Britain & Ireland

The Tudors continue to fascinate and some of their story is told here along with the other dynasty of the period the Stuarts. Alongside those resources are the podcasts on the ideas that transformed British society during that period and created a United Kingdom for the first time. The industrial revolution is explored through poetry as well as technology. Religious collapse, change and diversity are all themes explored in this section. Read more

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  • 1450: The Rebellion of Jack Cade

    Article

    ‘When Kings and chief officers suffer their under rulers to misuse their subjects and will not hear nor remedy their people's wrongs when they complain, then suffereth God the rebel to rage and to execute that part of His justice which the partial prince will not.' Thus did the Tudor...

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  • Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century

    Article

    (Historical Association Pamphlet, No. 124, 1942) Dunlop's research into the occupations and attitudes of Scots abroad during the 15th century uncovers some surprising revelations about all members of the Scottish ex-pat society. She particularly notes the ‘scurrilous' opinions of the French regarding Scotsmen's behaviour. While Scottish diplomatists and envoys tended...

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  • Reinventing the Charter: from Sir Edward Coke to 'freeborn John'

    Article

    When was Magna Carta launched on its modern career as a symbol of freedom and liberty? Justin Champion looks at the role of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lawyers and politicians in shaping how we see the Charter today. ‘For every person who knows what the contents of Magna Carta actually...

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  • A Mid-Tudor Crisis?

    Article

    This classic pamphlet takes you through the Mid-Tudor period focusing on foreign affairs and finance, the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, the risings of 1549, coups and commissions 1549-53, Edwardian Protestantism success and failure, Mary and the Catholic Restoration, the Marian Administration and the Spanish Marriage.

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  • Daniel Defoe, public opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union

    Article

    There is a tendency to represent Daniel Defoe as a novelist and satirical journalist who was at one point placed in the London stocks as a punishment. Ted Vallance's article broadens our perspective to appreciate Defoe's activities as a propagandist in both England and Scotland... The September 2014 referendum on...

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  • John Knox

    Article

    During his own lifetime John Knox was engaged in violent disputes, and throughout the succeeding ages his character has been the subject of acrimonious controversy. While there is an infinite variety of opinion as to his character, there is complete unanimity as to his importance. This pamphlet discusses the life,...

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  • The Scottish Parliament by Robert S. Rait

    Article

    This short pamphlet by the former Historiographer Royal for Scotland, Robert S. Rait, provides an introduction to the Scottish Parliament from its early origins to the Acts of Union of 1707.

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  • Captain Thomas and the North West Passage

    Article

    In the early years of the seventeenth century Englishmen vigorously prosecuted the search for a North West Passage to the Pacific. The fabled wealth of India and Cathay beckoned to them as enticingly as it had attracted their sixteenth century predecessors. The foundation of the English East India Company in...

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  • Scottish Diplomatists 1689-1789

    Article

    The object of this pamphlet is to show the gradual penetration of Scotsmen after the Union into a particular branch of the public service - what may be conveniently though not very accurately described as the diplomatic service. This essay makes a study of the actual negotiations conducted by Scottish...

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  • Podcast Series: Thomas Paine

    Multipage Article

    In this set of podcasts Emeritus Professor W. A. Speck of the University of Leeds looks at the life and ideas of Thomas Paine.

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  • Queen Anne

    Article

    In this pamphlet, James Anderson Winn, author of a recent biography of Queen Anne, recommends a new approach to historians writing about this successful and popular queen. Female, overweight, and reticent, Anne has long been underestimated. Her letters, however, show how well she understood the motives of her ministers, and...

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  • Thomas Paine

    Article

    The radical writer Tom Paine (1737-1809) has become a neglected figure, but this work argues that he should be rightly regarded as an original thinker, whose publications contributed to revolutionary discourses in America, France and Britain in the late 18th Century. He deserves to be remembered in the United States...

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  • Why did the prosecution of witches cease in England?

    Article

    This lucid survey of the history of witch trials in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth century focuses on the question of ‘why did the formal prosecution of witches cease?' Accusations of witchcraft can be found throughout the nineteenth century yet the last conviction was in 1712. Clive Holmes explores...

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  • Penruddock's Rising 1655

    Article

    Three hundred years ago John Penruddock of Compton Chamberlayne and a dozen other brave men paid with their lives for their failure to raise the West Country in the name of King Charles II against the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. They had been in arms barely four days, and their...

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  • The Darien Scheme - Pamphlet

    Article

    The colonisation project that became known as the Darien Scheme or Darien Disaster was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kingdom of Scotland to become a world trading nation by establishing a colony called "Caledonia" on the Isthmus of Panama on the Gulf of Darién in the late 1690s. This pamphlet...

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  • The Local Community and The Great Rebellion

    Article

    A.M. Everitt goes past a normal look at The English Civil War, and examines individual communities and resurgence in popular interest in it. More than that, how the Civil War has been documented and what the effect of this flawed teaching and writing on the subject has had on popular...

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  • Podcast Series: The History of Science

    Multipage Article

    In this series of podcasts we take a look at the history of the Royal Society and the influence it has had on the history and development of science. This series features: Keith Moore, Head of Libraries and Archives at the Royal Society, Dr Jordan Goodman, Dr Patricia Fara of...

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  • Interpreting an early seventeenth-century cottage at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum

    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...

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  • The Unfortunate Captain Peirce

    Article

    An apprentice biographer researches the career of an eighteenth-century sea captain On a cold January afternoon in 1986, my neighbour announced that he intended to go to Dorset's Purbeck coast that night. Puzzled, I asked why. He explained it was the 200th anniversary of the wreck of the East Indiaman,...

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  • Adam Smith

    Article

    Adam Smith 1723-1790 Adam Smith was so pre-eminently one of the master minds of the eighteenth century and so obviously one of the dominating influences of the nineteenth, in his own country and in the world at large, that is somewhat surprising that we are so ill-informed regarding the details...

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