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.]

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.)

Before there were blogs

The Folger Shakespeare Library ran a vibrant exhibition, "Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper," curated by Chris R. Kyle and Jason Peacey with Elizabeth Walsh, September 25, 2008-January 31, 2009. The exhibition is still online and is a sort of catalog book of the early newspaper from 1620s to early 18th century.

Our Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714 includes selections from MS. newsletters - 4.2 A Spanish newsletter about Hawkins and Drake (December 1569) and 8.8 Selections from newsletters (1675–82), as well as selections from early modern newspapers - 8.9 Selections from Whig and Tory newspapers (1679–82). Selections from the many newsbooks of the 1640s, however, must be searched for elsewhere. Early English Books Online (EEBO) has those collected and bound by George Thomason, and a modern edition of selections is to be found in Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks 1641-1649 (Oxford University Press, 2005). 

When EEBO and ECCO become Verbs

Another day, another blog:

• Early Modern Online Bibliography (EEBO, ECCO, and Burney Collection Online)

should be added to our list Virtual Grub Street? The Bibliography of Online Document Archives at the end of the 2nd ed. of Sources and Debates lists EEBO and ECCO as important source collections, even though we know that many schools and universities cannot afford to subscribe to these massive databases.  In my own course, I have students work with EEBO for at least one assignment, Sources and Debates, Revolutionary England, Essay on 1640-60.  I am working on a podcast on how to search EEBO and use the materials, although through Early Modern Online Bibliography I learned of the University of Warwick's English and Comparative Literary Studies' Video guide to using EEBO.

When Worlds Collide: Early Modern Word Up

It is with some surprise that I discover in the latest email newsletter from UK music magazine Word a link to the new London Lives 1690-1820: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis.

According to the Project Staff:

• London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages from eight London archives and is supplemented by fifteen datasets created by other projects. It provides access to historical records containing over 3.35 million name instances. Facilities are provided to allow users to link together records relating to the same individual, and to compile biographies of the best documented individuals. 

Eventually it will be integrated with an even larger set of databases, as described in Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500–1900.  London Lives should be added to the bibliography of online works in the 2nd ed. of Sources and Debates (and would be useful for students working on late Stuart social and cultural issues, ch. 9).

One caveat, the organizers promise a wiki to help markup and transcription.  A quick test of my father's name reveals the following:

• From a Court holden at the said Hospital of Bridewell on Friday the 6th. of March 1746/7 
• Edward BellamyEdward Bellamy      being Charged by the Oath of Harry KeyHarry Key      at the Wheatsheaf in Cornhill Linnen Draper being a Disorderly Personand Pilferring and Old Hall of small Value his Property. 

That clearly should be "an old hatt" (Bellamy appears to have stolen Harry's hat).  Amazingly, London Lives provides a photo of the original MS. minute book on the same webpage (with a handy zoom) and, indeed, that is what is written.  Amazing source.

Debating Reformations

Peter Marshall's new article, ‘(Re)defining the English Reformation’, Journal of British Studies 48, 3 (2009): 564-86, is a very useful summary of recent views of the Reformation (from above/below, quick/halting, etc.), and even-handed, even though Marshall himself has staked a position in these debates. This was published too late, of course, to be included in the 2nd ed. of Sources and Debates in English History, 1485-1714, ch. 3, although much of the relevant work is included there under "Historians' Debates," grouped by various debate questions (74-77). Note that the Wiley-Blackwell website includes Historiographical Commentaries
from Sources and Debates in English History (1st edition), which, although not updated with new secondary works like the 2nd ed., are still valuable essays for further research.

Students select Reformation after 1547 documents (group C)

Please post by Sat., Sept. 19 or before as a comment which 3 documents about which you would most want to lead discussion for week 4. Sept. 17. Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 (post-1547). Add one sentence for each document about why you like that document or think it would work well in class. (I will email you which one document you will be working on once I have your submissions.) Sign your comment with your first name and last initial.

Students select Reformation documents (group B)

Please post by Sat., Sept. 12 or before as a comment which 3 documents about which you would most want to lead discussion for week 4. Sept. 17. Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 3 (pre-1547). Add one sentence for each document about why you like that document or think it would work well in class. (I will email you which one document you will be working on once I have your submissions.) Sign your comment with your first name and last initial.

Students select Yorkist/Tudor Government documents (group A)

Please post by Sept. 7 or before as a comment which 3 documents about which you would most want to lead discussion for week 3. Sept. 10. Key and Bucholz, Sources and Debates, ch. 2. Add one sentence for each document about why you like that document or think it would work well in class. (I will email you which one document you will be working on once I have your submissions.) Sign your comment with your first name and last initial.

loves and fishes?

