You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
First full analysis of John Mirk's Festial, of particular importance for the evidence it offers for the debate over medieval heresy and orthodoxy. `Marvellously perceptive and insightful'. FIONA SOMERSET, Duke University.Written with largely uneducated rural congregations in mind, John Mirk's Festial became the most popular vernacular sermon collection of late-medieval England, yet until relatively recently it has been neglected by scholars -- despite the fact that the question of popular access to the Bible, undoubtedly regarded as the preserve of learned culture, along with the related issue of the relative authority of written text and tradition, is at the heart of both late-medieval here...
This book challenges conventional wisdom and provides new insights into Scottish social and economic history. Christopher A. Whatley argues that the Union of 1707 was vital for Scottish success, but in ways which have hitherto been overlooked. He proposes that the central place of Jacobitism in the historiography of the period should be revised. Comprehensive in its coverage, the book is based not only on an exhaustive reading of secondary material but also incorporates a wealth of new evidence from previously little-used or unused primary sources.
This engaging story of an eighteenth century Scottish laird whose brief arranged marriage was annulled on the grounds of his mental capacity - which seen through modern eyes can be identified as autism. It is a story of villainy and innocence, and provides a fascinating historical context to which the latest theories on autism are applied.
Cultures of Care: Domestic Welfare, Discipline and the Church of Scotland, c. 1600–1689 explores voluntary networks of charity and their interaction with the Reformed Church of Scotland. Whereas most previous histories have assessed the growth of institutional charity, this book contends that the Reformed Church of Scotland was heavily reliant on informal, domestic modes of self-help throughout the seventeenth century. The existence and widespread acceptance of informal care dramatically changes our understanding of the impact of the Calvinist Reformation. Local ecclesiastical and secular leaders did not have a concerted policy to affect or ameliorate informal networks of care. Reformed authorities were members of these networks, as well as agents to police them, collapsing distinctions between informal and formal modes of Calvinist authority.
A fresh and fascinating history of crime and violence in England through the office of the coroner In his fascinating debut, Matthew Lockwood explores the history of crime, homicide, and suicide in England over four centuries through the office of the coroner. While the office was established to investigate violent or suspicious deaths, Lockwood asserts that the demands of competing parties gradually shaped its systems and transformed England into a modern state earlier than is commonly acknowledged. Weaving together strands of social, legal, economic, and political history, this book will interest scholars across a range of fields.
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. This book is the first academic study of the post-mortem practice of gibbeting (‘hanging in chains’), since the nineteenth century. Gibbeting involved placing the executed body of a malefactor in an iron cage and suspending it from a tall post. A body might remain in the gibbet for many decades, while it gradually fell to pieces. Hanging in chains was a very different sort of post-mortem punishment from anatomical dissection, although the two were equal alternatives in the eyes of the law. Where dissection obliterated and de-individualised the body, hanging in chains made it monumental and rooted it in the landscape, adding to personal notoriety. Focusing particularly on the period 1752-1832, this book provides a summary of the historical evidence, the factual history of gibbetting which explores the locations of gibbets, the material technologies involved in hanging in chains, and the actual process from erection to eventual collapse. It also considers the meanings, effects and legacy of this gruesome practice.
In this interdisciplinary collaboration, an international group of scholars have come together to suggest new directions for the study of the family in Scotland circa 1300-1750. Contributors apply tools from across a range of disciplines including art history, literature, music, gender studies, anthropology, history and religious studies to assess creatively the broad range of sources which inform our understanding of the pre-modern Scottish family. A central purpose of this volume is to encourage further studies in this area by highlighting the types of sources available, as well as actively engaging in broader historiographical debates to demonstrate how important and effective family stud...
This Handbook triangulates the disciplines of history, legal history, and literature to produce a new, interdisciplinary framework for the study of early modern England. For historians of early modern England, turning to legal archives and learning more about legal procedure has seemed increasingly relevant to the project of understanding familial and social relations as well as political institutions, state formation, and economic change. Literary scholars and intellectual historians have also shown how classical forensic rhetoric formed the basis both of the humanist teaching of literary composition (poetry and drama) and of new legal epistemologies of fact-finding and evidence evaluation....
A pioneering new 'history from below' of Irish poverty told through the letters of the Catholic poor in Independent Ireland.