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Although extensively mined by political, legal and even economic historians, the records of the common law courts of medieval England have still to be used to their full potential by students of other branches of history. Focusing primarily on the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this article seeks to demonstrate the types of information which medical historians might glean from these sources, and in an appendix offers a list of named practitioners to supplement the standard listings by Talbot and Hammond, and by Getz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early modern water management was as much a social and political endeavour as an environmental one. This paper explores this assertion by analysing the different forms of knowledge used by English Commissions of Sewers in the governance of flood defence and drainage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Using examples drawn primarily from Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire, in south-west and eastern England respectively, this paper traces the rise and decline of popular influence over water management. Where Commissions of Sewers operated harmoniously, they were staffed by significant numbers of local people, who valued their right to participate in water management. With the involvement of large numbers of 'ordinary' people, Commissions of Sewers, and particularly the minutes of Courts of Sewers, became repositories of oral and customary knowledge about the functioning of local drainage networks and flood defence schemes. However, the paper argues that, over time, as customary knowledge that was divulged and negotiated orally became codified, and decisions about water management became founded on textual precedent, those who lacked access to textual resources lost influence over water management decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses studies in the field of English Renaissance drama, focusing on Tudor and Stuart Drama. Topics discussed include the author's comment that books he finds particularly influential deal with book history, queer theory, and the history of ideas, and books relating to English Renaissance drama including "The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio" by Emma Smith.

The article examines whether Ireland was at the receiving end of exceptional violence perpetrated by the early modern British Empire. It discusses several approaches taken by historians such as Rory Rapple and Brendan Kane on the issue, the early historiography of the question, and calls for further comparative study between 16th century English policy in Ireland and policies in the Tudor Far North.

In Utopia, Thomas More delivers a specific and context-bound critique of Tudor England through a faux anthropological report on a perfect society, "perfect" being defined as everything that Tudor England was not. Philippine fiction can similarly be read as visions of what the nation could and should be, delivered in oblique flashes that project a fragmentary composite picture of everything that the Philippines is not, or no longer is. The supposedly opposed vectors of romance and realism coincide in their explicit and implicit yearnings for contentment and happiness, echoing More's own bemused, amused impatience with his flawed country. Through a telescoped survey of Philippine fiction in English, this article traces the contours of the Philippine utopian ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features Sir Christopher Moresby of Scaleby and Windermere who resided in far North West, England and a servant of Earl Richard Neville of Warwick during the late Medieval period. Several historical records are cited including his birth in 1441 and death in 1499, his service in the army of the earl's army in 1461 and the Scottish raid of Cumberland and Westmorland in 1467 and 1468. The effect of the Tudor triumph on Moresby is also cited.

The article examines how the scientific belief system practiced and advocated by chemical physician Mary Trye in her treatise was connected to her father's teachings and legacy and how her practice and writings show her to be a forward-thinking, assertive woman in her own right. Topics include the rise of chemical medicine, the prosecution of 21 women practitioners for various misdemeanors by the Royal College of Physicians of London, England, and the treatment of gout.

The article discusses the political discourse surrounding coinage in England during the mid-Tudor dynasty from the 1540s through the 1560s, including Tudor governors' control of how currency was perceived in England. An overview of rumours about coins and minting in Tudor England, including about counterfeit coins, is provided.

Law-related English local maps, especially those dating from the early- to mid-sixteenth century, remain in need of both extensive and close study. In this article, a hand-drawn sketch map in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, is re-contextualized in relation to documents connected with lawsuits in The National Archives in England. These lawsuit documents, concerning disputes brought before the court of the Star Chamber in the mid-sixteenth century, allow us to correct the accepted date of the map’s creation, suggest its likely creator and identify its probable use at a time of expanding cartographic consciousness among the educated classes. The importance of the manuscript map to one English family’s subsequent assertions of proprietary rights in a small stream running from Bradbourne to Ashbourne, Derbyshire, explains its provenance outside official court records. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the basic concepts of equivocation and ambiguity in late sixteenth-century education in England. Topics covered include the ancient and Renaissance texts used in universities at the time, the possible shaping of attitudes towards ambiguity by university education, and the ways of disagreement from varied interpretations of the same text. Also noted is the moralistic approach to the use of ambiguity in such Renaissance treatments as Melanchthon's "Elementorum rhetorices."

