English History

During the reign of James II/VII Stuart (1685-1688), the political, diplomatic and cultural relations between the British court and the Italian states flourished as never before. This was due above all to the Roman-Catholic faith of the king and the lively personality of his consort Maria Beatrice d’Este («Mary of Modena»), while the growing English economic power was acquiring commercial dominance in the Mediterranean area. With the help of thousands of unpublished papers, the book by Alessandro Cont reconstructs the British diplomatic network in Italy during this period, the personalities and orientations of the ministers of Italian princes accredited to the court of Whitehall, the queen’s dynastic policy and the peculiar characteristics of her Italian entourage of chaplains, servants, artists and musicians.

Through a close textual reading and contextual analysis of a short series of early fourteenth-century manorial court roll entries, this paper draws larger conclusions about the interplay between law and equity in a medieval English manor court. It follows a narrative thread focused on a single tenement, which was forfeited by a villein in 1317 due to his fugitive status. The forfeiture was described as permanent in the Great Horwood court roll, and the tenement was transferred by the lord to a new tenant immediately. However, over a decade later the villein’s widow successfully claimed dower in the tenement, and shortly thereafter her son succeeded in regaining the family’s possession of the purportedly forfeited land. The paper reveals the presence of competing interests among various members of the Great Horwood community; the selective marshaling of written evidence, manorial custom, and common law rules; and the exercise of equitable discretion in selecting the “rightful” tenant, possibly guided by extra-legal factors, such as the exigencies of famine. The paper also makes a methodological claim, arguing that a combined textual and contextual analysis of fragmentary evidence can reveal insights that might not come to light through other analytical approaches.

Despite the popular aphorism, ‘the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,’ historians have been slow to appreciate the value Georgian elites vested in their public schools and public school sport. In fact, the stereotype of these schools as anarchic and pedagogically insignificant still endures. I argue that the schools of this period came to enjoy a growing popularity precisely because of their rough nature. Contemporaries praised the violence of both the dormitories and the playing fields as productive of vigorous, future leaders, capable of defending Britain in a world at war. Such rhetoric, I argue, anticipated the late Victorian cults of sport and manliness.

There are many matters in the history of Polish-English relations that have so far escaped the attention of historians dealing with this subject. Religious issues that are the subject of this article, which is the result of a monthly query in the British Library, Bodleian Library, and The National Archives of England and Wales, seem to be undervalued. The aim of the article is to present selected religious and political issues as important factors in the shaping of Polish-English diplomatic relations at the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

This study describes the archaeological investigations that have taken place at the wreck site of the English slave ship Henrietta Marie (1700) since its location in 1972. Information is provided on the methodology utilized during on-site archaeological data recovery, and the artifacts retrieved from the wreck site are described in detail. An account of complimentary documentary research on this wrecked slaver is also presented. Contemporary historical data gleaned from shipping lists, slaver’s logs, seamen’s wills and other sources are utilized to place Henrietta Marie within her proper context as a vehicle involved in the notorious transatlantic slave trade.

Hablar de la memoria desde los estudios culturales es hablar de un proceso dinámico en el que se reconstruyen aspectos del pasado. La memoria, de hecho, no constituye un espacio fijo e inmutable sino un proceso que, como lo indica Pierre Nora “…se encuentra en permanente evolución, abierta a la dialéctica del recordar y olvidar…”. Por esta razón, este proceso pertenece no sólo al pasado sino también al presente; en palabras de Nora: “La memoria es un fenómeno incesante y real, un nexo que nos ata a un presente eterno…”. La memoria, a pesar de encontrarse en el individuo, es construida socialmente; en otras palabras, ésta no es construida por la persona en aislamiento sino por los miembros de una sociedad, y es precisamente en una sociedad donde una persona hace memoria de las cosas.

Este carácter social-democrático de la memoria cultural no implica que no podamos hablar de lugares específicos de la memoria, es decir, de lugares que evoquen en un sujeto la memoria, tales como bibliotecas, museos, obras arquitectónicas e incluso conmemoraciones, peregrinajes, entre otros. Un lugar de memoria puede ser real -si en él se produjo un evento significativo para la identidad cultural de una nación- o producto de la actividad imaginativa.

