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This note lays out new information on Henry Lanman, the owner or part-owner of the Curtain theatre in late-Elizabethan London. It shows that Lanman was a longtime servant of the courtier and politician Sir Christopher Hatton, a fact which helps to clarify a number of aspects of Lanman’s life. It also discusses the Lanman family’s strong association with Catholicism. Finally, it considers the possibility that Hatton acted as an informal protector of Lanman and his theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of sabbat, apocalypse and anti-Catholicism in English demonological treatises from 1587 to 1648. Topics discussed include the influence of the belief in the reality of sabbats or a secret nocturnal assembly where witches worship Satan in the search for alleged witches, famous demonological authors during the period such as Jean Bodin and Nicolas Remy, and role of the Apocalypse and the Antichrist in the relation between Catholicism and witches.

Recent work on medieval heresy has emphasized the 'constructedness' of heresy by orthodox power, thus undermining the coherence of heretical sects and tending to suggest that those tried as heretics were essentially unwitting victims. This article examines the evidence from the entire range of surviving Lollard trials, and argues that we can see consciously 'dissenting' speech alongside the standard theological positions associated with (and perhaps imposed upon) Lollardy. In each area of dissent anticlerical, sceptical, disputational and rebellious a wider cultural context is explored, demonstrating that the language of dissent is not limited to 'Lollardy'; at the same time however it is argued that it is precisely through the voicing and reception of such wider referents that a heretical movement comes to exist. The article traces trends in medieval speech through which specific opinions and beliefs are voiced as a challenge, and the linguistic and social contexts within which they give rise to wider meanings—including collective identifications. Thus, whilst we may wish to foreground the impositions of power and orthodoxy that 'made' heresy, we should not make 'heretics' disappear completely. Through the records of prosecution, we can still hear something of the voices of those who chose to voice dissent; and we can give recognition to that choice as a form of dissenting agency—dependent also however on the reception and interpretation of those voices by neighbours, witnesses and inquisitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the prominent Henrician evangelical Robert Barnes was burned as a heretic in July 1540, a flurry of pamphleteering ensued both in England and abroad. Coming quickly to dominate this polemical output was the text of Barnes's last words spoken at the stake, which were printed in at least two languages and published by polemicists of three distinct theological orientations, and which survive in twenty editions. Because the extant editions of Barnes's words contain significant variants, they afford a unique opportunity to investigate the processes and complexities of martyrological identity shaping. It is argued that, being aware of attempts to obscure his theology and thus prevent his memorialization as a martyr, Barnes, with his last words, consciously attempted to shape his own posthumous theological identity; his manner of doing so, however, not only complicated his enemies' attempts to vilify him, but also forced his evangelical allies to reshape the identity he had meant to craft for himself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses contemporary responses to the executions under martial law of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle in 1648, following General Thomas Fairfax's siege of Colchester. It compares the royalist propaganda, which established these two royalist partisans as martyred heroes, to the Parliamentary and Army propaganda, which lamented the assassination of the wellknown New Model Army colonel Thomas Rainsborough two months later. Analysing newsbooks, accounts by participants and observers, and literary responses (especially the elegy), it finds that popular writers used these deaths to impugn the honour of their opponents, and consequently to argue against reconciliation or compromise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the influence of English queen Matilda in the history of England. Matilda as a feminine threat to order; Anxiety over the power of Matilda as a queen, as demonstrated in the text `Gesta Stephani Regis' and the chronicles of William of Malmesbury; Depiction of Matilda as a puppet of her husband.