Roger Martyn notes that "on the Monday one way, on the Tuesday another way, on the Wednesday another way, praying for rain or fair weather as the time required; having a drinking and a dinner there upon Monday, being fast day; and Tuesday being a fish day [when Catholics were required to abstain from meat] they had a breakfast with butter and cheese, etc., at the parsonage, and a drinking at Mr. Clopton's by Kentwell, at his manor of Lutons, near the ponds in the park, where there was a little chapel...." Were Anglicans required to abstain as well in the 16th century? Butchers and Fishmongers: Their Historical Contribution to London's Festivity; AU : Billington, Sandra; SO : Folklore; VO : 101; NO : 1; DA : 1990; PP : 97-103, points out that Protestant England wanted to increase the number of fish days for economic reasons, although Puritan figures of fun in late-Eliz/early-Jac. plays often sat down to a dinner of flesh on Fridays.

Who Loves Liz?

The following on the role of Sir Walter Raleigh (and Hatton too, for that matter--he would have been better in the movie, but no one has heard of him) in Elizabeth's court from von Wedel's Journey, 1584-5 is not included in either edition of our sourcebook, but is quite valuable:

• The queen is served at dinner by a very young gentleman in black, who carves; the drink is handed to her by one in green, almost of the same age, who has to kneel while she drinks. Afterwards he rises again and takes the cup from her. To the right side of the table stand the gentlemen of high rank, as Lord Howard, called Chamberlain, in Germany he would be taken for a mareschal, also Lord Leicester, Master of the Horse, with whom, as they say, the queen for a long time has had illicit intercourse, now he is married; the treasurer of the State and the count Hertford, who, they say, is the next to the crown in England. He had deflowered one of the queen's ladies, and, against the queen's wish, married another, which brought him into disgrace, but now he had recovered his character; and Christopher Hatton, the captain of the guard, whom the queen is said to have loved after Leicester. They all had white sticks in their hands and were fine old gentlemen....
• The queen, as long as the dance lasted, had ordered old and young persons to come and converse with her, who, as I have mentioned, were all obliged to kneel on their knees before her. She talked to them in a very friendly manner, making jokes, and to a captain named Ral [Sir Walter Raleigh] she pointed with her finger in his face, saying he had some uncleanness there, which she even intended to wipe off with her handkerchief. He, however, prevented her and took it away himself. It was said that she loved this gentleman now in preference to all others; and that may be well believed, for two years ago he was scarcely able to keep a single servant, and now she has bestowed so much upon him, that he is able to keep five hundred servants. [“Journey Through England and Scotland Made by Lupold von Wedel in the Years 1584 and 1585,” trans. Gottfried von Bülow, TRHS n.s. 9 (1895): 250-1, 258-65.]...
• "She had in her time four principal favorites: namely, the Earl of Leicester, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Earl of Essex. All these successively enjoyed her grace in the highest measure, being men of very comely personage, and adorned with all outward gifts of nature, but much differing one from another in the disposition of their minds.
• “The Earl of Leicester, after his restitution in blood, which had been corrupted by his attainder in Queen Mary's time, was created Baron of Denbigh and Earl of Leicester, and afterwards advanced to the offices of Master of the Horse and Steward of her household. He was very graceful in behavior, of a liberal diet, and much addicted to sensual pleasures. He was commonly accounted a good courtier, which in other terms is called a cunning dissembler. Eager he was of revenge where he intended it, as being very hardly reconciled where he had once conceived offense. Leicester was no great soldier, his nature being more inclinable to ease and delights of the court than to "service in the field; though now and then for ambition or hope of gain he would undertake great attempts, as may appear by his wars in the Low Countries, where he spent a great part of the time of his abode in shows of triumph and feastings. He was ill beloved of the people, who thought that he abused the Prince's favor for his own private advantage to the hinderance of the public good. He lived many years in great estimation with the Prince, and dying left no posterity to succeed him. His end, if report may be believed, was hastened by means of some sinister practice, and his lands extended for the payment of great sums of money wherein he was indebted at the time of his death.
• “Sir Christopher Hatton, being a young student in an Inn of Court, was first made known to the Queen in a show or device presented before her at a festival time; whereupon being called to her service, she made him one o£ her pensioners, then Captain of her Guard, and afterwards Vice-chamberlain, and of her Privy Council; continuing and increasing her favor toward him, till in the end she advanced him to the Chancellorship of England. And it hath been thought he was the more gracious for that he lived unmarried. Touching his gifts of mind, they were neither altogether ordinary nor excellent. Premeditated speeches he would deliver in public with good grace. He was very passionate and, being provoked, a violent and implacable enemy. In household expenses he was magnificent and attended with many followers, whereof some he used for their advice and direction in matters belonging to his office, and others for ministerial places, now and then observing formality to shadow greater defects. Being much indebted to the Queen and inwardly discontented in mind, he ended his life.