En este trabajo, nos proponemos hacer memoria de uno de los lugares más representativos de Inglaterra, la Torre de Londres, desde los tiempos en que ésta fue creada por Guillermo el Conquistador hasta la Posmodernidad. Al hacerlo, abordaremos el edificio no tan sólo desde un punto de vista arquitectónico -en especial cuando hagamos referencia a la Torre Blanca- sino también desde los propósitos que sirvieron y/o sirven la serie de torres que lo conforman y desde las principales historias que albergan los muros de la Torre.

review essay of
Vitamania: Vitamins in American Culture
by Rima D. Apple
New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers, 1996

Men at War 1914-1918:
National Sentiment and Trench Journalism
in France during the First World War
by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau
translated by Helen McPhail
Oxford & Washington D.C.: Berg, 1995

The New Niagara:
Tourism, Technology, and the Landscape
of Niagara Falls, 1776-1917
by William Irwin
University Park: Penn State Press, 1996

Wild West Characters
by Dale Pierce
Phoenix: Golden West, 1991, 3rd printing 1996
142 pp.; $6.95 paper

1066 and All That:
A Memorable History of England
by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman
Introduction by Frank Muir
Dover NH: Alan Sutton, 1993
(illustrated reissue of 1930 edition)

Daily Life in Elizabethan England
by Jeffrey L. Singman
Westport CT: Greenwood, 1995

In the historiography of early modern England ‘democracy’ is conspicuous for its absence. The observation that since back then it did not exist, pre-nineteenth-century criticisms of democracy are not worth exploring has led historians to neglect some major questions: why was this so? How was such widespread criticism of popular government articulated? In what ways did different authors and genres depict the people and their power? Which political concerns, social prejudices and clusters of values informed this anti-democratic paradigm? What was democracy actually thought to stand for? In order to address these points my essay analyses how anti-democratic ideas were elaborated in various sources from ca. the inception of the Jacobean reign (1603) up to the killing of Charles I (1649). In particular, my work offers a panoramic view onto the variegated landscape of anti-democratic thought to show the remarkable continuity informing its rhetoric. It also reveals how political and religious debates as well as events were defined by concerns surrounding democracy – not republicanism – and opposition to it. So much so that we can speak of democracy as an omnipresent challenge at a plurality of levels in early modern English public life. In fact, a multiplicity of discourses (not just political or ecclesiastical but broadly cultural too) was employed to make democracy shine in all its monstrosity. Democracy was a dirty word and remained so in the 1640s, which contrary to much scholarship did not see the dawn of a new democratically-inclined era. Inevitably selective, the chronologically-ordered sections of this chapter provide thus a hopefully innovative illustration of an important but overlooked topic as well as an examination of the long-term relevance of principles that are still much debated today.

Скандинавская концепция готицизма, т.е. идея о происхождении жителей Северной Европы от готов, появляется в Англии в начале XVII в. в связи с критикой средневековой «легенды о Бруте», которая уже не отвечала критериям эпохи Возрождения о национальной истории, и исчезает к началу XIX в., сменившись доктриной тевтонизма. В середине XVIII в. в Англии происходит расцвет готицизма, который начинает исполнять функцию устоявшегося национального мифа в работах местных антиквариев. В данной статье рассмотрена эволюция английского готицизма и выделены два периода его бытования: связанный с германским богом Туиско, фигурирующим в сочинении Корнелия Тацита, и относящийся к скандинавским богам - асам под предводительством Одина.

In all of the major military campaigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the “American War of Independence” and the Napoleonic Wars, both the Royal Navy and the Crown regiments of the British Army employed Black servicemen. The Royal Navy employed Black and Asian men as ratings on their vessels, before, during and after the Battle of Trafalgar (1805).(1) The British Army’s Black rankers served before, during and after the Battle of Waterloo (1815).(2) (Neither service seems to have made any distinction between men of African or Asian origin, simply referring to them as either “Black” or “of colour”).
Peter (Perry) Brookings, was born in Barbados c.1791-1793, and between 1810 and 1833 he served in both the Royal Navy and the 40th Foot of the British Army. (Nothing is known of his early life and throughout his military and civilian records, his forename alternated between Peter and Perry). His twenty-three years of service to the Crown included the Napoleonic War against France, the “War of “1812” against the United States (with the Royal Navy), and service in Britain, France, Ireland, Australia and India (with the 40th).

Презентация доклада на 24-й международной научной конференцим студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных «Ломоносов-2017».
В докладе рассматриваются историографический поиск и выделение высшего слоя нетитулованной англо-саксонской светской элиты накануне Нормандского Завоевания (1066 г.) по материалам XII века. Последовательно разбираются и критикуются попытки в рамках конституционной истории (Р. Рид и Д. Рофф) и аграрной истории (У. Стаббс и П. Кларк). Докладчик приходит к выводу, что данные гипотезы не подтверждаются известными источниками (Книга Страшного Суда и нормандские переводы англо-саксонского права XII в.) при непредвзятом анализе и требуют насильного прочтения известных текстов. В заключении делается предположение, что подобные построения – это отражение современных представлений об устройстве общества (в том числе и английского), где относительно чётко выделяются имущественные классы.