The voice of the people is assumed to have carried little authority in early modern England. Elites often caricatured the common people as an ignorant multitude and demanded their obedience, deference and silence. Hostility to the popular voice was an important element of contemporary political thought. However, evidence for a very different set of views can be found in numerous polemical tracts written between the Reformation and the English Civil War. These tracts claimed to speak for the people, and sought to represent their alleged grievances to the monarch or parliament. They subverted the rules of petitioning by speaking for 'the people' as a whole and appealing to a wide audience, making demands for the redress of grievances that left little room for the royal prerogative. In doing so, they contradicted stereotypes about the multitude, arguing that the people were rational, patriotic and potentially better informed about the threats to the kingdom than the monarch themselves. 'Public opinion' was used to confer legitimacy on political and religious demands long before the mass subscription petitioning campaigns of the 1640s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reassesses the role of gender in early modern demonic possession from a medical perspective. It takes as its starting point the demoniac Richard Mainy, who in 1585 claimed to be suffering from hysteria. Best known for its influence on Shakespeare's King Lear, Mainy's gender crossing diagnosis should be read in the context of the close historical relationship between hysteria and epilepsy. While medical historians have viewed hysteria as the key possession-related illness, epilepsy was equally important. Both were seen as convulsive illnesses caused by an excess of reproductive fluids. Emphasizing the similarities rather than the differences between male and female sexuality, this shared etiology underpinned medical approaches to demonic possession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the publication of records concerning English sea captain Sir Francis Drake and the lack of publications concerning Drake between 1580 and 1630. It states his reputation was made with his raid on the Spanish treasure train at Nombre de Dios, Panama, and in circumnavigating the globe in 1577 to 1580. It mentions the books "The World Encompassed" and "Sir Francis Drake Revised" appeared 30 years after his death and speculates on geopolitical reasons in publication delays.

The trial of Charles I (said mid-seventeenth-century radical Protestants) was "a Resemblance and Representation of the great day of Judgement." Situating the trial in its theological and iconographic context, viewing it as an expression of broader Puritan performance culture, this essay offers a close reading of its staging, arguing that we should view the assertion that the trial resembled Judgment Day not as an abstract theological aspiration but as a concrete description of the trial's visual, spatial, and dramatic representation of the Last Judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs about the receipt found for the year 1207 where King John of England received a diplomatic envoy from the sultan of Egypt by the name of William. Topics discussed include diplomatic relations between Islamic and western European interactions in the Middle Ages, bureaucratic governance and Ayyubids.

The abduction in 1160 of Romsey's abbess Marie, daughter of King Stephen and Queen Matilda of England, attracted considerable attention in England and Northern Europe. Medieval chroniclers theorized about those who had arranged the raptus, emphasizing that they had targeted a holy bride of Christ. At the scandal's crux was the altered status of the abbess who had unexpectedly become sole heir to her family's lands, wealth, and titles. This transformation occurred for Marie when the last of her family died in the waning months of 1159. With astonishing speed, Marie transitioned from her role as a high-status abbess to one of heiress-countess. This article examines the evidence concerning the abduction's backstory, the resulting marriage, and the aftermath of Marie's nine years as a married countess. It presents Marie in light of her ability to adapt to and exploit the changing political, social, and cultural landscapes that she inhabited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the later history of the Whiteway anarchist community in Gloucestershire. The sole survivor of the various communal experiments of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Whiteway colony was a bohemian enclave that attracted political militants, draft-dodgers, exponents of colonial separatism, and cultural and religious dissidents in exile from Europe. In common with other settlements of this nature in Europe and North America, Whiteway received considerable voyeuristic and prurient attention from the state, police, anti-vice activists and near neighbours. This article examines the mythology surrounding Whiteway, and considers the arguments about its later significance in the twentieth century. Locating the community in the traditions of political protest, it relates the history of Whiteway to broader debates about the role of alternative cultures within British popular politics and memory. Re-examining Whiteway's reputation for the exotic and the aberrant, this article unearths previously unused documents about the colony to reassess the changing moral and political attitudes displayed towards the community by reformers and anti-reformers at the beginning of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the possible influence of the French and the French language upon British culture in the 12th century, particularly the rise of chivalry. It discusses the erosion of slavery and slave-raiding in Great Britain, moral conduct towards women, and forms of chivalry in wars between Christians. The article also discusses the book "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker.

This article explores the intersection between society and culture in medieval England by examining the ways in which the social identities of female pilgrims were represented in twelfth-century miracle narratives. Miracle stories are written accounts of miraculous events associated with saints' shrines, and often include detailed sociological information about medieval pilgrims. The article focuses on women in these texts, and investigates the extent to which the social roles and labels attributed to female pilgrims by clerical writers suggest a hagiographical discourse of womanhood rather than an accurate reflection of women's social experiences in twelfth-century England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of English Countess of Pembroke Anne Devereux Herbert is presented. She was born around 1433. She was married to nobleman William Herbert in 1449 and they had at least nine children. They lived at Raglan Castle in Wales and she largely supervised its renovation in the 1460s. She was the guardian of future English king Henry VII and died early during his reign.

