‘Love ye therefore the strangers’: immigration and the criminal law in early modern England

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW LOCKWOOD
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis article offers a comprehensive examination of the relationship between foreign residents and the criminal law in early modern England, as well as an investigation of trials ‘de medietate lingue’, trials with half-English and half-foreign juries, in theory and practice. Because England witnessed both a series of foreign migrations and a series of geo-political crises in the years between 1674 and 1750, the article charts patterns of foreign prosecutions across the period in order to place them in their proper historical context. The article concludes that the protections offered by English law to foreign residents were real and significant and that these protections were especially important at points of geo-political stress.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

scholarly journals Women, Marriage, Property and Law: Contextualizing The Witch of Edmonton

Early Theatre ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Stretton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Personal Relations ◽  
Marital Property ◽  
The Witch

Changes in marital property and marriage negotiations, the economy, and personal relations in early modern England form the backdrop for key elements of The Witch of Edmonton. This essay draws on recent scholarship surrounding these changes to provide historical context for analyzing the play. It argues that the commercialization of economic relations and the emergence of trusts facilitated a shift away from customary arrangements (such as dower) towards more contractual ones (such as jointures). Meanwhile, increased reliance on credit and legal instruments, such as bonds, produced record levels of litigation, contributing to legalistic thinking and cynicism about legal agreements. 

INTOXICANTS AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHIL WITHINGTON
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
The Poor

ABSTRACTThe article considers the rapid increase in the English market for alcohol and tobacco in the 1620s and the set of concurrent influences shaping their consumption. It suggests that intoxicants were not merely a source of solace for ‘the poor’ or the lubricant of traditional community, as historians often imply. Rather, the growth in the market for beer, wine, and tobacco was driven by those affluent social groups regarded as the legitimate governors of the English commonwealth. For men of a certain disposition and means, the consumption of intoxicants became a legitimate – indeed valorized and artful – aspect of their social identity: an identity encapsulated by the Renaissance concept of ‘wit’. These new styles of drinking were also implicated in the proliferation (in theory and practice) of ‘societies’ and ‘companies’, by which contemporaries meant voluntary and purposeful association. These arguments are made by unpacking the economic, social, and cultural contexts informing the humorous dialogue Wine, beere, ale and tobacco. Contending for superiority. What follows demonstrates that the ostensibly frivolous subject of male drinking casts new light on the nature of early modern social change, in particular the nature of the ‘civilizing process’.

scholarly journals The Impact of the Netherlandish Landscape Tradition on Poetry and Painting in Early Modern England*

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 866-903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Trevisan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Rare Case ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Complex Product ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between poetry and painting has been one of the most debated issues in the history of criticism. The present article explores this problematic relationship in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, taking into account theories of rhetoric, visual perception, and art. It analyzes a rare case in which a specific school of painting directly inspired poetry: in particular, the ways in which the Netherlandish landscape tradition influenced natural descriptions in the poem Poly-Olbion (1612, 1622) by Michael Drayton (1563–1631). Drayton — under the influence of the artistic principles of landscape depiction as explained in Henry Peacham’s art manuals, as well as of direct observation of Dutch and Flemish landscape prints and paintings — successfully managed to render pictorial landscapes into poetry. Through practical examples, this essay will thoroughly demonstrate that rhetoric is capable of emulating pictorial styles in a way that presupposes specialized art-historical knowledge, and that pictorialism can be the complex product as much of poetry and rhetoric as of painting and art-theoretical vocabulary.