• “Sir Walter Raleigh was descended of an ancient gentleman's house and well allied, howbeit, as it falleth out for the most part with younger brethren, unprovided of maintenance which by his own industry he was to supply; having thereto as many helps as nature herself could afford. For touching his shape and lineaments of body, they were framed in so just a proportion and so seemly an order, as there was nothing in them that a man might well wish to have been added or altered. In such gifts of the mind as the world generally esteemeth, he not only excelled the most, but matched even the best men of his time. His first employment was in the wars of Ireland occasioned by the rebellion of the province of Munster, where he had the charge of a company and served with good commendation. Afterwards, returning into England, he followed the Court there in hope of preferment, and by his wit and diligence in observing such persons as were then of most inward credit with `` the Queen, he wound himself by little and little into her knowledge and good opinion. He held as places of trust and reputation the Captainship of the Guard, and the Wardenry of the Stannaries in the west parts of the realm, enriching himself by continual gifts and rewards, which he received of the Prince's bounty; till at the last, by the course of` fate, his fortunes being then at the highest, he fell into open disgrace; by reason whereof many years together he was sequestered from the Court. Howbeit, partly by the mediation of his friends there and partly by the inclination of the Queen herself, who never sought utterly to ruin those whom she had once favored, he was in the end admitted to her presence and after that, obtained the government of the Isle of Jersey. He was a man of a very bold spirit and of a quick conceit, in adversity not altogether dejected; insolent in prosperity and ungrateful to such as had supplied his wants in his first and mean estate. He was commonly noted for using of bitter scoffs and reproachful taunts which bred him much dislike. He was so far from affecting popularity, as he seemed to take a pride in being hated of the people, either for that he thought it a point of policy, or else that he scorned the approbation of the multitude. He was commonly reputed an atheist, by reason of his profane speeches, perverting the words and sense of Holy Scripture. But whether they proceeded from a desire to maintain argument only and to make show of wit, or from a corrupt judgment in matter of religion I will not take upon me to censure. For he would dispute very subtly of such matters as came in question by way of discourse even with expert men in their own professions. His manner of speaking was for the most part confident, and his writing, judicial. Valiant he was, and well experienced in military affairs, whereof he ofttimes made proof in his services both by sea and land. He had in him all those parts which, having been well used, might have availed much for the general good of the realm, and for the assurance of his own private estate.
• “The Earl of Essex, differing in quality of degree from the two last remembered, as being noble by birth and descent, was first brought into favor by the Earl of Leicester, his father-in-law, under whom he was a while trained up in the wars of the Low Countries, where, being but yet of the age of eighteen years, he was made General of the Horse. Upon the resignation of the Mastership of the Horse by the Earl of Leicester he succeeded in that office, and after the victory of Cadiz he was created Earl Marshal of England. Many voyages by sea for desire of glory he undertook, not all with like success. He was naturally of a very good disposition; no flatterer nor dissembler, as being either an open friend, or an open enemy. To fleshly wantonness he was much inclined and overmuch swayed by the bent of his will; being more stiff in his own opinions than was thought convenient for a man of his employment, that had ofttimes the chief commandment and direction of mighty armies. He was a great lover of learning and was well learned himself, as might well appear by divers letters and discourses which he wrote with great elegancy and judgment. Soldiers for the most part he esteemed; some of best desert upon emulation he envied. He a obtained of the Queen many great suits, the benefit whereof he communicated with his followers, reserving the least part to himself. He was generally as much beloved as Sir Walter Raleigh, his predecessor, was hated: two affections that in the multitude are commonly extreme, but to great men not always dangerous alike. This popular affection he won for the most part by his courtesy and affability, having by that means the fortune to enjoy at one time both the favor o£ the Prince and the good will of the people: which two very seldom meet together, either for that favorites, taking advantage of the time for their peculiar benefit, do seek for the most part to enrich themselves by the hurt of the Commonwealth; or, transported with opinion of their greatness, neglect and condemn the vulgar sort; or else, doubting the danger of popularity, suppose it a safer course to want the people's love than to incur the jealousy of the prince. Free he was of expense and, somewhat above the proportion of his estate, liberal, either for that naturally he was so inclined as bounty commonly accompanies true nobility, or else that his wants were continually supplied by great gifts of the Queen, with whom he would sometimes in violent manner expostulate (the cause of his discontentment proceeding from delays and crosses in such suits and actions as he undertook), provoking thereby her displeasure, and by little and little diminishing her favor towards him. So far was he from soothing and simulation, that he would not use it even at those times when it might have most availed him. At his return from Ireland, whither he had been sent as Lieutenant of that kingdom to suppress the rebellion there, Essex fell into open disgrace and was committed to safe custody for a time; but afterwards recovering some liberty, as a man not altogether insensible of the injuries which he conceived had been offered him, and pricked forward by some of his followers, whose hopes depended upon his fortunes, he resolved to seek a speedy remedy by procuring his personal access to the Queen; but taking the wrong way in attempting it, he failed of his purpose, and unfortunately lost both himself and them.” [BL, Add. MS. 22,925; printed in Evelyn Plummer Read and Conyers Read, eds., Elizabeth of England: Certain Observations Concerning the Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth by John Clapham (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951), 85-6.]