Historians—both those who concentrate on military history and those who touch upon it in passing—often refer to the ‘laws of war’ in the middle ages without any clear idea of what this term actually implies. Ecclesiastical immunity during warfare has long been held as one such ‘law of war’; this article, however, questions the validity of identifying late medieval ideas of ecclesiastical immunity during wartime as valid ‘law’. The article focuses on English warfare in and around the fourteenth century (c.1290–c.1415), contrasting apparent attempts to protect ecclesiastical property with the widespread destruction of churches, abbeys, and other religious property during wartime. By comparing theoretical military conduct, as stipulated in military ordinances, with actual military conduct in the field, the article seeks to reveal medieval attitudes regarding the limitation of war. A number of English campaigns from Edward I to Henry V are examined, with particular attention given to the Durham Ordinances of Richard II, created on the eve of his 1385 invasion of Scotland. It is argued that notions of ecclesiastical protection contained within military ordinances were based more on politico-military factors than on moral or legal considerations. Furthermore, it is argued, ecclesiastical immunity lacked fundamental characteristics of law—compliance, sanction, enforcement—and therefore cannot be identified as valid ‘law’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses medieval English queens. The article discusses evolution of political influence and significance exercised by queens in medieval England, queens such as Eleanor of Provence, Berengaria of Navarre, and Isabella of Angoulême. The article also discusses the cultural significance of medieval English queens, the culture of the households of queens, and ceremonial functions of queenship.

An examination of the decorative elements on the structure of the Anglo-Saxon chapel of St Laurence at Bradford on Avon, Wilts., has suggested that the total decorative scheme, comprising different elements, was abandoned before completion. This hypothesis arises from an examination of the carved moulding on some of the internal and external pilasters, the external blind arcading, and the 'unfinished' rood on the eastern wall of the nave. A historical context for this is suggested in the abandonment of the nearly completed building on the death of King ABthelred, the sponsor of the construction of the chapel as a cult centre for Edward the Martyr from AD 1001. While his successor King Cnut would probably have been supportive of the continuation of the cult at Shaftesbury, the chapel was arguably soon abandoned because the underlying religious and political rationale for its construction no longer obtained in the circumstances of the new king's regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Latin chronicle "Flores Historiarum," which provides a historical account of facts centering around the English period of reform and rebellion between 1258 and 1265. It argues that a large portion of the "Flores Historiarum" was written at Pershore Abbey in Worcestershire, England, rather than the common assumption that it was written exclusively at St Albans Abbey in St Albans, England. The author discusses why this would make the content of the chronicle more believable and analyzes how it would have been acquired by Pershore, and later by Westminster Abbey in London, England.

This article provides an analysis of the images on the seals used by the archbishops of Canterbury which portrayed the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. The discussion will proceed on several levels. First, although the image of the murder appears on all of them, there is great variety in the iconographical detail to be explored and compared with contemporaneous manuscript illuminations and reliquaries. Secondly, the accounts which furnished the material for the images differ widely; an investigation of the descriptions of the martyrdom given in the Lives of Becket written by his close associates, as well as contemporaneous sermons and liturgical celebrations, demonstrate a variety of influences on the iconography. Finally, an examination of the seals within the various political contexts will illuminate unexplored aspects of historical detail concerning the legend of the Canterbury martyr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The limestone quarried on Ham Hill near Yeovil in Somerset is very distinctive and readily identifiable. It was used extensively throughout the medieval period for a great variety of purposes. Whole buildings were constructed using it from floor to roof and it was also employed for decorative work and sculpture. A large group of church monuments was carved in Ham Hill stone, especially effigies and cross slabs. Monument production can be appreciated in the context of a much larger industry and analysis of the figures has revealed that the clients were predominantly the local gentry. Consequently, there are significantly more male civilian and female effigies than are typically found elsewhere, such as in Devon and Yorkshire. There is evidence of an awareness of the products from other stone centres in the south-west, which the carvers of Ham Hill stone were willing to imitate in order to satisfy customer requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a historical overview of English property law as of August 2012, focusing on an analysis of the Roman law's influence on the development of property law in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Several legal treatises are addressed, including "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Angliae" which is also known as "Glanvill." The development of Roman Canon law is also examined in relation to the publication of the textbook "Concordance of Discordant Canons."

The article discusses French and English secular law codes concerning childbirth and pregnancy in the 12th and 13 centuries, with a particular focus on the control they granted to males. The impact that factors, including inheritance, illegitimate children, the expansion of literacy, the study of Roman law and the bureaucratization of medieval society, had on the French and English law codes is discussed. The author also discusses the laws within the French and English law code which protected women and unborn children.