Fire disasters were a perennial threat to urban life in early modern England, but are yet to receive sustained attention from historians. By analysing popular literature, charitable collections and relief distribution this article reveals how urban fires were interpreted and what effect they had on individuals and specific communities in England between 1580 and 1640. Some aspects of the experience of fire disasters in early modern England are illuminated through detailed contextual readings of contemporary news reports, quantitative analyses of the collection and distribution of charitable funds, and attention to the fortunes of individual survivors of fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Tallis's Gaude gloriosa Dei mater is one of the finest large-scale Tudor votive antiphons. It has long been regarded as a celebration of the short-lived return to Catholicism under Queen Mary and as a tribute to the Henrician masterpieces of the pre-Reformation years. All of the sources are Elizabethan, but one: the incomplete fragments of the Contratenor part with a hitherto unidentified English text, discovered in 1978 during building renovations at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The author of that text has now been identified as Henry VIII's sixth and last queen, Katherine Parr. Less than a year after her marriage to Henry, Katherine produced her first publication, Psalmes or Prayers (1544). These included 15 psalmcollages (or psalm 'centos') translated into English from Fisher's Psalmi seu precationes, originally published in 1525. Katherine's translations are followed by a prayer for the king, and another 'for men to saie entryng into battaile'. England was at war with Scotland and France. The Ninth Psalm, 'Se lorde and behold', headed 'against ennemies' was set to an earlier version of Tallis's Gaude gloriosa. This discovery sheds light on the circumstances behind the production of this most extraordinary English contrafactum. It is here argued that the adaptation was not only intimately bound with Psalmes or prayers but also with Cranmer's Exhortation unto prayer and English Litany, and part of a flurry of activity leading to its first use at St Paul's Cathedral on Friday, 23 May. It would have been a unique and short-lived event quite new to the liturgical stage including as its centrepiece an English version with stirring themes of war of the most complex early Tudor votive antiphons. More personally, the exercise seems aptly to demonstrate Katherine's passion for reform and Henry's growing conservatism in the final years of his reign: an elaborate meld of a hotly topical vernacular text with an established stylistic idiom. The earlier Henrician origins of Gaude gloriosa are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government's incursion into the midlands lordships of the O'Connors and O'Mores in 1546 is often identified as the root of the Tudor conquest of Ireland. Conversely, the years from 1535 to 1546 have been depicted as a period wherein a conciliatory approach to Gaelic Ireland was favoured. This paper argues that the origins of the Tudor conquest lie in the 1530s following the Kildare Rebellion. At this time a majority of senior officials in Ireland urged the regional conquest of the lordships of the O'Byrnes, O'Tooles and MacMurrough Kavanaghs in Wicklow and Carlow. This strategy was not adopted as Henry VIII refused to finance such a costly endeavour. Consequently a cheap political alternative now known as 'surrender and regrant' was briefly adopted in the early 1540s. However in 1546 the officials whofavoured regional intervention in Leinster succeeded in initiating an incursion into the midlands. In light of the links between the campaign for the reduction of south Leinster in the 1530s and the incursion into the midlands in 1546. this paper argues that the origins of the Tudor conquest of Ireland can be traced to the campaign for the reduction of south Leinster in the mid-1530s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the clothing choices made by some of the Tudor (and Stewart) elite who met their end on the scaffold. While the final speeches of the condemned have been analysed, what they chose to wear has been neglected - yet contemporary observers often recorded their choices in detail indicating that it was significant to both the prisoner and their audience. By exploring the clothes worn for trials and executions, and the significance of undressing in public, this article argues that most elite prisoners used clothing to make a final statement, the nature of which could range from defiance to a wish to make a dignified end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Anglican clergyman and author Michael Sherbrook and the provenance of MS GG. 3.33 held in the collection of Cambridge University Library. Sherbrook authored the book "The Fall of the Religious Houses" regarding the dissolution of the church in England after being a witness to the pillage of the Cistercian monastery of Roche Abbey in West Riding of Yorkshire. The manuscript was part of Roche Abbey's library and was owned by Sherbrook. The manuscript provides commentary on the Psalms.

This article explores the social, legal, and administrative response in Tudor and early Stuart England to people known in law as ‘Egyptians’ or ‘counterfeit Egyptians’ but commonly called ‘Gypsies’. It argues that such people differed from ordinary poor vagrants in their heritage, their language, and such activities as horse dealing and fortune-telling. Elizabethan and Jacobean publications placed Gypsies on the fringes of fecklessness, criminality, and the picaresque, and established a stereotype of deceit and imposture that has not yet disappeared. Acts of Parliament in 1531, 1554, and 1563 criminalized ‘Egyptians’, forbidding their entry, ordering their expulsion, and eventually making them liable to the death penalty. Enforcement, however, was haphazard, and repression co-existed uneasily with growing registers of tolerance. This is a neglected topic in early modern social history, with links to international and interdisciplinary Romani studies as well as work on itinerancy, ethnicity, and marginality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay discusses archives and record collections built by English Catholics in the early decades of the eighteenth century which sought to build accounts of English Catholics during the Tudor dynasty of the in the 16th century, including English martyrs, 16th century English diaspora, and the Benedictines. The author considers how the process of choosing and structuring historical materials for such collections created meaning.

