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Religion and Science in the Eighteenth Century
Historian article
Much has been said about the clash between religion and science in Victorian times but there has been less research into the relationship between them in the eighteenth century. This article considers three Georgian clergymen who were also notable scientists – the Reverend William Stukeley, the pioneer of scientific field...
Religion and Science in the Eighteenth Century
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Ideas on the Shape, Size and Movements of the Earth - Pamphlet
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet takes you through some of the key ideas on the shape, size and movements of the Earth as they changed over time from classical cosmology to the work of Galileo and Isaac Newton.
Ideas on the Shape, Size and Movements of the Earth - Pamphlet
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Interpreting an early seventeenth-century cottage at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum
Historian article
The Weald & Downland Open Air Museum (WDOAM), which opened to the public in 1970, is one of the leading museums of historic buildings and rural life in the United Kingdom. It has a collection of nearly 50 historic buildings - domestic, agricultural and industrial - dating from the thirteenth...
Interpreting an early seventeenth-century cottage at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum
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'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
Article
Notwithstanding the tribal hatred recently shown for each other by a handful of English and Turkish football fanatics, nobody who has travelled in Turkey or taken a holiday in that country can have failed to notice the courtesy and generosity with which visitors are invariably treated. Indeed, one of the...
'The Generous Turk': Some Eighteenth-Century Attitudes
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Shipwrecks, Clocks and Westminster Abbey: the story of John Harrison
Historian article
‘Poor England has lost so many men'
On 22 October 2007 an unlikely group of people were to be seen casting wreaths upon the sea off the Scilly Isles. They comprised a Chief Executive, a Naval Commander, a Science journalist and the Fourteenth Astronomer Royal (this writer). A clue which...
Shipwrecks, Clocks and Westminster Abbey: the story of John Harrison
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The effect of the loss of the American Colonies upon British Policy
Classic Pamphlet
(1) Problems of an Empire in ruinsTwo weeks after Yorktown, but before the news of that disaster had reached England, George III wrote to Lord North that "The dye is now cast whether this shall be a great Empire or the least dignified of European states." England had not fought...
The effect of the loss of the American Colonies upon British Policy
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The New History of the Spanish Inquisition
Article
Helen Rawlings reviews the recent literature which has prompted a fundamental reappraisal of the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition — first established in 1478 in Castile under Queen Isabella I and suppressed in 1834 by Queen Isabella II — has left its indelible mark on the whole course of Spain’s...
The New History of the Spanish Inquisition
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Popular revolt and the rise of early modern states
Historian article
In the 1960s and 1970s, historians and sociologists who were not specialists in the Middle Ages constructed models of pre-industrial crowds and revolt to understand the distinctiveness of modern, post-French Revolutionary, Europe. Foremost among these scholars were George Rudé, a historian of eighteenth century England and France, and Charles Tilly,...
Popular revolt and the rise of early modern states
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A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Forgotten William Dampier
Historian article
In September 1683 in the Cape Verde Islands William Dampier lay 'obscured' among the scrubby vegetation to do some bird watching. He was excited for he had just caught his first sight of flamingos. The detail and delicacy of his description would gladden any modern ornithologist. They were, he wrote,...
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Forgotten William Dampier
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Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
Historian article
Books as evidence
The study of books as objects can reveal a great deal about their owners and the society in which they lived. By examining why the books were printed in the first place, and by whom; why they were acquired and for what purpose; how they were bound;...
Aristotle and Dudley: what can books tell us about their owners?
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Thomas Muir and the 'Scottish Martyrs' of the 1790s
Article
From the 1750s, after more than a century of intense political and religious disputes and of economic stagnation, Scotland began to enjoy several decades of almost unprecedented political stability, religious harmony, economic growth and cultural achievements. Jacobitism had been crushed and most propertied and influential Scots rallied to the Hanoverian...
Thomas Muir and the 'Scottish Martyrs' of the 1790s
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The Journey to Icarie and Reunion: A Romance of Socialism on the Texas Frontier
Historian article
The viewer of the internationally popular television show Dallas was routinely treated to an aerial tour that skimmed across the open prairie over the distinctive skyscrapers across the fifty-yard line of Texas Stadium and up the manicured pastures of South Fork.
This façade of larger-than-life Texana reflects an urban reality...
