Search

The requirement to proclaim Richard Cromwell lord protector in September 1658 forced town leaders to engage with an unstable political context through the production of a large-scale public event. This article examines the ceremonies used in a range of provincial towns to offer a new perspective on urban culture in 1650s England. By analysing both contemporary print and the records of civic government, it reveals how urban inhabitants could maintain a variety of performative responses to state directive whilst approaching the moment of succession actively and pragmatically to confront issues specific to their respective locales. Crucially, there was no standard ritual experience and civic authorities remained relatively free to modify existing codes and apply them in the way/s that made most sense to their particular situation. In addition to confirming the essentially ambiguous nature of ceremonial expectation in this context, the findings presented in this article complicate our understanding of urban government during the last months of the protectorate by emphasizing the capacity for towns of varied religious and/or political complexion to use public ritual to further corporate interests and negotiate a range of specific concerns in both a national and a local framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Explanations of local interconfessional relations in post-revolutionary England tend to highlight the role of Catholic quiescence and compromise in allowing Protestants and Catholics to ‘get along’. By examining the interactions of a Catholic family who were far from quiescent in their religious and political practice, this article suggests that these explanations may overemphasize the compromise of religious minorities, obscuring the importance of the wider local context to the shape of interconfessional relations. The subjects of this study, the Rookwoods of Stanningfield, Suffolk, were active in expression of Catholic religion and its political implications. Contrary to patterns suggested elsewhere, the social and economic interactions of this family with their neighbours illustrate that such ardent Catholicism was not enough to prevent cordial relations with local Protestants. The social and economic importance of the Rookwoods within their community is used to make suggestions as to why they were accepted on the local level against a backdrop of wider anti-Catholic polemic. The example of the Rookwoods implies a need to explore the broader factors which shaped the underlying balance of power on a local level before it is possible to understand the nature of compromises that allowed for peaceful co-existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the more difficult practical questions raised by the English Reformation was just how to support its clergy and its fabric. Despite extensive resistance from the godly members of church and state, the Elizabethan church maintained the pre-Reformation system of impropriations, lay ownership of ecclesiastical tithes. This article examines the historical, practical, and ideological stakes of these everyday economics in the late sixteenth century. It argues that the majority of impropriators were responsive to the needs of the church, sustaining rather than undermining the nascent English church. In the space opened up by the Reformation's rents in the social and physical fabric of the parish, new bonds between church, state, and society were knit. This process of building the post-Reformation church thus tied the laity closer to the interests and activities of the church in England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at central government's role, focusing on the parliamentary terms 1959–64 and 1964–6, in directing the way in which local authorities enacted the central area redevelopment schemes of the 1960s. The first two sections review the substantial but little-studied literature produced across the political spectrum about central area urban renewal in the period 1959–64. Section III uses the Joint Urban Planning Group, a group set up within the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, as a case-study to show how modernist approaches to redevelopment became operative within a government department. The Joint Urban Planning Group has received no attention from historians. Section IV discusses the fate of these ideas during Labour's first term after the 1964 election. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a new perspective on Elizabethan puritanism. In particular, it examines the ways in which the memory of Marian conformity continued to influence religious and political controversy during the reign of Elizabeth I. Drawing upon extensive archival evidence, it focuses on moments when the chequered pasts of Queen Elizabeth, William Cecil, and other chief officers of English church and state were called into question by puritan critics. In contrast to the prevailing narrative of Elizabethan triumphalism, it argues that late Tudor religion and politics were shaped by lingering puritan distrust of those who had revealed a propensity for idolatry by conforming during the Marian persecution. This fraught history of religious conformity meant that, for some puritans, the Church of England had been built on unstable foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

