Speaking of Wales...

Lloyd Bowen of Cardiff University has filmed a couple of nice introductions to early modern Wales (here and below) speaking before a (massive) map of Wales (in his department office?). (Dr. Bowen is involved in the new BBC series The Story of Wales, unfortunately not available in North America.) He points out the trans-formative nature of the English Civil War: the Cromwellians (he says Cromwell, but I think that others cared more) had to invent a revolutionary ruling group in heavily Royalist Wales, and they did so at least in part through the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales.


Lloyd Bowen on Wales and the English Civil War from Bruce Etherington on Vimeo.

High feeding and smart drinking among Lords and Commoners

Simonds D'Ewes, Journals of All the Parliaments
during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth
(1682), frontispiece

Kudos to The History of Parliament (HoP) Trust for making available online all the constituency and member biographies existing in print (for the early modern period, that includes material on the members of the House of Commons for the years 1386-1421, 1509-1629, and 1660-1820): The History of Parliament: British Political, Social & Local History.  The massive HoP project is now quickly, simply, and freely usable.  I have incorporated it into an assignment on Mapping Unreformed England, 1660-1832 (at least I did so after one of my students discovered it as I was explaining how to use the print volumes!).

The History of Parliament Trust has published a delightful teaser of sorts for the forthcoming multi-volume prosopographical study on the House of Lords, 1660-1715: Ruth Paley and Paul Seaward, eds., Honour, Interest and Power: An Illustrated History of the House of Lords, 1660-1715 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2010), with an illustrated section on "'High feeding and smart drinking': clubs, dinners and party politics," 232-4, with a couple of quotes from Newton Key, “‘High feeding and Smart drinking’: Associating Hedge-Lane Lords in Exclusion Crisis London,” in Exclusion and Revolution: the worlds of Roger Morrice, 1675-1700, ed. Jason McElligott (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2006), 154-73, for which citation I am most grateful.  I do wonder, however, the extent to which Lords eschewed their own townhouses for meeting in coffeehouses.  How would one measure public vs. private feasting and drinking?
.

Early Modern England in North America (cont'd.)

New courses/universities adopting either Early Modern England and/or Sources and Debates in English History, 148-5-1714 are

• British Politics and Society, 1485-1714 (Wilfrid Laurier)
• Early Modern England (Southern Utah)
• England to 1714 (Metropolitan State) 
• Events and Debates in Tudor-Stuart History (North Carolina State)
• Medieval and Early Modern England (Southern Adventist)
  
• Stuart Britain (Laurentian)
• Sun Kings vs.Parliaments: France & England 1600-1715 (San Francisco State)
• Tudor and Stuart Britain – 1500-1700 (Ohio State)
• Tudor and Stuart England (Weber State)

Two syllabi which have used Early Modern England and/or Sources and Debates are no longer available online:

• History of England, 1485-1714 (Texas, Arlington)
• Reformation Britain (Utah State, 2nd)

Giants and Pygmies: The Politics of Body Types in Restoration England?

A new work published, John Spurr, ed., Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683 (Ashgate, 2011) returns a long overdue spotlight onto the great leader among the CABAL, the country party, and the Whigs.  (I say long overdue, but we cover his political career at least extensively in ch. 9 of Robert Bucholz and Newton Key, Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History, 2nd ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.)  The new Ashgate catalog includes the following quote from Mark Kishlansky: "A collection of essays that befits the stature of the Earl of Shaftesbury."  That quote sent me on a quest to recall the exact words of John Dryden's hatchet job on Shaftesbury in Absalom and Achitophel: "A fiery Soul, which working out its way / Fretted the Pigmy Body to decay."  Even Tim Harris, a contributor to the volume notes in his ODNB biography: "He inherited the short stature of his grandfather and as an adult was markedly below average height." Harris, ‘Cooper, Anthony Ashley, first earl of Shaftesbury (1621–1683)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008)

All of which might make us ask what Prof. Kishlansky was suggesting.  A wider question is the politics of physical description.  The revamping of the Yorkist Richard III as hunched and crippled by Tudor apologists such as William Shakespeare has long been commented upon (Bucholz and Key, ch. 1).  Have we been influenced to do the same to Shaftesbury, the Count Tapski of Tory propaganda?  [This thought is influenced by some of the current work of my co-author, Robert Bucholz, on political images of fatness.  While that issue doesn't apply in Shaftesbury's case, as Prof. Harris notes "the Habeas Corpus Amendment Act, sometimes known as the Shaftesbury Act..., passed...only because Lord Grey of Warke...decided to count one particularly fat peer as ten, and no one spotted the error."]