The Journey to Icarie and Reunion: A Romance of Socialism on the Texas Frontier
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A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
Historian article
The Elizabethan Reformation in Staffordshire had a shallow seedbed. The radical reformers of the 1540s had greeted the conversion of the county with a mixture of high hopes and hyperbole. The East Anglian preacher and disciple of Latimer, Thomas Becon, wrote a treatise The Iewel of Ioye urging that itinerant...
A Tale of Two Chancellors: The Ineffectual Reformation in Elizabethan Staffordshire
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Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
Historian article
The dissolution of the monasteries was one of the most dramatic developments in English History. In 1536, the religious orders had owned about a fifth of the lands of England. Within four years the monasteries had been abolished and their possessions nationalised by Henry VIII. Within another ten years, most...
Recycling the Monastic building: The Dissolution in Southern England
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Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
Historian article
The National Portrait Gallery in London is home to many thousands of portraits, photographs and sculptures of the great and the good, as well as those who travelled on the darker side of history.
In 2007 it hosted a small exhibition in the Porter Gallery entitled Between Worlds: Voyagers to...
Dean Mahomet: Travel writer, curry entrepreneur and shampooer to the King
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The Reign of Edward VI: An Historiographical Survey
Article
The modern historiography of this critical and disturbed six year period begins with the work of W.K. Jordan. Jordan was already a well established authority on the history of English philanthropy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, when he turned his attention specifically to Edward VI in the mid-1960s.
The Reign of Edward VI: An Historiographical Survey
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From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756
Historian article
Why is Henrietta Luxborough, who was born in 1699, of interest today? In the first place because of whom she was; in the second because of what happened to her; and in the third because of her courage which enabled her to overcome adversity and lead a life utterly different...
From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756
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Catherine de' Medici and the French Wars of Religion
Article
R. J. Knecht suggests that the 'Black Legend' may not be quite as unfair to Catherine as her defenders have argued. Few historical figures have aroused as much passionate controversy as Catherine de’ Medici who was queen of France from 1547 until 1559 and several times regent before her death...
Catherine de' Medici and the French Wars of Religion
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The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
Article
Dr Michael Bush investigates the interpretations of the pilgrimage of grace. Our perception of the pilgrimage of grace has been largely created by Madeleine and Ruth Dodds and their magnificent book The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-7, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (Cambridge). Published in 1915, it has dominated the subject...
The Pilgrimage of Grace: Reactions, Responses and Revisions
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The Creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707
Historian article
Why did both the parliaments of Scotland and England vote themselves out of existence in 1707 in order to create a new ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’? From an English perspective, there was always a strong feeling that this union did not create a new kingdom and that it certainly...
The Creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707
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Poetry of the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands c.1730-1800
Historian article
There is a view that the poetry of the eighteenth century began with moralising neo-classical satire, that this was followed by insipid pastoral, and that the century closed with the advent of the Romantic. This view is simplistic. While at particular times particular types of poetry might have predominated (and...
Poetry of the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands c.1730-1800
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The first trans-Atlantic hero? General James Wolfe and British North America
Article
Early on the morning of 8 June 1758, British frigates unleashed their broadsides upon French shore defences at Gabarus Bay, on the foggy and surf-lashed island of Cape Breton. Under cover of the warships' guns, a motley flotilla of craft headed towards the land. Propelled by straining Royal Navy oarsmen,...
The first trans-Atlantic hero? General James Wolfe and British North America
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Why did regional variations exist in the prosecution of witches between 1580-1650
Historian article
Regional variations in the intensity of European witchhunting existed because the necessary preconditions for panic chain-reaction hunts were only constantly in place in a very small number of regions. More than 35,000 witchcraft executions took place in the Holy Roman Empire where there was a wide acceptance of the cumulative...
Why did regional variations exist in the prosecution of witches between 1580-1650
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The Irish historians' role and the place of history in Irish national life
Historian article
The debate on the nation and its history is new to England; and there is, perhaps, a tendency to assume that what is new in England is new everywhere. In Ireland, the debate has been going on since the 1970s, fuelled by what is called ‘revisionism’; or rather, by a...
The Irish historians' role and the place of history in Irish national life
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'The Mouth of Hell': Religious Discord at Brailes, Warwickshire, C.1660-c.1800
Article
Colin Haydon explores religious intolerance and conflict in an English village. In recent years, many historians have explored the subject of religious intolerance, and particularly anti-Catholic sentiment, in early modern and modern England. The political allegiance of ‘Papists’ was suspect: was not their allegiance to the Pope – to ‘another...
'The Mouth of Hell': Religious Discord at Brailes, Warwickshire, C.1660-c.1800
