The story begins in 1980 with a chance find on John Dixwell in the British Museum, then resumes in New England several decades later with an old key handed over to the author in a plastic bag. Sarah Dixwell Brown had resolved to ask her father about the ancestor whose name always seemed to produce… Continue reading Passing on a regicide’s key
Category: Seventeenth Century
Algernon Sidney in Context
I’m very pleased to see the swift progress of a collection on Algernon Sidney’s work in context I’m contributing to due to appear with Classiques Garnier later this year. It is edited by my colleagues Tom Ashby and Christopher Hamel and based on several workshops on Sidney they had organised with Gilles Olivo at the… Continue reading Algernon Sidney in Context
Whose Voice?
The text known as The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow was long considered an authentic account of the English Revolution – until Blair Worden discovered Ludlow’s manuscript and recovered the regicide’s real voice. At a workshop in Newcastle we discussed the feasibility of a complete edition of this manuscript.
WS: Edmund Ludlow – The Memoirs of a Regicide in Exile
We are planning a small workshop on Edmund Ludlow’s Memoirs and his MS ‘A Voyce from the Watch Tower’ to gather ideas for a new edition of the text. You can join us at Newcastle University on 2 July – in person or via Zoom. Just get in touch.
The death of the Special Collections reading room
On a recent researcht trip to Germany I wanted to look at some German editions and translations of English republican works from the seventeenth and eighteenth century at a university library. And for the first time in my career as an early modern historian, the Special Collections librarian asked me if it was really necessary… Continue reading The death of the Special Collections reading room
Hunting the regicides in America – Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion
The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion passed after the Restoration of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660 was a general act of pardon for those who had acted against Charles I in the English Civil War and its aftermath. It was intended as a reconciliation between the incoming King Charles II and his… Continue reading Hunting the regicides in America – Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion
Museums are living things that evolve with us
Located at a small distance from the street markets, old factory buildings and designer shops in hipstery Shoreditch there is London’s Museum of the Home. From a distance, the complex looks a bit like an eighteenth-century hospital or a school, set in ample grounds with a well maintained lawn. As a matter of fact, the… Continue reading Museums are living things that evolve with us
Beyond the Old White Men: Women in English Republicanism
‘The history of old white men is on its way out’, a friend of mine and I agreed on a recent Zoom call. He is working on seventeenth-century English royalist thought, I’m working on republicanism. We’re both interested in gender issues and wondering how to make our research more inclusive and relevant. Old-white-men history should… Continue reading Beyond the Old White Men: Women in English Republicanism
Working with Translations in the History of Political Thought
As part of my project on ‘English republican ideas and translation networks in early modern Germany’, I look at the ways in which ideas from the English Revolution spread and were received in the German-speaking areas of Europe through the means of translation, and what potential impact they might have had on the constitutional debates… Continue reading Working with Translations in the History of Political Thought
Defending the English Revolution in the German Lands
In his study of the contemporary reception of the English Revolution in the German-speaking lands of continental Europe, Günter Berghaus stresses that a large majority of pamphlets published on the subject in German were biased towards the Stuart monarchy. This is little surprising given that the majority of territories were ruled by princes who were… Continue reading Defending the English Revolution in the German Lands
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