A PowerPoint presentation at the 24th international academic student and young researcher's conference "Lomonosov-2017".
The presentation analyses the historiographical search for an upper layer of the titleless Anglo-Saxon lay elite on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1066). The presentation's consecutive study reveals the flaws in the constitutional (by R. Reid and D. Roffe) and agrarian (W. Stubbs and P. Clarke) approaches to the problem. The author finds that such hypotheses do not find support from the extant sources (the Domesday Book and Norman translation of the Anglo-Saxon law) when reading without any preconceived notions. The conclusion supposes that this kind of search might be a reflection of the modern-day view of the society (including the English one) as composed of more or less clearly defined classes.

Think you know the Tudors? Think again...

We know what they wore. We know what they ate. We know the details of their monarchs' sex lives, and how they caused seismic changes in our country's religious and political history. But what about Black Tudors? Until now, the story of the Africans who lived and died in sixteenth-century England has remained untold. Dr Miranda Kaufmann thought she knew the Tudors too, having devoured their stories at school, at university, and in countless novels, films and TV dramas. None of these mentioned black Tudors. But one day she found an official letter dating from 1596 that clearly stated that there were Africans living in England, with more having arrived since the onset of war with Spain. Surprise turned to an all-consuming curiosity that fuelled a painstaking search for further evidence of their lives and experiences. Many of the over 360 African individuals Kaufmann found in the archives are recorded only by a brief mention in a parish register or tax return. But in a few cases it has been possible to piece together something more of their lives that not only casts new light on the Tudors, but also on our own debates surrounding race and identity.

(English below) " 'As coisas como elas são'. Moralidade política e social em William Godwin (1790-1800)" é um estudo a respeito do filósofo, romancista e ideólogo político William Godwin (1756-1836). A trajetória política de Godwin na década de 1790 é abordada tendo como referência a crítica às posições tradicionais da historiografia a seu respeito. Enquanto esta se recusa a atribuir a Godwin um caráter propriamente político e representativo no dito "debate político" da década de 1790, este estudo procura compreender o conteúdo propriamente político de sua atuação social. Para isso, investiga como Godwin pensa a ordem políticosocial na Inglaterra da década de 1790, tendo como fontes fundamentais seu tratado filosófico Investigação acerca dajustiça política (1793) e seu romance As coisas como elas são, ou as aventuras de Caleb Williams (1794). No romance Caleb Williams, Godwin se dirige à crítica política da moralidade privada. Segundo ele, em decorrência da perpetuação de uma ordem política fundada nos valores morais aristocráticos, as relações entre os indivíduos são marcadas pela violência, pela tirania e pelo sofrimento. Esta crítica revela seu caráter propriamente político por ser dirigida às instituições monárquicas e aristocráticas que, para ele, condicionam os indivíduos a alimentar os valores e sentimentos que conduzem as sociabilidades privadas a assumirem um caráter conflituoso e violento. Com sua crítica à ordem monárquica e aristocrática, Godwin revela os desejos de uma fração das classes médias inglesas interessadas em reformar a moralidade da. nação e de universalizar seus códigos de conduta. Godwin defende as idéias burguesas de virtude e capacidade individual, ao invés da hereditariedade e do sangue nobre cultivados pela aristocracia. Godwin desempenha o papel de ideólogo burguês, que opera a reelaboração e difusão de valores mais aptos à consolidação da ordem capitalista na Inglaterra. / "'Things as they are'. Political and social morality in William Godwin (1790-1800)" is a study on the philosopher, writer and political ideologist William Godwin (1790-1800). Godwin's political role in 1790's is approached according to the criticism to the traditional historiography approaches about him. Whereas the latter refuses to attribute a properly political nature to Godwin, which is representative in the so-called 1790's "polítical debate", this study seeks to understand the proper1ypolitical content ofhis social actuation. To do so, it investigates how Godwin thinks of the political order in England in 1790, having as fundamental sources his philosophical treatise Political justice (1793) and his romance Things as they are or the adventures ofCaleb Williams (1794). In Caleb Williams Godwin addresses private morality's polítical criticism. According to him, due to a perpetuation of a polítical order founded on aristocratic moral values, re1ations among individuaIs are marked by violence, tyranny and suffering. Ris criticism reveals its proper1y polítical nature because it is addressed to British aristocratic and monarchical institutions. To him, they subject individuaIs to the conditioning of supporting values and feelings which makes private sociability to assume a conflicting and violent nature. With his criticism to the monarchical and aristocratic order, Godwin reveals the desires of a fraction of British middle classes interested in refonning nation's morality and universalising its behaviour codes. Godwin advocates bourgeois notions of virtue and individual capacity rather than that ones of heredity and noble blood maintained by aristocracy. Re reveals himself as a bourgeois ideologist that proceeds to a re-e1aboration and spread of values more suitable to the consolidation of the British capitalist order.