Rebels and Rulers, Collect Them All!

 From a series of 1923 Cigarette Cards entitled Celebrities and their Autographs.  Oliver Cromwell (d. 1658) and James, Duke of Monmouth (d. 1685). I think the autographs might look more convincing than the portraits.

Pour encourager les autres

A note for a new semester:

• "It is not the want of our Abilities, that makes us use our Notes, but it 's a Regard unto our Work, and the good of our Hearers.  I use Notes as much as any Man, when I am lazy, or busie, and have not leisure to prepare." Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702)

Scholar's Choice, Elizabethan Religious Performances

Archbishop Edmund Grindal
(see 4.13-4.14 on prophesyings)

Undergraduate group “e” discussion leaders have been asked to provide 1-2 sentences for each of 3 documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 4 (documents 4.10–4.19) “Elizabethan Worlds," as to what seems useful or interesting about the document, in a comment below (beginning with the one they'd most like to examine/explain/contextualize).

Scholar's Choice, Global Elizabethans

A True Description of the
Naval Expedition of Francis Drake
(detail, rounding Cape Horn
and into the "South Sea")

Undergraduate group “d” discussion leaders have been asked to provide 1-2 sentences for each of 3 documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 4 (documents 4.1–4.9) “Elizabethan Worlds," as to what seems useful or interesting about the document, in a comment below (beginning with the one they'd most like to examine/explain/contextualize).

Scholar's Choice, Religious Reformations (1547-1559)

Undergraduate group “c” discussion leaders have been asked to provide 1-2 sentences for each of 3 documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 “Religious Reformations” [docs. 3.12-3.18], as to what seems useful or interesting about the document, in a comment below (beginning with the one they'd most like to examine/explain/contextualize).  [For students: by Sept. 16. Fri., Group c recommendations are due (online); document assignments & readings distributed by that Sun.; presentations.Sept. 22. Thurs.]

Feasting on Early Modern Theater Database

A review of a new digital resource - Early Modern London Theatres, ed. by John McGavin
Toronto, Records of Early English Drama, 2011 - in Reviews in History (David Kathman, review of Early Modern London Theatres, review no. 1119), drew me to the online source and database itself.  This appears to be the first stage (as it were) of the database, or Version 1 (February 2011): "Records pertaining to the Eight Theatres north of the Thames [Red Lion (1567), the Theatre (1576), the Curtain (1577), the Fortune (1600), the Red Bull (1604), the Boar's Head (1602), the Phoenix or Cockpit (1616), and Salisbury Court (1629)."  A quick run through the database, finds some 40 uses of the term "feast."  Although the term is, of course, often used to date contracts, the following note from mid-November 1626:

• "The Duke of Buckingham feasts and entertains the King and Queen with 'plays and desports' at York House. Joseph Mead reports, 'some people stick not to prate that his majesty is in very great favour with the duke's grace.'"

Materials, then, for "Elizabethan Worlds," and beyond.

Scholar's Choice, Religious Reformations (pre-1547)

J. Foxe, Acts and Monuments
(1563), detail

Undergraduate group “b” discussion leaders have been asked to provide 1-2 sentences for each of 3 documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 “Religious Reformations” [docs. 3.1-3.11], as to what seems useful or interesting about the document, in a comment below (beginning with the one they'd most like to examine/explain/contextualize).  [By Sept. 9. Fri., Group b recommendations are due (online); document assignments & readings distributed by Sun.; Sept. 15. Thurs. Presentations.]