The year 2016 is the 400 anniversary of Shakespeare's death. His plays are read, interpreted, and performed throughout the United States and the world, and from the early seventeenth century onward, the praise bestowed on him is hyperbolic, as if he were superhuman, even divine. Biographies of Shakespeare abound and often are informative, but not about Shakespeare himself, for we know very little about his day to day activity. Biographers thus imagine and invent the life, using speculation and conjecture as substitutes for evidence and fact. We do know much about the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater and about London acting companies. We know too that for his company, Shakespeare was an actor and a sharer (an investor who shared in the profits) as well as a playwright. But none of the original scripts that Shakespeare wrote or co-wrote has survived. There are no manuscripts in Shakespeare's hand, nor did he prepare and authenticate any of the published texts we possess. Hence we do not know for certain what the world's greatest writer actually wrote. Shakespeare's plays are a supreme fiction, and this more than anything explains his astonishing longevity and renown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, lord chancellor of England from 1515 to 1529, has inspired no small number of literary, historical, and dramatic retellings. A comprehensive study of these texts remains to be written, but this article seeks to make a start by examining how Tudor writers portrayed the cardinal's response to his deposition and subsequent disgrace. For some authors, Wolsey's fall only made him more proud, and he began to act erratically and disloyally, confirming the wisdom of the king's decision to relieve him of office. For others, deposition moved Wolsey to become philosophical and penitent, and some such writers depict a cardinal who at the end of his life underwent nothing short of a conversion. This article traces both of these historiographical trajectories from their origins in writings of the late 1540s and 1550s through a range of late Tudor chronicle accounts. Elements of both narratives about the cardinal appear, prominently if not always congruously, in one of the best-known theatrical works about the events of the reign of Henry VIII, the play King Henry VIII (All Is True) by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Understanding the interrelationships between the Tudor texts presented here is essential to grasping later portrayals of Wolsey and his contemporaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the large-scale development at One New Change on Cheapside in the City of London, archaeological investigations recorded a number of cellars, cesspits and other features with associated artefactual assemblages from properties that once fronted Cheapside between Old Change and Bread Street. By using documents (when possible) related to property ownership, historic mapping and archaeological evidence, this article will take a holistic approach to the study of up to six properties here from the Tudor period, including those destroyed by the Great Fire of London, up to the mid- 18th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An afterword is presented to this special issue on topics focusing on translations and interpretations of Biblical Psalms during the Reformation in Tudor England.

The article focuses on the social and political functions of portraits in England in the 1500s. Topics discussed include the events that led to the transition of the portrait from a religious to a secular item, the emergence of wood panels as a favored medium over stretched canvas in the 1590s and the ways in which portraits are used to establish the social identity of the subject of the portrait.

This article examines correspondence between mothers and daughters in sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England, as a way of investigating the distinct nature of mother–daughter relationships during this period, and of studying the ways in which such relationships were negotiated through the epistolary medium. Based on approximately 100 letters extant for the period 1530 to 1620, it applies recent innovations in the field of Renaissance letter-writing to the social-cultural history of early modern women and the family. Rhetorical and material reading strategies, it argues, shed important new light on letters as evidence of mother–daughter relationships, and such interpretive methodologies are useful in reading, situating and understanding broader social relationships inscribed within correspondence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integral method of keeping a non-conforming community functioning is the construction and up keep of networks, as this web of connections provided security and protection with other non-conformists against the persecuting authorities. The non-conforming Catholic community of Elizabethan England (1558-1603) established various networks within England and abroad. This article is based on research that examines the network of Catholics in the Elizabethan Midlands in order to understand both its effectiveness and the relationship of the local and extended Catholic community with one another. The construction, function and result of these networks will be surveyed over several categories of networks, such as local, underground, clerical and exile. Members of the Midland Catholic community travelled to others areas of the British Isles and Europe to gather spiritual and material support for their faith, sent their children abroad for religious education, and resettled abroad creating in this wake a larger and complex international network. The main objective of this exercise is to show the dynamic and function of the network, and understand the impact it had at the local level for Midland Catholics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the beginning, the early modern study of Anglo-Saxon England had a theological dimension, as opposing apologists sought to appropriate the teachings of the early English church. The Protestant enlisting of Ælfric is well known but Bede too was wielded in the religious controversies. The present article highlights the key theologically motivated figures who looked to early England in the Tudor period, examining in particular writings by John Bale, the “Parker circle” and Thomas Stapleton. Part 2 of the article (to be published in a forthcoming issue ofEnglish Studies) will trace the continuing theological appropriation of Anglo-Saxon Christianity in subsequent centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The sixteenth-century English smuggling trade has, in recent years, become a topic of increasing interest to historians of trade and maritime culture. Investigation into the inner workings of England’s ports and their relations with the wider world has helped to create a fuller image of sixteenth-century culture and politics. This research note examines the unpublished and understudied ‘Survey of the Port of Southampton’, commissioned by Elizabeth I in 1565 in an effort to deter illicit trading in English ports. Through study of this underused resource, this research note is designed to enhance understanding of smuggling culture in the sixteenth century, and to demonstrate the effect that regional, national and international factors could have on the types of illicit trade undertaken by smugglers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the prosecution of a group of men who sang rude songs about the British government in Surrey village, England dealing with political criticism and attempt to defame early modern English leaders. Topics include criticism by philosopher Francis Bacon, advancements in printing technology, criticism of Tudor legislation, English Poor Laws, and criminal court records in England, witchcraft, and the role of Star Chamber courts.

