Court of Chivalry, 1634-1640, whose records have been edited at the University of Birmingham by Dr Richard Cust and Dr Andrew Hopper over the period 2003-6.
  

(This work would be particularly relevant for students working on the early Stuart period (Early Modern England, ch. 7; Sources and Debates, ch. 6), and/or social and cultural issues (Early Modern England, ch. ; Sources and Debates, ch. 5).

And, because I keep being drawn to telling examples from The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England, by Keith Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2009) (see earlier posting), one might mention the following from his "Arms and the Man" chapter: "In 1513 virtually all fit members of the nobility turned out for Henry VIII's campaign in France, in the same way as their ancestors had done for Henry V at Agincourt." (47) No waning, then?