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Essex in the Age of Enlightenment brings together eleven studies in historical biography by John Bensusan-Butt. In a direct and engaging style, they explore the lives of musicians, artists, a highly original architect, a skilled doctor, a forthright lawyer who was painted by Thomas Gainsborough, a benevolent cleric, a suicidal poet and others who lived in or near Colchester in Essex. These essays examine patronage and the arts in Georgian provincial towns, public service and philanthropy as well as urban culture, polite society and its politics and personalities. John Bensusan-Butt (1911-1997) was a knowledgeable local historian whose research career spanned some forty years. Shani D'Cruze is Honorary Reader at Keele University. She is the author of A Pleasing Prospect: Social Change and Urban Culture in Eighteenth-Century Colchester (Hertford, 2008) and is also a historian of gender, crime and violence.
John T. Shawcross's groundbreaking new study of John Milton is an essential work of scholarship for those who seek a greater understanding of Milton, his family, and his social and political world. Shawcross uses extensive new archival research to scrutinize several misunderstood elements of Milton's life, including his first marriage and his relationship with his brother, brother-in-law and nephews. Shawcross examines Milton's numerous royalist connections, complicating the conventional view of Milton as eminent Puritan and raising questions about the role his connections played in his relatively mild punishment after the Restoration. Unique in its methodology, The Arms of the Family is req...
"Katherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk, was one of the highest-ranking noblewomen in sixteenth-century England. She wielded considerable political power in her local community and at court, and her social status and her commitment to religious reform placed her at the centre of the political and religious developments that shaped the English Reformation." "By focusing on her kinship and patronage network, this book offers an examination of the development of Protestantism in the governing classes during the period. The importance of gender in the process of spiritual transformation emerges clearly from this study, showing how the changing religious climate provided new opportunities for women to exert greater influence in their society."--BOOK JACKET.
A record of material and spiritual gifts to churches, compiled from 3000 wills made over 180 years. Reads like a medieval detective story. A splendid book... should be treated as a companion volume to The Stripping of the Altars. JULIAN LITTEN, CHURCH TIMES In the late medieval churches of the former deanery of Dunwich there are many features which were provided by testamentary gifts; this study of three thousand wills from fifty-two Suffolk parishes, written between 1370 and 1547, records such material and spiritual bequests. Many purchased prayer (the prayers of the poor being particularly sought), vital for the swift passage of the soul through Purgatory; other testators left instructions...
Examines the De Lisle hours of Margaret de Beauchamp, the De Bois hours (Dubois hours) of Hawisia de Bois, and the Neville of Hornby hours of Isabel de Byron.
The 650th anniversary of the foundation of Wingfield College was the occasion for a special two-day symposium marking the culmination of a three-year UEA-funded research project into the college and castle. The building projects of the late medieval aristocracy focused on their homes and the monasteries, churches or chantry foundations under their patronage where their family were buried and commemorated. This commemoration allowed a visual celebration of their achievements, status and lineage, the scale and prestige of which reflected on the fortunes of the family as a whole. Wingfield is explored in the context of both the actual building of the castle, chantry chapel and the college, and ...
Eighteenth-century Colchester in Essex was a sizeable provincial town. Colchester People is a mine of information for those researching particular individuals and families. It also builds up a picture of social, political and religious connections between families, individuals and neighbourhoods.This biographical dictionary is based on the archive compiled by John Bensusan Butt. It identifies over 1,000 individuals of the middling sort and town gentry who lived in or were associated with Colchester.This is the first of three volumes.It covers those with surnames from A to L. Volume 2 deals with surnames M to Y. Volume 3 contains appendices including entries for Colchester's eighteenth-century inns and full indexes cross-referenced across all volumes.
Detailed study of female monasticism in the later middle ages, with particular emphasis on the nuns' importance to the local community.