Scholar's Choice, Tudor Challenge

Edward Hall, The Union of the Two
Noble and Illustre Famelies (1550).

Undergraduate group “a” discussion leaders have been asked to provide 1-2 sentences for each of 3 documents from Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 2 “Reviving the Crown, Empowering the State: the Tudor Challenge,” as to what seems useful or interesting about the document, in a comment below (beginning with the one they'd most like to examine/explain/contextualize).  [By Sept. 3. Sat., Group a recommendations are due (online); document assignments & readings distributed by Sun./Mon.; Sept. 8. Thurs. Presentations.]  (Joel has already submitted same, so I provide his as the first example.)

Remembering Anniversaries: Kett's Rebellion

Samuel Wales, Under the Oak of Reformation
at his Camp on Mousehold Heath, Norwich

Robert Kett and various rebels "camped at Mousehold Heath outside the regional capital of Norfolk from 10 July until final defeat by a royal army on 27 August" 1549.  That date, 27 August, rather than the beginning of the insurrection or the execution of Kett (7 Dec.), became "an annual day for the ringing of bells in the city's many churches, and for a religious service commemorating their salvation (the latter continuing into the eighteenth century)." John Walter, ‘Kett, Robert (c.1492–1549)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.  In the early eighteenth century, painter Samuel Wale was born, possibly in Yarmouth.  It was possibly in the 1740s that Wale "painted a historical scene in oils of the Norfolk insurrectionary Robert Kett," above or to the right, which "is now in the Norwich Castle Museum." M. G. Sullivan, ‘Wale, Samuel (1721?–1786)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009. Our Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714, includes 5.8 Depositions taken before the mayor and aldermen of Norwich after Kett’s Rising (1549–50), which suggests a more short-term, and less fanciful (what is that on Kett's head?), memory of the days when discussion freely ranged over the need (the ways?) to reduce the number of gentlemen and merchants.

1688 And All That

University of Nottingham Library, has a great visual representation of William of Orange's Itinerary (specifically a "map of southern England showing the routes followed by William's headquarters, four of the main Dutch commanders, and some English detachments.")  Their set of online documents, timelines, and other sources on the invasion are also worth noting.  (Thanks, and a tip of the hat to Charlie Foy.)

1688 also has its chronology (well 1685-89) here.  There is a Williamite world (well Universe) here.  And, to be fair, a Jacobite world (including an extensive set of documents) here.

(b)log rolling

London booksellers (n.d.)

In the past, I have attempted to describe blogs related to early modern England (and Wales, and Scotland, and Ireland) here, here, and here.  I will continue to draw attention to the new and noteworthy (and Early Modern Commons has an extensive EMC Blogroll).  But I have also begun a bloglist on the lower-left of this blog with several of the more interesting of the fellow laborers.

Course(s) Correction

Amended list (on the left-hand side of this blog) of The Courses (using either Early Modern England and/or Sources and Debates) based on currently active URLs (based solely on a quick, basic search):

Say good-bye (for now) to:

• Britain in the Stuart Age, 1603-1688 (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
• Crown and Peoples: Early Modern Britain (Anglia Ruskin, pre-course reading)
• England Under the Tudors, 1485-1603 (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
• Religion, Conflict and the Printing Press in Early Modern Europe (Illiniois, Urbana-Champaign)
• Selected Topics in Tudor and Stuart History (Western Ontario)
• Tudor and Stuart Britain, 1500-1700 (Ohio State)
• Tudor and Stuart England (Texas, Permian Basin)

Say hello to (among others, I am trying to recall what I added yesterday):

• Britain in the Modern World, 1550-1815 (Grinnell)
• Cultural Stress in Britain: From Reformation to Revolution (Salisbury)
• Early Modern England (Georgia State)
• Elizabeth I of England (Marian)
• English Renaissance Literature (Salem State)
• History of England, 1485-1714 (Texas, Arlington)
• Reformation Britain (Utah State, 2nd)
• Reformations and Revolutions in Early Modern Britain (Northumbria)
• Selected Topics in Tudor and Stuart History (Western Ontario)
• Shakespeare’s England, 1450–1603 (Ohio)
• Tudor and Stuart Britain, 1500-1700 (UCL)
• Tudor England (University College, Dublin)
• Tudor Stuart Britain (Salisbury)
• Tudor-Stuart England (Georgia)
• Tudor-Stuart England 1485-1688 (Central Arkansas)

The (Early Modern) Revolution Will Be Crowd-sourced?