While many recognize Macbeth as representative of King James I’s obsessions with absolutism and witchcraft, the play’s explorations of gender also reveal a tangible influence from the conversation surrounding the royal’s assumed femininity and hesitancy to drive England to war. More explicitly, Shakespeare’s play concerns the “womanly infirmity” of the Macbeths in their reluctance towards violence. Much like the unstable, newly-Jacobean England, the environment of Macbeth encourages a universal rejection of feminine weakness. However, the narrative path of Lady Macbeth exploits her attempt to overcome the rigid definitions of female behavior as a measure of her immorality in a way it does not for her husband. Moreover, only Lady Macbeth will meet a stereotypical conclusion by succumbing to hysteria, despite Lord Macbeth having more reason for a descent into madness. Thus, while the theatrical realm rejects general deviancy, Lady Macbeth exclusively faces a villainization founded upon the basis of sex.

While many interpret Prince Hal's soliloquy at the end of Act 1, Scene 2 as a simple exchange of identities, through close-reading Shakespeare's use of syntax and metaphor within Hal's dialogue, the complexities of Hal's inner confliction come to light. It is too simple to read the Prince's address as the rejection of a false persona in favor of adopting his true self. Despite the passage examining Hal’s innate nature versus the facade, he displays, in analyzing these two halves of his identity, it does not just declare the thieving rogue as false and the noble king as truly Hal. Instead, as his figurative language and sentence structure display, Hal holds deep uncertainty about what he claims to do and who he claims to be.

Abstract

The Treaty of Bardo (Tunis) between England and the Regency of Tunis was a general peace and commercial agreement. On the behalf of the English monarchy, the Treaty of Peace was concluded, in the name of George II by Augustus Keppel, commander of British Mediterranean fleet and by Charles Gordon, His Majesty's Consul General to the State of Tunis. And on the behalf of Tunis, the treaty was signed by Ali I Pasha, the Begler Bey of the Regency of Tunis in the Palace of Bardo (Tunis) on October 19, 1751.
The British maintained their contact with the deys and beys of Tunis, primarily to ensure their commercial interests in the Mediterranean in Early Modern Times. The Treaty of 1751 was one of the proofs for this relationship. In the agreement the two states regulated several, previously contracted questions – free trade, inviolability of the subjects, etc. –, furthermore, new elements appeared. From the British point of view the most important issue was the protection of the island of Minorca and Gibraltar, which was acquired during the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and Literature addresses the need for an authoritative guide  through the bewildering maze of medieval law as well as the need for concise examples of how the law infiltrated literary texts. The Companion combines accessible essays written by leading specialists in legal history with essays exploring literary conversations with the law in the works of later medieval authors
from Chaucer to Malory. The first half of this book contains detailed introductions to legal concepts, practices, and institutions in medieval England. In the second half, experts cover a number of texts and authors from across the later medieval period whose verse and prose can be understood as engaging with the law. In this way, the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and Literature forms the basis for students wishing to explore this rich area or for scholars to familiarise themselves with literary uses of the law.

ISBN: 9781316632345

La Guerra Civil Inglesa de 1642 a 1651 fue un período de beligerancia social, disputas religiosas, experimentación política e inestabilidad en Inglaterra, Escocia e Irlanda. Sin embargo, se sabe menos, pero se debate mucho, sobre las causas ya que no parecían ser propensas a producir los conflictos, sólo el tipo de ellos. Algunos historiadores se han centrado en la sociedad y las masas, otros en las élites, otros en aspectos socioeconómicos y muchos más en el funcionamiento de la iglesia y el estado. Otros se quejan de los enfoques de arriba hacia abajo, de demasiado enfoque en Escocia e Irlanda, y de interpretaciones erróneas de los documentos dejados por realistas y parlamentarios. Hay quienes argumentan que fue un conflicto religioso, mientras que otros argumentan que fue retratado por algunos contemporáneos como una guerra santa. Aunque muchos todavía no están de acuerdo, existe un consenso creciente entre los historiadores de que la religión desempeñó un papel primordial en la causa de los conflictos. Los años que condujeron a la Guerra Civil fueron un período de errores de cálculo por parte de la realeza, revueltas escocesas e irlandesas debido principalmente a tensiones religiosas, discusiones religiosas entre realistas y parlamentarios, y celo religioso que produjo una guerra civil inesperada y no deseada. Si bien los agravios políticos y constitucionales parecían haber desencadenado los conflictos y aumentar la tensión, la religión fue el principal factor subyacente.