This article reconsiders one aspect of Christopher Haigh's influential article 'Anticlericalism and the English Reformation'. His article argued that anticlericalism in early 16th-century England had been exaggerated, mislabelled and (in effect) invented as a scholarly construct. Dr Haigh proceeded to dismantle the foundations of anticlericalism in literature, in litigation, and in legislation. Evidence of anticlericalism in parliament, he maintained, was discontinuous, opportunistic and unrepresentative. This article suggests, however, that Haigh's claim makes insufficient allowance for the scarcity of the sources, underestimates the degree of continuity before and after 1529, and fails to take into account the inherently public character of parliamentary petitioning. It proposes, instead, that the challenging of the Church's wealth, the criticizing of clerical abuses, and the questioning of ecclesiastical jurisdiction recurred in early Tudor parliaments, and that the significance of such thwarted attempts at legislative reform crossed sessions and became cumulative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the old notion championed by J.E. Neale that Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex (1565-1601), displayed 'megalomania' in his parliamentary patronage during the latter years of Elizabeth I's reign. In addition to surveying Essex's influence on the membership of late Elizabethan parliaments, this article addresses the likelihood that the earl was angling for the summoning of a parliament in the spring of 1601. Instead, thanks to the Essex rising of 8 February 1601, Essex himself was executed and posthumously attainted for treason at a parliament summoned in October 1601. Finally, the article speculates about the possible impact of Essex's example and political research on the 12 peers who sought to force Charles I to summon a parliament in 1640. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early history of cousin marriage in England is a story of royal passion and religious zeal. Beginning with the complex marital career of Henry VIII and focusing on the fierce Protestant–Catholic debate over the “prohibited degrees” of marriage, this article tells the story of how cousin marriage became not just a legal fact in England, but a crucial aspect of the country’s early Protestant identity. The article closes by assessing popular attitudes toward cousin marriage in the late Tudor and Stuart periods. It concludes that while cousin marriage was accepted quickly by theologians, particularly those of a strong Reforming or Puritan bent, popular opinion was still firmly against it by the end of the seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the roads upon which the Tudor government's postal arrangements rested, the methods deployed by central government for sending and receiving official mail nationwide, and the network of exchequer-funded post-stages that connected London with the south-western periphery of the realm during periods of war, rebellion and political turmoil. The article also uses a large number of postal endorsements to measure objectively the speed and efficiency of the Tudor south-west's royal post-stage service. In doing so, the study's primary goal is to demonstrate that this mode of government dispatch was more rapid and reliable than the majority of historians, who have relied on anecdotal subjective evidence, recognize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the role of royal women associated with the Tudor dynasty in England as patrons to the book printing industry, assessing the evidence provided by dedication statements in books of the period. The women considered include Lady Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth of York, and King Henry VIII's six wives. Dedications to them from printers as well as from authors and translators are cited, from books including "Blanchardyn and Eglantine" and "Salute Corporis."

The survey of Hume's influence on "libertarian" and "liberal" economics in the twentieth century will not persuade everyone, but it convinces that appreciation for his philosophy can unite otherwise opposing ideologies. Marking the pinnacle of a long-running collaboration between two leading historians of early modern political economy, this is 'the first comprehensive study, in the English language, of Hume's economics' (p.16). Hume's I History of England i traced the progressive development of property, markets and money from the Tudor era, in tandem with the emergence of a government capable of securing them. [Extracted from the article]