As a contribution to the long-running debate concerning the extent and motivation of medieval storage, this article uses purveyance accounts to examine such facilities in England prior to the Black Death. Three hundred and fifteen cases of predominantly urban storage were recorded for 97 communities for the products of agriculture purchased by the purveyors, mostly threshed grains. When these 315 cases were analysed using an Excel database, it was found that, in contrast to the often magnificent barns on monastic and other lordly estates, this storage was much smaller and informal, often indistinguishable, it seems, from the domestic storage for families themselves. As modest as it was, however, it likely played an important role in the increasing commercialization of medieval England, even perhaps to the extent of making society at the time more susceptible to subsistence crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through historiographical error, the belief persists that 'town air makes free' was a principle applicable throughout medieval England. However, it was not in force in all towns, nor advantageous to all hoping to escape servitude. This avenue to emancipation was introduced for pragmatic, not philosophical, reasons, and to benefit the free rather than the servile sector of society. Caught up in larger trends, it became a nuisance to the intended beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates an episode in 1652 which is usually ignored and has never been explained. On 19 May 1652 the Rump Parliament, without forewarning, voted not to renew the office of lord lieutenant and thereby stripped the lord general, Oliver Cromwell of one of his highest and most significant offices. The article seeks to penetrate the wall of silence in the press and in the parliamentary records to see what lay behind this decision, which split the Commons down the middle. It seeks to relate the decision to two very different visions of the settlement to be imposed on Ireland following the rebellion of 1641 and the 'Cromwellian conquest' and it suggests that it is likely that the subsequent act of the Rump, which sought the execution of tens of thousands of Irish royalists, the exiling of many tens of thousands more and the herding of almost all of the rest of the catholic population into four counties in the west of England - known to history as the 'Cromwellian settlement'- was precisely a settlement Cromwell did not want. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early modern England, bestiality was tied to cultural and social perceptions and realities and (alongside other sexual behaviours viewed as lewd or subversive of the natural order) had a powerful cultural resonance. This paper investigates early modern English attitudes (social, religious, and cultural) to bestiality and argues that, while contemporary pamphlet literature, sermons, broadsides, and legal texts strongly condemned bestiality and hint that occurrences of it were rife, prosecutions for the crime were relatively rare and this asymmetry may be explained by analyzing the political atmosphere at specific moments when bestiality was legislated against. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the English old poor law (OPL), instituted during the reign of British Queen Elizabeth I and continuing through the 1830s. It explores the historiography of studies of OPL, as well as considering changes in standards of living, the relationship between life expectancy and mortality rates during the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries, and changes in real wages between the late medieval and early modern periods. Other subjects considered include British public health policies and public charities, the social impact of the plague, and how the OPL and poor relief benefited women.

Interpretations that solely emphasize either continuity or controversy are found wanting. Historians still question how the English became Protestant, what sort of Protestants they were, and why a civil war dominated by religion occurred over a hundred years after the initial Reformation crisis. They utilize many approaches : from above and below, and with fresh perspectives, from within and without. Yet the precise nature of the relationship of the Reformation, the civil war, the interregnum and the Restoration settlement remains controversial. This review of recent Reformation historiography largely validates the current consensus of a balance of continuity and change, pressure for further reform and begrudging conformity. Yet ultimately it argues that continuity must form the foundation for any interpretation of the Reformation, for controversial or dramatic alterations to the status quo only made sense to contemporaries in the context of what had come before. Challenging ideas, like challenging individuals, did not exist in a vacuum devoid of historical context. The practical limits of possibility, constrained largely by the established norms and procedures, shaped the course of English Reformation. As such, practicality seems a unifying and central theme for current and future investigations of England's long Reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with Henry III, pavage grants were presented by the Crown to the burgesses, bailiffs, and mayors of English towns, allowing those officials to assess tolls on imports and exports. The funds from the tolls were used for paving and repairing streets. The records of pavage grants are found primarily in the Calendar of Patent Rolls. The local and national concern regarding urban street paving reflects the demands of an increasingly commercial economy that required better roads to lower transport costs and enable faster delivery to market. Further, the increase in the number of grants between the mid-thirteenth century and the mid-fifteenth reflects the rising investment in public works by the Crown and local officials. Use of the grants to improve roads promoted greater commercialisation throughout England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]