Worlds collide.  For following changes in a region stretching roughly from Morocco to Iran (which I follow myself at Small Ax), my current fave blog is iRevolution, which shows how innovation and technology such as Crisis Mapping or Crowdsourcing can be used both to understand the changes and to impel the changes themselves.  It has struck me how some of these techniques might be used by historians although we rarely have datasets as big as those.  For example, Analyzing the Libya Crisis Map Data in 3D (Video), would be fascinating to apply to, say, incidents mentioned for one year in one or two newspapers from the 1640s. (Blogger "A Trumpet of Sedition," who seems particularly focused on the mid-century revolutions, might consider how such techniques might help understand the revolutionary era from a post-revisionist stance.)


Now, iRevolution has posted Crowdsourcing Solutions and Crisis Information during the Renaissance which suggests how crowdsourcing was used in the past, in this case, to aggregate pamphlet reporting on the 1607 Severn inlet floods.  Turns out of course there already is a website for the Great Flood of 1607 with a great set of sources on same.

Virtual Royal Exchange - addendum to early modern blogroll

Wenceslaus Hollar, Byrsa Londinensis, vulgo
The Royall Exchange of London (1644), detail

The first is an extensive list of blogs relating to early modern England (including this one), and this and the others below should be added to our Virtual St. Paul's Churchyard, and Virtual Grub Street as relevant blogs:

• Early Modern Commons (extensive blogroll, with Aggregator)
• Hans Eworth & The London Stranger Painters (Tudor Art)
• History Woman (includes late Medieval, early modern)
• Homo Gastronomicus (late 17th & 18th century feasting)
• she-philosopher.com (not really a blog, but I borrowed the close-up detail to left, from Women booksellers, 1640 and 1644, gallery)

Update: Early Modern Architecture (again, not a blog, but a good forum for conferences, research, resources - includes weekly newsletter)

Union Jack(ed)

London Metropolitan Archives' FLickr photostream has some interesting images (mostly 19th and 20th cent.). Dirck Stoop's "The Manner how her Maties. D. Catherine imbarketh from Lisbon for England," (which they title, The Marriage of Catherine of Braganza to King Charles II, 1662) has the English Fleet flying the Union Jack, which must be one of the earliest portrayals of said flag.  The OED, has the following early reference - London Gazette, 924 (1674), "[t]hat from henceforth [subjects] do not presume to wear His Majesties Jack (commonly called, The Union Jack) in any of their Ships or Vessels, without particular Warrant" - although the practice dates from the early Stuarts.

Get Thee To...The Continent

"Painted Life," Mary Ward and Companions

An interesting database is now available - Who were the Nuns? A Prosopographical study of the English Convents in exile 1600-1800.  It is interests me, not only because it is fun to say the word "prosopographical," but because one can locate Catholic county communities.  Thus, selecting region Monmouthshire and searching for surname with wildcards (A*, B*, C*, etc.), turns up some 32 nuns with links to that "Welsh Lancashire," including an Antwerp Carmelite, known as Anne of the Angels, born in Monmouth in 1613 to the Hon. Anne Russell, and fathered by Henry Somerset 1st marquess of Worcester (Philip Jenkins, "'A Welsh Lancashire?' Monmouthshire Catholics in the Eighteenth Century," Recusant History 15, 3 (1980): 176-88; Newton E. Key and Joseph P. Ward, “‘Divided into Parties’: Exclusion Crisis Origins in Monmouth,” English Historical Review 115, 464 (2000): 1159-83).