England was blighted by frequent agricultural depressions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Recurrent crises brought poor law reform to the parliamentary agenda and led to the passage of two non-compulsory pieces of legislation, Sturges Bourne's Acts of 1818 and 1819. These permissory acts allowed parishes to ‘tighten up’ the distribution of poor relief through two vital tools: the formation of select vestries, and the appointment of waged assistant overseers. Whilst previous studies have tended to represent the legislation as a failing reform in the dying days of the old poor law, we know remarkably little about the relief practices deployed by parishes operating under the auspices of Sturges Bourne's Acts. This article starts by detailing the genesis of the reforms before considering the provisions of the acts and their rates of adoption in rural England. Focusing upon administrative records from Wessex and West Sussex, the article proceeds to examine the inspection of relief claimants, and judgments made as to their ‘character and conduct’; the general measures taken to reduce outdoor relief; and their alternative strategies for allocating relief. It is argued that the reforms re-drew the distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, ultimately changing individuals' and families' entitlement to relief under the old poor laws. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Processes for the identification of criminal suspects tell us a great deal about wider cultural assumptions and social prejudices regarding somatic difference; its causes, relative degree, and consequence. If early modern Europeans had something approaching a forensic science, it was astrology, which has recently garnered renewed attention from historians of ideas. Rather than assume astrology's seventeenth-century decline in the face of revolutionary natural philosophy, what follows suggests that English astrology remained significant for mundane bodily discrimination, in the context of both a more deliberate, gradual reform and the tenacity of centuries-old humoral physiology. More importantly, scrutiny of astrological practice, and the logic underpinning its lasting currency, can reveal much about the significance of bodily contrasts and the meanings ascribed to them by Tudor-Stuart folk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 20 Oct. 2011. It explores how the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, stimulated shifts in historical method, and transformed the culture of memory, before turning to the interrelated question of when and why contemporaries began to remember the English Reformation as a decisive juncture and critical turning point in history. Investigating the interaction between personal recollection and social memory, it traces the manner in which remembrance of the events of the 1530s, 1540s, and 1550s evolved and splintered between 1530 and 1700. A further theme is the role of religious and intellectual developments in the early modern period in forging prevailing models of historical periodization and teleological paradigms of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Eighteenth-century architect-builders were a small group, but important for understanding the market strategies of knowledge-based experts in an age of rapid growth in technical information before the creation of modern professions. This article confronts a teleological historiography of emerging professionalization. It is focused on Robert Mylne and several of his contemporaries in Edinburgh and London, including a number of successful London-based Scots who were active as architects, builders, engineers, and surveyors, and self-styled in all these areas when it suited them. It supplies an account of what it took for building experts to establish themselves and flourish in big cities and the ways in which such experts navigated, controlled, and accommodated an environment of unregulated expertise that largely suited contemporary practitioners. Individual, family, and collective market strategies are examined in detail and the final section is a close analysis of the activities of the Architects Club in the 1790s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The second earl of Shelburne is well known for his association with reform initiatives in the second half of the eighteenth century. However, he also put conspicuous effort into strengthening his aristocratic credentials and status. One noteworthy feature of this was his politeness: he aimed at personal cultivation, a goal in itself and a foundation for leadership in society; he also had a reputation for politeness in everyday social situations. One context for Shelburne's conspicuous politeness was his personal need to overcome a number of impediments to asserting aristocratic status. However, another context was his effort to articulate a vocation for the modern aristocrat. For Shelburne, polite sociability was a way for the aristocrat to gather, organize, and deploy creative energies in society for the sake of improvement and reform. Though a particular example, Shelburne illustrates the energy that asserting aristocratic status could demand and the sort of modernity that could be claimed on behalf of aristocracy. Finally, Shelburne demonstrates the role of politeness in aristocratic formation: in particular, he shows how aristocratic engagement in contemporary society entailed a range of social relations which polite competence helped to manage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines leisure in eighteenth-century London and argues that historians have exaggerated the importance of public, commercial leisure at the expense of leisure in the home. The domestic sphere was the primary scene of leisure for men and women of propertied society. In tandem with this examination of leisure I argue that our frameworks for understanding the use of domestic space fail to capture both the significance of particular rooms and the variety of uses for individual rooms. The failings of the public/private framework are well known, but scholars have thus far failed to develop successful alternatives. From diaries, letters, and inventories conclusions may be drawn about the habitual uses of space, but letters and diaries also provide evidence of how room use varied depending on time of day, activities pursued or people undertaking those activities. I present several variables that residents used to determine where and with whom different activities were taken. Meanings of spaces were contingent upon a mix of qualities constantly re-assessed by residents and guests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the poor law has formed a key element of recent discussions of 'state formation' in early modern England. There are, however, still few local studies of how formal poor relief, stipulated in the great Tudor statutes, was implemented on the ground. This article offers such a study, focusing on Lancashire, an economically marginal county, far from Westminster. It argues that the poor law developed in Lancashire surprisingly quickly in the early seventeenth century, despite the fact that there is almost no evidence of implementation of statutory relief before 1598, and formal relief mechanisms were essentially in place before the Civil War even if the numbers on relief remained small. After a brief hiatus during the conflict, the poor law was quickly revived in the 1650s. The role of the magistracy is emphasized as a crucial driving force, not just in the enforcement of the statutes, but also in setting relief policy. The thousands of petitions to JPs by paupers, parishes, and townships that survive in the county archives suggests that magistrates were crucial players in the 'politics of the parish'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the state of modern English rural history. It identifies an 'orthodox' school, focused on the economic history of agriculture. This has made impressive progress in quantifying and explaining the output and productivity achievements of English farming since the 'agricultural revolution'. Its celebratory account was, from the outset, challenged by a dissident tradition emphasizing the social costs of agricultural progress, notably enclosure. Recently a new school, associated with the journal Rural History, has broken away from this narrative of agricultural change, elaborating a wider social history. The work of Alun Howkins, the pivotal figure in the recent historiography, is located in relation to these three traditions. It is argued that Howkins, like his precursors, is constrained by an increasingly anachronistic equation of the countryside with agriculture. The concept of a 'post-productivist' countryside, dominated by consumption and representation, has been developed by geographers and sociologists and may have something to offer historians here, in conjunction with the well-established historiography of the 'rural idyll'. The article concludes with a call for a new countryside history, giving full weight to the cultural and representational aspects that have done so much to shape twentieth-century rural England. Only in this way will it be possible to move beyond a history of the countryside that is merely the history of agriculture writ large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses changes in the nature and significance of duels fought in England's London area during the 18th century. Shift of the purpose of fighting duels to a demonstration of courage; Alternative strategies for defending reputations provided by both the press and the courts; Increased intolerance of violence; Internalized understandings of elite honor.

