I don’t read much popular history, and that is probably a mistake. By ignoring countless works written for a mass audience I miss what attracts most people to my subject area: a good story that is actually true, or at least could be true, reconstructed from sources scattered all over the archives and joined by… Continue reading Tracking down the regicides
Category: Seventeenth Century
English republicans on film in New Worlds
I never thought I would see Algernon Sidney on TV. Now I have – on the recent Channel 4 drama New Worlds, which looks at English radicalism during the Exclusion Crisis. He is cast as the grand old man of republicanism (Donald Sumpter, made to look much older than Sidney’s 60 years) who has survived Civil… Continue reading English republicans on film in New Worlds
The woman who almost became queen
I got an early Christmas present this year when the Memoirs (1630-1680) of Sophia of Hanover landed in my pigeonhole about a week ago. They arrived unexpectedly, but my curiosity soon got the better of me, and I was not able to resist the life story of the woman who nearly became queen of England.… Continue reading The woman who almost became queen
Creating and Preserving the Digital Republic of Letters
Earlier this week I attended the excellent Durham conference on ‘Intellectual Networks in the Long Seventeenth Century’. With a theme like this it seemed inevitable for participants to talk about the early modern Republic of Letters and to draw parallels between early modern and modern networks around the (known) world. So I had the honour… Continue reading Creating and Preserving the Digital Republic of Letters
Library badges of honour
I collect library cards like badges of honour. I’ve got some I’ve had for a long time – from the British Library, the Bodleian and an out-of-date one from Cambridge University Library. Of course, I also have a CARN (County Archives Research Network) ticket and one for the National Archives. More recently, I have also… Continue reading Library badges of honour
‘The World is Our House’: A Midsummer’s Symposium of Jesuit Culture and Music, 1540-1700
Swansea University and Hereford Cathedral are holding a Midsummer symposium on international Jesuit culture, 1540–1700. The event on 21 June celebrates the re-evaluation of the Cwm Jesuit Library, housed at Hereford Cathedral since 1679. The library is the largest surviving seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary library in Britain. Scholars are currently analysing the library as part of a… Continue reading ‘The World is Our House’: A Midsummer’s Symposium of Jesuit Culture and Music, 1540-1700
Chasing Algernon Sidney in Kent
‘That sounds like a film’, a friend of mine responded when I told her I was off to the archive again, ‘chasing Sidney in Kent’. That’s true. In fact, I am surprised nobody ever did make a film about Algernon Sidney – or at least I am not aware of one. He clearly is the… Continue reading Chasing Algernon Sidney in Kent
On the economic power of God’s invisible Church
‘Brethren in Christ’ was the common form of address in correspondences among Calvinist elites in early modern Europe as they asked for each other’s support and solidarity, in particular in times of displacement and hardship caused by bouts of intolerance sparked by the Counter-Reformation. Among those forced into exile for their faith during the sixteenth… Continue reading On the economic power of God’s invisible Church
Continental Connections: Anglo-European Intellectual Networks, c1500-1800
A Day Workshop at Northumbria University 2 May 2013 Lipman Building, Room 121 Early modern England was more European in outlook than much of the (anglocentric) historiography suggests, and nowhere was this more obvious than in the Republic of Letters, which crossed both territorial and linguistic boundaries. However, this community of scholars and literary figures… Continue reading Continental Connections: Anglo-European Intellectual Networks, c1500-1800
Men and Women in the English Revolution
Over the summer I agreed to review two books on the English civil wars. One Blair Worden’s God’s Instruments (2012), the other Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution (2012). The first, aside from a few fleeting references to Lucy Hutchinson, deals almost exclusively with Oliver Cromwell and other men who fought in the Civil War… Continue reading Men and Women in the English Revolution
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