Student Learning Outcomes
• Demonstrate knowledge of the general dates and significant events of the 16th-17th century European witch hunts, as well as its major causes, participants, and outcomes.
• Discuss the role of witch finders in society, their methods, and the moral implications of their profession
• Explain why the witch-hunts largely ended with the advent of the 18th century “Age of Enlightenment”

This paper announces the Battle of White Hill. It took place in 926 and was a crushing victory for King Athelstan of Wessex. As the immediate result of the battle, Athelstan reasserted control over Northumbria which he had annexed by fiat and then lost over the course of the previous twelve months. In the treaty of Eamont Bridge, which followed hard upon this victory, the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde formally recognised Athelstan as king of all England and overlord of all Britain. As such I propose that this was the "First Battle of Britain". Without victory for Athelstan at this battle, there would have been no Battle of Brunanburh (937), so vaunted by the annalists. This paper sets this battle in its context, identifying the battlefield. The author hopes that the local authority will now take steps to preserve and memorialise such of the battlefield as remains otherwise undisturbed and takes appropriate steps to recognise the forthcoming 1100th anniversary.

There is a lot of misinformation circulating about this battle. This is largely based on retrospective accounts of the day, and some particularly partisan accounts.  This section challenges these through a forensic study of eye-witness accounts of the battle. In so doing it completely revises our understanding of the battle.

Elizabeth's curly red hair provides a clue for identifying her offspring.  Robert Devereux, who was sired by the dark-haired Robert Dudley, had curly auburn hair.  The Third Earl of Southampton, to be discussed more fully in Part III, had long, curly locks in auburn color. The first earl of Essex, Walter Devereux, died when Robert was nine, so he became the 2nd Earl of Essex and a ward of the court. He became Elizabeth's favorite after her long-time lover Robert Dudley (who she dubbed Earl of Leicester) died in 1588. This son expected to succeed Elizabeth on the throne of England, and he often acted arrogantly.  This trait led William Cecil and others to resentment, so he had enemies at court. When he disobeyed Elizabeth in a military campaign, she punished him by stopping a monopoly of sweet wines that he depended on for income.  She refused to see him personally, and William Cecil also barred Essex from contact.  To break through the barriers Cecil had made around Elizabeth, Essex tried to form a rebellion.  But the effort failed and Essex was charged with treason, then beheaded in 1601.  All four of the sons came to an unhappy end.

The ‘Norman Conquest’ is generally regarded as an epic event in English history – it was more than just a change of royal dynasty.  There is no doubt that William I  built castles and drastically changed the composition of the nobility and clergy, dispossessing many of their estates.  However, the extent of legal and administrative changes he made is contested by different historians. I intend to show that William initially minimised these changes to help legitimise his claim to the English throne. He emphasised continuity in English law and customs, to avoid the appearance of a Norman French takeover of England. But he later abandoned this strategy, and made some major and lasting changes to English law and administration.

Argues Prospero is a righteous ruler under Jamesian monarchical theory, analyzing his thoroughly positive relationship with his daughter Miranda, moderately positive relationship with his servant Ariel, and not-unredeemable relationship with his slave Caliban.  Proposes an alternate reading of the close of the play that puts Prospero in an even more heroic light than before.

"Rural workers in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England were not passive victims in the face of rapid social change.  Carl J. Griffin demonstrates that they deployed an extensive range of resistances – from wood-taking and poaching to the Swing Riots and Chartism - to defend their livelihoods and communities.

Thematically organised, Protest, Politics and Work in Rural England, 1700-1850 analyses:

• cultures of work, worklessness, the poor laws and poverty
• relations between law, the evolving state and rural labourers
• enclosure, land-use and changes in the environment
• religion, custom and the politics of everyday life and resistance
• rural protest movements, trade unionism, and popular, radical  politics.

Locating protest in the wider contexts of work, poverty and landscape change, this lively and approachable volume offers the first critical overview of a growing area of study."