Describes how military honor during the English Civil War was professional, moral, utilitarian and a force for social stability. Requirement for the soldier to know and observe the codes and practices of his metier; Satisfaction of the internal sense of personal integrity; Broader social value of honor.

Reconsiders the place and importance of urban political culture in England between 1550 and 1750. Argument that England's towns and boroughs underwent two renaissances over the course of the period; Restructuring of the social relations and social identity of townsmen and women.

Examines the use of seditious libel and blasphemy as instruments of control during the era of Tory hegemony in England. Argument that the law of libel was an instrument of repression; Threat of prosecution against the writers and vendors of radical literature; Reasons why a great deal of arguably seditious literature circulated freely during the period.

Examines the intellectual and ideological debate about the notions of dueling, courtesy and honor in the Jacobean anti-dueling campaign. Examination of Francis Bacon's 1614 book 'The Charge Touching Duells' and a text by Henry Howard, the earl of Northampton; Contrasting responses to the problem of dueling; Court of honor which would solve all the disputes of honor between noblemen and gentlemen.

Focuses on the efforts of Elizabeth I, the queen of England, to effect the restoration of the Royal Supremacy and the replacement of the Latin liturgy by an Edwardian Prayer Book. Marian legislation; Manifestations of Protestant liturgy in the Chapel Royal; Indications of intention to restore the Book of 1549; Agreement to the restoration of the Book of 1552; Concessions to conservatism.

Explores the circulation of rumour and news among those at the lower levels of society in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England focusing on its impact on political opinion. Analysis of court records in which people were indicted for spreading false reports or speaking seditious words; Relationship between oral, manuscript and printed media.

Examines Samuel Roffey Maitland's fervent objections to Foxe and his martyrology, and Maitland's relationship to the major religious movements of his day. Foxe's partisan bias; Poor editorial job; Sympathy for the Oxford Movement; Examination of scholarly credential as a Foxe critic; John Foxe's `Acts and Monuments.'

Focuses on the rise of litigations in England in 1550-1640. Association of the litigation's rise with the breakdown in societal relations; Rise in litigations due to matters concerning credit and contracts; Consideration of community relations and reconciliation under litigations functionality.

Examines the debating society in London in 1780. Venue background; Audiences present at the debates; Types of questions asked; Nature of responses; Range of reactions to such activity.

Analyzes the shift in English popular sentiment from anti-Dutch to anti-French in the 1670s. English attitudes towards Europe; Understanding of European politics by the English nation in the 1660s; Abandonment of Charles II of the French alliance.

Focuses on the history of the Digger movement in England. Response of Cobham's residents to Gerrard Winstanley and his Digger followers; Response of Cobham's inhabitants to the Digger movement as a reflection of Cobham's tradition of landlord-tenant conflict.

Explores the way and extent in which the criminal law was used to control the motorist in England during the first third of the twentieth century. Problem in the development of motor vehicles travelling at greater speeds; Issue between the police and the middle classes; Whiggish view of law making; Concept of the `policeman state'; `The road hog' scapegoat.

Considers the causes of the spread of the campaign to reform manners from England to Ireland in the 1690s. Links and resemblances in the campaigns; Catholic revanche of 1685-90; Powerful tradition of providential explanation for recurrent crises; Tense and increasingly competitive relations between the Church of Ireland and presbyterians.

Reviews evidence regarding King Henry VIII of England's motives in the writing of his will and suggests different conclusions with regard to outside factors which might have affected the writing of the will. Political factionalism; Tampering; Seymour faction of 1547; Conciliar provisions.

Explores the strains and tensions which were created by the application of the Crown's policy toward the nobles and the rule of the provinces under the early Tudors and to the `peripheral' parts of the Tudor state. Outline of the political ambitions, resources and estate-management policies of a border baron; Suggestion that the traditional approach of historians to the problems of Tudor politics and government reflect too much a view of events as seen from `the center.'