The Problem of ‘Atheism’ in Early Modern England

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 135-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Real ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

To speak of ‘atheism’ in the context of early modern England immediately invites confusion, and it is for this reason that I shall place the word in inverted commas throughout this paper. On the one hand, I intend to deal with what a twentieth-century reader might expect ‘atheism’ to imply, namely overt hostility to religion. On the other, I want to consider at some length the profuse writings on ‘atheism’ that survive from the period: in these, as we shall see, the word if often used to describe a much broader range of phenomena, in a manner typical of a genre which often appears frustratingly heightened and rhetorical. Some might argue that this juxtaposition displays—and will encourage—muddled thought. But, on the contrary, I think that it is precisely from such a combination that we stand to learn most. Not only are we likely to discover how contemporaries experienced and responded to the threat of irreligion in the society of their day. In addition, by re-examining the relationship between the real and the exaggerated in their perceptions of such heterodoxy, we may be able to draw broader conclusions about early modern thought.

Summary of Closing Plenary Discussion on ‘Honour and Reputation in Early Modern England’

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 247-248
Author(s):  
Ingrid Tague ◽  
Helen Berry
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Companionate Marriage ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

Richard Cust connected honour to his work on political culture and the gentry. He introduced the work of Mervyn James on honour as a framework for thinking about behavioural change over time. He suggested that the new historical approach is a multi-layered rather than a teleological one. Certain speakers had emphasised change rather than continuity over time, while others challenged such an approach. Important new themes had been introduced by the conference speakers, such as the importance of lineage, the impact of the companionate marriage, the relationship between public and private notions of honour and the acceptability of violence as a means of defending or challenging honour. He suggested two related ways of thinking about honour that had not been touched on by any of the speakers: the notion of ‘honesty’ to refer to a godly magistrate following his conscience, and the importance of godliness generally, a pious reputation as key means of establishing one's honour.

scholarly journals “The True Forme of Love”: Transforming the Petrarchan Tradition in the Poetry of Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1631)

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Tomáš Jajtner
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Lady Mary Wroth ◽  
Female Poets

Abstract The following article deals with the transformation of the Petrachan idea of love in the work of Lady Mary Wroth (1587-1631), the first woman poet to write a secular sonnet sequence in English literature, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. The author of the article discusses the literary and historical context of the work, the position of female poets in early modern England and then focuses on the main differences in Wroth’s treatment of the topic of heterosexual love: the reversal of gender roles, i.e., the woman being the “active” speaker of the sonnets; the de-objectifying of the lover and the perspective of love understood not as a possessive power struggle, but as an experience of togetherness, based on the gradual interpenetration of two equal partners.

Ben Jonson and Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Searle
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Religious Conversions ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the complex role played by religion in Jonson’s life; his relationship to the theatre; his works in various genres (plays, poetry, and masques), and in the critical reception of his writings. It considers the biographical evidence surrounding Jonson’s multiple religious conversions within the broader context of recusancy culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. It then examines some of the ways in which religion is represented in his plays and how this influenced and was shaped by the changes in religious culture that characterized Jonson’s lengthy professional career from the 1590s until the 1630s. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the relationship between religion and the theatre as it impacted upon Jonson’s writing and his own instrumentality—as a key cultural player—in redefining that relationship in early modern England.

scholarly journals Reading alchemically: guides to ‘philosophical’ practice in early modern England

BJHS Themes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Rampling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
Late Fifteenth

AbstractDozens of early modern treatises claim to offer straightforward instructions on the theory and practice of alchemy, including all the steps necessary to produce the philosophers’ stone and a range of medicinal elixirs. Yet the resulting works often seem to obfuscate more than they explain: omitting vital information, disguising ingredients and practices behind cover names, and describing outcomes that seem, to modern eyes, impossible. Were such ‘instruction manuals’ ever intended to offer guides for actual practice, or did they serve other ends – from attracting patrons to persuading sceptics of the truth of alchemy? Drawing upon alchemical dialogues written, compiled and annotated by English alchemists in the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, I argue that these works of ‘philosophical’ alchemy could indeed serve as technical manuals, although not always of the kind we might expect. Such writings offer advice not only on practical techniques, but also on the process of reading alchemically: guiding readers through the exegetical minefield of alchemical writing, in order both to extract meaningful chemical recipes from obscure texts, and to craft the practitioner's own persona as an alchemical philosopher.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document